Why do Ancoms hate marxism so much? They do realize that Marxism is different from Leninism and Marxism-Leninism, right...

It's more complicated than that. They have very different definitions of the state. By the anarchist definition of the state, Pannekoek, Bordiga, and Dauve were all anarchists, and by Marx's definition of the state, all social anarchists (Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc.) argued for Marxist praxis. Moreover, they come from the exact opposite ends of the theory-praxis dichotomy which both intend to abolish and which both fail to except for where they converge in communization. Marxism has always had better theory in the sense that they make a wide-ranging critique of actually-existing conditions and then try to artificially develop a praxis to suit it, whereas anarchist praxis is far more organic and generally precedes theory. That isn't to say that one side hasn't tried to integrate the approaches of the other into its own action - council communism had its praxis develop organically into something fixed in a way more similar to anarchist schools of thought while failing to truly synthesize the two, and Kropotkin attempted in "The Conquest Of Bread"

I've recently been reading "Eclipse And Reemergence Of The Communist Movement", and I have to say, it is one of the best books which I have read - it is the beginning of an idea to rebirth leftism in the modern world as a definitive analog to Marx or Kropotkin or any of the other great thinkers of past leftism. What it lacks, however, is an attempt to move beyond dialectics as a metaphysical construct for translating "ought" to "is", although this is a topic which demands its own writing along the lines of Hegel's "The Phenomenology Of The Spirit". As I stated in the Empirical Marxism thread in my long article-like rants on dialectics, we need to have an empirically-derived metaphysics, a cybernetics and American Pragmatism-based metaphysical way of thinking which accounts for all of the levels and circuits and control relations within modern society. We need to reestablish an ultrapure class analysis and then find its ties, as a closed-loop system which attempts to self-maintain and self-adjust in the presence of real material changes which antagonize or support it, to existing concepts such as the Spectacle. The Enlightenment failed in the social realm and led to a great Fragmentation best characterized by modernism and postmodernism because it merely enlightened us to the many facets of the world and had no deduced metaphysical models such as a cybernetic understanding (arising from study of living organisms and machines) for connecting things together. This is best exemplified in how Marx attempted to draw together many facets of Enlightenment thought using a dialectical metaphysics and failed because they could not represent the real laws of motion of the system. To end the Fragmentation, we must have a philosophical Coalescence.

Until we do, communization will be half-blind in its attempts to integrate its own praxis into the very shifts of modern society which could give birth to communization's own self-replication as a real circumstance and growth. It seeks to create a new world in the shell of the old as it falls to pieces and births something totally unknown, but in order to do this, it must first understand the level upon sub-level upon sub-sub-level of causal events within the many spheres of political and social engagement which can be understood empirically as individual chains but which are nonsensical and overwhelming without metaphysics (fundamentally non-empirical).

Because they are liberals who strongly dislike capitalism.

Bakunin and Proudhon were harsh anti-semites as were many other leftists too(Herr Duhring).

Most non-jew whites were antisemitic during that time period.

lol not NEE-CHEE

As a Marxist, what's always turned me off from Anarchists is the Idealism that runs through a lot of the writers (As in, counter-posed to Marx's materialism).

From my brief reading of some of Kropotkin's stuff, he seems to think Communism is the logical conclusion of liberalizing trends in politics and leftward trends in economic thought. Just doesn't convince me like a Materialist analysis.

You're right. Anarchist should read more Marx.

comrade, what?

I don't.
Yeah, I started reading Marx when I saw leftcoms BTFOing MLs left and right.

im an ancol but i like marxists. I just fucking hate tankies

They hate what modern marxists have become, but more or less agree with the majority of marxism.

Because they're Idealists, they put their emphasis on a superstructural entity, the State, instead of the material circumstances behind it, the class necessity of it, and the relationship between both. To do so is to be inherently anti-Marxist.

They're closer to liberals who identify one or two institutions as the root of all evil, but a bit broader than usual in their target.

embarrassing tbh

epic trolling Holla Forumsro

There's a few anarchos that are still autistically LARPing as if it's the 19th century but most ancoms are basically anarcho-marxists

better get some dip for those narchos

It's completely incorrect to say the State is just another superstructural entity and not something much more unique and powerful. Without the state Capitalism couldn't have even been created, nor could it still exist.

Your kind of thinking is the same thinking of every ML state in existence, and they're all turned out the same way. It's not because they were all created and controlled by evil men, but because an institution built on force and coercion and who's entire existence is to perpetuate those things cannot ever possibly lead to human freedom. No longterm entity will ever try to limit or diminish it's grow, or deliberately try to kill itself.
It's not the institution that's the root of all evil, but the spooks behind it, authority being one of the most dangerous, considering that is the spook that has convinced the masses throughout history that it is wrong to rebel against their masses or that their masters know better than them.

Anarchists who hate Marx are much more likely to be Mutualists or some kind of anarcho individualist. Even post left anarchists take some things from Marxism(there is actually a connexion between post left anarchism and some strains of leftcommunism)

Speaking of Anarchism and Marxism, has there or is there actually any meaningful disagreements between them when it comes to economics? Ultimately it seems like all Leftism economics are actually just Marxist economics.

That's literally the definition of superstructure

Anarchists have long begun to integrate marxism, sadly most Marxists are either tankies or autistic dogmatics who havent done the same. There is a lot of common ground and overlap if you are willing to see it.

I don't think there's much of an anarchist "economics" outside mutualist fringes. Ancom critique of capitalism is mostly built on marxism, so you're pretty much right in your suspicions.

Dialectics presupposes being within the realm of a single idea in conflict with its own internal contradictions as it is driven to the brick wall of paradox by a system similar to reductio ad absurdum. What we need is a structure to deal with the real world and its many-sided relations as if they were a brain or a computer, the facets of this structure to be discovered by looking at what is useful to what. Until you have that as a basis for a critique attacking many different relations at multiple levels of society and revealing how they are connected in a hierarchical fashion (how does the Spectacle ultimately connect to material changes in the mode of production and thereby adapt to changes in it to maintain homeostasis? What's in-between? Are there contradictions in the self-regulating system of nature created by capitalism challenging certain aspects of it?), your critique can't accomplish anything.
As the modern day world has work permeating every corner of it and communization must therefore destroy it all to make way for the new, it must be conscious in at least a vague sense of the mechanisms by which all its targets are connected in order to determine scientifically what specifically it must do. To try to change everything at one as individual pieces is a Sisyphean task which must either end in dejected immediate failure or the drawn-out failure of becoming a lifestylist. It needs to happen to have a scientific socialism in this day and age.
tl;dr?
Cybernetics is a good starting candidate for a new metaphysical way of thinking because it's made to describe the control mechanisms of self-regulating systems.

This could solve the incompatibility of Marxism and anarchism by surpassing the flaws of both.

In Kropotkin's writings, there is a very mechanistic, strictly empirical streak which I believe Marxists would do well to integrate into their analysis. Marx, however, had the right broader mindset of trying to understand the system in metaphysical terms as something which never stood still and could always become something new depending on which contradictions were realized as an aufheben. How do we, however, integrate the understanding of different groups within a single relation resolving their contradictions by leading into something entirely new into a system little removed from a fully-empirical understanding of the actual relations between power structures.

Is there already a word for this? Has someone done this?

There are very real differences which prevent a full integration, the most important IMO being that Marx wouldn't give up on dialectics and had a tautological definition of why the state is always beholden to a ruling class.

Noam Chomsky seems like a reasonable guy imo

Explain.

There's always a way to coexist. From what i've seen, Ancoms generally agree with the class structure, the only disagreement is with this notion of the state and when socialism transitions into a stateless classless moneyless society.

I don't think that's correct.

Agreed.

I just think a lot of Ancoms are LARP'ers. Not all of them obviously, but a good portion.

I never understood why most marxists have to take the most dictatorial route.

Chomsky's Marx-illiterate. His video on what he thinks of Marx is "lol he's from the 19th century, therefore he can't be relevant, stop naming yourself after a guy because there's no such thing as Einsteinism".

I mean, I still like the guy - he is who got me into ansyn for several years before I read more and my experiences with my IWW local disappointed me. His views on Marx are uninformed, though.

The only ones who really hate marxism are 'marxist'-'leninists'

As an Ancom I don't hate Marxism at all. I've read more Marx and Engels than any anarchist thinker. But I also think there are more organic ways to introduce communism than the top down directives of a "dictatorship of the proletariat"

Jesus, it's telling how badly M-Ls have abused that term when someone thinks they can call the dictatorship of the proletariat a 'top-down' phenomenon.

Its original meaning is just 'the working class controlling society', but the fucking tankies have twisted it to mean rule by paranoid dictatorship. They pulled the same shit on the term 'vanguard' too.

Shut the fuck up, you retard. It is painfully obvious you are nowhere near to accomplishing anything.

...

It has nothing to do with tankies. Marx's method has resulted in nothing but state capitalist societies as of the present.

At least with Rojava they are not telling the people they need to socialize. The are simply allowing people to decide for themselves.

Which is fine so long as it is not co-opted, or becomes brutally repressive and centralized.

Mind correcting him?
t. other user

Ancoms come from middle class backgrounds and have never been without want their entire lives so it's no surprise they would hate the only realistic way of communism happening. It's just another button they can pin to their vest with all the other wicked cool indie band pins on it

Marx's method is exactly what the tankies had to distort and discard in order to pull off their horrendous shit, though. Hell, they even had to put most of Lenin's work through the ringer to support their bullshit. You simply can't trace tankie praxis back to Marx in anything more than a purely superficial sense. This is most obvious when you consider the comparative importance of the abolition of the Law of Value between Marx's understanding of revolution versus that of the tankies.

You've either put on a shitposting flag or are a nazi. Luckily the solution is the same either way: Neck yourself.

The obvious difference is that Marxists want to establish a massive, all-powerful, centralized socialist state to transition to full-communism. Anarchists rightly point out that such a State would have enormous power over the people, power that could be abused. It wouldn't really be a "dictatorship of the proletariat" as not everyone is going to be able to effectively weird state power. SO the result is a totalitarian quasi-fascist regime like we see in China/North Korea today and the USSR historically.

He's knocking down a strawman of his own creation.
He doesn't understand anything about the materialist conception of history, as if it weren't developed by Marx (and Engels) to provide this very means of dealing with the real world, although without attempting to do so as a computer. He believes that cybernetics is a fully fledged metaphysical system rather than a predecessor to modern bourgeois Operations Research. His entire post is a philosophical word salad ultimately without meaning to anyone but himself. How does capitalism create a self-regulating system of nature? What are the contradictions of this natural system? Nobody knows. This statement in particular
implies he has any idea of what flaws constitute both Marxism and anarchism. Does he name them? Of course not. He's a doofus with a big head.

Does he have any idea why Marx wanted to avoid mechanistic, overly empirical "streaks"? It's because of what he describes in the next sentence:
Except Marx didn't understand bourgeois social relations in a purely metaphysical way, while also avoiding the kind of rigid empiricism that characterizes the likes of Hume. He babbles something that appears insightful but really just leaves people confused upon closer inspection.

Does this vulgar synthesis resolve anything but the posters own need to look smart? No, it doesn't.

If you want to understand what Marx or the anarchists were talking about – read them. You'll avoid the fate of this guy.

Jesus, stop getting all of your ideas about MArx from fucking Stalin, dude.

The concept of a dictatorship of the proletariat is inherently flawed. No matter how democratic it is, any system where someone else has the power to decide how much your labour is worth (aka "From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution" aka lower stage of communism) is going to be dictatorial.

t. used to be an avid Marxist

This, a dictatorship of the proletariet is in itself authoritarian (something I think Engels even mentions) and just leads to a restructuring of class structures, not their abolishment.

MLs are just as guilty of this as anarkiddies. Both need to read Marx.

Engels described revolution as inherently authoritarian because it is the imposition of demands from one part of the population upon another. I think anarchists wouldn't describe this type of coercion as "authority". I don't oppose violent revolution either. The emergence of a ruling elite (intentionally not using the term class here) is something that comes after.

Please, then, enlighten us, comrades. Describe Marx's socialist transition state.

Anarcho-pacifists would.

I'm the guy you replied to and an Ancom, and yes you are correct here again. I don't think reading Marx makes one less inclined to LARP though, if anything it gives LARPers a "scientific" base to excuse what they're doing. But Marx should still very much be read to understand the core elements and crises of capitalism.

If you were a Marxist, what are you now?

His critique of Capitalism is extremely thorough, compelling and profound. It's hard to find any fault in his description of what was going down.

He also presents and interesting and well considered revolutionary strategy. But it's no surprise that it's a lot easer to describe what is than to describe what will be and how to get there.

fucking utopian

OK, let me ask the question a different way. How would we prevent a socialist transition state from devolving into a fascist dictatorship like we saw in the USSR?

Yeah the USSR was definitely a blood and soil, muh Volk, lets genocide people based upon their ethnoreligious group phenomenon.

Yeah it's sooooo much better to kill people because of what they think instead of what ethnicity they are. You're right the USSR was dope as fuck what am I talking about?

Woah those goalposts really flew didn't they?

You're the one who's dodging the most obvious and important critique of Marxism.

What I'm doing is pointing out that the USSR wasn't fascist. If that triggers you, perhaps you should fuck off to reddit, where everything that you don't' like is fascist.

I'm having trouble finding any reputable sources for this quote. Do you have one? The first result for it on Google is from Metapedia, and searching for the essay it claims to be quoting finds a Wikipedia slapfight.

How would we prevent a socialist transition state from devolving into a dictatorship like we saw in the USSR?

Alright, comrade, I apologize for my loose use of language. Let me ask the question in yet another way.

How should we prevent Marxists socialist transition states from devolving into totalitarian dictatorships/oligarchies?

...

So you don't consider the USSR/Bolsheviks to be Marxists at all?

How could you? The ways their understandings of capitalism, communism, and revolution are completely at odds with Marx far outnumber their agreements with the man.

Starting in a country where the forces of production have been developed to a greater degree than a rural backwater petty bourgeois shithole with a monarch just coming out of a devastating world war would be a good start. And having the revolution being a phenomenon that isn't isolated to only one country, thereby leaving it vulnerable to counter-revolution and immediate external embargo and intervention. Those bourgeois fucks know what's up because they are ruthless at killing off revolutions exactly like that, military coups, funded insurrections, and so on.

The Russian revolution was isolated and destroyed, it's that simple. Stalin was just the failure personified, not its ultimate cause. Even so, the framework of the state as occupying the ideal total capitalist within a (poorly) planned economy remained and could have been transformed with the right movement – but sadly this movement did not exist, and neither did any movement outside the bloc nations ready to give solidarity to their comrades in the USSR.

I want to give you a solid answer comrades but I cannot. I want to provide you with a plan of action that guarantees success but I cannot. All I can say is that we have two prerequisites: internationalism from an organized and agitated proletariat, and the forces of production developed to a degree that there won't be immediate famine and catastrophic collapse of industrial production, i.e. an economic basis unable to provide for the proletariat, post-revolution.

Thank you for this thoughtful post, comrade.

No they're Marxist, it's just that the majority of "Marxism" has little to do with Marx.

You do know that the whole "From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution" thing is more in line with collectivist anarchism than anything else, right?

In socialist politics (actually in any type of politics) you will end up with people being repressed or killed. That's the very nature of politics, if you don't like it then go be a idealist liberal dreaming with an united mankind and world peace.

Isn't individualist anarchism?

Individualism and collectivism arent at odds as far as usually thought. True individual identity can only be developed as a part of a wider community, just like true empowerment where your individuality isnt just indirect pressure to adhere to rules like under capitalism is dependent on an enabling wider society.

You're not really criticizing the points tho, just calling him a big dummy and a doofus and an egghead because what he's saying is going over your head & doesn't fit with your previous semantic models of what theory ought to look like. Take the neophobia test: rawilson.com/papers.html

I don't think that you really grasp what cybernetics is, it's not just 'computers'. There's no metaphysics in cybernetics, however a metaphysical *model* can be derived from the science of cybernetics. It's an interdisciplinary science that analyzes things on many.. MANY different levels, but its analysis is on closed systems, otherwise it won't work. Closed systems happen all the time within nature.

emphasis on a key point:

>Take the neophobia test: rawilson.com/papers.html

Hail Eris!

Spoken like a true comrade!

I'm talking of collectivism as in the anarchism of Bakunin and most non-Proudhonist anarchists of the First International. Not collectivism in the way liberals tend to use the term.