An Address to Anarchists
Italian anarchists are very irritable because they are very conceited. Their longstanding conviction that they’re oracles of revealed revolutionary truth has become “monstrous” ever since the Socialist Party, through the influence of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik…
I love this line:
The bourgeois will become an anarchist again after the proletarian revolution: he will once again become aware of the existence of a State; of the existence of laws foreign to his will, hostile to his interests, to his habits, to his freedom. He will realize that “State” is synonymous with “compulsion” because the workers’ State will take away the bourgeoisie’s freedom to exploit the proletariat, because the workers’ State will be the bulwark of a new mode of production which, as it develops, will destroy every trace of capitalist ownership and any possibility of its revival.
This is exactly the crux of the failure of ideological "Freedom Now" maximalism. That maximalist freedom they want includes the freedom to exploit and take away the freedom of others. The paradox that needs to be accepted and synthesised is that Freedom necessarily must be imposed at this stage.
Precisely, without the dictatorship of the proletariat there is no path towards stopping exploitation.
@Blursty> That maximalist freedom they want includes the freedom to exploit and take away the freedom of others.
You do know that this is by far false, and you must be referring to neo-liberals. The anarchist tradition is of anarcho-communism/syndicalism and libertarian-communism and the perversion some fools describe as anarcho-capitalism (us libertarianism) is not accepted as anarchist by anarchists themselves. In some areas they would even fear of having a physical presence among the rest. So what good is it to base some conclusion on a false premise?
Do you think when Marx was spending time with Kropotkin discussing, playing chess, it was because Kropotkin was defending the freedom to exploit? Go read the consititutions of CNT, of FAI, the Italian Federation, and see whether there is a clear position against ANY exploitation of humans by humans.
Where the weakness of the libertarian proposal lies is that "society" on its own will not find a way to organize against capitalism, or be organized adequately to survive without a state. Society can and will not do such things without a revolutionary vanguard leading it to that direction. Anarchist organization has had to deal with this contradiction where itself becomes the vanguard "over" society or the working class, deciding for the class things like tactics, methods, goals, etc. The relationship between a political organization and society or the working class therefore becomes hierarchical and allows little "freedom" for those outside the organization to decide or even affect the decisions made. So, a revolutionary process becomes one where the vanguard imposes conditions and rules on the working class. The more anarchists try to organize the fewer stay with it as they feel uncomfortable with the contradiction.
In m-l tradition the vanguard is an acceptable and conscious decision to maintain this hierarchy, use the class struggle as a movement to overthrow the government and take over the state. Unfortunately those two branches of radical anti-capitalism can't seem to synthesize any form of collaboration and possibility of coexistence. For historic reasons there is little trust or hope for such cooperation or agreement.
There is a trend (specially after 1950s cointelpro activities) of individualism that can extent all the way to anti-communism, otherwise called insurrectional individualist anarchists, who are also very much against any formal organization as being the source of oppression. Those fools write and write as individuals, appealing to individuals, and formulating individual beliefs that can never escape their lack of organization. Lack of a collective organ to promote their ideas keeps them well in the bottom of movement significance. They have never been able to achieve anything. But you can't characterize 150y+ traditions by some neo-con trends of youth lifestylism.
How would you classify and explain the presence of IWW for two centuries? The presence of CNT in the 1930s Spain's uprising against the invasion of Franco with US and German support?
If there is superiority of m-l over anarchism/libertarian-communism, there must be presented and analyzed on true premises not lies and characterizations empty of content. For the anarchist freedom can not exist without equality, but equality is as political as it is economic. It would be hard to believe that people of "equal" presence in decision making would produce a system of exploitation or oppression, or any other form of inequality. Systems of inequality exist because minorities serving individual interests form organizations to maintain inequality.
@Blursty
You do know that this is by far false,
I didn't know that no. Looking forward to hearing an argument against it.
So what good is it to base some conclusion on a false premise?
I think it's a terrible idea to base a conclusion on a false premise. I'd advise against it. I'm still waiting to hear a counterargument for this simple truth.
Do you think when Marx was spending time with Kropotkin discussing, playing chess, it was because Kropotkin was defending the freedom to exploit?
People play games for fun. This is what I would imagine the reason for them playing was.
Go read the consititutions of CNT, of FAI, the Italian Federation, and see whether there is a clear position against ANY exploitation of humans by humans.
I very much doubt if they'd state it openly. It's a simple and obvious end result of "freedom maximalism".
... The more anarchists try to organize the fewer stay with it as they feel uncomfortable with the contradiction.
Presumably because the individuals' freedom being inevitably curtailed by unavoidable realities contradicts their anarchist beliefs.
There is a trend (specially after 1950s cointelpro activities) of individualism that can extent all the way to anti-communism, otherwise called insurrectional individualist anarchists, who are also very much against any formal organization as being the source of oppression. Those fools write and write as individuals, appealing to individuals, and formulating individual beliefs that can never escape their lack of organization. Lack of a collective organ to promote their ideas keeps them well in the bottom of movement significance. They have never been able to achieve anything. But you can’t characterize 150y+ traditions by some neo-con trends of youth lifestylism.
I'm going to guess that this is some copypasta you just tried to shoe-horn in here. Honestly without your comment history I'd guess that this is chatGPT copy paste. Who is characterising anything "by some neo-con trends of youth lifestylism.". What for that matter even is a neo-con trend of youth lifestylism?
How would you classify and explain the presence of IWW for two centuries? The presence of CNT in the 1930s Spain’s uprising against the invasion of Franco with US and German support?
As proven failures. What's to explain?
If there is superiority of m-l over anarchism/libertarian-communism, there must be presented and analyzed on true premises not lies and characterizations empty of content.
If there's to be any counterargument for what I stated, I'd like to hear it. All I've got is weird randomly generated paragraphs of nothingspeak.
For the anarchist freedom can not exist without equality, but equality is as political as it is economic. It would be hard to believe that people of “equal” presence in decision making would produce a system of exploitation or oppression, or any other form of inequality.
Hard to believe? Wait til you hear about Capitalism.
Systems of inequality exist because minorities serving individual interests form organizations to maintain inequality.
And such minorities are an inevitable product of systems designed for pander to individualism.
I'm still not sure if I'm talking to a robot.
The bourgeois was anarchic before his class seized political power and imposed on society the ideal State regime suitable to safeguard the capitalist mode of production
definitely going to use this in future convos
I can see the retort being, a now-proletarian anarchic movement can 'seize[] political power and impose[] on society the ideal State regime suitable to safeguard the [anarchist] mode of production'.
Still, it's a good quote and could be used at the same time as the idea that capitalism entails an 'anarchy of production', which leads to crises of overproduction. The question becomes, without planning, how do left wing anarchists plan to avoid this problem?
This is really bad quote to use by itself if you’re trying to “debunk” anarchists. Not because it’s actually a bad quote, but because it seems like one when read naively.
Even though it’s trying to make a different, much more salient point, it just reads as another version of the “Hitler was a vegan” cliche.
Seems like some people are overly optimistic with when the state should be abolished.
Socialist transition to communism will last for a long time, that's because socialists are not tyrannical bastards like capitalists, and the material conditions required for communism isn't going to be reached in the foreseeable future.
A good timeline to follow is the second centenary goal of China, that is to "build a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by 2049".
It's idealist af. It'll take generations upon generations, just like in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Hell, we're still dealing with the remnants of old feudal orders in the age of late stage capitalism.
There is no communism button.
thanks for the post interesting read so far
I agree that anarchists are often conceited, but do we really have to take the exact opposite position to them, and decree that because an oppressive proletarian State is in the interest of the proletariat, that we should not try and dissolve the state at all? Is limiting ourselves to the short-term desires of the proletarian class, not even considering what kind of class structures that could form in the future, really the best way forward?
This reads a strange form of vulgar Marxism to me, a kind of reaction to the idea of anarchism that arises when you criticize it from gut opposition at their “arrogance” rather than the actual issues with it. I’m not saying the article is actually saying this, but what it is saying is dangerously compatible with such a viewpoint.
I am a Marxist because I believe that the struggle of the proletariat has the greatest chance to end the constant class struggle of human society, not because I think that the state is a necessary or even remotely “ok” methods of human organization. It is only justifiable as a form of self-defense for the proletariat (which the dictatorship of the proletariat should fundamentally be viewed as). Anything more than that isn’t just bad from some abstract moral opinion, but because it’s completely pointless to the revolutionary struggle.
Marx was very clear regarding the fact that a proletarian state under the dictatorship of the proletariat would be necessary to replace the existing capitalist state. Marxist idea is not that the state can be dissolved spontaneously, but rather that the state withers away as society internalizes new socialist relations. It's also quite obviously not possible to do away with the state while capitalism is the dominant ideology in the world and capitalist states actively work to destroy socialist ones.
But that is what I am saying.
The article seems to miss the fact that the ultimate point of instating a dictatorship of the proletariat is to protect the creation of a mode of production that doesn’t need a State at all.
If the Anarchist says they are against the existence of the State, then that makes their desire ultimately the same as ours - a communist mode of production. The flaw of anarchist ideology seems to be this idea that the State is not justifiable even if it’s purpose is to destroy itself, which seems like a simple example of not reading about the tolerance paradox to me.
The arguments in the article just seem inefficient.
