COINTELPRO never ended
that particular type that hates the state but somehow believes whatever their state says about their opponents 🤔
I feel like I’ve been seeing lots of anti-anarchist shitposts lately. Is there some new Lemmy tea à la leftist-infighting that I’m unaware of? Or is it just typical rage bait from ml?
To be fair, Lemmy.ml doesn’t generally poke the anarchists much, even if MLs disagree with anarchists on many things. We can and do still work together. Only a few accounts actively poke the anarchists.
I’m anarchist leaning and even I make memes making fun of anarchists on lemmy because the majority of lemmy anarchists are liberals and western chauvinists. The reason I am anarchist leaning and not a fully committed “tankie” isn’t because I didn’t bother to read Marx and Lenin I just don’t believe that some of their ideas will practically work, specifically the concept that a state is both inherently bourgeois and in charge of managing impossible contradictions yet somehow the dictatorship of the proletariat is able to wield state power to institute the will of the vanguard while being immune to the inherent contradiction of a state. To me this is a fundamental logical error in the revolutionary process that has to be resolved.
The reason I am anarchist leaning and not a fully committed “tankie” isn’t because I didn’t bother to read Marx and Lenin
Fair enough, lol. I used to be an anarchist, took a lot of reading to come around to Marxism-Leninism.
I just don’t believe that some of their ideas will practically work, specifically the concept that a state is both inherently bourgeois and in charge of managing impossible contradictions yet somehow the dictatorship of the proletariat is able to wield state power to institute the will of the vanguard while being immune to the inherent contradiction of a state. To me this is a fundamental logical error in the revolutionary process that has to be resolved.
Big correction, the state isn’t inherently bourgeois, but instead inherently representative of the class in power. States predate the bourgeoisie, and last after the bourgeoisie. States are the representative of a class, meaning states can be proletarian, and this is largely determined by which aspect of the economy is principle, as the state exists to maintain class power. Economies where public ownership is principle can be maintained by proletarian states.
The reason the proletariat is a special class, is because as a ruling class, it seeks to end class, not maintain itself as the working class. To do so, it needs to collectivize all production and distribution, which gets rid of any differences in ownership. No more businesses, no more landlords, nothing, just full public ownership. At this point, there are no classes in contention (though it takes generations for the capitalist brainworms to culturally phase out), and thus the oppressive elements like special police forced phase out, leaving only “the administration of things” in place.
Proletarian states aren’t immune to contradictions, but that just means they will run into difficulties, not that they are impossible to carry out into withering away and communism.
I still don’t believe that distinction actually address the contradiction though and what Lenin says in State and Revolution. The title is literally “The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms” and later “The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class”
How can this state that is a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms and an instrument for exploitation of the oppressed class be wielded to do anything else but that? Sure maybe the argument can be made that the bourgeois is the oppressed class in the DoP, but they still control the businesses and enterprises even after a state revolution. I don’t think the world can exist without commerce and it is a fundamental feature of human culture. The Soviet state was never able to break that, at most it transferred a portion of that to the state itself, so was the state then an instrument to exploit itself?
This is why I appreciate people like Rick Wolff and his expanded analysis of the prerequisites of revolution including a robust cooperative economy along with political revolution. I just don’t believe the vanguard state is capable of doing what must be done without a component of non hierarchical syndicalist character and anarchist social revolution as an additive measure to the standard ML take and why I consider myself anarchist leaning.
For clarity, I basically summarized the points of State and Rev.
How can this state that is a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms and an instrument for exploitation of the oppressed class be wielded to do anything else but that?
It cannot be, the point is that in socialism, the proletariat exploits the bourgeoisie and gradually appropriates its property.
Sure maybe the argument can be made that the bourgeois is the oppressed class in the DoP, but they still control the businesses and enterprises even after a state revolution.
Correct, but only the secondary and small/medium industries at most, as in China, or practically nothing at all, as in the USSR post-NEP (except, of course, for the cooperative farms). By holding the commanding heights of the economy, the proletariat holds the economy in general, and has the bourgeoisie’s hands tied.
I don’t think the world can exist without commerce and it is a fundamental feature of human culture. The Soviet state was never able to break that, at most it transferred a portion of that to the state itself, so was the state then an instrument to exploit itself?
The state was in a state of withering. It was not exploiting itself, but the proletariat was in control of the economy, and abolishing class. It wasn’t until revisionism took root that corruption began to start undermining the system.
This is why I appreciate people like Rick Wolff and his expanded analysis of the prerequisites of revolution including a robust cooperative economy along with political revolution. I just don’t believe the vanguard state is capable of doing what must be done without a component of non hierarchical syndicalist character and anarchist social revolution as an additive measure to the standard ML take and why I consider myself anarchist leaning.
I don’t really agree, but that’s fine. Cooperatives can certainly be a part of socialism, for example Huawei is a cooperative, but it isn’t a prerequisite IMO.
I think Chomsky turning out to be part of the pedophile conspiracy Israel uses to control the West has called into question if Anarchism is simply libertarianism, but edgy, and part of the intelligence community’s efforts to control a “compatible left” ala Foucault and all the phenomenological academia the CIA is publicly known to be behind the success of.
Anarchy existed long before Noam Chomsky…? Also, full disclosure, I didn’t even know Noam Chomsky was associated with Anarchist thought. I only know his name since it comes up in linguistics (I’m not a linguist just ADHD and interested in conlangs)
Anyway, I don’t really see how anarchy can at all be libertarianism since the latter isn’t socialist…? Perhaps I’m just not familiar enough with modern libertarianism, but iirc libertarians tend to very strongly believe in private property and keeping businesses free from government regulation. Neither of which are beliefs shared by any anarchists I’ve ever met.
On the note of CIA control, isn’t the easiest method of controlling leftists trying to create division and separation between leftists because smaller groups cause less of a threat? And, if that’s the case, aren’t these anti-anarchist memes a form of that exact kind of control tactics?
What are anarchists spreading/believing that put them on the same plane as liberals?
Im aware it’s a stereotype and there’s definitely cool anarchists that don’t, but especially believing various lies about AES (China, UdSSR, DPRK, etc.)
Ahhh, fair enough. I think it’s rich criticizing these places when they don’t live somewhere that’s “better” in whatever way they think it is. The whole world is fucked. We need to rebuild from the ground up. I think about things practically. Ideally, an anarchist future sounds great, but we cannot implement that without at the minimum instilling socialism, evolving to communism, and then many generations down the line if things can go well, then achieve anarchy. Jumping the gun would lead to so many issues, especially from the libertarian crowd. They are basically liberals with a desire to remove safety nets altogether. Which is fucked. And we all know that the way liberals operate is just like Republicans, but virtue signal for the sake of profit rather than shoot themselves in the foot by being open about their true intentions or internal beliefs (racism, sexism, etc).
There is something so on point about this. Mostly the fact that the goofs couldn’t spell believing.
A good old fashioned fumbling self-own, just like reddit used to make :)
