Convince to be an anarchist

So i'm a marxist-leninist and would like to look more into anarchism and maybe become one of you. I've read the Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid but that's it. To my knowledge, revolutionary Catalonia and Nestor Makhno's Free Territory of Ukraine weren't stateless, but prove me wrong. I don't see a state as desirable but necessary in order to achieve communism for a number of reasons but specifically to distribute resources efficiently, protect us from invaders and counter revolution, and to establish new societal norms. But if you guys think statelessness would do these things (and other things) just as good or even better please, let me know.

Other urls found in this thread:

new-compass.net/articles/anarchism-power-and-government
telesurtv.net/english/news/Poll-Most-Russians-Prefer-Return-of-Soviet-Union-and-Socialism-20160420-0051.html
pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/
express.co.uk/news/world/701026/russians-life-better-soviet-union-ussr-sixty-four-percent
youtube.com/watch?v=Bfb8Dhog3Ts
rt.com/usa/343334-virginia-jail-inmate-starvation-lawsuit/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/09/slavery-prison-system-170901082522072.html
globalresearch.ca/the-plot-to-kill-martin-luther-king-survived-shooting-was-murdered-in-hospital-an-interview-with-william-pepper/5544005
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

My main reason for siding with anarchism is because while socialist states were good at holding onto their power, they failed to implement socialism or communism.

The USSR promised but failed
North Korea promised and failed
Vietnam promised and failed, and so on.

Tl;dr ML states have a track record of not keeping their promises

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Maybe it's time to stop promising utopian societies and instead promise shit that can be achieved with socialism like drastically shorter work weeks and higher salaries.

I'm an ex-anarchist, I can try to tell you what not to read. First of all, DON'T go for Bookchin; he's become a meme because of over a dozen US military bases in Syria but other than btfoing post-left morons like Bob Black he didn't write anything worth reading. Goldman is ok if you've never read any theory before (she was always more of an activist and orator than theoretician) but since you've already read Kropotkin there's not much point. Also I think Bakunin has some interesting ideas but he's a fucking horrid writer so if you read him try to focus on the main points and ignore the rambling. Proudhon was influential even on Marx (as much as Marxists would like to deny that) but a lot of what he writes will seem outdated.

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Maybe it's time to actually follow up on your promises instead of just falling to authoritarian market "socialism"

Say what you want about Makhno and Catalonia, at least they tried to get shit done. The USSR et al became complacent, their leaders power hungry.

Take baby steps first. The proles dunno what actual communism is and if a land of plenty utopia's even possible. Talk to them bout shit they can understand and that socialism can provide, but don't call it that.

It's not anarchism, its syndicalism :^)

But I get what you mean, have a definite direction and stick to it as opposed to kicking off a revolt just because you can

is syndicalism not a method of reaching statelessness?

Well yes, but my point is to chop off the "anarcho-" part of it to make it more approachable to outsiders. Just reword the ideology in general to make it sound softer, while being functionally identical.

How's syndicalism not just Luxemburgism?

What the fuck

Ain't they both big into "workers councils" and other such semi-organized shit?

If you grossly oversimplify it. Syndicalism states worker councils having a form of decentralised planning, cooperating with other such groups to determine inputs and outputs to keep economic efficiency in good order.

But it relies in these communes reaching their decisions quickly and decisively, or the whole system gets bogged down by a dozen petty councils stuck in analysis paralysis.

Therefore, they are rotated often to prevent this kind of complacency. But said councils hold no more effective power than the man in the factory floor, they just exist to gather and pass in decisions and information.

Describe a hypothetical scenario that would require a workers council get together to plan out.

Basically, mutual aid.

What's stopping one council from using the scarcity to royally screw the other council over for personal gain like a commune of predatory capitalists?

Because they're cycled often, it's not the same people making the decisions. And if one group did try and pull such a stunt, they'd be disposed of inside of a day.

What is Property is a good Porperty is usually a good start for most people who are coming in from the right.
Since you're an ML I believe God and the State (published posthumously so be warned), and Statism and Anarchism are both good starts going from the top down.
Anarchism tends to go with "theory in practice" I.e. It's not afraid to adjust its rules to fit the situation (case in point is Makhno as well as Syndicalism as a whole).
And because Anarchism, like all forms of socialism, has its secs not every single one is exactly the same.

I forgot to tag the OP like an absolute dumbass

So basically a workers collective votes for a representative, representative leaves for better or worse after his term's up.

No, no representatives. The councils are formed entirely of the workers, and are called as and when they are needed.

You rotate through various semi random groups, so while the rest performs the duties you'll have those who perform the administrative and cooperative side of things.

I did not know Afroplasm is socdem now.

it's the ultimate chemo against nationalism, without it you're left with "socialism" with chinese characteristic, democratic peoples republic of fascist korea, and stalinist bureaucracies that would powergrab even without the archaisms of pre-internet logistics and paperwork.

i guess cuba is ok though, compared to philipines, puerto rico or haiti

What makes Cuba OK?

free health care, comfy work and live conditions compared to shitholes all around, won't starve won't have to lick the boots of some turbo-BDSM petit-bourg

Side with anarchists because utopias cannot reals.

Let us put the system in the hands of the least capable and least willing to preserve it, let us tear it all down.

Fuck human progress lol.

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democratic workplace gulags, full militarised society, crude spectatcle of "normal" life for tourists. it's full nazi.

stalinism aka Marxism-Leninism

But user, they're at war right now.

I don't know about the other points but this is excusable.

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They didn't, they didn't even established their new society before disappearing again. They never even got down to all the nitty gritty that comes with long term organization of an enduring society. The reason people still fawn over them so much is precisely because they didn't even have time to fail on their own. They can be forever immaculate in people's imaginations. The same can be observed with Trotskyites; it's so much easier to defend than orthodox ML because the rubber never hit the road.

Meanwhile the Soviet Union actually established a new socialist civilization, and the people living in it and organizing it had to struggle daily for years and years with all the difficulties that entailed. It all came to nothing but fuck it they actually did manage to establish something that lasted for some 70 years. Only to have ignorant children shit on them years later.

They were the only ones that gave the workers the MoP, something never to be accomplished in the USSR. And no, "representatives who own the MoP and make decisions without worker input" do not count.
You're right, your shitty USSR stabbed them in the back instead of organizing with them, then tried to take on Hitler and the other fascists by themselves causing more casualties than needed.
Into the trash you go.

The USSR was never socialist, the MoP was owned by the state, not the people. And had they not stabbed Makhno in the back and left CNT to be conquered they could have had some easy allies to help spread revolution and such.

But they fucking didn't. Throughout their entire existence, the Soviet Union suffered from chronic backstabbing disorder, and then wondered why nobody liked them.

Tl;dr
THE USSR WAS SHIT. SHIIIIIIIIIIIIT

What a load of nonsense. The communist party, nor its representatives, nor the functionaries ever owned any MOP. At best you can say that the MOP were managed by a group of specialists, at the behest of the collective of which they formed a part. Which is not ownership!

The rest of your post is also gibberish, if you read Capital vol. 2 you will notice how Marx explicitly situates the heart of capitalist production not in commodity production, but in the separation of the ownership of the MOP and the ownership of labour power (which are both represented as commodities). The key is not that commodities are exchanged, but that labour power becomes a commodity to be bought by the capitalist. If you take that away by unifying labour power and the MOP in one subject, you're no longer dealing with capitalist production. Might not be full communism, but it isn't capitalist production. The Soviet Union bridged this divide by instituting a collective ownership of the MOP, and you can imagine a market socialism closing it by putting the ownership with the particular groups of workers and then having them engage in the market to coordinate production.

Nonsense. The USSR was a collective society with representative specialist engaged in the management and planning of the utilization of the MOP. The ownership was collective.

Bookchin's Communalism is way more practical than traditional anarcho-communism. Bookchin's analysis of the Spanish Revolution is very compelling.

new-compass.net/articles/anarchism-power-and-government

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

Anarchists probably won't purge you after the revolution. Any authoritarian revolutionary may promise to not purge you, but if they change their mind then you are going to die. Or maybe they won't change their minds, but the authoritarian that comes after them will. You don't know and you can't count on authority's benevolence.

Anarchists, by refusing to seize power, won't be able to purge you unless there was a democratic consensus that you needed to be purged. You'd have to be so purge-worthy that everyone wants you dead - like a pedophile or something. So, presuming you aren't human garbage, you are safe from authority in an anarchist society.

'Course you'll probably get killed when society collapses, but at least it wasn't the state!

I must agree. I personally consider the USSR to work best as an example when it comes to the viability and potential of an planned economy, as it was quite an successful arrangement for economic and technological development despite the heavy-handed and unrefined techniques they had available at the time to pull it off with.
To be honest the roughness and estimating nature of the gathered data they had at hand and the strict pre-designed production-goals they placed according to said data makes me think it seems like it was more of an "command economy", but still.

Still, these are just my two cents. What can I truly claim to know about anything?

-ly owned by the state. There's no two ways about it, the USSR didn't have worked owned MoP, and so can't truly be called socialist.

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Even with their "crude methods" there was no reason for anyone to ever go hungry. The economic planning was clearly done with global domination as a priority over the dignity, health and happiness of the People.

Trashcan of ideology right there.

How so? Hunger ended after 1933 (world war excepted), literacy achieved nearly 100%, universal healthcare was achieved, science and high arts flourished. What more do you want?

it doesn't matter how benevolant the dictatorship is, the fact of the matter is that they weren't socialist.

living conditions improved. great, happy for you. but that's not the point. The crux of the argument is that the MoP were state owned, with little to no input from the workers.

Is there clear data on what the actual quality of life was for people in different parts of the USSR after the war?

Obviously it matters…. the perception in the West is that life in the USSR was terrible. That people didn't have the basic things that make for a reasonably comfortable life, and that free thought and speech was violently suppressed. Was this the case or wasn't it?

Last time I checked, there were local assemblies that drew up and included information about their local situation and added information to each economic plan, each little part of the plan had to be approved by these assemblies.

Perhaps this was the system on the books, but did it really work that way in practice, or did the politburo really have ultimate decision making power?

Drivel, the MOP were owned collectively and managed by the people's representatives. Also the poster was whining specifically about living standards and such.

Just look at the life expectancy, that's an easy enough proxy for all these things. It shot up under Stalin, then started to stagnate as revisionism was implemented, and totally crashed when capitalism returned.

It is not known who abandoned the first alliance, hence the "USSR backstabbed Makhno" narrative is dubious at this point, regurgitated with dishonest intentions.

But is there detailed information about the average life of a Soviet citizens?

Why would there not be. They keep statistics just like any other country, have newspapers and documentaries, and so on. There is likely specialized literature also.

It will only be marginally harder than finding "detailed information" about the lives of US citizens 30 and more years ago.

Because it was a communist police state that cooked the books to make the regime look good?

R3d Fascist

Read Soviet Communism: A New Civilization

If there's no laws, you could go to the movies without paying. That would be cool. Anarchy, baby, it's the only thing that makes sense.

great, i guess it's settled than

you are clinically retarded

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I'm much more interested in the second half of the 20th century actually.

People are just letting this goebell's propaganda fly? What the fuck?

Anarchists are fucking retarded.

It seems to me that we can't rely on official records when trying to determine what people's lives in the Soviet Union were actually like. And isn't global domination an explicit part of Marx's praxis?

I literally don't know what you mean by this, are you saying that "marx's praxis" = moustache twirling tyrants?

If so, kill yourself immediately.

Stalinism and "m"-"l" are interchangeable, it does exist, stop being a fucking retarded statecuck

You're just spooked by your own propaganda. All the relevant archives have been opened, it's all out there. You deserve that wordfilter.

The official records have not been proven false, you just assume it out of hand because you are a disingenuous ideologue. You have no intellectual integrity, you are a tool.

this is literal projection

but what can you expect from namefags

Doesn't Marx advocate for taking over a nation-state with a revolution, establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, and then using that country as a home base for militarily expanding that dictatorship of the proletariat around the whole world.?

The soviet state was well known to be deeply fucking corrupt, any Russian can tell you that. They were also fans of shooting the messenger, so to speak, so even well intentioned record keepers had good reason to lie.

Ummmm no, maybe lenin but not in the way you're envisioning. They're saying that workers should overthrow the ruling class to have actual democracy the world over. It's not some neo-russian imperialism.

Kill yourself you fucking propagandized child.

ITT

ITT:

ANARCHISM IS AN INFANTILE DISORDER.

YOU CANNOT HAVE ANARCHISM STRAIGHT AFTER CAPITALISM, IT WILL BE DESTROYED EVERY TIME. STATE SOCIALISM FIRST THEN COMMUNISM.

tanks are literal fucking children

state socialism inevitably turns into authoritarian stagnation without fail

You're just spewing crypto-nazi horseshit espoused by goebells and western capitalists though. There's literally no difference or nuance that separates you from them.


And anarchism never arises - I'd rather have actual socialism than no socialism at all LOL.

Says the well off neckbeard fantasizing about Soviet Russia propaganda without ever talking to an actual fucking Russian with first or second hand experience.

yes there is
youre just illiterate

fucking where? none of the state """""socialists""""" got anywhere close to socialism. instead they became content with their power, and so sat on their hands and became dictatorships.

Anarchism isn't practical, but that doesn't mean we have to go full Marxist. Bookchin's Communism is honestly a very thoughtful and practical amalgamation of radical leftist ideas. His system is just structured enough to protect people and have a functioning economy without being authoritarian. Freedom requires people to protect it.

telesurtv.net/english/news/Poll-Most-Russians-Prefer-Return-of-Soviet-Union-and-Socialism-20160420-0051.html

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/

express.co.uk/news/world/701026/russians-life-better-soviet-union-ussr-sixty-four-percent

LOL.


Show me the distinction of your argument that isn't superfluous nonsense.


youtube.com/watch?v=Bfb8Dhog3Ts

Anarchists are children; middle class brats who are just temporarily aggrieved liberals who will grow into reactionaries.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOARD?

PLEASE. He's a revolutionary socialist!

Bookchin sympathized and fraternized with ancap ideology and advocated for imperialism in the middle east under the guise of "relieving oppressed peoples".

condense this shit

for a tank, you should be better armoured :^)

No I just can't stand children and their fantasies.

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More state propaganda. Tell me, have you ever spoken with a Russian? Or been to Russia? Somehow I doubt it, you foolish swine.

the positions of nazis and anarchists hold no common ground

you're literally a child screeching that anything you dont like is the same

He wasn't perfect. No one is. But the broad strokes of his ideology are heading in the right direction.

Have you, burger?

you should leave then

t. disingenuous ideologues

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So you admit it, then. The retarded fucking Soviet weeaboo is running on pure propaganda.

So instead of all the poll research we should believe your mythical anecdote that you haven't yet evoked? I'm sure you know what the russians think right?


No he's just another revisionist, opportunistic westerner who wants some warped "libertarian" society that is in cahoots with capitalists.

They shout the same propaganda against socialist countries.

USSR seemed more representative and democratic than most western nations, I wanna know how it was a dictatorship.

you claim to not like "screeching children" then behave like one yourself


oh look, another pointless buzzphrase

Everyone with a brain points out that the USSR was still a capitalist state under Stalin

Saying things doesnt make people the same

I don't know what alternate reality you're from, but bring me back a souvenir.

BECAUSE MUH GULAGS (AMERICAN PRISON SYSTEM) MUH SECRET POLICE (CIA AND FBI) MUH 100 MILLION DEAD (WESTERN IMPERIALISM AND NEO-COLONALISM) MUH STALIN (NIXON) MUH PROPAGANDA IS TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 I'M A LEFTIST I SWEAR!

You sound like a fucking Nazi. Leave this place. Reported.

literal screeching child


go back to Holla Forums

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did the american prison system starve, work to death and kill people as a matter of course? the US prison system is shit, but a gulgag it is not.

the CIA and FBI covertly spy on people, the NKVD would make you disappear in the night, never to be seen again. and there's no non-tinfoil evidence of the alphabet soup doing that

Nixon was nothing like Stalin wtf

What a farce, this place is a joke. You're even worse than the fascists because you deliberately sabotage socialism when it happens. Bet you were a trotskyite.

oh fuck off. your idea of socialism is the same oppressive shithole the USSR was where questioning the government would make you disappear.

they weren't socialists, not even close and it baffles me that you pretend they were.

Are you saying workplace democracy isn't democracy? Is that what you're saying?

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it wasn't though. the MoP were state owned, and the representitives were nothing more than puppets dancing to the tune of the all powerful party

Yes

rt.com/usa/343334-virginia-jail-inmate-starvation-lawsuit/


Yes.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States

aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/09/slavery-prison-system-170901082522072.html


Are you seriously questioning if the US "justice" system kills people unjustly? What a joke.


Jesus christ how fucking ignorant. Read up on the black panthers and the CIA's crimes in the cold war against domestic leftists.


Yeah he was probably worse.

And your idea of socialism is nonexistent LEL.

And neither the Holocaust or Holodomor ever happened, right?

you

have

to

go

back

Go back to where retard? From where I'm standing YOU'RE the one against socialism and are preferring enemies of socialism to socialists themselves - if your bias to information is anything to go by. Pathetic.

weak
come on
that's great, now prove it's a system wide problem instead of privately owned prisons, we're talking about governments here

weaaaak
they were shit, yes but people didn't live in fear of them kicking their door down for wrongspeak

Don't get me wrong, the system is fucked, but not nearly as fucked as Soviet Russia.

At least you're dropping the pretense of being impartial to socialism.

holodomor denial is on par with holocaust denial

It's not at all

Stalin did nothing wrong, right? Fuck off.

to reddit of course. You are obviously fresh off the boat.

How? Any adult soviet citizen had the right to vote and run for an election. The state was elected by the people.

Honestly, we should welcome our brothers and sisters workers no matter where they come from.

Your priorities dude.


It happened, but I want to hear your reason to WHY it happened? Do you think big bad stalin caused it all by himself?


I show you proof and you dismiss it without proper rebuttal. Typical anarchild.


It is a system wide problem when EVERY prison operates this way. Fucking WHY are you defending america my man? It's insane.


LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL.

globalresearch.ca/the-plot-to-kill-martin-luther-king-survived-shooting-was-murdered-in-hospital-an-interview-with-william-pepper/5544005

The CIA/FBI assassinated/assassinate people all the fucking time.

Yeah, just like politicians in America are elected by the people. Maybe on the small scale, but the big guys are pushed through with money.

Crimes like not sucking Stalin cock, or having something that a powerful party member wants to have.

ITT: crypto-fascist subverts or as they like to be called: anarchists and trotskyites.

It really makes you think when their arguments against socialism are indistinguishable from the american right.

If the only way you can even attempt to justify Soviet atrocities is by pointing fingers at America, you need to shut the fuck up. It's painfully obvious you're not self hating American.

You're so pathetic, I want a mod to check your posting history just so we can see what type of cretin you really are.

>you're not a self hating American

well you just ousted yourself as a newfag

I bet you wish you could send me to the gulags for daring to disagree with the party line, amirite?

They can do that though, they've done it to the baboon poster.

No I want to see if you're as transparent as I'm lead to believe. You reek of Holla Forums subversion.

hilarious paranoia

Whatever you say, ☭TANKIE☭. If only your party was still around, they could take care of anyone who dared disagree with you, right? You're just like Holla Forums, even have the same colour scheme.

Lame ass comparison. In capitalist states politics serves the will of the bourgeois. What are you trying to say?

or you could just lurk for a few months and learn the culture and syntax before jumping right in, as is customary to do on chans

Same in Soviet Russia. You can put lipstick on a pig but it's still not fucking pig.

The culture and syntax includes punctuation, faggot.

Revolution can only be achieved organically because a vanguard parties operate merely on proletarian ideals, which makes the support of actual workers unnecessary. This causes a rift that makes it perfectly legitimate to crush actual workers for the sake of proletarian ideals and still believe yourself to be pro-worker. Which is why it actually happened in every instance of ML states.

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You're a mirror fucking image.

you shouldn't post pictures of your fam online bro

What a shame, a mark of the dark times we live in.

wow nice thread

leftcom master race

Nope, I won't, if you are too stupid to figure out by yourself, that the state and hierarchical roles are oppressive by default, then you are a brainlet and that's your fucking problem.

Don't we need some system of authority in order to prevent violence?

said system need not be hierarchal

It seems to me that at the very least there would be a hierarchy of military power. Whoever has the guns has to be trusted to act in accordance with the will of the people.

They are oppressive thats the point so that we dont get invaded or thrown over by counter revolution.

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Perhaps the matter best be.. LEFT unconvinced. Maybe you are to drift somewhere between authoritarianism and libertarianism.
Nowadays I wonder if anarchism wouldn't also be a result or part of late stage communism, as insane or ridiculous as it may sound.
One thing I do am certain of is that whatever the case, we'd best focus on changing people into a humanity or family worth nurturing.
Whether so they know how to cherish and preserve their freedom, metaphorically how to reap what they sow, perhaps show them how to make use of dialectics in their own elaborations, even in that very choice of what to sow.

If you see communism or anarchism as ideals, it'd be only reasonable to pursue them and use as a sort of ever developing guideline.
In either case, they'd eventually have to learn how to think for oneself. But to leave at that would be foolish, so we need to teach them of compassion and understanding so their minds do not stray onto needless persecution. They cannot grow docile either and need the spirit to fend for themselves, especially in these times, so they need to acknowladge their own authority, ideals and values to that of government or their superioirs. But then what of their fellow folk? They cannot dispute everything in a warmongering fashion. And so on and so forth..

There's a golden mean to everything, if not a couple alternative ones.
And although we drift between mentioned authority and liberty, I don't see why either wouldn't strive for their ideals, whether through means of education, collaboration, indoctrination or propaganda. I can't help but think on emphasizing a golden mean, balance doesn't necessarily equate to even distribution, in this case of values. And considering the nature of things it'd only make sense to balance depending on the times, circumistances and needs. So that raises the old question of whether ends justify the means.. perhaps that too best be left considered case to case.

This meant for OP

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This really sums it up eh? Some one goes into great detail defending the USSR and with sources from marx explains that the USSR was socialist and did have collective ownership of the MOP. Then some idiot comes and says