Communists?

[Guest]

anarchists don't accept the materialist account of history

i do, insofar as i accept materialism over idealism, and i accept that the mode of production, being the means of survival, is of the utmost importance in examining a society, so that all else stems from it and history is shaped by it. and i accept what history shows, that the mode goes through 'revolutions' of change when its limits are reached.

[Guest]

I suppose that the question of the workers state is the biggest of the big. Marxists call this state many names: "workers state," a "semi-state", "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and so on. For anarchists, no matter what you call it, we are opposed to it. Why? First of all, our opposition has absolutely nothing to do with defence of the revolution. I must stress this, as Marxists tend to say that anarchist opposition to the "workers' state" means we think the capitalist class will just disappear. No, our opposition is based on an awareness that any revolution will need to defended. As such, it is really based on the question of who has power, the working class or the party.

I should point out, firstly, that when Marx first used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", the proletariat was a minority of the working class everywhere bar the UK (and, indeed, for many decades after his death too). Thus, if we assume that Marx meant direct rule by all the proletariat by this term, he was still advocating rule by a minority. For Bakunin, this could not be justified nor supported. Secondly, what does the "dictatorship of the proletariat" mean in practice? Does it mean the "rule by the majority" or the minority elected by said? The two are by no means the same.

So which was it? Well, the evidence points to the latter. Marx, for example, argued in 1850 in his "Address to the Communist League," for "the most determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority." He thought that "the path of revolutionary activity . . . can only proceed with full force from the centre." Needless to say, if power rested at the centre, it could only be exercised by a few, by the leaders. This conclusion is confirmed by Engels, who noted that as "each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state, so the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is striving to establish its rule, the rule of the working class." Elsewhere, he considered what would happen "as soon as our Party is in possession of political power." All of which simply (and dangerously) confused party power with working class power.

Thus working class "political power" simply meant the ability to nominate a government. "Universal Suffrage," argued Marx in the 1850s, "is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population . . . Its inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of the working class." This position was echoed by Engels decades later:

"In every struggle of class against class, the next end fought for is political power; the ruling class defends its political supremacy, that is to say its safe majority in the Legislature; the inferior class fights for, first a share, then the whole of that power, in order to become enabled to change existing laws in conformity with their own interests and requirements. Thus the working class of Great Britain for years fought ardently and even violently for the People's Charter, which was to give it that political power."

Thus we have the "dictatorship of the proletariat" based on the proletariat delegating its power to a handful of leaders. As Bakunin argued, no matter how you look at it we get the "same dismal results: government of the vast majority of the people by a privileged minority." This is to be expected, as any state is based on inequality in power, with power lying at the top, in the hands of a few. The state structure, anarchists have long argued, has evolved to maintain minority class power and so marginalises the population by its very nature. Therefore a "workers' state" is a contradiction in terms for if the working class was in power, then the state would not exist and if a state existed, then only a few leaders would have real power. This would soon create a new class system, simply due to the institutional processes at work within any statist system.

worth reading: http://marxmyths.org/hal-draper/article2.htm

[jack]

Yeah, the materialist conception of history is the best for judging just about anything.

[marxist]

Judging by what I've read from Marx so far. No, there is no real reason for their to be a seperation between Marxism and anarchism apart from bullshit semantics and some less than accurate interpretations of Marx's thought.

So you accept the commonly understood judgment of the superiority of Marx's thought and analysis and that it is the anarchists who have distorted the factual record of Marxism's achievements time and time again, as well as their actively disrupting and sabotaging Marxist-led movements for revolutionary change, as in the Spanish Civil War?

[thelastindividual]

i do, insofar as i accept materialism over idealism, and i accept that the mode of production, being the means of survival, is of the utmost importance in examining a society, so that all else stems from it and history is shaped by it. and i accept what history shows, that the mode goes through 'revolutions' of change when its limits are reached.

Question: Why was the 'limit' of the ancient mode of production never reached by the native americans?

eah, the materialist conception of history is the best for judging just about anything.

What I said above. Plus:

Rudolf Rocker, The Insufficiency of Economic Materialism

So you accept the commonly understood judgment of the superiority of Marx's thought and analysis and that it is the anarchists who have distorted the factual record of Marxism's achievements time and time again, as well as their actively disrupting and sabotaging Marxist-led movements for revolutionary change, as in the Spanish Civil War?

No.

[MaxxMan]

Communism in it's purest form, according to Marx's theory, is anarchy. So in theory Anarchists and communists have certain ideals in common. Yet, now that there are so many different types of communism / marxism / lenninism I have no idea what to think.

[Guest]

'you accept the commonly understood judgment of the superiority of Marx's thought and analysis'

i do, as far as his analysis of political economy, which is masterful, as might be expected having spent decades immersed in it.

'and that it is the anarchists who have distorted the factual record of Marxism's achievements'

nope. i deny that the 'achievements' of self-professed 'marxists' were the 'achievements' of 'marxism'. i don't like the term 'marxist' because it seems to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean, thus rendering it functionally meaningless. i prefer to be more specific and say e.g 'leninist', 'maoist', etc. as for the 'achievements' of those movements, there were some, but i'd certainly not want to ally myself with them in totality.

marx is awesome. i love marx. but 'marxists' are mostly vicious bastards, willing to crush the very proletariat they profess to be fighting for, if that proletariat follows marx's advice and attempts to take control for themselves, from the bottom up. intellectual 'marxists' in fact mistrust the proletariat and look down on them as inferiors. anarchists reject such notions. i'm an anarchist, who takes wisdom from marx, of which there's a huge amount.

[Guest]

'Why was the 'limit' of the ancient mode of production never reached by the native americans?'

pre-colombian native americans did not comprise a monolithic culture. i'll assume you mean some specific group, such as the stereotypical plains nations, hunting buffalo and living in tepees. you seem to be implying that they should have followed the same timeline as other native american nations in different locales, or even of different peoples around the globe. but there's no reason to expect this. at any rate when you zoom out and take in the totality of native american peoples, you'll find that such modes of 'production' (a bit of a misnomer, but meh) did indeed reach their limits and were supplanted by more 'advanced' cultures (more advanced than contemporary europe in fact; so does the lag of europe imply what you're attributing to native americans? does it nullify the theory even though they did eventually advance?). you also seem to believe that the theory predicts precise modes everywhere. but the whole 'primcom > slavery > feudalism > capitalism' thing is just showing how the theory played out in practice in certain places. (btw, the 'socialism > communism' to follow is really lenin's thing, where he exploded the idea of two-stage communism into soc/com.)

[jack]

If you want to look at an example of different stages of historical development among the Native Americans, simply look at the Aztecs vs the Cherokee, or even some of the smaller tribes surrounding Aztec lands. The Aztecs had a slave state, the tribes had primitive Communism.

[patrickhenry]

worth reading: http://marxmyths.org/hal-draper/article2.htm

If I thought Draper would bring something new to the table. He was a full fledged marxist and to some a Lenin apologist..He was also known to attack anarchism and its theories. Not the neutrality I was looking for guest. You have something I can read thats not so biased?

[Guest]

so what if he was those things? the piece is topical. his being a marxist is actually a plus in this case. he's speaking of what he knows.

besides, i don't even know who said what you quoted. you didn't bother citing it. maybe it was hitler. zomg! that would make it automatically wrong, of course. wait, no it wouldn't

see? this is why i love anonymity. every book should have the covers ripped off. words > messengers.

[patrickhenry]

so what if he was those things? the piece is topical. his being a marxist is actually a plus in this case. he's speaking of what he knows.

Good if your a tow the line Marxist. I know it's difficult to find a marxist who isn't brainwashed but I know some exist. I find Harry Cleaver to be very credibal. The person who I quoted was anonymous. I also know anarchists that would jump off a bridge before they would give any cred. to Marx.

[Guest]

ffs it's topical! read it or don't. i don't give a fuck. jesus.

anywho, here's more topical stuff (by alan freeman, a marxist, omfg brace yourselves, he might say the sky is blue and then patrick's head will explode) as to how modes of production actually *do* reach their limits but are rescued. in this case capitalism, which has hit the wall more than once, but capitalists consciously and deliberately saved their baby through imperialism, war, etc...





from a roundtable including my favorite youtube marxist, brendan cooney http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2009 ... ic-crisis/

the summary (tho i hope you'll watch it) is that capitalists happily suspend their own 'laws' when necessary, but that if we were ready at such moments it would have already been relegated to history.

the fact that they were more prepared does absolutely nothing to refute the theory, since it wasn't capitalism qua capitalism that survived its own storms, but rather something new (e.g the ironic command economy of ww2). when the storm settles, conservatives usher us back to the church of the invisible hand. it's about readiness. no surprise that we never are, since they've got all the power. this is where anarchists i think have the potential upper hand, if only we'd follow our own rhetoric and 'build the new inside the shell', which we never actually get about doing, but instead we keep capital propped up by accepting the seeming inevitability of it and our own helplessness in the face of it, so we go into debt slavery for a college sheepskin and get corporate jobs and mortgages and the ship sails on. but we at least have the rhetoric, whereas leninists don't even pretend to oppose any of that but actually encourage their membership to immerse themselves in the status quo so as to take it over.

[patrickhenry]

Guest-Where I again state the difference is with marx's theory of a transitional form between the revolution and communism. This transitional revolutionary state is still a "state" with a political power base centered to a select few (the party). Like we saw in 1917 they never made the next step. It needs to be from the bottom up not vice versa. Again this splitting hairs.

this is where anarchists i think have the potential upper hand, if only we'd follow our own rhetoric and 'build the new inside the shell'

This is what the Mutualists strive for. Its a big part of their theory.

[Guest]

pretty sure i'm familiar with vanguardist theory. just because we anarchists don't subscribe to it doesn't mean we should preemptively nix anything said by those that do. sheesh.

mutualists don't have a monopoly on counter institutions, nor even particularly good ideas there, imo.

anyway we're digressing and i can sense a blowup approaching. i'd rather avoid it so let's just drop it. i'll try to remember not to suggest anything that isn't from the classical anarchist lexicon on this forum.