Anarchy and Communism

[cbm989]

Just a quick question. The impression i get is that Communism is a highly centralized government. Yet anarchy calls for the abolition of the system. So how are the two related? **I could be wrong on those impressions, its just how i thoguht they worked.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Communism is a stateless classless society. Anarchism is the theory of instantly abolishing the bourgeois state during revolution in order to start a transitition into communism. Anarchists think the state is inherently opressive and most be abolished because no matter who wields its power, oppression will still exist.

[Everyday Anarchy]

Anarchism is the theory of instantly abolishing the bourgeois state during revolution in order to start a transitition into communism. Anarchists think the state is inherently opressive and most be abolished because no matter who wields its power, oppression will still exist.
Whereas the Marxists and similar believe that a transitional period with a worker's state (also called Dictatorship of the Proletariat) is necessary to make the change from Capitalism to Communism.


You can sum it like so...
Anarchists --> Immediately Stateless / Communism
Marxists --> Transitional State / DoP --> Stateless / Communism

[cbm989]

ahh ok i get it now. cool. I got the wrong impression from all the so called anarchist-punks at my school. Who believe anarchy means there is no structure in society. at all. ever. so thats where i got that notion.

[Dyst]

Well, what you usually learn about communism in school is that it is an alternative economical model (alternative to capitalism,) where all power is in the hands of "the state" which then are given the responsebility to spread the resources among the public. Of course, any fool, when she reads this, thinks "The State will go corrupt and will have all the power for themselves" etc.

Basicly they are painting a picture of communism as it is like the situation was in Soviet.

What they don't mention is that communism in fact is the theory of what will happen after capitalism. And that it is physically impossible to "skip" capitalism, in other words, the revolution towards communism must happen in a country already fully capitalisticly evolved.

And that communism (marxism) is per definition a stateless society, unless perhaps some form of authorities will be needed in the short period directly after the fall of capitalism. After this, it is basicly "From each according to ability, to each according to need".

To make this work, we will need the recent technological advancement we have seen capitalism has provided the wealthy nations with.

But we must also remember the the shit capitalism has provided the rest of the world.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2006, 11:56 PM
Just a quick question. The impression i get is that Communism is a highly centralized government.
No. There's no government in communism.


Yet anarchy calls for the abolition of the system. So how are the two related? **I could be wrong on those impressions, its just how i thoguht they worked.

the system, being the Class system, which communism also calles for the abolition of.

But more fundamentally both Anarchism and Communism desire the same ends, and in most cases overlap in their process. (Anarchist-Communism)

[Xanthus]

The basic and primary theoretical difference is in the conception of what the state is.

To an anarchist, the state is what creates and maintains a class society. Therefore, by abolishing the state, you can eliminate the class society.

To a marxist, the state is merely the tool used by the ruling class to maintain their control. If you abolish the state without abolishing the ruling class, then that ruling class (or another) will merely sieze power again and setup a new state, which in all likelyhood would end up more oppressive then the last one. Many would argue that is exactly what happened during the Spanish Civil war, where the stateless anarchism setup in much of the country was quickly replaced by the previous ruling class siezing power along fascist lines with the Franco dictatorship.

The marxist solution to this is to first setup a state with the workers and peasents as the ruling class instead of the capitalists. This new state's purpose (what Lenin defined as "socialism") would be to bring the workers' and peasents' living standards up, and expropriate the capitalists, therefore bringing everybody to an equal economic footing. Then, over the course of several decades, as class identities fade away, the state withers away and a classless, stateless society emerges (what Lenin and others have called "communism"). The transitional state's proper and full name is "the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasentry", though because of their abillity to organise, it would be led by the working class. It should be emphasised that the term "dictatorship" is not used in the more modern way meaning a dictatorship of a person or small group, but instead is a dictatorship of an entire class, as soon as possible to be elected through workers' and peasents' councils ('soviet' is the Russian word for council), restricting capitalists from the electoral process not unlike the way workers are restricted from running for government within bourgeois "democracy".

[CCCPneubauten]

Marx does say that the revolution will not come from the rural folks though, the hammer and sickle is not even a Marxist symbol. Marx said socialism must come from an industrialized nation.

[Xanthus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 12:48 PM
Marx does say that the revolution will not come from the rural folks though, the hammer and sickle is not even a Marxist symbol. Marx said socialism must come from an industrialized nation.
Nothing Marx said precludes the possibility of other classes helping the process along. In Russia, the tiny working class minority (5% or so) could NEVER have taken power on their own. However, at the same time, the working class WAS the revolutionary class, and at the lead of the alliance between the workers and the peasents.

Socialism was never developed in Russia (despite Stalin's claims) primarily because the working class was not strong enough to maintain power (especially after the civil war in which many of them died). Lenin and other bolsheviks knew that socialism couldn't be created in Russia alone because of the small working-class base, exactly as Marx had described, hense the theory of permanent revolution and the necessity of the revolution spreading to a developed country. History has since proven Lenin, Marx, and Trotsky completely correct in that regard.

It was a working-class revolution, aided by peasents, but it could not be a working class government, as we saw.

Edit: I feel the need to add a few quotes from Lenin to back this up.

On the bourgeois-democratic revolution (Marx's prerequisite to industrialisation):

There remains 'the people', that is the proletariat and the peasantry. The proletariat alone can be relied on to march on to the end, for it goes far beyond the democratic revolution. That is why the proletariat fights in the forefront for a republic and contemptuously rejects stupid and unworthy advice to take into account the possibility of the bourgeoisie recoiling. (ibid)

And this, more to the point, is Lenin addressing what the democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and peasentry is capable of in an unindustrialised country:

But of course it will be a democratic, not a socialist dictatorship. It will be unable (without a series of intermediary stages of revolutionary development) to affect the foundations of capitalism. At best, it may bring about a radical redistribution of landed property in favour of the peasantry, establish consistent and full democracy, including the formation of a republic, eradicate all the oppressive features of Asiatic bondage…lay the foundations for a thorough improvement in the conditions of the workers and for a rise in their standard of living, and - last but not least - carry the revolutionary conflagration into Europe. (Works, vol. 9, page 57)

As you can see, Lenin never expected to be able to build socialism on the backs of the peasentry, and you're right, if he had, it would have been throughly un-marxist.

BTW, these quotes come from roughly the period around the 1905 uprising.

[CCCPneubauten]

Lenin was backwards....Russia hadn't been in the capitalist stage yet, so failure was expected by Marxists...well..some...

[Xanthus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 02:11 PM
Lenin was backwards....Russia hadn't been in the capitalist stage yet, so failure was expected by Marxists...well..some...
Lenin was backwards??? Would you please explain that?

Lenin predicted, as did every other true marxist, that the Russian revolution would ultimately fail (as it did) unless it succeeded in quickly spreading to the west (which it didn't). So, how was Lenin backwards? He predicted exactly what happened.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2006, 11:01 AM
Lenin was backwards??? Would you please explain that?

Lenin predicted, as did every other true marxist, that the Russian revolution would ultimately fail (as it did) unless it succeeded in quickly spreading to the west (which it didn't). So, how was Lenin backwards? He predicted exactly what happened.
"If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself."

-Mikhail Bakunin

Bakunin was expelled from the first international for continuous opposition to Marx. If Lenin was smart, why didn't he just listen to the Anarchists predictions (which were almost 100% on the dot) rather than take the Marxist line?

[Dyst]

Bakunin was expelled from the first international for continuous opposition to Marx. If Lenin was smart, why didn't he just listen to the Anarchists predictions (which were almost 100% on the dot) rather than take the Marxist line?

I believe it was Marx who first said that advanced capitalism is a primary necessity for a succesfull communist revolution.

[Xanthus]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2006, 03:38 AM
I believe it was Marx who first said that advanced capitalism is a primary necessity for a succesfull communist revolution.
And my big problem with so much of what I've read, not just in this topic, but everywhere else on this forum is that there seems to be an assumption that Lenin did not understand this basic principle of Marxism, and set out to build socialism in Russia.

I used this quote from Lenin once before in this topic, and now I'll do it again. This should be self explainatory, but if not, let it be known that it conclusively prooves the point that Lenin very much did understand that principle. The only way any Marxist thought the Russian revolution might succeed in building socialism (much less communism) is if it quickly spread to an advanced country, which it very nearly did.


But of course it will be a democratic, not a socialist dictatorship. It will be unable (without a series of intermediary stages of revolutionary development) to affect the foundations of capitalism. At best, it may bring about a radical redistribution of landed property in favour of the peasantry, establish consistent and full democracy, including the formation of a republic, eradicate all the oppressive features of Asiatic bondage…lay the foundations for a thorough improvement in the conditions of the workers and for a rise in their standard of living, and - last but not least - carry the revolutionary conflagration into Europe. (Works, vol. 9, page 57)

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2006, 11:51 AM
let it be known that it conclusively prooves the point that Lenin very much did understand that principle.
I never said he didn't understand it. I just think its bullshit.

and Lenin should not have subscribed to it.

[Dyst]

And my big problem with so much of what I've read, not just in this topic, but everywhere else on this forum is that there seems to be an assumption that Lenin did not understand this basic principle of Marxism, and set out to build socialism in Russia.

I used this quote from Lenin once before in this topic, and now I'll do it again. This should be self explainatory, but if not, let it be known that it conclusively prooves the point that Lenin very much did understand that principle. The only way any Marxist thought the Russian revolution might succeed in building socialism (much less communism) is if it quickly spread to an advanced country, which it very nearly did.

But why "start" the revolution in a pre-capitalist society? Could he not foresee the fact that the revolution would not spread to capitalist countries, mainly because of aid from the other capitalist nations?

It is true that Russia needed a revolution of some sort, but a capitalist one rather than a communist. And that was also, to some degree, what they got.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by Additives [email protected] 11 2006, 11:12 AM
If Lenin was smart, why didn't he just listen to the Anarchists predictions (which were almost 100% on the dot) rather than take the Marxist line?
Just because someone is wrong doesn't make him stupid. And the Russian anarchists didn't do a very go job of getting their ideas out to the public, at least not compared to the SRs or Bolsheviks.