Anarcho-Communism or Communism

[Redhead]

I'm new to this forum, and i cant seem to figure out what the big difference between communism and anarcho.communism is. To me they sound similar, as they both work for the same goal. Correct me if im wrong. Some arguments about both ideologies would be helpfull :)

[Loony Le Fist]

At the risk of being torn apart by more experienced people, I'm going to say that communism, without qualification, generally refers to a classless system where the state maintains a certain social order. Whereas in the case of anarcho-communism there is a complete abolition of the state. The idea is that communists (without qualification) generally think that there needs to be a state to maintain the classless society. Anarcho-communists reject the state, in that it's existence creates a class of people that have more power and authority than others in all contexts.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

At the risk of being torn apart by more experienced people, I'm going to say that communism, without qualification, generally refers to a classless system where the state maintains a certain social order. Whereas in the case of anarcho-communism there is a complete abolition of the state. The idea is that communists (without qualification) generally think that there needs to be a state to maintain the classless society. Anarcho-communists reject the state, in that it's existence creates a class of people that have more power and authority than others in all contexts.

Sorry, that is simply not true. Marxists consider the state to be a product of class antagonism; the state "maintaining the classless society" is as nonsensical as the ocean maintaining dryness.

Both anarcho-communists and "authoritarian" communists fight for a classless, stateless society. The difference is that anarcho-communists imagine that the state can be abolished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, whereas Marxists hold that the state will wither away in the transition to the communist society.

[Loony Le Fist]

Sorry, that is simply not true. Marxists consider the state to be a product of class antagonism; the state "maintaining the classless society" is as nonsensical as the ocean maintaining dryness.


Right. Everything I tend to say is pretty meaningless I guess.



Both anarcho-communists and "authoritarian" communists fight for a classless, stateless society. The difference is that anarcho-communists imagine that the state can be abolished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, whereas Marxists hold that the state will wither away in the transition to the communist society.

So the Marxist idea is that the state will continue to be there until it withers away. What is it's purpose in the meantime, while it's withering away? Is it's purpose to simply wither away?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So the Marxist idea is that the state will continue to be there until it withers away. What is it's purpose in the meantime, while it's withering away? Is it's purpose to simply wither away?

It's purpose is to destroy the resistance of the defeated bourgeoisie and the layers that support them, to safeguard and advance the revolution internationally, and to organise rationing, accounting in the socialised enterprises etc.

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

Both anarcho-communists and "authoritarian" communists fight for a classless, stateless society. The difference is that anarcho-communists know that the state can be abolished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, whereas Marxists imagine that the state will wither away in the transition to the communist society.

There. I corrected for you.

But in essence this is true yes.

[Loony Le Fist]

It's purpose is to destroy the resistance of the defeated bourgeoisie and the layers that support them, to safeguard and advance the revolution internationally, and to organise rationing, accounting in the socialised enterprises etc.

Right. So basically



...a classless system where the state maintains a certain social order.


By



destroy[ing] the resistance of the defeated bourgeoisie and the layers that support them


At least temporarily, as imagined.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Right. So basically


...a classless system where the state maintains a certain social order.

By


destroy[ing] the resistance of the defeated bourgeoisie and the layers that support them

At least temporarily, as imagined.

Except the transitional period, in which the state remains a necessity, is not a classless society. It is a period of dissolution of class society - and in it the state weakens in proportion to the weakening of class society and its structures. Talking about the state in a classless society is meaningless for Marxists. A state is a class dictatorship - obviously an impossibility if classes have been abolished.

[reb]

I'm new to this forum, and i cant seem to figure out what the big difference between communism and anarcho.communism is. To me they sound similar, as they both work for the same goal. Correct me if im wrong. Some arguments about both ideologies would be helpfull :)

Generally, when someone describes themselves to be an anarcho-communist, they're using the term in opposition to a caricature of Marxism, where Marxism = state-socialism. The fact that they have to put the word "anarcho" or "anarchist" as a prefix to this shows the idealist nature of their beliefs where you can have many different types of communism based on different ideas of it. This is in opposition to Marxism where communism is a process that occurs in capitalism, what Marx calls "the real movement" that is going to abolish the present state of things, rather than some future society. So fundamentally, it stems from vastly different conceptions of what revolution means and how to get there. This sort of idealistic reasoning permeates much of anarchism from them believing in a nature of man where all power corrupts, to ideas of prefiguration and so on.


Sorry, that is simply not true. Marxists consider the state to be a product of class antagonism; the state "maintaining the classless society" is as nonsensical as the ocean maintaining dryness.

Both anarcho-communists and "authoritarian" communists fight for a classless, stateless society. The difference is that anarcho-communists imagine that the state can be abolished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, whereas Marxists hold that the state will wither away in the transition to the communist society.

Well, you've got the first part correct and the second wrong. Both Marxists and Anarchists wish to smash the state. The problem is, anarchists have such a poor conception of class that they don't understand why a state exists in the first place, or what a state is, that they view the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to be a state. This also goes for a variety of so-called "communists" despite the fact that Marx and Engels made comments otherwise. A state exists, according to Engels, because there are irreconcilable class antagonisms in society. How then can one consider the DotP a state along these lines when the whole point of it is the abolition of classes and thus class antagonisms itself? If one is unable to untangle class society and a state forms out of it, can this state be considered a revolutionary transition? The answer is no. States and class antagonisms do not just "wither away", they are abolished. You're falling into the same shallow definition of a state that anarchists follow, except that you presumably approve of it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, you've got the first part correct and the second wrong. Both Marxists and Anarchists wish to smash the state. The problem is, anarchists have such a poor conception of class that they don't understand why a state exists in the first place, or what a state is, that they view the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to be a state. This also goes for a variety of so-called "communists" despite the fact that Marx and Engels made comments otherwise. A state exists, according to Engels, because there are irreconcilable class antagonisms in society. How then can one consider the DotP a state along these lines when the whole point of it is the abolition of classes and thus class antagonisms itself? If one is unable to untangle class society and a state forms out of it, can this state be considered a revolutionary transition? The answer is no. States and class antagonisms do not just "wither away", they are abolished. You're falling into the same shallow definition of a state that anarchists follow, except that you presumably approve of it.

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever - you want to abolish class society before abolishing class society, have a transitional period in which the state toward which society is transitioning has already been reached. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a state because it is a dictatorship of the class, albeit a special one because it is the last state form that is possible, unless you buy the "managerial" nonsense of Burnham and co. That it strives to abolish itself does not make it a non-state.

Of course, in the transitional period the bourgeoisie, and likely the better part of the petite bourgeoisie will have been expropriated. But other classes and strata would remain, for a period, hostile to the proletariat and its rule, as well as groups of former exploiting classes, whose consciousness will not immediately change in line with their new social position. And the contradictions of class society can survive the destruction of the bourgeoisie for as time, just as e.g. the contradictions of the slave-owning period have survived the destruction of the slave-owner class.

[AnaRchic]

All communists fight for a society of freely associated labor, without classes and inequality, without money, and without a state. The nature of the revolutionary process of getting there is what separates anarchists and Marxists.

A state is an organized apparatus of repression, characterized by armed bodies of men (army, police, courts, prisons, etc). I think both anarchists and Marxists can concede this basic definition. The state becomes necessary in human society only at that point in human society where there are irreconcilable class antagonisms between those who own the means of life and those who do not. The "property" of the bourgeoisie can only be upheld against the majority by means of this repressive apparatus, the state.

In a social revolution, which we aim for, the present state must be abolished. Electoral victory to a bourgeois state is not a revolution in the sense that we are seeking. That state must be done away with. The working class must, in and of itself, seize power in a given area, and indeed internationally as time goes on. If the bourgeoisie is to be expropriated, to have their wealth and power forcibly wrenched from their hands, as is necessary, these social forces will organize viscous and unfathomable violence against the working class, in an effort to reverse the revolution. Hence open class warfare is an inevitable feature of the revolutionary process.

Consequently, organized revolutionary violence will be necessary to defend the power of the working class in its path of socializing the means of production and wrestling the wealth and power away from the capitalists. The form such organization takes makes little difference, assuming workers themselves retain and indeed expand democratic control over the organization. In some countries federated militias may be all that is needed to defeat the forces of reaction, though in other circumstances a highly disciplined and centralized traditional army may in fact be necessary. Real-world conditions will inevitably determine the various forms such a working-class revolutionary power will take.

Whether you want to call this organization a state or not is ultimately a matter of symatics; all serious anarchists that I have ever read or spoken to understand very well the need for highly organized revolutionary violence to defeat class enemies. Given the definition of a state given above, and recognizing the elemental functions of a state as mediator of class struggle and upholder of class dominance in the face of irreconcilable antagonisms, we can accurately say that the victorious proletariat will need its own state as a tool and tactic of its own self-emancipation from the chains of exploitation.

Anarchism is not without merit however. Anarchism understood as a tension away from hierarchy and toward increasingly broad and participatory forms of democratic organization is immensely valuable to all serious socialist revolutionaries. Throughout a social revolution the power of the new state (or "armed revolutionary federation" or whatever) must be increasingly decentralized, bringing in broader masses of people into the administration of society at all levels, and, in the course of time, as the need for repression fades away consequent the evisceration of counter-revolution, this organization of the working class will cease to have a repressive character, and will thereby qualitatively cease to be a state. Any armed bodies will be dissolved into the broad masses of the people armed. The repression of people will be more and more replaced by the simple administration of social affairs, and all this will happen on an increasingly decentralized and autonomous basis.

Traditional Marxism and Anarchism both have a great deal to offer 21st-century revolutionaries. We must carefully learn from and effectively synthesize these tendencies and, combined with an updated analysis and critique of the nature of capital in the modern age, move onward with a new and powerful revolutionary perspective.

[tuwix]

And all of you are forgetting about the one of the major differences. Anarcho-communism want to abolish money immediately regardless what economic circumstances are. However, Marxist communism predicts at least two phases. The first phase, when the means of production are socialized but money are still in use. And the higher phase that must come due to technological growth when money will become obsolete.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

However, Marxist communism predicts at least two phases. The first phase, when the means of production are socialized but money are still in use.

No.

Labour vouchers, and other rationing mechanisms that have been proposed for the lower phase of the communist society, are not money, because they are not transferable, do not circulate etc.

[tuwix]

No.

Labour vouchers, and other rationing mechanisms that have been proposed for the lower phase of the communist society, are not money, because they are not transferable, do not circulate etc.

If you think that labor vouchers aren't some form of money, that's only your problem...

[ckaihatsu]

Labour vouchers, and other rationing mechanisms that have been proposed for the lower phase of the communist society, are not money, because they are not transferable, do not circulate etc.





If you think that labor vouchers aren't some form of money, that's only your problem...


I *still* haven't seen a full description of how labor vouchers might work -- at this point it may as *well be* the same as money, or perhaps it would be perfectly appropriate for a top-down bureaucratically-controlled command economy...(!)





It's not enough for someone to say 'We'll just use labor vouchers and everything will work out.' What's *left out* is that "labor vouchers" is supposed to tie together what liberated labor is worth in relation to materials, and *also* in relation to other kinds of liberated labor -- this is simply too much for one instrument to handle, and that's why it needs to be dropped.





My standing critique [...] is that a 'points system' doesn't go far enough because the question of how points are issued in the first place is intractable:




How would points be assigned to individuals in the first place -- ?

If it's on a strictly across-the-board consistent basis -- say 100 points per person per month -- that would be very egalitarian, but it would be an overall (societal) *disincentive* towards new efforts at greater social coordination and experimental / speculative advancements in research and development.

And, conversely, if *increasing* rates of points could be obtained for increased amounts of work effort, *that* would be tantamount to the commodification of labor, since labor would be directly exchangeable for material rewards -- too close to a capitalistic market economy, in other words.

Part of the reason for using RevLeft so much is precisely for this question of a feasible political-logistical approach to a post-capitalist political economy, and why I've developed my own 'solution' for such, at my blog entry, blah blah blah....


Pies Must Line Up

http://s6.postimg.org/erqcsdyb1/140415_2_Pies_Must_Line_Up_xcf.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/erqcsdyb1/)

[Bala Perdida]

I hope to bring communism about through anarchist means, but I believe there has to be a transition out of scarcity if society is still under it's effects. Labor vouchers are pretty vague, but maybe there's a fitting interpretation of them that can work out. I'm kind of thinking my position is to go from a Bakunin inspired collectivism to classic Kropotkin inspired communism.

[Ahab Strange]

ckaihatsu,


It's not enough for someone to say 'We'll just use labor vouchers and everything will work out.' What's *left out* is that "labor vouchers" is supposed to tie together what liberated labor is worth in relation to materials, and *also* in relation to other kinds of liberated labor -- this is simply too much for one instrument to handle, and that's why it needs to be dropped. From my understanding, its feasible to calculate the labour time content of every product in an economy. If we use labour time as our criterion for efficiency, the planning system can make rational production calculations with this info. It is part of the solution to the old "calculation debate". (Of course not a complete solution, but thats another topic)

On the flipside of this, at the consumer end, the planning system can pay workers non-circulating labour credits that equal the value of the labour they have contributed. These credits are "spent" in the communal stores on goods or services of equal worth, where they are cancelled. The labour credits spent give planners information on what society desires to be produced, and also provides some constraint on limitless demand.

Yes, labour vouchers have a similarity to money in that they aid calculation and have a superficial resemblance to wages, but critically, they cannot circulate. Usury of course does not exist either, so banking as we know it would disappear. And yes, I would advocate a market of sorts in consumer goods, but that's it. It is just a feedback component for the larger planning system.

Labour vouchers are a specific component of a cybernetic planning system, not a magical like-for-like replacement for money

[ckaihatsu]

ckaihatsu,

From my understanding, its feasible to calculate the labour time content of every product in an economy.


I'm sorry, but this is just too much to assert.

As a negative example, how about a post-revolution scenario where there's an area that's been lacking clean water, and some liberated laborers from the larger surrounding area organize themselves to a collective project that successfully taps groundwater and puts up infrastructure to capture rainwater as well....

Now the area is well-supplied and is no longer at a loss for clean drinking water, for all of its inhabitants.

How, exactly, would that liberated labor that effected this new infrastructure be 'valued' in terms of each and every gallon of water that's now available for drinking, till the end of time -- ?





If we use labour time as our criterion for efficiency, the planning system can make rational production calculations with this info. It is part of the solution to the old "calculation debate". (Of course not a complete solution, but thats another topic)


I have no problem with a post-commodity system of material planning, nor do I have any differences with seeing labor time as the fundamental economic unit of a post-capitalist political economy.





On the flipside of this, at the consumer end, the planning system can pay workers non-circulating labour credits that equal the value of the labour they have contributed.


Well, gee, that's great and everything, but it's very *easy* to just *say* this, and to presume that this model would be the correct way to go -- assertions aren't enough, though, as I'll gladly note to any right-winger.





These credits are "spent" in the communal stores on goods or services of equal worth, where they are cancelled. The labour credits spent give planners information on what society desires to be produced, and also provides some constraint on limitless demand.


But how are these conventional labor vouchers / credits *determined* in the first place -- !

My critiques from post #15 still stand.





Yes, labour vouchers have a similarity to money in that they aid calculation and have a superficial resemblance to wages, but critically, they cannot circulate.


How is this a desired feature, that they don't circulate -- ?

My own framework has a type of 'labor credits' that *do* circulate....





A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits




http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673





Usury of course does not exist either, so banking as we know it would disappear. And yes, I would advocate a market of sorts in consumer goods, but that's it. It is just a feedback component for the larger planning system.

Labour vouchers are a specific component of a cybernetic planning system, not a magical like-for-like replacement for money


Feel free to elaborate, if it would illuminate anything....

[Redhead]

Both ideologies calls to me. The dictatorship of the proletariat after a revolution sounds logical... but on second hand, when someone first got power, they most likely wont give it away either if its the workers or the capitalists. History backs that thought up.

[Sinister Intents]

Anarcho-communism is the combination of anarchism and communism. Anarchy means
without rulers, so anarchism is most accurately the philosophy and movement advocating the
removal of hierarchal institutions and coercive authority in favor of individual freedom and
voluntary cooperation. Communism is the form of society in which there exist no social class, and
has no state, as well as having abolished money in favor of a gift economy based on “to each
according to their ability, to each according to their need,” (to quote Karl Marx) and mutual aid.
Essentially anarcho-communists want to bring about the freest human society possible.
Anarcho-communists accept Marx's historical analyses, but reject Lenin’s idea of the proletarian
dictatorship (Dotp) and of the Vanguard party (a concept closely linked to the DotP). They reject
both the idea of the DotP and of the Vanguard party seeing them as authoritarian measures.


This comes from an essay I wrote and I hope it can help in this thread a bit :) I kind of blindly posted it...

[motion denied]

Both DotP and Vanguard Party (arguably) are Marxian concepts.

[Sinister Intents]

Both DotP and Vanguard Party (arguably) are Marxian concepts.

Concepts I used to consider feasible. My entire opinion has changed and I oppose these two ideas. I'll add more later

[reb]

Both ideologies calls to me. The dictatorship of the proletariat after a revolution sounds logical... but on second hand, when someone first got power, they most likely wont give it away either if its the workers or the capitalists. History backs that thought up.

The dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't come after revolution, it is the revolution. It is the real life solution to the philosophical problem of class society, the revolutionary transformation of one society into another. The argumentation you are presenting lacks depth on the issue of the state and this transformation of society. Which is to be expected because you have to wade through piles of dogmatic shit from all camps.

[reb]

This comes from an essay I wrote and I hope it can help in this thread a bit :) I kind of blindly posted it...

There's more to it than that. Anarchists are not that much different from Leninists in certain regards, especially with the idea of the organization being some sort of educational device that teaches the masses. Anarcho-communists are inherently utopian and idealist, because they have this fixation on creating a specific type of society based on a supposed human nature. It's actually pretty obvious from the literature they put out and their constant reference to "anarcho"-communism as if it's in opposition to other ideas of communism. There's really nothing material about it.

[Thirsty Crow]

It is the real life solution to the philosophical problem of class society
Not even close that class society is a philosophical problem. Just as the real revolutionary transformation is a solution, this is most of all a tangible, immediately practical problem.

[ckaihatsu]

---





Both ideologies calls to me. The dictatorship of the proletariat after a revolution sounds logical... but on second hand, when someone first got power, they most likely wont give it away either if its the workers or the capitalists. History backs that thought up.





I'm more than a little surprised that so many are so concerned about a vanguard organization's potential for "hanging onto power" after a revolution is completed. In my conceptualization the vanguard would be all about mobilizing and coordinating the various ongoing realtime aspects of a revolution in progress, most notably mass industrial union strategies and political offensives and defenses relative to the capitalists' forces.

*By definition* a victorious worldwide proletarian revolution would *push past* the *objective need* for this airport-control-tower mechanism of the vanguard, for the basic fact that there would no longer be any class enemy to coordinate *against*. Its entire function would be superseded by the mass revolution's success and transforming of society.




tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism

[BIXX]

Reb, you always say anarchists or anarcho-communists or what have you are idealist/petty-bourgeois, but you never have stopped to prove it. Would you mind doing so?

[Sinister Intents]

There's more to it than that. Anarchists are not that much different from Leninists in certain regards, especially with the idea of the organization being some sort of educational device that teaches the masses. Anarcho-communists are inherently utopian and idealist, because they have this fixation on creating a specific type of society based on a supposed human nature. It's actually pretty obvious from the literature they put out and their constant reference to "anarcho"-communism as if it's in opposition to other ideas of communism. There's really nothing material about it.

Anarchists are vastly different from Leninists in many regards as well, they may share similarities, but I'd say all socialists share similarities. Both libertarian socialists and authoritarian socialists. Anarcho-communists are not utopian idealists as you insist, and I've been called both of those recently and to be completely honest it pisses me off. Show me how anarchists and anarchist communists are utopian and idealist? How is Kropotkin's Mutual Aid anything about human fucking nature? It more has to do with mutual aid among all creatures and this includes humans. All creatures do some form of mutual aid or another. Back everything you say up with more

[AnaRchic]

Show me how anarchists and anarchist communists are utopian and idealist?
The strict adherence to a particular organizational principle (anti-hierarchy) and the strict rejection of another organizational principle (hierarchy) regardless of objective conditions and necessities. This is an idealist position.

If an anarchist admits that utilizing hierarchical means is ok if it is an objective necessity, then I fail to see how they can call themselves an anarchist. Anarchy means without rulers and, more specifically, without hierarchy. Without an absolute rejection of hierarchy anarchism is no longer anarchism, but simply revolutionary socialism.

A materialist approach to revolution takes into consideration objective factors and necessities, always keeping the communist goal at the forefront of our objectives, without any dogmatic adherence to particular organizational forms regardless of conditions.

Anarchism, shed of its idealism, is revolutionary socialism with a skepticism toward centralization of power. A very positive thing I might add. But without that principled rejection of hierarchy I fail to see how such a tendency can be appropriately called "anarchism".