Maybe as an experiment, let's try to understand each other's positions ITT and not have the same boring old arguments (because they're boring).
Edit - nice discussion everyone, thanks <3. I'm seeing a lot of responses from ML and not many from anarchists, but maybe I'm the only anarchist on this site lol
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Im a ML and really like this tbh. Very fair critique and I definitely have thought this way in the past as a former anarchist myself.
I think the biggest thing that changed for me was seeing the development of Marxist-Leninist states as the next stage of development away from capitalism and the creation of true state-capitalism. Obviously this is not the end goal, but it’s greatly preferable to the bourgeois state. What brought me to being a ML was not what I’d call “settling” but something more along the lines of “fuck it, it’s the best way we have to defend a revolution and marxist thought from the bourgeois. It may not ever wither away and if it doesn’t, fuck it and overthrow it, but if it does wither away that’s a W”
Should the eventually state wither away on its own, that would be fantastic. If not, we will see the next development exactly along the lines of Marx’s predictions, with the growth of socialism continuing to sprout from the rotting corpse of capitalism, resulting in the overthrow of said state-capitalist regime and establishing whatever form the much more class conscious working class sees fit to bring about socialism and eventually communism.
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Exactly! It is my job as a socialist to do what I think is best to help carry on and protect our grand humanitarian project, and I don’t see a better way of doing that than defending the only states which as a bare minimum tell their people the truth about socialism and protect them from some of the worst barbarism of capitalism. At least, this is the hill I am willing to die on.
:chefs-kiss: this is how mi'lady earned that crown (in a fully directly democratic system of nobility where noble titles can be revoked at any moment of course) :left-unity-2:
I guess I don't know enough about the Anarchist conception of Hierarchy. I don't want to go all, "MUH HUMAN NATURE," but as I understand the word, I think hierarchy DOES naturally and, potentially even positively, form in many human relationships. We can make normative claims about the form we want it to take and measures of democratic accountability to keep it from getting out of hand, but I can't imagine a world where the wisest, most knowledgeable, or most capable people aren't given some amount of acknowledged power to be experts/leaders of human affairs.
Even in small and relatively egalitarian groups you see power dynamics form. These can be done more or less equitably, but they cannot, it seems, be avoided. It even seems disadvantageous to me to try and suppress it entirely as having recognized expertise, wisdom, or decision making capacity does a whole lot for keeping a group cohesive and effective. The larger the group, the more it seems to rely upon formal structures for recognizing and enabling hierarchy to maintaining cohesion and effectiveness and resolving internal conflict or responding to external challenges. I think with this can and should come formal mechanisms for accountability - but I don't think hierarchy is inherent oppressive. If anything, the ability to effectively organize human activity to accomplish tasks and free people from the limitations of the natural world: disease, pain, drudgery and toil in our work, existential dread and the problems that come with consciousness itself; all of these kinds of things can be better overcome, managed, and solved with at least a little bit of hierarchy (so far as I understand it) managing our efforts along the way.
When I picture communism I guess I don't recognize a world without hierarchy, but instead one where productive decisions are made completely democratically. That may mean the realm of economic influence is more equitable, and so too will become many of our social institutions (as base affects super structure), but matters of knowledge and wisdom seem like they'll still require and benefit from hierarchy to appropriately recognize and exclude bad actors, preserve knowledge effectively, or coordinate large efforts.
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This is a great anarchist critique of MLism (and basically any institution). I would even add to it -- if you are able to create a legitimate, actual meritocracy, you're likely to get at least a well-intentioned actor who will bend that system back towards something more corruptible if only to keep doing things that may be genuinely good. Over time and personnel changes this could open the door for power-seeking bad actors.
If we're talking about fundamentally reshaping society, though, I think long-term we could get to a point where a "real" meritocracy could work. You could make leadership positions truly thankless jobs, even at the highest levels (strip away most of the perks, prestige, and little displays of power). You could have qualified people drafted for those jobs for fixed, non-renewable terms. You could have recall votes a possibility for every position, you could have "real" journalism (i.e., not for profit, with access not determined by those in power), you could have a deep cultural taboo against ambition for ambition's sake, you would of course have a much improved education system that among other things swaps capitalist indoctrination for leftist political education.
"We could run an actually good organization at national or global scale" is not too big of a dream compared to anything else leftists discuss.
It's not necessarily a blanket rejection of authority, just a condemnation of the forms of authority that end up having a stratifying and totalizing effect- that is, when someone is considered to be an authority that all other authorities are subservient to, when some people are seen as categorically more valuable or more deserving than others, or when as an individual you are put and kept in a lower category regardless of your volition and efforts.
The great thing here is that wisdom, knowledge, and capability aren't one thing. There are lots of different ways to be wise, lots of different fields to be knowledgeable in, lots of different skills to be capable at. Instead of thinking about a comrade, "Frubbins is the wisest", we should be thinking "Frubbins has outstanding wisdom and eloquence in motivating and inspiring people".
We can take things like the theory of multiple intelligences from psychology, and separate political domains from First Nations cultures, and a lot of other stuff, and start to get an understanding of how people can develop themselves for various proficiencies, without having to "rank" the skills or the people. There will still be a hierarchy within each skill or domain, but it won't extend beyond that field. Between the two of us, I might be the better teacher and you might be the better event planner and meeting facilitator; these don't need to be stacked up against each other.