[ARCHIVED] Shit Liberals Say

@[email protected] Here's another really good distinction by Bukharin, when talking about "decentralized" economics that anarchists push:

"Communist society is, as such, a stateless society. If this is the case — and there is no doubt that it is — then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and Marxist communists consist of? Does the distinction, as such, vanish at least when it comes to examining the problem of the society to come and the "ultimate goal"? No, the distinction does exist; but it is to be found elsewhere; and can be defined as a distinction between production centralised under large trusts and small, decentralised production.

We communists believe not only that the society of the future must free itself of the exploitation of man, but also that it will have to ensure for man the greatest possible independence of the nature that surrounds him, that it will reduce to a minimum "the time spent of socially necessary labour", developing the social forces of production to a maximum and likewise the productivity itself of social labour.

Our ideal solution to this is centralised production, methodically organised in large units and, in the final analysis, the organisation of the world economy as a whole. Anarchists, on the other hand, prefer a completely different type of relations of production; their ideal consists of tiny communes which by their very structure are disqualified from managing any large enterprises, but reach "agreements" with one another and link up through a network of free contracts. From an economic point of view, that sort of system of production is clearly closer to the medieval communes, rather than the mode of production destined to supplant the capitalist system. But this system is not merely a retrograde step: it is also utterly utopian.

The society of the future will not be conjured out of a void, nor will it be brought by a heavenly angel. It will arise out of the old society, out of the relations created by the gigantic apparatus of finance capital. Any new order is possible and useful only insofar as it leads to the further development of the productive forces of the order which is to disappear. Naturally, further development of the productive forces is only conceivable as the continuation of the tendency of the productive process of centralisation, as an intensified degree of organisation in the "administration of things" that replaces the bygone "government of men"."

Nikolai Bukharin, Anarchy and Scientific Communism.