So, more propaganda that Biden is a Communist? Really, that's how you make that point and comparison? Tired of the Dems are Communist trope when it's not true. Sure Biden is for the worker - THE WORKER IS THE MIDDLE CLASS!!
Which by Trump has been shrunk, and not in a good way, making it harder for middle class workers. Biden, whether I agree with him or not, clearly thinks MORE about the middle class and worker protections than Trump ever has done.
Anti-communists thinking that by doing blanket condemnations of past mistakes instead of historical and material analysis of why it happened, how much was necessary, and how much was the excess, they can totally avoid them in the future and bring down capitalism with the power of love.
What's the alternative? Ending up like Allende, or the Spanish second republic, or Rosa Luxembourg? "The only good socialist movements are those who fail"
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act by which one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons — by the most authoritarian means possible; and the victors, if they do not want to have fought in vain, must maintain this rule by means of the terror which their arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if the communards had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach them for not having used it enough?
Therefore, we must conclude one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are only sowing confusion; or they do know, in which case they are betraying the proletarian movement. In either case, they serve reaction.
An anticommunist breadtuber (but I repeat myself) debunks Engels 😂 Anarchism, unlike Marxism-Leninism, has yet to succeed in the real world for more than a few months. We will welcome anarchists’ lectures once they’ve proven their theory in praxis.
Anarchism’s lack of success to date is historical fact, and I think that’s reason enough not to take the time to engage with some Burgerland anarchist’s video essay.
The laws or nature impose required forms of organization upon human society to function. The "double slavery" idea is not some obscure idea. When humans enslave nature to use it for their benefit, nature enslaved humans and imposes specific forms of organisation in turn. The specific form of organization imposed upon a society of large scale industrial producers is large scale centralized organization, in which the will of singular individuals is drowned out.
Ok, I've read it and I'm not impressed. The post on hexbear tries to act as if they were seriously considering the anarchist point of view, they are constantly being disingenuous.
The biggest point of critique againstEngels is that he is effectively strawmanning anti-authoritarians, by using a definition of authority that differs from the anarchist definition in a fundamental way. While the hexbear author acknowledges that fact in the beginning and seems to take the (IMHO flawed) definition of the anarchist's critique at face value, he repeats the same mistake that Engels did and takes Engels' definition as the only logical one.
Authority as indirect or direct force (essentially the engels) argument is the only logical way of definition authority, as the hexbear post argues using the example of the armed mugger. The definition of authority as blind obedience (as defined by the anarchist) is completely flawed in that it doesn't account for the source of the blind obidelience and isn't easy to measure.
The post on hexbear tries to act as if they were seriously considering the anarchist point of view, they are constantly being disingenuous.
I think you're confusing dismissing your viewpoint after engaging with it in a serious way with being disingenuous
The biggest point of critique againstEngels is that he is effectively strawmanning anti-authoritarians, by using a definition of authority that differs from the anarchist definition in a fundamental way.
You mean the definition of authority that the video you linked as a rebuttal is based on? Because that is the one that is being critiqued in a Marxist Response
he repeats the same mistake that Engels did and takes Engels’ definition as the only logical one
The argument is that the alternate definition that the anarchist proposes is incoherent.
On authority is used to justify the fact that many communist movements of the past turned into brutal dictatorships and that "it's fine actually that mao starved half of China because you can't have a revolution without being authoritarian".
The actual paper is short and kind of stupid. What Engels was arguing in that short essay with a ridiculously outsized influence was that he was technically correct (the best kind) that anarchists are silly because any type of government someone could propose inevitably involves one person imposing their will on another like your quote says.
Really what Engels (who was a prominent communist thinker) was doing was fucking up any attempts at communist organization because now 1/3 of communists think that brutal authoritarianism is based and necessary for a revolution.
This is the kind of analysis you get when you have no understanding how organizations work. Mao was not some lone actor who miraculously acquired supreme power, and then starved "half of China" for shits and giggles apparently.
Anyone familiar with the way that Mao operated knows that he made frequent use of the mass line and mass mobilisation. He also made use of the collective leadership of the party, and was often frustrated by their lack of cooperation with him (at one point even threatening to launch a revolution against the party). Even anti-communists who have at least studied China in detail know that the lone dictator nonsense is well, nonsense. It is just great man theory of history. A society is made of many moving parts.
As to the failures of the glf, they were entirely technical. The rush to industrialise in a decentralised manner left agricultural production vulnerable to poor weather conditions. This was compounded with the fact that much of the country at the time had poor transportation and communications, and ruled by corrupt cardie, leading to a disastrous lack of effective coordination across the nation. It is only with higher level organization today that countries can mount effective disaster responses. The glf proves the opposite of your point.
He mostly explained how he actually didn't really have a proper grasp of what authority actually means. He conflated them with a lot of things without actually making sense. I'm surprised why "On authority" is so widely known.
He has a great grasp on how often Anarchists operate mainly on vibes, even if in practice when they get into power they still implement some form of authoritarianism, such as the labor camps in Revolutionary Catalonia.
Sorry, but claiming that just shows that someone didn't engage at all with anarchist theory.
Edit - addendum: even if this wasn't true back then in Engel's days: Still quoting him today ignores all that anarchist theory on power that happened since then.
I have, I used to lean more Anarchist, until I read more Marxist theory. Concepts like ParEcon were extremely interesting, and could be applied to both an Anarchist system or a Worker State. I am aware of Anarchist principles of horizontal organization, and I think they are quite beautiful, but I am also aware that Anarchist critique of Marxism falls flat almost all of the time.
How exactly would Marx denounce Lenin? Or Mao? That's a supremely goofy statement.
Bakunin was not correct in analyzing power. If saying "states have issues" counts as being "correct" enough to only approve a system that has only ever lasted a few years at a time, you're intentionally missing the forest for the trees. The USSR was by no means perfect, but it was history's first true Socialist state and managed to prove that Socialism does work.
The problem with anarchist theory is that it demonstrably doesn't work. A theory that can't be put into practice is not worth the paper its written on.
Hey, I stepped into an anarchist space to read the most popular critique of on authority, you can step into a non-sectarian left space to read a critique of the critique.
If the critique was well founded we'd see it applied in practice in the real world. The fact that anarchists aren't able to put their ideas into practice shows that they can be safely binned.
Seriously. I might not be a great "Marx Scholar" and I don't think the revolution will just be a peaceful process "whished into existence" but I don't think Marx was Dunkin g on anti authoritarians here and to presume the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is the long term free society of Marx ideals is utter garbage.
Communism will be anti-authoritarian or it will not be.
The thing is that anarchism fundamentally doesn't scale. There's a reason we see central authority arise in every functioning society regardless of its political system. It's the same reason complex animals evolve things like nervous systems and brains. Large organism need a way to coordinate actions towards a common purpose, and a human society is no different. This is why we see anarchist style societies at small scales, and then as they grow they develop central coordination mechanisms. The fact that anarchist can't wrap their heads around this simple concept is frankly depressing.
Anarchists tend to fall for idealism, and see only Anarchism as "good" and therefore acceptable. That's really the key point, they feel like they must unify means and ends, and that the microscopic chance that one day Anarchism may be established is worth fighting for.
It's idealism to the core and puts the individual over the well-being of the group.
Indeed, and this is why anarchism is really just an offshoot of the liberal ideology at the end of the day. Idealism holds that existence is inseparable from human perception and that reality stems from the mind. This leads them to think that they can just will reality into existence through sheer force of will. The general premise most anarchists seem to believe is that the state is responsible for all the problems in society, and if it was somehow abolished then people would just naturally act in cooperative and enlightened way. This appears to be premised on the assumption that most people think the way anarchists do.
You claim to know with great detail and certainty what anarchists believe without citing any anarchist thinkers. All you are doing is constructing a strawman of anarchists based on vibes hoping that none will be here to refute it. Anarchy is more than the absence of the state, and none who are knowledgeable posit that anarchy will materialize without effort. Anarchists are idealists not out of naivete, but necessity. It has been born out of history that when means and ends are not unified, the means become the ends. This was true of the Russian revolution when "all power to the Soviets" became hollow words and "war communism" became the new oppressor of the people.
Nah, I'm going by the actual tangible achievements, or lack of thereof as the case may be, of anarchists based on the teachings of their thinkers.
This was true of the Russian revolution when “all power to the Soviets” became hollow words and “war communism” became the new oppressor of the people.
Having actually grown up in USSR, I can tell you that listening to anarchists regurgitate this nonsense is incredibly offensive. It completely discredits your argument and shows that it is you who's opining on a subject you have no understanding of. All people like you accomplish is enable capitalist oppression by rejecting real world solutions.
Nah, I'm going by the actual tangible achievements, or lack of thereof as the case may be, of anarchists based on the teachings of their thinkers.
The Bolsheviks discount anarchist achievements by claiming them as their own. Anarchists fought alongside the Bolsheviks because they promised to realize the anarchists' goal of all power to the Soviets. When it became clear the Bolsheviks lied in order to selfishly establish themselves as the intelligentsia, a privileged class, the anarchists resisted and were violently repressed by their former brothers and sisters in arms.
I would like to hear about your experiences growing up in the USSR as I know there were many positive aspects, but by betraying the values for which many of the revolutionaries fought they created a society with an unstable foundation, as evidenced by its' eventual collapse. Anarchists did not reject real world solutions, they defended them with their lives and lost. The Bolsheviks have themselves to blame for the collapse.
This clearly illustrates that anarchists are not capable of organizing in effective ways that can protect their ideology. The same way anarchists ended up losing to Bolsheviks, they end up losing to capitalists, and fascists. What Bolsheviks achieved was to build a socialist state that was able to defend itself and greatly improve the lives of the working majority. Anarchists simply aren't capable of doing that as the past century has shown beyond all doubt.
USSR was the first ever attempt at building socialism at scale, and while it may have collapsed, other socialist projects live on today and continue to improve lives of over a billion people on this planet.
You're using the same argument capitalists use to dismiss socialism, namely that socialism clearly doesn't work because all socialist projects ended in collapse or continue in a state of poverty. This is, in essence, victim-blaming. Just as socialism struggles under the oppression of capitalist hegemony, anarchism struggles under the oppression of both capitalists and statists.
What Bolsheviks achieved was the betrayal of all who fought for the liberation of the proletariat. If power had gone to the Soviets as the Bolsheviks promised then the USSR would not have collapsed under the weight of its' contradictions. You speak as if the USSR only repressed the forces of reaction, but it also repressed the very same workers it claimed to support when they tried to claim the worker control of the means of production they were promised.
What I'm pointing out is that all ideologies compete with others. That's the reality of the world. If Anarchists are not able to defend the way they want to organize society then their ideology ends up being trampled by others. That's the world we live in. Calling this victim blaming doesn't change the material reality of the world.
The difference between anarchists and communists is that the latter actually managed to build functional societies, and to effectively resist capitalism. Anarchists failed to do that, and the reasons for why anarchist approach fails time and again are well understood now.
What Bolsheviks achieved was the betrayal of all who fought for the liberation of the proletariat.
Repeating nonsense over and over will not make it true.
You speak as if the USSR only repressed the forces of reaction, but it also repressed the very same workers it claimed to support when they tried to claim the worker control of the means of production they were promised.
This is an idealist position that's divorced from realities of the world. USSR existed under siege from global capitalism throughout its whole existence, and that was the reason it was organized the way it was.
The dictatorship of the proletariat literally just means that the bourgeoisie are suppressed politically until they can be integrated into the rest of society, it doesn't mean a dictatorship, it means a democracy where the former oppressors don't get a seat at the table.
Mark Twain Two Reigns of Terror Quote never gets old. People are blind to all the normalized terror around them that happens soley because one class seeks to maintain its dominance over the class they exploit to make thier lifestyles possible.
I like how the reactionary communities post shit that isn't thought out. Then you got a couple of... Left communities where they post thought out essays. Too long to read but probably mostly true
the meme is referencing a quote from marx that is greatly useful for dunking on idealist leftists who believe that the revolution can simply be wished into existence without all the dirty work.
Obviously they do, they are dunking on armchair leftists that judge every leftist movement on how perfect it is, but judge all liberal structures with supreme nuance.
we have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. but the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of god and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.
