Just Don't Call It a State

more like "anarchists fail when they dont use a state, and only manages to not fail when they use one but claims not to"

Also the idea that anarchists think we can have a full blown stateless communist society overnight is bull. None of what was described by OP is per se anti-anarchist during a revolutionary period.

...

What is a good book or essay debunking Kekalonia's anarchism?

davidharvey.org/2015/06/listen-anarchist-by-david-harvey/

If you're going to be forced to resort to using a state, you might as well have embraced it from the start.

some of you guys are alright. don't exile to mexico tomorrow.

fucking pick one muke
EVOLVE

i'd call myself ML if its definition to most people was a synthesis of marxism and leninism, but ML is actually considered what stalin defined it as because stalin coined the term. hence, i call myself a leninist.

i'm not xerox nerd.

Thanks, but I was thinking of something that focuses mainly on how they claimed to be anarchists while actually being statists, something like "The Anarcho-Statists of Spain".

A little more complicated than that, but sure. It's still a definition though, and is the reason when anarkiddies and tankies yell at each other about states they are 99% talking about different things.
Which is why I find threads like this so smugly retarded. Yes, we get it, under the marxist definition of a state an anarchist society would have a state. Woo.
i personally have problems with both definitions. I lean more towards the marxist one, but I reject the idea of 'full communism' in the sense that statelessness is possible

How did either movements resemble the Leviathan?

Read Nestor Makhno and the Russian Civil War by Michael Malet

I call myself an ML for that reason, I could care less who coined the term. A lot of people define communism as "ebil dictatorship" but that doesn't keep us from calling ourselves "communists." Am I misinterpreting you here?

That's not muke, I'm muke, but had to reply to

M8. Leninism as described in letters from afar and State and Revolution is nothing like either of thoes. kys.

i wouldn't choose a name just to be edgy.

so would i. that is, if it weren't for the fact that stalin did not only coin the term but also defined the term. his definition was 'whatever i claim lenin's take on marxism was about, also whatever i've ever done'.

yes, because i first and foremost whenever i'm asked to spell out my ideology reply "communist". leninism is for me only the means to the end.

This, actually.

Unless one considers that there were no post-Lenin "true" Marxism, it makes no sense to call oneself Leninist.

It wasn't Stalin. It was the Party. What could it have called it's ideology, if not Marxism? And why not call it Leninism, if it was the major contribution to the ideology (and the guy himself was a mummy at this point anyway)?

Also, what exactly did Stalin do wrong? I'm sensing crypto-anarchist here.

It would be easier if people would choose either Stalin or Trotsky, and didn't worry about what they look like.

I'm a big fan of Lenin, but both stalinists and trotskyists claim an unbroken line from him. Pick Stalin if you are for Stalin, purges, uniforms, and pick Trotsky if you are for a more theoretical democratic way.

I get that there a million different issues and opinions, but it sure would be easier if we were only split down the middle rather than nobody knowing who a lenninist sides with out of the two massive splits.

can't make this shit up

Kek

What the fuck are you talking about? Stalin is industrialization and planned economy.

Sad, but true.

That's actually pretty funny, I will admit.

I don't mind you anarchists, since in the end if we work together statelessness by anarchy will either succeed, or fail and a socialist state will happen.

Uh that's not my intention, I'm identifying my ideology.
Hope this isn't bait. Everyone I've discussed MLism with take it as a synthesis of the ideas of Marx and Lenin, not Stalin's ideas of what Marx and Lenin were on about.
I agree with this

Except where Trotsky first proposed five year plans. Trotskyists are for industrialisation etc. The difference I can give to them is Trotsky called for democracy before being assassinated, while Stalin had more of a direct control over what was for the good of the party.

No. What we call industrialization now is creation of heavy industry. I.e. becoming capable to independently produce means of production.

That was 100% Stalin's thing and was considered insane, impossible and inhumane (presupposed forcible collectivization of farming) by others. Including Trotsky. He called it "super-industrialization" at the time.

Trotsky's industrialization was limited to creation of light industry and weapon production. He did not suggest to collectivize farming, nor go balls-to-the-wall with industrialization, as Stalin did.

It's called Realpolitik.

And this is called revisionist mythology.

pick two.

marxism-leninism. that is, if marxism-leninism tacitly refered to a synthesis of marx and lenin's take on marx.

we don't disagree on this.

sow the seeds for an increasingly less revolutionary DotP that would work to build socialism in one country instead of maintaing an interntionalist attitude.

i misread then. regardless, i call myself a leninist because i believe lenin's take on marx to be optimal and the most cogent ideologically for building a movement towards communism.

it's not bait and in my four years of interacting with several different political parties that formally call themselves marxist-leninist, i have not rhetoric that puts the use the vanguard central in securing the DotP for the purpose of international revolution out of it as the focal point, but one that emphasizes the establishment of a plurality of socialist republics that all maintain national sovereignty and build "socialism in one country", with almost no mention of doing more than securing the longevity of this multitude of socialist republics like engaging in active internationalist military action to free the world from the many bourgeois states that will inevitably defeat socialism if we do not, for socialism and capitalism cannot exist alongside one another.

this is not infighting, my teenage comrade.

"The Trotskyite opposition united against the original Bolshevik plan provided one of the policy options which were the subject of a vote on 27 December 1927. Before this vote was taken, there had been a great party debate going on over many years and the result left nobody in any doubt. Of the 725,000 votes cast, the opposition secured 6,000 - i.e., less than 1% of party activists supported the united opposition."

Mine.

That's some recursive autism I see here.

Not that I'm agreeing to your opinion, but didn't USSR under Stalin advance World Revolution much further, than anyone did ever before?

I think it's understood that by Stalin he obviously meant both Stalin and the party. No one should have to spell that out.

hehe

If by "advance world revolution" you mean imperialism. Then yes. He was awarded a number of countries after WW2 and imposed USSR dominance over them and others.

Then it would seem to me that those parties were revisionists of actual MLism. I wholeheartedly agree with the vast majority of what your talking about (placing emphasis on "exporting revolution" and whatnot).

no, that's basically how the soviet party form decision making is ultimately concluded in the vanguard: with the leader's executive sanctioning of it as valid and to be enacted. post-1922 this leader would be stalin. hence, the decision to apply the coined term "(marxism-)leninism", with its definition as such was performed this way. hence, both stalin and the party are responsible for the definition, as two separate entities both with different levels of authority as per the party's protocol.

i contest its use not because i disagree with "marxism-leninism" as being a proper term for what to call a synthesis of marx and lenin, but because the term popularly refers to much more than that and was not born and handled historically as meaning this. i thus refuse to refuse to use to use it to describe my ideology just like i refuse to utilize the term "national socialism" as referring to any actual socialism (DotP) operating under a nation state, because that is not what it means to people. i shouldn't have to spend this much time and text getting that through to you.

if you limit the confines of 'success' here to doing a step forward, but two steps back ultimately. why? as this very method of organizing a multitude of socialist republics only to defend and maintain them on a national scale ultimately was what made worldwide revolution a failure. and i am with this not lowering myself to anarkiddie angst and defining stalin's policies as imperialism (as stalin did not install markets or operations that work to the profit of an economic class, as those did not exist in the USSR), but as stalin's own inherently poor praxis in working towards worldwide socialism.

if we take ML to mean a synthesis of marx and lenin, yes. but the fact of the matter is that ML popularly stands for establishing a multitude of socialisms in a multitude of countries, with no real praxis beyond that. i therefore distance myself from the term like other leninists, as i wish to use the term to embody the ideas of lenin with marx, while theorizing and building upon them.

OK, so Stalin is the ideology of industry, because stalinists said that Trotsky's idea for five year plans was not good enough. Interestingly the opposition said similar things about Stalin's industry, before being exiled and put in prison, and then in hindsight we are still dealing with stalinist industrialisation being called too harsh on the populace, and leading to unnecessary deaths.

You can't claim the ideology of industry just because you think you deserve it best.

I will admit it is confusing, since stalinists also claim that the USSR was democratically run by the workers, rather than a buracracy, which is also what trotskyists claim it was.

My memory's a bit fuzzy. But I remember that the Soviets invaded Poland with the Nazis. I mean was it only 50% imperialism and 50% advancing the world revolution or…?

invasion does not necessarily imply imperialism, my juvenile companion.

regardless of whether it was a good idea or not strategically, was it the intention of the soviets to use molotov-ribbentrop to invade poland and establish bodies of trade to extract goods and power to an economic class back in soviet russia? or was the invasion part of an already established pact to invade poland and divide it in two temporarily amongst two enemies (nazi germany and soviet russia) as to then subsequently see matters step by step? do you even know why poland was important for especially the soviets, but also the nazis at the same time (excluding of course the former's objective of a european empire ruled by germany, and the latter's objective of establishing a worldwide society free of capitalism)?

...

I think I agree with what you're saying here. A little hesitant to go about calling myself a leninist, but your critique of ML as it exists today seems sound to me. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
BTW, any other works of Lenin you would deem "essential" besides "State and Revolution?" I was looking to read more by him but my ML friend said that's pretty much it, so I've been catching up on other stuff as of late.

Is there some point being made? Because you are behaving just as nonsensical as moustache-glasses retard. That's a bot level of intelligence.

This word doesn't mean what you think it means.

They did not.

You can whine about muh innocent victims of Stalin all you want, but the difference is not quantitative, but qualitative.

Trotsky wanted to keep Russia agrarian banana (wheat) republic, because that's what it was. His position was to adapt to circumstances.

Stalin's idea was to change the status quo. Re-create within a decade or two advantages that took capitalist nations centuries to build up. That's what industrialization is about. And it has nothing to do with Trotsky.

i don't know why that's there either (didn't make it), but the ISO embodies perfectly the crypto-anarkiddie (note: anarkiddie, not anarchist) tendency to tactically abandon materialist methodology in defining whether something is socialist or not. in this way, it fits the image.

good. to recapitulate: my critique of ML as a term comes from the fact that it reeks of including stalin's praxis in it. and it is not because i dislike stalin that i shun the term, but because stalin's praxis, like any other, should be considered just that: his praxis. it should not be considered integral to the basic workings of a vanguardist DotP, which is indeed a leninist take on marxism.

'what is to be done?' and 'one step forwards, two steps back' in my opinion are even more important than state and revolution once you have read it, because they illustrate many questions and problems on the praxis of vanguardism moreso than its rhetoric and justifications.

How so? Since when did trots abandon leninism?

u w0t m8

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland

Ok. Is there an argument for his recursive autism? I did not find any.

Exactly, I'm tired of MLs stating that they're for industrialization. That was a material necessity for the time, not some intrinsic character to ML. If anything ML identified that it needed to happen.
I'm gonna have to talk to this dude, for some reason he said reading that was "worthless/unnecessary." Thanks man

Oh. That's right. I forgot that ML's have a special definition of imperialism that precludes everything the USSR did even if it was explicitly to further the scope of their political and economic influence. I mean … er … um… "advance the worldwide revolution".

I am not arguing about correct explanation of a joke. Seriously. This is not happening.

That's real persuasive.

Please, learn some history first.

It's not special. Lenin literally wrote a book about it.

Where are you getting that from?

Again, just because Trotsky criticised Stalin's going too far… Before we saw the Ukraine famine, doesn't mean you can attribe industrialisation to Stalin when Trotsky called for industrialisation in a different way. In a non famine inducing way.

Industrialisation was proposed by both. One was enacted and led to a famine, one was proposed as less than famine inducing. You can prefer one over the other, but not say that you have the sole ideological ownership of industrialising.

But it is.

You need to keep cranking out Means of Production, if you want to keep your Socialism moving in the correct direction.

Granted, that's not all there is to it, but it is crucial part people always prefer to ignore. Bolivarians, for example. Even if they'd managed to make planned economy instead of marksoc nightmare they've got - it would've still imploded.

Could you literally not make it past the first paragraph?

while trotskyists will traditionally call the USSR post-lenin (either directly post-lenin, or a few years after stalin has solidified his position) a "degenerated worker's state" (to which even i can slightly agree), the ISO and many of its members have, on record, unironically called the USSR post-NEP "state capitalism".

precisely. a leninist vanguard taking power under an already sufficiently industrialized state would not for some reason decide to industrialize even more for good measure even if it didn't need to. what happens under a leninist state is entirely dependent on its will and what it takes on consideration with it.

he might be the kind that sees no failure in the praxis of past leninst revolutionaries, and will instead blame the eventual failure of leninism in the 20th century on individual actors only, as opposed to actively engaging in self-theory and criticism. 'what is to be done?' is an important read precisely for this.

to my knowledge, the USSR did not have a ruling economic class interested only with the private accumulation of capital. therefore, any invasions that occurred happened explicitly for the purpose of either liberating the proletariat of that given nation of bourgeois rule (see: literally any member of the USSR that wasn't russia) or for the purpose of first occupying it in order to later on liberate it of bourgeois rule (see: poland, belarus, ukraine, etc. whom all ultimately got purged of bourgeois and even monarchical rule and then became socialist republics themselves).

From his texts.

I'll clarify that I'm talking about what considered it inevitable and accepted it as a fact. Not that he had some sort of grand idea to keep Russia agrarian forcibly.

Fuck you and the high horse you rode on in.

Relevant piece.

dare.uva.nl/document/2/84923

Because that certainly showed its usefulness as an idea. Keep producing tons of iron even when it isn't needed. Keep building tractors even when there are too many. Just to keep figures up, and just to make it look like the economy is growing.

The bureaucracy had to make sure it was needed.

Yes, under the USSR's definition of imperialism, the USSR was innocent. Do you seriously not see the problem here?

Could you be a little less retarded?

Consider for a second that I might've read it. Moreover, consider that I don't agree with it. I wont even ask you to consider possibility of me trying to correct it numerous times to include all the facts. Unsurprisingly enough, this did not sit well with the wankers of the wiki.

Now go read on about Montevideo convention

Didn't think so.

And my high horse? Trotsky criticised Stalin's five year plan "in four years" as too much and would lead to major problems, in 1930. In 1932 there was a famine in the Ukraine.

At least be a standard Stalinist and say it was unrelated causes, or that you think it was needed to win WWII.

It did. Extremely well.

You must be joking. Or do you just not care about the USSR after Stalin died?

This shitposting is annoying.

You got your difference. Now stop trying to guilt-trip me with stale Holla Forums-tier propaganda for proving you wrong.

No, I'm not joking. Is there an argument coming at some point?

Most MLs admit that the USSR regressed towards a capitalist mode of production with Khrushchev.

That's not the point here.

user tries to argue that industrialization is unnecessary, because bureaucratic state cannot do anything right.

Except he can't say it without sounding like an ancap.

Which is why he is being as vague as possible about the whole idea, expecting people to spontaneously convert to randroidism, once he drops enough clues.

Yes, the difference is not one of industrialisation vs "agrarianism" as you try to put it, it's between one type of industrialisation that led to a famine, and the critic of that types own idea on industrialisation.

If you want to take my opinion out of it you could say it's between Stalin's and Trotsky's industrialisation. Rather than you just going Stalin is industry and Trotsky is against it.

Stop pretending you own industry. You own Lenin. You own Marx. These things are very much in contention between communists.

No, don't tell fibs. user said that production simply for production sake was a bad idea. The bureaucratic state needed to keep itself ticking over, and so kept useless production going. Why would you increase industry when it wasn't needed unless you were covering your failings… Or if you were a ML who believed it was an intrinsic quality of your ideology.

It doesnt matter how socialist it was when the plan to keep producing no matter what ran production into the ground.

Strawman.

The difference was about status quo: adapting to it or changing it. Which is explicitly stated here:

>Trotsky wanted to keep Russia agrarian banana (wheat) republic, because that's what it was. His position was to adapt to circumstances.
> Stalin's idea was to change the status quo. Re-create within a decade or two advantages that took capitalist nations centuries to build up. That's what industrialization is about. And it has nothing to do with Trotsky.

Bullshit.

I already said that it was not industrialization. And explained why.

Why do you keep repeating the same propaganda? Does it make you feel safer? Do you hope the world will change if you repeat it several times? Because I can't find any rational reason for you to keep doing it.

Except nobody said that it was good idea.
Except nobody said anything about it.
Except I was talking about completely different things.

What am I even doing in this thread?

Oh, right. Randroids being butthurt.

But that's boring. Bye.

me sarcasticly commenting that constantly "cranking out the means of production" as an inherent idea, did not show itself to be a good idea when the USSR started producing for no reason other than to make it look like they were producing
You saying it did prove itself to be a good idea.

Denying it.

OK.

Producing for the sake of producing is a poor replacement for producing when needed.

Why the fuck are anarchists such insufferable immature faggots?

Oh you're one of those Holla Forums esque stalinists who just straight up deny the famine even occurred? Interesting.

It was two takes on industrialisation, but its nice that you consider yours the only true one to exist.

tankies really don't give a fuck about reality so long as they can make others look bad in order to prop themselves up

this is why people say you lot are like Holla Forums

So Trotsky was for keeping Russian as an "agrarian banana republic", which is not "agrarianism". Can you show where exactly did Trotsky advocate for that?

He's probably a newbie.

Anyways, I've seen stupid shit from both sides. Can we stop this stupid childish fighting?

you understand the irony, right? read the OP of this thread and the wonderful facts on self-described anarchist makhno again.

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your circlejerk.

If he's a minarchist, he's not an anarchist, so you aren't attacking anarchists.

Would you like to know another myth?

The socialism myth of the Soviet Union

sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your delusion that socialism, let alone ultimately communism, can ever be achieved without a state in a world dominated by international capital.

then neither are makhno, durruti and literally any other anarchist ever because they consciously established states to further their goals despite supposedly being against doing so.

top kekalonia.

Not even other Marxists agree: marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1939/marginal.htm

The meme that socialism is whatever the state does comes from Stalin as Wolff points out.

Makhno knew about anarchism. He was an anarchist. The idiot minarchist (which is some high-level stupidity) is a fucking idiot who basically acknowledges he's not an anarchist. By your own standard though, because Makhno didn't do anarchist things, the USSR also wasn't socialist.

I also never mentioned Catalonia.
You're assuming I'm an anarchist.

...

"At Makhno’s insistence, the second Congress passed a resolution in favor of “general, voluntary and egalitarian mobilization.” The orthodox Anarchist line, expressed at an Anarchist gathering of this period, was that “no compulsory army…can be regarded as a true defender of the social revolution,” and debate ranged round the issue as to whether enlistment could be described as “voluntary” (whatever the feelings of individuals) if it took place as the result of a resolution voluntarily passed by representatives of the community as a whole.77

Just in case people did not understand the meaning of “voluntary,” the Makhnovists issued a clarifying bulletin:

Some groups have understood voluntary mobilization as mobilization only for those who wish to enter the Insurrectionary Army, and that anyone who for any reason wishes to stay at home is not liable…. This is not correct…. The voluntary mobilization has been called because the peasants, workers and insurgents themselves decided to mobilize themselves without awaiting the arrival of instructions from the central authorities."

Again, I consider Makno an anarchist like I consider a Stalin and the others socialists. However, the Free Territory wasn't anarchist like the USSR wasn't socialist.

Also

You need to just get over the fact that the Socialist movement is riddled with failures from both Marxists and anarchists. We've only had tiny microcosmic examples of socialism. Get over it and stop attaching yourself to these attempts.

and then you add RDW's, with all respect to the man, name as the icing on the cake for providing the same non-argument?

then why did he effectively do the exact same as literally any other 20th century socialist: establish a state, but also maintain and even reinstate a capitalist mode of production complete with private firms?

either that or you're yet another smug left com or council communist that will tactically ignore materialist reasoning when deducing whether something is socialism or not whenever it isn't your kind of socialism.

He says without a hint of awareness to the fact that's literally all this thread is

Socialism needs to be worldwide. The citizens of the USSR were exploited by the state to compete with other bourgeois countries during the Cold War. Get over it. The guy from kapitalism101 has also said it.

I'll support any socialist movement if I think supporting it is worth it.

This doesn't mean we should dismiss successes when they do occur. Even then, I admit we shouldn't idolize them. We should learn what works and what doesn't.

The Soviet Union was not a success. The
Revolution and the takeover of the state was a real and incredible success however. There were many peculiar circumstances, but that may really be learned from.

Also, wtf, Makhno didn't establish a capitalist mop. Ukraine was still largely feudal. The peasants would farm for themselves. It wasn't really socialist or capitalist.

Thank you for making the admission of the failures of 20th century socialism.

i do not shun any opportunities to say this. the failures of the 20th century can of course all be at least in significant part be attributed to the strongarm of global capital's meddling, but must also heavily mention bad economic, military and social policy.

to imply that this means a state socialism itself did not exist is just pure ultra-leftist autism and ignoring our mistakes while saying 'not real socialism!' is precisely the kind of attitude communists must abandon for the 21st century, as the leninist sniff man would say.

your post has a succinct lack of arguments, bucko. in fact, all of them do.

where do i disagree?

so aside from this not being an argument that basically restates and mirrors the material reality the USSR was under, what else do you have to both at the same time ignoring that life expectancy went up under this so-called "tyranny"?

appeal to authority.

also tactically ignoring that what mccooney rightfully assessed in kapitalism101 was not that the USSR wasn't socialist by virtue of this, but that it still had wage labor and commodity production which nonetheless served as an economy based on growth. AKA state socialism. what the USSR wasn't was communist.

good, but i don't care about your value judgements on movements which also low-key admit that you consider them socialist in the same sentence (lol).

In that case, would you say we've learned that in order to be successful, a revolution must seize and use the state apparatus to act in its interest?

Sounds pretty socialist to me fam.

I wouldn't say Mahkno established a capitalist MoP, but he definitely wasn't preventing their elements from arising either (or dealing with the kulaks, a 'feudal' problem):

Ehh fuck it. I don't want to argue. I'm getting really disappointed with the socialist movement. I don't agree with many thing you said on that post though.

I knew this revisionist was up to no good.

I fukkin' knew it.

Gibe source, btw.

Just fucking go back to /marx/. Jesus Christ.

What are you doing here? Wolff isn't even politically incorrect. He is socdem.

It was on a video called socialism for dumbies. The first one.

What else would they do though?

The same place where Stalin proves that Trotsky was a literal Nazi spy, or that he sabotaged workplaces with bombs. The same place where Stalin manipulated photos, and exiled, imprisoned, or assassinated political enemies.

The same place where they get all their information. It's hard to believe that this stuff is still going on after all these years.

[doublethink intensifies]

You realize that you can't have both?

Trotsky either advocated for Stalin's rapid industrialization or he advocated for playing it safe and not turning agrarian economy of Russia into industrial within a decade or two.

And - no. I'm not going to comment your tinfoil ideas about Stalin's agents secretly altering Trotsky's articles all around the world.

I find it funny that local ancoms make fun of ancaps, even though ancaps are more logically consistent
ancoms are just hypocrites

Marx and Engels made a mistake when they were pandering to anarchists with all that withering of the state bullshit

causality is as follows
first you have classlessness, that you have statelessness
not the other way around

Thank you for showing your true bourgeois colors tankie.

Holla Forumsack here, these threads provide me with endless amusement.

You are a good show, tankie.

that I acknowledge ancaps consistency doesn't mean I agree with them

but at least they don't dance around
if consequence of anarchy is drug trade, then so be it

I can respect such principled stance

and as a commie, I'm as much consistent in my statism, as they are in their anarchism

Stalinists are always above proving what they say. We are waiting for you to show us where Trotsky said to keep the USSR as an agrarian banana republic, and to not industrialise.

Also, famine.