I won't debate you or anything I'm just really curious what some of the main reasons why someone would want the state to beat capitalism rather than defeat capitalism according to anarchist theory. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to answer my question. Hopefully an interesting discussion can be had. EDIT: I appreciate everyone's response. Not exactly a big fan of most of the sentiment but I appreciate those who took the time to help me understand.
As a former anarchist -- because it is incredibly easy to see what is and is not effective at bringing about a revolution based on any sort of analysis of history. Marxism achieves revolution, time and time again. Anarchism rarely ever does, and on the rare occasions it has done so they have either relied upon nearby marxism post-revolution to defend them or implemented states that look like bootleg ML states with poorer organisation that last a little while but then get run over by capitalists.
It is extremely easy to see that anarchism will not survive until all the capitalists are first gone.
Oh god, are we unironically doing the political compass thing now?
"Authoritarian Left", lmao
I'll just link this then: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
He was a much better writer than I'll ever be.
I was an anarchist but then I realized that we aren't going to be able to swap straight from capitalism to anarchism without a period of change, growth, and some pain to detoxify our society of the effects of capitalism. I realized that the path to true anarchy was going to be through Marxism-Leninism.
There seem to be a lot like me.
Yeh, this is what a lot of people seem to misinterpret. The end goal of MLism is the same stateless, classless society that anarchists call for. We just recognise the reality that the working class will need to repress the bourgeoisie and the counter rev before that can happen. You can’t have a stateless classless society when there’s still a section of society that wants to re-establish its past dominance.
This is also why I think there's a mythical divide between being authleft and libleft. I think the authentic core of leftism is libleft, but the question is how do we get to it, and that's where we differ.
That and if you think it's authoritarian to gulag a tiny fraction of the populace that terrorized us, I have no idea what your alternative proposal is but I guarantee it's not going to work.
My heart is an anarchist, but my survival instinct is a Marxist-Leninist.
Long story short, the state exists as an expression of class struggle. The purpose of the state is the subjugation of one class by another class. In current bourgeois society, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois state exists so that the bourgeois minority can repress the proletarian majority.
After a proletarian revolution, there will inevitably be a counter revolution. The boug will not just give up their vast wealth and power without a fight. There will also be immense lingering pro-capitalist or even fascist elements within society.
That’s where the dictatorship of the proletariat comes in. The proletariat, having defeated and smashed the bourgeois state, establishes a proletarian state. As always, the purpose of this state is the repression of one’s class enemy. For the first time in history though, the proletarian state will represent the majority of the society, the workers. It will be the bourgeois minority being repressed.
Marxist-Leninists argue that as this repression becomes complete, once the bourgeois elements and the counter revolution are quelled, the state (which exists historically only as a manifestation of class struggle) will wither away, becoming nothing more than a counting house, an organisational/distribution tool.
I’m no ML, but if you’re asking what made me a Marxist instead of an anarchist, I would say that a transitional state (ie not government in the sense of the word), is needed, capitalism has to be deconstructed as we can’t just jump straight to it, and structurelessness is a grave weakness like overcentralization, both extremes are fragile within.
As to why I’m not a ML, I see it to be nothing more than panacea-mongering, a socialist government, constrained by the chains of global capital, hindered by centralized bureaucracy, in a single nation, will never bring global communism and will instead only continue to the samsara of capital as time, the banalities of capital, and inner power struggles destroy it.
It can be a method for advancing the struggle forward, but it is not the end-all, be-all method for the global world, and I would assume that MLs know this as well.
I usually advocate for international organizations as the best means forward, and actions in general that are across the board international, to fight a global enemy, we must fight in a global scale, not constrained by any politician or nation, as international proletariat, we are not bound or pledged to any of those, we are unchanging in global capitalism, they are not.
I do not know a ton of theory so throw any corrections at my face please. But despite anything I hear or learn about anarchy the biggest core element I always take away is the concept that you should always justify power or violence over others (though differences in word usage and definition I'm sure exist).
I fucking hate capitalism. But I love democracy. To me, democracy is the rule of the majority. And to me, anarchy then just becomes whether someone's violence is justified by that majority. If you achieve this, then anyone in a position of violence over another with support of less than 50% should automatically step down from that position.
If that's not "anarchy" to you (and I don't get the sense that it is) then I guess I don't really know what you want enough to know why I probably don't want it.
