legit question and please suggest a book if it answers this, how do you go from a revolution to full communism without a transitory state? In all likely hood there will be foreign aggressors that will intervene after the revolution, how do you have a defense?
How does it work in places were large scale distribution / planning is needed to industrialize (USSR/Maoist China)
There's a great book that seeks to answer these sorts of simple questions about anarchism, I highly recommend you check it out. Each chapter is a self-contained answer to a specific question, asked by the chapter title.
Without wanting to sound like an attack, if anarchism works, why hasn’t it worked?
You might not be intending it to be this way, but this is just a tired mindless attack, the same one your average chud makes against any form of communism. If your definition of valid forms of society includes only ones which have successfully overthrown capitalism in a modern state and stayed that way to the current day, then capitalism is the only valid way to arrange society.
Are you really surprised that anarchist communities tend to be smaller in scale? My understanding of anarchist values would lead me to assume a smaller scale, less centralized existence. I think many anarchists would consider these positives.
if communism was as successful as capitalism I’d have hoped to have seen communist projects on a scale to collectively rival capitalist projects in size
The argument your making is no better than the one made by bourgeois capitalists to "disprove" communism.
Just remember, we're fighting the same fight, and there's no reason existing communist countries and existing anarchist communities can't work together. Zapatistas seem to have figured out leftist unity.
The most successfull revolutionary group in the history of the imperial core was a maoist vanguard party , the black panthers.
In the US, yeah, but generally many European countries had much more successful revolutionary groups than a relatively short lived movement with 8k members in a country of 300 million, and most of Europe is generally considered part of the imperial core.
“Well ackshcullly unions were and are the most successful revolutionary group in the history”
Unions aren't a group, or an organization, or a movement. However you can look at who is organizing unions etc, and the presence of anarchists in organized labour is pretty much 0 in most European countries, unlike communists.
I live in Europe the idea that any kind of marxist group is able to get enough power to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat is silly to me
Where in Europe do you live? Because in most European countries in the 20th century it was marxist communists who had any kind of success at all ever, as opposed to anarchists, unless you take into account Catalonia which was before the war and had nothing to do with modern anarchy, in which case you'd also have to take into account all the partisans all over Europe, the communists in Spain, and the (failed) revolutions that happened.
I favour communism over capitalism for ideological not practical reasons, but I favour marxism over anarchism for practical reasons over the ideological.
I think most anarchists favor anarchism over marxism for ideological reasons, so using practicality-based arguments might not appeal to most anarchists.
These days though I just think a marxist approach is more realistic and less utopian
I think there's room in the world for both, and perhaps each is more capable in certain places.
Well, the way I see it is that the most effective method for achieving communism in China is marxism, and the most effective method for achieving communism in Chiapas is anarchism; both evidenced by the fact that their attempts to fight back against capitalism worked, and the rest of the world's attempts have failed. I think pretending there's gonna be one blueprint that's "the most effective" everywhere is naïve.
Anarchism has a considerably stronger track record in Chiapas. Anarchism has a considerably stronger track record in Smangus. I don't understand this obsession with picking one global economic system.
I said your argument sounded like bourgeois capitalist arguments, not that it was the same exact argument. It's called a simile. Obviously capitalists use the argument to defend capitalism, not communism. Have you never encountered a capitalist using the argument that capitalism is good because it brings people out of poverty (a term defined by capitalists)?
For starters, the definition of poverty being used is $1.90 per day, which is obviously not a reasonable goal.
I'd also challenge the very idea of judging success based on measurements that are fundamentally at odds with anarchism, like how much money one has. Are people in Rojava materially better off than they were before Rojava? Yeah. Are people in Chiapas materially better off than they were before the Zapatistas? Yeah. The fact that China made people's lives materially better is the success, not raising them out of poverty.
Poverty is a definition based on a monetary system. Communism (and anarchism) hope for a moneyless future. I don't think using capitalist-defined measures like poverty is a good method for assessing the health and growth of non-capitalist societies.
Plus, it's just such a small amount of money. Personally, I'm fighting for much more lofty goals than $1.90 per day.
There's been dozens of successful Marxist-Leninist revolutions. It took the US half a century of unparalleled economic, military, diplomatic and propagandistic efforts to wear these states down, states that without exception where undeveloped, impoverished, largely illiterate backwaters either suffering under despotic monarchs, a colonial extractive economy or both before the communists came along, and not only did most of them hold out against the biggest superpower in the world for decades while making substantial headway in improving material conditions, the yanqui swine still haven't succeeded in their effort against China, the DPRK, Cuba and Vietnam. There's good, valid criticisms from the left of all of these states and how far they've actually come in building AES, but denying their successes in their entirity because they didn't immediately implement full communism, ignoring the sacking of the bourgeoise class in these countries and saying that capitalism is the only game in town and that our only alternative would be some totally different approach that just has never been tried yet, that these projects are "not actually socialism", is a form of capitalist realism. Please stop adopting chuds "socialism doesn't work" arguments. Of course socialism does work, there would have been no need for a Cold War if it wouldn't. If even the transitionary stage of socialism wasn't a massive, vital threat to capitalism, if communist revolutions would be as pointless in overcoming cpaitalism as you are stating, why would capital bother to fight tooth and nail against this?
Look, it's not really an own if you need to put words in my mouth to make your argument work. I didn't argue against anarchism at all, i was arguing for socialism, which you are dismissing in exactly the same way as some chud or neolib - by saying that there has never been a viable alternative to capitalism. But there has been, and there is.
I think one problem is that by its very nature anarchism is less obvious in its existence. The existing anarchist communities (Rojava, Zapatistas, Smangus to name a few) aren't themselves states, but exist within states. Because of this it's easy to think that China is "working" better than the anarchist examples just because it has more power, especially when coming from the point of view of someone raised in the west where nations are seen as the building blocks of our societal structure. But this doesn't mean anarchism hasn't worked, it just means that anarchism and Marxism-Leninism work differently than each other when implemented (:shocked-pikachu:).
And I think there are advantages to not standing out, not making it obvious that you're growing an alternative to capitalism. China is and has been a target of capitalist nations since it became communist. On the other hand, outside of their geographical neighbors, the anarchist communities are left alone because they're seen as less of a threat.
By the marxist definition of the state, they are a state.
Rojava, and many anarchists, aren't marxists, so I don't think they'd care much about marxist definitions.
The fact is, anarchism is very diverse in its values and goals, and many anarchists disagree about what is and is not "real" anarchism. In my opinion, gatekeeping anarchism is pretty lame.
It worked, and if it doesn't, neither did Leninism, since the USSR isn't around and every AES states are far away from communism.
also your reasoning is wrong because you're measuring success in terms of taking state power which anarchists are specifically against.
Revolutionary Catalunya isn't around anymore but until it was, it managed to defend itself against both the fascists and sectarian violence and it's decay - to big surprise - started when they decided to seize the government.
But if you insist to making a dick measuing contest out of this as most MLs tend to do, the book provides examples of anarchy woking that were formed well before the Russian Revolution, so that doesn't really stand either.
foreign aggressors that will intervene after the revolution
They're not going to wait that long, they'll intervene during the revolution. So any anarchist revolution that succeeds has already proven to be militarily capable of resisting foreign aggression. Military organization/defence is obviously not antithetical to anarchism.
large scale distribution / planning is needed to industrialize
Syndicalism specifically and anarchism generally isn't against confederation and large scale organization, otherwise all anarchists would be egoists. We just reject the state as the means to do it.
The key word here that anarchists have a beef with in regards to a Transitory State, is "State". While you may think of the transition state as either a condition of being or a government anarchists object to the later. A transition period is fine by us but to anarchists this period is marked with prefiguration to our ideal communist society; because as the anarchist idiom goes, "The means by which we achieve our ends, will invariably determine what they will actually look like". This emphasis on prefiguration is important here to avoid the revolution's regression to capitalism as seen in the Soviet Union and China
I'm not well informed enough on defence but looking at Rojava and especially the EZLN shows that you don't need a hierarchical chain of command to defend the revolution.
legit question and please suggest a book if it answers this, how do you go from a revolution to full communism without a transitory state? In all likely hood there will be foreign aggressors that will intervene after the revolution, how do you have a defense?
How does it work in places were large scale distribution / planning is needed to industrialize (USSR/Maoist China)
There's a great book that seeks to answer these sorts of simple questions about anarchism, I highly recommend you check it out. Each chapter is a self-contained answer to a specific question, asked by the chapter title.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
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You might not be intending it to be this way, but this is just a tired mindless attack, the same one your average chud makes against any form of communism. If your definition of valid forms of society includes only ones which have successfully overthrown capitalism in a modern state and stayed that way to the current day, then capitalism is the only valid way to arrange society.
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Are you really surprised that anarchist communities tend to be smaller in scale? My understanding of anarchist values would lead me to assume a smaller scale, less centralized existence. I think many anarchists would consider these positives.
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The argument your making is no better than the one made by bourgeois capitalists to "disprove" communism.
Just remember, we're fighting the same fight, and there's no reason existing communist countries and existing anarchist communities can't work together. Zapatistas seem to have figured out leftist unity.
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In the US, yeah, but generally many European countries had much more successful revolutionary groups than a relatively short lived movement with 8k members in a country of 300 million, and most of Europe is generally considered part of the imperial core.
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Unions aren't a group, or an organization, or a movement. However you can look at who is organizing unions etc, and the presence of anarchists in organized labour is pretty much 0 in most European countries, unlike communists.
Lots of anarchist groups had the same success the BPP had
Not really. Especially not in the US.
Where in Europe do you live? Because in most European countries in the 20th century it was marxist communists who had any kind of success at all ever, as opposed to anarchists, unless you take into account Catalonia which was before the war and had nothing to do with modern anarchy, in which case you'd also have to take into account all the partisans all over Europe, the communists in Spain, and the (failed) revolutions that happened.
I think most anarchists favor anarchism over marxism for ideological reasons, so using practicality-based arguments might not appeal to most anarchists.
I think there's room in the world for both, and perhaps each is more capable in certain places.
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Well, the way I see it is that the most effective method for achieving communism in China is marxism, and the most effective method for achieving communism in Chiapas is anarchism; both evidenced by the fact that their attempts to fight back against capitalism worked, and the rest of the world's attempts have failed. I think pretending there's gonna be one blueprint that's "the most effective" everywhere is naïve.
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Anarchism has a considerably stronger track record in Chiapas. Anarchism has a considerably stronger track record in Smangus. I don't understand this obsession with picking one global economic system.
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Smangus is a really cool indigenous, Christian anarchist community in Taiwan. I think Smangus is a great example for how we can fight against capitalism in other Christian communities; their movement toward anarchism was a spiritual one as much as an economic one.
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Their biggest industry is tourism. 🙂
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Nothing has ever seen long-term or large-scale success, if you uncharitably tweak the definitions of long-term and large-scale.
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Sorry, they haven't lasted long enough to be long-term, and they're not big enough to be large-scale.
I, too, can use meaningless filler terms with definitions only I know while insisting I'm arguing in good faith.
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You sound like Matthew Yglesias.
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It means your arguments sound like those made by bourgeois capitalists.
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😑
I said your argument sounded like bourgeois capitalist arguments, not that it was the same exact argument. It's called a simile. Obviously capitalists use the argument to defend capitalism, not communism. Have you never encountered a capitalist using the argument that capitalism is good because it brings people out of poverty (a term defined by capitalists)?
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For starters, the definition of poverty being used is $1.90 per day, which is obviously not a reasonable goal.
I'd also challenge the very idea of judging success based on measurements that are fundamentally at odds with anarchism, like how much money one has. Are people in Rojava materially better off than they were before Rojava? Yeah. Are people in Chiapas materially better off than they were before the Zapatistas? Yeah. The fact that China made people's lives materially better is the success, not raising them out of poverty.
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Poverty is a definition based on a monetary system. Communism (and anarchism) hope for a moneyless future. I don't think using capitalist-defined measures like poverty is a good method for assessing the health and growth of non-capitalist societies.
Plus, it's just such a small amount of money. Personally, I'm fighting for much more lofty goals than $1.90 per day.
There's been dozens of successful Marxist-Leninist revolutions. It took the US half a century of unparalleled economic, military, diplomatic and propagandistic efforts to wear these states down, states that without exception where undeveloped, impoverished, largely illiterate backwaters either suffering under despotic monarchs, a colonial extractive economy or both before the communists came along, and not only did most of them hold out against the biggest superpower in the world for decades while making substantial headway in improving material conditions, the yanqui swine still haven't succeeded in their effort against China, the DPRK, Cuba and Vietnam. There's good, valid criticisms from the left of all of these states and how far they've actually come in building AES, but denying their successes in their entirity because they didn't immediately implement full communism, ignoring the sacking of the bourgeoise class in these countries and saying that capitalism is the only game in town and that our only alternative would be some totally different approach that just has never been tried yet, that these projects are "not actually socialism", is a form of capitalist realism. Please stop adopting chuds "socialism doesn't work" arguments. Of course socialism does work, there would have been no need for a Cold War if it wouldn't. If even the transitionary stage of socialism wasn't a massive, vital threat to capitalism, if communist revolutions would be as pointless in overcoming cpaitalism as you are stating, why would capital bother to fight tooth and nail against this?
please take a step back and appreciate the irony
Look, it's not really an own if you need to put words in my mouth to make your argument work. I didn't argue against anarchism at all, i was arguing for socialism, which you are dismissing in exactly the same way as some chud or neolib - by saying that there has never been a viable alternative to capitalism. But there has been, and there is.
yes you did
no im not
i fully, unironically support the DPRK you fucking clown
take your disingenuous bullshit somewhere else. your arguments are chud-tier, your walls of text hurt my eyes.
Dude, wtf? Are you always like this?
impatient toward disingenuous sectarian bullshit by extremely online debate nerds? yes. thats a good thing.
I think one problem is that by its very nature anarchism is less obvious in its existence. The existing anarchist communities (Rojava, Zapatistas, Smangus to name a few) aren't themselves states, but exist within states. Because of this it's easy to think that China is "working" better than the anarchist examples just because it has more power, especially when coming from the point of view of someone raised in the west where nations are seen as the building blocks of our societal structure. But this doesn't mean anarchism hasn't worked, it just means that anarchism and Marxism-Leninism work differently than each other when implemented (:shocked-pikachu:).
And I think there are advantages to not standing out, not making it obvious that you're growing an alternative to capitalism. China is and has been a target of capitalist nations since it became communist. On the other hand, outside of their geographical neighbors, the anarchist communities are left alone because they're seen as less of a threat.
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Like this American anarchist? Rojava is inspired in part by American anarchism.
Rojava, and many anarchists, aren't marxists, so I don't think they'd care much about marxist definitions.
The fact is, anarchism is very diverse in its values and goals, and many anarchists disagree about what is and is not "real" anarchism. In my opinion, gatekeeping anarchism is pretty lame.
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I think this is wishful thinking, but as ong as you see Rojava as a success, i won't argue,
Well, to that I point to the EZLN, going strong for over 3 decades, maybe even expanding and unlike China, didn't regress into capitalism.
It worked, and if it doesn't, neither did Leninism, since the USSR isn't around and every AES states are far away from communism.
also your reasoning is wrong because you're measuring success in terms of taking state power which anarchists are specifically against.
Revolutionary Catalunya isn't around anymore but until it was, it managed to defend itself against both the fascists and sectarian violence and it's decay - to big surprise - started when they decided to seize the government.
But if you insist to making a dick measuing contest out of this as most MLs tend to do, the book provides examples of anarchy woking that were formed well before the Russian Revolution, so that doesn't really stand either.
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tfw you read 1 paragraph + 1 sentence and accidentally give that away
what fucking chud told you anarchism is when no organization?
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They're not going to wait that long, they'll intervene during the revolution. So any anarchist revolution that succeeds has already proven to be militarily capable of resisting foreign aggression. Military organization/defence is obviously not antithetical to anarchism.
Syndicalism specifically and anarchism generally isn't against confederation and large scale organization, otherwise all anarchists would be egoists. We just reject the state as the means to do it.
The key word here that anarchists have a beef with in regards to a Transitory State, is "State". While you may think of the transition state as either a condition of being or a government anarchists object to the later. A transition period is fine by us but to anarchists this period is marked with prefiguration to our ideal communist society; because as the anarchist idiom goes, "The means by which we achieve our ends, will invariably determine what they will actually look like". This emphasis on prefiguration is important here to avoid the revolution's regression to capitalism as seen in the Soviet Union and China
I'm not well informed enough on defence but looking at Rojava and especially the EZLN shows that you don't need a hierarchical chain of command to defend the revolution.