Anarchists in a Socialist State? What happens next?

[WeAreReborn]

These countries on the road to socialism.. and dissident movements allowed the restoration of capitalism. The party in these former eastern block countries was replaced in power so any analysis that posits that the seeds for the re-establishment of capitalism were laid by Stalin or the Soviet system is very flawed I think. If anything, their mistake was not being strict enough with dissident movements who seeked to place them out of power.

Yeah but blaming it on the Anarchists is simply dishonest and false.

Why would I be arrested? I'm not an anarchist, I'm a communist who agitates for the advancement of socialism. I wouldn't attempt to overthrow the government of a socialist state so there would be no reason to lock me up.

It is hard to believe you would push for the advancement of Socialism when you admire Juche so much.

It wouldn't matter where you go with analysis of online media such as here, it would be possible to find former anarchists. But as long as you don't agitate for the overthrow of the new socialist state you would be fine there would be no reason for you to worry.

I don't believe any Anarchist, aside for maybe Individualists, would fight for another society if it actually was Socialist.

[Jimmie Higgins]

If a socialist society is achieved, then I don't think the majority of anarchists would mind at all. Most of the disagreements among socialists/anarchists that look to working-class rule of society are about if the other tradition's theory and action is adequate to actually helping to achieve working class self-emancipation.

So if workers organized their own rule though democratic workplace councils and maybe in coordination with democratic community bodies... but there was a worker's militia initially to defend against a counter-revolution or if there were democratic institutions for workers to make collective decisions and this was called a "socialist state" I don't think many anarchists would be all that bothered really and would engage with their fellow workers and promote what they think should be done in that society.

If workers organized their own rule through democratic workplace councils and maybe in coordination with community bodies... there was a worker's militia and some institutions which workers create to help with democratic coordination etc... but it was called a "non-hierarchical network" rather than a state, then I wouldn't care either and would engage in building this society with my fellow workers and promote the ideas that I think would help this society.

I think if there was an established socialist society, we might still call ourselves "anarchists" or "socialists" and there would certainty be lots of different ideas for the way forward from a lot of workers, but I think the arguments would be over things we can't really anticipate. People would probably begin to organize themselves into "parties" that advocate various priorities for the socialist society... like some people might think housing is the most urgent thing to work on after a revolution, others might think that modernization of poor regions is most important, others education.

Historically, the Russian Revolution and seeing workers actually take power somewhere united a lot of the radical left: bolsheviks, what would become left-coms, anarchists - even some Democratic-socialists defected. It was the failure of that revolution that broke up the happy leftist rainbow party. First it was a split between groups representing urban worker and peasant demands in Russia, then friction was caused as many radicals began to see the problems with substitutionism by the Bolsheviks. And by the Spanish civil war, it was because the left was split between the anarchists and other left-forces who represented working class politics and the "communists" who represented Russian foreign policy interests.

So I think a successful socialist revolution will actually bring these radical left-wing traditions back together in a lot of ways because many of our historical disagreements would be settled in practice. In other words if socialism is achieved by uniting workers behind one big union, then why the hell would I care that I was wrong that syndicalism alone could help workers achieve socialism!

[Bitter Ashes]

You're saying that another bonus to the revolution is that we get the SWP to ditch all those bloody newspapers? Awesome!

[robbo203]

True hard line anarchists attempting to overthrow a Socialist state, like the DPRK, the Soviet Union under Stalin or China under Mao, will be arrested and convinced that they should not follow anarchism. If they refuse to stop promoting anarchism and the overthrow of socialism then they will be held indefinitely. An anarchist in a socialist state is effectively in the same rank as a counter-revolutionary reactionary.

What is "reactionary" and "counter revolutionary" is the assertion that these anti-working class state-run capitalist regimes had anything to do with socialism in the first place

[Tim Cornelis]

Here's what I don't get.

Why would anarchists take part in the establishment and eventual government of a socialist state?

That's why I said it depends on what kind of "socialist state". Marxists and anarchists use different definitions of state. To Marxists a state is organised violence of one class to suppress another, meaning defending egalitarian revolutionary communes against violent reactionaries would be considered a state by Marxists, but not by anarchists as in an egalitarian commune there would be no hierarchy.

The Bavarian Soviet Republic, although it retained hierarchy in the three weeks of its short existence, was more genuinely democratic and based on Soviet Democracy than the USSR in the 1920s.

I would support a revolutionary state (using Marxists' definition) if it's completely democratic and socialist (self-management) and hierarchy is minimised (although I advocate its elimination). If on the other hand the socialist state is top-down elitism as in Russia post-1917, or Mao's China or whatever I will fiercely resist it.

[Red And Black Sabot]

I disagree with some of yall arguing that anarchists under socialism would be satisfied.
I tend to agree with Alfredo Bonanno when he wrote that anarchism is a tension. It is not an ideology or program or any specific list of set goals.
Once or if we reach our current desired goals, I'm sure some anarchists will feel a pull toward further liberation. We just don't see what that might look like right now because the world we live in now informs our struggle and points it toward a specific end.

[tradeunionsupporter]

This is a good thread.

[Thirsty Crow]

To Marxists a state is organised violence of one class to suppress another...

That's an oversimplification of a complex issue which was resolved in different ways in different Marxist currents.
For instance, I don't think that any kind of Marxism should confuse specific apparatuses of repression for the whole of the apparatuses which function as the organization of capitalist rule. And that's what you did.

One other point in Marxist theorizing about the capitalist state concernes the famous distinction between the base (economic activity) and the superstructure (ideological forms which are more or less derived from the mode of production).
Thus, one Marxism may postulate that the capitalist state is not part of the capitalist system, that it is external to it in its function of maintaining favourable conditions for capital accumulation.
Another Marxism would argue that the capitalist state also intervenes into the relations of production, that it constitutes these relations in their specificity.