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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Yeah ngl as someone who's mostly spectating/absorbing the discussion it seems like that person just wants to argue about their strawman of anarchism without really addressing what anyone else is saying, over and over... I don't even want to go that far, I'd jusy like to be directed at the text where they are getting this from so we can interrogate the claims and see what makes sense and what doesn't. Arguing against 'Anarchism' im general just isn't very coherent given the diversity of thought and proposals under the banner. Similar to how 'communism doesn't work' is basically a nonesense claim. Like, lets take 'co-ops' as an example (sorry, I'm sorry). It is a well identified pattern that co-ops which grow in scale, complexity and diversity of membership interests run the risk of the principal-agent problem where management is able to accrete power and benefit to themselves to the detriment of the membership. This is a very real risk. The response to that risk though is not to never engage in cooperativism. The response is to build systens which mitigate the risk and dsincentivize the behavior while also instituting ongoing co-op education and socialization initiatives for members AND management in order to maintain cohesion within the association and between the association and the enterprise. Theres a whole body of literature and ~150 years of practice directed at this problem. So the answer to 'how do you deal with greedy bastards' is: holistically, comprehensively and as best we can within our framework. Now, if you want to argue thay anarchist formations like some worker co-ops or the EZLN or Rojava etc. are WORSE at navigating this problem than liberal capitalism I'm all ears but not holding my breath. Crumbskull fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 18:28
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Crumbskull posted:I don't even want to go that far, I'd jusy like to be directed at the text where they are getting this from so we can interrogate the claims and see what makes sense and what doesn't. Arguing against 'Anarchism' im general just isn't very coherent given the diversity of thought and proposals under the banner. And I realize there are probably a thousand different answers.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:32
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Cpt_Obvious posted:No, dude, you were talking about anarchism as a society, not a method to achieve it: Because the fundamental point of disagreement between socialists and anarchists I run into is the role of the state and of repression - anarchists seem to be vehemently against the idea of using state repression in the interests of a particular class not just in the end utopian goal (where there's no classes), but in the aftermath of overthrowing capitalism and the transition period towards that. Are you saying that using the state as this kind of evil shibboleth to be avoided at all costs isn't pervasive in the anarchist movement? If they are not, then what is the distinction between a leninist and an anarchist?
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Nov 13, 2020 18:35
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You may need to read some books mate and I'm not being flippant you jusy have a very rigid idea of what Anarchism is that is going to be difficult to expand post by post on the boards. I reccomend 'What is Anarchism' by Emma Goldman, and then some reading about the political projects Goldman was actually involved.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:37
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Crumbskull posted:You may need to read some books mate and I'm not being flippant you jusy have a very rigid idea of what Anarchism is that is going to be difficult to expand post by post on the boards. I reccomend 'What is Anarchism' by Emma Goldman, and then some reading about the political projects Goldman was actually involved. quote:Are you saying that using the state as this kind of evil shibboleth to be avoided at all costs isn't pervasive in the anarchist movement? Again, is this not the case? If anarchists are absolutely fine with using the state and centralized organization as a means of power against class enemies in the transition period towards a classless society then I'm fine with that - but if that's the case, why is there any distinction between socialists and anarchists in the first place?
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Nov 13, 2020 18:40
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mila kunis posted:Again, is this not the case? If anarchists are absolutely fine with using the state and centralized organization as a means of power against class enemies in the transition period towards a classless society then I'm fine with that - but if that's the case, why is there any distinction between socialists and anarchists in the first place? Dude, if you want to ask a question, ask a question. It's unbelievably silly to assume that anarchists, of all ideologies, adhere to any single attitude about anything. poo poo, even Liberals have offshoots that ostensibly hate state coercion.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:43
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Does anarchism require global adherence? If not, what kind of response can be mustered against outside aggressors without centralized coercive organization like conscription? Yeah there are but: anarchism does not require global adherence any more than any other society does I think, but if I decide to ignore all the community agreements and ruining all the bicycles I, personally, expect someone will beat the poo poo out of me but theres a lot of different ways of handling the anti-social and no 'anarchism' does not at all imply that if some person decides to start violently subjugating people we all have to just try and like verbally convince them to stop. As to the conscription question: not sure to be honest, we've never seen anything approaching a modern 'developed' anarchist state [yeah, I said it] so I dunno. The theory is that a community organized along anarchist principles would actively culrivate community defense skills and attitudes and that people would spontaneously volunteer to defend that society. If they WON'T then, according to my anarchist principles, thats fine too if everyoje decides its not worth the risk and they'll just be exploited again. I, again just personally, have a radical commitment to popular democracy and if the whole town votes to burn itself down well, then, heres a match.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:43
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mila kunis posted:Again, is this not the case? If anarchists are absolutely fine with using the state and centralized organization as a means of power against class enemies in the transition period towards a classless society then I'm fine with that - but if that's the case, why is there any distinction between socialists and anarchists in the first place? Most anarchists are fine with being called socialists.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:47
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Dude, if you want to ask a question, ask a question. It's unbelievably silly to assume that anarchists, of all ideologies, adhere to any single attitude about anything. poo poo, even Liberals have offshoots that ostensibly hate state coercion. I am being pretty clear. Again to repeat myself: - isn't anti-statism a huge component of most anarchist thought? every political tendency has sects, offshoots and variations but in rhetoric and practice, don't anarchists oppose hierarchy and centralization? - if this is not actually the case, and most anarchists are all on-board the State train towards using that as a means of struggle against capital until a classless society is achieved, what is the practical difference between anarchists and m-l's in terms of philosophy and practice?
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Nov 13, 2020 18:51
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I mean, its literally called 'libertarian socialism'.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:52
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Historically the arguments have been about tactics within specific historical contexts but broadly speaking Anarchists are more wary about allowing power to concentrate in unnacountable hands and if that is startinf to sound more and more like andifference of degree than kind: welcome to left unity comrade. So, like, most anarchists do not trust the idea of a right thinking vangaurd seizing power and then delivering the masses unto socialism because of how that kind of power concentration has played out historically, but if someone did do that and then instituted meaningfully democratic socialist governance and relinquished their unaccountable power then that would suit most anarchists fine, in the end. Crumbskull fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 18:53
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mila kunis posted:I am being pretty clear. Again to repeat myself: If you're willing to define any horizontal, democratic organization (like a trade union federation) as THE STATE, then you're not using the terms in the way anarchists use them in their own lexicon.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:56
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The Oldest Man posted:If you're willing to define any horizontal, democratic organization (like a trade union federation) as THE STATE, then you're not using the terms in the way anarchists use them in their own lexicon. Which, again, since you are clesrly genuinely interested: you should do some more in depth reading to get a sense of 'anarchism' on its own terms rather than purely in the oppositional Socialism vs. Anarchism Debate format.
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Nov 13, 2020 18:57
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Any discussion of anarchism vs. Marxism is necessarily going to be about means of defeating capitalism, carrying out a revolution, defending a revolution, and generally supporting the transition to a classless society, because it's actually a common point between both ideologies that in a classless society no repressive apparatus is needed and people can be counted on to cooperate in transparent, democratic ways without being forced to. I actually agree with mila kunis that if an anarchist is like "well of course you might need various centralized, coercive institutions like an army in the short term..." then they're just a bog-standard communist. What I usually see in disagreements between anarchists/leftcoms/whatever and more orthodox Marxists or MLs is the claim by the former that even establishing a worker's state (or a worker's "state" which doesn't call itself a state but still has an army, people who'll come to your door and requisition some of your grain, etc) is a bad idea and inherently failure-prone because power just begets more power, anyone in any position of leadership or even strong administrative influence will necessarily become corrupt and counterrevolutionary, and so on. It seems like we don't actually have any of those people in this thread?
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Nov 13, 2020 19:10
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Ferrinus posted:Any discussion of anarchism vs. Marxism is necessarily going to be about means of defeating capitalism, carrying out a revolution, defending a revolution, and generally supporting the transition to a classless society, because it's actually a common point between both ideologies that in a classless society no repressive apparatus is needed and people can be counted on to cooperate in transparent, democratic ways without being forced to. I am an anarchist by most weaker definitions, tho. I do think that the ideal dictatorship of the proletariat as described by marx is a good step. But any apparatus that might be needed must have checks and restrictions to make sure that it doesn't become some kind of new ruling (minority) class. Even a roman style dictator is compatible with my anarchism as long as the recall of their power back to the people is sufficiently reliable. I don't believe that the ML states are worker states in that sense. I do think that vanguard communism is more likely to lead to a dictatorship of the vanguard then a dictatorship of the proletariat. I also do not believe that the current products of ML-revolutions are sufficiently close to being a DoP that they can transition to real communism without any further internal revolutions. Which is sufficient to make me an anarchist by their definition.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:26
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Ferrinus posted:even establishing a worker's state (or a worker's "state" which doesn't call itself a state but still has an army, people who'll come to your door and requisition some of your grain, etc) is a bad idea and inherently failure-prone because power just begets more power, anyone in any position of leadership or even strong administrative influence will necessarily become corrupt and counterrevolutionary, and so on. It seems like we don't actually have any of those people in this thread? No that's broadly what I think. Hi.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:30
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Ferrinus posted:What I usually see in disagreements between anarchists/leftcoms/whatever and more orthodox Marxists or MLs is the claim by the former that even establishing a worker's state (or a worker's "state" which doesn't call itself a state but still has an army, people who'll come to your door and requisition some of your grain, etc) is a bad idea and inherently failure-prone because power just begets more power, anyone in any position of leadership or even strong administrative influence will necessarily become corrupt and counterrevolutionary, and so on. It seems like we don't actually have any of those people in this thread? This is me, actually, although I would clarify that it's more like creating an economic center of gravity (even if it's democratically controlled at first) will tend toward a regression to capitalism, and that's a feature of post-Marxist-Leninist revolutionary states as well as explicitly non-socialist institutions (like how the Egyptian Army is a major power player in civilian politics because of their outsized economic influence). Individual people and leaders who take power in the vanguard need not immediately go "haha, gotcha!" and emulate the capitalists, but a) people don't live forever and b) a hierarchical power structure necessarily creates space for wreckers and abusers as a result of its being hierarchical. Eventually the hierarchy sustains itself to sustain itself, class interests and replication outweigh solidarity, etc... it's like how a liberal democracy can forestall the descent into late capitalism but ultimately will succumb to it. But that doesn't preclude things like an army or other large-scale projects, unless you believe that military forces or other similar projects must be inherently hierarchical and coercive (either to the trigger-pullers themselves or to the rest of the society who support them materially) which to me just sounds like another a priori assumption to which there are counter-examples.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:34
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Well, in that case, mila kunis isn't punching at shadows but instead talking about a really-existing rift in left wing theory. Of course, a lot of this comes down to historical questions about if and to what extent various really-existing institutions were democratic, bottom-up, subject to recall, etc. People often assume that the governments of the USSR, Cuba, etc. were just cabals of unaccountable autocrats that made no real allowance for the masses of citizenry to have their say, in which case they are examples that The State will always betray you and you must never attempt to create one in the course of having a revolution. But if, in fact, such things as the Soviet constitution were being followed more or less faithfully, if communist leaders were subject to recall and just had so much legitimate popular support that it didn't happen at the top level, then anarchists need to reckon with the fact that the things they propose as antidotes or alternatives to statism were actually already happening on the ground and that they've either got skewed perceptions of actually-existing socialism or that there's no social engineering magic bullet that will let you defeat capitalism while also never subjecting anyone to coercion via a centralized power structure. Or both!
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Nov 13, 2020 19:37
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Donald trump also had sufficient support to complete a term in office, that you can construct a political system to manufacture support for any rear end in a top hat you like isn't saying much.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:41
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OwlFancier posted:No that's broadly what I think. Hi. Ok, then I'm not arguing against a strawman. What would be your solution to handling a class and group of people that opposes resource and wealth redistribution and equalization in the transition to a classless society?
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Nov 13, 2020 19:43
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Ferrinus posted:Well, in that case, mila kunis isn't punching at shadows but instead talking about a really-existing rift in left wing theory. Of course, a lot of this comes down to historical questions about if and to what extent various really-existing institutions were democratic, bottom-up, subject to recall, etc. People often assume that the governments of the USSR, Cuba, etc. were just cabals of unaccountable autocrats that made no real allowance for the masses of citizenry to have their say, in which case they are examples that The State will always betray you and you must never attempt to create one in the course of having a revolution. But if, in fact, such things as the Soviet constitution were being followed more or less faithfully, if communist leaders were subject to recall and just had so much legitimate popular support that it didn't happen at the top level, then anarchists need to reckon with the fact that the things they propose as antidotes or alternatives to statism were actually already happening on the ground and that they've either got skewed perceptions of actually-existing socialism or that there's no social engineering magic bullet that will let you defeat capitalism while also never subjecting anyone to coercion via a centralized power structure. Or both! In addition to that - I think of the soviets as like, as someone living in the ussr 1950-1979 you could have a job, guaranteed housing, education you were paid for, a state that used the moneys from production and exchange to pay for all of this in addition to funding anticolonial liberation, etc etc. After struggling through the richest and most powerful countries in the world trying to kill them, a civil war, famines, multiple invasions, the complete destruction of their infrastructure (twice!) and a brutal demographic wipeout in WW2. They withstood all that and - warts and all - they provided for their citizens and that was the explicit goal of their system. That system collapsed when a certain bald man (not alone obviously, there was tremendous pressure from the capitalist blockade and oil price collapse that decided it) decided privatization and decentralization was the way to go, ironically. It would be apparent that the struggles they went through were practical ad hoc solutions to trying to achieve this and that you, as a leftist materialist, would run into similar problems trying to do the same today. If you want to learn from history it seems kind of an infantile fantasy that decentralized spontaneous formations and disorganization can beat back the fully organized and militarized formations of capital.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:49
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Ferrinus posted:Well, in that case, mila kunis isn't punching at shadows but instead talking about a really-existing rift in left wing theory. Of course, a lot of this comes down to historical questions about if and to what extent various really-existing institutions were democratic, bottom-up, subject to recall, etc. People often assume that the governments of the USSR, Cuba, etc. were just cabals of unaccountable autocrats that made no real allowance for the masses of citizenry to have their say, in which case they are examples that The State will always betray you and you must never attempt to create one in the course of having a revolution. But if, in fact, such things as the Soviet constitution were being followed more or less faithfully, if communist leaders were subject to recall and just had so much legitimate popular support that it didn't happen at the top level, then anarchists need to reckon with the fact that the things they propose as antidotes or alternatives to statism were actually already happening on the ground and that they've either got skewed perceptions of actually-existing socialism or that there's no social engineering magic bullet that will let you defeat capitalism while also never subjecting anyone to coercion. Or both! I mean, Lenin himself was accused of being an anarchist and not baselessly. That doesn't mean that the USSR didn't slide into autocratic rule and ultimately become vulnerable to liberalizing influences on its decision-makers. There's no True Anarchist test and there is the possibility of organizations being democratic but not sufficiently and sustainably democratic to avoid a process of accumulation or regression on the scale of years or decades. The punching at shadows part is equating the rejection of coercive, hierarchical structures as a means toward socialism with a rejection of all coercive tactics or violence as if those must be the same. Also, while there are anarchists that simply paint all states as exactly the same level of evil (just as there are anarchists who are for/against ________), that's not me. I explicitly said earlier in this thread that even in all the post-ML vanguard revolution states that regressed to autocracy or liberalizing influences, you can find many examples of how the revolution resulted in durable gains to the material conditions of the people and also to their democratic power. That is to say, I think Marxist-Leninists are on to something but their states do not achieve "escape velocity" to the intended end-state of a stateless, classless society (for a variety of reasons including external ones like capitalist encirclement), eventually the revolutionary fervor dies back and the progress of socialism begins to slow, stall, or reverse, and that problem remains fundamentally unsolved in my opinion.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:54
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mila kunis posted:Ok, then I'm not arguing against a strawman. Are you talking about some crazy guy arguing on a street corner that the street belongs to him and everybody should pay him for it? I would ignore him. Or are you talking about a political party that wants to privatize streets? I would vote against their ideas.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:57
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mila kunis posted:Ok, then I'm not arguing against a strawman. Well I think broadly that the ability to hoard wealth, and the power that hoarding wealth gives you, is socially constructed. The reason a billionaire can walk into any store and walk out with anything in the store is because society is set up to facilitate that. If everyone else in society doesn't really want to share with the billionaire and doesn't think they're special, then they basically... aren't a billionaire any more. Wealth disparity on the scale of modern society can only exist as long as everyone cooperates, and so I think that the kinds of conditions that would lead to that society undergoing a revolution are also the kinds of conditions that basically rob the wealthy of a lot of their power. Probably a common hypothetical example is doomsday preppers, they hoard guns and food and poo poo but they have no friends and so the common retort is that they'd just get shot by someone and all their stuff taken, probably by an organized group. You fundamentally need people and a society to achieve a lot, wealth gives you the ability to command people and a society that values your wealth and believes you have a right to keep it, but you can't actually personally, directly, control more than you can personally, directly, carry on your person and use, so if a critical mass of society ceases to respect your right to have whatever you want, then you're in trouble. As to how you might fight wars, well, decentralized militaries are a thing. They are historically a surprisingly effective thing, being able to exact heavy costs on centralized, hierarchical militaries operating overseas and backed by major world powers. Conquest is surprisingly difficult to do, few places have achieved it in the last hundred years or so, a lot more have eaten poo poo trying it. Broadly for anarchism to work you need a lot of people who think it's a good idea, or who think that what it can bring to them is something that they want, at least. But this is also true of all other political systems. The question is what processes and conditions help to create support for anarchism rather than other ideas. Personally that is why I favour anything that attacks traditional structures and favours the personal liberty of people to live as they want to live. I think that a society full of people with highly variable personal preferences but a shared desire to live without being subject to pointless coercion by others, will be a kind of society I want to live in. It's why I think LGBT issues, feminism, secularism, racial equality, stuff like that are important outside of just the fact that they're important to people they affect, I think they are also important because a society that rejects racism and gender and poo poo like that is a society that internalizes the right of people to live free of arbitrary coercion. I think that kind of thinking follows on to rejecting things like capitalism and authoritarianism more broadly.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:58
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mila kunis posted:If you want to learn from history it seems kind of an infantile fantasy that decentralized spontaneous formations and disorganization can beat back the fully organized and militarized formations of capital. Yeah, like this is punching at shadows right here. "Organized" does not mean "hierarchical" and nothing else. Hierarchy is a type of organization.
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Nov 13, 2020 19:58
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VictualSquid posted:Are you talking about some crazy guy arguing on a street corner that the street belongs to him and everybody should pay him for it? I would ignore him. Isn't that just liberalism then? If some group of people have accumulated wealth, and convince enough people that the means of production should stay concentrated in their hands (wealth can buy you control of media and messaging for example), and people vote in favor of it then how is this anarchism so different from what we have at present?
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Nov 13, 2020 20:03
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You need to read actual anarchist literature because you keep randomly falling back to your incorrect understanding, demonstrated by repeatedly forgetting that anarchism != disorganization. If all the anarchists voted to do something that looks like modern liberalism then ideally yes, the results would look like modern liberalism. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 20:04
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I think we need to start using words like "horizontal" and "vertical" to describe organizations. Also, let's not fling "class" around without cause. You can call a group of assholes a group of assholes. They don't need to be a class of assholes, especially when an anarchic society doesn't have classes.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:04
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And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but "vertical" organizations are systems where some people have more power than others like capitalism or monarchy. "Horizontal" organizations are systems where everyone has equal power, like democracy.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:07
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I have a couple requests for the thread, aimed at finding resources to help educate my leftist-layperson, not-Extremely Online friends. I can google for this of course, but hoping you all can help me with any recommendations, as I suspect there's a lot of shoddy content out there. Are there any long-form essays on the history and current status of the EZLN that this thread would recommend? I'm thinking along the lines of a New Yorker article stylistically, with the ability to describe complex/nuanced ideas in relatively simplified layperson terms being the most important feature, and a narrative structure being nice to have but not as important. Are there any streamable video series (Youtube, Netflix, etc.) that provide a good overview of Marxism and the failures of late-stage capitalism? I'm thinking more along the lines of a PBS doc as opposed to an acerbic Youtuber, fwiw. Unfortunately the first actual PBS doc I found is titled "Heaven On Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism" and features this description, which does not make me optimistic about its slant: "This 3-hour documentary explores one of the most powerful political ideas in history. Socialism spread farther and faster than any religion Then, in almost the blink of an eye, it all collapsed. What happened?"  gradenko_2000 posted:A loose distinction that one can make between feudalism and capitalism is that feudalism appropriates surplus value via force/fiat, with the feudal lord essentially being a fusion of the military and economic spheres, while capitalism appropriates surplus value via contracts and legalism - the establishment of the concept of private property and the enclosure of the commons denies most people the ability to provide their own subsistence, which means they need to sell their labor, and the price of labor is controlled by capitalists, etc. Thanks, this was a super helpful post btw. I bolded the part that more articulately captures what I was thinking. I guess where I'm getting tripped up is that if you replace "ownership of land" with "ownership of capital", there isn't really much effective distinction between feudalism and capitalism... (I think?)
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Nov 13, 2020 20:08
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OwlFancier posted:Donald trump also had sufficient support to complete a term in office, that you can construct a political system to manufacture support for any rear end in a top hat you like isn't saying much. Sure, but this itself is an important point to make. Donald Trump isn't an unaccountable tyrant ruling us from on high. He had a legitimate base of support, not just among the hyper-rich, that swept him into power and kept him there. I don't think that base is so strong as to, say, allow him to seize indefinite control of the state apparatus via coup, but he really is a reflection of what many American people wanted and still want and, rather than being an example of how states corrupt and subvert the people in charge, is an example of how states respond to the will of the people. Of course, ours is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and will never produce a ruling executive that in any way threatens that dictatorship, but within the bounds of the prevailing mode of production Trump represents neither an accident nor the machinations of some kind of unaccountable, self-sustaining bureaucracy that has totally insulated itself from the people's will. In the same way, I think it's wrongheaded to imagine that the governments of China, Vietnam, etc did what they did because of the bare fact of being state governments. The state is a terrain of struggle, it's not an actor in and of itself, and state institutions do things because of how conflicting class interests resolve and synthesize, not because they have a bottomless appetite for power for power's sake. That is to say... The Oldest Man posted:I think Marxist-Leninists are on to something but their states do not achieve "escape velocity" to the intended end-state of a stateless, classless society (for a variety of reasons including external ones like capitalist encirclement), eventually the revolutionary fervor dies back and the progress of socialism begins to slow, stall, or reverse, and that problem remains fundamentally unsolved in my opinion. ...obviously no one has achieved communism as yet. But is this because creating a worker's state inherently retards the progress towards communism? What if, instead, creating a worker's state is the only thing that's even gotten us this far? Luna Oi's "is Vietnam socialist?" video was linked earlier in this thread, and I think she makes a persuasive case that Vietnam liberalized and opened up its market not because the ruling communist party had become so insulated from the needs of the people that it felt safe to nakedly pursue its own advantage, but precisely because the ruling communist party was accountable to the people and had to take its best option for building up productive forces and increasing the standard of living rather than idealistically condemning the citizenry to extended privation.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:12
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OwlFancier posted:As to how you might fight wars, well, decentralized militaries are a thing. They are historically a surprisingly effective thing, being able to exact heavy costs on centralized, hierarchical militaries operating overseas and backed by major world powers. Conquest is surprisingly difficult to do, few places have achieved it in the last hundred years or so, a lot more have eaten poo poo trying it. Uh, are they? I don't know much military history so feel free to give examples, but the way you write here makes me think first and foremost of Maoist and Viet Cong guerillas, and while those military forces were certainly, like, sneaky and spatially distributed, I'm pretty sure they had centralized command-and-control infrastructure same as the bourgeois forces they were up against.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:15
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mila kunis posted:Isn't that just liberalism then? If some group of people have accumulated wealth, and convince enough people that the means of production should stay concentrated in their hands (wealth can buy you control of media and messaging for example), and people vote in favor of it then how is this anarchism so different from what we have at present? And yes, an anarchist society can theoretically vote to reorient itself along a different paradigm. Even if it is leninism, liberalism or even monarchism.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:24
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Ferrinus posted:Uh, are they? I don't know much military history so feel free to give examples, but the way you write here makes me think first and foremost of Maoist and Viet Cong guerillas, and while those military forces were certainly, like, sneaky and spatially distributed, I'm pretty sure they had centralized command-and-control infrastructure same as the bourgeois forces they were up against. Afaik there were no really measurable improvements in fighting prowess that can be attributed to the de-democratization specifically. The way in which they were "decentralized" was mostly in that officers were elected by their future superiors and the soldiers could recall them as long as it wasn't in the middle of an actual battle.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:30
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VictualSquid posted:The SU had a decentralized military before trotzky's reforms. The first french republic had a decentralized military before it reformed. Many revolutions try it. Wait, have I been using "centralized" wrong? I feel like I meant it to mean a concentration of power, and you seem to be using it as a "undemocratic" power. Am I out of touch? Are the one and the same?
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Nov 13, 2020 20:34
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Ferrinus posted:Uh, are they? I don't know much military history so feel free to give examples, but the way you write here makes me think first and foremost of Maoist and Viet Cong guerillas, and while those military forces were certainly, like, sneaky and spatially distributed, I'm pretty sure they had centralized command-and-control infrastructure same as the bourgeois forces they were up against. I was thinking perhaps more the afghan-soviet war with the various mujahideen groups fighting semi-independently of one another albeit under a unified front, and while the war was obviously horrifically costly for Afghanistan they did eventually manage to make the soviet occupation untenable, which is pretty impressive given the disparity in power and equipment, even with outside materiel assistance. It is certainly true that where possible armies tend to adopt centralization because centralization does help with fighting wars, but determined resistance can make it nigh impossible for even very well equipped and determined armies to hold territory, even with what you might think of as an organizational disadvantage. If you are going to fight a war of course it is preferable to have it be in an organized and probably centralized fashion, the danger is that if you have an organized and centralized military, you tend to find wars to fight because the military becomes its own political force a lot of the time. As other noted it has its own economic demands, its own political power within the wider bureaucracy, its own access to the highest levels of power, and it can also become its own social class sometimes. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Nov 13, 2020 |
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Nov 13, 2020 20:35
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Ferrinus posted:...obviously no one has achieved communism as yet. But is this because creating a worker's state inherently retards the progress towards communism? What if, instead, creating a worker's state is the only thing that's even gotten us this far? There are enough examples of non-state organization that have produced effective results of resistance to militarized liberal capitalism (or outright fascism) that I think saying "only thing" is reductive. It's a common and relatively effective method of resistance, with its own problems. quote:Luna Oi's "is Vietnam socialist?" video was linked earlier in this thread, and I think she makes a persuasive case that Vietnam liberalized and opened up its market not because the ruling communist party had become so insulated from the needs of the people that it felt safe to nakedly pursue its own advantage, but precisely because the ruling communist party was accountable to the people and had to take its best option for building up productive forces and increasing the standard of living rather than idealistically condemning the citizenry to extended privation. One of the perverse mechanisms of hierarchical decision-making systems is that the most idealistic people at the top are equally as capable of making decisions that move the overall group away from its collective goals out of their own belief that they are making the hard choices on behalf of everyone else. IE, is Vietnam ever going to be able to back out of liberalizing and capitalism now? The point I'm making here is that a group of people can choose to endure hardship and collectively sacrifice for a common goal, but an idealistic, compassionate leader in a hierarchy will not choose to inflict hardship on his people - he will sacrifice their shared ideals first, because he believes he can take personal responsibility for the destruction or debasement of the shared vision and absolve his people of the decision to do that. So even good leaders can and will destroy what the people they represent are trying to build and preserve, even if the people as a whole might choose a different way if the choice was everyone's. Obviously I am not doing the wrecker move here of smugly pointing out that capitalism still exists so why communism, because the improvements to the lot of (particularly) colonial people brought about by communism are relatively undeniable from my perspective, but the path beyond the worker state seems to me to be unreachable by the worker state apparatus.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:41
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Wait, have I been using "centralized" wrong? I feel like I meant it to mean a concentration of power, and you seem to be using it as a "undemocratic" power. If you imply that all (or even most) anarchists oppose "centralized" then it is essentially the same as "undemocratic". Anarchism is primarily about the distribution of power. The ultimate authority is democratically decentralized into the soliders/population or it is undemocratically centralized into the leadership.
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Nov 13, 2020 20:49
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VictualSquid posted:If you imply that all (or even most) anarchists oppose "centralized" then it is essentially the same as "undemocratic". Anarchism is primarily about the distribution of power. The ultimate authority is democratically decentralized into the soliders/population or it is undemocratically centralized into the leadership. Centralized organization is distinct from centralized power in a lot of anarchist thinking. It makes sense to e.g. centralize grain sorting and distribution but that doesn't imply a hierarchical power structure. Concentration of power is the big no-no because it corrupts and recreates capitalism. If you can dissolve a structure without problem then power was never concentrated there in the first place; there never was a King Grain.
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Nov 13, 2020 21:00
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VictualSquid posted:The SU had a decentralized military before trotzky's reforms. The first french republic had a decentralized military before it reformed. Many revolutions try it. You could also get together with your fellow workers and fire your manager in the Soviet Union, but anarchists never seem to call that a "decentralized" system and frankly neither would I. There's still a clear chain of command, it's just subject to some kind of democracy... like many modern chains of command, even sometimes under capitalism. OwlFancier posted:I was thinking perhaps more the afghan-soviet war with the various mujahideen groups fighting semi-independently of one another albeit under a unified front, and while the war was obviously horrifically costly for Afghanistan they did eventually manage to make the soviet occupation untenable, which is pretty impressive given the disparity in power and equipment, even with outside materiel assistance. I mean, Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation also received significant material support from places with highly centralized militaries and modes of production. This stuff about the military becoming an interest group in and of itself is sort of the anarchist suspicion of the state in microcosm. Setting aside the question of whether it's technically correct to call members of the military a "class" the same way you might call the peasantry a "class", I think it elides questions of why people join the military, who actually materially supports the military, and why the military does what it does. Institutions don't just grow and accumulate power for no reason, and institutions don't exist separately from the social classes that give rise to those institutions and that mediate their conflicts through those institutions. The Oldest Man posted:There are enough examples of non-state organization that have produced effective results of resistance to militarized liberal capitalism (or outright fascism) that I think saying "only thing" is reductive. It's a common and relatively effective method of resistance, with its own problems. Like what? People like to bring up the ELZN and Rojava here, but those are both formed in whole or part by MLs, have their own internal defense mechanisms and repressive infrastructure, and certainly in Rojava's case have made questionable bargains with the west for the sake of their own survival. This isn't to criticize them as bad or something, far from it - it just seems that all the same left-com critiques of classical socialist states could be applied to these institutions just as easily. quote:One of the perverse mechanisms of hierarchical decision-making systems is that the most idealistic people at the top are equally as capable of making decisions that move the overall group away from its collective goals out of their own belief that they are making the hard choices on behalf of everyone else. IE, is Vietnam ever going to be able to back out of liberalizing and capitalism now? The point I'm making here is that a group of people can choose to endure hardship and collectively sacrifice for a common goal, but an idealistic, compassionate leader in a hierarchy will not choose to inflict hardship on his people - he will sacrifice their shared ideals first, because he believes he can take personal responsibility for the destruction or debasement of the shared vision and absolve his people of the decision to do that. So even good leaders can and will destroy what the people they represent are trying to build and preserve, even if the people as a whole might choose a different way if the choice was everyone's. Obviously I am not doing the wrecker move here of smugly pointing out that capitalism still exists so why communism, because the improvements to the lot of (particularly) colonial people brought about by communism are relatively undeniable from my perspective, but the path beyond the worker state seems to me to be unreachable by the worker state apparatus. Okay, but is liberalizing a sacrifice of the Vietnamese people's shared ideals, such that the leaders must have been choosing to do this on behalf of people who wouldn't have been willing to do it themselves? Or was it a democratic decision with support by a majority who had a clear-eyed understanding of what they were choosing between and what risks either path entailed? I think all this comes down to an idealized picture of administrative, decision-making structures (whether formally part of a state or just effectively part of a state) as somehow operating independently of the classes that give rise to them, rather than being syntheses of the classes that give rise to them. I keep seeing the state (or subsidiary state structures, like the army) get, in effect, anthropomorphized, where it takes on a life of its own and starts betraying its masters... but that's not the only explanation for what we see states do in response to their conditions.
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Nov 13, 2020 21:03
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