Originally posted by
[email protected] 21 2004, 06:00 PM
The short time that I have been here I have learned alot now I am stuck between being a Anarchist or a Communist I just need some help. Don't tell me what to be just try to help me please. This is killing me.
You can be both. Anarchists also wants communism, all important anarchists have been anarcho communists.
If there is a clash, its rather between anarchism and marxism (a tool for analyzis), then between anarchism and communism (a material movement).
But in much, anarchists and marxist have come closer together...i know many anarchists that I have much more in common with (opinions) then I have with "communists", marxist-leninists och trotskyites for example (if you could call them communists)...
The Anarchist Tension
"When Karl Marx talked about communism he talked about stages to achieving it."
Hrmm....i dont really agree...Ofcource revolution is a process but Marx never really talket about "stages" in anything, though his followers often did. Marx him self was rather very anti-schematic and anti-deterministic. But very missunderstood.
"When Marx analysed society and developed his theories he came to the conclusion that in order to achieve communism you had to go through a transitional phaze which in the classic marxist term they call the "dictatorship of the proletariat" but is often called socialism or the first stage of communism."
Dictatorship of the proletariat is NOT the same thing as the leninists bloody "socialism" (state capitalism).
"Marx argued that you couldn't go straight from capitalism to communism and that you must have this transitional stage in order to take power into the hands of the workers, organise society and defeat the capitalists."
Also called revolution. Ofcource the dictatorship of the proletariat (the state) is necessary, never understood people who said it aint. Even most anarchists i know agree with me, but some dont like to use the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" or "state" cause...i dont really know. Some lack in historical knowledge maybe.
Well, well. If we want to abolish capitalism...ofcource we must then monopolize the power to the single, the one and only, class with intrest in this development, and also the only class that have the possibility to do this. And ofcource the bourgeoisie wont go out in the woods and pick berries, and they will oppose us, and therefor it is good to have an organized defence (a state) to defend the revolution from bourgeoisie attacks - the dictatorship of the proletariat (no, not a damn party dictatorship, a CLASS dictatorship)...
"He argued that when the time was right this dictatorship of the proletariat idealised in the state, would eventually wither away."
Yes, ofcource it will. Cant really see how it wont. All states are HISTORICAL, they always exist under historical conditions. All states have a purpose, for the dictatorship of the proletarians, the purpose is the defence of the revolution.
When its no longer needed......why the hell should we keep it for then?
And...it could not exist anyway, cause there is no longer any classes. When the proletarians have ceased being proletarians...then the bourgeoisie will cease being bourgeoisie, and capitalism will cease, and with no proletarians, there can ofcource not be a dictatorship of the proletarians/a state of the proletarians...so...its gone.
"Marxism is often called communism"
Nay...well, maybe it is. But its not the same.
Marxism is a tool for analysis of capitalism, and it is really effective if you want to study communism, cause communism is the antithesis of capialism (aswell as the synthesis of them both), the very negation of the class society. It is a movement within the proletarians, an expression of their struggle against reducing to the commodity labour. So marxism is more a tool for understanding capitalism, and communism...
BTW, I think Bakunin would accept the dictatorship of the proletariat today. Is main objection to the theory was that the proletarians was in minority at the time, today they are not. They are more then ever.