Contradictory

[Mutualizm]

Isn't it contradictory and self-defeating to oppose the state, then try to get it to pass laws defending unions, when it has to bring in more money to do that, and therefore taxes people more and grows as an entity rather than shrinking?

[Homo Songun]

No, because revolutionaries are not capable of smashing the state. Only the masses are. But it is only through class struggle that the masses can come around to our way of thinking. Particularly if materialism is true (and the largest proportion of revolutionaries hold that it is), then as a practical matter it is only through the experience of political and social struggle (as a reflection of material conditions) that masses realize that the capitalist state on the one hand, and freedom and actualization for the vast majority of humanity on the other, are mutually exclusive options. In other words, there are lots of ideas about things floating out there (including revolution in the abstract) but practice is the sole criterion of the truth of those ideas.

Marx wrote some interesting things about "idea" or utopian socialists, who thought capitalism could be overthrown simply by convincing enough people that communism was better. In my opinion, Mao's famous essay (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_16.htm) on this topic is a great introduction to the subject.

[IndependentCitizen]

I'm sorry, but since when does the legislature of countries want to defend unions and not the bosses?

[Mutualizm]

No, because revolutionaries are not capable of smashing the state. Only the masses are. But it is only through class struggle that the masses can come around to our way of thinking. Particularly if materialism is true (and the largest proportion of revolutionaries hold that it is), then as a practical matter it is only through the experience of political and social struggle (as a reflection of material conditions) that masses realize that the capitalist state on the one hand, and freedom and actualization for the vast majority of humanity on the other, are mutually exclusive options. In other words, there are lots of ideas about things floating out there (including revolution in the abstract) but practice is the sole criterion of the truth of those ideas.

Marx wrote some interesting things about "idea" or utopian socialists, who thought capitalism could be overthrown simply by convincing enough people that communism was better. In my opinion, Mao's famous essay on this topic is a great introduction to the subject.
So you don't see any contradiction in the behavior of anarcho-communists who claim to oppose the very existence of the state... except when it benefits them?

I'm not referring to Leninists or Marxists here. I mean Bakuninists and other anarchists. To vote more power into the hands of the government is to work directly against the elimination of that government.

Unless you think these people are attempting to expand the government so much that it becomes unbearable and the people revolt.


I'm sorry, but since when does the legislature of countries want to defend unions and not the bosses?
Legislature defends the bosses whenever it gets involved, but if there's enough pressure, they'll throw the workers a bone. Too many self-styled anarchists are willing to try and get the government involved in their interactions with their employers, cheerfully ignoring the fact that they just get screwed over worse in the long run.

[Blake's Baby]

Why are you asking Mutualizm? Do you have anything in particualr in mind?

It strikes me that anyone who claims to be an anarchist who is making demands on the state is probably doing so in the belief that working people waging a struggle against capitalism and the state is inherently a good thing. By coming together in a group to protest and fight for better living and working conditions, people become conditioned to thinking that organising with their workmates to protest and fight their corner is natural and a positive thing. So it's about the working class building its own consciousness.

While there is obviously a big problem of becoming reformist and seeing the state as the means to solve the working class's problems (instead of of revolution) I don't think that most anarchists are in danger of selling out the workers in the way the social-democratic parties did in 1914. I also don't see all that much danger that the state will corrupt so many anarchists by giving in to working class demands.

Do you?

[Homo Songun]

So you don't see any contradiction in the behavior of anarcho-communists who claim to oppose the very existence of the state... except when it benefits them?

I'm not referring to Leninists or Marxists here. I mean Bakuninists and other anarchists. To vote more power into the hands of the government is to work directly against the elimination of that government.

It doesn't matter who you are, there are laws of social development. To acknowledge that masses make history is not Marxism, it is realism. The essential difference between a successful "Bakuninist" and a failed one is in grasping this. (Now in doing so, the Bakuninist may transform himself into something else, but that is a different discussion...)

http://drb-chemistry.wikispaces.com/file/view/gravity.gif/164150347/gravity.gif

[ZeroNowhere]

Hm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm).

[promethean]

Mutualizm does not seem to accept that capitalist society is a class society. It is up to them to define what kind of society they think it is.


Isn't it contradictory and self-defeating to oppose the state, then try to get it to pass laws defending unions, when it has to bring in more money to do that, and therefore taxes people more and grows as an entity rather than shrinking?
Do you think if the state reduces its taxes on its citizens it 'shrinks' as an entity? An autonomous body like the state either grow or shrink based on what it collects as taxes, except in the size of its departments, but not in its efficacy in preserving private property. In any case, your thinking that you can reduce the state by getting it to reduce its taxes is not just contradictory, but just idiotic.


So you don't see any contradiction in the behavior of anarcho-communists who claim to oppose the very existence of the state... except when it benefits them? Here is the difference between individualist anarchists and class struggle anarchists. Whereas class struggle anarchists defend what is beneficial to the class as a whole, individualists just see themselves as atomic individuals with no relations to the working class.


To vote more power into the hands of the government is to work directly against the elimination of that government.
Your idea of what gives power to the state is wrong. Collecting taxes has nothing to do with it. In any class society, the state just acts in the interests of the dominant classes irrespective of the amount of taxes it collects. Also, you now seem to suggest that if the state reduces its taxes, it eliminates itself(!), which is another idiotic statement.


Unless you think these people are attempting to expand the government so much that it becomes unbearable and the people revolt.
You seem to have no understanding of class society and how it works. Do you accept that capitalist society is a class society?