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Books or papers I should read on Anarchism that would challenge my bias towards Marxism/Leninism? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/anarchism@hexbear.net
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On the internet I don't see too many Anarchists give arguments past "communism doesn't work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state" and "we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!" Which like...is not convincing to me at all. I've engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that's purely anecdotal.

So, I'd really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.

I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you

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[–] 12 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

Anarchists have proven thousands of time since it was written that they are very willing to use force against capitalists and fascists but biting the hand that beats you in itself is not an authoritarian act.

Ok I can agree there but about counter revolutionaries after the revolution? Do you let them organize and gather support in the name of free expression? Do you engage them only after they start shooting at you?

Another question I have is how do you handle defense of the revolution from outside forces? Sure you could have militias with elected officers and whatnot, but what if part of your anarchist territory does not want to fight to defend the revolution? I could imagine the people further away from the frontlines would be less inclined to go and fight and I'd also imagine drafting people would be too authoritarian for anarchists.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    I got in to it with some internet "anarchists" about using force to disarm Nazis and keep them from organizing and arming. I was shocked that they were stridently against any attempt to control Nazis with force until the fash were breaking the door down. I just could not and cannot make sense of extending "live and let live" to fascists whose explicit goal is to kill you and everyone around you. It was an extremely strange, uhh, discussion.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Well if we manage to get there (and it's a long shot now) the main obstacle to anyone who would rather go back to stock trading and widespread destruction of species is that people will see which one works more and if there's a clique of these weirdos first they won't associate with them and second if they infested to a point that they actually mean a threat to the new order, they would just rise up, as it can be seen in South America or Cuba or wherever there is a threat to the system. Anarchism isn't against that.

    The other dilemma is a good one and i'm yet to think about it thoroughly, though since it's highly theoretical it's tough to come up with a one size fits all solution. Obviously the main objective would be to avoid conflict. If it's unavoidable (one thing to think about is what outside forces were there in a global anarchist society), i would think that the kind of general solidarity that we see in Bolivia or Venezuela or Cuba would switch on and there wouldn't be a problem about it but i'll think about it (note: this is my subjective opinion about the case you introduced).

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    That's a whole lot of assumptions that need to be true for something like this to happen. The biggest assumption is that after the anarchist revolution the overwhelming majority of the populace will become ideologically anarchist and will refuse counter revolutionary propaganda and agitation. This has never happened after any revolution in history, in a lot of cases only a few percent of the populace were committed revolutionaries that actually execute the revolution with only the conditional backing of a huge chunk of the populace.

    If anarchism can only work if most of the people are anarchists it's not a viable revolutionary ideology IMO.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's a whole lot of assumption

    The whole thread we started here is a whole lot of assumptions. Of course globally humanity will take generations to be ideologically realign. As it is with EVERY ideology.

    If anarchism can only work if most of the people are anarchists it's not a viable revolutionary ideology IMO.

    Good thing i didn't say that.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You still haven't responded to my concerns at all tho. How exactly do you deal with counter revolutionary activity in an anarchist territory? It's pretty clear how you do it with a state.

    If anarchism can only work if most of the people are anarchists it's not a viable revolutionary ideology IMO.

    I can't see it being viable any other way tbh. What keeps the anarchist territory cohesive in protecting the revolution if not that?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    I read a story ages ago, and the premise was something like Anarchism had mostly taken hold for a long time, but some old hands got word that someone was building a state and went to look in to it. And it talked a bit about the "paradox of tolerance" present in a bunch of anarchists taking it on themselves to raid a nascent state and destroy it violently, what gave them the justification, what if anything they owed the folks in the state. I remember it being an interesting read but can't remember the details. I want to say in the end it turned out that the person organizing the state turned out to be an ai who broke down crying when finally confronted and admitted it didn't want to be building a state but didn't know how else to handle some problem.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    (one thing to think about is what outside forces were there in a global anarchist society)

    But what of an anarchist society that isn't global? The revolution has to start somewhere, and capitalists would try to crush it before it became worldwide and everyone sees that it is a superior system, yeah? Is this "highly theoretical", or something that every revolution has to have a plan for?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    A not global anarchist revolution would have to grapple with the same problems as a communist one and having a state apparatus at hand is not a guarantee of the revolution being protected.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    But how would you do it without a state? A state offers an obvious and historically proven vehicle for defending a revolution from internal counter revolutionaries and external imperialists. What is the anarchist alternative?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    There is a flip side to this.

    A state offers an obvious and historically proven vehicle for imperialists and internal counter-revolutionaries to derail, subsume, or decapitate a revolution. A revolution centered on a state will have a huge target that it advertises; a revolution that manages to operate horizontally will not.

    The state apparatus emerged in conjunction with money, and it co-evolved with the development of capital. It's going to take a lot of de-coupling to get to a point where it's truly and fully independent.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    See this is exactly the kind of senseless dick measuring contest all of these conversations devolve into that brings with itself the disgusting sectarian bullshit in the fucking anarchy community of the left unity website like the comment that replied to yours. No, the state isn't "an obvious and historically proven vehicle for defending a revolution from internal counter revolutionaries and external imperialists." The state failed many times to do that. The USSR is long gone. There's ZERO states that has achieved communism.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    I think "How do you do it without a state?" Is a fair question in an educational thread. We are mostly communists here, with a common understanding of how we would defend a revolution - some of us might be taking sectarian snipes, a lot of us just don't know the anarchist answer to this.

    If our premises are incorrect, maybe tell us why? Or direct us to someone who would?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    There are two dynamics to keep in mind here.

    One is that the bourgeois state has more contingencies that it depends on than localized egalitarian collectives do. Capitalism isn't some latent universal law that resurfaces as soon as you're no longer stamping it out. It's a historical process; it came from somewhere; it was ushered into being with great amounts of force. It would take a great amount of force to reimpose it (and in 1991, it did take just that). To get rid of the landlord class, though, all a government needs to do is arm the working people and pledge not to prosecute violence against landlords.

    The other is that there's a bit of a cost-benefit analysis that needs to be done in order to subjugate a putative free territory. There's a certain amount of resources or revenue that could be extracted from the territory. If the attempt to being it back under the yoke of capital was projected to cost more than that amount, there would be no material driving force to get it done. Capitalist entities have enough trouble already balancing 10-year prospects against quarterly prospects. Granted, though, this means that anarchist approaches would most easily work in less-developed, less-contested places.

    The colossus is not something that categorically hates you, it is something that sees you as a threat to itself and also wants to exploit you.

    So for the case of counter-revolutionaries, all flesh is grass, they bleed as easily as any plebeian does. For the case of "fighting to defend the revolution", I'd be interested to see a concrete example of what that would look like, situationally.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Capitalism isn't some latent universal law that resurfaces as soon as you're no longer stamping it out.

    It kinda of is right now. Unless the anarchist revolution is immediately global you're gonna get bad actors from capitalist states trying to ratfuck your anarchist institutions, also the ruling classes that you deposed aren't going to disappear overnight unless you outright kill them all.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    My second point directly addressed that. Capitalist state apparatus operates by a conflicting logic, but it's still a logic rooted in material benefit.

    Sure, if it's someplace like Grenada that could be seen as a lilypad to attack the United States, it would be crushed to avoid perceived harm in the cost-benefit analysis. If it's someplace like Chile or the Congo with a whole lot of mineral wealth, the payoff will be higher. But there's still a calculation that gets made. Capitalists are not irrationally driven to crush socialist projects; they do it because they stand to financially benefit in the long run even after the losses in money and equipment and lives.

    Another point is in the belly of the beast. Nobody has outlawed homesteading, despite the fact that this actively reduces GDP by displacing the formal economy with the informal economy, limiting tax revenue and also rarely contributing to anything that can be used as part of a war effort.
    If you call yourself a Marxist-Leninist party with the stated goal of overthrowing the government, you're a target from the beginning, and the past 100 years have seen Western governments running absolute circles around insurgent communist parties. But if you're supposedly just a bunch of people doing collective homesteading, with a mutual aid network that's definitely no-sir not at all part of a dual power institution, you have the capacity to grow and spread.

    I thought we had fully abandoned the whole premise of "they hate us 'cause we're free" and understood the logic that was obscured by that thought-terminating cliche.

    What kind of ratfucking is a bad actor going to do? Assassinate the Leader that doesn't exist? Bribe or blackmail someone, okay. But do you bribe the chief parliamentarian, the chief strategist, the chief taskmaster, the chief mediator, the chief teacher, or the chief spokesperson on the council of good governance? None of those options sound very productive, and all those roles are easily switched out with someone from a lower council. Or maybe they want to invade and occupy- how are they going to do that when there would be a rifle (or a bow) behind every blade of grass?

    In practice, anarchistic projects in the 21st century have faced more difficulty with gangs than they have with state actors.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    how are they going to do that when there would be a rifle (or a bow) behind every blade of grass?

    Presumably with artillery and bombing runs.

    I thought we had fully abandoned the whole premise of "they hate us 'cause we're free" and understood the logic that was obscured by that thought-terminating cliche.

    I don't think they'd just sit by idly if an anarchist revolution popped up in a developed western state for example. They understand well that a successful socialist project on their doorstep is an existential threat to them. Even by your logic they'd want to intervene because a lot of capital would be lost to them otherwise.

    Also the point of a socialist revolution IMO is seizing the industry and cities, not homesteading. Once you start doing that they're not going to look kindly to you and will go all out.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    There's a pretty big assumption there, that you're fighting to hold ground that the enemy operates on. Is the point of a socialist revolution to accept the framework of the capitalists, and contest it in a matching style? Or is it to secure a well-founded base of power for people regardless of inherited means, in order to provide them with the quality of life and personal development they need? Are you trying to seize as much GDP as you can, or are you trying to garner food, shelter, education, healthcare, and transportation? In short, is your revolution focused around the outcomes for your revolutionary subject, or is it focused around depriving your adversary of something?

    My strategy would not center around seizing a Funko Pop factory even if they became the most traded commodity.

    Presumably with artillery and bombing runs.

    Look how successful that was in Afghanistan.

    To quote another reactionary griping about their Ls, the conventional army loses if it does not win; the guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

    The biggest and most conclusive military strategic lesson of the past 40 years has been that you don't automatically "win" everything by winning the pitched battle, and that fighting an insurgency is counterproductive and rapidly becomes probibitively expensive, because of the gap in cost between guerrillas and occupying armies.

    In the case of a remote target, it is far easier to disrupt the flow of capital (e.g. burning cash crops, sabotaging equipment) than it is to disable the local ability to field an autonomous resistance force.

    If we're talking about the invasion of a bourgeois army in the service of capital, then it's pretty clear that everyone in its general path will have a common cause of self-defense against it- and sure, you have a military commander for the operation, plus a couple officers, for the sake of strategic and tactical coherence. There is no reason why that military command needs to spill over into the sphere of governance.

    For the whole world's sake, I am glad that the CPC in the 30s did not follow the directive that "the substance of a socialist revolution is seizing industry and cities, not building up a rural power base and the means of subsistence".

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Or is it to secure a well-founded base of power for people regardless of inherited means, in order to provide them with the quality of life and personal development they need?

    And how are you gonna do that without an industrial base? It's not about "GDP" or "playing their game", it's about industry being necessary to support a decent life for a large population.

    If we're talking about the invasion of a bourgeois army in the service of capital, then it's pretty clear that everyone in its general path will have a common cause of self-defense against it

    Will they? There's gonna be a sizable chunk of the population that would probably materially benefit from capitalist restoration, mainly the previous upper classes and their lackeys. Also people with terminal religious/traditionalist brainworms. Also people that don't want to spend a decade in a guerilla war.

    For the whole world's sake, I am glad that the CPC in the 30s did not follow the directive that "the substance of a socialist revolution is seizing industry and cities, not building up a rural power base and the means of subsistence".

    1930s rural China looked absolutely nothing like for example rural America today, it's not even the least bit comparable. Back then peasants were the absolute majority of the population, nowadays this isn't true at all.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    You're forgetting so easily that most of the industry that's "required" to support a population has been offshored. Much of it went to a neighbor that in fact has multiple empirical examples of exactly what I'm talking about, with government crackdown being either fully stalled or outright absent.

    A revolutionary situation isn't going to pop out of nowhere and hold contested territory. It's going to need capillaries in the hinterland so it can support itself with lower recognition and risk. And I'm not going to rehash the explanation of how a good quality of life can be secured mostly independently of gasoline technology here.

    Before you started drifting the conversation with selective clapback quotes and refusing to specify an example as I asked for, you were talking about "defending the Revolution^TM^" from outside forces. Now you're talking about adversaries running on idealism popping up inside the territory, who are not a small minority, are not better off in the alternative to capitalism, and who somehow are equipped with everything they need to set up the systen of subordination and oppression again. I'm not sure you're arguing in good faith.

    But my answer to the counter-revolutionaries question is that imperialist infrastructure is harder and lengthier to build and easier to destroy than autonomous infrastructure. It takes months of construction to build a bridge that can carry military equipment, and only 1 well-placed explosive to nullify it. If the power grid and petroleum distribution network were knocked out, the armed forces couldn't move a mile- and the same would be true of suburban pickup-truck-driving reactionaries, who would more likely shrivel in their subdivisions or get in a gunfight with their neighbors at the first sign of scarcity. Meanwhile for every anarchist it would be a sort of dream come true.

    Moving prior to the question of military contention, if an anarchist movement in the West was integrated with the economy like China has been since the 80s, stamping it out would be an act of self-destruction by capitalists. If it wasn't, attempting to suppress it would still be weakening the metropole by the state turning on its own territory and population. In any given revolution, you don't start out from square one saying you're going to annihilate the government. You conceal your intention while you build up your capacities, so that you actually get a chance to act instead of being infiltrated, compromised, and executed.

    I had a whole bunch of these discussions with 2 people in my scene IRL years ago, who insisted on the need to conduct conventional warfare or take over the military from the inside, under the assumption that you publicly declare a much larger enemy from the very inception. They had both just gotten out of the armed forces themselves. I call this "army brain". Anyway, neither of them are still involved in anti-capitalist organizing. One of them moved away and the other got kicked out of the local PSL.

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