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My phrasing was emphatic but my intended meaning was that 'those that are the most vocal' - I assume (and hope) that most MLs have a good understanding of theory as well as a more favourable and less antagonistic assessment of anarchism - but then again, the comments made by this potentially vocal minority are not challenged or more realistically, downvoted. I have always downvoted posts by anarchists that have contributed nothing but flak or shit-stirring, it's a waste of time and serves nothing than to make people mad.

Then why not start to abolish hierarchy in all forms, and replace it with egalitarian and horizontal organizing, from the very beginning? That's how ants and bees and termites do it.

Reactionaries like to say that hierarchies are stable, but in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. Absolute rulers always have resentful subordinates and envious rivals, both of whom pose a constant threat to the ruler's survival.

I hold that the abolition of hierarchy is contingent on culturally dismantling the bourgeois concept of "leader" and "leadership". Being an expert or authority on one topic is okay. Being the authority in all topics is not.

That's a good recap on things but there are a few things i would point out.

You say that a central leadership is needed to quickly manouvre against capitalist aggression, but are there any cases there apart from warfare where you have to be that quick that the decisions can't travel up to the main governing body in like i don't know, a week or even way faster with today's tech? And even if we're talking about warfare, you can do what the iroquis did: the main governing body makes the decisions about it but the smaller units can put in a veto in it. The Ukrainian's anarchists strategic mastermind was Makhno but all his tactical decisions had to go through a column and that didn't bother thm as much as the fact that they were fighting with stones basically. Guerilla warfare also is stronger if it's not revolving around one central leadership but is a network of multiple coordinated groups. This is just an example, i'm not trying to disprove you btw just to show that there were other successful models.

Also the thing with being top heavy is that a party can paint a crosshair on a leader which the reactionary forces will absolutely happy to target at, why do you think it's rather a strength and not a weakness? For example if this wasn't the problem in Burkina Faso, than what? (Note: I know jack shit about Burkina Faso apart from that France killed Sankara and from that point the ervolution was basically over)

The problem you have here is that in order to achieve our goals this is a necessary aspect of revolution and defending the revolution. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of revolution we have, this is a power that will be used and is a power that must continue to be used until reactionary forces no longer exist. I don’t mean this in the sense of murdering reactionaries of course, although that will occur, but even in the sense of elimination through re-education, it is something that must continue to exist until capitalism is gone. How do you propose to check this while also recognising that it MUST continue to be a power used while capitalist forces seek to destroy our gains? If we over-check it then we kneecap our ability to stop reactionary forces destroying our project through a 5th column or through the national-bourgeoisie whereas if we under-check it then it gets wielded as a weapon to destroy us if reactionaries ever take over leadership in the project.

The thing with this is that as anarchists movements are bottom-top structured there's less chance of infiltration because the project starts when people are on board with it and this is a very important point. You said that the mass line is about putting the party in every people's lives so the party basically becomes society, that is a valid way, but for anarchists it is the other way around, it's about building society first then comes the "party" It's safe too because if there are reactionary elements in the society, it's society that expulses them, not a secret police - however there's bigger flexibility in anarchist movements because you don't have to fall in line to be a part of society until you're not straight up destructive.

As for over and underchecking, most anarchist/ic projects' structure makes it really difficult to hijack them. Administrative positions are rotational, for example. Thing is that they are structured in a way that if someone clearly tries to distract a project than it's easier to get rid of them than for them to exert real power over the movement.

I am really bad at writing long rants btw

They (the capitalists) use the people against us and if that takes hold it results in disaster, not to mention that events occur that are sudden and complex which a small leadership group may be capable of learning all the information about in a short space of time in order to respond to it that the larger bulk of society won’t be able to

This sounds more like received dogma than anything.

Don't you think that each person having a stake in how it's done, a feeling of self-ownership, would induce people to resist capitalist methods? Why is having one small group of people that has stratified power over others ("leadership") better than having many small groups of people with a united cause?

An in-group of a party leadership structure is extremely prone to groupthink and to missing things that "flatter" organizational structures would catch. More minds thinking about a problem means better answers. Subordinate minds don't produce answers as well as autonomous minds do. A party leadership is also a huge target for capitalist forces: if they know who your leader is, they can incapacitate you easily by striking at, threatening, or negotiating separately with the leader. It's no coincidence that both cops and military intelligence are obsessed with "finding out who's in charge" or "who the leader is". Ultimately, aggregating all roles of power into one "leadership" category is risky, and is counter-productive to revolutionary pursuits IMO.

If society and the party merge then ultimately when hierarchy is no longer needed to oppose the capitalist aggression then struggle will break out within society to eliminate the remaining new socialist hierarchy.

Again, this sounds dogmatic. What guarantees that after defending a hierarchy this whole time, that we'll shift gears and dismantle it? Habits matter; culture matters; behavioral inertia matters, just as much for organizations as for individuals. You have to have some consistency of your ends with your means. If you predict that something is going to happen beyond your lifetime, and you don't do anything to set it in motion or at least parallel it in some form, then you might as well admit to yourself that it is never going to happen; it is utopian, deus-ex-machina, wishful thinking for there to be a discontinuity sometime in the future. That's basically saying "I'm not going to do anything to solve this, I'm going to leave it all to future generations of revolutionaries". And no wonder revolutionary progress gets stalled. You need the sprouts of what you look forward to, or else it will never be harvested.

Consider modern warfare, especially what the US has engaged in. No centralized armed force has been able to fight the US and win. It's guerrilla warfare, not command-and-control, that has stymied the ability of the US to conquer. Whether it's the Internet or a slime mold or a combat force, the decentralized model is far more resilient and adaptable than the centralized one.

I think what you're trying to say is that "during a combat situation, we need one person (or a few people) in strategic control", and I agree, but that's not what "general leadership" means I just don't think that role should persist outside the scope of combat. Algonquian peoples, Nahuatl peoples, and colonial-age pirates all knew this, and had separate and limited domains for their war leaders. There are many ways to be a contributor or an expert at something; "leadership" means that one person (or one chain of command) does all these roles. And that's too much to ask for one person/CoC. It's much more efficient, and avoids the bottleneck and assassination problems if you distribute the roles. E.g. your dominant economic planner, your battle captain, your political theorist, and your highest council of dispute resolution are all different people, and none of these quantifiably have power over another.

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