communism

[Deleted]

It’s been some time since I’ve read Ecology of Freedom but seriously just read Origin of the Family and Dialectic of Nature by Engels. You’ll be much better off

[dmk]

Here's a better question. Fuck, marry, or kill between Marx, Engels, and Lenin?

[Magnum P.P.]

fuck marx marry engels kill lenin

[Deleted]

Jesus Christ dude don’t do this to me

[Magnum P.P.]

kill trotsky too

[beowulf]

I'm marrying sugar daddy Engels

[johnny two cool]

sean can do the communism and I’ll just kinda roll with it. Personally, I will stay on the pessimistic pseudo-Hegelian side as I am deeply suspicious of all attempts to render the world as it is in thought

[Deleted]

Jan 26, 2024 15:38:41 GMT -5 johnny two cool said:

suspicious of all attempts to render the world as it is in thought

SAME

You ever read Todd McGowan talk about Marx in this way? I don't know if he ever fleshes it out in writing, maybe in that Emancipation After Hegel book and I've just forgot, but he talks for some time on a Why Theory episode about this communist notion, higher state socialism in Marx, overcoming contradiction itself... suspicious if you ask me! There is clearly so much to be said about that, but I'm willing to walk down that road with him.

We're also talking about something that is highly under-theorized, let alone so far away from in any practical sense. Owl of Minerva and all that.

[johnny two cool]

Nah, I haven’t. I’m getting better at reading again, but I has a period of time when it was very difficult outside of a structured environment.

Any high-falootin speculation about hypothetical political systems turns me off. A lot of times, it’s sloppy and anachronistic, and I am just not convinced that it is possible to determine what a putatively rational agent would will when considered in isolation/abstraction from institutions. If that makes sense.

[Tstigz]

It doesn’t haha

[Deleted]

I wen't turbo nerd back there my bad ha haaaaaaaaaaaa

I agree largely, that's why I'm more interested in the "labor vouchers" side of things concerning how we actually move toward socialism.

[accidentalcharm]

I wen't to my niece’s first communism.

I’m not Catholic though so I didn’t get any wine or wafer

[meatballmaniac]

yo wtf are you guys talking about

[Deleted]

let us "cook!!"

[johnny two cool]

Jan 26, 2024 15:59:27 GMT -5 Tstigz said:

It doesn’t haha

Come to my office hours

[johnny two cool]

Jan 26, 2024 16:00:47 GMT -5 @notsean said:

I wen't turbo nerd back there my bad ha haaaaaaaaaaaa

I agree largely, that's why I'm more interested in the "labor vouchers" side of things concerning how we actually move toward socialism.

Would you like to read a paper I wrote that is not about communism but is about Geist, sean?

[Tstigz]

[Ted Mujint]

I work in buildings in NYC. There is no chance in hell can anarchist 'society' can get that many millions of people to work and back home to their loved ones on time every day.

And I unironically support centralizing all road planning to NYC. Have you ever driven a 13-foot truck through the South before? I don't understand how one could even thought up some of those loopy ass road designs.

[johnny two cool]

How many anarchists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Trick question they do not have lightbulbs lol

[Cholo Molester]

The debates between Anarchists and Marxists in the first international were instrumental in the development of both schools of thought and as such in how both movements organized themselves. The fundamental Marxist text on the subject of authority was authored as a result of these debates; “On Authority” by Marx’s closest theoretical ally Fredrick Engels. Historically Marxists have used this text to guide their ideas about the subject, specifically in regard to the state. From the point of view espoused by Engels authority itself is not negative, but can be positive if used by specific groups for a specific end. In the case of state authority Engels and Marxists after him argue that if it is created by and for the working class against the capitalist class within the class struggle then this authority becomes a weapon of the workers for their emancipation.

SPOILER: Click to show

Anarchists have always maintained “anti-authoritarianism” which means that they oppose what they have referred to as “authority” in all circumstances, rather than viewing it as a tool which can be used for negative, or positive outcomes. For Anarchists this included state authority which they always conceived as a coercive mechanism that forced exploitation by the capitalist class on to the working class. Engels argues against “anti-authoritarianism” as such.

In Engels view “anti-authoritarianism” is a childish over-reaction to a multifaceted social question. If we oppose authority in every instance then we can 1; not properly carry out the operation of day to day life in a society and 2; not properly carry out the task of a socialist revolution against capitalism.

It is pretty obvious that in order to maintain a functioning society people need to exert force over things. They need to operate the railroads and trains to make them run on time, they need to organize factories to produce the needed products on time, ect. ect.. Engels argues that this is “authority”. By exerting physical force over the railroads and trains we are in effect exerting our “authority” over them. “Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?”

For Engels the Anarchist desire to abolish authority is ridiculous. All practical organization of society would be rendered impossible if authority was to be abolished. “We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.”

So the question is, are “the anti-authoritarians” , as Engels refers to Anarchists, really so ridiculous as to not recognize the authority exerted in social organization over things and even people? To answer this question we have to understand what Anarchists mean when they say “Authority”.

When Anarchists rail against authority they are typically railing against a specific kind of authority, rather than authority in the abstract. Specifically the authority most prominent in our lives as members of a hierarchical class society. The authority of rulers over the ruled. The authority that capitalists impose over workers by monopolizing social production as their private property, the authority that the state imposes over society by creating and enforcing laws and regulations that establish and protect the claim capitalists have to social production, the authority of the family relations that allow men to control women in order to saddle women with the housework that reproduces the lives of the working class, ect. ect.. Here it is useful to quote an article from the Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin on the same subject written not long before Engels’ piece. “The most stubborn authorities must admit that then there will be no need either of political organisation or direction or legislation, three things which, whether they eminate from the will of the soverign or from the vote of a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and even should they conform to the system of natural laws – which has never been the case and never will be the case – are always equally fatal and hostile to the liberty of the masses from the very fact that they impose on them a system of external and therefore despotic laws.” “The Liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatsoever, divine or human, collective or individual.”

This explanation makes clear that when Anarchists say they are against authority what they mean is that they are against the domination of one person by another, the rigid and hierarchical control of the mass of people by a bureaucracy, the exploitative power that bosses hold over workers, the misogynist restriction that men impose on women through patriarchal social norms. But what do Anarchists have to say about the authority that is exerted for practical purposes in social organization? Let us again turn to Bakunin. “Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their apinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.” “I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I receive and I give – such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subbordination.”

Here we can see that Bakunin recognizes authority that is based on expertise, efficiency, and practical social organization, precisely the authority that Engels accuses Anarchists of rejecting. Anarchists want an efficient, large scale, organized society created through the free agreement of associated people and as such accept the authority of delegation, expertise, and natural laws. We can then safely conclude that Engels’ assertions about Anarchists ignoring the need for practical authority in social organization are fundamentally wrong.

Authority In Revolution

Engels also argues that without authority a revolution against capitalism can not be carried out. He exclaims “Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution?!” and goes on to describe how when workers rise up against their oppressors they will arm themselves and exert supreme coercive and forceful authority over them with canons, bayonets, ect.. “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?” So then how do Anarchists conceive of revolution?

Anarchists are fully aware that a revolution against capitalism will mean that the working class overthrows the capitalist class by force and uses the same force to destroy the reactionary forces aiming to preserve capitalist society. In the 1936 social revolution in Spain lead by Anarchist unions, the CNT and FAI, the working class took up arms and forcibly suppressed an attempted coup by Francoist Fascists forcing them to flee the country. In this social revolution the Anarchist Buenaventura Durruti lead armed Anarchists in a fight against the Fascist reactionary forces. The question then is whether this revolutionary force of the masses of people is in contradiction with opposition to authority.

We have already established that Anarchists only oppose the kind of authority which is imposed from above through the domination and exploitation of people by other people. In this sense, to reverse Enegels’ statement, a revolution is the most anti-authoritarian thing there is. When the masses of working people rise up to take possession of the production which they operate every day, when they destroy the state that exists to forcibly prevent them from taking this action, when women challenge and reorganize social relations to create equality between genders in the place of patriarchy, the hierarchical domination of people by people is being destroyed through the free organization of those formerly subjugated to said domination. Anarcho-syndicalist Rudolf Rocker illustrates this point well when he contrasts the Marxist view of revolution to the Anarchist one. “We already know that a revolution cannot be made with rosewater. And we know, too, that the owning classes will never yield up their privileges spontaneously. On the day of victorious revolution the workers will have to impose their will on the present owners of the soil, of the subsoil and of the means of production, which cannot be done — let us be clear on this — without the workers taking the capital of society into their own hands, and, above all, without their having demolished the authoritarian structure which is, and will continue to be, the fortress keeping the masses of the people under dominion. Such an action is, without doubt, an act of liberation; a proclamation of social justice; the very essence of social revolution, which has nothing in common with the utterly bourgeois principle of dictatorship.”

Does Engels Have a Leg To Stand On?

The investigation of his arguments we have done here shows us that, in fact, he didn’t. It is clear from the text that Engels did no real investigation into the positions of “the anti-authoritarians”. He finds himself in debates with anti-authoritarians such as Bakunin and feels the need to respond and to do this pulls his own prejudices about the anti-authoritarian point of view out of a hat, regardless of any relation they have to the actual views of the anti-authoritarians. He compares the hierarchical domination and exploitation that Anarchists oppose to practical social organization between freely associated people, and then, even worse, the overthrow of these systems of exploitation and domination to said systems themselves. It’s high time this little bit of Marxist common sense be discarded.

[johnny two cool]

It sounds like Bakunin is describing the modern liberal democratic state lol

[Magnum P.P.]

pretty bizarre that people that call themselves communists seemingly cannot even fathom a world without the state 🤔

[johnny two cool]

I am not a communist. Isn't the term that Marx/Engels use "aufhebung"? Which would mean that the the state's functions would be "pocketed." I dunno, haven't read a ton of Marx, but that doesn't give anyone a particularly clear understanding.

Like, I don't know if Marxists have (or need) an answer to questions like, "Okay, well, under communism, how will rural areas receive the resources necessary to build and maintain infrastructure?" At least in nominally communist societies, that has been done by the state just as it is done in many if not most developed capitalist countries.

[Cholo Molester]

If you wanna get literal then Marx didn't define the state beyond a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie, that obviously doesn't mean that the state would always default to being that, but I can see why some anarchists think Marxism can only function without a state. Tbh Engels and Weydemyer both do a great job at laying out the need for a state, especially Engels who basically argued that the state emerged as a product of class antagonisms, particularly with the advent of private property. He contended that in primitive communist societies, there was no need for a state, as there were no significant class divisions, however, as private property developed, so did class distinctions and conflicts.

[Deleted]

Hell yes!!!!!!!!!!! LFG

[johnny two cool]

Luckily, I'm doing a lot of boring citation and figure-finding this afternoon, so I was able to skim a solid source here. I also feel like I get the Critique of the Gotha Program a bit better now.

Marx's anarchistic concessions, delivered on polemical occasions, are direct but epigrammatic and do not pretend to complete the anarchist vision with the necessary political and economic implementations; in fact, he showed little interest in the forms of future institutions, and it is significan that the theory of the "withering away" of the state was propounded not by him but by Engels; in so far, however, as Marx sketched, in broad strokes, the outlines of socialist society, he insisted on the need of centralization and authority, and indeed implied the possibility of a state organization. Altogether, therefore, he seems to me to be closer to the liberal tradition than to formal anarchism. His scheme for the future may be regarded as another
embodiment of the liberal idea, although it was a novel and revolutionary one. He agreed with the liberals in rejecting the dogma that all authority whatever is evil. With them he distinguished a realm of freedom and a realm of coercion. He agreed with the liberals in establishing such matters as conscience and thought in the historic realm of freedom. But whereas economic liberals of his day included in that realm the activities of business and industry, Marx submitted those activities to pervasive regulation and integration.

In sum, the weight of the evidence is rather against an anarchist interpretation of the doctrine of Marxism, as that doctrine was defined by its principal author

Bloom, Solomon F. “The ‘Withering Away’ of the State.” Journal of the History of Ideas 7, no. 1 (1946): 113–21. doi.org/10.2307/2707273.

[Magnum P.P.]

Jan 26, 2024 19:30:15 GMT -5 johnny two cool said:

Luckily, I'm doing a lot of boring citation and figure-finding this afternoon, so I was able to skim a solid source here. I also feel like I get the Critique of the Gotha Program a bit better now.

Marx's anarchistic concessions, delivered on polemical occasions, are direct but epigrammatic and do not pretend to complete the anarchist vision with the necessary political and economic implementations; in fact, he showed little interest in the forms of future institutions, and it is significan that the theory of the "withering away" of the state was propounded not by him but by Engels; in so far, however, as Marx sketched, in broad strokes, the outlines of socialist society, he insisted on the need of centralization and authority, and indeed implied the possibility of a state organization. Altogether, therefore, he seems to me to be closer to the liberal tradition than to formal anarchism. His scheme for the future may be regarded as another
embodiment of the liberal idea, although it was a novel and revolutionary one. He agreed with the liberals in rejecting the dogma that all authority whatever is evil. With them he distinguished a realm of freedom and a realm of coercion. He agreed with the liberals in establishing such matters as conscience and thought in the historic realm of freedom. But whereas economic liberals of his day included in that realm the activities of business and industry, Marx submitted those activities to pervasive regulation and integration.

In sum, the weight of the evidence is rather against an anarchist interpretation of the doctrine of Marxism, as that doctrine was defined by its principal author

Bloom, Solomon F. “The ‘Withering Away’ of the State.” Journal of the History of Ideas 7, no. 1 (1946): 113–21. doi.org/10.2307/2707273.

sounds an awful lot like social democracy to me!

[johnny two cool]

Tomato tomatoe

[dmk]

Jan 26, 2024 17:53:38 GMT -5 Ted Mujint said:

I work in buildings in NYC. There is no chance in hell can anarchist 'society' can get that many millions of people to work and back home to their loved ones on time every day.

And I unironically support centralizing all road planning to NYC. Have you ever driven a 13-foot truck through the South before? I don't understand how one could even thought up some of those loopy ass road designs.

I can't help you if you can't see a world without the state, but the only revolution in North America that actually overthrew the government in the last 50 years was anarchist led. EZLN is obviously in a delicate moment right now with the cartels, but they've sustained themselves for 30 years, and it's not like the state has stopped the cartels either.

And good luck convincing some guy working at a factory in Mississippi that waiting a week to hear back from the central committee won't create disillusionment. One of the biggest issues in the Soviet Union was running on Moscow time, even if you were in say Kyiv or Estonia.

[johnny two cool]

Cool, so now that we’ve exhaustively established that dmk does not know what the modern state is, doesn’t understand why it exists, and more or less completely fails to understand what it even does…

We can make a move to develop this thread as one of the most peaceful, civil, and productive on board.

With that established, here’s something good I found while looking for something else:

www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute-old/pdf/BourgeoisPhilosphy.pdf

I really like Pippin’s writing, and I think you will find it worthwhile.