posting 'tankie' is the new 'woke' slur on a lemmy instance..

Oh for sure with valve - they're still a company and they're certainly capitalist, which basically means they'll get more cold and ruthless, and it means they're making money for someone else through their labors

That's still anarchist though - no ruler, not no rules. They don't get told what to work on or how - the threat of getting let go (with a reasonable chunk of severance) doesn't make it not anarchist. Neither does the fact they don't get to keep their profits

You can mix and match systems - you can have pure anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-communism, although by operating in a predetermined framework it's not really pure anarchism

The ranking system doesn't take much away though, team roles are aren't assigned, they're ad-hoc. And with software we don't have the same hierarchy within a team unless there's a massive gap in skills/experience. You can't code what you don't understand after all - leadership is more about communication. You might have an architect designing the big picture and a team lead coordinating, but even in strict chains of command, programmers usually write tasks as a group then choose their task from what needs doing and what they feel confident in

But anyways, it might've been transformed to be more corporate over the years (I dug into all this a decade ago), but it was certainly designed to be anarchistic - that doesn't mean good, not exploitative, in any way fair or equal... Just that the group functions through the individuals autonomously working towards the groups goals

Hilarious how she doesn't even have a problem admitting it's all a matter of fitting the edgy cyberpunk aesthetic of blue hair, computers, skateboards and slapping stickers around. All about individual image and no political dedication.

And I can understand listening to theory audiobooks instead of reading them, although I think it's worse as it's harder for you to re-read lines and take notes, but... While skateboarding? Can you imagine yourself attempting to make any sense of a Das Kapital audiobook while playing basketball? Probably just to be able to say "yeah i've already read it" and nothing else. Once again, all about aesthetics.

So when she said 1.6GB of litterature, it was basically two audiobooks. That'll show them how litterate she is for sure lmao

This is so on brand. Especially the "I lack the discipline to regulary sit down and read a book, so I tell people I have ADHD even though we all know no licensed professional ever diagnosed me"-attitude.

😊

Not long after I wrote this, I poured a cup of tea and picked up Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Kwame Ture (a name he took later, leaving behind 'Stokely Carmichael'). He writes (p. 29–30, emphasis added):

As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against "black supremacy", "black nationalism", "racism in reverse," and begin facing reality. The reality is that this nation is racist; that racism's not primarily a problem of "human relations" but of an exploitation maintained—either actively or through silence—by the society as a whole. Can whites, particularly liberal whites, condemn themselves? Can they stop blaming us, and blame their own system? Are they capable of the shame which might become a revolutionary emotion?

Lockheed Left is reactionary though.

The USSR was eventually compromised, so it technically failed in that sense, but how is China an example of failing to retain worker control? If you're claiming that capitalists control China's government, I'd challenge you to provide some evidence

Above, you seemed to suggest that you agree with the need for material analysis over idealism. You seem to be saying the same here, by saying what MLs already agree with: that state power in the USSR and China was/is complicated.

But then you say:

Representative worker ownership of the means of production through the state doesn’t have a compelling track record.

You responded to GrainEater about that, but I'll add here that revolutionary states run by Marxist Leninists are the only ones to have made any headway at all. The track record is at least 5-nil against all other revolutionary ideologies and that's only counting self-proclaimed ML AES states that still exist. These are Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos, DPRK. A materialist analysis of these states may lead you to change your mind.

This isn't counting the massive, overwhelmingly positive contribution to humanity made by the USSR in it's short existence. Defeating Nazi Germany. Ending Feudalism in Russia and elsewhere. Supporting third world liberation movements and helping to 'end' colonialism. Raising the living standards of it's inhabitants. Providing an impetus for western social democracies to implement a welfare state (how fast these have deteriorated since the Berlin Wall fell!).

I think it’s dishonest, reactionary and anti intellectual to laugh off arguments like that of comrade spood from the screenshot above.

The problem with Spood's comment is that it doesn't really make sense. Do they mean the workers need to control the state that controls the means of production? If so, there's little or no disagreement.

Or that the workers need to control the means of production directly? If so, what does that mean? Does this mean worker co-ops? Or something else? If co-ops or something else, it's not Marxism. Plus, what happens to the logic of capital without a central authority, i.e. a state, to organise these units of workers? How do workers abolish the relations of capital (markets, competition, etc) if all they own is their own workplace? If they own more than the place they work, what structure are they using that isn't a state by another name?

If it is the latter (direct control), then it could instead mean simply that communism will only be achieved when the workers control the means of production. This is (1) a trite tautology with which no ML will disagree, and (2) either (a) only one side of the story or (b) anti-dialectical, and (3) not mutually exclusive with the workers controlling the means if production through the state.

As Marx and Engels say in The German Ideology, communism is the process of overturning capitalism.

From a dialectical perspective, which treats the world as interrelated contradictory processes rather than static things, a communist revelation must be a contradictory process. One can't claim to be an historical materialist and then refuse to treat revolution – the focus of all revolutionaries – in an anti-dialectical way. To reduce communism and revolution as a status that can pop into existence is to deny that these are, again, interrelated, contradictory processes.

Communism is not just the end goal or the 'end' end goal. Communism is the next stage of human social development, which will happen over a period of time. After that, humans will have to resolve other contradictions and society will develop further. Or not. Maybe humans are doomed to strive for communism forever. (Not my view.)

Either way, communism is both the name for the struggle and the goal that revolutionaries are struggling for. If this is what Spood means when they say that communists should never stop striving, every ML would likely agree.

If that's not what they mean, they seem to be making an empty left-communist slogan that means we either go straight to 23rd century communism in one fell swoop or don't bother trying.

Slogan-making like that is anti-intellectual for relying on models that don't account for the fact that reactionaries are armed to the teeth, violent, and merciless. Thus also dishonest by claiming knowledge that excludes salient facts. And reactionary for suggesting a path that will inevitably lead to failure and for criticising the revolutionaries who are actually doing revolution rather than waiting for a fairy godmother to wave the magic revolution wand.

In sum, it's idealist and anti-Marxist to reject the concept of and need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

I don't want to speak for them but I don't think Krause was saying that you're not doing enough organising. I interpreted the comment as a reference to the Leninist concept of the state (following Engels). To put it somewhat crudely, a state (a) has class characteristics and (b) is a tool for organising class society and exercising authority.

From this perspective, it is reductive to say 'states are bad'. If there's an implied question in Krause's comment, it's not, 'what are you doing to change they material conditions?' but 'how are we to secure those changes without, and why can't we fast track them using, the state?' Or, 'how is any region supposed to secure its gains without a state in a world in which the US exists?' (Also, most people on Lemmygrad are involved or trying to get involved in organising.)

Just in case it seems as though I uncritically see states as necessary in revolutionary action, I'll mention Roland Boer's excellent short book on Engels' concept of socialist governance, which might help us here. He explains that a 'socialist state' is an oxymoron. Socialists must seize state power to prevent the capitalists from re-gaining power. After that, there's no socialist state, only socialist governance.

No offense, but I can tell you're some flavor of ultra/liberal by your use of dramatic, bombastic language to make sweeping statements that don't hold up to scrutiny.

It is not.

You are an ultra? Then why do you sound like a yankee flag huffing neoliberal all the time?

I'm not sure if anyone is getting angry that you're saying the state must be abolished. MLs fundamentally agree with that. It's what revolutionaries are aiming for.

The criticism is that you seem to be saying that revolutionaries cannot use the state because it's an incoherent notion:

If your position is “we can’t abolish the state until there are no class divisions” then you’ve got an infinite loop.

By this do you mean to say that the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is logically contradictory? That it won't work? You seemed to agree, above, that you don't think that's the case (i.e. you think the state can be used as a tool), but here you appear to be saying just that?

It may be helpful here to reiterate the dialectical element of Marxism-Leninism. It's not a step-by-step sequence of events. First one, then the other. It's a dialectical development.

The plan isn't to seize the state, then to use the state to abolish classes. That won't work. It's anti-dialectical.

The idea is that by seizing the state and wresting control over the means of production from the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie will become redundant and whither away. This will take a long time. The state is needed to keep the reactionaries in line in the meantime.

It's taken China over half a decade to start the process and most of the rest of the world hasn't even begun the task yet. The DotP and the abolition of classes and the state are one process. They're interrelated.

Have you read State and Revolution or 'Better Fewer But Better' by Lenin?

Of course there will be social classes -- as I said, a state is a tool for the oppression of one class by another. For a socialist state, that means the workers (mainly the proletariat, but also other smaller classes of workers that remain from the pre-capitalist mode of production) oppressing the bourgeoisie. Most of the capitalists, especially the smaller ones, will gradually become proletarian. When there are only proletarians left, there will no longer be a state, unless the state stops acting in the interest of the proletariat at some point before that. A proletarian democracy (i.e. an actual democracy, where the people can force any elected representative to step down at any time if they're not satisfied, and money has no role in the electoral process) will eventually turn into a democracy for everyone as everyone becomes a proletarian (which is equivalent to a classless society, since a class only has meaning in relation to other classes).

Those without (or with lesser) power than the ruling class of the state

In other words: the bourgeoisie, they are the ones who would be oppressed.

Abolishing the current state and replacing the bourgeoisie with proletariat workers merely creates a new bourgeoisie

No, it puts a new ruling class in charge of the state, it replaces the current bourgeois state to form a new proletarian state.

Power corrupts

This is idealism.