Can someone give me a quick rundown on anarcho-anything positions? It all sounds like it will turn into Mogadishu...

exactly what is undialectical about it?

what exactly is unrealistic about it?

there are already hundreds of these types of institutions around, all you have to do start building and advertising their proliferation. What it all depends on is your advertising.

Tell me how starting businesses is less realistic than

1) Armed revolution
2) Voting

?

Reformism in inherently agaisnt the diamat
again, reformism gets co-opted by the fat cats, who will let them have their little sliver until it threatens them
Voting?

Why does it seem that everyone on this board thinks that Marxism and Marxism-Leninism are interchangeable terms?

Historical Precedent? Marx did the "what", Lenin did the "how"

I'm not reforming anything, I'm building something new.

You can't co opt direct democracy without private property unless you directly subvert the democracy.

I'm not implying it, I'm stating it. It is wildly unrealistic to think that very soon you are going to have convinced all the liberals that in fact, they need to take arms against everything they currently believe, convince them not to go to college, but instead to start acts of violence in the streets.

You think is easier to convince people to abandon their entire lives to violence than it is to get them to start a collective?

Anarchism is what happens when you discover communism before you turn 18

No dude. Marxism-Leninism is Stalinism. It was Stalin's attempt at legitimizing what he was doing in the USSR by trying to connect it with Marx and Lenin. Marxism isn't Marxism-Leninism. Leninism isn't Marxism-Leninism. You guys should really read up about this stuff.

Yeh just look at this fucking little kiddie

That is exactly what they will do, look at bills like citizens united
The change won't come until it is materially necessary, and it will happen sooner than we think. Resources are running out.

and this one

and this one

and this one

In the context of this board:
ML means revolutionary action leading to socialism
Stalinism means tankie.

this meme needs to die

That's dumb. So an anarchist revolution would be described as ML? It's a revolutionary action.

it's jokes. i love you all!

well of course you are going to face opposition. So would an ARMED REVOLUTION, most likely, and armed opposition, backed by tanks, and fighter jets, and drones. Suppose you manage to convince 50% of Americans that getting out their old hunting rifle is a good idea, the US army could and would wipe them out with impunity. You don't think they aren't itching?

As opposed to, starting a network of co-operatives and highering some tutors to go into schools for free before you branch out and buy housing etc

Nope, anarchists want to abolish the state, so no socialism

So you don't think, right now, it materially necessary for the people of the world to rise up?

It has been materially necessary since Marx's own time and has only got worse. What are you saying fams? How much worse does it have to get?

building a strong co-op sector is a good thing, and will help to provide an example for organization when the revolution happens.
But for the final push, the abolition of class and transfer of power to more democratic organizations, we are going to have to kill some folks

I dunno, but my guess is that the first world will have to experience a drop in living conditions, This will probably happen as countries like China and India experience rising conditions, and there's not enough jelly to cover the bread.

at that point, why would you have to assume control of the state if you had the democratic institutions already in place to take on its roles?

it has been experiencing a drop in living conditions since the 70's

because the transition will be ugly. You think people who have enough money to hire armies (and already have the structure, in mercenary companies like the former Blackwater) will just give us their class position willingly?

Absolutely true. Right now we are seeing the birth pangs of class consciousness in america, as it is being subverted into blaming the other, blaming the govt instead of business, etc.

yes but assuming that the war is won at this point, after the ugliness, why keep the state when you already have a network of democratic institutions?

like, ML or anarchist, you are going to have to win the same war.

also, I don't actually see it like that, under what pretext are they going to openly attack what is just a network of small businesses and services provided freely to the public?

The aim is to be providing services for free, you think the public is going to be on the side of a state that has made it illegal to provide free teaching and nursing?

Wrong, just because Stalin was ML doesn't make all ML Stalinism

And every Soviet leadership thereafter and Socialists outside the Soviet Union did the same thing

except that this is wrong. non-revisionist marxists condemn stalin's purges and cult of personality, the ones that hold stalin infallible is hoxhaists and maoists.

while stalin was the one that coined the term marxist-leninist, it doesn't mean what it meant in 1950

because that will lead to balkanization, leaving the generals holding the reins

I'm saying these institutions will not wield enough real power to stop any counter-revolutionary or sectarian forces, whether military or political

only that isn't a democratic federation then. Also, again, what you are describing, where the generals are left in charge, has literally been the result of every ML revolution??

I know that is what you are saying, but why not? We are assuming an outright civil war here, between a federation of democratic businesses and the state, who have trumped up some whacky pretext and are attacking their own citizens so they can stop them giving out free teachers.

So, at what point would they do this? When you have 25% of the economy under your control and are feeding the homeless everywhere and rehabilitating drug addicts?

or at 50% when you have housed the homeless and are opening you own hospitals?

Pretty sure the state attacking such an organisation would lead to mass consciousness pretty quick.

You've got to remember that people don't like upheaval in their own town. In the middle east its fine, but the state will have to convince the people its in their interest to block the morning traffic with tanks.

and in this case, when the state attacks you, why would having a vanguard party help you to fair any better against these institutions? You still have almost no weaponary, particularly in Europe, and are against well trained soldiers.

So assuming this war was won, somehow, why after that, would you choose to keep the state when you could just had power to the already in place network of co-operatives and soviets?

if 25% of the economy was controlled, Porky would damn well take notice
This is a valid point, but a state gives us at least some chance of preventing it by giving us a familiar method of organization. These groups would eventually become a state anyway, just a more locally based one.

M-L endorses "socialism in one country" which is a specifically Stalinist line of thinking that isn't a feature of any other type of Marxism that wasn't a spin-off of M-L.

Of course, but, you would actually be doing them a service. You really think all those conservatives are going to be able to convince people its a bad thing you got people off drugs/ the streets?

> by giving us a familiar method of organization

how on earth would emulating the bourg state go any way towards making sure one doesn't happen again?

>These groups would eventually become a state anyway, just a more locally based one.

No, because they wouldn't be bound by constitutional powers, they would have come about in such a way that organisations only ever fulfilled a purpose and only existed to fill this purpose. That doesn't require enforcement, because it is in the interest of everyone involved to keep it going.

This is the key, you take privatised, atomized neoliberal goals and in their place you put communal goals, the result is communal activity. This isn't a theory, there is a great wealth of evidence to support this.

What you would have is a network of completely autonomous businesses whose only relation to other businesses is through mutual community projects or other voluntary associations. Thus interest groups would come together to discuss only the advancement of projects, not the direction of society as a whole.

your argument just ate itself, senpai

In what way? I'm saying M-L is explicitly Stalinist. Proof of which is that M-L and it's offshoots like MLM are the only people who support Stalin's socialism in one country meme.

Look at what they are able to convince people of right now, political strategists are sneaky weasels
As they provide more services, and garner more esteem, their power and influence will grow to the point where they basically become a state
This is the hardest part, and exactly why a state is needed to safeguard the revolution. Will it become too powerful and controlling? maybe, and I'm probably not smart enough to figure out how to divide the powers enough to prevent it.

ML (in the context of this board) is not stalinist.
You are conflating stalinisim with ML, and then using that to argue against stalinism, and therefore ML
That's when the snake ate its own tail

I don't really care about an imageboards snowflake definition of Stalinism and M-L.

Lurk more, faggot
It's shorthand, to figure out your stance on praxis and theory

Difference between convincing people that capitalism is better than muh 80 gorillion or that homeless people are homeless because they are stupid, and convincing the armed forces of the working class to act against the organisation that helped out their junky cousin and is caring for their old nan, when that organisation has offered not so much as a threat of violence?

who is the "they" you refer to here? Groups of people working on individual projects? How would they change it so that instead of autonomous federation they were in charge?

You divide the powers absolutely, that's how, you get rid of private ownership and then put in place a democracy at the most basic level of society, that of labour and production, you divide the power down so far that each individual has the freedom of their own labour, in that case, nobody has a reason to demand the curtailing of freedoms of another, for they have it for themselves already.

Without private property what do they have to gain by centralising power?

Okay, so extreme division of power: What about defense? Assuming the revolution is not world-wide all at once, what prevents these autonomous associations from being overrun by other interests, or banding together to do the same?
I agree with the principle of the organizations, but it's just a state under another name.
Socialism does not necessarily mean central control of everything, but some things are better organized on a larger level than the local, such as defense, transportation, and technology

Defence would be a public project like anything else. I imagine most workers would see the benefit of their co-op contributing to the defence of the network and vote accordingly. In terms of military organisation I'm a fan of pirate ship democracy, that is, most pirate captains were elected and given direct control only in battle or storm situations and these powers were immediately revoked in any none military or storm situations, these agreements worked because the captain will always be outnumbered. At least according the the author of Villains of All Nations, this is how most piracy worked in practice. Also important was the position of the quartermaster, who was in charge of the ships resources and did not answer to the captain. This division of powers was intentional.

I would imagine an anarchist militia would adopt similar principles, so that in the moment an individual can make split section decisions but their powers are strictly administrative and applied situationally so that they had no way over reach.

So, for a period of war, either the militia itself or the network as a whole would elect a leader for that period. Afterwards, the leader would be commended and return to normal, whatever that was.

just because it is decentralised does not mean it can't be multi-regional, there is no reason regions cannot agree to share projects where it will mutually benefit them. Indeed, they will do so only where it will do so and never when it does not so. The point is, as a decentralized process, it is highly unlikely that a contributing party would become exploited, as they would have the power to dissociate. By this token mutual projects would only ever be mutually beneficial. Basically, I believe the free market is true, but only when you have removed private property. It cannot be free while the few hold the real economic power, if that power is divided absolutely then each becomes free to make only those decisions which benefit them.

The right libs are right in a sense, but they imagine a world where there are no other factors influencing decisions besides personal wants and needs, which is completely false. The aim should be to provide this endlessly self pleasing utopia they imagine, and this can only be done with the democratisation of the means of production

also there are examples of decentralised militias being highly effective fighting forces littered throughout history

So what you are proposing sounds a lot like the soviet councils. While the situation was more complex in Russia, it will be equally complex in any place. The simple fact is that more conglomeration of power, whether economic, military or political will create another hierarchy, and states will first band together to defend themselves, then conglomerate to gain advantage. States will again develop. This can only be prevented by removing the material conditions of inequality FIRST. We have the same goal, but disagree on the timing. Anarchists want to skip a step, and I get it, that would be nice. That's why it's utopian. Anarchists argue for what ought to be, socialists see a future that is inevitable, and has cycled throughout human history.

*councils will band together, not states
*marxists see a future, not all socialists

You haven't actually said anything new here, you've really just restated objections I have already answered, but then called me utopian at the end.

Why are so you concerned about a state reforming when what you want to do is create a state?

If a new "state" as you call it, forms, that is truly democratic and a workers state, made up of federations, that controlled resources democratically, I would really see no problem with that, we would be a lot further forward then we are now, and a lot further forward than ML has ever taken us.

I believe such a 'state' where the means of production are under the control of the workers and they are empowered to collaborate on mutually beneficial projects, like mechanised farming and such would in fact be the final step before we democratically worked out the FALC.

and this is simply a platitude with no basis, its just how you like to see yourself.

and all of this time has been you questioning me, so where is the evidence that ML states every actually whither away?

I agree with a lot of that, the only difference is timing, it seems.
The problem with the ideas you're espousing is that it relies on a lot of reform under the current system, and this will be opposed by porky at each step of the way, as it grows slowly.
I agree that this is the hardest part of the idea to understand, and don't necessarily believe that it will be that easy.
The presence of a state exists to perpetuate itself, and it would be a hard-fought victory to abolish it, or let it wither.
The idea, under ML, is that the state simply becomes redundant, its goals already achieved by other, better organizations.
I am not so optimistic, but I believe that any revolution is very likely to be taken over by those who value personal interest over theory. Thus, the revolution must be safeguarded by an entity powerful enough to minimize splintering.
This is the state, which need not be completely centralized. Without it, we will be right back where we started. The councils would devolve into sectarian bickering amongst themselves, and the resulting power vacuum would leave the door open for warlords, opportunists, and another class of bourgy.