Can't the workers make communism without a state?

[Jacob Cliff]

The anarchists everywhere established communism or socialism but were squashed by statist socialists like Lenin, even though those anarchist movements actually created communism and Lenin just gave the state more power. Why does the working class need a state before communism? Why can't they just rise up and establish it like they have proven to have done before?

[ChangeAndChance]

Uh oh, this thread is like a Marxist vs. Anarchist debate bomb waiting to explode. :laugh:

[Vogel]

I've always thought the first step to communism would be establishing Democratically ran workplaces. If we have control over the state to help push the process along, carve out the river so the waters of human freedom can flow to the ocean of Communism without being intercepted and blocked.

[Creative Destruction]

The anarchists everywhere established communism or socialism but were squashed by statist socialists like Lenin, even though those anarchist movements actually created communism and Lenin just gave the state more power. Why does the working class need a state before communism? Why can't they just rise up and establish it like they have proven to have done before?

I'm not going to get too deep into this thread, because I can tell it's already going to degenerate into another useless anarchist vs. communist pissing match.

With that said, a couple of things:

A.) Anarchist movements didn't create communism/socialism. They may have been at the fore, sometimes, of setting up conditions in anticipation of the establishment of communism. But the establishment of communism assumes that communism has been established everywhere. Otherwise, the revolution is still happening and capitalism still exists. For as long as capitalism exists in a significant form, there cannot be communism.

B.) It's arguable that these anarchists "establishing communism" were running their own versions of a proletarian dictatorship, or a worker's republic... whichever sounds better to you. Given that, they end up proving Marx's point about the need for a proletarian dictatorship, rather than disproving it. Of course, we can't say what Marx would have said about Lenin's usurpation of power, but, given what he's written before, I'd be comfortable in saying he may have considered it a kind of "barracks" or "crude" communism, which wasn't representative of what Marx was going for when he was talking about a worker's state.

We've seen time and again that capitalism does not go away on its own, and the tools are not yet there to establish communism. There needs to be a period of social revolution in order to transform the institutions. You can't just flip on a switch and say "Hey! We have communism! yay!" ... otherwise, I imagine, we would all be living under a communist society already. Some anarchist try to do it with the Graeber-ish 'live as if you were free' horseshit.

[Jacob Cliff]

How were the Anarchisr societies like worker's states?

[Sewer Socialist]

Dear MarxianSocialist:
You have the most confusing name.

Anyways, the working class rising up as a unified force and asserting their power as a class against bourgeois rule is itself a state, if we consider the state to be an instrument of class rule. Once this revolutionary proletarian state (also known as the "dictatorship of the proletariat") enjoys a general victory over the bourgeoisie, class is dismantled and the state form may must be abolished. If it is in the process of dismantling class, a revolutionary workers' state can also be said to be in the process of dismantling itself, as that is the reason for its' existence.

If it is not in the process of dismantling class, it has ceased to be a workers' state.

Why do you say the anarchists created communism? What are you referring to?

[VivalaCuarta]

If the Anarchists had established communism we would be living in it.

Generally, in revolutionary situations anarchists do support the state -- specifically, the bourgeois state.

[tuwix]

The anarchists everywhere established communism or socialism but were squashed by statist socialists like Lenin, even though those anarchist movements actually created communism and Lenin just gave the state more power. Why does the working class need a state before communism? Why can't they just rise up and establish it like they have proven to have done before?

I think that working class doesn't need a state for anything, but state still there is. And the problem is how to dismantle it and what exactly state is. Many anarchists will say that a global state governed by referendums as a whole and in its parts is no longer a state, but Marxists and other will argue it's exactly a state. And this is a field of misunderstandings and arguments between anarchists and other revolutionary leftists.

[revnoon]

The anarchists everywhere established communism or socialism but were squashed by statist socialists like Lenin, even though those anarchist movements actually created communism and Lenin just gave the state more power. Why does the working class need a state before communism? Why can't they just rise up and establish it like they have proven to have done before?


No I think you are wrong:rolleyes: Lenin never wanted the state to run or own factories. He wanted the working class to run and own the factories in a democratic way through worker council!! No CEO or management at all.

Stalin killed Lenin has he wanted the state to run and own things at the state level by communist party management running and owning the factories telling workers want they can or cannot do. And all the profit would go to state.The state than was in charge of want the workers got.

In a way the state became the CEO.

[Viktor89]

We don't need any state, and least of all any dictatorship. Establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" here and I would be as much against that one as I am against this fucking state today. I have respect for Stalin and Tito for beating those fascist bastards in WWII, but other than that, fuck all states. Only the most weak minded herds of sheep needs to follow a leader or be told what to do. Together we can create a society of equality and sharing, and helping, without any uniformed scumbags putting bullets in the heads of vaguely suspected "spies" lol.

[Viktor89]

Lenin murdered or imprisoned all those nihilists and anarchists, Emma Goldman writes how sick she got of it when she visited Lenin's Russia. Worth reading Goldman's selfbiography.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'm not going to get too deep into this thread, because I can tell it's already going to degenerate into another useless anarchist vs. communist pissing match.
Uh...maybe an anarchist vs. Marxist pissing match, but come on, you should know that anarcho-communism is a thing.

[Tim Cornelis]

We don't need any state, and least of all any dictatorship. Establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" here and I would be as much against that one as I am against this fucking state today. I have respect for Stalin and Tito for beating those fascist bastards in WWII, but other than that, fuck all states. Only the most weak minded herds of sheep needs to follow a leader or be told what to do. Together we can create a society of equality and sharing, and helping, without any uniformed scumbags putting bullets in the heads of vaguely suspected "spies" lol.

Dictatorship didn't mean then what it means now. Dictatorship meant power temporarily being place in a person or institution to quell civil unrest, and then it meant something like all power concentrated in x = dictatorship. So 'all power to the people' would be a dictatorship of the people. Dictatorship was not incompatible with democracy and not synonymous with despotism or tyranny. Hence why Bakunin could advocate an invisible dictatorship and still be anarchist.

As for the rest, you wouldn't be against the Paris Commune and this was considered a proletarian dictatorship by Marx.

[Ele'ill]

Dictatorship didn't mean then what it means now. Dictatorship meant power temporarily being place in a person or institution to quell civil unrest, and then it meant something like all power concentrated in x = dictatorship. So 'all power to the people' would be a dictatorship of the people. Dictatorship was not incompatible with democracy and not synonymous with despotism or tyranny. Hence why Bakunin could advocate an invisible dictatorship and still be anarchist.

As for the rest, you wouldn't be against the Paris Commune and this was considered a proletarian dictatorship by Marx.

i think the criticisms are generally aimed at those temporary power structures or 'good' power structures never going away, and that a lot of what is described is simply a reciprocation of what we know from current society