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TRUE communism!

The Democratic People's Republic of Tankiejerk @lemmy.world

TRUE communism!

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TRUE communism!

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  • I understand that this is an anarchist comm, so you're free to post whatever you want, but I don't think it's productive to take a stance that fundamentally rests on misrepresenting what you're critiquing. Since you invoked my username in one of your comments here, I'd figure I'd give the Marxist stance its fair representation.

    First, there is no such thing as "true communism." The obsession over purity in politics is a result of dogmatism and book workship.

    Secondly, for Marxists, the stance isn't that you "do a state" and then "stop doing the state." For Marxists, not just Marxist-Leninists, the state is purely a body that resolves class contradictions through class oppression. It isn't hierarchy, and it isn't organization. Communism in the marxist conception, as a stateless society, is stateless in that once all property is collectively owned and planned, there is no class distinction. Administration remains, and is not to whither, as that's a necessary product of mass, industrialized production.

    Taking that into account, the state can only disappear if all class disappears, and class cannot be abolished until all global production is collectivized. There has never been that point, you cannot have communism in one country. You can be socialist, in that public property can be the principle aspect of the economy and the state can be proletarian in character, but the state can never whither until all states are socialist, interconnected, and borders fading away into one democratic system.

    Socialist countries like the PRC do rely on commodity production to engage with the global economy, as they must for the time being. They can't achieve a global system as one single country. As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character. You cannot "declare socialized production" with the stroke of a pen, it's something that must arise from development. That doesn't mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the "socialist road," ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.

    This is all starkly different from the anarchist position, that we can develop from the outset a decentralized, horizontalist society. I'm not going to debatelord here, this is an anarchist comm, but if you're going to misrepresent the views of Marxists, then I feel you're doing a disservice by making anarchists less prepared to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.

    • That doesn't mean the character of an economy that is dominated by public ownership is capitalist, either, just that it is on the "socialist road," ie it is socialist, and working its way to higher levels of socialization until communism is achieved.

      This is the crux of the disagreement between anarchists and MLs. I would argue that state ownership - if the state does not adequately represent the will of the people - is not public ownership. A hierarchical state with a flawed and bureaucratic democracy that is prone to corruption inevitably creates and maintains a class of bureaucrats with social, political, and economic privilege. The state - in order to preserve itself - maintains a monopoly on collective ownership, preventing workers from organizing on their own terms.

      This is what anarchists mean when they call something "state capitalist." They are arguing that the state itself is a private entity pretending to represent the will of the people.

      • I'd say the real crux of the argument is in full centralization and collectivization, or full horizontalism and decentralization. The endpoints are different, so the means are different.

        Either way, I don't agree that administrators represent a class. Public property is not bourgeois property, it doesn't exist in the M-C-M' circuit of production, it's collective and planned. Even if there's administration, it's a physical, real thing. There will be flaws, there will be issues, but to let perfect be the enemy of progress is an issue. It's less about some metaphysical "will of the workers" and more about material relationships to the means of production and the sublimation of property.

        Secondly, the state doesn't "preserve itself," at least the Marxist conception of the state. The state isn't a class, it's a representative of a class, and when all property has been sublimated, there is no class, and no state. There still exists administration, but not special bodies of armed men to oppress other classes, as there are no classes to oppress.

    • It feels a bit disingenuous to hear the following:

      to engage in productive conversation with Marxists.

      I mean I got your point the other day, that I shouldn't necessarrily argue about Communistic dogma without reading all the literature, but I had to fight tooth and nail to get to that point and not just be waved away as a bad faith actor. So I was already working hard just to be told to go and read up.

      OP is using the same intensity hammer you guys got going on over there. Is it fair?

    • As long as the state holds control of the large firms and key industries, and resolves class contradictions in the favor of the proletariat and against the bourgeoisie, then as the economy develops and grows it will continue to take on an increasingly socialized character.

      When has this been achieved in communism?

      • Cuba, USSR, PRC, etc, though these are/were socialist. Communism, in the Marxist sense (not anarchist), must be global, fully collectivized, etc, while these are examples of single states in the context of a globally capitalist-dominant system. Nevertheless, they are all examples of socialism, where as they developed as socialist countries their economies became increasingly developed and collectivized.

        The USSR dissolved for myriad reasons, such as liberal reforms that set elements of the system against each other, and the PRC at one point under the Gang of Four tried to shortcut its way to communism out of a dogmatic approach to socialism, but post-reform as the PRC has been developing, it has steadily been increading the socialized character of its production. The large firms and key industries are firmly held by a proletarian state, and over time as the small and medium firms grow, these are more and more controlled by the public sector.

49 comments