Statism

Stay assblasted, lifestyler.

communism is a stupid end goal

a technocratic or socialist society with a guaranteed minimum standard of living is the closest humanity will ever get to an ideal society

statism force people to seek realization in hollow actions, just like art or science, the primitivness of anarchism just prove how happy they were.

have fun getting mauled by a bear at age 30

I don't recall ever making it about moralism, as statists so often like to pretend is the only failing.

Guns are tools which serve a specific, useful purpose, in the emancipation of those who hold them. In completely the opposite direction, the state is specifically a tool meant to impose class divisions. Communism requires the abolishment of class divisions. Neither I nor OP have stated this to be impossible, just that we are of the opinion that a state cannot achieve this.

Can you not provide an argument as to why you think the state can be used as such?

it's like using water to pay fire, it's completely counterproductive.

have fun living 100 years being a wageslave, retard.

Who ya gunna call?

Honestly. I've been browsing Holla Forums for years, and I've yet to see a single ML or whatnot even attempt to explain how supporting a state which rules over a peasant class isn't inherently anti-communistic, or how such a contradiction is a transitional flaw only and will ultimately be resolved.

Do any of you actually know? Is my question just flawed? Heck, I'd be glad just to be directed to some reading on the subject and check it out myself. All I ever get is "well it'll just wither away" or "there's nothing wrong with a ruling class if it's the state" sort of answers.

It's the one thing that keeps me from really accepting Marxism et al as potential routes of socialism.

That wasn't my intent. I was trying to get them to recognize their own hypocrisy. "Ooh, look at these pretty buildings! Capitalism The state made these things, not the workers!"

And ignoring a critical threat because you want to impress people is even more childish.

Cherry-picking is not a valid argument

didn't you kill yourself?

Why make a tool that only works for 'initiating communism', and works poorly at that, when you can just use the tool that creates more tools e.g. Fascism?

why not just have universal direct democratic participation in the state?

That's called anarchism.

shut up i'm baiting for anarkiddies who haven't read theory

can you define what you mean by "state"? I feel like these discussions are always trash because marxists and anarchists have a different idea in mind of what a "state" is.

To put it in the easiest terms to understand, anarchists want not just the means of production to be owned by the workers, but the means of governance as well.

Marxists want the means of governance to be privately owned.

wtf i hate Marxism now

because people are stupid and will make shitty desitions.
but if we onl let some(the smartest ones) to decide, then they'll turn evil and shit.

...

0/10

Trash. I'm pretty sympathetic to anarchism but that's just not what I meant when I asked for a definition. I mean like Marxists often define the state as the enforcing arm of a certain class by which it exacts its will upon another class. This is why you'll often hear Marxists say that an anarchist society is just a state that doesn't call itself a state. Because it comes about through revolution. The proletariat enforces its will on the other classes and reorganizes society through violent action. I would argue that anarchists use a different definition for what the state is, but it's a bit unclear what exactly that definition is.

...

Well, I was trying to be inflammatory because when I ask seriously all I get are crickets.

Which is laughable. Ruling by proxy is the same logic which leads to people putting their faith in the capitalist system and hoping their newly elected representative is immune to being bought out, or having different opinions. It doesn't matter who you claim to rule in the name of. The ruling class will always put their own interests first.

Then I would say a Marxist revolution has different goals to an Anarchist revolution. For Anarchists, the idea is to abolish class divides, not simply usurp the rulers and put their own favorite in power. The "enforcement of will" on the other classes is explicitly in retaliation and prevention of their will being imposed by force on us, and meant not to subjugate them, but to neutralize this servant/master relationship entirely. We can already understand this principle of individuals not having the "right" to enslave others. For some reason, it becomes confusing at larger scales?

There is a different definition, and as to why it's unclear I can only chalk up to willful ignorance. It isn't hard to find, I've typed it out on Holla Forums numerous time myself. I've even seen another user do it just today.

The state, as used by anarchists, is the manifestation of the ruling class in the political sphere. In capitalism, it becomes somewhat synonymous with the government, which causes a lot of the confusion. It applies to various involved apparatus as well. However, the two are different entities, and can be divided, as government i.e. the governing of a society can be done by a population without the use of a state, which must forcefully subjugate a populace into compliance in order to function. This is inherent.

Because their is this divide between those who have power over others, and the powerless, the state enforces the class system. You see, then, why we would believe it "ridiculous" to call the state an effective tool at eradicating social classes.

kneesocks is the best 2d girl of all time prove me wrong

you literally can't

I guess we can decisively conclude that Anarchists are right about this

Even though their theory is still shit

Question: what anarchist theories are there that help inform what society will look after a anarchist revolution? Because like the Marxists they only give vague notions.

I'm not an anarchist baitmaster like OP, but I am actually interested in this: under an ideal Marxist state, how does the transition from central state authority to decentralized voluntary individualist communism occur? How do we avoid or mitigate corruption from within the "elite" of the central government, which would presumably threaten the potentiality of such a transition?

It feels like tankies never give a straight answer to this and it's really what keeps me firmly in favor of decentralized democratic socialism. Maybe it's a stupid question, but I'd at least to know WHY it's stupid.

You guessed wrong. At least ask on >>>/marx/

Because it's been discussed ad nauseum for over 150 years.

And - yes. You are an Anarchist, because you consider your primary oppressor to be some "central authority", rather than economic circumstances. Compare necessity to work for 12 hours a day to working 8 hours a day. What is more free? Pure Anarchist answer would be that both options are equally free!

If you want to abolish state, you need to remove the reason for it's existence: immense poverty that enslaves us all to the Capital.

>You guessed wrong. At least ask on >>>/marx/
I actually did, back when my post here wasn't getting any feedback.

Only one response so far, and doesn't answer the question.

Nice strawman by the way, and still not addressing the question. It's okay to admit that you don't know.

I fail to see an argument in the op
Also, democracy

nomenklatura

when will tankies learn

YOU LEFT WING LEANING PARASITE, YOU EXPECT ME TO SIT HERE AND LISTEN TO YOUR DRIVEL?

I checked and it was answered the question you asked.

I literally answered the question: you cannot have modern economy without modern state. You need to either advance past this economy, or go back to non-state feudalism. The purpose of Socialist state is to advance past modern economy, to create a possibility of living without a state, but not going back to feudalism.

This might be not the answer you want, but stop pretending that you did not get it.

...

Please, everyone here can use Ctrl-f. Your only response to my critique of Marxism is that Anarchism won't work either?

No. Class division precedes the State.

By utilizing it as a tool of universal influence to accompany a revolutionary programme while suppressing outside bourgeois forces and inside counter-revolutionary forces.

Thinking decentralized, multi-entity organization can get us to a lasting, better society is what's ridiculous.

It's difficult with a state and harder without one.

Class society precedes the state. How ahistorical will anarkiddies?

The ownership of private property, and thus the stranglehold on political power, can only be maintained by forced compliance at the hands of the state. In state socialism, the private property middleman is removed, but political power is still kept in the hands of the few via force.

Explain your point of view. How does class division precede the state?

Yeah that would be why Kropotkin never shut up about the four hour work day. Please read.

Pure rhetoric. What is a "tool of universal influence"? What are the parameters of this "revolutionary programme"? Who decides your suppression of "counter-revolutionary" forces, as I'm sure you're not so stupid as to use this as a positive point in an argument against an anarchist. I'd like to avoid the purging this time around, thanks.

It's difficult with a state and harder without one.
Again, all you have as a counter is to criticize anarchism in lieu of actually facing this single contradiction I've highlighted.

How does the state abolish the state? One question.
Answers do not include:
-Anarchism can't work
-The state makes things easier/ is necessary
-vague, overarching prose that doesn't actually mean anything

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Of course not. The State is a specific organization dedicated to the rule of one class onto the others. It is born from the necessity to maintain this or that class society indeed, but it is not the origin of said class society. Your point of view is completely idealist.

There is no such thing. Socialism will be classless, and thus stateless. The proletarian State will be an instrument for the dictatorship of the proletariat. It will exist only during the revolution.

By abolishing classes.

By abolishing trade and private property.

The chicken and the egg, yes thank you peanut gallery.
Which will just wither away once they've decided the revolution is over, right? And I'm the idealist here?

trade is directly opposed to private property, with trading you can easily avoid property

terrible meme

Private property is only relevant in the designation of classes because their ownership begets political power.

The state still performs the function of maintaining classes without it, by withholding power from the masses. Removing private property does not remove the state, and thus does not remove classes.

This may have been pure rhetoric before the 20th century, but alas, we know that the 20th century only shows us these problems in recorded form. Counter-revolution was a frequent threat and outside bourgeois forces where a near-omnipresent influence.

There are many. The repression of the bourgeoisie, abolition of private property, establishment of a universal army and democratic centralism, to name a few. I tend to agree with Jameson's contemporary sketch of a 21st century praxis: youtube.com/watch?v=MNVKoX40ZAo.

Democratic centralism.

Your ideological identity does not interest me at all when I critique you; the content of your position does.

Avoid doing the same thing 'I' did then, by virtue of it being inevitable should your projcet desire any longevity. By which I mean: creating a state and labour camps in Catalonia (see: libcom.org/files/WorkersAgainstWork-Seidman_0.pdf), or a cult of personality and a private intelligence service in Ukraine (see: libcom.org/history/kontrrazvedka-story-makhnovist-intelligence-service-vyacheslav-azarov.

You haven't highlighted anything novel worth addressing more than I or any other proper Marxists worth their salt already have. It's becoming a little tiresome to have a discussion that's already long over and, at best, a 'well, that's like your opinion man!' scenario.

By becoming functionally obsolete. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not 'abolished', it withers away. This is the historical materialist prose.

The work camps already existed in the Spanish republic. Juan Garcia Oliver reformed them to make them slightly more humane when he became minister of justice. If anything this is yet more evidence that the popular front strategy was shit, that the revolution and the war shouldn't have been separated and that the Iron Column did literally nothing wrong.

So were gulags in Tsarist Russia. Why weren't they abolished in Catalonia?

I want to know why this state function wasn't abolished by self-described anarchists.

Irrelevant to my question.

Don't have time at the moment, will try to get to later.

So I have to be a part of the ruling class to matter. Got it.

Sure.

ie don't do things we don't like, behave and we won't slaughter you.

And finally we get to the meat of the matter. The state will wither away because it is unnecessary. Having no longer a relevant role in society, these wonderful comrades running the state in the name of the "proletariat", having just rendered their duties obsolete, graciously give up their unchecked power and rejoin the masses.

EXCUSE ME, BUT THE PARASYTE CLASS WOULD LIKE TO HAVE A WORD WITH YOU ABOUT THAT

Because the CNT joined the government under the delusion that a popular front government would make the liberal powers more likely to help Spain. This was what the Stalinists (You) did to secure power and oppose the working class, other than refusing to arm anarchist militias which led among other things to the fall of Malaga, where some militia units had only half a rifle for every fighter.

More realistic than fucking 'lel global horizontal democracy any day now lads'.

Absolutely relevant to you calling my outlined justifications for a state as 'pure rhetoric' (which isn't really a question); it's the primary justification for utilizing such a powerful and omnipotent tool such as the state.

Jameson's TL;DR would be 'Dual Power' (universal militia + democratic centralism).

There is no ruling class in a classless society.

Forgive me for the WEBM. I just love it too much.

Correct. Just like Ukraine and Catalonia. Oppose the revolution or the sovereignty of the worker's state/'free territory' and you will die or serve time in a labour camp.

Precisely.

Tell me, where and how did Stalin get any firepower to begin with? I'm taking some sick offense at the 'Stalinists (You)' part, you know! :-(

Nice OC btw (me on the left).

It's better to lose in a war against a well trained and supplied army than to have your state collapse because of its own broken political system. Explain how Stalin did everything right but revisionism somehow came in. I guess it was just insufficiency.

You, the "worker's state" have the power to murder me, a worker, without my having any say whatsoever.

This is what you call a classless society.

You are the shitposter here.

There were no "gulags" in Tsarist Russia. The idea that people in worker camps should get paid in full, or that they should get vacation from prison sentence to go home was preposterous in Russian Empire.

The main thing I'm getting from this thread is that I was a fool to ever take state socialists seriously.

What a fucking joke.

Ah! Well, I've shot my load now… Is it over yet?

He did almost everything wrong, starting with taking over the reigns in an already doomed structure of power and making it even worse.

If anything, there was not enough revisionism.

If you relevantly threaten the worker's state, you will die (just like I would die if I were to threaten the Catalonian sta- syndicate or the Ukrainian secret poli- free territory). Correct!

Uhuh.

The worker's state is just a pretty name you've given to the ruling class. They choose whether I am a "threat" or not, regardless of my actions, and I have no discourse or means of protesting my systematic removal. How are you so fucking dense to not see this for what it is?

This is a thing you came with in this thread. Don't pretend otherwise.

Oh, you're a leftcom or a trot who's just using the exact same sources that tankies do every time, putting sectarianism before your own positive beliefs.

The 'free territory'/'worker's syndicate' is just a pretty name you've given to the ruling class. They choose whether I am a 'threat' or not, regardless of my actions, and I have no discourse or means of protesting my systematic removal. How are you so fucking dense to not see this for what it is?

It's the result of the division of labor being developed enough to provide a social surplus to support those who do not provide their own means of subsistence. The division of labor preceded the social surplus and made it possible, so that's the root of the matter.

Since the neolithic we've seen a humongous increase in the complexity (to the point of redundancy) of the division of labor, and it should come as no surprise that the responsibilities and powers of the state have grown exponentially with this development. The state, in its most basic form, is a body of armed persons (men in the old parlance). The only reason those persons could go about armed and fed was because there was a surplus with which to maintain them, and a division of labor to arm them. The distribution of the surplus and the direction of production has, for the vast majority of our history, been decided by a ruling class, which this body of armed persons serve.

So what does that mean? Division of labor precedes a social surplus, which is appropriated by a ruling class and then distributed according to their interests, and guarded by the proto-state of armed persons. That's the majority of humanity's history once settled agriculture was possible. Women, by the way, were deeply involved in the creation of agriculture and things like pottery, so their particular oppression by the class system and hence the state stretches back millennia, as they were not only disarmed but the fruits of their labor robbed in order to create the archtypical patriarchal state.

To ties this back into what is being discussed, we can see that so long as there is a division of labor and a social surplus there will be a class society and thus a state. Anarchists can organize their federation or union of egoists or whatever they please, but they will grapple with the reality of class and the state nonetheless. Anarchists will require a body of armed persons to defend their revolution, and delegates or councils to direct production – all requiring those who cannot provide their own means of subsistence.

Marxists don't shy away from this reality. They proclaim the dictatorship of the proletariat, or something similar like Jameson's universal army, in which the majority class seizes the state and uses it in its most advanced form, rather than pretending that anything different can be devised from the ground up while the division of labor still exists. The erosion of the value-form and thus the division of labor will be the only thing to destroy the state, and the state will be the only organizational basis for this erosion to occur, one way or the other. This is the heart of the matter when Marxists snipe that anarchists pretend they don't have a state.

ITT: Anarkiddies bitch about history

Yes, I went through all this effort, even making a thread on /marx/ (dead as it is) just for the laughs. You sure got me.

Do I have to keep pointing out that going "no u" at anarchists every time I point out the flaws in your ideology doesn't fix those flaws?

I'm not trying to have a dick measuring contest here. Fuck anarchism. Take a goddamn critical look at your own ideology.

No. I abhor and cannot stand Trots and left coms propose solutions I find either idealistic or incomplete. I am a Leninist, and I believe in democratic centralism and a universal army.

These potential derailments are intrinsic to concocting a future revolutionary programme. A way must be found to avoid personality cult and ineffectiveness as to avoid repeating the 20th century experience.

Then maybe, just maybe avoid grasping at the 20th century for lack of a better argument. It's tired, done and frankly quite boring.

...

Ah, the meme arrows – my kryptonite!

Is this it? The summum of argumentation?

I'm seriously embarrassed for you if this is how you're going to write your posts.

Embarassment of an anonymous image board post? Well alright, Mr.!

Just want to remind everyone that we've gone from a somewhat meaningful exchange over the topic at hand to strawmen, meme arrows and proclaiming embarassment. Yeesh…

When I posted that marxism and autism pic it was supposed to be a joke.

i love this thread.

Thank you for the serious reply and the effort. This is a nice post.

From what I understand then, the issue here is that it isn't simply necessary to have a state, or useful, but rather actually impossible to not form a state based on the relationship of excess labour needed in order to maintain armed troops, as the human organization needed to orchestrate a thing essentially fulfills the function of what marxists define as the state. They fulfill a task, but do not produce, and thus must be produced for, is that right?

I'd still dispute that anarchism doesn't necessarily contest this reality, only the importance on how a state manifest as to not give undue political power into those specific institutions' hands, but there's a more pressing criticism here.

In accepting this definition, we say that anarchists only pretend to not have a state. Does this not go both ways though, in that marxists are only pretending to be classless?

Also, the idea the the state will wither away out of uselessness is still absolutely foolish. Uselessness would have withered away the capitalist state by now, if that's how it worked. Instead, it invents new reasons to exist, perpetually justifying itself and the status quo. A marxist state, even if designed to be temporary at conception, will inevitably do the same.

I've only once cited it, in the context of not wanting to get killed off by a marxist state that thinks me a nuisance.

Needs more robots

Yes.

Because those are not flaws. You have to deal with objective economic reason for state's existence, before you can hope for a successful Anarchist Revolution.

Except you keep pretending that it's not the case and the Glorious Marxist Revolution should not focus on solving economic problems, but solve the problem off the state itself.

And so you are pointed again and again at the core problem of your reasoning: abolishing state does not solve anything. You'll either go feudal or you'll get another state.

You're most welcome.

Correct. Ideally, those who produce are also those who direct how the surplus is used. This is a very critical tension even in Marxist theory: balancing between self-management and production for humanity as a whole, or at least those within the revolutionary state.

On the contrary, Marxists are well aware that the dictatorship of the proletariat is still a class society. Not all will have the same relations to the means of production; not all will be able to work. In a more general sense, the revolutionary state will be deeply scarred by the preceding historical and cultural context. This is where cultural revolution is supposed to be necessary, as well as the general reshaping of productive relations along socialist lines. But that's a huge issue that Marxists have been arguing over for a long time.

Well, believe it or not, after the Cold War there were many who proclaimed that the state was, in a bourgeois fashion, withering away. Multinational corporations and transnational capital along with supranational organizations like the European Union, and things like the SWIFT banking system and institutions like the IMF were considered ascendant while the state lost the iron control it wielded last century. All true.

But the state remains indispensable. Even with the armed forces, the bedrock of the state, outsourced to a fair degree, it remains. The nation-state, dividing the world into neat little investment zones with their own capital laws, endures. Marxists have largely moved beyond a simple instrumentalist view of the state, which is to say the state is simply a tool of the bourgeois class, into many others, so opinions are divided on what all this means. Regardless, the division of labor presupposes a state, and we're divided more than ever.

I would argue that is true until socialism covers the world, which is a very distant possibility at this time. So long as there is a bourgeois state opposing it, there will be a Marxist state. A key point is that, even if that is the case, there must be as much done as possible to reduce the necessity of the division of labor and thus work itself. We can't fetishize work, it only reinforces the production of value rather than its abolition. Of course, we can't fight for world socialism without a surplus to support those who fight it. So there's another tension.

Kek, really? All previous anarchist projects failed at establishing worker power beyond local groups. When it comes to the politics of a whole country (region, if that triggers you) anarchist have nothing.

source: Ealham C (2010) Anarchism and the City: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937. Oakland: AK Press.
davidharvey.org/2015/06/listen-anarchist-by-david-harvey/

No genius, which will wither away when it's material basis is gone. Tell me, how are you gonna have a specific organisation for the rule of one class onto the others when there are no more classes?

Classes are defined by your position in the production process. With the abolition of property and the social control over the means of production and their products, every member of the society will share the same position in the production process. I.e.: no classes.

Yeah, right…

Hey you know what? I need money. Do you need a car? I can sell you a car. Half-price. Brand new! The only thing is I don't own it.

I wish I could shitpost this good.

You have no idea what a class is, do you?

I think you're misunderstanding this. I don't understand why it's so hard for Marxists to wrap their head around this question. When a small group of people have complete political and economic control of a society, why would they ever give up that power? It doesn't matter that society doesn't need them. The fact that they're obsolete won't cause them to go away. THEY HAVE COMPLETE UNCHECKED ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONTROL OVER A SOCIETY. THE HAVE FUNCTIONALLY REPLACED THE BOURGIES WITH SOMETHING EQUALLY POWERFUL BUT MORE CENTRALIZED. WHY WOULD THEY GIVE UP THAT POWER?

Tell me, what does this "complete control" consist in? Concretely?

It is 1937. I am Lenin. There was a successful revolution in Germany in 1919. They helped us Russians and together we united the proletarians of all the world, we overthrew the bourgeoisie and we managed to abolish all forms of private property. Needless to say, I didn't die. I remained the head of the international Soviet republic to this day. Now the whole world is socialist. What does my control consist in?

not an argument

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#Lenin.27s_government

perhaps you cannot sell me a car, but you can sell me and to other people bycicles

perhaps your job is to manufacture and sell bikes, and many people need bikes, you can trade those bikes for a car using some form of currency

one man simply cannot hold one of each of the means of production, thinking that you can own a car factory, a computer factory, a bycicle factory and so on is retarded, instead you can exchange the sense of property by exchanging the products of said manufacturing facility that you own

come on user

This has literally nothing to do with my question.

If I own them, then there is still property.

thats because the concept of property is incompatible with the material world where resources are limited

if you own something then nobody else can own the same thing

however if you own a bycicle factory and if everyone who wants to own a bycicle can get one via trading with you, the concept becomes a lot less compliated

another option is that you could give ownership of the factory to the people who want a bycicle, let's say, I want a bycicle I can go to the bycicle factory and make my own

you would own the bycicle you just made, but you don't own the factory

Why would I do such a thing?

let's say you are tired of making bycicles and now you want to print books, even today people just sell buisness in order to start new ones

also that is implying the whole situation started with you being the sole owner of the factory, but what if a group of people want to make their own bycicle factory?

you (or someonelse) implied trade and private property should disappear, but its trade what lets people claim ownership of things

kys

Tankies just want to change one ruling class into another.

If capitalists won't voluntarily give up their power why would the state?

Uh, what?

made this just for you

you asked what power Lenin had. I gave you a Wikipedia page explaining what power Lenin had

Does this mean that in your view we need to eliminate the division of labor? Wouldn't that be rather inefficient?

No, I asked what power Lenin would have in a socialist society.

What?

its basically the whole argument for marxism, people trade their labour, represented by commodities for other commodities, the problem arises when the capitalist claims ownership of said labour

Which he always does, when trade is developed enough.

but trade is a completly separate issue from the capitalist/propietor one

you are implying that the final resolution of trade ends in explotation, I don't see how you get there

I can see how you could get there, both from the marxist point of view where an individual keeps all the fruits of people's labour and from an anti-marxist point of view, where you could arguee that the commune is supriming the individual, but as long as you stop said conditions from happening, I dont see how you wouldn't be able to come up with very complex trade agreements that do not end up in explotation

This is a difficult question to answer.

First, considering that our historical development is necessarily messy, with the remnants of dead ages still with us even now, its complete elimination is unlikely. Even if we achieve something recognizably communist, there will still be those who are born in the middle of the amazon, or some backwater, where more traditional forms of life remain stubbornly ingrained. The only way to eliminate that is to literally stamp out such forms of life by force. I'm not certain that's either desirable or necessary.

Second, I mentioned that the division of labor has reached the point of redundancy. A lot of the work done today is simply unnecessary – and so is the consumption it entails. So the progressive elimination of the division of labor by automation and the culling of stupid, useless work is absolutely necessary. Capitalism furthers automation but not efficiency in occupations, and it is incredibly inefficient when you consider how it is not meeting the needs of the vast majority of humanity, despite its great productive prowess, and even worse – at the cost of our ecological stability.

Finally, we have to look past efficiency in another sense – people are more than units of consumption and production. Life can be better and have a purpose beyond living to work and consume, and capitalism denies that is possible. Pursuit of efficiency, growth, and so on, for the sake of it is idealogical claptrap we can do without.

Okay. I missed it.

>It's better to lose in a war against a well trained and supplied army than to have your state collapse because of its own broken political system.
What the actual fuck.

ML is great because it managed not only seize the power (cue fuck-ups of 1848), but to survive subsequent war (twice), which Commune had failed to do, and then it successfully carried on for decades. And then it even managed to outcompete most Capitalist states - let's not pretend that if US had (somehow) fallen during WWII, Soviets wouldn't have taken over the world.

That's four successes in a row.

It was also extremely inefficient and led to constant stagnation, which had been happening when Kruschev took over from Stalin.

I mean really shit ones yeah, but it never got close to the West. Yugoslavia on the other hand…

But it didn't and it filled Western Europe with gibsmedats, and instead the Soviet Union fell because of its broken economic policy and authoritarian rule. To bad, so sad. Yugoslavia was the only successful socialism within the 20th century, the only one that experienced constant economic growth.

And anarchists don't see how an instrument of class rule can bring about a society free of social class. the Marxist definition of a state is so broad as to include any working class direct action

Too bad it failed at implementing socialism

Given their starting point, and lack of pre-industrialization… out of all the critique you could have of the Soviet Union, that - is not a valid one.

When it comes to building of infrastructure, industry, modernization… it was a monumental success. With no precedent, nor equal, in all of history. Nothing even comes close.

top-tier autism, lad. the point is that Lenin had a large amount of state power. Your point makes no sense unless it's clear that the USSR would have developed into a socialist society had they conquered more territory or whatever other conditions are necessary for the state to wither away.

It's like saying "well what power would Lenin have in a communist society?" Obviously in a truly egalitarian fairy-tale land, none of this would be a problem. That's not what we're dealing with here. We're dealing with a recently feudal society that had transitioned into a centralized capitalist state (perhaps as a transitionary period before moving toward socialism and communism, perhaps not).

You're asking me to imagine a situation in which much of the problems in this situation– not only diplomatic problems but larger internal problems– have just disappeared. What the anarchists in this thread have been asking is why you assume these problems will just disappear. How do we get from state capitalism with more red to actual stateless communism? You've taken the approach that most people on this board take: "oh let's just assume this is not a problem, therefore it's not a problem." Trash.

so then there is a sort of necessary and practical division of labor that will remain. Does this other type of division of labor not require a state?

There's only one condition for the State to wither away: no more classes. In other words: socialism. No Marxist ever said that the State could wither away before we get to socialism.

Now, the other user seemed to think the State won't wither away even in socialism. Hence my question: what concrete power could the State possibility have in a socialist society?

If the society is truly classless and the workers are not producing surplus materials to support an army, then of course the state will go away. My concern is transferring from this society in which the state holds control of the means of production and is heavily centralized into a society in which there is no class no oppressive state, etc. etc. Once again my concern is not, how will the state wither away once there is no class, no army, no state controlling and apportioning goods, my concern is that I don't see how we'll get to that point in the first place.

>as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.
-Marx, The German Ideology

The key difference between production under communism and today is that it is voluntary as opposed to something coerced and enforced upon the individual by "natural" right – private property, the market, etc.

Here we come back to the difference between anarchists and Marxists. The former believe that production must, immediately, become voluntary – a matter of free association. In this way the state is abolished, and by no other. But work as a concept is not voluntary, it is necessary; there will be production necessary in order for an anarchist society to reproduce itself. It will be voluntary insofar people have a greater degree of control over how work is organized and so on, but the immediate abolition of work is not possible. The division of labor will thus endure, and so on.

Marxists, by contrast, are aware that humanity is subject to forces beyond its own collective control under capitalism, and that it will take time to gain a revolutionary kind of control over production that no society has yet experienced. Striving to eliminate the value-form – money, for simplicity's sake – work and thus the division of labor is how it will be achieved, which attacks the underlying foundations of the state.

So we can theorize that, yes, there will be a kind of necessary and practical division of labor up until we reach communism. If it is necessary and practical it will consequently have to be done by someone, for some time, in order to meet societies' needs – it will not be a purely voluntary arrangement in that it is only done because people wish to do it. Communism is defined, in large part, by voluntary activity – that includes production the individual finds compelling, personally satisfying, creatively fulfilling, etc. The individual is no longer coerced, either by force or necessity, to produce for the sake of society. Under communism, work will no longer exist; the division of labor will be a memory; and society will become free in a real sense, without a state.

But that's a long way off. I'm going to add one more thing. Considering the ecological crisis, which will far outweigh any capitalist economic crisis in its impact on humanity, there will have to be a lot of work done to fix it – over centuries. Anarchist free association based upon local self-management will ride up against this powerful, coercive force. It's going to be a necessary task of epochal proportions, and it will require the state, one way or the other.

Rojava is not nationalist.

Leftists who say that may as well renounce the EZLN because a clear made part of their struggle was to preserve their indigenous culture and traditions.

This is just the natural shit that happens after so much time under suppression

thx user. this was pretty reasonable and interesting.

So far I've not seen any sufficiently convincing evidence of this. Everything points to the opposite.

Soviet Union started slowing down. That's it. Even Khruschev's USSR was head and shoulders above the rest of the world.

Every single one except US is "really shit one" then.

1) existed only because USSR was around
2) couldn't properly industrialize
3) was a half-assed attempt at Socialism, that got popular only because Capitalists had nothing to fear from it

I would add sabotaged Socialist Balkan Federation, but Yugos weren't guilty alone for this.

That's Holla Forums level of history.

You meant Communism. Anarchists don't have Bolshevik's "Socialism" (aka "transitory phase").

If he's talking about the Soviet planned economy then you're right, he is wrong. In a market comparison between the industrial output of the Soviet Union and it's Western counterparts, it was in general just as efficient. Its major problems seem to have come from the planners' inability to anticipate the needs to the people they were planning for.

In fact, Soviet economic development mirrors Western development post WW2. They seemed to have both experienced similar economic slowdowns and crises around the same time, no doubt because they were both reliant on the similar market inputs and were affected by their fluctuations.

In any event, this stuff about the Soviet economy being inefficient is bunk. Whatever its failings might have been, "inefficiency" wasn't one of them.

pdfs related.

Neither is "It's just ridiculous".

Wouldn't large outputs much of which is not of the desirable kind to the people due to the central plannings inability to accurately judge the peoples needs as demands change with time lead to a large amount of waste therefore be inefficient in itself?

ECONOMIC CALCULATION PROBLEM CONFIRMED. SUCK IT COMMIE CUCKS

the economic calculation can be solved with full automation once we reach a post-scarcity level, something can can easily be achieved by non-proft driven working co-ops

try again

It wouldn't be an issue if we could simulate a market using computers, which we can do.

akarlin.com/2012/06/the-soviet-economy-charting-failure/

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Central planning has all the prognostic tools market economy has, and two more - people's own opinion and knowledge of what the "competition" would do. It makes no sense for Central Planning to be less efficient at predicting.

Market economy constantly overproduces (and underproduces) already and is extremely inefficient even if we do not account for the cost society at large has to pay for bankruptcies.

Please, stop. Things measured in Italy/Spain (who were in no way "the same as Russia" pre-WWI) are qualitatively different from those measured when it comes to Soviet GDP. Not only goods exchange was more streamlined, quite a lot of things could not be accounted for.

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By your own logic primitive communism was not a thing

While inefficiency can arise briefly due to changes the demand, it can correct it self rather quickly naturally as producer will exit the market for that good if there is overproduction and instead move to another market which is in demand at that time. In cases of underproduction producers will enter that market instead.

However in the grossly inefficient system of central planning sudden changes require those from higher up to notice that there is an over/undersupply of a good, then correctly estimate how much would be correct to produce (keep in mind there may very well be wrong with this estimate) and then issue the new amount that should be produced to the factories, this process takes much longer to conduct than what happens in a market economy. Also one should keep in mind that at this time there are thousands of goods if not hundreds of thousands which the central planners need to individually monitor the over/underproduction of, this is a recipe for disaster.

I had to double check to see if I got re-routed to some fantasy/religion/libertarian board. You see, I occasionally check the boards without having any idea what's inside.

Now, since we've established that this thread is not a part of any of those and is supposed to be about the real world, I'd like to point out that I'm of an opinion that:

1) In real world goods do not magically transform into other goods.
2) In real world worker's speciality does not magically change into another speciality
3) In real world factories do not magically rebuild themselves (at no cost!) into another factories
4) In real world backbone of economy is industry, where supply/demand does not change often.
5) In real world participants of market economy are different from the participants of planned economy only in that they have less information and less coordination with the rest of the world. Not by having access to magic.
6) In real world "exiting the market" means that you went bankrupt, lost a lot of money - and it is inefficient all by itself. Even if you think it is moral and just, it is still extreme loss of invested resources.
7) In real world becoming extremely inefficient after minor inefficiency does not negate neither minor inefficiency, nor extreme.

It seems to me that you have religious beliefs that contradict some or all of those points.

While inefficiency can arise briefly in a centrally planned economy due to changes the demand, it can correct it self rather quickly naturally as producer will stop producing that good if there is overproduction and instead move to another production which is in demand at that time. In cases of underproduction producers will enter that production instead.

However in the grossly inefficient system of markets sudden changes require every company to notice that there is an over/undersupply of a good, then correctly estimate how much would be correct to produce (keep in mind there may very well be wrong with this estimate) and then issue the new amount that should be produced to their factories, this process takes much longer to conduct than what happens in a centrally planned economy. Also one should keep in mind that at this time there are thousands of goods if not hundreds of thousands which companies actually individually monitor the over/underproduction of, this is a preview of what central planning will look like.

How do you figure?

I know its a fucking joke that more state will get rid of state.

Division of labor existed before civilization, though among gender lines. Men would hunt and women would do pretty much everything else.

I would like to address the points that you have made as I find your view of "the real world" to be rather amusing.

Agreed, but would also state that the demands of people for goods will not magically change either.

Respecialisation due to retraining is hardly what I would consider magic, but maybe something as simple as this appears as such to a tanky. While retraining will take resources it will at many times overweigh the sheer loss of overproduction and this as a result will lead to greater efficiency.

I have no objections to this but those factories can be converted to change their output at a cost. Just like above this cost be outweighed by sufficient overproduction and in that circumstance would lead to improved efficiency.

You have got to be trolling with the claim that supply/demand does not change often in the area of industry in which goods such as cars, electronics, food and entertainment are produced. Demand of these goods are anything but static, but then again maybe magical tanky land works differently than the very reality we all live in.

I hardly think that the workings of simple market economics are magic but I guess to some people who could not even comprehend my earlier post it would appear to be.

I don't know about your version of the "real world" but in reality bankruptcy is hardly the only way one can exit the market and the cost of businesses having to refocus to other goods would be preferable to the greater future cost of having multiple companies fail or even a whole sector of the economy crash due to personal emotions.

I would agree but going from minor inefficiency to efficiency does.

After going over these points, some of these beliefs do not even require one to be religious to find ridiculous. While you may claim that others have religious reasons to disagree with those points, fair argument can be made that some of those very points could only come from a dogmatic adherent to the religion of Stalinism.

After doing a complete cop-out like that from your other post, you are the religious one who believes in magic here tankie.

The fact that you even have to appeal to emotion, construct a huge strawman, put points into peoples mouths, clearly shows that you don't have any arguments and the sheer desperation to defend yourself.

Also its embarrassing that you can't even tell how different market economics are to bureaucratic planned economics or even what they ARE.

I don't see how that makes primitive communism impossible. There was no social surplus, so there was no class society. Maybe there was enough for a feast every now and then, but it was immediately consumed. The division of labor within the community, however, preceded the surplus. The forces of production were developed to the point it was regularly available and then we see the emergence of class society. We can't return to primitive times with a primitive division of labor (nor should we want to). The only way out is to develop a new communism in which the division of labor has been effectively eliminated.

The claim that surplus or division of labor is ridiculous though, especially considering that civilizations did indeed exist during the neolithic period that did not have class divisions. The true source of class division and domination is not from a creation of a surplus or division of labor but from the housewifization of women. I would recommend that you read Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization.

That surplus or division of labor resulted in class*

I actually will after I'm familiar with Bookchin. But stating "read X" is not a good argument.

You're going to have to define what you mean by this and how the process works.

How do you force women into that position without the division of labor? How can you keep them in the home, away from production and the outside world, without a surplus to feed them? (Eg. the ancient Greeks.)

Also, the existence of civilizations without class divisions rapidly became the exception rather than the norm as the forces of production were developed. Today's living proof of that.

And?

At no cost? Nope. That's magic.

I.e. Market is efficient because it is possible to have even greater inefficiency (that never happens IRL). Is that correct?

"Industry" as in "industrial goods". You are listing consumer goods.

Yes, it is relatively static. Market shifts occur within years, if not decades.

Let's take a look at how electronic works as a practical example, because I can't expect you to understand theory.

In "magical tanky land" you may have changed ten computers/smartphones within a decade, but polycrystalline silicon rods that have been used for microchip wafers? They are the same 300 mm rods, which standards were established in 2000-2001, at the latest - 2004 (roughness). And that's it. That's your cutting edge of progress. You have half a dozen of major producers that make those rods, using mostly the same equipment and the same processes.

And it doesn't look like it will change any time soon.: producers of equipment capable of creating 450 mm rods have to persuade industry to adopt this new standard - buy a lot of new equipment, which is a very expensive thing to do. And so we have 450 mm standard moved from 2012 to 2015, to 2017, to 2020.

Not only quality, the quantity doesn't unexpectedly fluctuate: even if there might be immense fluctuations in supply/demand of one specific type of electronic device, the general demand for silicon rods depends on hundreds of different devices. If one company that buys microchips goes bankrupt - the other steps into it's place or one of the existing companies buys leftover supply - and this generally happens year or more before the actual goods are even produced.

The same goes for grades of steel, industrial chemicals, agriculture, and so on, and so forth. You might get some variety in form, color, logos or specific way things are assembled/packaged, but all the pieces available to producers of consumer goods have been predetermined years, if not decades ago.

Over 80% of industry is already planned, except you are not allowed to make any decision about it. You are not even allowed to know anything about particular contracts, because it's every participant's right to play the grand game of "market economy". Your right is to pay the expenses: to be unemployed or have a crappy job; to pay with your taxes for bailing out losers; to enjoy damage to the environment players cause; to consume all the overpriced crap that gets produced as a result.

This is how the economy in magical tanky land works. Making it Centrally Planned simply means that you get a say at how things are run.

And I don't really care if you think that "dogmatic adherence to the religion of Stalinism" (that claims improvement of this process, should the democracy be applied to it) is somehow a "fair argument" against Central Planning. I do not think that Invisible Hand is doing a good job and you can't present a coherent reason why it does.

No arguments except ad hominem?

I'm not getting answer, am i?

This. Using consumer feedback for planning how much to produce of this or that product is not something restricted to decentralized systems.

The chaotic competition we have today means that even the smartest business people can't properly plan with dependencies. Take the hardware market, whether it is game consoles or whatever. Does the best hardware win in the market? What matters for a consumer is what the combination of hardware and the software running on it can do. A big company with inferior hardware, but an established retail infrastructure, an established brand, tends to prevail. The programmer tells you that hardware A is a pain in the ass to program for in comparison to hardware B, but hardware A got the big market share and so it gets his software and so it continues to have the market and so it continues to get software and so on. Where is the market magic fixing this? This loop wouldn't even vanish if all marketing shills were gulaged and all patents abolished. You don't migrate to a theoretical better hardware if there is no software for it, and if that hardware isn't widespread and its architecture is very different, so porting is far from trivial, you are stuck.

In a planned economy, the people doing the programming take a good look at different hardware prototypes first, and the one they estimate to be better is the one that will be mass-produced and get the software.

No force, no civility. Why do you deny human nature?

Human nature is to live and be communists without a state. Mutual aid and not the war of all against all.
t. WW1 man

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