Quoting from What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
Let us take an illustration; the United States, for instance. Ask yourself why revolutionary propaganda has been of so little effect in that country in spite of fifty years of Socialist and Anarchist effort. Is the American worker not exploited more intensely than labor in other countries? Is political corruption as rampant in any other land? Is the capitalist class in America not the most arbitrary and despotic in the world? True, the worker in the United States is better situated materially than in Europe, but is he not at the same time treated with the utmost brutality and terrorism the moment he shows the least dissatisfaction? Yet the American worker remains loyal to the government and is the first to defend it against criticism. He is still the most devoted champion of the “grand and noble institutions of the greatest country on earth.” Why? Because he believes that they are his institutions, that he, as sovereign and free citizen, is running them and that he could change them if he so wished. It is his faith in the existing order that constitutes its greatest security against revolution. His faith is stupid and unjustified, and some day it will break down and with it American capitalism and despotism. But as long as that faith persists, American plutocracy is safe against revolution.
From Chapter 25, The Idea is the Thing.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc27
Discussing What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
I've thought for a while that my thoughts and ideas on mutual and the importance thereof were quite anarchic in nature so I think I need to read Kropotkin's writing on mutual aid at some point.
Discussing What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
on a related note I'm listening to the Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff series on the Kronstadt Rebellion which has been quite enlightening as to the history of anarchism during the multiple Russian Revolutions along with the failures of the Bolsheviks.
re: Discussing What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
@packetcat the only info i have on kronstadt is from a self described bolshevik on youtube, so factor this obvious biss in mind, but is not at all clear cut when it comes to the failures of the bolsheviks because it was literally organized by a man who had tried to join the white army, who was himself in communication with an actual former member of it, who was very smugly proud of the number of useful idiots he had doing counter-revolutionary work for him in that rebellion
re: Discussing What is Communist Anarchism? by Alexander Berkman
@aescling a lot of the history there is muddled because the Bolsheviks wrote bunch of it. I'm not fully familiar with the Kronstadt Rebellion yet as I've not yet finished listening to the podcast series on it.
but what I'm referring to in my post is stuff that happened before Kronstadt, I'm talking more generally.