Lenin: "The difference between the revolutionary Marxists and the anarchists is not only that the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production..."

My thoughts: It's fairly obvious now that "Bigger is Always Better" is wrong. It would have seemed more convincing 100 years ago. Bigger is sometimes better. Small-scale production has some advantages. (Do I need to state them? I'll leave it to the reader as an exercise.)

If Big Communism and Small Anarchism both have their uses in their contexts, some sort of dual-track economy is needed, two parallel ways of organising the means of production.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]
    ·
    10 months ago

    When at war or under siege, I think Lenin's thought is completely right. You need coordination of the means of production towards the war effort, especially heavy industry. It's not like mom and pop oil refineries are a thing anyway, so I don't think that the usual exceptions you'd make in favor of community-owned businesses apply. But for light industries? Yeah, sure, we can talk about it.