On the internet I don’t see too many Anarchists give arguments past “communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state” and “we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!” Which like…is not convincing to me at all. I’ve engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that’s purely anecdotal.
So, I’d really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.
I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you
Gotta keep in mind that many internet Anarchists are angry young people who haven’t had much if any connection with Anarchist or other left movements. They still mostly trapped in a world of NATO propaganda and if you uncritically accept everything NATOstan says about communism then internet “No gods no bedtimes” no theory “anarchism” looks reasonable. I’d suggest go dig in to real shit - The old school stuff like Kropotkin, but also look up modern, functioning Anarchist projects. There aren’t a lot of big ones but there are lots of places where communities are run on either explicitly Anarchist lines or on lines that meaningfully run parallel to Anarchist thought. Try to look for projects outside of NATOstan and the Anglosphere. Places in the global south seem to be a lot less prone to being infected with NATO brainworms. I wish I had some examples but it’s been a while since I’ve looked it up, but you’re looking for coops, community self defense orgs, community infrastructure development, things like that. I’d say look up the Zapatistas as a starting point. Don’t worry too much about what the rest of the world calls them, try to dig up their own writings about their project and how it works day to day.
Truuuue that makes sense. I did watch a few videos on anarchism that seemed pretty rooted in theory, drawing a lot from Malatesta I believe. But it still didn’t really do anything for me, like it feels like I could poke holes in a lot of what was being explained about how it would work. But there’s only so much they can explain in 10-20 minute videos.
I’m familiar with the Zapatistas but not much else but they are based af. Or were, I think I read something recently where narcos have started to move in to their territory :/ I’ll definitely search and see if I can find out about more projects outside of the west though!
My understanding is that there are a number of radically different ideologies under the Anarchist umbrella. Like you’ve got chill community building people who have a solid theory of a society without the coercive and violent organs of a state, but you’ve also got dangerous anti-social edgelords organizing under the eight-fold star of chaos undivided. Both groups get lumped in to Anarchism but idk if it can be said they actually share much in the way of goals and beliefs beyond opposition to states.
And yeah, I understand the Zapatistas are facing serious problems and making changes. There’s no end to history, sadly.
If you want deliberate critique, the list in the sidebar has entries for explicitly anti-ML writings; the post-left (the real kind, not the Twitter kind) section also has some zine-sized critiques of the organizational methods of the “old Left”. Also lots of other good stuff to read.
I think part of the reason for a lack of substantive ML critique is that many anarchist currents are organized around creating and advancing a (often quite narrow) political project in the Here and Now, and do not necessarily concern themselves with the dissection of dead leaves. Some of these manifest as gangs, squats, ZADs, insurrectionary movements, FnB, etc. This is not to say that these groups do not or have not Read Theory, but that the digestion and interpretation of Theory is subordinate to the acts of creation and destruction.
It is also important to draw a distinction between Anarchism the Western political philosophy and anarchism the lived practice. Key to small-a anarchism are taking up space and a cognizance of cotemporality. We are Here together Now. Communal farms and living spaces, traditional ecological knowledge, communal child-rearing and education practices, and temporary affinity groups can all demonstrate these ideas. The default Western perspective on the apportionment of space by contract and the linearization and quantification of time mediates the relation of both the individual and the collective to the Here and Now. In this way, the importation of a Marxist or Anarchist body of theory and practice may grind against the principles that guide an existing current. Marxists and Anarchists are perhaps at odds since they disagree about the proper way to exploit the resources of the planet, but they are both bound up fundamentally in production relations.
On this last point, there are some extant sources regarding indigenous critiques of Marxism:
- Red Skin, White Masks
- Indigenous Peoples, Marxism and Late Capitalism
- This also cites an older paper, The Silko Road
- The Silko Road draws on the works of Leslie Marmon Silko
- Some additional commentary on Silko’s Almanac of the Dead in the context of 2008
I also found Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination illuminating.
To be pithy about it, Marxist and much of Anarchist thought place Now at the end of a line called History and Here within the long-collapsed walls of dead empires. Lived anarchist practice does not fix Here and Now beyond the immediate.
I am also obligated to say: Read Desert.
“communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state”>
I’d love it if you expanded on this cause i’ve been on this massively ML dominated space for years and still haven’t been convinced that they’re not (though i was always an anarchist so that might not matter that much). One of the main function of a state is reproducing it’s power, that’s why it can’t wither away, especially in a world dominated by capitalist mode of production where communist states are forced to develop their productive forces.
“we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!”
We don’t know what a communist society will look like either, mind you, we have blueprints at best. I posted an essay a few weeks ago about revolutionary spain and how anarchists there organized themselves and they definitely were getting there. You can check out Diego Abad de Santilan’s writings to see a pretty concrete vision of how they wanted to make things work (though he’s somewhat of a pariah cause he joined the revolutionary government, which is, yeah, not very anarchist).
Apart from that Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos (it’s in the sidebar) is, while a pretty basic, but is another good example that shows why anarchism is anything but idealistic since it shows that the basics of anarchism together or separate were actually laid into praxis tons of times.
One thing to keep in mind tho which i see all the time is that anarchists have a different notion of what a successful revolution is than marxists, since their methods are different and i see this turning into a dick measuring contest still. For anarchists any revolution and any activity that creates stateless bubbles is a success, even if it’s crushed in two years. That’s why i specifically can’t look at the USSR and say it’s a success story, because while it existed, the state never withered.
Apart from that, what i think is also a huge and catastrophic misunderstanding is that most MLs still think On Authority is the greatest gotcha ever existed, but in my opinion doesn’t do anything apart from conflating authority and force. Anarchists have proven thousands of time since it was written that they are very willing to use force against capitalists and fascists but biting the hand that beats you in itself is not an authoritarian act. What anarchists didn’t do is setting up state structures where everyone’s every step is monitored and you’re encouraged to snitch on your friends and neighbours. Yes, i know we live in a system like that currently as well. That’s why i say, from an anarchist standpoint there’s no difference.
So yeah two critique’s of Engels i’ve found interesting is this one and this one.
Are we allowed to have discussion on these points in this thread? Because one thing I never understood is the idea that the socialist projects have to wither away so fast, I never got how anyone thought we were at any time in modern history at a point where the coordination created by socialist States could be torn down safely while preserving the gains made.
With the richest countries in the world and many of their colonies, with all the nukes and military one could imagine, breathing down on your doorstep I don’t know how it’s rational to think that you should then begin tearing down the structures which were then only created out of historical necessity to fight against these very forces. Do Anarchists (capital A) generally believe that the period for communist parties to prove they can transition towards a classless society has passed, and that they’ve somehow proven they’re incapable? Or do they think that the chance hasn’t been available yet but that if it was then communists would then prove themselves incapable of transitioning towards communism?
Anarchists generally think that state communist parties (council communists are a different question) are not capable to lead towards a stateless, classless society, since they want to use state power, whose primary functions include reproducing itself. I’m yet to read any convincing account about how, if we got there, Leninists would start to break down the vehicle they used to defeat capitalism and rallied society around.
If you’re asking my opinion, i have much of the same scepticism towards communist parties, but not on an equal level, for example i see much more potential in Latin American left/communist movements than in China. What i differ from most anarchists tho is that i’d be very happy to be proven wrong and generally won’t advocate for the overthrow of the CCP in the current context.
Doesn’t it seem reasonable that the idea of trying to create a classless society would be a task better suited for those who come after us? For example, the promise of socialism is that democracy is then increased to be available to the wider masses of people. Socialist societies have in the past, and even in the modern day, demonstrate that they’re able to make huge leaps in social progress that enable more people than ever before be able to participate in the democratic processes of a society. I guess I’m not convinced that the idea that “Leninsts would not break down their own state” is something which is provable, and thus not a useful heuristic for making decisions. So what if “Leninists” aren’t capable of the next step in the growth of humanity, it’s been shown that they’ll give up on their power much more peacefully than societies dominated by the bourgeois class ever will (even and especially communist officials who didn’t benefit from the transition to liberal governance). If we’re able to save the planetary ecosystem with cybernetic planning, end hunger, guarantee housing and work for those who’re able and a good life for those who aren’t as the “Leninists” demand; won’t we have left our children with far more fertile soil for an anarchist society than if we simply struggle directly for a classeless society today?
whose primary functions include reproducing itself
Mind expanding on that since it seems like in the us its doing a piss poor job of it. In fact I’d say that a capital dominated state wants to do away with itself via privatization.
Engle’s makes a pretty convincing argument that the state arose to mediate class conflict in favor of capital and that it cannot be destroyed until that class conflict is resolved.
Take the landlord tenant relationship. In order for this to exist then the landlord must exercise their property right through state mediated violence and the tenant is offered some rudimentary protections. If the state simply no longer recognized the property right of the land lord the state would wither and class conflict would resolve a bit.
Anarchists have proven thousands of time since it was written that they are very willing to use force against capitalists and fascists but biting the hand that beats you in itself is not an authoritarian act.
Ok I can agree there but about counter revolutionaries after the revolution? Do you let them organize and gather support in the name of free expression? Do you engage them only after they start shooting at you?
Another question I have is how do you handle defense of the revolution from outside forces? Sure you could have militias with elected officers and whatnot, but what if part of your anarchist territory does not want to fight to defend the revolution? I could imagine the people further away from the frontlines would be less inclined to go and fight and I’d also imagine drafting people would be too authoritarian for anarchists.
I got in to it with some internet “anarchists” about using force to disarm Nazis and keep them from organizing and arming. I was shocked that they were stridently against any attempt to control Nazis with force until the fash were breaking the door down. I just could not and cannot make sense of extending “live and let live” to fascists whose explicit goal is to kill you and everyone around you. It was an extremely strange, uhh, discussion.
Well if we manage to get there (and it’s a long shot now) the main obstacle to anyone who would rather go back to stock trading and widespread destruction of species is that people will see which one works more and if there’s a clique of these weirdos first they won’t associate with them and second if they infested to a point that they actually mean a threat to the new order, they would just rise up, as it can be seen in South America or Cuba or wherever there is a threat to the system. Anarchism isn’t against that.
The other dilemma is a good one and i’m yet to think about it thoroughly, though since it’s highly theoretical it’s tough to come up with a one size fits all solution. Obviously the main objective would be to avoid conflict. If it’s unavoidable (one thing to think about is what outside forces were there in a global anarchist society), i would think that the kind of general solidarity that we see in Bolivia or Venezuela or Cuba would switch on and there wouldn’t be a problem about it but i’ll think about it (note: this is my subjective opinion about the case you introduced).
That’s a whole lot of assumptions that need to be true for something like this to happen. The biggest assumption is that after the anarchist revolution the overwhelming majority of the populace will become ideologically anarchist and will refuse counter revolutionary propaganda and agitation. This has never happened after any revolution in history, in a lot of cases only a few percent of the populace were committed revolutionaries that actually execute the revolution with only the conditional backing of a huge chunk of the populace.
If anarchism can only work if most of the people are anarchists it’s not a viable revolutionary ideology IMO.
(one thing to think about is what outside forces were there in a global anarchist society)
But what of an anarchist society that isn’t global? The revolution has to start somewhere, and capitalists would try to crush it before it became worldwide and everyone sees that it is a superior system, yeah? Is this “highly theoretical”, or something that every revolution has to have a plan for?
I read a story ages ago, and the premise was something like Anarchism had mostly taken hold for a long time, but some old hands got word that someone was building a state and went to look in to it. And it talked a bit about the “paradox of tolerance” present in a bunch of anarchists taking it on themselves to raid a nascent state and destroy it violently, what gave them the justification, what if anything they owed the folks in the state. I remember it being an interesting read but can’t remember the details. I want to say in the end it turned out that the person organizing the state turned out to be an ai who broke down crying when finally confronted and admitted it didn’t want to be building a state but didn’t know how else to handle some problem.
Check out the work of Wayne Price. Pick whatever seems interesting https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/wayne-price
Oooo thank you!
This is somewhat related to the thread as this guy critiques Marxism a lot on his channel, what are Hexbear anarchist thoughts on this guy: https://www.youtube.com/@Anark/videos
He seems at first glance more coherent than most Internet Anarchists I’ve encountered, is he a good source on anarchist theory?
Not a big fan of his overarching narrative, especially in matters of history.
He lavishes glowing praise on anything anarchist in a way that is entirely blinkered to the realities and is without critical analysis. For example, he will extol the virtues of the economy of the Spanish Republic but he refuses to actually engage in the (scanty) historical scholarship and acknowledge that there were critical flaws within the Spanish Republic and clear problems especially especially to do with labour discipline, or he will deny the Eichenfeld massacre.
He’s extremely dogmatic.
I have had very productive discussions with anarchists about these sorts of matters. If you can acknowledge that an anarchist revolution is going to have excesses and that, historically, excesses have occurred and that they need to be learned from in order to mitigate the risk of them happening in the future then we’re going to get along just fine.
If you look me dead in the eye and deny the Eichenfeld massacre or claim that valid criticisms of Makhno’s personal conduct as de facto leader of the Makhnovshchina that came directly from a member of the Military Revolutionary Council are merely Bolshevik propaganda, without actually having done any research into these things, then we are not going to get along.
In my experience, Anark falls into the latter category. He is not a person I would be comfortable with even back when I was an anarchist.
idk, looking at beehives and termite mounds I was never able to pick out which one of them was the General Secretary
were you?
the queen
The queen bee doesn’t exactly do any coordination and planning tho.
That said it’s a pretty nonsense analogy in the first place, people aren’t insects.
1·3 months agodeleted by creator
Nah, queens in eusocial insects don’t control the hive. Afaik in honey bees the girls decide things in a weird communal democratish way, and ants make decisions using pretty strict behavioral rules. I’ve read several entomologists say calling them queens was a mistake and creates an incorrect impression about their role. They’re much more at the mercy of the hive than the other way around.
Eusocial insects are hard to map on to human behavior, though. Like bees do seem to have something that roughly maps to democracy, but ants and termites seem to be essentially machines that operate on strict behavioral rules.
Read Listen Marxist by Bookchin.
It’s pretty good. It’s a history book.
The take-home point is that the Bolsheviks crushed their opponents including the Russian working class.
The EZLN does not identify with the western political paradigm and thus they are not anarchist and they openly reject the label, but they are radical and they are opposed to MLism, not in an absolute opposition sort of way but in a strongly critical sort of way.
Subcommandante Marcos has written criticisms of MLism and similar stuff. One of his big communiques in this respect is the unequivocal I Shit On All the Revolutionary Vanguards of this Planet which is a response to criticisms leveled against the EZLN.
For something a bit more dry and measured is Listen, Marxist! by Murray Bookchin, who is a contentious figure in anarchism as he too doesn’t truly fit within anarchism as he broke with it later in his life, although this piece was written prior to this development in his politics so I’d say it’s a decent example of an anarchist counter-argument to what MLs argue for.
For a longer-form defense of the anarchist position in a more general sense, one that addresses ML criticisms without necessarily responding directly to them, is Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos. It’s not really something that attempts to deconstruct the ML position but I think that it will still be valuable in challenging your beliefs.
If you want a comprehensive resource then An Anarchist FAQ has an entire section dedicated to state socialism https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionH.html.
Some your questions are answered there like:
- H.1.4 Do anarchists have “absolutely no idea” of what to put in place of the state?
- H.3.7 What is wrong with the Marxist theory of the state?
And if you want some more examples of an anarchist society then Section I is dedicated to that.
Although It is worth noting that there are a lot of different anarchists and the FAQ does not speak for all of them. I just think it manages to get the basics across very well.
