Questions about anarchism

[TrotskyMyHero]

If I understood, anarchism is about destroying states and having the world ruled by independant communities. But, if there is no state to control the means of production, how will trade between these communities be organized ? Won't it be just another kind of capitalism with communities unavoidably richer than others ? Isn't it a bit of an individualistic thought ?

[The Feral Underclass]

Central planning doesn't require a state to organise it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If I understood, anarchism is about destroying states and having the world ruled by independant communities. But, if there is no state to control the means of production, how will trade between these communities be organized ? Won't it be just another kind of capitalism with communities unavoidably richer than others ? Isn't it a bit of an individualistic thought ?

I think this question gives the incorrect impression that we Trotskyists call for a state to control the means of production in socialism. Well, no, we aren't really fans of theories that have the state continue to exist in socialism. Of course we advocate central coordination and not "independent communities". So the question can fairly be posed: how would independent communities avoid a market and thus private property? But not all anarchists propose independent communities.

[TrotskyMyHero]

Thanks for your replies. So the question would rather be : How would there be a central organization without a state ? How do we define the state then ?

[tuwix]

If I understood, anarchism is about destroying states and having the world ruled by independant communities. But, if there is no state to control the means of production, how will trade between these communities be organized ? Won't it be just another kind of capitalism with communities unavoidably richer than others ? Isn't it a bit of an individualistic thought ?

The differences in wealth will disappear only when there won't be money nor any its equivalents. It's the case of higher phase of communism. The differences in wealth aren't a cases of capitalism only. The the first phase of socialism there will be always richer and poorer whatever version will be introduced. Capitalism is about an exploitation of worker that means it's about depriving a surplus-value of him. In socialist factory a profit should be divided equally or invested, but in capitalist it belongs to owner and s/he can do whatever s/he wants. And that's the difference between socialism and capitalism.

[TrotskyMyHero]

Well, no, we aren't really fans of theories that have the state continue to exist in socialism.

I know, I'm just questioning about how we can achieve this. The question would rather be : How can there be a central organization without a state ? What is exactly a state then ?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I know, I'm just questioning about how we can achieve this. The question would rather be : How can there be a central organization without a state ? What is exactly a state then ?
As Engels described the modern state: "And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists."

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I know, I'm just questioning about how we can achieve this. The question would rather be : How can there be a central organization without a state ? What is exactly a state then ?

There are two complementary ways of looking at this. One is that the state is a class dictatorship; the rule of one class over other classes and strata, and in particular, in every class society up to now, over the dispossessed class of direct producers.

Second, on the "street level", the state is composed of several bodies of armed men (and women, today), generally separate from the general population, preforming coercive functions, and the various offices that oversee them. This is how most people view the state.

Both ways of looking at the state are correct and are in fact inseparable. Class rule requires coercion, carried out by particular bodies. In socialism, because there are no longer classes, this coercive function of society atrophies. This is what is meant by the "withering away of the state".

In the period of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, there is still coercion - here ideally carried out by armed workers as a whole - against those who would try to work against the democratic decisions of the workers' dictatorship in some sense (for example, people who dump toxic waste in an area where this has been specifically prohibited). In socialism, however, the subordination of groups to the social consensus has become a matter of habit. Just as it is a matter of habit to most of us to look left and right before we cross the road, or to eat with a fork and not our fingers (assuming you live in Europe or the Americas). Coercion is replaced by persuasion in all but the most extreme cases.

People would follow the targets etc. set by the bodies to which society has delegated the task of planning and coordination, not because there is a gun pointed at their head, but because they understand the necessity of central planning.

[TrotskyMyHero]

Thanks a lot comrades. I feel smarter now :)