just posting so i won't be deleted

[Narodsky]

not really sure what to write. anyways, i'm narodsky. anarchist and platformist.

[Q]

Welcome :)

If you have political questions, you can ask them in the Learning forum. That's why it's there after all!

If you have questions about your account, don't hesitate to send me a PM or ask here.

Mind that your posts in the non-political forums aren't counted, so your postcount will remain 0 inhere.

What attracts you to anarchist ideas? Where are you from and what's the left there like?

[Rosa Partizan]

ok ok, I see your good intentions, you can stay here.

Welcome.

[Brutus]

Welcome. Have a nice stay!

[Reactionaries Kill]

I think I should do the same, I'm here for understanding

[Narodsky]

wow thanks for all the warm welcomes :grin:

i have been an anti-capitalist for years. my anarchist tendencies awoke only recently. i became attracted to anarchism after my brother went to jail. i remember sitting in the courtroom looking at what was basically a bunch of intelligent apes squeaking at each other over some imagined "rules" that my little brother had broken. he hadn't hurt anyone nor infringed on anyone's personal freedom. it was at that moment i realized that the state was simply an invention by the powerful to keep the common man subservient. i have always had leftist leanings, but in that moment i became an anti-statist. sure, some of my beliefs come from resentment and bias, but the more i read on anarchism, the more i agree. i believe that we need to build strong networks of people committed to the fight so that we may undermine the bourgeois system of government oppressing all those who dare to speak against it and all those in the working class. all human beings are created equal. no one person has any true authority over another. the state, by means of its very existence, negates those two concepts which i believe in to my core. thus, i find myself standing with the anarchists and the anarcho-communists. i am not a communist b/c communism requires the dictatorship of the proletariat. i don't think there should be a dictatorship of anyone.

anyways, that's just a little about me. what about y'all?

[Q]

wow thanks for all the warm welcomes :grin:

i have been an anti-capitalist for years. my anarchist tendencies awoke only recently. i became attracted to anarchism after my brother went to jail. i remember sitting in the courtroom looking at what was basically a bunch of intelligent apes squeaking at each other over some imagined "rules" that my little brother had broken. he hadn't hurt anyone nor infringed on anyone's personal freedom. it was at that moment i realized that the state was simply an invention by the powerful to keep the common man subservient. i have always had leftist leanings, but in that moment i became an anti-statist. sure, some of my beliefs come from resentment and bias, but the more i read on anarchism, the more i agree. i believe that we need to build strong networks of people committed to the fight so that we may undermine the bourgeois system of government oppressing all those who dare to speak against it and all those in the working class. all human beings are created equal. no one person has any true authority over another. the state, by means of its very existence, negates those two concepts which i believe in to my core. thus, i find myself standing with the anarchists and the anarcho-communists. i am not a communist b/c communism requires the dictatorship of the proletariat. i don't think there should be a dictatorship of anyone.

anyways, that's just a little about me. what about y'all?
I think that's a very good starting point regarding the state. Regarding this 'dictatorship of the proletariat', this should be viewed in the context of the fact that we're currently living in a 'dictatorship of capital'. When Marxists talk about it,we don't mean a specific form of government with it. What we mean to say is that the we aim for working class rule as opposed to capitalist rule.

Proletarian rule must be the complete blossoming of democracy. I wrote a little about it here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6359).

Also, mind that Marx and Engels only uttered the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" about a dozen times during their lives and only in a polemical and critical situation. In general, I'd avoid the term altogether.

[Narodsky]

Interesting point and I liked what you wrote. My point is that I don't think anyone should rule anyone regardless of their class. I think the capitalists are the enemies of all working people and the current holders of power and therefore the oppressors of humankind and they should be taken out of power. But to replace them with anyone would be foolish in my opinion. Power feeds on more power and it always corrupts. No person is immune from the dangers of power and so we must eliminate all positions of power. That's what I meant. The continuation of the state, albeit in a different form, that communism advocates is where I take issue.

[Q]

Interesting point and I liked what you wrote. My point is that I don't think anyone should rule anyone regardless of their class. I think the capitalists are the enemies of all working people and the current holders of power and therefore the oppressors of humankind and they should be taken out of power. But to replace them with anyone would be foolish in my opinion. Power feeds on more power and it always corrupts. No person is immune from the dangers of power and so we must eliminate all positions of power. That's what I meant. The continuation of the state, albeit in a different form, that communism advocates is where I take issue.
I tend to agree with the saying that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". It is the reason why I advocate a strong version of collective rule. This also means I'm critical of elections as I hold that elections are counterposed to democratic rule. The ancient Greeks already understood why this is an oligarchic mechanism (this is an excellent article about why that is (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/788/democracy-or-oligarchy)).

Communists therefor favor abolishing large swats of the existing state: The army and police, the current 'justice' system, the large bureaucratic apparatus... but also, the meta-state institutions like the international financial markets and semi-state institutions like corporate media. If our class is to rule as a class-collective, the state and indeed the international state system has to go.

And, as this will undoubtedly pop up sooner or later, regarding the USSR: Every communist worth its salt is at the very least highly critical of what happened there. In my opinion the early Soviet Union knew a period going from revolution to counterrevolution between 1917 and 1936 (with the 'Stalin' constitution, consolidating the facts on the ground) or maybe 1938 (with the murder of the old generation of Bolsheviks, thus burying a genuine tradition of proletarian politics). Stalinism for me is anti-communism.

[Narodsky]

Oh, don't think I'd be close-minded enough to associate any communist with Stalin or anything after that unless they said that's their ideology. :)