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Khrushchev didn't create the bureaucracy that led to corruption that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet Union did the opposite of what China did. They denounced Stalin, but kept his policies and the whole system intact. China held Mao in high regard, but took down most of his policies and systems. On the surface, it may seem Khrushchev changed everything, but they focused mostly on names. Look deeper and pretty much nothing changed.
I am not saying everything Stalin did was bad, the industrialisation under him was amazing, but he did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union and his totalitarian rule and human rights abuses are unforgivable and they do not in any way present socialism or communism.
Summary: the purging, superexploitation, and bad foreign policy of the Stalin era were fueled by ideas of “historical necessity” and Marx as the discoverer of general economic laws that would apply to any society and not just capitalism.
I use reddit exclusively on mobile, so there was no google translate option.
This text to me reads like idealism a justification rather than a reflection. Like GSP said that the state dying out did not actually mean the state dying out, but some abstract "power". In actuality socialism abolishes the need for a state. The "historical necessity" is a defense, not a reflection.
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't mean a literal dictatorship, it means rule of the working class. The entire working class are the dictators. The way that in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capitalism), it is the entire bourgeoisie who are the dictators over the other classes.
That's simply begging the question. The point being raised by the other commenter, as well as other anarchists, is whether party leadership can adequately maintain proletarian values when in a position of material power over others/a state.
Simply assuming that the proletariat class will be adequately represented and served by any given party leadership of alleged communist alignment, or a so-called 'workers state', is putting the cart before the horse and avoiding the real, necessary discussion of what methods of organization would best ferment the conditions necessary to initiate and maintain the process of 'socialism' and economic justice.
No marxist has ever assumed that a dictatorship of the proletariat will just magically represent the proletariat all of its own accord. They have always debated and implemented democratic mechanisms to ensure that this would happen, from the soviets, to party membership, to the mass line. And it is a continual learning process as socialist experiments continue to evolve.
Revolutionary parties only ever win revolutions when they are organic expressions of the political desires of the workers. And workers can only win revolutions, and maintain those victories to move onto the next battle, through revolutionary parties.
In Marxist terms, the dictatorship of the proletariat means giving the working class political power and collective control of the means of production.
I would say that the solution would be to develop a practicable theory to make sure that the party doesn't become disconnected from the masses, with its role being primarily concerned with organization, coordination, education, etc. Mao Zedong seems to have made some development in that direction.
It doesn't, one of the core tenents of Marxism let alone Marxism-Leninism is self-critique. Its scientific socialism for a reason, as for the vanguard in of itself it also doesn't require perfection. It simply requires what it says on the tin, the most educated and class conscious of the proletariat dedicated to the movement. That's far from perfection.
As for the idea that somehow the USSR counts as proving this idea right, it doesn't. China fell into the same issues as the USSR it just has survived in one piece after. It was less an issue with the DotP and an issue with the fact the only previous revolution to go off of was the Paris Commune, which didn't live long enough to encounter what one might call a cultural issue. Bourgeois culture is a thing after all and it doesn't dissolve into dust post revolution. You will still carry it's residuals for at least a generation, as a result one might backside into revising the movements aims and goals to suit these petty Bourgeois or just generally Bourgeois ideas. Like market "socialism" upholding the anarchy (not the political kind) of production.
There are issues with the USSR but this is like saying that the revolution in Catalonia failed because Anarchism can't magically summon hordes of Tanks. It misses that we have a lot of hindsight as to where things went that no one at the time knew.
The focus was largely on counter revolution at the time, not at the resurgence of capitalist aligned elements within your own ranks.
In short DotP doesn't require perfection or perfect leaders, the issues you're describing were just straight up because this was the first time any socialist revolution had survived long enough to encounter them, and thus unforseen issues or were issues that had in then in the minds of the leading revolutionaries already been taken care of.
While Marxism and its variants does have a tendency of self-criticism, in practice it also has a tendency to orient that criticism in ways that defer blame from the Party and its leadership and onto scapegoats of many flavors - very easy to call hard criticism or a new development in theory "bourgeois," "counter-revolutionary," or "revisionist" as an easy way to target those espousing it; for example, take Lysenko in the USSR purging geneticists who advocated for Mendelian genetics (correctly so based on observational, experimental data) because Lysenko preferred Lamarckian genetics due to it being more congruent with Marxist ontology. Or the majority of the Five Black Categories and the Stinking Old Ninth from the Cultural Revolution in China, both of which were used as a cudgel to persecute actual scientists who understood how the scientific method works far better than your average 'scientific socialist.'
The point I'm trying to get at is that the moment that a revolution adopts an orthodox interpretation or party line of Marxist theory, it ceases to allow self-critique, and it ceases being a scientific understanding of political economy and becomes dogmatic - thus diametrically opposed to science as a practice and tendency.
When Marx described "scientific socialism" he used German words that meant a little closer to "systematic/formulaic" rather than being a pure natural science; but it's treated as a genuine science by many, so I think it's worth discussing if you're on the topic of a self-critical, systematic body of theory, practice, analysis, and re-assessment.
North Korea is still out there, so is Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, it is a much more complex issue.
I find the term authoritarianism dumb, since even under Stalin there was democracy into the party and soviets, there is a CIA document talking about it, I'll try to find it.
I mean, what makes a country “authoritarian” versus not? The US has two parties, is that authoritarian? How about Cuba: it has one party, yet there is significantly more citizen participation in state affairs on a broader electoral level and more opportunity for an ordinary persons to represent themselves/their community in government. Is that more or less authoritarian? What decides that, the number of parties? The degree of representation? The vibe?
Authoritarianism,
-the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
"he warned against the intrusion of authoritarianism in various countries"
lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.
"in his authoritarianism he has displayed disrespect for the culture he works in"
Authoritarianism is a spectrum that is defined by several factors, such as which rights and protections of the citizen the government is responsible for, the measure by which government policy is shaped by the people they govern and the legal avenues available to the people to voice their wishes and objections.
Then there's also legal accountability, the ability for citizens to point out wrongdoings of their government or one of its officials (cops, soldiers, ministers) and have them investigated and persecuted in a court of law without the approval of a more powerful official (and whether there even are laws by which to hold them accountable in the first place).
Different countries score differently in these aspects, creating an overall image of how authoritarian they are, for example, the US actually has (had?) a pretty robust system of accountability on paper but is severely undermined by corruption and corporate meddling at every level, something that has gotten rapidly worse in recent years.
Its two-party system has proven very erosive to popular mandate.
But its rights and protections are still built into the legal system and have proven to block power grabs by the Trump administration at several instances, proving more resilient wherever ICE thugs don't trample on them.
In other words, it means nothing. Both the state and revolution are inherently authoritarian constructs (in that you always sacrifice a degree of freedom to reap their benefits). If “authoritarianism” is merely the exertion of authority in exchange for personal freedoms, literally every governing body in history could be called that. The point is who that authority serves. In the United States, as in all capitalist nation-states, authority is centered around capital (in turn appropriated by the bourgeoisie). In other words, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat (working) class. To overcome this, when thinking dialectically, we must pursue this productive-relation’s opposing force: that is, a dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeois. The function of the proletariat dictatorship is the oppression of the bourgeoisie until such a time that the bourgeois class withers away, and the productive forces of society are appropriated by society as a whole as opposed to individual actors. Both of these constructs are “authoritarian,” but as we see, one serves the majority, the other serves the minority. One is inherently preferable to the other.
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That’s one of the core arguments of anarchism. No power structure or system of government can survive being captured by bad actors. A constitution or founding document is just words on a page if the leaders choose to ignore it.
Further, that capture is inevitable because people who want to abuse positions of power are going to seek power. Thus, the best solution is to never create structures or systems that can be abused.
We do ok so long as wait for it... we actually do anarchism.
Actually having anarchist justice processes and institutions, engaging in freedom of association and actually recallling delegatea. Being autonomous of public opinion and pressure and actually sticking to anarchist principle when in a statist environment of counter insurgency.
Reorganizing away from the bad actors if necessary, keeping Organizatioms only as long as they are useful and making new when needed.
Autonomy again requires emotional self regulation to not be manipulated and played like a fiddle that requires actual stong community and comrades watching your back. That concept that freedom comes from the power and opportunities created collectively shines true especially with the way lonely individuals can be controlled psychologically by bad acfors much easier.
The old man watches fox news or whatever is worse all day because he is not engaged meaningfully with his family friends and community. His lack of belonging lack of solidarity is multiplied by a dizzying number is a wave of reaction made by a failure of community to persist and resist the distraction and keep physical connections among people through the generations.
Anarchism also says mutual respect. Did you see ho Malatesta had those debates in that pamphlet the Cafe he was polite debating with his political adversaries who gave him the same respect. That lowers the drama. Today high drama people who are not respectful are not challenged as authoritarian run people over with popular buzz words and dubious propaganda.
If we were being solid in our anarchism we would not tolerate such foolishness.
Anarchism is about giving less power to bad actors.
Wow I'm usually pretty sympathetic to anarchism but you've made it sound way less viable than I normally feel about it. Not only bad actors but guys sitting around can take it down? Got to work on that rhetoric.
Workers and communities not being organized and connected means workers get their asses handed to them. We have, the tranfer of wealth to the rich has happened in part because we do not have the level of organization we need to fight back.
A social center and assembly halls so engaging you can go their and meet so many of your needs. Friends and community so dedicated you can trust them because they can trust that people have their backs too.
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Marx, Engels and Lenin, didnt believe that socialism could survive in isolation either. (MLs will incorrecly attribute the "invention" of this idea to Trotsky, but it predates him)
Edited: dont know enough about Bakunin to slander him
All positions of power and hierarchical institutions will be corrupted, because it is in the class interest of the people holding that power to do so. It's not a question if it happens, only when.
And if your revolution is led by a political party, then the leadership positions in that party have a substantial amount of power.
Since their power comes from the party, their main class interests are the strengthening of the party (and thus the state) and the strengthening of their positions in the party.
That is directly opposed to the class interests of the workers, who want more control for themselves and thus a less powerful state and they want better chances to reach positions of power and therefore less secure positions.
Since the people in power have far more political power, their will will happen eventually. You can delay that, by implementing the party well, but it will happen eventually.
And once it has happened, the socialist experiment is practically dead, because the proletarian state seizes to be proletarian anymore.
Very short version: Bakunin wanted a system of freely federated communes and workers association, that would work together in a federation.
A commune would solve local problems through direct democracy and elect delegates (representatives, that have to act according to the will of the electorate and which can be unelected at any time) to the federation.
That federation does not have a police force or army and participation in it is completely voluntary.
That federation mainly does economic planning and organizes against forces that could harm the anarchist system.
Workers are supposed to get labor vouchers (basically non-transferable money) for their work to buy what they need.
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He didn't really go into detail, but that's on purpose. He didn't want to impose a new anarchist system, but instead wanted to give the people all the power they need, to establish a system that works well for them. His writing is mostly about the necessary guardrails to ensure that the system would remain anarchist (meaning, without hierarchies) and how to fight ideas and institutions that stand in the way of that, like statehood or religion.
Bakunin's writings served as a blueprint of what anarchism should be, but his way of building an anarchist society had substantial flaws, that would be corrected by later anarchists.
And anarchists though has changed a lot since Bakunin because of it. His analysis is still invaluable to modern anarchism and many of his ideas about anarchist societies are still core parts of modern anarchist ideologies, but most modern anarchists are either Anarcho-communists or Anarcho-syndikalism, both of which are pretty objectively better than what Bakunin wanted.
I mean, yeah, that's one of the things later anarchists fixed.
Something we shouldn't forget, is that Bakunin wrote at a time, when armies were significantly weaker. All they had was guns and civilians had those too. Well trained militias would have been able to put up a decent fight against a lot of armies.
Modern anarchist Ideologies do account for an army, but it's still separated from the federation itself, to make sure that power doesn't really centralize.
thanks for the answer 👍, i actually partially agree, the members of the communist party themselves, became the driving force behind the dissolution of the soviet union ironically enough, emerging as the new bourgeois in post soviet eastern europe
I swear why is it always anarchists that pick these fights. The USSR did more than almost any other nation to uplift the working class and spread socialism. They did the best under the material conditions they had, I've yet to see the hypothetical anarchists society... well even exist in the first place. I love yall but you make it difficult sometimes.
If the time you spend online is just hating other ideologies while we are still all getting fucked by capitalism and disrupting trust and unity then you are functionally a wrecker.
Again, they were allies, not subordinates. Not that I'd expect an ML to understand that difference.
Those people put their lives on the line to fight the nationalists. They produced arms in local factories, they fought on the front line against fascists and they died for the socialist cause.
Is that really something worth punishing, just because they weren't MLs?
Again, they were allies, not subordinates. Not that I'd expect an ML to understand that difference.
Turn off your device and go read a book. You're being sectarian and are of no use to anyone besides the Feds in this state.
These grudges from a century ago serve no purpose. Stalin is dead, the CNT-FAI is dead, they're all dead. Learn why the CNT-FAI failed and no it wasn't just Stalin. Learn why the nationalists beat you. Then move on and develop the next project.
This isn't just about the CNT-FAI. It's also about Makhnovia (that were Bolshevists, but close enough) and KPAM (which was severely harmed by MLs, though wiped out by the Japanese Empire), as well as the vibrant anarchist movements in Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, etc., that were all criminalized and wiped out by MLs.
And that is despite many of those anarchist movements allying themselves with MLs.
And anarchists weren't the only ones. I don't like Trotsky, but he was one of the most influential maxist thinkers of all time, only to be assassinated by the USSR.
And on the topic of the Spanish civil war, Andreu Nin, one of the founders of the POUM (the trotskyist party), was detained and tortured to death by the NKVD.
Direct bolshevization efforts by the USSR targeted communist parties around the world and practically wiped out vast amounts of Marxist Ideologies.
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Like, that's what MLs have always done, to all leftist movements and Ideologies.
At which point should we acknowledge that it's a bit of a pattern?
I already have. I'm not a fan of ideological zealots like Durutti. It's half the reason I abandoned anarchism as a philosophy. Too uncompromising and dogmatic. No revolution or project is ever pure enough to pass the test if the entire global doesn't all simultaneously rise up in revolution. Same issue with Trotskyists, just too goddamned dogmatic about everything.
Edit: It's cowardly to comment and block. I expect that of a reactionary with no solid argument.
I am pragmatic. Every tool, every avenue of attack on capitalism. I won't discard an idea, means or tool if it doesn't exactly fit my ideology.
When talking about others being "dogmatic", "uncompromising" etc, MLs like yourself should always look into the mirror first, the sheer hypocrisy you'd be about to release might overwhelm you. And as for MLs, along with "(hyper)dogmatic", "backstabbers" too might describe you even better.
They were building them in car factories repurposed for the war effort. They also had gold that they couldn't use to buy guns cause they did a united front rather than implement political anarchism allowing people to participate as workers in anarchist economic and political organs with the freedom to meet in their own cadres.
The USSR sent the weapons, tanks, armored cars, airplanes, thousands of red army volunteers to be pilots and drivers without which the civil war was not possible to begin with.
To begin with the workers took the weapons from the police and republican army. The workers themselves rose up and if that was it they should have won with the 2/3 of spain they took. The reinforcements and mercenaries from italy and germany changed the game a bit.
Truly if you want to make a point make the point that the anarchist needed to take political authority and establish libertarian socialism. Basically shit or get off the pot. This hand ringing allowed the Soviet influence without strong anarchist conditions. The war and the revolution could have been won in both Russia and in Spain with the numerical majority supporting anarchism if the anarchist thesis at the time acknowledged the need for worker self-administration of both political and economic power.
LOL i am terribly biased as well but i love leftists of all stripes so i realllly do want to not pick shit with other leftists. like at the end of the day we all want a better world. our politics are rooted in love of humanity, and that is why i'm delusionally a believer in anti-sectarian, no-infighting spaces for leftists.
Jarvis pull up the missing parts of this paraphrasing, especially the parts about certain "parasitic" people, which fueled his irrational hatred for Marxism-Leninism.
Such predictions are kind of worthless when revolution is inevitable. In essence it is like shouting "we all are going to die" on a ship in the midst of the storm. Most of the people don't understand how little actual leverage over the events revolutionaries have. They are just riding a wave and if they try to turn away from it they go down. All they can do is to make the events unfold in a most free and unrestrained manner.
Interpreting anarchist critique (which this isn't, it's just a meme) of the USSR/authority/traditional Marxist thought as incessant, purposeless 'team sports' level of spatting is ignoring what an entire school of thought dedicated to critiquing power structures is trying to tell you about the issues that have existed in the power structures of revolutions, and how we may be able to address those concerns going forward with the socialist experiment.
But yes, let's just boil it down to 'team sports' when we all want to reach the same end goal. It's incredibly enlightening.
Critiquing the failures of the USSR is a vital necessity for communists, I agree, but critique that does not aim to create a better and more viable revolutionary project is worthless.
It seems that your assumption, then, is that anarchist critique is 'worthless' in that it 'does not aim to create a better and more viable revolutionary project'.
I genuinely ask how and why you come to that conclusion, if that is what you have come to.
I've meet some serious, smart and revolutionary anarchists that have made great points about ML. But 95% of the time is just the same empty, idealist takes about authoritarianism.
He played an immensely important roll in shaping the modern left, and dismissing a political theorist because he "failed to do lasting material change" is idiotic and could also be used to dismiss any temporary Marxist theorist which is incredibly counter Intuitive
Multiple revolutions which didn't become degenerated bureaucratic states, actually helping those in need with mutual aid and combating fascism on the street, major contribution to the labor movement?
And if you can dismiss Bakunin for not creating "lasting material change", then why can't I say the same about Marx or Engels? Is there any "lasting material change" they created which Bakunin didn't, and if they did then does that mean we need to deny all political theorists who haven't done that since creating lasting material change is what defined there worth?
How long did those revolutions lasted? How many people did it helped? Communists took a billion people out of extreme poverty my guy.
To your second point, every Marxist-Leninist revolution. That's why you can't say the same about Marx and Engels, bc it simply ain't true. And yes, actually, I think we should deny most political theorists that don't do anything to change the world for the better should be ignored.
The point of political revolution isn't just to last long and help people out of poverty, if it was we could all be social democrats. Anarchist revolutions showed a glimpse at real worker control over society which would be crushed by Marxist-Leninist states.
If the only worth of a political theorist is their contribution to creating a revolution through theory, then you couldn't deny Bakunin 😂 Also, Karl Marx and Engels had minimal "material change" in their life time, so if someone had this position you have rn at the time they were alive then they could feel free to dismiss Karl Marx. If you deny a theorist now for the contribution they had to the past you are ignorant of the future.
I don't think the fundamental purpose of leftist theory is simply to improve the lives of the people. Though creating a greater quality of life for people is great, it is not the fundamental purpose of our revolutions, and if simply pointing to the fact that revolutionary movements improved the lives of people is proof of success then I fear we would have to start allowing any political movement to this sub which improved the conditions of people to whatever extend, which would be extendable to literally every political movement
The point of political revolution isn't just to last long
The point of revolution is, in fact, to win.
This is the strength of marxism: it is willing to learn from the history of socialist revolution in a scientific manner, and apply lessons from the past.
Marx saw the failures of the Paris Commune, and he learned from them--something anarchists still haven't managed to do centuries later, instead opting to repeat the same idealistic mistakes over and over again, resulting in crushing defeats every single time.
Revolutionary theory is utterly useless if it is incapable of victory. This is why marxists have won dozens of revolutions at the scale of the state, and held them for generations at a time, and anarchists have achieved precisely nothing lasting.
People following in the line of Marx and Engels have lifted well over a billion people out of poverty, and held massive territories for generations. They have created world powers genuinely capable of challenging global capital, even if they haven't overthrown global capital as of yet.
Anarchists have never been able to hold even small territories for more than like 2-3 years.
Before anyone comments Rojava, they've literally been shielded by the United States. Given material support and military training. Without that they likely wouldn't have been overrun by Turkey, ISIS or Assad's army.
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he was an anarchist, all they do all day long is predict the end of civilisation, dictatorship, democracy, empires and whatever else, you can build a wooden fence and an anarchist will go "erm you do know wood rots over time right ? you do know this fence wont keep your sheep in in 5000 years right ?"
Lmao, council communists of all people should understand the critique of state power substituting itself for working-class self-activity, since that's literally your whole thing with opposition to Leninism (in case you didn't know). But sure, do pretend anarchists are just being nihilistic pessimists when they point out that authoritarian means produce authoritarian ends. Bakunin saw it coming and history proved him right and then some. Cope.
Are you actually serious right now?? We've been articulating what we want since berore the First International. Bakunin himself was among those who laid it out: collective ownership without the state, federations of workers' associations, abolition of all hierarchical authority.
Kropotkin developed mutual aid and what we call anarcho-communism and was a prolific geographer and evolutionary biologist. Malatesta contributed greatly to voluntary organization and Goldman on prefigurative practices.
A century and a half of developed theory, both positive and negative - in short, and again, you're a council communist asking anarchists what our positive vision is? Sorry to break it to you, but your entire tendency exists because Leninism produced exactly what Bakunin said it would - a new ruling class. It's always been funny to me how of all Marxist-adjacent strands, "council communists" tend to seethe most at the mention of anarchism when, in spirit, their theoretical highlights are closest to us. I guess one can get out of Leninism, but Leninism out of them? Apparently never.
Anarchists have been proven right by history while you're still trying to salvage authoritarian Marxism from its own wreckage. We want abolition of the state, capitalism and all forms of domination, to be substituted by free association, voluntary cooperation, workers' self-management without party mediation or state apparatus.
The real question is: what do you want that's meaningfully different from what we want and why do you need to dress it up in Marxist jargon to feel legitimate? Because from where I'm standing, council communism is just anarchism with extra steps and some lingering state and organizational worship.
brother, you still have not told me what you want and/or what your solutions are so far. "we want an abolition of capitalism" ok to replace it with what ? "we want voluntary cooperation" that means nothing, society in general is voluntary cooperation that's the entire point of being a mammal "we want free association" that's called freedom of speech and is the most bare bone human right that exists, "we want workers self management" again that's just the human experience. you are giving me nothing here except a lot of fluff about how right you were that the evil empire would collapse someday
You are either being deliberately obtuse or you are genuinely incapable of comprehending political theory that doesn't fit into your Marxist framework. I'll spell it out in terms even you should understand.
Replace capitalism with what? Well that should be easy:
Communism. Anarcho-communism. Not "socialism" as a transitional state, not "workers' state" bureaucracy but actual communism. Abolition of wage labor, commodity production and capital accumulation. Production for use and not for market-exchange. Distribution according to need.
Voluntary cooperation and no, society under capitalism is coerced cooperation mediated by the threat of starvation and enforced by state violence. Anarchist voluntary cooperation means no boss, no state and no hierarchy compelling your participation. You work because you choose to contribute to the the commune, not because you'll starve, freeze or be imprisoned otherwise.
Free association and isn't "freedom of speech", you dolt. It means the ability to associate and disassociate from collectives, communes and federations without state permission or economic coercion as well as no forced participation in state structures or capitalist employment relations.
Workers' full self-management: No, wage slavery under a boss or a party bureaucrat is NOT "just the human experience". Self-management here means workers directly control production through assemblies and federations, no managers, no party vanguard and no state planning committee dictating anything from above.
The fact that you think these all are "fluff" and that capitalism already embodies voluntary cooperation tells me you've internalized liberal ideology so deeply you can't even recognize what actual freedom would look like. Are you even a council communist as you'd like your flair to convince me, or are you just a liberal lurker in need of whatever flair just so you could participate in the subreddit?
Council communism is supposed to be about workers' councils as the fundamental unit and you should already understand this, yet you're so desperate to distance yourself from anarchism that you are pretending not to comprehend the most basic anti-capitalist concepts.
Sorry to break it to you, but we were right about the "evil empire" and you're still trying to rehabilitate the logic that created it.
Radicals unwilling to form even temporary alliances with people sympathetic to their cause, refusing to create a wider platform and actually achieve some of their goals, prefering to wait for the current world to collapse so that the "right" one can rise from its ashes like paradise after the apocalypse, all while maintaining moral superiority and caring more about being ethically pure than about creating lasting change?
Just from observing vegan subs these last few days.
I wonder why Bakunin might have had a problem with Marxism. Here's a selection of some of the most insane things I found in one letter after googling "Mikhail Bakunin being antisemitic"
The Jews today form a real power in Germany. For a long time now, they have been sovereign masters in the banking business. But in the last thirty years or so, they have also succeeded in a kind of monopoly in literature - there is hardly a newspaper in Germany that does not have its own Jewish editor, and Journalism and Banking join hands, rendering each other valuable services.
It was a kind of unrestrained conspiracy, and to tell the truth, a dirty conspiracy of German and Russian Jews against me.
The Jew is therefore authoritarian by position, by tradition and by nature. This is a general law and one which admits of very few exceptions, and these very exceptions, when examined [intercalated: closely] confirm the rule, Revolt [inserted: source of all liberty,] is foreign to the genius of this people He has stigmatized [inserted: and cursed] it once and for all, in the figure of Satan. He has It has indeed sometimes risen up against Jehovah, but to worship the golden calf, the alter Ego, the necessary complement of Jehovah.
Individually taken, each of them is miserable, null, impotent. But they are a legion, and what is worse, a very well-disciplined legion, [intercalated: and] only waiting for the sign of master to <[ill. ]> throw [intercalated: all] their drool on the individuals designated to their rage; this always latent rage, this hatred without passion, without anger, but which is never so happy as when it is provided with the opportunity to manifest itself. Insulting and slandering is their life.
In this cult of authority and regulatory discipline, the Jews have been matched in Europe only by the German bourgeoisie. Passionate and convinced slaves, the bourgeois as well as the as well as the German nobleman willingly bow his head before their sovereign and before every public official, military and civil, the ostensible representative of the sovereign's power. The Jews, while paying obligatory homage to all the established powers in the countries where they live prefer to seek their authorities and leaders among the most powerful and intelligent men of their race. of their race. They deify them, adore them, which constitutes for the benefit of these leaders a real power.
I hope the day comes soon when online anarchists stop falling for this psyop. Bakunin was antisemitic scum and his hatred was inseparable from his politics. You have been lied to. This isn't even the worst stuff he wrote, it's just the first article I opened. His attacks on Marx were truly vile.
His predictions on authoritarianism were that the Jews would end up making slaves of the gentiles, whether that was through Marx or the Rothschilds. Is that what you think was correct?
People can't just believe this stuff in a vacuum and then form political beliefs completely separately. Bakunin's conception of authority was inextricably bound up with his hatred of Jews.
Such a shame his conception of authority and its dangers, EVEN even separated from any "Jew hatred" undertones, still make just as much sociological sense as before. So pretty please, less screeching.
Oh look, a Posadist? Someone whose ideology involves nuclear holocaust as a shortcut to communism, lecturing anyone about moral fitness, quite rich.
Indeed did Bakunin write antisemitic shit, it was reprehensible, indefensible and he can (and should) be criticized for it. No anarchist worth their salt has ever once denied this or defended those passages.
But you? Please now, you're not doing historical analysis, all you're doing is attempting an elaborate character assassination as a substitute for political argument.
Here's what you conveniently ignore: Bakunin's critique of Marxist state socialism had nothing to do with antisemitism. His warnings about the dictatorship of the proletariat creating a new ruling class of bureaucrats, analysis of how centralized state power would reproduce domination regardless of revolutionary rhetoric, prediction that Marx's "workers' state" would become oppressive, all of this was proven correct by history.
The USSR, GDR, every Marxist-Leninist state validated Bakunin's structural critique of authoritarian socialism.
Marx also wrote antisemitic garbage ("On The Jewish Question", among others). Does that invalidate dialectical materialism? Nope, because we separate the analytical framework from the personal bigotry and you? You obviously don't actually care about intellectual consistency as you're using Bakunin's antisemitism so aggressively as a smokescreen to avoid confronting the fact that he was right about what happens when you concentrate power in a revolutionary state.
And you're a fucking Posadist talking about "psyops"? Once again, your ideology is literally a meme about using nuclear war to achieve socialism, so just based on that you have zero credibility to lecture anyone about political coherence - sit down.
Ultimately Marxism is the scientific approach to societal function. Science isn't exactly full of cases where people got it right the first time. The main objective of each revolution is to solve the biggest problems of the time and place. Failure is universal among early experiments.
That any of them succeeded well enough that even the CIA had to admit in its own documents that socialist projects that lasted more than 20 years were able to produce the same physical quality of life as a capitalist state with three times the GDP/Capita* is proof that Marxism is on the correct track, but isn't proof that any AES actually got it right, yet.
Even doing that well was a massive threat, though, to capitalist hegemony and had to be undermined in every way that the Western Bloc could find.
So, yes, the DotP failed, but it took a while for it to fail, and that's with enormous amounts of external pressure and an honestly awfully conservative culture that it had to fight constantly in order to make any progress at all.
We should not look at past attempts as examples of what to copy in entirety, but instead as collections of experiments, some of which succeeded and some of which didn't, from which we can learn myriad ways to do better in the future, both compared to past AES projects and the current systems in place.
*It's also worth noting that the OECD and UN did some studies about 15 years ago, and found GDP/C stops mattering at about $40k/year (today dollars), and after that point only inequality matters (where more is worse, obviously), and this is true even in capitalist systems. So any socialist project that can reach that upper limit of useful productivity and flatten the distribution will be, once it's got functioning infrastructure and no resource shortages, the best place to live in the world, bar none, unless it's still stupidly culturally more conservative than other countries around the world and you're a minority.
We pray to Surpreme brotherly leader his comradeness Joseph Stalin and ask for forgivness to the perfect and mistakeless Soviet Union every morning or something, according to this guy
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I love the Bakunin discourse because everyone either thinks he was a misunderstood martyr or a pure evil anti-authoritarian antisemite when in reality he was just a neckbeard who made some good points
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Cue leftist infighting
Leftist infighting bottom text
Don't forget the strawmen
Lenin himself warned the enemies would be close and try to take the dictatorship in the wrong direction, and oh boy, he was right.
I was going to make an edit to OP’s meme: “Vladimir Lenin predicted the downfall of the USSR if revolution didn’t succeed internationally.”
Here before an ML calls you a trot
Can i do it anyways just to keep the plot consistent
And then Papa Iosif came and... well we know what happened next
Oh, god no. Let's not do that.
Lets discuss our relationship problems when the anarchists aren't looking guys pls.
She started it!
Yes. Stalin did irreparable damage to the USSR and communism as a whole.
I would say that was Kruschev, but sure.
Khrushchev didn't create the bureaucracy that led to corruption that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet Union did the opposite of what China did. They denounced Stalin, but kept his policies and the whole system intact. China held Mao in high regard, but took down most of his policies and systems. On the surface, it may seem Khrushchev changed everything, but they focused mostly on names. Look deeper and pretty much nothing changed.
I am not saying everything Stalin did was bad, the industrialisation under him was amazing, but he did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union and his totalitarian rule and human rights abuses are unforgivable and they do not in any way present socialism or communism.
To be fair to both of them, the errors in the construction of the economy preceded them and encouraged strange (for a communist) actions. https://msz.gegenstandpunkt.com/1987-12-stalin-wer-war
I don't speak German, I can't understand any of that. Can you give a summary of that text?
If you can’t run it through google translate, here’s an alternative: https://ruthlesscriticism.com/October.htm
Summary: the purging, superexploitation, and bad foreign policy of the Stalin era were fueled by ideas of “historical necessity” and Marx as the discoverer of general economic laws that would apply to any society and not just capitalism.
I use reddit exclusively on mobile, so there was no google translate option.
This text to me reads like idealism a justification rather than a reflection. Like GSP said that the state dying out did not actually mean the state dying out, but some abstract "power". In actuality socialism abolishes the need for a state. The "historical necessity" is a defense, not a reflection.
Fair
GSP is nothing if not opposed to idealism (as they clearly define it). What does the interview justify?
The way you word it is a bit weird, but surely the social relations of class domination is the condition for the abolition of the state, no?
They are opposed to declarations of “historical necessity.” Of course, Stalinists use historical necessity in the manner you describe.
Your critique is a bit unclear. Would you quote parts if you still have problems with them?
Maybe my reading comprehension failed, then. I understood the text in the Stalinist way, was it not?
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Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't mean a literal dictatorship, it means rule of the working class. The entire working class are the dictators. The way that in the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capitalism), it is the entire bourgeoisie who are the dictators over the other classes.
Pretty sure that guy is a closeted liberal
That's simply begging the question. The point being raised by the other commenter, as well as other anarchists, is whether party leadership can adequately maintain proletarian values when in a position of material power over others/a state.
Simply assuming that the proletariat class will be adequately represented and served by any given party leadership of alleged communist alignment, or a so-called 'workers state', is putting the cart before the horse and avoiding the real, necessary discussion of what methods of organization would best ferment the conditions necessary to initiate and maintain the process of 'socialism' and economic justice.
No marxist has ever assumed that a dictatorship of the proletariat will just magically represent the proletariat all of its own accord. They have always debated and implemented democratic mechanisms to ensure that this would happen, from the soviets, to party membership, to the mass line. And it is a continual learning process as socialist experiments continue to evolve.
Revolutionary parties only ever win revolutions when they are organic expressions of the political desires of the workers. And workers can only win revolutions, and maintain those victories to move onto the next battle, through revolutionary parties.
In Marxist terms, the dictatorship of the proletariat means giving the working class political power and collective control of the means of production.
I would say that the solution would be to develop a practicable theory to make sure that the party doesn't become disconnected from the masses, with its role being primarily concerned with organization, coordination, education, etc. Mao Zedong seems to have made some development in that direction.
This is how I recognize a true communist.
Disco Elysium, good taste.
Ngl, if the system requires perfect actors to function, then maybe the system is fundamentally unstable
It doesn't
It doesn't, one of the core tenents of Marxism let alone Marxism-Leninism is self-critique. Its scientific socialism for a reason, as for the vanguard in of itself it also doesn't require perfection. It simply requires what it says on the tin, the most educated and class conscious of the proletariat dedicated to the movement. That's far from perfection.
As for the idea that somehow the USSR counts as proving this idea right, it doesn't. China fell into the same issues as the USSR it just has survived in one piece after. It was less an issue with the DotP and an issue with the fact the only previous revolution to go off of was the Paris Commune, which didn't live long enough to encounter what one might call a cultural issue. Bourgeois culture is a thing after all and it doesn't dissolve into dust post revolution. You will still carry it's residuals for at least a generation, as a result one might backside into revising the movements aims and goals to suit these petty Bourgeois or just generally Bourgeois ideas. Like market "socialism" upholding the anarchy (not the political kind) of production.
There are issues with the USSR but this is like saying that the revolution in Catalonia failed because Anarchism can't magically summon hordes of Tanks. It misses that we have a lot of hindsight as to where things went that no one at the time knew.
The focus was largely on counter revolution at the time, not at the resurgence of capitalist aligned elements within your own ranks.
In short DotP doesn't require perfection or perfect leaders, the issues you're describing were just straight up because this was the first time any socialist revolution had survived long enough to encounter them, and thus unforseen issues or were issues that had in then in the minds of the leading revolutionaries already been taken care of.
While Marxism and its variants does have a tendency of self-criticism, in practice it also has a tendency to orient that criticism in ways that defer blame from the Party and its leadership and onto scapegoats of many flavors - very easy to call hard criticism or a new development in theory "bourgeois," "counter-revolutionary," or "revisionist" as an easy way to target those espousing it; for example, take Lysenko in the USSR purging geneticists who advocated for Mendelian genetics (correctly so based on observational, experimental data) because Lysenko preferred Lamarckian genetics due to it being more congruent with Marxist ontology. Or the majority of the Five Black Categories and the Stinking Old Ninth from the Cultural Revolution in China, both of which were used as a cudgel to persecute actual scientists who understood how the scientific method works far better than your average 'scientific socialist.'
The point I'm trying to get at is that the moment that a revolution adopts an orthodox interpretation or party line of Marxist theory, it ceases to allow self-critique, and it ceases being a scientific understanding of political economy and becomes dogmatic - thus diametrically opposed to science as a practice and tendency.
When Marx described "scientific socialism" he used German words that meant a little closer to "systematic/formulaic" rather than being a pure natural science; but it's treated as a genuine science by many, so I think it's worth discussing if you're on the topic of a self-critical, systematic body of theory, practice, analysis, and re-assessment.
Well, it doesn't.
It literally does, authoritarianism, even with the best intentions assumes that every leader that comes after also carries those intentions
North Korea is still out there, so is Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, it is a much more complex issue.
I find the term authoritarianism dumb, since even under Stalin there was democracy into the party and soviets, there is a CIA document talking about it, I'll try to find it.
It's literally a term promoted by western imperialism to easily equate nazism to Communism.
Edit: listen commie, have you considered "CIA propaganda talking point". Yes, we have, please stop.
thats totalitarian, not authoritarian
totalitarianism was coined to describe hitler and stalin and equavilate them
youre right, but with the wrong term
Its true, systems of accountibility are a bourgeouis scam.
I mean, what makes a country “authoritarian” versus not? The US has two parties, is that authoritarian? How about Cuba: it has one party, yet there is significantly more citizen participation in state affairs on a broader electoral level and more opportunity for an ordinary persons to represent themselves/their community in government. Is that more or less authoritarian? What decides that, the number of parties? The degree of representation? The vibe?
Its a good thing that words have meaning:
Authoritarianism, -the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. "he warned against the intrusion of authoritarianism in various countries" lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others. "in his authoritarianism he has displayed disrespect for the culture he works in"
Authoritarianism is a spectrum that is defined by several factors, such as which rights and protections of the citizen the government is responsible for, the measure by which government policy is shaped by the people they govern and the legal avenues available to the people to voice their wishes and objections. Then there's also legal accountability, the ability for citizens to point out wrongdoings of their government or one of its officials (cops, soldiers, ministers) and have them investigated and persecuted in a court of law without the approval of a more powerful official (and whether there even are laws by which to hold them accountable in the first place).
Different countries score differently in these aspects, creating an overall image of how authoritarian they are, for example, the US actually has (had?) a pretty robust system of accountability on paper but is severely undermined by corruption and corporate meddling at every level, something that has gotten rapidly worse in recent years. Its two-party system has proven very erosive to popular mandate. But its rights and protections are still built into the legal system and have proven to block power grabs by the Trump administration at several instances, proving more resilient wherever ICE thugs don't trample on them.
In other words, it means nothing. Both the state and revolution are inherently authoritarian constructs (in that you always sacrifice a degree of freedom to reap their benefits). If “authoritarianism” is merely the exertion of authority in exchange for personal freedoms, literally every governing body in history could be called that. The point is who that authority serves. In the United States, as in all capitalist nation-states, authority is centered around capital (in turn appropriated by the bourgeoisie). In other words, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat (working) class. To overcome this, when thinking dialectically, we must pursue this productive-relation’s opposing force: that is, a dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeois. The function of the proletariat dictatorship is the oppression of the bourgeoisie until such a time that the bourgeois class withers away, and the productive forces of society are appropriated by society as a whole as opposed to individual actors. Both of these constructs are “authoritarian,” but as we see, one serves the majority, the other serves the minority. One is inherently preferable to the other.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf
Here go
Yup, that's the one.
Look if democracy and freesoms are not for everyone they are privileges.
By your measure corporate fascism is not dictarorship or undemocratic because investers still vote dor the boards of corporarions.
The question is who has the power do the rights exist even when the powerful wish they did not?
Yeah should be no freedom for the bourgeois class, if you disagree then idk how you can claim to be a communist
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That’s one of the core arguments of anarchism. No power structure or system of government can survive being captured by bad actors. A constitution or founding document is just words on a page if the leaders choose to ignore it.
Further, that capture is inevitable because people who want to abuse positions of power are going to seek power. Thus, the best solution is to never create structures or systems that can be abused.
Anarchism is also not batting a thousand for surviving bad actors.
We do ok so long as wait for it... we actually do anarchism.
Actually having anarchist justice processes and institutions, engaging in freedom of association and actually recallling delegatea. Being autonomous of public opinion and pressure and actually sticking to anarchist principle when in a statist environment of counter insurgency.
Reorganizing away from the bad actors if necessary, keeping Organizatioms only as long as they are useful and making new when needed.
Autonomy again requires emotional self regulation to not be manipulated and played like a fiddle that requires actual stong community and comrades watching your back. That concept that freedom comes from the power and opportunities created collectively shines true especially with the way lonely individuals can be controlled psychologically by bad acfors much easier.
The old man watches fox news or whatever is worse all day because he is not engaged meaningfully with his family friends and community. His lack of belonging lack of solidarity is multiplied by a dizzying number is a wave of reaction made by a failure of community to persist and resist the distraction and keep physical connections among people through the generations.
Anarchism also says mutual respect. Did you see ho Malatesta had those debates in that pamphlet the Cafe he was polite debating with his political adversaries who gave him the same respect. That lowers the drama. Today high drama people who are not respectful are not challenged as authoritarian run people over with popular buzz words and dubious propaganda.
If we were being solid in our anarchism we would not tolerate such foolishness.
Anarchism is about giving less power to bad actors.
Wow I'm usually pretty sympathetic to anarchism but you've made it sound way less viable than I normally feel about it. Not only bad actors but guys sitting around can take it down? Got to work on that rhetoric.
"Sitting around can take it down?"
Workers and communities not being organized and connected means workers get their asses handed to them. We have, the tranfer of wealth to the rich has happened in part because we do not have the level of organization we need to fight back.
A social center and assembly halls so engaging you can go their and meet so many of your needs. Friends and community so dedicated you can trust them because they can trust that people have their backs too.
We do not have a chance unless we organize.
The leaders must by its nature lead by obeying
https://preview.redd.it/oih2nbm4vk8g1.jpeg?width=208&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c7190103ad60123f5f0736d2434880ecb097ce6
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What does this argument even mean?
It’s the famous “voluntarism” anti-communist argument. “Your utopia only works if everyone acts morally and chooses to work hard.”
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Honestly, good response
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Ronald Reagan predicted the collapse of ussr too
so did Tev Lrotsky
Vro… not teon lrotsky 🥀🥀🥀
Marx, Engels and Lenin, didnt believe that socialism could survive in isolation either. (MLs will incorrecly attribute the "invention" of this idea to Trotsky, but it predates him)
Edited: dont know enough about Bakunin to slander him
His reasoning was basically:
All positions of power and hierarchical institutions will be corrupted, because it is in the class interest of the people holding that power to do so. It's not a question if it happens, only when.
And if your revolution is led by a political party, then the leadership positions in that party have a substantial amount of power.
Since their power comes from the party, their main class interests are the strengthening of the party (and thus the state) and the strengthening of their positions in the party.
That is directly opposed to the class interests of the workers, who want more control for themselves and thus a less powerful state and they want better chances to reach positions of power and therefore less secure positions.
Since the people in power have far more political power, their will will happen eventually. You can delay that, by implementing the party well, but it will happen eventually.
And once it has happened, the socialist experiment is practically dead, because the proletarian state seizes to be proletarian anymore.
What would be, for Bakunin, the solution for this?
knowing him, he’d blame it on the jews
Very short version: Bakunin wanted a system of freely federated communes and workers association, that would work together in a federation.
A commune would solve local problems through direct democracy and elect delegates (representatives, that have to act according to the will of the electorate and which can be unelected at any time) to the federation.
That federation does not have a police force or army and participation in it is completely voluntary.
That federation mainly does economic planning and organizes against forces that could harm the anarchist system.
Workers are supposed to get labor vouchers (basically non-transferable money) for their work to buy what they need.
.
He didn't really go into detail, but that's on purpose. He didn't want to impose a new anarchist system, but instead wanted to give the people all the power they need, to establish a system that works well for them. His writing is mostly about the necessary guardrails to ensure that the system would remain anarchist (meaning, without hierarchies) and how to fight ideas and institutions that stand in the way of that, like statehood or religion.
Bakunin's writings served as a blueprint of what anarchism should be, but his way of building an anarchist society had substantial flaws, that would be corrected by later anarchists.
And anarchists though has changed a lot since Bakunin because of it. His analysis is still invaluable to modern anarchism and many of his ideas about anarchist societies are still core parts of modern anarchist ideologies, but most modern anarchists are either Anarcho-communists or Anarcho-syndikalism, both of which are pretty objectively better than what Bakunin wanted.
Sounds like a great way to let US capitalist imperialism completely destroy your movement in about a week flat.
I mean, yeah, that's one of the things later anarchists fixed.
Something we shouldn't forget, is that Bakunin wrote at a time, when armies were significantly weaker. All they had was guns and civilians had those too. Well trained militias would have been able to put up a decent fight against a lot of armies.
Modern anarchist Ideologies do account for an army, but it's still separated from the federation itself, to make sure that power doesn't really centralize.
thanks for the answer 👍, i actually partially agree, the members of the communist party themselves, became the driving force behind the dissolution of the soviet union ironically enough, emerging as the new bourgeois in post soviet eastern europe
not just stalinists, i've seem so trots say it too
I swear why is it always anarchists that pick these fights. The USSR did more than almost any other nation to uplift the working class and spread socialism. They did the best under the material conditions they had, I've yet to see the hypothetical anarchists society... well even exist in the first place. I love yall but you make it difficult sometimes.
Exactly. I love my anarchist comrades. But this shit is petty and a waste of energy. Like idk man go do some mutual aid.
If the time you spend online is just hating other ideologies while we are still all getting fucked by capitalism and disrupting trust and unity then you are functionally a wrecker.
Facts
The USSR also made some major mistakes that we’re stuck with today. Not that OP points any of those out.
Swear all you like, it doesn't make it any more true.
Cool cool, how long did Anarchist Spain last again?
Or Paris Commune, Strandzha uprising, Baja California Rebellion, KPAM, etc.
About as long as Marxist control in Spain
You mean they were just hangers on
No, I don't mean that. MLs, Trots and Anarchists all did a lot. It was a united front.
Well, at least it was, until the MLs did an ML and showed everyone why you shouldn't trust them in a united front.
How many tanks and airplanes did they contribute? They weren't just using everyone else's stuff without obeying orders, right?
Again, they were allies, not subordinates. Not that I'd expect an ML to understand that difference.
Those people put their lives on the line to fight the nationalists. They produced arms in local factories, they fought on the front line against fascists and they died for the socialist cause.
Is that really something worth punishing, just because they weren't MLs?
Turn off your device and go read a book. You're being sectarian and are of no use to anyone besides the Feds in this state.
These grudges from a century ago serve no purpose. Stalin is dead, the CNT-FAI is dead, they're all dead. Learn why the CNT-FAI failed and no it wasn't just Stalin. Learn why the nationalists beat you. Then move on and develop the next project.
This isn't just about the CNT-FAI. It's also about Makhnovia (that were Bolshevists, but close enough) and KPAM (which was severely harmed by MLs, though wiped out by the Japanese Empire), as well as the vibrant anarchist movements in Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, etc., that were all criminalized and wiped out by MLs.
And that is despite many of those anarchist movements allying themselves with MLs.
And anarchists weren't the only ones. I don't like Trotsky, but he was one of the most influential maxist thinkers of all time, only to be assassinated by the USSR.
And on the topic of the Spanish civil war, Andreu Nin, one of the founders of the POUM (the trotskyist party), was detained and tortured to death by the NKVD.
Direct bolshevization efforts by the USSR targeted communist parties around the world and practically wiped out vast amounts of Marxist Ideologies.
.
Like, that's what MLs have always done, to all leftist movements and Ideologies.
At which point should we acknowledge that it's a bit of a pattern?
Read towards a fresh revolution by the durruti group
I already have. I'm not a fan of ideological zealots like Durutti. It's half the reason I abandoned anarchism as a philosophy. Too uncompromising and dogmatic. No revolution or project is ever pure enough to pass the test if the entire global doesn't all simultaneously rise up in revolution. Same issue with Trotskyists, just too goddamned dogmatic about everything.
Edit: It's cowardly to comment and block. I expect that of a reactionary with no solid argument.
I am pragmatic. Every tool, every avenue of attack on capitalism. I won't discard an idea, means or tool if it doesn't exactly fit my ideology.
When talking about others being "dogmatic", "uncompromising" etc, MLs like yourself should always look into the mirror first, the sheer hypocrisy you'd be about to release might overwhelm you. And as for MLs, along with "(hyper)dogmatic", "backstabbers" too might describe you even better.
They were building them in car factories repurposed for the war effort. They also had gold that they couldn't use to buy guns cause they did a united front rather than implement political anarchism allowing people to participate as workers in anarchist economic and political organs with the freedom to meet in their own cadres.
The USSR sent the weapons, tanks, armored cars, airplanes, thousands of red army volunteers to be pilots and drivers without which the civil war was not possible to begin with.
To begin with the workers took the weapons from the police and republican army. The workers themselves rose up and if that was it they should have won with the 2/3 of spain they took. The reinforcements and mercenaries from italy and germany changed the game a bit. Truly if you want to make a point make the point that the anarchist needed to take political authority and establish libertarian socialism. Basically shit or get off the pot. This hand ringing allowed the Soviet influence without strong anarchist conditions. The war and the revolution could have been won in both Russia and in Spain with the numerical majority supporting anarchism if the anarchist thesis at the time acknowledged the need for worker self-administration of both political and economic power.
Did it happen for the reasons he said tho? Even a broken clock is right twice a day
Predicted the downfall of a nation that existed from 1922 to 91, now let’s see the alternatives that succeed and were better…
I swear, this sub is just non-MLs picking fights and MLs trying not to be sectarian in response lmao
Tbh I don’t mind MLs fighting back with this one, it was provoked
LMAO well im not gonna but im thinking it
maoists try and pick fights all the damn time
Though I may be biased, I also noticed this trend here
LOL i am terribly biased as well but i love leftists of all stripes so i realllly do want to not pick shit with other leftists. like at the end of the day we all want a better world. our politics are rooted in love of humanity, and that is why i'm delusionally a believer in anti-sectarian, no-infighting spaces for leftists.
that’s because it is like 70% of the time
Without having read Bakunin’s writings on this, I want to know if he successfully predicted why
His prediction was about authoritarian creep and how coercive hierarchy will inevitably reproduce itself when you centralise power
Jarvis pull up the missing parts of this paraphrasing, especially the parts about certain "parasitic" people, which fueled his irrational hatred for Marxism-Leninism.
Why are anarchists always starting shit? Maybe I just don't notice it, but I don't see commie memes here about the failures of anarchists.
Bukharin was a petty-bourgeois sectarian, ig he'd be proud you follow in his traitor footsteps
no shit has been or will be started, it’s a meme
I like that I laughed at the post for being a shitpost then laughed even harder at OP getting clapped up in the comments 😔
the whole post is funny from all sides
Such predictions are kind of worthless when revolution is inevitable. In essence it is like shouting "we all are going to die" on a ship in the midst of the storm. Most of the people don't understand how little actual leverage over the events revolutionaries have. They are just riding a wave and if they try to turn away from it they go down. All they can do is to make the events unfold in a most free and unrestrained manner.
So workers shouldn't organize right now because revolution is inevitable and it still seems far from materializing currently?
🍿
How many lasting successful revolutions does your team have? 0? I see. End of discussion.
Interpreting anarchist critique (which this isn't, it's just a meme) of the USSR/authority/traditional Marxist thought as incessant, purposeless 'team sports' level of spatting is ignoring what an entire school of thought dedicated to critiquing power structures is trying to tell you about the issues that have existed in the power structures of revolutions, and how we may be able to address those concerns going forward with the socialist experiment.
But yes, let's just boil it down to 'team sports' when we all want to reach the same end goal. It's incredibly enlightening.
Critiquing the failures of the USSR is a vital necessity for communists, I agree, but critique that does not aim to create a better and more viable revolutionary project is worthless.
It seems that your assumption, then, is that anarchist critique is 'worthless' in that it 'does not aim to create a better and more viable revolutionary project'.
I genuinely ask how and why you come to that conclusion, if that is what you have come to.
I've meet some serious, smart and revolutionary anarchists that have made great points about ML. But 95% of the time is just the same empty, idealist takes about authoritarianism.
Indeed, the problem is the idealism of the present argument, not their failure to reach your ideal of success.
Yep flairs checks out
It’s a joke flair. And MAGAComs would tend to say the exact opposite.
https://preview.redd.it/1ilhyrxdel8g1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28d7a2a23651ac12be9795008c744530b60713c2
And what did Bakunin do? Get kicked out of the first international? Amazing.
Bakunin fought in many revolts.
Alright, that's based.
Literally what is this supposed to proof
Why should we listen to people that failed to do lasting material change?
He played an immensely important roll in shaping the modern left, and dismissing a political theorist because he "failed to do lasting material change" is idiotic and could also be used to dismiss any temporary Marxist theorist which is incredibly counter Intuitive
The results irl are actually the most important part of any revolutionary ideology, what are you talking about?
Okay he shaped the modern left, what has the anarchist modern left accomplished? What are it's biggest wins in your opinion?
Multiple revolutions which didn't become degenerated bureaucratic states, actually helping those in need with mutual aid and combating fascism on the street, major contribution to the labor movement?
And if you can dismiss Bakunin for not creating "lasting material change", then why can't I say the same about Marx or Engels? Is there any "lasting material change" they created which Bakunin didn't, and if they did then does that mean we need to deny all political theorists who haven't done that since creating lasting material change is what defined there worth?
How long did those revolutions lasted? How many people did it helped? Communists took a billion people out of extreme poverty my guy.
To your second point, every Marxist-Leninist revolution. That's why you can't say the same about Marx and Engels, bc it simply ain't true. And yes, actually, I think we should deny most political theorists that don't do anything to change the world for the better should be ignored.
The point of political revolution isn't just to last long and help people out of poverty, if it was we could all be social democrats. Anarchist revolutions showed a glimpse at real worker control over society which would be crushed by Marxist-Leninist states.
If the only worth of a political theorist is their contribution to creating a revolution through theory, then you couldn't deny Bakunin 😂 Also, Karl Marx and Engels had minimal "material change" in their life time, so if someone had this position you have rn at the time they were alive then they could feel free to dismiss Karl Marx. If you deny a theorist now for the contribution they had to the past you are ignorant of the future.
the point of a revolution is to be lasting and to improve the lives of people actually. That is exactly the point.
I don't think the fundamental purpose of leftist theory is simply to improve the lives of the people. Though creating a greater quality of life for people is great, it is not the fundamental purpose of our revolutions, and if simply pointing to the fact that revolutionary movements improved the lives of people is proof of success then I fear we would have to start allowing any political movement to this sub which improved the conditions of people to whatever extend, which would be extendable to literally every political movement
The point of revolution is, in fact, to win.
This is the strength of marxism: it is willing to learn from the history of socialist revolution in a scientific manner, and apply lessons from the past.
Marx saw the failures of the Paris Commune, and he learned from them--something anarchists still haven't managed to do centuries later, instead opting to repeat the same idealistic mistakes over and over again, resulting in crushing defeats every single time.
Revolutionary theory is utterly useless if it is incapable of victory. This is why marxists have won dozens of revolutions at the scale of the state, and held them for generations at a time, and anarchists have achieved precisely nothing lasting.
fellas, is the revolution supposed to be about overthowing capitalism? or about feeling good about myself?
People following in the line of Marx and Engels have lifted well over a billion people out of poverty, and held massive territories for generations. They have created world powers genuinely capable of challenging global capital, even if they haven't overthrown global capital as of yet.
Anarchists have never been able to hold even small territories for more than like 2-3 years.
its literally like my dudes *points at material evidence.
Before anyone comments Rojava, they've literally been shielded by the United States. Given material support and military training. Without that they likely wouldn't have been overrun by Turkey, ISIS or Assad's army.
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Oh don’t forget all the genocide he supported!
he had some takes on jews too
he was an anarchist, all they do all day long is predict the end of civilisation, dictatorship, democracy, empires and whatever else, you can build a wooden fence and an anarchist will go "erm you do know wood rots over time right ? you do know this fence wont keep your sheep in in 5000 years right ?"
Lmao, council communists of all people should understand the critique of state power substituting itself for working-class self-activity, since that's literally your whole thing with opposition to Leninism (in case you didn't know). But sure, do pretend anarchists are just being nihilistic pessimists when they point out that authoritarian means produce authoritarian ends. Bakunin saw it coming and history proved him right and then some. Cope.
ok but what do you WANT man, that's my issue, what do you want instead, pointing at the rot is easy we can all do it but what is your solution here
Are you actually serious right now?? We've been articulating what we want since berore the First International. Bakunin himself was among those who laid it out: collective ownership without the state, federations of workers' associations, abolition of all hierarchical authority.
Kropotkin developed mutual aid and what we call anarcho-communism and was a prolific geographer and evolutionary biologist. Malatesta contributed greatly to voluntary organization and Goldman on prefigurative practices.
A century and a half of developed theory, both positive and negative - in short, and again, you're a council communist asking anarchists what our positive vision is? Sorry to break it to you, but your entire tendency exists because Leninism produced exactly what Bakunin said it would - a new ruling class. It's always been funny to me how of all Marxist-adjacent strands, "council communists" tend to seethe most at the mention of anarchism when, in spirit, their theoretical highlights are closest to us. I guess one can get out of Leninism, but Leninism out of them? Apparently never.
Anarchists have been proven right by history while you're still trying to salvage authoritarian Marxism from its own wreckage. We want abolition of the state, capitalism and all forms of domination, to be substituted by free association, voluntary cooperation, workers' self-management without party mediation or state apparatus.
The real question is: what do you want that's meaningfully different from what we want and why do you need to dress it up in Marxist jargon to feel legitimate? Because from where I'm standing, council communism is just anarchism with extra steps and some lingering state and organizational worship.
brother, you still have not told me what you want and/or what your solutions are so far. "we want an abolition of capitalism" ok to replace it with what ? "we want voluntary cooperation" that means nothing, society in general is voluntary cooperation that's the entire point of being a mammal "we want free association" that's called freedom of speech and is the most bare bone human right that exists, "we want workers self management" again that's just the human experience. you are giving me nothing here except a lot of fluff about how right you were that the evil empire would collapse someday
You are either being deliberately obtuse or you are genuinely incapable of comprehending political theory that doesn't fit into your Marxist framework. I'll spell it out in terms even you should understand.
Replace capitalism with what? Well that should be easy:
Communism. Anarcho-communism. Not "socialism" as a transitional state, not "workers' state" bureaucracy but actual communism. Abolition of wage labor, commodity production and capital accumulation. Production for use and not for market-exchange. Distribution according to need.
Voluntary cooperation and no, society under capitalism is coerced cooperation mediated by the threat of starvation and enforced by state violence. Anarchist voluntary cooperation means no boss, no state and no hierarchy compelling your participation. You work because you choose to contribute to the the commune, not because you'll starve, freeze or be imprisoned otherwise.
Free association and isn't "freedom of speech", you dolt. It means the ability to associate and disassociate from collectives, communes and federations without state permission or economic coercion as well as no forced participation in state structures or capitalist employment relations.
Workers' full self-management: No, wage slavery under a boss or a party bureaucrat is NOT "just the human experience". Self-management here means workers directly control production through assemblies and federations, no managers, no party vanguard and no state planning committee dictating anything from above.
The fact that you think these all are "fluff" and that capitalism already embodies voluntary cooperation tells me you've internalized liberal ideology so deeply you can't even recognize what actual freedom would look like. Are you even a council communist as you'd like your flair to convince me, or are you just a liberal lurker in need of whatever flair just so you could participate in the subreddit?
Council communism is supposed to be about workers' councils as the fundamental unit and you should already understand this, yet you're so desperate to distance yourself from anarchism that you are pretending not to comprehend the most basic anti-capitalist concepts. Sorry to break it to you, but we were right about the "evil empire" and you're still trying to rehabilitate the logic that created it.
aaah there we are, see was that so hard ? well i agree with all your points and i have a similar view of what future the human race should go towards.
This is genuinely the weirdest way I've heard anyone accidentally articulate anarchist critique
its all i see anarchist do, maybe they have an actual political idea but as far as i can tell they are the vegans of the left
I don't get the vegan comparison lol
Radicals unwilling to form even temporary alliances with people sympathetic to their cause, refusing to create a wider platform and actually achieve some of their goals, prefering to wait for the current world to collapse so that the "right" one can rise from its ashes like paradise after the apocalypse, all while maintaining moral superiority and caring more about being ethically pure than about creating lasting change?
Just from observing vegan subs these last few days.
Alright thank you for explaining!
Alright thank you for explaining!
Welcome. Just to be clear, I haven't seen enough of anarchist movement to know how much of this applies to them too. It's what I saw among vegans.
yes you do
I nicely asked for an explanation how could I have known
don’t you have a crystal ball comrade?
Comrade who brings nothing but assertions and statements to the function
that's the vegan part of me shining trough :pensive_emoji:
I wonder why Bakunin might have had a problem with Marxism. Here's a selection of some of the most insane things I found in one letter after googling "Mikhail Bakunin being antisemitic"
Source: https://libcom.org/article/translation-antisemitic-section-bakunins-letter-comrades-jura-federation
I hope the day comes soon when online anarchists stop falling for this psyop. Bakunin was antisemitic scum and his hatred was inseparable from his politics. You have been lied to. This isn't even the worst stuff he wrote, it's just the first article I opened. His attacks on Marx were truly vile.
"Guys is true, google agrees with me"
Never said he was a good person, I said his prediction on authoritarianism were correct
His predictions on authoritarianism were that the Jews would end up making slaves of the gentiles, whether that was through Marx or the Rothschilds. Is that what you think was correct?
People can't just believe this stuff in a vacuum and then form political beliefs completely separately. Bakunin's conception of authority was inextricably bound up with his hatred of Jews.
Such a shame his conception of authority and its dangers, EVEN even separated from any "Jew hatred" undertones, still make just as much sociological sense as before. So pretty please, less screeching.
Oh look, a Posadist? Someone whose ideology involves nuclear holocaust as a shortcut to communism, lecturing anyone about moral fitness, quite rich.
Indeed did Bakunin write antisemitic shit, it was reprehensible, indefensible and he can (and should) be criticized for it. No anarchist worth their salt has ever once denied this or defended those passages.
But you? Please now, you're not doing historical analysis, all you're doing is attempting an elaborate character assassination as a substitute for political argument. Here's what you conveniently ignore: Bakunin's critique of Marxist state socialism had nothing to do with antisemitism. His warnings about the dictatorship of the proletariat creating a new ruling class of bureaucrats, analysis of how centralized state power would reproduce domination regardless of revolutionary rhetoric, prediction that Marx's "workers' state" would become oppressive, all of this was proven correct by history.
The USSR, GDR, every Marxist-Leninist state validated Bakunin's structural critique of authoritarian socialism. Marx also wrote antisemitic garbage ("On The Jewish Question", among others). Does that invalidate dialectical materialism? Nope, because we separate the analytical framework from the personal bigotry and you? You obviously don't actually care about intellectual consistency as you're using Bakunin's antisemitism so aggressively as a smokescreen to avoid confronting the fact that he was right about what happens when you concentrate power in a revolutionary state.
And you're a fucking Posadist talking about "psyops"? Once again, your ideology is literally a meme about using nuclear war to achieve socialism, so just based on that you have zero credibility to lecture anyone about political coherence - sit down.
new copypasta just dropped
Meanwhile, me, still waiting for anarchists to wage a revolution that won't just instantly drag us down the primitivist pipeline.
Ultimately Marxism is the scientific approach to societal function. Science isn't exactly full of cases where people got it right the first time. The main objective of each revolution is to solve the biggest problems of the time and place. Failure is universal among early experiments.
That any of them succeeded well enough that even the CIA had to admit in its own documents that socialist projects that lasted more than 20 years were able to produce the same physical quality of life as a capitalist state with three times the GDP/Capita* is proof that Marxism is on the correct track, but isn't proof that any AES actually got it right, yet.
Even doing that well was a massive threat, though, to capitalist hegemony and had to be undermined in every way that the Western Bloc could find.
So, yes, the DotP failed, but it took a while for it to fail, and that's with enormous amounts of external pressure and an honestly awfully conservative culture that it had to fight constantly in order to make any progress at all.
We should not look at past attempts as examples of what to copy in entirety, but instead as collections of experiments, some of which succeeded and some of which didn't, from which we can learn myriad ways to do better in the future, both compared to past AES projects and the current systems in place.
*It's also worth noting that the OECD and UN did some studies about 15 years ago, and found GDP/C stops mattering at about $40k/year (today dollars), and after that point only inequality matters (where more is worse, obviously), and this is true even in capitalist systems. So any socialist project that can reach that upper limit of useful productivity and flatten the distribution will be, once it's got functioning infrastructure and no resource shortages, the best place to live in the world, bar none, unless it's still stupidly culturally more conservative than other countries around the world and you're a minority.
Period. Science is full of failed experiments, that doesn't mean we don't try to learn from them and do better in future experiments.
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Well, he did, with eerie accuracy.
Guy who thinks the USSR was still a proletarian dictatorship after 1925
Bakunin didn't understand what an actual DotP was in the first place
We pray to Surpreme brotherly leader his comradeness Joseph Stalin and ask for forgivness to the perfect and mistakeless Soviet Union every morning or something, according to this guy
And how is your revolution coming along?
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To be honest that is the best case I have yet seen made for anarchism
I love the Bakunin discourse because everyone either thinks he was a misunderstood martyr or a pure evil
anti-authoritarianantisemite when in reality he was just a neckbeard who made some good pointsRight? Two things can be true, he was an objectively shitty person, and he was right about authoritarian creep
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this post will surely be civil and no comments will need to be removed, right :D
…right?
ok who downvoted this, i’m gonna icepick you
Socialism in one country - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBNwMtE1P9Q
Also that just means the rule of working class.