I wouldn't considered myself an anarchist, but I can respect that anarchists are actually committed to building a society that isn't just Social Democracy with added genocide, which is more than you can say about MLs, Trots, Maoists, et al.
Except that isn't what any of the workers' states that have existed at this point (however bureaucratically deformed) have been. The Soviet Union was not a 'social democracy with added genocide', unless you define social democracy as a system in which the capitalist system has been thoroughly eradicated (which was the case in the USSR and remains the case in the remaining deformed workers states), a definition that no social democrat would accept as legitimate. You don't have to be a genius to be able to discern that there was indeed a difference in the economic systems of, say, Sweden circa 1975 and the USSR or GDR of the same period. If the USSR and its allied states were really just 'social democracy with added genocide', wouldn't one expect that said states would be on friendlier terms with actually existing social democracies, as opposed to being completely hostile to them?
It also goes without saying that using the term 'genocide' in a context aimed directly at the USSR and its allied states is dubious at best, given that for genocide to occur you have to have some degree of outright planning, which wasn't the case at all in the USSR or PRC, unless of course you're willing to deem the murder of factional opponents within the bureaucracy of these countries 'genocide' (in which case you lack a developed understanding of what that term entails). Did the USSR and PRC (among others) engage in ruthless suppression of the class enemy in these countries? Certainly. But was there much of a choice, in the context in which these societies sprang up?
Certainly not. The Bolsheviks took power
peacefully in 1917. Very little blood was actually shed during the seizure of power, mostly in Moscow (Petrograd, by contrast, was essentially bloodless), where resistance from the bourgeois elements was much more fierce. It was only when organized resistance to the (popularly-supported!) Bolshevik government sprang up did the Bolsheviks have to resort to the use of force, and why shouldn't they have? The Whites were murderous thugs who would stop at nothing to restore their lost privileges and power. We don't condemn the Union for using force against the Confederacy on the same account, and neither should we condemn the Bolsheviks for defending the popularly supported government they headed against counterrevolutionaries.
In Eastern Europe after World War II, the opposition was fascist, and was dealt with in a manner befitting fascism. The Red Army liberated these territories and brought with them the social structure of the October Revolution, allowing the backward, peasant states of Eastern Europe to develop modern economies. Far from being 'Soviet imperialism,' literally any source on the relationship between the USSR and the 'People's Democracies' of Eastern Europe will attest that the Soviets spent more on uplifting these regions and transferring technology and skilled laborers to them than it 'gained' from having them within its political orbit.
Also, as for China, again, the opposition was pro-imperialist (Chiang was in the pocket of the US and UK) and had it won, the result would have been the prostration of China yet again for the imperialist rape of its resources. Would we not repel invaders (or 'patriots' aligned with them) to this country with equal zeal?
This argument that the USSR and the workers' states that sprang forth from it are somehow worse or no different than the capitalist states (whether liberal or social democratic) is lacks historical context. However flawed, these states represented (and represent, in the form of the five that remain) an attempt to transcend capitalism and institute a society based upon a collective plan of production and the provision of essential human needs to all members of society, not just capitalist parasites. These states have done far more for the cause of human liberty (in spite of very real bureaucratic deformations) than any anarchist movement has at any point in human history.
Unlike anarchism, of course, they are able to survive for more than ten minutes in lieu of outside pressure. They are likewise not deluded by petty bourgeois prejudices concerning 'democracy' or allowing counterrevolutionary murderers to continue along the path of capitalist restoration just because they call themselves socialists.
