I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Anark’s whole body of work. I have only watched a handful of his videos, on recommendation from an anarchist I know. But what I did see was enough to recognize: petty-bourgeois anarchism dressed up in the language and strappings of rigorous theory. The starting point it appears is never class struggle, production, imperialism, state power, colonial pressure, or the actual historical tasks of socialist construction. It is abstract “power,” abstract “authority,” abstract “domination,” and then a moral judgment against every real revolutionary state for failing to match an idealized fantasy of immediate anti-authoritarian purity.
In theoretical terms: phrase-mongering and infantile ultra-leftism. From what I have seen, his understanding of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and existing socialist states is paper-thin. Socialist construction under siege, blockade, sabotage, civil war, peasant backwardness, imperialist encirclement, and restorationist pressure gets flattened into a morality tale about “authoritarianism.”
His definition of power is fine, if overly individualist: “the ability to successfully enact one’s will.” This makes sense given individualism being a pillar of anarchism. But the definition of “authoritarianism” is yet another vacuous redefinition to add to the pile. It strips analysis of class content, state form, property relations, and historical function. “The degree to which a power structure monopolizes control over the total social implementation of some power” sounds precise, but it tells us almost nothing. Which class controls it? Through what institutions? On the basis of what property relations? Against whom is coercion being used? In what historical situation? A workers’ state, a fascist state, a colonial state, a bourgeois liberal state, and a revolutionary army can all be made to fit vague language about monopoly, coercion, and implementation. Returning it once again to a label for designated bad countries™.
Your claim that defending proletarian power is “not materialist” because it supposedly relies on people with the correct ideas doing domination is a misunderstanding of the argument. Marxist-Leninists do not defend proletarian state power because the people wielding it have nicer opinions. We defend it because class power is materially rooted. A bourgeois state defends private property, capital accumulation, wage labour, imperialist extraction, and the dictatorship of capital not because they have bad ideas but that it is directly within their class interest to do so. A proletarian state, however imperfectly and under real contradiction, is a transitional instrument for suppressing the old exploiting classes, socializing production, defending the revolution, and reorganizing society toward communism not because they have better ideas but again because it is directly in their class interest to do so.
You also misunderstand class when you claim that administrators in socialist states simply become a ruling class of bureaucrats because they administer. Administrators, planners, party officials, and state functionaries can absolutely develop bureaucratic distortions, careerism, privilege, and contradictions. Marxist-Leninists do not need anarchists to discover bureaucracy for us. But a bureaucrat without private ownership of the means of production, without the legal right to buy, sell, bequeath, and accumulate productive property as capital, does not occupy a different class but a different stratum of the same class.
And it is obviously valid to point out that words were specifically chosen for their negative connotations. An unrelated example to show the point: there’s a reason western media uses regime for talking about “designated bad countries™” governments despite it effectively being a synonym of government, it’s the connotation. Criticising this is again obviously valid.
I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Anark’s whole body of work.
I can tell. I will ignore your wrong, and partially ad-hominem attacks on Anark (like him supposedly not understanding Marx). They are baseless and tangential to the discussion.
This makes sense given individualism being a pillar of anarchism.
It seems as if you claim that individualism is the main pillar of anarchism, which ignores the anarchist collectivist tradition. Anarchism focuses both on the individual and the collective.
But the definition of “authoritarianism” is yet another vacuous redefinition to add to the pile. […]
It is an abstract term with an abstract definition. All the things you mention can be subsumed under that abstract definition.
It seems you have a problem with abstraction in general. It seems that’s due to motivated reasoning, rather than the wish to do scientifically/logically rigorous thinking.
Returning it once again to a label for designated bad countries™.
That’s motivated reasoning. The critique is against all states, not against “designated bad countries™”.
[…] because it is directly in their class interest to do so.
You complain about abstract definitions before and now you hide against the huge abstraction of “clars interest”.
You claim that the party (the controling body of the so-called “socialist” states) has “proletarian class interests”. But that implies that the members of the party are actually part of the proletarian class. This supposed class membership is purely idealist. A materialist analysis suggests however, that they are not proletarian, but a class of bureaucrats.
You also misunderstand class when you claim that administrators in socialist states simply become a ruling class of bureaucrats because they administer.
That’s not all they do. Anark’s critique doesn’t attack administration. But they administer via authoritarian and domination strategies.
I will ignore your critique of the form, since it’s not directed at the argument made.
Edit:
I still didn’t see any argument made about how this definition fits the term “western propaganda”, except for “word sounds scary”, which doesn’t critique the content of the definition. The same points would be valid if you called it “power-monopolized”.
I will ignore your wrong, and partially ad-hominem attacks on Anark (like him supposedly not understanding Marx). They are baseless and tangential to the discussion.
Saying Anark displays a poor understanding of Marxism is not an ad hominem. It is an observation about the content of his analysis. An ad hominem would be “he is wrong because he is personally bad or stupid.” I am saying his categories are weak because they fail to grasp class content, state form, property relations, and historical development. That is directly relevant to the argument.
I also never said individualism is the only or the main pillar of anarchism. I said it is a pillar, which it plainly is, and this has been a Marxist criticism of anarchism since Marx and Lenin. The fact that there is a collectivist anarchist tradition does not erase the petty-bourgeois individualist core of much anarchist theory: the tendency to begin from abstract individual autonomy, abstract anti-authority, and abstract moral opposition to coercion rather than from class struggle and historically specific relations of production.
Your defense of the “authoritarianism” definition as merely “abstract” misses the point. The problem is not abstraction as such. Marxism uses abstraction constantly. The problem is bad abstraction: abstraction that removes the decisive features of the thing being analyzed. A useful abstraction helps reveal the essence of a process. This one obscures it. It tells us there is concentrated power, coercion, and administration. That describes every state and every serious revolutionary process in class society. What it does not tell us is which class holds power, what property relations are being defended or abolished, what state form exists, what social base sustains it, what historical pressures condition it, and whether the coercion is being used to preserve exploitation or suppress exploiters.
My objection is not that the definition is “too abstract.” It is that it is vacuous. It explains nothing of substance while pretending to explain everything. It takes the unavoidable existence of state power under class antagonism and gives it a scary liberal gloss. Then, in practice, it becomes a ready-made tool for flattening the difference between a bourgeois imperialist state and a socialist state under siege. You can say the critique is “against all states,” but that is infantile. Critiquing all states in the same moral register, without class content, only benefits the existing hegemonic order. The bourgeois state already exists globally as the dominant power. Treating proletarian state power as equally evil for exercising coercion does not transcend the bourgeois state; it disarms opposition to it.
You also accuse me of hiding behind the abstraction of “class interest,” but class interest is not an empty abstraction. It is rooted in material relations to production, ownership, surplus extraction, and the reproduction of social relations. The bourgeoisie has an interest in maintaining private ownership of the means of production and the extraction of surplus value. The proletariat has an interest in abolishing those relations because it does not own the means of production and survives by selling labour-power. That is not idealism. That is basic historical materialism.
Your claim that party members or state administrators in socialist states are automatically not proletarian because they administer is nonsense. Class is not determined by whether someone performs administrative labour or exercises authority. Class position is determined principally by relation to the means of production, particularly ownership thereof. A school principal is not less proletarian than a teacher merely because they administer. A doctor, safety inspector, engineer, planner, or workplace coordinator may exercise authority in a technical or administrative capacity without thereby becoming a capitalist. The key question is whether they privately own productive property and appropriate surplus value as capital.
The same applies to government administrators in socialist states. Their existence creates contradictions, and bureaucracy can become a serious danger. Marxist-Leninists have written extensively on this. But a state functionary operating inside a socialized property system, without private ownership of the means of production, without the legal right to buy, sell, bequeath, and accumulate productive property as capital, is not automatically a bourgeois class simply because they administer. You are confusing function with class position.
Saying “they administer via authoritarian and domination strategies” does not solve this. It just repeats the same empty categories. Every state administers through coercive mechanisms because every state is an instrument of class rule. The question is not whether coercion exists. The question is coercion by which class, against which class, defending which property relations, and moving society in which direction. Without that, “authoritarianism” and “domination” become little more than moral labels for power you dislike.
I do not think “authoritarian” is inherently a Western propaganda term. The problem is that it is a vacuous political label: it covers a wide range of state forms and social relations while explaining very little about their actual class content. In that sense, it functions much like “regime.” It can describe almost anything with centralized power, but it tells us nothing decisive about which class rules, what property relations are being defended, whose interests the state serves, or what historical conditions produced it. Precisely because of that vagueness which abstracts away the core of the matter, it becomes useful to Western propaganda under the current conditions of Western hegemony: it allows imperialist states and their ideological apparatuses to flatten socialist, anti-imperialist, or otherwise non-aligned states into a moral category of “bad governments,” they can then point to and shout look at these authoritarians who are just as authoritarian (read bad) as the Nazis.
I am not going to pretend to be an expert on Anark’s whole body of work. I have only watched a handful of his videos, on recommendation from an anarchist I know. But what I did see was enough to recognize: petty-bourgeois anarchism dressed up in the language and strappings of rigorous theory. The starting point it appears is never class struggle, production, imperialism, state power, colonial pressure, or the actual historical tasks of socialist construction. It is abstract “power,” abstract “authority,” abstract “domination,” and then a moral judgment against every real revolutionary state for failing to match an idealized fantasy of immediate anti-authoritarian purity.
In theoretical terms: phrase-mongering and infantile ultra-leftism. From what I have seen, his understanding of Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and existing socialist states is paper-thin. Socialist construction under siege, blockade, sabotage, civil war, peasant backwardness, imperialist encirclement, and restorationist pressure gets flattened into a morality tale about “authoritarianism.”
His definition of power is fine, if overly individualist: “the ability to successfully enact one’s will.” This makes sense given individualism being a pillar of anarchism. But the definition of “authoritarianism” is yet another vacuous redefinition to add to the pile. It strips analysis of class content, state form, property relations, and historical function. “The degree to which a power structure monopolizes control over the total social implementation of some power” sounds precise, but it tells us almost nothing. Which class controls it? Through what institutions? On the basis of what property relations? Against whom is coercion being used? In what historical situation? A workers’ state, a fascist state, a colonial state, a bourgeois liberal state, and a revolutionary army can all be made to fit vague language about monopoly, coercion, and implementation. Returning it once again to a label for designated bad countries™.
Your claim that defending proletarian power is “not materialist” because it supposedly relies on people with the correct ideas doing domination is a misunderstanding of the argument. Marxist-Leninists do not defend proletarian state power because the people wielding it have nicer opinions. We defend it because class power is materially rooted. A bourgeois state defends private property, capital accumulation, wage labour, imperialist extraction, and the dictatorship of capital not because they have bad ideas but that it is directly within their class interest to do so. A proletarian state, however imperfectly and under real contradiction, is a transitional instrument for suppressing the old exploiting classes, socializing production, defending the revolution, and reorganizing society toward communism not because they have better ideas but again because it is directly in their class interest to do so.
You also misunderstand class when you claim that administrators in socialist states simply become a ruling class of bureaucrats because they administer. Administrators, planners, party officials, and state functionaries can absolutely develop bureaucratic distortions, careerism, privilege, and contradictions. Marxist-Leninists do not need anarchists to discover bureaucracy for us. But a bureaucrat without private ownership of the means of production, without the legal right to buy, sell, bequeath, and accumulate productive property as capital, does not occupy a different class but a different stratum of the same class.
And it is obviously valid to point out that words were specifically chosen for their negative connotations. An unrelated example to show the point: there’s a reason western media uses regime for talking about “designated bad countries™” governments despite it effectively being a synonym of government, it’s the connotation. Criticising this is again obviously valid.
I can tell. I will ignore your wrong, and partially ad-hominem attacks on Anark (like him supposedly not understanding Marx). They are baseless and tangential to the discussion.
It seems as if you claim that individualism is the main pillar of anarchism, which ignores the anarchist collectivist tradition. Anarchism focuses both on the individual and the collective.
It is an abstract term with an abstract definition. All the things you mention can be subsumed under that abstract definition.
It seems you have a problem with abstraction in general. It seems that’s due to motivated reasoning, rather than the wish to do scientifically/logically rigorous thinking.
That’s motivated reasoning. The critique is against all states, not against “designated bad countries™”.
You complain about abstract definitions before and now you hide against the huge abstraction of “clars interest”.
You claim that the party (the controling body of the so-called “socialist” states) has “proletarian class interests”. But that implies that the members of the party are actually part of the proletarian class. This supposed class membership is purely idealist. A materialist analysis suggests however, that they are not proletarian, but a class of bureaucrats.
That’s not all they do. Anark’s critique doesn’t attack administration. But they administer via authoritarian and domination strategies.
I will ignore your critique of the form, since it’s not directed at the argument made.
Edit: I still didn’t see any argument made about how this definition fits the term “western propaganda”, except for “word sounds scary”, which doesn’t critique the content of the definition. The same points would be valid if you called it “power-monopolized”.
You absolute whiny baby
Please respect rule 1.
Saying Anark displays a poor understanding of Marxism is not an ad hominem. It is an observation about the content of his analysis. An ad hominem would be “he is wrong because he is personally bad or stupid.” I am saying his categories are weak because they fail to grasp class content, state form, property relations, and historical development. That is directly relevant to the argument.
I also never said individualism is the only or the main pillar of anarchism. I said it is a pillar, which it plainly is, and this has been a Marxist criticism of anarchism since Marx and Lenin. The fact that there is a collectivist anarchist tradition does not erase the petty-bourgeois individualist core of much anarchist theory: the tendency to begin from abstract individual autonomy, abstract anti-authority, and abstract moral opposition to coercion rather than from class struggle and historically specific relations of production.
Your defense of the “authoritarianism” definition as merely “abstract” misses the point. The problem is not abstraction as such. Marxism uses abstraction constantly. The problem is bad abstraction: abstraction that removes the decisive features of the thing being analyzed. A useful abstraction helps reveal the essence of a process. This one obscures it. It tells us there is concentrated power, coercion, and administration. That describes every state and every serious revolutionary process in class society. What it does not tell us is which class holds power, what property relations are being defended or abolished, what state form exists, what social base sustains it, what historical pressures condition it, and whether the coercion is being used to preserve exploitation or suppress exploiters.
My objection is not that the definition is “too abstract.” It is that it is vacuous. It explains nothing of substance while pretending to explain everything. It takes the unavoidable existence of state power under class antagonism and gives it a scary liberal gloss. Then, in practice, it becomes a ready-made tool for flattening the difference between a bourgeois imperialist state and a socialist state under siege. You can say the critique is “against all states,” but that is infantile. Critiquing all states in the same moral register, without class content, only benefits the existing hegemonic order. The bourgeois state already exists globally as the dominant power. Treating proletarian state power as equally evil for exercising coercion does not transcend the bourgeois state; it disarms opposition to it.
You also accuse me of hiding behind the abstraction of “class interest,” but class interest is not an empty abstraction. It is rooted in material relations to production, ownership, surplus extraction, and the reproduction of social relations. The bourgeoisie has an interest in maintaining private ownership of the means of production and the extraction of surplus value. The proletariat has an interest in abolishing those relations because it does not own the means of production and survives by selling labour-power. That is not idealism. That is basic historical materialism.
Your claim that party members or state administrators in socialist states are automatically not proletarian because they administer is nonsense. Class is not determined by whether someone performs administrative labour or exercises authority. Class position is determined principally by relation to the means of production, particularly ownership thereof. A school principal is not less proletarian than a teacher merely because they administer. A doctor, safety inspector, engineer, planner, or workplace coordinator may exercise authority in a technical or administrative capacity without thereby becoming a capitalist. The key question is whether they privately own productive property and appropriate surplus value as capital.
The same applies to government administrators in socialist states. Their existence creates contradictions, and bureaucracy can become a serious danger. Marxist-Leninists have written extensively on this. But a state functionary operating inside a socialized property system, without private ownership of the means of production, without the legal right to buy, sell, bequeath, and accumulate productive property as capital, is not automatically a bourgeois class simply because they administer. You are confusing function with class position.
Saying “they administer via authoritarian and domination strategies” does not solve this. It just repeats the same empty categories. Every state administers through coercive mechanisms because every state is an instrument of class rule. The question is not whether coercion exists. The question is coercion by which class, against which class, defending which property relations, and moving society in which direction. Without that, “authoritarianism” and “domination” become little more than moral labels for power you dislike.
I do not think “authoritarian” is inherently a Western propaganda term. The problem is that it is a vacuous political label: it covers a wide range of state forms and social relations while explaining very little about their actual class content. In that sense, it functions much like “regime.” It can describe almost anything with centralized power, but it tells us nothing decisive about which class rules, what property relations are being defended, whose interests the state serves, or what historical conditions produced it. Precisely because of that vagueness which abstracts away the core of the matter, it becomes useful to Western propaganda under the current conditions of Western hegemony: it allows imperialist states and their ideological apparatuses to flatten socialist, anti-imperialist, or otherwise non-aligned states into a moral category of “bad governments,” they can then point to and shout look at these authoritarians who are just as authoritarian (read bad) as the Nazis.