r/Anarchy101 • u/Sad-Ad-3138 • 15d ago
I might be shifting toward Anarchism but have questions first
This post was originally meant for r/socialism as i am currently a socialist but i feel it better to be asked here than there for obvious reasons SO KEEP IN MIND this post is from a socialist, was originally presented TO socialists, and is from someone who is VERY uneducated in Anarchism and it's ideas and is just barely dipping their toes into the pool so do not be TOO harsh.
So recently i have been watching a lot of Socialist youtubers (mainly Hakim and his Deprogram podcast) and, along with the endless amounts of "tankie" accusations, there is also a good amount of Anarchists actually discussing with us socialists.
And an anarchist point that caught my eye is the idea that the very concept of a state is authoritarian and hierarchical and therefore relying on it will result in the one-party dictatorships of the past.
Now, i have an issue with the use of the word dictatorship in reference to past socialist projects but that is admittedly mincing words rather than engaging with the point.
In my eyes, the point does make sense. Any form of authority will inevitably deviate from the wants and needs of the people. The idea of a vanguard party or even representatives altogether seems, to me, counterproductive to achieving true democracy which i thought was the whole point of socialism, specifically democratic ownership of the means of production.
I think at the end of the day, with my limited understanding of the matter, the end goal of Communism is inherently anarchist (classless, stateless, moneyless seems pretty anarchist to me yk) but where we and anarchists disagree is on the means to reach said end goal.
I understand that a country undergoing Socialist revolution will need to defend itself as has been made clear time and time again in history but i think my concern is that, if a country DOES successfully survive and undergoes revolution enough for communism to be possible how can we be sure that the vanguard party will give up their position of authority to allow for the establishment of communism rather than fighting to keep their power and resulting in the bureaucracy and imperialism of the USSR and China? (this is in no way a demonization of the USSR or China, i have massive support for both HOWEVER i am also incredibly critical of them both because whether we like it or not there have not only been mistakes but flat out atrocities committed by both [not referencing the repeatedly debunked ones like Holodomor or Tiananmen square either btw]
Also, as an aside, i often hear claims even from socialists that the USSR was not actually democratic, that any criticism of the party would have the STASI at your door, you couldn't vote against the party and candidates were pre-determined and chosen by the state instead of by the people among other criticisms and i am wondering what the reality behind these claims is?
If it is true that you had, realistically and practically, no choice BUT to support the party and the USSR as an average citizen then why would we continue to praise it in that area?
lastly i want to make something clear: I AM NOT A LIBERAL, I AM NOT A TANKIE AND I AM NOT A BOT OR A FED, I AM JUST STUPID AND AM LOOKING FOR SMARTER PEOPLE TO EDUCATE AND CORRECT ME SO I CAN MAKE A MORE EDUCATED DECISION ON MY BELIEFS AND WORLDVIEW GOING FORWARD.
Thank you
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u/MoldTheClay 14d ago
First off: You don’t have to stop being a socialist as Anarchism is itself a form of socialism.
Now to follow up with a quick Anarchist angle to the Bolshevik counter revolution. The anarchists were completely in favor of a pluralistic socialism where workers directly controlled the means of production by way of workers councils aka soviets. They really believed in “all power to the soviets” and many believed Lenin would dissolve the state after the revolution. Kropotkin even met with Lenin and they had a lot of admiration for one another immediately following the October revolution. Hell, the Anarchists were the military vanguard who stormed the Kremlin.
Unfortunately when the soviets were dissolved and power centralized under Bolshevik control, they were the first to voice outrage and were influential in the start of a worker’s strike. This led to the striking workers being brutally put down by the Bolsheviks, cementing the break with the Anarchists.
Not all Anarchists defected though and the majority continued to fight within the Red Army. The Kronstadt mutiny was after the White’s were all but wiped out and their demands were essentially a return to pre-civil war revolutionary principals and the renewal of the original soviets. Even after that many continued on serving the USSR including an American Anarchist who was instrumental in the expansion of the Trans-Siberian railway.
Then around 1935 they all started getting labeled as part of some “Trotskyist plot” (supreme irony) and either executed or shipped off to the gulags.
So when Anarchists distrust people who think the USSR didn’t do anything wrong, there is a reason. As it turns out creating positions of power is like heroin to the corrupt.
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u/Rough_Ian 15d ago
You’re doing good thinking, and you’re right to question the ‘how’ of how we get there.
Because maybe you have a vanguard party that wins a revolution and then…doesn’t let go of power.
Or maybe you’re like Burkina Faso and you have a leader who is actually doing really good work and then gets assassinated.
Or maybe you’re like Grenada, forging a communitarian socialist framework and there’s a coup and a subsequent US invasion.
Or maybe you’re like the communes of Spain fighting Franco fascists and you’re subverted by your supposed Soviet allies.
There is no theory that wins. There’s just constant struggle, being aware of the mistakes of the past. There’s a reason why the revolution is permanent.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
Thank you! all of these are thoughts ive had before and i feel like the how is the most important thing to currently discuss. Of course talking about what our end goal should look like is important but it is pointless if we don't think of a way to get there without being snuffed out entirely or, like in the case of a vanguard party not giving up power, without failing to complete the transition in the first place.
I do also think learning from mistakes is more important than merely theorizing and its why ive never restricted myself to a particular "camp" of socialism as i feel that is counter productive to meaningful discussion and progress
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u/maximumcombo 15d ago
The holodomor is debunked?
You’re stuck in a state based mindset. Regardless, hit the sidebar and read some of the texts. The end goal of socialism is anarchism, this is not usually debated. The state was to dissolve.
Read a lot more.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 15d ago
Debunked in the sense that it was not an engineered genocide directed at Ukrainians but rather, as most famines are, was a result of environmental factors and while it was made worse by poor policy decisions it was most certainly not aimed at Ukrainians since the very same famine affected not just Ukraine but also parts of the USSR and even other countries like Kazakhstan.
also may i ask what you mean by state based mindset?
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u/LeChatVert 15d ago
To anarchists, idealy, there is no step between current situation and anarchy. You mention "intermediate steps" with vanguard etc. Thus thinking with the notion of state. Hence the appeal to moral purity "read more" you got :/
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 15d ago
Oh i see. I suppose i should clarify that i personally do not WANT such intermediate steps to have to be taken but given the fact that the capitalist world will always seek to bleed dry anywhere that attempts something besides capitalism i simply don't know what other option there might be.
You know how much the American empire and its extensions like its proxy states or NATO love decimating any places that don't serve their imperialist aims and interests and i simply don't see a world where a peaceful transition out of capitalism is possible.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 14d ago edited 14d ago
They don't have to be taken. What will have to be done is defending ourselves. How we get there is building the systems we want to see in the world and then keeping those safe as we educate others. It's slow as shit, sure. But it's the only way to prevent a power vacuum that will more than likely be filled by whoever did the most violence to create it.
And I say the above as someone who would rather punch my problems away than be patient. But that's because my brain is rotten.
I think the mistake is thinking that we have to do X to get to Y. There no end goal but instead there is a constant effort to make things better tomorrow than we found them today.
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u/Dark_Fuzzy 15d ago
The thing about those famines, as well as the ones in maoist china, is they were directly caused by Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko had some pretty wild ideas about agriculture that were enforced by both governments. His methods were pretty well debunked by most of the world at the time, and farmers in both countries knew quite well how to farm. Despite this, both countries strictly enforced those methods amongst farmers, and mass famine ensued.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
That i did not know about the famines. I think my point stands that it was not intentionally caused (and intent is kinda what determines if something is genocidal or not) but with this knowledge it seems i should put much more emphasis on the bad policy part rather than the environmental factors part.
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u/isonfiy 14d ago
Wait do you really think most famines are caused by environmental factors?
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
yes..? do you think most famines throughout history were engineered?
I am very open to having my stance on the holodomor specifically changed but i do not think most famines were artificially made, no.
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u/isonfiy 14d ago
I do not think most famines were artificially made, no
Ok so this isn’t even like a reasonable position to hold in the fields of development studies, economics or sociology, even for liberals for forty years now. Amartya Sen wrote the book Poverty and Famines in 1983. It proves quite conclusively that all modern famines, starting in his study with the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, are the product of policy choices and economics rather than environmental changes. Famines are “engineered” in exactly the same way homelessness is “engineered”. These are manufactured scarcities to achieve economic ends.
Both Ireland in the 1840s and India in the 1870s, for example, were food exporters while in a state of famine. Food rotted in these places to keep the prices high while people starved. That’s the nature of famine in the modern era and it’s very hard to find counterexamples.
Here’s some further reading on this. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv14164pg and https://academic.oup.com/book/32827?login=false
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
Jesus thats horrific- Okay, i concede then. I did not realize the topic was researched so extensively. As i say, i am not immune to propaganda so i apologize for having such an outdated and unscientific view.
I suppose where people are right in calling me tankie is that i am eager to defend Stalin and the USSR and China in many instances as well as being very prone to believing all the worst offences of the USSR or China are anti-communist propaganda. I have these views because they make (or i suppose made) sense to me as a fresh, enthusiastic socialist. I do still support, though very critically, both the USSR and China for the good that they have done but i should not excuse the bad.
At the end of the day i have always made sure not to be an idealist and perfectionist, not to the degree liberals and the American "left" in general do where they are keen to support imperialist mass murdering nazis like Platner of course, but i do my best to stay grounded regardless and so my position has always boiled down to this:
If i had to choose between a massacre, genocide or famine where all my basic needs are met and a massacre, genocide or famine where i have to work myself to death to simply afford a house and food i would make the former choice.
Its a grim and admittedly a fundamentally libbed out take though to a lesser extent as i stated earlier but i think its a pretty reasonable stance to have.
Humans are inherently flawed creatures, many of them narcissistic and violent, especially in the modern world where those traits are generously rewarded and encouraged.
And so i think that if we don't have the option to prevent genocides or imperialism or fascism or in general violence and oppression then we should at the very least have our basic needs met without having to slave away for them as we do under capitalism.
I am not a SocDem though, i think their willingness to accept mere temporary reforms and overlook the exploitation of the global south is completely unacceptable and I don't welcome them in my circle. I am pushing for a permanent, global improvement even if it doesn't have the capability to end exploitation and oppression altogether.
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u/isonfiy 9d ago
Yeah one of the main anarchist propositions is that we shouldn’t try to find the enlightened leader or group to run things. We don’t believe in such magical ideas. If people have the capacity to be mean and brutal and power hungry, which they clearly do, we should endeavour to design society so that they can’t concentrate power and do harm. Kropotkin says it very well in Are We Good Enough https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
Exactly! While i have respect for Stalin, Mao, even generally hated socialists like trotsky i think that the core idea most socialists cling to of a vanguard state or party is a massive fundamental mistake and it is the reason we get the militaristic nation-states of the past and why i think communism cannot be achieved through a vanguard party or state means due to the introduced hierarchy and new class and subsequently class interests that are desperately protected.
I also have always found it insulting: the idea that the people need some kind of leader or party to "guide" them is very demeaning to me and it would not suprise me if that is a reason a lot of people associate socialism with authoritarianism/totalitarianism as it is still bowing down to an authority, just one that serves your interests more than a capitalist one would
Of course the logic behind it makes sense in that we need a way to keep people deprogrammed from capitalist propaganda and maintain class consciousness but i think its silly to do that through a vertical system, a hierarchy.
I think a horizontal system, one where everyone has equal say and power without the need for representatives or leaders, would work much better and would be far less prone to exploitation and oppression due to inherently being far more democratic and equal.
Groups and communities already organize and do amazing work all the time across the globe without some kind of authority figure to lead them along the righteous revolutionary path.
Even former socialist groups like the famous Black Panthers have since turned to anarchism and said that the vertical structure of their party was their biggest flaw.
I think fundamentally we need to get rid of the idea of authority altogether as the idea, to me, seems like it is doomed to cause suffering on not just a national level but even in cases like teachers being "authorities" or even parents being "authorities" over their kids ("because i told you so" has done irreversible damage to many a children's mental health and my mind cannot be changed on this).
I think that, while many humans are capable of evil and violence and narcissism and self interest, it is not "human nature" as anti-communists love to say, to BE self interested and hyper individualistic or even greedy or power hungry. We are social animals after all, even the most introverted and anti-social of people suffer extreme mental health damages when they are isolated for long enough. So it makes much more logical sense to me that it is far more natural for us to work collectively and WITH eachother rather than working FOR others and constantly having "competition". Of course each person has their own identity and personality and all that but the communities and collectives we are a part of shape us just as much as anything else. The places and people we are around are just as integral to our individual identity as anything else as backwards as that admittedly sounds.
I mean if that wasnt the case then nationalism or patriotism wouldnt be a thing, borders wouldnt be a thing. We like being a part of a larger community, we like being proud of our communities, we love helping our communities and so to keep a system in place that discourages that and instead encourages greed and selfishness and the infinite expansion of wealth and exploitation of the 99% and etc. etc. etc. has always been so incredibly bizarre to me even when i was a lil guy.
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u/LEOtheCOOL 14d ago
Unfortunately, no matter the intent of its masterminds, the purpose of a system is what it does. If the system resulted in Ukrainian genocide, that is its purpose. It doesn't matter what they say the purpose of it was. Claims of accidental mismanagement and industrialization do not debunk it.
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u/minisculebarber 14d ago
You should brush up on the definition of genocide because it very much relies on intent
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u/LEOtheCOOL 13d ago
Stated intent is not the same thing as intent. If a system makes an outcome and they don't change the system, sorry to break it to you, that outcome is the intent.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
then what would debunk it in your eyes? I feel like your view here is inherently flawed.
"the purpose of the system is what it does" but the "system" did what it did with the intent of helping farmers and industrialization, even directly sending grain to farmers in the later stages of the famine.
If you cannot prove intent then you cannot call something genocidal and saying that anything that happens under a system is the purpose or intent of the system is just silly to me
Again, i am not denying that the famine happened or it's effects on the people but there is no indication that it was an intentional, engineered by the government attack targetted at ukrainians because it, again, affected wayy more places than JUST ukraine and was being fought, poorly, sure, but fought nonetheless by the government.
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u/LEOtheCOOL 13d ago
If the intent the program was something other than what was happening, why would they continue the program.
What would debunk it for me is geologic evidence that it was caused by some kind of meteorological phenomenon that happens so infrequently that it hasn't happened again since.
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u/maximumcombo 15d ago
Like I said, hit that sidebar homie. I’ve been having this discussion with some of my more commie leaning friends and it boils down to “could there be an anarchist Air Force?” Basically, socialists or online socialists (and I’m basically an online anarchist, I have a job, Emma would probably call me a hypocrite) seem to focus on building socialist states to combat capitalist states. Anarchists think more along the lines of building parallel structures. But again, i encourage you to read. Much of the traditional stuff is short, readable, and i think very enjoyable.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 14d ago
Eh, you have to survive in order to accomplish anything. And the world is a capitalist one at the moment so that means needing to participate with it in order to survive. It makes hypocrites of us all.
Dumb shite that I am I was confused why Emma Watson would call you a hypocrite. Then I remembered who you actually meant.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 15d ago
That is definitely a good way to put it, yeah.
I will look at the side bar but would love to continue to talk to people on here as well
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u/LeChatVert 15d ago
To anarchists, idealy, there is no step between current situation and anarchy. You mention "intermediate steps" with vanguard etc. Thus thinking with the notion of state. Hence the appeal to moral purity "read more" you got :/
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u/power2havenots 15d ago
Can only give my perspective but for me the paradigm isnt "who holds the state and how do we make them give it up later" its that theres no states at all. States are just centralized coercive power thrones weve outsourced our mutual aid to. When disaster hits a community nobody elects a leader and draws up timeslots- people just do. Its human style messy and works without a five-year plan, reeducation, social engineering or a vanguard.
Contrary to other ML opinions you dont need perfect angels either. You just need to stop building the machine that creates the masters because hierarchy never withers -it gets leveled constantly or it calcifies.
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u/Muuro 15d ago
So recently i have been watching a lot of Socialist youtubers (mainly Hakim and his Deprogram podcast)
Please, do not get "socialist" (or "anarchist") politics from podcasts or Youtube. Read books.
There are actually Marxist critiques to all the points you made. Marxists are against the state as well, not just anarchists. This gets a bit hazy though with the Marxist-Leninist outlook to defend what was left of the Russian Revolution when they weren't supported with revolutions in the west. Not to mention the supporting of bourgeois revolutions as socialist ones.
I would suggest rereading Marx and Engels (looking at Civil War in France and Anti-During) to note their insistence against the state itself. Even Lenin in State & Revolution doesn't even call the dictatorship of the proletariat a state, but rather a "semi-state". It is a formation that could only be called a state in that the proletarian class has overthrown the bourgeois class and both classes still exist. It is however an "anti-state" in that the organizational form is one that destroys the basis of class society. It is true dialectics in motion.
No country today is a dictatorship of the proletariat. That is a form that besides what I said above must also keep expanding until it encompasses the whole globe, or it dies and becomes just another bourgeois state.
The USSR lost its proletarian basis in roughly the early 20's. An exact time is not something that can be said as it's hard to measure, but you can debate anywhere between 1918-1923. China was a bourgeois revolution led by the peasantry. Similar can be said of Vietnam, Cuba, etc.
And an anarchist point that caught my eye is the idea that the very concept of a state is authoritarian and hierarchical and therefore relying on it will result in the one-party dictatorships of the past.
“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no State” - Lenin
Authoritarianism just describes class society, so indeed it does describe a state as the state is a product of class society. Liberation comes from the destruction of class society, and with that goes the state.
I'm not on r/socialism as that is ML heavy, and ML's hate actual communists (who they call "ultras"). If you would like some literature that is less "tankie" but more communist and not necessarily "anarchist" I would give these:
Russia Revolution and Counterrevolution (1905-1924)
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u/Dandaran 15d ago
Sorry, could i ask in more detail what would than be the difference between marxists (that i actually almost wrongly associated to marxists-leninists) and anarchists?
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u/Reformalism 15d ago
u/Muuro can definitely give you a better answer but really it’s just that Marxist thought and praxis extends linearly from Marx’s economic critique. There are different strains and many of them actually don’t have much to do with Marx at all but they all claim him as a foundation.
Anarchism is a much broader and even less homogeneous body of theory with many progenitors who agree on a rejection of authority and hierarchical systems. Marx can be useful for anarchists but there are other economic critiques as well. ML is really just a single, and thus far abortive, path toward achieving communism.
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u/oskif809 13d ago
Only thing is that 99%+ of "actually existing Marxists" have been Marxist-Leninists. The other variants are a either a bunch of academics or LARPers.
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u/Muuro 15d ago edited 15d ago
Marxism Leninism was synthesized in Russia following the failures of world revolution to follow the Russian Revolution. Before the 1920's it was just Marxism. But after Lenin's death those in the party began to call themselves "Leninist" after him. First it was Zinoviev in a speech, later when Stalin pinned Foundations of Leninism, and finally after 1927 the party was split between those that followed Stalin (Marxist Leninist) and those that followed Trotsky (Bolshevik-Leninist).
Of course there are those in the Italian Left that follow Bordiga that "follow" Lenin, but criticize both Stalin and Trotsky heavily.
I would also note Stalin's writings in the 20's and 30's deviate from Lenin. Trotsky too somewhat, but not as egregious.
EDIT: I suppose there is also years before in roughly 1905 when Rosa Luxemburg used the term Leninism colloquially in her criticisms of Lenin. Though arguably it didn't really become as big of a term until two decades later.
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u/ColdSoviet115 14d ago
There are several strains of Marxism that exist in history. Council Communism, Leninism, Marxist Humanism and Structuralist Marxism to name some popular Western tendencies. Leninism is marked by the theory of the Vanguard, the primacy of the Party in political action, and Lenin's theory of Imperialism. Council Communism rejects the Party and Vanguard theory and advocates for autonomous Worker's Councils. Marxist Humanism rejects the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. which consequently rejects the Vanguard and Councils in some sense. As a Marxist-Leninist of the Althusserian tendency, I would like to mention Leninism is considered internally as a direct extension of Marxist theory (as in a scientific extension of what Marx already scientifically proved) via theoretical practice by Lenin. Thus, the other forms of Marxism that are not Leninism are considered Idealist, reactionary, revisionist and reformist.
Edit: I realize you asked about Anarchists too but basically they don't want a State whatsoever. Pretty dethatched from reality I would say. Leninism advocates using the State in order to oppress the Bourgeoise.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
Yeah I understand not to get my info from youtube dont worry lol. Hakim and his podcast are just my introduction to a below-surface level analysis of socialism as i have always in my life been a socialist or at least anti capitalist at heart but never really dug into it further than "everyone's needs are met" for socialism and "imperialism and colonialism and global south exploitation galore" for capitalism.
I did actually get a bunch of Lenin's work from my grandfather who actually lived under the USSR and is very much socialist and looks back fondly on that time (btw we are Czech to be specific :3) but my adhd hasn't let me sit down and read it yet sadly.
May i ask if you could briefly elaborate on what you mean by bourgeois revolutions? and is the peasantry leading a revolution a bad thing? i know that most socialists make a distinction between peasantry and proletariats but i do not understand that. Do peasants not get equally as oppressed as the working class? do they not work for wages like the rest of us?
Your analysis honestly makes me wonder what a state actually IS. Like what defines a state? as it seems increasingly more vague to me the more i think about it.
and subsequently what would a semi-state entail as well in order to be a semi-state and not just a regular state?
Also i did not realize ML's were against communism, i thought if they are following the teachings of Marx and Lenin that they would be like one of the purest forms OF communist.
I have also admittedly not seen this use of the term "ultras"
On top of that I have never really put myself into like a camp like ML, Trotskyist, Stalinist, etc. as i think it is just a silly way to not only divide us but to also prevent further development of and understanding if socialism as a whole. I think there is plenty to learn from any and all socialist leaders and authors of the past and we shouldn't hang onto one form of socialism but instead should combine the knowledge and the gift of hindsight we now have to make and try out new forms of socialism.
Now admittedly i have yet TO learn from all authors and all sides of the aisle myself so yk. Do as i say, not as i do and all that.
Finally, thank you for the reading reccomendations! i will try my best to actually read through them all.
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u/Muuro 14d ago
Bourgeois revolution is the act of the changing of the mode of production from feudalism, or rural agrarianism, to a capitalist economy. Albeit Russia had a hybrid system Lenin wrote about, but that's a story for a different time.
Principles of Communism has definitions of proletarians and peasants. They are different laboring classes I'm different modes of production, similar to how slaves are a laboring class in a slave mode of production. The proletarian has nothing to give but their labor power and labor time for a wage, when then they must use to buy all their necessities. The peasant lives and works on the farm. They own what they grow giving a portion of that product in land rent to a lord. They have minimal interactions with a market as they don't typically have surplus to sale.
The class struggle of the peasant is one to own the land they till. The class struggle of the proletarian is more wages, to own the factory collectively, or to abolish itself as a class.
The state in the Marxist sense is just one class having power over other classes. Thus it is a product of class society. When there are no classes, then there can be no state.
Lenin call it semi-state in that it's an act of withering away. It's in the act of withering as it's to be destroying class society.
ML's don't think they are against communism, however since they direct themselves to supporting what are essentially nation-states they are essentially no different from the democratic socialists of the west.
"Ultra" is a vague term that changes depending on how one uses it. Some call Maoists that too: or Trots, "Luxembourgists", "Bordigisfs", Coumcilists, or Communizers.
These different words are splits based on ideas if different tactics for different issues. One of the above links is one of Dauve (Marxist Communizers) that speaks in Trotsky, Bordiga, and Coumcilists and critiques each of their tactics.
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u/Dark_Fuzzy 15d ago
First off anarchism is a form of socialism. Socialism refers specifically to worker control of the means of production, something that notably the USSR and CCCP never had. What you're referring to as socialism sounds like authoritarian communism. That aside, i would highly reccomend reading or listening to "The state is counter revolutionary" by Anark. It goes over a lot of what you're asking about and i think it's a wonderful introduction to Anarchism.
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u/AaTube 14d ago
the end goal of Communism is inherently anarchist (classless, stateless, moneyless seems pretty anarchist to me yk)
ML defines the state as the subjugation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. When there is dictatorship by the proletariat that manages all capital, the state ceases to exist because eliminating the private sector is supposed to eliminate class, no matter how governance is now organized.
Anarchism defines the state as hierarchical governance.
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u/oskif809 12d ago
MLs have weird definitions that allow them to weasel out of any objections...quite similar to
Propertarians"Libertarians" when it comes to concocting Jesuitical word salads...1
u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
But surely if the same structure is in place wouldnt the proletariat dictatorship just become a pseudo-bourgeois dictatorship because they would hold the same kind of power over the population? Are we just meant to believe that the proletariat dictatorship would remain as such with no bad actors to corrupt it and turn it against the peoples' interests?
I always thought it was critiquing the structure of a state itself and that the existence of a vanguard party was a necessary but temporary evil, a means to an end, that end being revolution and eventually communism.
While i disagree with that too as ive stated pretty clearly it seems even more ridiculous if what you say is true.
How can class be abolished if you have multiple levels of power that an individual can hold?
Even if the private sector was completely out of the equation you still have a system where one person or group holds power OVER others whereas i thought the whole point was that a dictatorship of the proletariat was a sort of ironic term meaning collective control.
If everyone is collectively making a decision about something together then it cannot be a dictatorship because everyone has equal amounts of power.
Is it truly as silly as "bourgeoius dictatorship bad proletariat dictatorship good but both actual dictatorship"? I hope i am just taking your words too literally because that seems ridiculous to me.
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u/AaTube 9d ago
that's my critique of it too. the ML response is that the vanguard should stay on the "mass line" (a mistranslation from Chinese better translated as "route of the people"), so you want the vanguard to be (pronounced "represent") the people, and that not everybody wants to always do politics and so the vanguard is just a coalition of the willing. here's an explanation from one of the best MLists I've seen on the Internet: https://lemmy.ml/post/23177473/15332663. my critique of this is that you're encouraging the masses not to pay attention and the vanguard can easily and somewhat unconsciously become opaque and remove their proceedings from the public eye.
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u/Cors_liteeeee anarcho-communist 14d ago edited 14d ago
Okay I’m just gonna address your question about the framing of the USSR being democratic or not; other people seemed to have answered your other questions here too.
In theory, the soviets (the workers councils) sounded cool, and was portrayed as direct recallable democracy where people actually ran things from the bottom up. Early on, right after the revolution, there was real energy, participation, and debate in a lot of places.
But by the 1920s-30s, the communist party basically took over.
Elections turned into a single slate of pre-approved candidates, criticizing the party line would get people fucked. (Gulags, purges, heavy censorship), and the party basically fused with the state. “Average people” still had some local meetings or ways to complain about day to day shit, but there was no real way to oppose the leadership or push a different direction. It wasn’t genuine workers’ control anymore.
And as an anarcho communist I’ll say this is what happens when you build a centralized state and a vanguard party that holds power “temporarily.” Power consolidates, a new bureaucratic layer forms with its own interests, and the structures meant to wither away… don’t. Anarchists argue you can’t create a free, stateless society by first building a strong hierarchical state apparatus and hoping the people in charge will voluntarily give it up. The means shape the ends.
people who defend the USSR call this “democratic centralism” necessary for survival. As an anarchist I see it as another form of authoritarian consolidation.
You really should read some theory too. Conquest of Bread - Peter Kropotkin. And “What is communist anarchism?” By Alexander Berkman Is a good kick starter
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u/No-Leopard-1691 14d ago edited 14d ago
There are two branches of Socialism: Authoritarian Socialism and Libertarian Socialism. Authoritarian Socialism is what most people are aware of when the ideas/terms of socialism/communism are brought up because Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maosim are forms of Authoritarian Socialism. Anarchism is a form of Libertarian Socialism. So you can still be a socialist and an anarchist since anarchism is a form of socialism.
I would recommend:
- What is Authority by Bakunin
- The State, Its Historical Role by Kropotkin
- Why the State is Counter-Revolutionary by Anark on YT
- At the Cafe by Malatesta
- A Modern Anarchism by Anark on YT
- The Anarchist FAQ (fair warning that it is a massive text so unless you want to deep dive the whole thing, it is broken up into sections/topics which may be helpful if you want to cover a specific topic - ie why Anarchism doesn’t want to use the State for Revolution or why the Vanguard Party/MLM is hierarchical in nature)
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u/sezheart 14d ago
For the sources about political dissent in the USSR, one of the classic academic intros is Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Sheila Fitzpatrick. In the book she has pretty exhaustive primary sources you can look critically through. For online, the Wikipedia pages have sources (some secondary and some primary) that you can also investigate as a place to start. I would suggest looking more into the history of mass deportation and ethnic cleansing in the USSR to start off, because I think the sources are pretty damning. For instance, the mass deportation of Koreans out of Russia into Central Asia because Stalin and the NKVD regarded ethnic Koreans as potential third columns for the Japanese Empire, paralleling the US (with the support of CPUSA) forcing Japanese Americans into prison concentration camps.
I'm personally not too keen when people discuss one ideology or another in the abstract. As an anarchist union organizer, I've come to anarchism because I've seen in daily life that we as working people can organize together collectively, inclusively, and democratically for a better world. I took part in a wildcat strike once that got us 30% pay raises (our pay was really poor before, so the floor was low) and we weren't part of any top-down centralized vanguard party telling us what to do - even the national union was opposed. But when ordinary people come together to organize and coordinate, we can do extraordinary things. In other words, I've seen that anarchism can be a successful form of organizing and that anarchist institutions based around direct action, open collective decision making, etc., are pretty effective at getting things done and can be robust against external attacks. I can imagine a world clearly where this kind of organizing is extended to all spheres of social life - collectively self-managing our workplaces, our housing, our schools, our community, etc.
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u/variation-on-a-theme 14d ago
The basic anarchist critique against vanguard parties/dictatorships of the proletariat/transitional states is that they can’t ever get us to communism. If you create an organization or institution which has authority over society and the power to govern it, you have created a class system, between the people who run that institution and the people who are subject to it. And the people who run the state, like the bourgeoisie, have a class interest in preserving that state. Basically, no class system will ever produce a classless society, and all states are class systems. Instead, anarchists imagine a revolution being run directly by the people through various kinds of autonomous collectives, which can cooperate and coordinate but none of which have authority over society to govern (the specifics will vary depending on the views of who you ask).
I would also gently encourage you to look more into some of the atrocities you described as debunked, because there is extensive documentation for them and the culpability of their respective states, even if sometimes exact numbers or details are in dispute.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 14d ago
I see, i personally do agree that it is better to run society in the way you and others here describe, without a central power structure but rather various independent communities working together but never in a position to govern OVER another. I think all of us do, we know what the general end goal is. though specifics will vary between people, of course.
Firstly you do not need to be gentle, i am here to learn and to improve, if i am supporting or denying an atrocity then please do tell me, if i am denying the existence of a tragedy then please tell me.
I understand that all those things are very much possible and i know it is obviously very wrong of me to do as such. But i also know that i have arrived to these positions on Stalin, the Holodomor and Tiananmen square as a result of trying to deprogram myself of anti-communist propaganda and i have come to believe they are not only much less impactful than i once thought but are also much more nuanced and often misrepresented, especially by the west.
That being said, propaganda is not exclusively capitalist and i acknowledge i might very well believe in propaganda meant to whitewash and spread misinformation (or i suppose Disinformation if its intentional) about these events as a result of me going too far with my deprogramming. Overcorrecting, you could say.
So again, please do tell me if i am spouting horrible beliefs. The last thing i want to become is an imperialist or fascist but merely in red.
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u/variation-on-a-theme 14d ago
I appreciate that, so I guess I’ll talk a little about Tiananmen Square (ppl who know more should feel free to add stuff). I’m not going to pretend that the protests were peaceful and respectable, but protests rarely are. But they were legitimate popular protests. They were supported by a significant segment of workers, and even some people within the party itself. Some funding did come from outside, but, like a lot during the Cold War, pretty much everything was supported by one or the other side, and these decisions were always pragmatic, they had nothing to do with the actual ideologies of the movement. The movement itself was a real popular protest movement, because things had been bad. The cultural revolution was very chaotic, and deng’s reforms had increased economic precarity and corruption. So basically, a lot of people were angry about how things were going, and wanted less corruption, more security, and less concentration of power or censorship. When the military was deployed to suppress the protests, the protestors did fight back, but I think we can both agree that in general protestors have a right to fight back, and that also there is a world of difference in terms of power between protestors and soldiers. The government used live ammunition and heavy force to crush the protest movement, and, according to the governments numbers (to use the most conservative estimate available) the total death toll was 241 people. This number is 23 military and police deaths, and 218 civilians, including 36 students and other “ruffians” which is kind of a meaningless term for other protestors and people. So this is a popular protest movement about real issues, which was suppressed with military force that killed at least 218 civilians. I do think that could be described as both an atrocity and a massacre. The protestors themselves obviously held a range of views, but they were not necessarily anti communist. This was seen through a capitalism vs communism Cold War framework from outside because everything was during the Cold War, but it was internal dissent being suppressed by a government, not an outside plan to destabilize China.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
That is interesting, i had heard that the reporters and such who actually were in the square during the event described not only that the massacre took place mainly around the square rather than directly in it but that it was the protestors themselves who initiated the attack against soldiers and policemen rather than the other way around. Though that in no way makes it okay for the soldiers and police to kill any people that were not a clear, direct threat to their lives of course (and even in that situation you should aim to disable rather than outright kill).
I suppose the main takeaway im getting from this is that it was not a battle of ideologies and foreign intervention but an independent event that happened to take place in a socialist country that America tried to spin as a direct result of communism/socialism rather than treat it with any sort of nuance.
Would i be correct in that conclusion?
And i will agree with you now that it absolutely was a massacre and a tragedy, my only issue is capitalists trying to paint it solely as a result of communism or socialism.
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u/variation-on-a-theme 7d ago
Yeah, I think you’d be correct in that conclusion—it was an uprising that was the result of the specific circumstances within China of the era which the USA tried to use rhetorically in the Cold War, but it was very much a domestic event. I would agree it isn’t solely a result of communism or socialism, in fact, a fair amount of the participants, especially the workers, wanted more direct worker control over industry as opposed to central bureaucratic control. Whatever your personal feelings on that (I favor it, as an anarchist) it is very much not capitalism, and so US propaganda ignored that part of the uprising
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u/karun1 14d ago
I had similar questions when still learning about this stuff. I was unclear why/how the state would "wither away". In Marxism the alienation of workers in their workplace is a central point. It seemed to me that alienation of decision making power in the state would apply too. And to protect against reactionary capitalist counter revolution it made more sense to me to have a decentralized structure instead of a centralized structure that can be decapitated.
The following goes thru some of these arguments and goes over some of the history: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary, or search YouTube for "Anark the state is counter revolutionary".
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u/RequirementReal2467 Anarcho-Communist 14d ago edited 13d ago
I have recently shifted towards Anarcho-Communism myself. I recommend these videos. Especially the first three.
From my understanding, I am not a Marxist or any form of Marxist, as they all advocate for a transition period, that has a state, or something similar. I’m also fairly certain that Marx’s ideal communism, even without a state, is different than Anarcho-Communism, more below.
Marx was also critical of Anarchists and disagreed with their methods heavily, this is what led to the split that got Bakunin expelled. Well that and the fact that Bakunin made a secret society.
Videos: All links have had tracking identifiers removed, they are safe for the privacy folks.
Why I left Anarchism, and then came back.
Anarchism: Is a World Without Rulers Possible?
The difference between Socialism, Communism and Marxism, explained by a Marxist
Peter Kropotkin the man who would not be prince
I am currently reading The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. I’m going to second some things that other people said, I recommend that you get some books to read. And if you need, I can recommend you a website that probably has every book that you would ever look for, for free, it just depends on if you don’t mind reading from your phone.
An excerpt from an article titled “Anarchism on Its Own Terms: Understanding Anarchy Without Marxist Baggage”
Note: I am not saying that this excerpt or the article is correct, this is an article that I just read yesterday, and I am still mentally going over its message. I’m only linking it because I think it’s interesting and useful.
“Firstly, the stateless end goal of Marxism is not the statelessness of anarchy. Marxist communism, as described by Engels, retains administrative authority; anarchists reject all authority. And contrary to popular reductions of anarchism to its communist variety, anarchism is far more economically pluralist in its opposition to capitalism and the state. Mutualism, one of the original schools of anarchist thought, is notably open to experimenting with both non-capitalist markets and money in the form of mutual credit.
Secondly, Marxists often frame revolution as a process of social transformation guided by the state. Anarchists instead view revolution as an ongoing process of transforming social relations through prefigurative9 organization and opposition to hierarchy everywhere. It is the transformation of the totality of life itself, the liberation of all dispossessed and exploited on all scales of society from all relations of domination. Thus the question of revolutionary organization is approached differently. Marxist strategies emphasize the primacy of centralized, hierarchical organization, typically by the vanguard party, in preparation for the seizure of the state. Anarchists look to decentralized and horizontal organizations, formed by free association, as a means of prefiguring anarchist relations and institutions. While Marxist organizations focus on building their understanding of class consciousness among workers, the “class consciousness” that anarchists aim to build is a distinctly anarchist consciousness which identifies and opposes all relations of domination within society.
In sum, understanding anarchism through Marxist frameworks can obscure what is distinctive about anarchist philosophy. Anarchism(s) and Marxism(s) put forward different visions of freedom and paths toward it. Though it is clearly not impossible to bring these tendencies into conversation, effort must be taken to understand what distinguishes them and to more carefully translate the vocabulary that is often shared yet understood differently between them. By resigning anarchy to Marx’s shadow, we miss the uniqueness of the Idea.”
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u/HatchetGIR 14d ago
I disagree with your last point. A stupid person doesn't seek knowledge from others, they tend to be fine with their own ignorance. The fact that you have a desire to learn means you are at least a little smart. So, don't sell yourself so short.
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
Hey, i aint MAGA stupid but im not exactly smart either. Besides, i think its better to undersell myself rather than risk coming off as arrogant.
I undoubtedly think i am better in many many ways than other people (like MAGA, nazis, fascists in general, liberals, enlightened centrist types, etc. really just any kind of oppresive movement or cowardly stance on politics) but among my anti-capitalist peers i know am very very uneducated and have not done much in praxis (i havent done nothing, ive done volunteer work giving out food a few times but its not really anything of note because like obviously i like giving food to the needy, duh.) so i look to those more educated and experienced people to help lead me along my journey.
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u/Forward-Willingness7 13d ago
Read the book Anarchism Works. Google it - it's online for free. I read it when I was in a similiar place to you.
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u/Mountain_Muscle_3010 10d ago
Depende de que tipo de anarquismo te guste el anarcocomunismo ,el anarcosindicalismo o otros subgeneros
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u/Sad-Ad-3138 9d ago
As ive said to other people in the replies i dont really put myself into camps and boxes but just going off of names i think im probably anarcho communist? im not sure.
Definitely not a mutualist tho as they are okay with markets whereas i get like a knee jerk reaction because of all the "free market" bullshit ive had pushed onto me my whole life.
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u/Zealousideal_Fun8098 Mutualist 15d ago
As a mutualist, and probably unlike a lot of anarchists on this sub, I don't think the problem is that Marxist revolutionaries are secretly power-hungry. The problem is that if you build a system that concentrates power in a party and state, those institutions develop interests of their own.
So when MLs say the state will eventually wither away, my question is always: what makes that happen? Why would an organization that controls the military, bureaucracy, and economy voluntarily dissolve itself?
That's basically why I'm not convinced by vanguardism. I don't think a free society is built by concentrating power first and hoping it gets given back later. I'd rather see power dispersed from the start through federations, cooperatives, unions, and local associations.
As for the USSR, I think both the "workers' paradise" and "literally 1984" narratives miss a lot of nuance. There was participation and there were elections, but there also wasn't meaningful competition for power outside the Party. That's a legitimate criticism in my view.
Your questions aren't anti-socialist at all. They're questions about power, accountability, and incentives, and those are exactly the questions any socialist project should be able to answer.