"But then why hasn't it ever worked?"

[gorillafuck]

I get rather frustrated when this is brought up in arguments (I mention anarchist Catalonia but that is usually ignored, and I don't want to only name one instance in every argument), so what are some other instances of anarchism or socialism working?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, I couldn't tell whether to put it here or in Practice.

[Pogue]

I share your concern...Anarchist catalonia was one area for once short time which then obviously ended, no fault of the system cos it had alot (understatement) to do with the stalinist purges and fascist bombings but anyone with a clue what it was but is politically ignorant and right wing says that it collapsed and others havent heard of it... shame cos although it was a grat system and acheivment people dont accept it as hisotrical validity of anarchism... yeh any help appreciated commie famalams.

[apathy maybe]

They (being the ruling class, and those parroting ruling class ideas), also said that "democracy" (as in representative democracy, with parliaments and shit) would not work.

Funny thing, they were wrong.

The fact is, you don't need to point to historical examples. Either it will work in the future, or it won't. It working, or not working in the past does not affect that. (For anyone who says different, point them to Hume.)

[gorillafuck]

They (being the ruling class, and those parroting ruling class ideas), also said that "democracy" (as in representative democracy, with parliaments and shit) would not work.

Funny thing, they were wrong.

The fact is, you don't need to point to historical examples. Either it will work in the future, or it won't. It working, or not working in the past does not affect that. (For anyone who says different, point them to Hume.)
But it helps an argument quite a lot.

[Tatarin]

The Paris Commune? It also didn't collapse, but was crushed.

[gorillafuck]

Aren't there also communities in Argentina right now that operate under anarcho-communist or collectivist anarchist principles?

[graaaaaagh]

Whiteway Colony, and the Tolstoyan Communes of the Soviet Union.

[mikelepore]

Before 1776, when had it ever "worked" for a colony to rebel against a monarchy, win its independence, draft a written constitution from scratch, and form a republic? Before 1903, when had it ever "worked" for a motorized vehicle with wings to fly through the air? I consider the argument that something has "never worked" to be absurd. It's equivalent to making the assertion that nothing in the world should ever be done for the first time. The amazing thing is that anyone over the age of six years old would make such a claim.

[Tatarin]

Just tell them to watch "Lost" on TV, and ask them if that is an unrealistic situation (people helping each other without asking for money or something in return).

;)

On the other hand, why are they so certain it hasn't worked before? How did people come together in the first place? Did someone just invent money and started capitalism?

[Drace]

The fact is, you don't need to point to historical examples. Either it will work in the future, or it won't. It working, or not working in the past does not affect that. (For anyone who says different, point them to Hume.)

How is Hume relevant?
If you will explain please.

[apathy maybe]

How is Hume relevant?
If you will explain please.

Hume articulated the Problem of Induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction), that is, just because something happened, or didn't happen, in the past doesn't have any bearing on it happening, or not happening, in the future.

If I roll a die 100 times, and it comes down six each time, the probability of it coming down six on the 101st roll is *drum roll* one in six.

The same with a coin flip. If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, the probability it will come up heads the next time, is still (~) one in two.

---

Anyway, as I've said before, you should read David Hume just because, even if you aren't arguing about the possibility of a future anarchist society.

[redguard2009]

A pro-democracy politician in France said, just a few years before the French Revolution, that it was impossible for democracy to exist in Europe during his lifetime.

[Wanted Man]

I think the idea that "socialism has never really been attempted" has the weakness of making socialists look like pipe dreamers, who simply denounce any "attempts at socialism" that did not go as planned.

I think it's stronger to suggest that socialist countries (or "deformed workers states", "bureaucratic socialism", "state capitalism", whatever) have accomplished so much for their people, even in poor, isolated countries. Of course, then you'd have to deal with a response along the lines of: "Okay, so a small attempt at socialism has failed, and you think it would work better to introduce more socialism? Maybe the third way is better."

It's a difficult matter, in any case.

[ZeroNowhere]

Wait, what does arguing for state capitalism have to do with socialism? :confused:
Though yes, claiming that 'socialism has never been attempted' would be perhaps erroneous, though I would argue that the Spanish communes and such were more of an attempt towards dictatorship of the proletariat than socialism, which is international.

[Djehuti]

I get rather frustrated when this is brought up in arguments (I mention anarchist Catalonia but that is usually ignored, and I don't want to only name one instance in every argument), so what are some other instances of anarchism or socialism working?

Small scale socialist societies has existed in various forms, from working class communes (that has been brutally crushed by the reaction) to socialist towns established by various religious grups (diggers etc).

Once the working class actually defeated the counter-revolution and established their rule, and that was in Russia 1917. However, the working class was not strong enough to see the revolution through and the class and the soviets lost power to the beurocracy and the state. Back then Russia was not a capitalist country, sure capitalism existed in Russia but Russia was primarily agrarian and the proletariat did not number more than maybe 20 million (?) and most of them could not even read. The conditions were simply not met for the revolution to succeed and for communist relations.

Most of the other eastern block states did not even see a proletarian revolution, "socialism" there was established with the help of the Soviet Union and the Red Army after WW2 and these states soon followed pretty much the same pattern as the Soviet Union (were the revolution allready had failed). But in some of these eastern states, like the DDR, the working class actually were quite strong and well-developed (even though millions of communists had been murdered by the nazis) and thus states like DDR developed in a better way than the USSR did. I would not say that the german working class had all power in DDR, but they actually had a lot of power and they actually succeeded with a lot of great feats even though they struggled under the worst conditions possible. In my opinon DDR was part socialist (and better then West Germany).

I think that many comrades are to confortable and make things to easy for themselves when they dismiss the so called "communist states" as state capitalist or whatever, even though I generally agree with them. Stalins purges for example are easy to condemn and rightfully so, but we can't just dismiss a major part of our (yes, our!) history with a few sentences or with some academic analysis. We most take history seriously and be very humble, our dead comrades deserve it. It was very hard times and very hard choises to be made and we will face similar trials again. We must actually learn from history, and it's not enough to say that "Stalin was bad" or "The USSR were in fact capitalist" or whatever.

[Pero's Pen]

I get rather frustrated when this is brought up in arguments (I mention anarchist Catalonia but that is usually ignored, and I don't want to only name one instance in every argument), so what are some other instances of anarchism or socialism working?

Ignore this "arguement." Feudalism worked and did not work. It "worked" for a few hundred years until it did not work, i.e. destroyed by capitalism. Capitalism's birth was marked with failures everywhere such as the French Revolution and the Restoration. The problem with something "working" is that it tends to mean working eternally. E.g. I often hear that the USSR did not work, yet it worked in at least form for 69 years. Socialism too will work and not work. It will work in the sense that it will come about and be functional for some time, but it will not work in the sense that it will one day come to an end and has had early failures. A time will be when capitalism does "not work," when it is done away with.

that is, just because something happened, or didn't happen, in the past doesn't have any bearing on it happening, or not happening, in the future.
Idealist arguement. A successful revolution will not occur by simply by chance. By this reasoning capitalism came about by accident. It does not realize difference in quality of revolutions. E.g. the Russian Revolution was more "successful" than the 1871 Paris Commune or 1905 Russian revolution, this was not by accident. The Bolsheviks did not ignore the 1871 Paris Commune, nor did they ignore nor were independent of the 1905 Revolution. The "arguement" that a successful revolution, etc. is mere accident is a dead-end, as was Hume which the author of the quoted words admires so much. I apologise if this is confusing, writing is not a strong suit of mine.

A pro-democracy politician in France said, just a few years before the French Revolution, that it was impossible for democracy to exist in Europe during his lifetime.
And that person was correct.

[Drace]

Hume articulated the Problem of Induction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction), that is, just because something happened, or didn't happen, in the past doesn't have any bearing on it happening, or not happening, in the future.

If I roll a die 100 times, and it comes down six each time, the probability of it coming down six on the 101st roll is *drum roll* one in six.

The same with a coin flip. If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 100 times in a row, the probability it will come up heads the next time, is still (~) one in two.

---

Anyway, as I've said before, you should read David Hume just because, even if you aren't arguing about the possibility of a future anarchist society.

Ah yes, well but that really does not have much of a significance on the topic.

The argument that "Communism never worked" wants to hint that the chance of it it happening is very low or none. Say for example, it says that dice has no 6 marked on it, and thus can never happen.

[apathy maybe]

Yes, but the argument "communism never worked, and therefore can't" is quite different from "communism can't work because...".

The first argument is simply wrong. The second argument is probably also wrong, but depends on what the ellipsis is.

Continuing with the dice example, those arguing from the past are saying that just because the die never came up 1, means that it never will come up one, even though one is a perfectly valid number on the die. They may be trying to imply that 1 isn't even on the die, but the implication fails unless they spell it out.

The same was as people who claimed that "representative democracy" could never work, because it had never worked before.


If they then try and claim that the die doesn't even have the number one on it at all, and therefore communism can't possibly work, it is up to them to provide evidence for this. And, they can't. Marxists point to a "progression" in society from having different classes in charge, until the majority class is in power, and the state whithers away. Communism, the end of history etc. But there is no way to actually prove this. And there is no way for detractors to prove that it won't happen.


A possibly decent argument about communism not working would actually have some evidence. For example, all large scale, technological societies have had states to maintain law and order. Where you have such a society without a state, there is disruption and problems, and given enough time, a state will step in or be created that will restore law and order. An example being Somalia.

Therefore, it is probable based on past events that a state is required to maintain law and order in a large technological society.

----

Lets look at two differences between that argument and the argument "communism has never worked in the past, therefore it can't work in the future". The big difference is that the first argument has evidence and reasoning behind it. This reasoning is flawed in my opinion, and I could point to cases such as Spain where a state wasn't required to maintain law and order. The second difference is that one argument argues an absolute "it will never happen", where as the first argument argues a probability.

(I flipped a coin 100 times, it came up heads 100 times in a row. Therefore, on the basis of probability it will come up heads again. Compared with: Therefore, it can never come up tails. Anyone who knows anything about probability knows that given an "ordinary" coin, the probability of the coin coming up heads is one in two (1/2), no matter how many times it came up heads before.)



Idealist arguement. A successful revolution will not occur by simply by chance.
For fucks sake. I never said anything about chance in that section. Of course we learn from the past, but all intelligent people do (including those who oppose us). (Veering off into troll land: I assume you are a Marxist, your argument is idealistic. Your definition of "state" is not related to actual existing things, but on an "ideal" state. Drawing radical conclusions about the future, from the past is just silly, yes you can "detect" different classes gaining control of the "state", but note that they are all minority classes, yet you say that from this, you know that a majority class can create a state. Etc. This isn't really a troll, but I do get pissed off by people who say stupid things, for example saying my argument is idealistic.)

[mikelepore]

I think the idea that "socialism has never really been attempted" has the weakness of making socialists look like pipe dreamers, who simply denounce any "attempts at socialism" that did not go as planned.

That "socialism has never really been attempted" is precisely my position. Nowhere did any society have, or even begin an attempt to have, the workers in control over the means of production without requiring the workers to obey the instructions of top-down appointees. The absence of any appointees in decision-making positions is essential enough to be part of a correct definition of the word "socialism."

[ZeroNowhere]

That "socialism has never really been attempted" is precisely my position. Nowhere did any society have, or even begin an attempt to have, the workers in control over the means of production without requiring the workers to obey the instructions of top-down appointees. The absence of any appointees in decision-making positions is essential enough to be part of a correct definition of the word "socialism."
Anarchist communes during the Spanish Revolution?

[KC]

That "socialism has never really been attempted" is precisely my position. Nowhere did any society have, or even begin an attempt to have, the workers in control over the means of production without requiring the workers to obey the instructions of top-down appointees. The absence of any appointees in decision-making positions is essential enough to be part of a correct definition of the word "socialism."

Early Russia 1917 was probably the closest to this.

[mikelepore]

Anarchist communes during the Spanish Revolution?

I'm not well educated about them, but I said "a society". I think the bare minimum size social unit for having what I would call "socialism" is one that has at least one instance of each kind of industry. Did each anarchist commune include its own shoe factory, nail factory, glass factory, medicine factory, clock factory, frying pan factory, etc., and at least one mine and refinery for all known minerals? A socialist mode of production isn't possible in any social unit that is too small to have all of them. If there is any resource that it lacks and therefore has to obtain by trade, then I consider the mode of production to be capitalism.