Ranking libertarian socialist currents, from worst to best

The situationists, I'm not using the term "situationism" as I believe that's considered bad form.

I would say that Council Communis is neither a libertarian nor an authoritarian current. Instead it seeks to overcome their dichotomy, like the dichotomy between Centralism/Federalism and Leader/Mass. And there have been time, like during the Nazi Dictatorship, where Council Communists became the strongest proponent of organizational centralism and authoritarianism. Also, Council Communism doesn't "proposes that workers’ councils are the basic form of organizing for workers". The Council Idea [and other related terms], as it has been called, denotes self-organization. Workers' Councils were one of the many expressions of this and might never arise in their traditional form in the future but that doesn't render the Council Idea obsolete, which only denotes self-organization, irrespective of form. See Paul Matticks's interview with JJ Lebel and Karl Korsch's description of the Commune as a "formless form".

From a PR prospective, a guild sounds like you’re combatting capitalism via sorcery and alchemy. Conjuring the gods of labour with the lads and ladettes. A trade union sounds a bit shit. The 21st century not making Top of the Pops is a bad sign though.

DeLeonism: Marxist syndicalism.

Communalism/municipalism: Vietnam-era hippies.

Guild socialism: British stupidity.

Autonomism: operaismo's abortion.

Syndicalism: trade unionism, unless you append the prefix 'anarcho-'.

Council communism: the Dutch-German communist left's abortion.

Anarcho-collectivism: self-governing federations.

Anarcho-communism: utopian socialism, fantastical technical blueprints, no political realism.

Anarcho-syndicalism: utopian trade-unionism.

The Situationist International: councilist art hoes.

Councilism: council communism's abortion.

Although I must add that not all anarchist communists conceived of revolution without any transitional measures like labor notes.

Instead of looking at the theoretical, it would be more useful to look at the practical instances of revolutionary anarchist communists, such as the Makhnovshchina, to highlight where these fell short of the aims and goals of the proletarian revolution, of its anarchy, its communism. What compromises did the Makhnovshchina make with the rule of law and order and mercantile society?

Equally, rather than concentrating on the self-proclaimed Council Communists, look towards the actual workers' councils, of India, Iraq, Africa, Europe and the Americas...

If you combined all 9 currents, do you think we’d be bigger or smaller than the English Subbuteo Association?

Agent of the International wrote: This is the original expression of socialist anarchism, of anarchism as a movement, and libertarian socialism in general. Born within the First International as the only alternative to authoritarian state socialists. The collectivists were the precursors of syndicalism.

I don't think it's particularly helpful to just regurgitate Bakunin instead of actually quoting Marx, if that's who you're referring to, and explaining how you think he was an "authoritarian." In addition to Bakunin's differing political/organizational views, he also personally disliked Marx, dismissing him on the basis of his German and Jewish background, and had every reason to misrepresent Marx's beliefs. People should really try bearing this in mind—i.e. that Bakunin described Marx as an "authoritarian" in the same breath that he dismissed him as a "German Jew"—whenever they go around parroting Bakunin's description of Marx and Engels instead of actually quoting them.

If you were to actually read and quote Marx and Engels, then you would find that they were not "authoritarians" at all! Marx and Engels, for the hundredth time, never meant a small group of professional revolutionaries when they were talking about the temporary proletarian dictatorship or workers seizing state power; their conception of this revolutionary or transitional period was in fact quite democratic and involved things like revocable delegates who were democratically selected and responsible to their constituents—the exact opposite of what prevailed in Bolshevik Russia. Both Marx and Engels also pointed to the Paris Commune as an example of what a transitional workers' government might look like. One can take, for example, Marx's commentary in the Civil War in France, in which he praised the self-governing aspects of the Commune:

Marx wrote: The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, of acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the Administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the State was laid into the hands of the Commune. (MECW, Vol. 22, p. 331)

Marx wrote: The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of Labour. (MECW, Vol. 22, p. 334)

I also don't see the point of ranking various socialist tendencies in the first place. Like are you suggesting that people who identify as anarcho-syndicalists (number 1 on your list) are somehow "more worthy" or "better allies" than people who call themselves anarcho-communists (number 2 on your list)?

Agent of the International wrote: 2. Anarchist communism. The vast majority of the collectivists became communists, and hence this current was born. This was probably the earliest expression of a approach to communism without any transistional phase. [not true at all] Although I must add that not all [i.e. very few in fact] anarchist communists conceived of revolution without any transitional measures like labor notes.

Once again, there is no such thing, in the vast majority of cases, as communism without any sort of transitional phase or transitory measures in between, unless you believe that communism/socialism can be created overnight, which is an idea that many anarchists themselves (both contemporarily and historically) reject. Again from the AFAQ:

McKay wrote: So rather than seeing a "full blown" communist society appearing instantly from a revolution, anarcho-communists see a period of transition in which the degree of communism in a given community or area is dependent on the objective conditions facing it. This period of transition would see different forms of social experimentation but the desire is to see libertarian communist principles as the basis of as much of this experimentation as possible. To claim that anarcho-communists ignore reality and see communism as being created overnight is simply a distortion of their ideas. Rather, they are aware that the development towards communism is dependent on local conditions, conditions which can only be overcome in time and by the liberated community re-organising production and extending it as required.

I'm not sure why you're trying to make Leninists' and Stalinists' job of criticizing anarchists easier by arguing the points that they claim that all anarchists believe in, such as that "full-blown communism can be created overnight."

Let's take the Paris Commune for instance, which is celebrated by both Marxists and anarchists: Did the Communards create a full-blown communist society following their rebellion against the Thiers government and their refusal to hand over the cannons? Of course not! The Commune was merely a transitional or revolutionary government during a Civil War, in which the democratically elected (excluding women unfortunately)[1] Commune Council tried balancing instituting radical reforms (e.g. allowing workers to take over abandoned workshops and opening up the arts and sciences to the mass of people) with defending themselves against the Thiers government and other reactionary forces. As Marx correctly argued in my view, the fatal error of the Commune was their failure to strike immediately at the Thiers government in Versailles (as the Blanquist faction, including Louise Michel at the time, and others desired) rather than allowing it to consolidate itself. In addition to the contrasting visions among the Communards on what a socialist society should be, it would have been impossible for the Commune Council to simply abolish commodity production or wages when Paris was largely an isolated city and when the foundations for a communist society were not yet in place.

Do you also know that anarchists (such as Eugène Varlin, Élie Reclus, and Jules Vallès) participated in the Commune Council, which was essentially a workers' government? This sort of democratically elected and revocable body is the sort of thing Marx and Engels were talking about when they used expressions like "state," "government," or "dictatorship of the proletariat."[2] As I said before, they were never talking about the dictatorship of a party or of a small group of professional revolutionaries who claimed to represent workers and peasants, when in fact they (the Bolsheviks/Russian Communist Party) mercilessly suppressed and exploited them.[3] It's also worth pointing out that the words "state" and "government" are employed in a lot of the scholarly literature on the Commune to refer to the Commune Council, such as in Eichner's work, so it's not merely a usage restricted to Marxists.

1. See Eichner's book The Paris Commune: A Brief History:

Eichner wrote: The voters, however, included only half of the adult population. Elected through universal male suffrage, the Commune Council was chosen by only the male portion of the population. Women remained disenfranchised from electoral politics, both literally and in its imagery, as exemplified by the Le Cri du peuple statement. Yet most women sought neither the vote nor a formal governing role. Socialist feminists considered the Commune the dawn of the social revolution and saw new political forms on the horizon. They understood the Commune as transitional to an emergent, egalitarian society. Female Communards engaged extensively, however, in a broad range of political acts, actions that constituted politics outside of government. (38)

2. See Engels for example in his 1891 introduction to Marx's Civil War in France:

Engels wrote: Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

3. Both Marx and Engels criticized Blanquism precisely for this reason. See the second part ("Programme of the Blanquist Commune Refugees") of Engels' series of articles collectively entitled Refugee Literature:

Engels wrote: Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionary, a socialist only in sentiment, because of his sympathy for the sufferings of the people, but he has neither socialist theory nor definite practical proposals for social reforms. In his political activities he was essentially a "man of action", believing that, if a small well-organised minority should attempt to effect a revolutionary uprising at the right moment, it might, after scoring a few initial successes, carry the mass of the people and thus accomplish a victorious revolution. [...] Since Blanqui regards every revolution as a coup de main by a small revolutionary minority, it automatically follows that its victory must inevitably be succeeded by the establishment of a dictatorship—not, it should be well noted, of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small number of those who accomplished the coup and who themselves are, at first, organised under the dictatorship of one or several individuals. (MECW, Vol. 24, p. 13)