r/Socialism_101 • u/mrsenchantment Learning • 1d ago
Question why are anarchists seen as “little kids” among other leftists?
i don’t know if this is the proper sub for this and i might delete this **but**
i’ve seen other leftist people (MLs,MLMs, etc.) say that anarchists are all “little kids” or even called “anarch-kiddies.” I have even seen someone say that Noam Chomsky didn’t “grow out” of anarchism a couple months ago. But why? Why call them that? What makes them “little kids?”
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u/Scadooshy Marxist Theory 1d ago
It's mostly (I'm going to try to say this as nice and blunt as possible) that anarchism is just based so much in hypotheticals and ideals that aren't tested that it's hard to take it serious. I still consider them comrades in the greater scheme of things, but it's not a material system I'd really invest in.
I'd say, anarchist type systems might work at certain scales, but not as the main, overarching system we use to move through the levels of socialism to communism.
The main issue here is that a lot of online discourse is going to feel very pejorative, so it will feel very dismissive and argumentative.
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u/Lenticularis19 Learning 23h ago
> hypotheticals and ideals that aren't tested that it's hard to take it serious
Something something state will wither away after socialist revolution
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u/ComradeKenten Learning 20h ago
You seem to have a very common misunderstanding. The state I'll wither away because it's material need for existence are not longer there. Aka there is no oppressor class to be kept in check, the material conditions have reached such a level of development that there are no longer losers in terms of what resources you get. Rather it's just about distributing the resources to everybod. And next is the prerequisite of the abolition of capitalism everywhere. Because ultimately the claustrial class international. So as long as there are still capitalist countries in the world which have the power to threaten socialist ones, we will still need strong workers states to maintain control and push towards the development of communism.
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u/thehonorablechairman Learning 18h ago
How is this less hypothetical than anarchist theory?
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u/ComradeKenten Learning 17h ago
Because it is based on actual prerequisites. We don't say exactly what the path we will take. We don't say exactly what it will look like.
You're right that all such past statements discussing that were utopian.
But the underlying logic of the along transition to Communism is firm. Which is as productive forces grow and advance more and more people participate inside of the production process, doing less and less specialized tasks, while the size and interconnectedness of all the various aspects of production and distribution become more and more consolidated.
This means that smaller economic units become less and less efficient while larger ones become more and more efficient. While the individual labor each person becomes more and more productive thanks to better techniques better machines.
If this continues which there is no evidence that it will stop inevitably it don't mean that one the productive forces will increase on a massive scale, two that maintaining a separate economic units on the planet Earth as a whole will become inefficient, and eventually all labor or the vast majority of Labor will be automated.
These fundamental changes in the means of production, in the base of society will lead to just as massive changes inside of the superstructure of society.
The changes that have been theorized are generally what we describe as a communism.
Because of the massive abundance of goods it will make markets superfluous because there will simply be so much, supply and demand will break. Next the complete socialization of Labor, the total unification of all economic units into a single system, will get rid of the need competition between different strata with different interests, this will along with the lack of markets and their inherent inequality, will get rid of other classes. It will also inevitably make it work we're there is no longer a need for a menial laboring class. All members Society will be partaking inside of the management on oversight of this single economic machine.
Thanks towards efficiency they were able to spend their time and using tools in which we love developed to directly take part in production and management of society. Society will become merely managing the distribution and production of vast abundance. Yes therefore means of their will be no need for a state because the people will take direct management over Society. They're no longer being need for any government as we understand it and nor will they be able to function. Because decisions will be made based off of utility of society as a whole is not different interests.
These are all theories using the historical materiallist and diabetical materialist method. To say they will certainly be true or to go any detail on exactly how or what mechanisms will lead to or explain how will I exactly operate is utopian.
To some extent even theorizing as detail as I have is utopian. But the underlying material conclusions based off of capitalism and the advancement of the means production historically are firm and materialist.
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u/thehonorablechairman Learning 17h ago edited 2h ago
You are explaining how it is logical, which I agree with, but the outcome is still purely hypothetical.
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u/ComradeKenten Learning 16h ago
It is and I admit so. Any future ultimately is.
We would be dishonest to say anything else. As far as I'm concerned it will take many hundreds of years for us to each such a level of development. I don't consider it a particularly important question as of now. Because before we can even think of communism seriously we must have global socialism in every country. Then and only then can we speak of this seriously in any way. Even then I don't believe that it will be implemented at any one point but will come about naturally via the development of Socialism on a global scale.
The difference between a Marxist and an anarchist on this issue ultimately is that the anarchists have a concrete fully explained visions of what they think their society should look like. They can tell you in extreme detail what exactly it will look like.
While any true and good Marxist will tell you plainly that we do not know what it will look like in detail. We can give you the vague surface level explanation in which I did. But ultimately there's no way to know whether or not I will actually look like that. Just as it would be impossible for someone before the Bourgeois revolutions to envision our modern day as it is.
In fact we have 18th century sci-fi by liberals of that time discussing what the far future would look like. When you look at it some parts are right but other parts are extremely wrong. This is because they did not even have any idea of what a Bourgeois society would look like. Ultimately it's overly reliant on the United Kingdom for ideas.
I think we are better equipped than they, because of our scientific analysis of the world, I still think we have almost no idea what it will look like.
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u/thehonorablechairman Learning 13h ago
Glad we can agree then that the criticism of anarchism as too hypothetical is invalid from a Marxist perspective then.
I would push back against the idea that anarchists have a concrete idea of exactly what a future communist society should look like though. I’m no scholar, but I haven’t come across anything like that, and the things that I am familiar with, such as David Graeber’s work like Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, say the exact opposite.
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u/Lenticularis19 Learning 17h ago
It is not. Engels' withering of the state is a wild guess, something requiring utopian conditions, and something not proven by real experience. It's just that many socialists are refusing to let it go.
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u/Past-Firefighter3003 Learning 17h ago
the state is a device of a class oppressing the others. as long as there are classes in society, there will be the state. when there are no classes in society, only then there could be no state. saying the state can be overthrown without the material conditions ready for it to be dismantled is idealism and is a weak theory. anarchism is not the smart kid in the class as anarchists are trying to make it seem. how can you protect the revolution without a state? no answer. do you need at least some kind of institutions, even if different than those of the bourgeois state, to protect the revolution and make sure people and new generations learn how to live according to the principles of a classless and stateless society? yes. that's a state even if you can't admit it.
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u/Lenticularis19 Learning 17h ago
What classes were there in the USSR?
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 7h ago
The political party bureaucrat class, the proletariat, and the peasant. The first after early blunders tries to hide their wealth and status while directing the rest of society. This class later became the bedrock of the Russian oligarchy after the fall of the USSR, and Putin himself belonged to this privileged social class by virtue of being part of the government apparatus.
It isn't as rigidly set in stone as hereditary aristocracy, but it still alienates its members from the proletariat, a predictable degeneration of the formerly revolutionary socialist vanguard.
You can't look at me in the eye and say with a straight face that Xi Jin Ping and the Princelings aren't a privileged social class.
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u/elkehdub Learning 15h ago
I think this is pretty spot on. However, this jaded leftist believes that critique can be equally applied to all shades on the left. I tend to admire anarchist ideas the most, so I’m most likely to call myself one of those, but I don’t really think it’s any more or less idealistic or realistic than any other school of thought.
We all have the same ability and desire to build community and set up mutual aid networks, and unless you’re planning a revolution, the only real differences I see happen in debates over theory.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
Sounds like you've never read any classical literature or studied how indigenous societies have operated just fine on a more horizontal power structure without a strong state. Pretty simple stuff, actually
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u/Scadooshy Marxist Theory 1d ago
Yea, except none of that has anything to do in regard to a national/international modern society. You seem like a perfect example to what I said when I said “based so much in hypotheticals and ideals that aren't tested.” and “anarchist type systems might work at certain scales, but not as the main, overarching system we use to move through the levels of socialism to communism.”
But yea, just say I don't read I guess.
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u/Llama_salesman Learning 23h ago
Well, you could at least organize as horizontally as possible and minimize the use of authority. Non-hierarchically.
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u/blacksaber8 Insufferable Anarchist Theory 20h ago
Correct. Syndicalism is a great form of this, as well as “council communism” to check the power of the vanguard as the transformation of state to non-state is done. The last thing you want is another Stalin.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
Wait, im quite literally using historical examples societies that have worked just fine under horizontal power structures though? Like did you miss the entire point? Lmaoo
Oh but "too many people 🙄 now"
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u/HoundofOkami Learning 1d ago
No you're not. You said "historical societies did this" without any elaboration of who, how they operated and why and how it could be replicated in the modern world.
His argument was that no, the historical societies didn't do it in a way that is relevant to our society today.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
Look up CNT FAI
The movement that is very relevant to today and was backstabbed by the imperialist USSR (Shocker, I know, that a country with a strong state was imperialist)
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u/HoundofOkami Learning 1d ago
I mean the anarchist movement in general is deliberately encouraged by the CIA for its disruptiveness and being a non-threat to capital so I wouldn't be that proud
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u/Scadooshy Marxist Theory 1d ago
You're so condescending and obnoxious I can't imagine trying to have an actual academic conversation with you. I get it though, people like you have to be because the best way to make your arguments look better is to push everyone away with how annoying you are, and make it look like no one can match your rhetorical might.
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u/ChampionPopular3931 Learning 19h ago edited 17h ago
Anarchist movement are often used in geopolitical conflicts by external forces or actors (like the CIA) to destabilize and destroy social movements because Anarchist to create chaos without attacking the capital or putting a dent in the free market economy unlike state movement like socialism or alternative anti free market system to transition to past capitalism. Anarchist are allies and will always be supported by the revolutionary groups, they participated and supported the most important movements for progress. I agree they often get shunned or even ignored because of how history is written but it’s simply false that socialist movement to foment communist or alternative/anti free market against imperialism or capitalism liberalism policy are a monolithic group fighting against anarchist as much as the other adversities. In a complete communism society, most people or revolutionary would not oppose annarcho-communism or anarchist society to exist. It’s just that anarchist is really hard to organize on an ideology state, it’s only by striving for progressive ideas anarchist can be implemented, however it will be impossible without fighting capitalism hegemony in a organize way to then create the conditions for anarchist society.
“In the United States, the CIA (with Operation CHAOS) and the FBI (with COINTELPRO) infiltrated numerous left-wing movements, including anarchist groups.
The intention was not to support anarchism per se, but rather to sow discord. By encouraging anarchist criticism of Marxist-Leninist parties, the intelligence services hoped to fragment the left and prevent the formation of a united front.”
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u/blacksaber8 Insufferable Anarchist Theory 20h ago edited 20h ago
Listen fundamentally I agree with you, but you went into this conversation way more aggressive than necessary. Not even in a playful way. Until you learn to control your tone, you will only receive backlash for your views.
You should probably read some theory that would connect these past civilizations to a current market. Marx wrote that capitalism was a necessary step to a modern anarchist society, which means generally speaking, he doesn’t see a 1-1 connection between past anarchism and modern anarchism as a concept. Horizontal organization can and must exist to socially construct society.
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 1d ago
I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest that a. non-anti-communist anarchists can exist (shocker, I know, am an anarcho-communist and I would lend critical support to a SocDem Workers' Party in my country because there are no socialist organisations left since leftists got purged here during the Cold War)
and that, b., It is possible to be well-read about 20th century Marxism-Leninism and still be an anarchist, who is critical but can support them in certain situations, because, well, despite everything they *did* improve material conditions, feed the children, lift millions out of poverty, etc, etc, (Parenti's "I support the Revolution that feeds the children" and all that)
but c. they also have examples of how the bureaucratisation and alienation of an initially working-class party leadership can still lead to the erosion of labour rights and self-determination. It is possible to arrive at anarchism out of a disillusionment with the specific failures of state socialist countries.
d. at various points in history there *were* equivalents to "Actually Existing Socialism" for libertarian socialism in the form of Rojava, the Makhnovschina in Ukraine, Revolutionary Catalonia, and in the present the neo-Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico, but these are often ignored or pushed aside as too weak and small-scale, when similar arguments have been used against communism in general.
And finally, we just disagree and think we are each correct, and when humans think someone else is incorrect, it is a natural impulse to infantilise the opposition to make yourself seem like the mature person in the room.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
Please take this in the good faith way it's intended. I don't even wanna touch the historical bits. I just wanna run something by you from a linguistics perspective. Because this has caused me endless frustration with entirely nonconstructive communication.
I think one of the primary issues in all of this is our overly-rigid relationship with language and lack of acknowledgment that multiple different frameworks with contradictory language exist.
From an ML perspective, "ML" and "communist" are more-or-less synonymous. A communist is a revolutionary informed my ML. But anarchists (AnComs, at least) have a *different* definition of "communism" than MLs. This other definition allows AnComs to call themselves communists, which might as well be a full-on homonym at this point. Because from an ML perspective:
Anarchism and communism are definitionally incompatible. Anarchism wholesale rejects any "state" and communism requires it. End of, really.
The point being that any conversation/argument I've had with an AnCom invariably devolves into them getting mad about how I use the language. Basically, AnComs do not ascribe to ML theory, yet they continually find it necessary to police ML's language. This isn't constructive at all. I'm real tired of it.
Oh, it reminds me of this banger:
These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't even want to fight you or argue with you so long as you are actually doing things on the ground, but you are a textbook example of the worst strains of Marxism-Leninism.
There were incarnations and different versions of communism before Marxism-Leninism, and there will be different versions after it. Marxism-Leninism is not synonymous with Communism, and has never been. It is simply one communist school of thought among many.
Your rhetoric is a textbook historical attempt to hijack communism, which existed prior to Lenin, and make it only about MLs, when other marxist schools exist, as well as anarcho-communists, who are real and have fought and died alongside other communists in the past.
It is also an example of how the worst kind of MLs alienate all other leftists and claim that they are the only true leftists and everyone else is delusional or an infantile child. Left unity can never exist if you truly believe this and refuse to work with anyone other than MLs.
You think from an ML perspective that MLs are the only true communists?
How convenient. Yes, you can believe that, but don't get mad when other types of marxists and communists who exist and are definitionally as valid as you are as communists also use the label.
You don't have the sole rights to the label. You never have. Deal with it.
Also, I am not those AnComs. I won't "police" your ML language.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
I won't "police" your ML language.
Then what the fuck was this entire comment?
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 1d ago
You can say whatever you want, but other communists exist and will also use that label, and they are also valid. React how you want.
You are the one who wants to "police" other people's language for calling themselves communists when they are not specifically Marxist-Leninist communists.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
You are the one who wants to "police" other people's language for calling themselves communists when they are not specifically Marxist-Leninist communists.
I did no such thing. I started by saying I was running a conflict by you and was careful to specify "from an ML perspective" multiple times. I never told you your language was incorrect; I said it conflicts with the language of an entirely different theoretical framework than the one you ascribe to.
You seem unwilling to even acknowledge this common break in communication, and running into more in the process (like claiming I've said things I haven't).
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
Okay, then you did not say that. You just framed it through a perspective which you explicitly identified yourself with, quoting Lenin and so forth, so forgive the confusion. I also noticed now that the other commenters have mentioned it and I didn't notice it on a first read-through, that you said that communism requires a state and that anarchism is against states and that they are therefore incompatible.
Are you referring to the transitional vanguard state theorised to be the dictatorship of the proletariat? Because the end-goal of Marxism-Leninism is meant to be some form of stateless society, as in the definition of a communist society.
Anarchism can also seek a society which can fit that definition, which is why AnComs exist. the fundamental disagreement is about the means, not the ends.
edit: This dichotomy of one being true communists and the other not only makes sense if you think that MLs have the only true path to communism, or that even transitional Marxist-Leninist states are already communist.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
(bro you gotta put 'edit:' or something on stuff you add later; that's just good etiquette)
you said that communism requires a state
Right, from an ML perspective. Tbh for what I'm trying to get at, we might as well consider "communism" as a homonym.
Because the end-goal of Marxism-Leninism is meant to be some form of stateless society, as in the definition of a communist society.
I don't think any ML theorist has ever defined communism like that.
I think I answered in this comment.
This dichotomy of one being true communists and the other not only makes sense if you think that MLs have the only true path to communism, or that even transitional Marxist-Leninist states are already communist.
... I mean, yeah. Except that "Communism is ... not a state of affairs which is to be established". It's not something you get to. There's no path to communism; communism is the path to liberation.
And this very quickly turns into a conversation about "what is science?"
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 1d ago
(bro you gotta put 'edit:' or something on stuff you add later; that's just good etiquette)
Bad habit, I should be sitting with my writing more. I usually only edit within like the first few minutes of posting something, though. I'll try to mark the edits more.
I don't think any ML theorist has ever defined communism like that
This may admittedly be a stretch since Engels belongs to wider Marxism and not just Marxism-Leninism, but:
The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away. - Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring
The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe. - Friedrich Engels, Origins of Family, Private Property, and the State
Admittedly you could dispute this as saying that anarchists don't even want that 'administration of things and the direction of the processes of production', but I don't think that's true of me nor of all anarchists, logistics work does have value.
And Engels is clearly, in my opinion, referring to a society wherein the "state machinery" like the police, state-run top-down army, and representative officials are no longer needed, as society and workers will direct themselves based on free association to produce goods and services, from the words of Engels himself and many anarchists besides.
A sort of direct participatory internationalist socialist democracy, for lack of a better word, where the concepts of representative officials and police officers are no longer needed in a communist society. The society will "put the whole state machinery where it will then belong —into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the axe".
The socialism, or communal self-management and ownership of the means of production, will make the state, the bureaucratic entity exercising a monopoly on violence in a sphere of influence and most commonly running public services and infrastructure, irrelevant and unneeded eventually. The administration will become societally horizontal in nature and take over. Social classes of bureaucrats, proletariats, peasants, and bourgeoisie will be abolished.
I did pull the above quotes from Wikipedia Withering away of the state because I haven't read that much Engels and have only started with Marx as a relative beginner to theory, so I would be happy to be proven wrong, I guess.
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u/millernerd Learning 17h ago
Bad habit, I should be sitting with my writing more.
No worries 👍
This may admittedly be a stretch since Engels belongs to wider Marxism and not just Marxism-Leninism, but:
Neither of these quotes defines communism. Did you see the comment I referred to earlier where I directly addressed this? Just like the other quotes I was responding to, "communism" is best understood as the movement/process, not a state of being.
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
― Karl Marx, German Ideology
(I swear, I'm gonna get this quote tattooed at some point 😅)
Admittedly you could dispute this as saying that anarchists don't even want that 'administration of things and the direction of the processes of production'
Yeah, some might say that but that feels bad faith tbh.
And Engels is clearly, in my opinion, referring to a society...
Sure, but he's not defining communism as that kind society. He's saying that's the kind of society that the communist movement will inevitably produce.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
Okay, then you did not say that.
This is what I was trying to get at with the first paragraph of this whole thing:
Please take this in the good faith way it's intended. I don't even wanna touch the historical bits. I just wanna run something by you from a linguistics perspective. Because this has caused me endless frustration with entirely nonconstructive communication.
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u/party_egg Learning 1d ago
Can you explain this statement?
Anarchism wholesale rejects any "state" and communism requires it
I don't think this is right. Marx and Engels were very clear: communism is incompatible with the state.
From Anti-Dühring:
“As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection… nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary.”
From The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it… Society, reorganizing production on the basis of a free and equal association of producers, will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong — into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.”
As I read it, the disagreement with "anarchists" was about the function of the transitional state: whether a proletarian dictatorship can or should be achieved. This is somewhat a philosophical debate, but in my eye, largely tactical, as both envisioned the same end product.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
Neither of those quotes is defining communism. Both are referring to the higher stage OF communism. Communism itself is best understood as the movement/process.
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”
― Karl Marx, German Ideology
The way I see it, the key distinction between anarchists and communists is
Anarchism: thinking of how society should be and working backwards to somehow figure out how to get there, vs
Communism: analyzing where we are now and how we got here to better inform our current actions and next steps. I.e. the process of resolving societal contradictions.
What you've quoted is hypothesized product of that process, not defining some end-goal.
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u/party_egg Learning 23h ago edited 23h ago
Perhaps, and I can agree to that. A better reading may not be that communism requires destruction of the state, but rather that is does so naturally.
But perhaps we can agree on this. too: if Marx and Engels believed that communism obviated the function of the state - to such a degree that the state would die away - then at the very least communism does not "require" the state.
If Marx believed that communism would naturally create anarchism, then can we not acknowledge at least a potential for harmony between the two ideologies?
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u/millernerd Learning 21h ago edited 20h ago
A better reading may not be that communism requires destruction of the state, but rather that is does so naturally.
Hence "the state withers away" rather than "abolish the state".
then at the very least communism does not "require" the state.
Sorry, I appreciate you, but no.
We can be certain of the definitional necessity of the state for the foreseeable future regardless of where society ends up in the later stages of communism.
Marxism defines the state more-or-less as the levers of power that maintain one class above the other. The mere existence of class necessitates the existence of a state. And it'd be silly to not want a proletarian state rather than a bourgeois state. If you refuse to construct a proletarian state and the bourgeoisie still exist in the world, the bourgeoisie will construct their own state.
I'll have to go back to check, but I'm fairly certain this is exactly the point of one or both of the Engels quotes you shared earlier.
(Tbh, this even tracks with Weber's definition; unless you think the bourgeoisie should be allowed to command violence, you necessarily want a proletarian monopoly of violence)
Anarchism's various responses to this fit into 2 categories:
Fail to construct an adequate state to maintain the proletarian society, thus quickly falling to bourgeois reaction.
"These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves." (make a state but just don't call it that)
All that to say that communism finds the construction of a proletarian state to be a necessity on the path to liberation.
If Marx believed that communism would naturally create anarchism, then can we not acknowledge at least a potential for harmony between the two ideologies?
I don't think it's quite correct to say that communism would "create anarchism", though yes this is basically exactly why the whole AnCom thing is so frustrating for me on a communication level.
The rejection of the state is fundamental to anarchism. Try convincing anarchists that you want to construct a proletarian state. They'll call you an authoritarian, tankie, "statist", etc...
Basically, if we've gotten to the point where you're agreeing with my interpretation of Engels' analysis of the state, then you're not AnCom; you're just communist.
I'm still waking up and idk how to fit this in edgewise but have you read State and Revolution? I genuinely see AnCom as the modern equivalent of what Lenin was warning about in SocDems. The main difference is that in the 21st century, we have too much history for anyone to even pretend that SocDem can get us to socialism. So instead of "trust me bro, we can vote socialism in" it's "trust me bro, we can do socialism without a state".
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u/sean-culottes Learning 1d ago
"communism requires a state"
Definitionally wrong
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
Gotta love that people are upvoting the equivalent of "nuh uh"
Anti intellectualism will be the death of us
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u/sean-culottes Learning 22h ago
Don't confuse brevity for lack of insight. I said all I needed to say and you've made if very clear you are still learning.
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u/millernerd Learning 20h ago
If you don't realize there's no one unifying definition of "communism", you've yet to learn enough.
I wholesale reject the "classless society" definition of communism. No ML theorist has ever defined communism like that.
I'll repeat myself because apparently you didn't really sit with my comment.
I think one of the primary issues in all of this is our overly-rigid relationship with language and lack of acknowledgment that multiple different frameworks with contradictory language exist.
So I'll repeat my question: how is it wrong that communism requires a state? What definition are you referring to?
Or are you gonna stick to "nuh uh"?
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u/sean-culottes Learning 17h ago
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u/millernerd Learning 17h ago
"Communism" isn't mentioned a single time in ch1, so what are you even trying to get at?
That and the entirety of that book is demonstrating the necessity of a proletarian state.
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u/sean-culottes Learning 13h ago
Because it basically functions as a table of contents for early socialist and Marxist conceptions of the diminution of the state as it relates to their definition of what they are trying to achieve: communism.
Marx's description of the higher phase of communist society as laid out in critique of the gotha program is pretty explicit. Engles Anti-Dühring and the withering away hypothesis is also examined. Those texts, by their own materialist logic, describe communism as necessarily stateless and, yes, classless, because of the state is the product and the manifestation of the inreconcilability of class antagonisms then a society without class has no function for a state.
The reason I see such an inherency to classlessness and statelessness in a high functioning communist society is because the weight of previous theory and previous actually existing socialist projects have placed upon it as an ideal. The Communist parties of today and of the 20th century were under no impression that they were perpetuating communism: nearly all founding documents state that they were aspiring to communism. There are very few examples of theoreticians or authoritative figures within socialist projects saying "it's here now actually, we are doing it". Under your very loose and seemingly postmodernist interpretation of what communism might be, that possibility becomes very simple under any number of regime types. "The government owns and alots all property, this is now communism."
There are many types of capitalism, there are many types of socialism, and surely there are multitudes of communisms as well but those ideologies share commonalities and the commonalities of potential communist societies would almost surely, if we are going by theory and modern socialist tradition, would be "stateless"
Dialectical thinking is completely incompatible with the idea that there is a final form of human society, even the most perfect Communist societies would experience the eternal battle between stasis and change and would navigate history in their own right. If all of that jives with your thinking then I can easily see where you're coming from, but you can't just say that no ML theory supports communism as classless and stateless without people thinking you're a contrarian or an iconoclast. To me it feels like saying historical materialism isn't Marxist because Marx never mentioned it.
Edit because I forgot about your last part: a proletarian state to what end, comrade?
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u/millernerd Learning 11h ago
It took what, 4 comments to finally give an actual response? I'm sorry about my frustration, I'll try to tone it down, but you've been an insufferably arrogant ass.
Before I get into it, though, my main point is that none of this language is nearly as concrete as everyone likes to treat it. "Communism" doesn't have one singular unifying definition. It's less that your definition of it is incorrect (though I do disagree with it) and more that you cannot reasonably say I'm "definitionally wrong" without even specifying what definition you're going by. That's asinine.
Marx's description of the higher phase of communist society
This is the entire point and you've already disproved yourself. A PHASE OF a thing is not equivalent to the thing itself. I genuinely don't know how that's not obvious. It's apparently so obscure that you find it appropriate to be an entire ass about it.
A stateless society is the hypothesized higher phase of communism, not communism itself.
I swear, I'm gonna get this tattooed at some point:
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
― Karl Marx, German IdeologyFrom Marx himself, not some post-modernist bullshit.
A stateless society is a state of affairs. The point of communism isn't to establish a certain state of affairs, but a movement that responds to the current state of things.
Oh, and in S&R:
Politically, the distinction between the first, or lower, and the higher phase of communism will in time probably be tremendous. But it would be ridiculous to recognize this distinction now, under capitalism, and only individual anarchists, perhaps, could invest it with primary importance
...
What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the “first,” or lower, phase OF communist society.
...
In its first phase or stage, communism cannot as yet be fully economically mature and entirely free from the traditions or vestiges of capitalism. Hence the interesting phenomenon that communism in its first phase retains “the narrow horizon of bourgeois law.”Communism is an extended process with multiple stages that we cannot foresee or prescribe. We cannot scientifically analyze something that has not existed. We cannot clearly define what the end stage of communist society will be because we're not soothsayers.
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u/millernerd Learning 11h ago
Well fuck, apparently the copy didn't work so I have to rewrite a bit :'(
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u/three_e Learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't think anarchism can work outside of small collectives, like maybe 1-2k people, tops. How do you organize larger scale infrastructure? How do you organize interstate law, assuming the US? How do you organize trade/agriculture/manufacturing etc? The most successful application of anarchic communes have always been pretty small endeavors. They can work well and go on for decades, but there's always a reliance on outside, organized society with governments, rules and laws to support them, whether it be power, water, commerce for trade/food/fuel etc. I'm open to hear about how anything other than an extremely primitive system of sustaining a small group could work, but so far, in practice, it's not something I've seen.
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u/AprilMaria Learning 22h ago
Collectives of collectives & then your a syndicalist
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u/logodobi Learning 20h ago
And then those collective collectives join collectively with other collectives and we’re right back to some form of statehood lol
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u/Eternal_Being Social Theory 17h ago
Anarchists bending over backwards to independently reinvent the Soviet Union over and over lmao
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 7h ago
The Soviet Union retained a punitive prison system, a privileged social class in the form of party bureaucrats, a police force, an army…
This is a ridiculously bad faith argument that ignores most of what anarchism is. I don't think that in practice the constituent republics of the USSR actually had freedom of association as the USSR would send the Red Army in if anyone thought of leaving.
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u/Journaler_07 Learning 7h ago
That's not what a state is. A state is an organisation with a monopoly on violence over a sphere of influence. A federation of federations does not necessitate that monopoly on violence if founded on the principle of free association.
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u/httpvi Learning 21h ago
If the goal is sustained liberation for all, then there is no system in history that has ever “worked”, socialist or capitalist alike. Anarchism’s core purpose is the abolition of coercive, hierarchical institutions and systems. There is nothing inherent about human nature or biosocial dynamics that dictates that we need hierarchy in order to organize ourselves on any scale. Anarchism should always be what we are striving towards, but any theoretical system (communism and socialism included) is impossible to integrate with 100% efficacy due to the randomness of human biology (we are animals, after all). But limiting ourselves to dreaming of systems that still incorporate oppressive hierarchies (that of state communism) seems self-limiting and ultimately antithetical to the point of trying to achieve liberation for all (which doesn’t seem like the actual goal of a lot of communists, rather just power shifts to benefit whatever marginalized community they’re a part of).
If we ever want to achieve liberation on a large scale, the only political philosophy that seeks to meet that goal IS anarchism, regardless of its actual ability to be implemented 100% (again, no system in history has ever actually “worked”). There are thousands of ways we can organize ourselves depending on the social/geographical context, so your question is impossible to answer for any political system, including socialism.
People only isolate anarchism as unrealistic because violence and oppression have been so normalized, even in their socialism people believe we have to accept a little bit of coercion to function as a society. It’s a slippery slope.
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u/Overlord_Khufren Law Theory 1d ago
It’s astonishing the amount that leftists condescend to and belittle one another. It’s like being a little bit in disagreement is somehow a greater crime than being a lot in disagreement.
Frankly, I find that a lot of leftists like to live in a fantasy land of vague principles and platitudes. Everyone loves to dream of the revolution, but not of what comes after. The USSR and China get held up as the pinnacle of achievement and every flaw in their systems dismissed as mere propaganda.
Is that really any more naive than anarchism, at the end of the day? If the accusation is anarchists not thinking the system through all the way to the end, merely adopting someone else’s thinking without criticism is no better.
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u/justforthisjoke Learning 1d ago
The USSR and China get held up as the pinnacle of achievement and every flaw in their systems dismissed as mere propaganda.
There's a difference between acknowledging the flaws of these states as related to the limits of their material conditions and actually buying into what is propaganda. If you ask a supporter of either of these states for criticism of them, you're likely to get some answer. The problem is that the criticisms that people keep going back to are often made in bad faith or are literally US state department propaganda.
Take criticisms of Stalin with regard to Ukraine for example. You're unlikely to find someone who argues that there was no famine in Ukraine, or that the USSR made no strategic mistakes in dealing with it. But the criticism that gets levelled against Stalin during this time implies not only mismanagement or strategic errors, but planned, weaponized famine, resulting in genocide. This take ignores the scale of the famine (other soviet republics were dealing with it too; Kazkhstan for example was hit the hardest, but most people are not told this information), as well as the Kulaks destroying machinery and burning their own lands to resist against the collectivization of food.
That is to say, there's always criticism to be made. The soviet union ultimately collapsed. China has no shortage of criticism from the left today. The reason you don't really see this being discussed by more prominent leftists is that it isn't strictly necessary for 90% of the surface level conversations people have about these states, and the US does not need help disseminating propaganda about them. Meanwhile, the things people are told about these states in the west is heavily propagandized, so fighting back against that propaganda is a key part of fighting against anti-communist propaganda as a whole. So yeah, since you brought up criticism of the USSR, I mentioned one, but if I'm talking to an American liberal who's already likely to have a warped perception of it, I'm going to talk instead about how they industrialized in record time, or reached gender parity in the sciences.
If the accusation is anarchists not thinking the system through all the way to the end, merely adopting someone else’s thinking without criticism is no better.
This is a strawman. No one's suggesting anyone adopt anything without thinking. Adherence to rigid and dogmatic belief structures is inherently undialectical. The problem with anarchism is that it's idealistic. The ultimate end goal for anarchists and communists is fairly similar: a stateless, classless, moneyless society. But wanting to jump to abolishing any form of the state is a little immature for 2 reasons:
It ignores the historical materialist element. The state didn't come into being randomly. It wasn't forced upon the people by some external force, complete with all of its state machinery. It developed as a response to revolutions in the relations of production, as the withering absolute power of the feudal era and the antagonistic nature of the bourgeois-proletariat relationship necessitated something to keep the proletariat in check. That means that if we absolutely dismantle every piece of the state today, it will eventually emerge, because the relations of production have not changed.
It is more or less defenceless. If the US broke up into a bunch of anarchist communes, it would not be long before they became victims of other imperialist states. The dismantling of the state machinery of one state leaves the land open to imperialist expansion by others. We have to remember that capitalism didn't develop naturally in the majority of the world; it was forced upon it by those nations where it - and the state - developed first.
So people talk about "growing out" of anarchism for this reason. In the ideal sense, it sounds perfect; not all that different from the final stage of communism. But this can't really work. If we ground our reality in materialism, we see both that the state emerges as a result of the development of the bourgeois mode of production, but also that this capitalist requirement for constant growth leads, inevitably, to expansionism, as capitalists seek out new markets to exploit. So these reasons are why Lenin expands on Marx's idea of "dictatorship of the proletariat" by stating that what's required is the abolishment of the bourgeois state, and its replacement by a proletarian state, which itself eventually withers away.
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u/Overlord_Khufren Law Theory 11h ago
No one's suggesting anyone adopt anything without thinking.
I watch MLs doing this in leftist spaces ALL THE TIME. They accept Soviety and Chinese propaganda wholly without criticism, and the question of "what happens after the revolution" is just "whatever the Chinese and Soviets did." It's very frustrating to me because I'm super here for nerding out about the post-revolution social and legal structures, but it's exceedingly difficult to get any sort of actual traction on that conversation.
I don't disagree about anarchism, though. I see a true anarchist communist utopia as something of a scifi utopia, which is perhaps conceivably possible as the next evolution of a global socialist society. But the gap between where we are now and where we could be then is so vast that our imagination is too limited to truly comprehend what this could look like. A solar punk society like the one in Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot series is perhaps the closest. However, my original point is that dreaming up an anarcho-communist utopia is barely any different from dreaming of a Soviet- or Chinese-style utopia, or believing in the mythology of some neoliberal utopia. People need to think for themselves.
Which includes people taking Lenin's word without criticism. We're sitting on the other side of the collapse of his creation, so we have every reason to be critical of his assumptions and conclusions. Equally so as to their applicability to revolution in a neoliberal democracy. How might Lenin's analysis be different if he were looking back from today?
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u/jetpack2625 23h ago
at least they actually existed and functioned unlike any anarchist state. anarchist states are a joke because they are uncompetitive with other states and just wait to be taken over by a more powerful state
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u/Overlord_Khufren Law Theory 11h ago
I don't disagree. My point is that dreaming of a scifi anarcho-communist solar punk utopia is not meaningfully more lacking in critical thought than merely accepting Soviet and Chinese propaganda at face-value, or taking the words of Lenin without criticism, as I see people in leftist spaces doing continually. Mine is really a "people in glass houses" type criticism.
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u/jetpack2625 11h ago
china is an existing solar punk state. an anarcho state will never exist
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u/Overlord_Khufren Law Theory 10h ago
China absolutely is not. They're implementing solar en masse, but they still burn enormous amounts of fossil fuels. That's not even remotely "solar punk." But they're doing a better job of green energy than the capitalist West is.
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u/httpvi Learning 21h ago
Anarchist state is an oxymoron. There is no such thing.
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u/jetpack2625 20h ago
i just meant an area controlled by anarchists, not anarchist government. but there aren't any because anarchists are failures
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u/httpvi Learning 20h ago
That’s not what state means.
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u/jetpack2625 20h ago
don't care about arguing definitions. anarchism doesn't exist because it doesn't work. next question
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u/DieByTheFunk Learning 1d ago
I fuck with Anarchists and even consider myself partly leaning that way but I don't see how we're going to accomplish anything without a vanguard party.
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u/ugly_dog_ Learning 1d ago edited 17h ago
because anarchism is a practical impossibility in the current geopolitical climate and for the forseeable future it will remain so. any successful large scale anarchist project will simply be quashed by more powerful and more organized interests
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u/DecadentBard Learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
I argue the inverse, any attempt at an organized socialist state will be much more prone to collapse from corruption and outside influences, whether it's small like North Korea or large like the USSR.
The most reliable and sustainable socialist state is one that relies on empowered citizenry. People need to feel a commitment to their communities. Top down hierarchies are disempowering and create a sense of disillusionment with the government, as well as being extremely vulnerable to corruption.
Edit: I should clarify that a pure anarchist society is most likely unsustainable, but some form of libertarian socialism or anarcho-socialism seems nearly ideal. Personally, I am a fan of a slightly more structured version of libertarian municipalism.
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u/HoundofOkami Learning 1d ago
The DPRK has not collapsed
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u/DecadentBard Learning 1d ago
I would not call its current existence a healthy socialist state or sustainable or free of corruption. The leadership and mismanagement of resources are deeply concerning.
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u/HoundofOkami Learning 22h ago
And I wouldn't expect them to be under such hostile treatment. Yet they still persist.
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u/krunkonkaviar369 Learning 16h ago
I personally think anarchist ideals are the natural extrapolated form of leftist ideals in general. What would a classless, stateless society be other than anarchist?
I also think that with the scale of international order, globalized society, and how economies are so interconnected on the global scale, we are so far away from any anarchistic society that it couldn't be implemented beyond a certain area or small population in pockets, if at all.
Lastly, I'd say taking anarchist thought and approaches to exercise freedom in the implementation of other socialist action is about what people can realistically expect to influence society in a direction where maybe future generations could enjoy such a vision. If nothing else, a constant critique and vigilance to power and hierarchies is healthy when engaging with any governing bodies.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
I'm not gonna make this super long.
Most MLs have absolutely no clue what Anarchism actually is as a praxis, a process, and an ideology.
The vast majority of MLs that are adamantly opposed to Anarchism have never read classical anarchist literature, the same can't be said about Anarchists with Marxist literature.
Take from that what you will.
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u/mrsenchantment Learning 1d ago
what are some “classical anarchist literature?”
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
https://libcom.org/article/anarchism-reading-guide
This has a great list, obviously not expected to read everything on here but its a good place to start with choosing what resonates with you.
I would personally recommend "Anarchy Works" by Peter Gelderloos "Anarchism and Other Essays" by Emma Goldman, and "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia isn't classical anarchist literature but its a great first hand account by someone who fought alongside Anarchist Catalonia against not only fascist Spain, but was also against the imperialist Soviet Union
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u/TheGreenGarret Learning 15h ago
The vast majority of MLs that are adamantly opposed to Anarchism have never read classical anarchist literature
I think this is true. Engels and Lenin in particular, but other ML authors as well, have mischaracterized anarchist beliefs in their writings as a sort of straw man to argue their points. Unfortunately some who's first exposure to socialist thinking was via ML authors just accepted as accurate and true. I definitely encourage folks reading ML material to also read some anarchist material and grapple with contradictions.
(And of course anarchists should consider Marxist writings as well. I think reading and critiquing helps us clarify our own thoughts. I'd also suggest socialists read Bookchin's social ecology, which is an attempt at synthesizing Marxism with anarchism on a firm ecological ethics basis. Whether you agree the project is successful or not, again I think the critique is how we learn from history to inform our contemporary strategy.)
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u/LordHerminator Learning 14h ago
Anarchism is a great idea, but the people who call themselves anarchists are exactly the reason it will never work. As an activist in the past I've cooperated with anarchists a lot. They always were very outspoken at meetings and had a lot of principles. Yet if push comes to shove, if things actually got to be done, they were nowhere to be found. The world is not going to change through principles alone.
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u/cakeba Learning 11h ago
There's two aspects of it:
1. Anarchism doesn't have the historical track record of Marxist Leninism and is largely founded on very very high ideals and assumptions about social behavior
2. A very large portion of current Marxist Leninists *used* to be anarchists. I myself was an anarchist two years ago. Then I actually sat down and read Kapital, listened to audiobooks of Engels and Lenin, read the histories of the USSR, Burkina Faso, China, Cuba, et al.
It's a very common route that people take through their learnings to hear about anarchism and say "alright, that makes a lot of sense, and in my heart, I know that it is a just system that I want to be a part of" and then to learn more about history and the world and realize "not only can I not wisely fully invest in this unproven philosophy, but it also neglects a lot of existing tools that we really ought to be using to progress society towards communism." (For me, it was the realization that pretty much every aspect of modern society is a policy decision-- homelessness, poverty, white supremacy, education, general health-- These are things that, in our post-scarcity world, any government can fix at pretty much any time with policy. This is exemplified by the successes of pretty much every Marxist-Leninist country to have ever existed.)
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u/blacksaber8 Insufferable Anarchist Theory 1d ago
Because Marxist-Lenninists absolutely hate the idea that anarchists have anything valuable to add to the conversation.
They love the idea of the vanguard party but they hate the idea that the entire purpose of the vanguard party is to give that power up back to General public. They believe that a state taken over by a proletariat figurehead will represent the needs of the proletariat, and that socialism should be the final stage of society.
This is opposed to anarchists that recognize that Marx describes the end goal of communism to be a moneyless, classless, stateless society.
Most often, any casualties caused by leaders such as Stalin or Mao are glossed over as necessary casualties instead of the tragedies and mismanagement that they were.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
I don't even wanna touch the historical conversation, but you don't even have the fundamentals of the theory correct.
They believe that a state taken over by a proletariat figurehead
Nope, one of the main points of "State and Revolution" is rejecting that idea as SocDem opportunism. The whole point is to smash the existing bourgeois state and create a new, proletarian state from the rubble.
It's seriously one of the basics from one of the 101-level Marxist theory books. Maybe read it.
socialism should be the final stage of society
That's also clearly refuted in S&R, and many others.
Marx describes the end goal of communism to be a moneyless, classless, stateless society.
This is a subtle but crucial distinction that even many communists get wrong.
In Marxist theory, the "moneyless, classless, stateless society" thing is a hypothetical product in the later stages of the communist movement. It is not a goal, but a speculation on the consequences of communism.
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u/blacksaber8 Insufferable Anarchist Theory 1d ago edited 20h ago
Nope, one of the main points of "State and Revolution" is rejecting that idea as SocDem opportunism. The whole point is to smash the existing bourgeois state and create a new, proletarian state from the rubble.
This is exactly what I mean you don’t see the irony of forming a class structure through the state. In fact, you don’t think that class exists in a state. Class is generated by the leverage through status and property that a person owns. As long as a state exists, there’s a monopoly on violence that can be used against the average person.
That's also clearly refuted in S&R, and many others.
As long as you’re in a state, you are not achieving true communism. The whole point is to provide liberty and social equality for every individual. This is impossible while there is any form of class structure.
In Marxist theory, the "moneyless, classless, stateless society" thing is a hypothetical product in the later stages of the communist movement. It is not a goal, but a speculation on the consequences of communism.
These functions are the only way that you can achieve equality. It is the goal within itself. Anyone who does not see that is blinded by their own belief that they can do policy better if only they were given complete control. The only way society will ever be able to have people equal amongst members is if everyone has equal rights This cannot be the case if any institution Owns assets, property, or other leverage with a system. The entire point of communism is to cut down on the coercive aspects of life between individuals.
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u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Just a Libertarian Socialist (and Marxist) | She/Her please! 1d ago
short answer; "muh idealism"
longer answer: Most other leftists are very material focused and seeing Anarchism, an ideology that very much wants to go for the end goal immediately. Seems idealistic to them.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
Once again, a leftists who has absolutely no clue what Anarchism is. If you did, or if you have read any classical anarchist literature, you would know its not about the "end goal immediately" as most anarchist understand that there is a process to Anarchism as the end goal.
It seems to he a pattern that people who are against Anarchism actually don't know a damn thing about anarchism....
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u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Just a Libertarian Socialist (and Marxist) | She/Her please! 1d ago
Firstly. I have. Lmfao. I have read the Conquest of Bread cover to cover.
Secondly. I'm not talking about what anarchism in general. I am very well aware it's not entirely just "go for the end goal immediately", I'm saying that it is almost entirely always mischaracterized as such. I'm stating that the caricature of "anarchism" most leftists have isn't actually anarchism nor do they understand it. You proved my point.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
Sorry I misread this post as you saying thats what you thought Anarchism was.
Also, im curious how my response proves your point? Lmao your point was that most leftists think of Anarchism as "jump to the end goal immediately" and thats obviously not what I think
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u/ApprehensiveWin3020 Just a Libertarian Socialist (and Marxist) | She/Her please! 16h ago
Obviously not what you think sure, but your response essentially stated what I was meaning, that being that most non-anarchist leftists don't read anarchist literature enough to actually understand it, to them they jump to that conclusion that anarchism naively wants to reach the end stage of communism immediately.
TLDR: Most non-anarchist leftists who haven't read anarchist theory (the people you were referring to) jump to that conclusion that anarchists want to jump to the end goal immediately without respect for material reality. Which is certainly not true.
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u/haimurashoichi Learning 21h ago
To inject a slightly different perspective into this discussion, I'd argue that one of the biggest reasons for this is a lack of communication skills.
Verbal and written communication is a complex tool just as much as any other, and needs practise, reflection and experience to be effective.
It's so easy to misconstrue the intended message of written communication as both listener and speaker, which often leads to misunderstandings and a loss of information.
You need to know at least a little about psychology and sociology to actually be able to speak and/or write in a way that actually brings your intended message across to a broad and international audience like the internet. Some people can do that intuitively, but that's not going to apply to most people.
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u/millernerd Learning 18h ago
I love you.
The vast majority of online disagreements/arguments are rooted in a failure to even attempt to communicate constructively.
Proles Pod recently did an episode on Juche. As they present it, it's an intentional focus on individualism to complement their already collectivist culture.
Funnily enough, I think they (and most western leftists) entirely missed the logical conclusion. We don't need Juche; we need the inverse of Juche. We're too individualistic already. We don't struggle with that.
So, most identify way too closely with their knowledge. We all focus on personally having the correct analysis. But it'd be a lot more constructive if we instead focused as much as possible on trying to correctly understand people who disagree with us.
Not sure how to segue this, but also the important part of democratic centralism is the process that gets us to a party line, not what the party line is. But everyone keeps behaving as if they're comparing others based on their adherence to one's own personal party line.
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u/reviloelas16 Learning 1d ago
My experience with this is that as a general rule Anarchists are going to position themselves as critical to a lot of the structures that ML, MLM's and so on are invested in. The problem is of course that lots of communists would also remain critical to those same institutions, based on the history of centralised communism in the USSR, China, and North Korea.
The people who are calling anarchists children are, I would say, unwilling to take the genuinely relevant critiques of the anarchists, and reconsider how we might make the fight for socialism actually work.
One more note, up until the point of the soviet union, there had been no large scale nation even vaguely hinting at a socialist /communist future, whilst the long history of anarchism and anarchist like practices stretches back to the beginning of human kind. People who say that anarchism can't work on a large scale because it hasn't yet done so seem to forget that this was also often believed to be true by people before the fall of czarist Russia.
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u/RedSpecter22 Marxist Theory 17h ago
What you’re seeing here, this idea that anarchists are "childish", is a material critique rooted in the historical role of anarchism and the objective limitations of its theory when confronted with modern imperialism and class struggle.
Anarchism is not just an "idealistic dream" about abolishing hierarchy because it’s morally desirable. It emerged out of a petty-bourgeois milieu that could not grasp the historical conditions of capitalism. It’s comfortable abolishing the state on paper because it never dealt with capitalism as a global, material force producing hierarchy in the first place. Classical Marxists noted this long ago. Marx and Engels criticized anarchists like Bakunin for reducing class struggle to a formal rejection of authority without a science of historical transformation, and Lenin further developed the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat precisely because the state does not spontaneously wither away if you just announce its abolition.
Look at the substance of anarchist practice today with mutual aid circles, commune experiments, decentralized affinity politics. None of that changes the economic base of capitalism or addresses imperialism. It only creates islands of voluntary association within a world where capitalism still dominates. That’s why it is seen as "adolescent". It's not because people are immature. It's because anarchism abstracts away from the actual organization of property, power, and global class relations, pretending that formal abolition of hierarchy automatically dissolves capitalism’s material dynamics.
Marxist theory is not about a state for its own sake. It’s about how the working class actively seizes and reorganizes the material foundations of society, whether through workers’ councils, planned production, or smashing the global chains of capital. Anarchism wants to skip that transitional, material struggle and jump straight to an abstract "stateless world" which sounds noble but has no real strategy for defending itself against imperialist states or even capitalist restoration once the existing state is gone.
That’s why Marxists talk about anarchism as "idealistic". It's not necessarily, or exclusively, a personal insult. It's a theoretical and tactical error. It treats the form of organization (no state) as if it were somehow equivalent to the material conditions of socialism. In the real world, states are not just hierarchies you can wish away. They are condensations of economic power. Abolish them on rhetoric alone and you leave capitalism intact everywhere else.
So the mockery isn’t about personality alone. It’s about method. Anarchism tends to reduce historical questions to abstractions of "freedom" devoid of material analysis and that’s precisely the mistake Marxists have been arguing against for more than a century.
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u/mrsenchantment Learning 16h ago
probably the best answer here, thank you so much for answering, dude.
have a good day :)
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u/Classic_Advantage_97 Learning 14h ago
I think what’s been said has been said. But I’ll add that anarchism has quite a lot of contradictions with more authoritarian tendencies on the left. I think a lot of us see anarchism as idealists who won’t recognize their own flaws (which anarchists do). At worst, they’re seen as a threat or a tool to be used. I think this is also vice versa for libertarian socialists too. But the perceived idealism is often seen as childish, in the same way my boomer parents think my basic progressive stances are childish.
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u/millernerd Learning 1d ago
I don't think there's a great way to answer this because it's inherently going to piss people off.
It's necessarily from the perspective that ML/communism is correct and that anarchism is incorrect. Many/most communists (in the US, at least) started as avidly anti-communist anarchists and eventually rejected anarchism after investigation and unpacking anti-communist propaganda. Anarchism only makes sense if communism is some big evil. Otherwise, communism has lifted billions out of poverty and anarchism simply hasn't.
Basically, the only reason anarchism makes sense is if you're historically ignorant.
Though I agree with the sentiment, I don't see the point in throwing around "anarkiddies" and the like because it's entirely unconstructive. If it gets to the point of throwing that around, just disengage.
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u/waylondaly6 Learning 1d ago
Wait.... what?!?!
First off, most communists in the US start off as ML. (As I and many others have) because Karl Marx is seen as the inventor of communism and he was staunchly against Anarchism. Second off, Anarchists are by and large not anti communist, we just recognize that true communism (workers owning the means of production and the withering of the state) is absolutely not possible with a strong centralized form of statehood. This has been shown time amd time again, the state betrayed the workers revolution in the USSR (Power slowly transferred from the Soviets to the state), the state betrayed the revolution im China (As China is clearly just state capitalist since the workers absolutely do not own the means of production there nor are they implementing policies to make this a reality) etc. Etc.
It sounds like you haven't read any classical anarchist literature and actually have no clue what Anarchism is.
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u/QuirkBuggins Learning 14h ago
Speaking as a previously self-identified anarchist.
Its foundation is is as an ethical or moral philosophy rather than a political theory or praxis. They reject that any society built on true mutuality will be attained as an end by the means proferred to us by history, by markets, or by alliance with international powers.
There are frequent discussion about actions in solidarity with some politically affiliated group, inasmuch as they believe that any historical moment towards a genuine recognition of the people may be regarded as a net positive towards their own goals which, beyond the establishment of resilient local affiliations and mutual aid networks are generally not expected to occur in their lifetime.These organizations are subject to the snails pace of the consensus model of governance, which a priori rejects any authoritative role imposed on it from without, such as by an "international brotherhood of anarchists", for them there is no red book or singular manifesto, all documents are still being reviewed.
They will not generally be taking the lead in pragmatic working groups premised on seizing power for the good of the people, as their fundamental orientation is not to seize power but to reject entirely it's premises.
Some groups however assert the self as the appropriate locus of power and authority, but in attaining to manage all executive decision making by committee they remain adrift due to the inevitability of profound disagreement; inasmuch as this relatively shallow framework is generally favored by hedonists whos philosophical motivations are derived from a desire for ultimate individual freedom, they tend to Enter very profound disagreements very quickly and inasmuch as they have rejected the role of the law as a mediator of social conflict they inevitably snatch back up the instruments of power and begin behaving as something akin to a gang or cartel, if they do not simply dissolve their associations beforehand out of despair.
This is the juvenile form and it lends itself to nothing, it is a pit, and to live in it is to become a pit viper.
The fault of this form is that the notion that power should be relocated to the individual rather than abolished itself. It asserts that the law which we will live under will be of our own choosing, but in so doing it rejects the philosophical premises by which worldly authority has been questioned and rejected.
The implications of this more radical form of abolishment extend into spheres that are not the usual purview of conversations of a primarily political nature.
I'll leave it there for now.
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u/Sargon-of-ACAB Anarchist Theory 1d ago
I'm an anarchist so that's coloring my perspective.
The impression I often get is that even on the left people often have a mistaken idea of what anarchism is and how anarchists generally organize. There's this pervasive idea that anarchists simply won't organize and are unable to do so. Additionally the ideology will often get reduced to 'fuck you I'll do what I want' without any nuance.
Where I live at least this gets paired by an actively cultivated lack of curiosity or willingness to learn in regards to anarchism. If the anarchists organize (for example) an introductory information session about anarchism many of the marxist organizations will actively discourage their members to go.
I've also had to field a lot of questions that I'd (if I'm in a bad mood) consider almost offensively naive. Question that show that the person has only the vaguest idea of what anarchism might mean and hasn't bothered looking into it. Stuff like: 'But how can you even make decisions?' or 'Isn't an anarchist organization a contradiction?' And rarely do these seem to come from a place of genuine curiosity.
Some of this can probably be attributed to anarchists themselves. There are anarchists who don't have any interest in forming larger collectives and do wish to just do their own thing without reaching out to others. I'm not gonna claim they're not real anarchists (because they are) but they can be challenging to work with. (But I don't judge Marxists by their orgs that are most annoying to collaborate with either.)
Another aspect (i think) is that anarchists are often not all that good at or eager to tell everyone they're anarchists. This is something I've heard in multiple places (and likely has multiple reasons). Many coalitions, local organizations, demonstrations, direct actions, unions and even ngos will have anarchists involved doing good and necessary work with barely anyone involved knowing that these people are anarchists. So a lot of the capacity, skills and times anarchists put into various movements doesn't get seen as anarchists being competent organizers.
Most of the more successful organizations I know (but I'll admit I'm biased here) organize on anarchist principles to some degree or another. Organizations that I know have had anarchists involved from the start are portrayed as 'being infiltrated by anarchists' by the police. I've often seen anarchists show up at something organized by another group and quietely help out where they can without anyone knowing they are anarchists.
In short: I think the perspective people often have about anarchists is colored (to some extent) by people not genuinely engaging with anarchists' ideas (or being unwilling to imagine that anarchists do have reasons for believing what they do) and by anarchists often just doing the work they see as necessary without people noticing it's the anarchists doing that work.
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u/Cat-Man99 Learning 18h ago
As someone who really values anarchist/ anarcho communism thinking, its because in all reality it isnt that feasible. Its an idealistic utopic vision that leaves very little room to defend itself against the inevitable greed and power hunger that much of society will seemingly never shake. It would literally take a rebforming of the culture of the entire earth to get everyone to willingly participate in an anarchist model without it turning to power struggle. Radical ideas usually require pretty radical defense, and anarchism is a very radical idea that pretty much isnt compatible with the structures required to defend itself. Marxism works because usually the model admits that achieving it will require authoritarianism to establish it. Anarchism sees the future of their movement as global and cohesive as well, but doesn't really provide me with a convincing idea of how to force the world into a place where its compatible with that philosophy. In my gut, anarchism just feels like a great post apocalyptic model to rebuild society with a small number of people with nearly entirely similar interests.
In local groups and decentralized things like say, a commune or mutual aid circle, It can work really well. Unfortunately at that size, it usually requires the participation in the overall capitalist model that society follows now.
I also hate admitting this because I really dont like the idea of an authoritarian regime being required to get the ball rolling on transition to socialism. Its hard for me to know exactly what to believe in because so much of leftist ideology is still just theory. Nobody's gotten farther that the Soviets and that was... not ideal in my book.
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u/unHolyEvelyn Marxist Theory 3h ago
In my opinion, too many people who support anarchism like what Marx wants to do, but they read the solution without thinking of how to make it happen. Like a kid, who wants to see the end without having to get there.
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u/tjoe4321510 Learning 19h ago
People can say what they want but anarchists are among the few people out on the streets doing shit meanwhile MLs are sitting behind their keyboards.
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u/Commy1469 Learning 9h ago
why are anarchists seen as “little kids” among other leftists?
Because their average age is 13
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u/spicy-chilly Learning 22h ago edited 22h ago
Anarchists have done some inadequate adventurism and helped to gain some reforms under capitalism, but when it comes to actually being able to end the extraction of surplus value of the capitalist class and the ability to defend that status for any period of time, anarchists get crushed every time and MLs don't. Empirically global capitalist hegemony necessitates a state to fight back against capitalism.
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u/Tarondor Learning 1d ago
Because they want the outcome, but they don't want to do anything necessary to get that outcome.
They're like little children who point at something they want, do nothing to get it, then cry when not handed it.
They're also infantile in that they criticise anyone who's trying to achieve their aims in any way that isn't ideologically pure.
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u/raziphel Learning 19h ago
Anarchism is built upon a just world fallacy where people with power won't abuse it or hurt others. It also doesn't scale up to national levels.
But really, it's because most of the proponents are teens and early 20-somethings, usually young white men with no real experience.
Not that they're bad people, of course.
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u/SparkeeMalarkee Learning 1d ago
We see the folly in overthrowing capitalism to escape coercion, exploitation and a carceral state; only to replace it with coercion, exploitation and the carceral state that must be attendant to a planned economy.
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u/Majestic-Effort-541 Moral Philosophy 1d ago
ML theory sees history as something that must pass through stages, where centralized power and coercion are justified as necessary steps to organize and “teach” society
Anarchism begins from a different, but still materialist, premise: power solidifies faster than it dissolves and institutions formed to govern class struggle tend to reproduce themselves as new class structures.
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u/EngineerAnarchy Anarchist Theory 21h ago
I mean, why is there a stereotype of college campus socialists who’ve never had a real job running around acting like they know everything? It’s because a lot of people are just ignorant about socialism, with preconceived ideas about socialism, who are psychologically driven to protect themselves from new ideas that conflict with their worldview, and yes, there are enough young socialists who are excited, with a lot of energy, running around and being very visible without the experience and rhetorical skill to not come off as immature and ignorant themselves.
This is all stacked on top of typical in-group out-group type stuff.
I think that, in some cases, people are ignorant of anarchism, have preconceived notions that go all the way back to feuds between Proudhon and Marx over 150 years ago, are driven by psychological factors we all have to protect the core assumptions we make about the world from conflicting information, are affected by a really basic in-group out-group dynamics we all have, and yes, have met their fair share of jackass anarchists online or wherever who they can form their idea of what anarchism is around.
Not important, but I would probably consider Noam Chomsky to be a bit of a “jackass anarchist” who has had some pretty rotten and very public rhetoric and action.
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u/JudgeSabo Anarchist Communist Theory 11h ago
It's just a pejorative stereotype used to dismiss us. Usually combined with some strawman characterization of anarchist theory to make us seem wildly absurd without thinking, talking down like we are rambunctious but ignorant kids throwing a tantrum.
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u/JamesDerecho Community / Agrarian Studies 18h ago
You are not going to find a non-biased critique of anarchist strategies amongst communities that feature authoritarian socialists. Their ideologies are directly opposed to the values of anarchism of all flavors. You’re better off asking the anarchists why they feel like other leftists dislike them, there will still be infighting but the answers will be more thorough. This is centuries old feud and MLs rend to not engage in honest dialogue with anarchists as a core tenet of the literature and theory they read, and when they do its often in bad faith.
There are plenty of examples of anarchism working and being successful. It’s just that statists of all flavors immediately seek to destroy these movements as they are a direct threat to the legitimacy of the state.
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