Same - and it’s weird to see so many leftists immediately jump to unconditional support for Hamas, who are literally a reactionary, religious fundamentalist force and who have done horrible things towards Palestinian people.

Armed resistance to Israel does not negate its evils or its reactionary internal role.

Been in the same exact position :(

Hope you get to make up for the lost time

Yeah, this is one of the differences between anarchists and communists I doubt we’d ever find agreement on due to the nature of our views. Anarchists reject the notion of power altogether, while Marxists don’t deny that power can entrench itself but attempts to explain why and under what historical and material conditions it can be overcome.

I have strong doubts that the people in charge will just give up power once it comes to that, and sadly most experiments with communism/socialism (in Eurasian at least) lead exactly to that.

To be clear, my intention isn’t to defend the past socialist experiments as seen in my original comment, but using them as examples where people in charge refused to give up power misunderstands theory and history. The countries were never in position to “give up power”, as they didn’t ever reach a point where state became unnecessary, and there are reasons for that.

If you look at a country like post-revolution USSR, the country was agrarian with vast peasant majority. The productive forces were far from developed to properly transition into socialist mode of production and meet everyone’s needs, which is one of the purposes of the centralized state, and this is something that would have taken a really long time given their productive capacity. Lenin and Bolsheviks did try to go for an international revolution angle in hopes they would escape this predicament, but they failed, leaving USSR isolated, forcing it to adopt capitalist markets and then quickly degenerating due to opportunism and the ‘bad actors’ the system inevitably creates over time as leadership changes.

Marxists such as myself would argue that USSR was doomed from the start due to their material conditions at the time unless they could have found success internationally. This is something that Anarchism wouldn’t resolve - decentralization in an undeveloped, isolated and hostile environment would weaken defense, cripple the development of productive forces and very likely would have lead to an accelerated collapse.

Also apologies - I can’t help but write unreadable walls of text.

To touch up on some of your questions you have at the bottom, and be warned that this will be somewhat anti-anarchistic:

After a successful revolution, bourgeoisie fall and people cheer in the streets. What now, do we go full horizontal hierarchy mode and decentralize? The truth of the matter is that post-revolutionary period is incredibly volatile (as seen by the fact that most revolutions happened in cascades) and faces a multitude of immediate issues, such as: 1. The previous ruling class trying to get themselves back into power again via counter-revolution or armed uprisings using their resources and connections, be it foreign or internal. 2. The need to overcome capitalist commodity production and reorganize it into planned production to satisfy human and economic needs (aka socialist mode of production). 3. Defense against foreign capitalist threats who would love to get more land/resources or major political influence via coup. 4. The need to spread the revolution internationally, as a country that doesn’t operate under capitalist mode of production simply cannot survive in a global capitalist world (can elaborate on this if anyone cares, don’t want this wall of text to be too long).

Decentralized horizontal systems are quite detrimental when it comes to solving these immediate issues - it fragments authority, decision making, delays responses to armed insurrections, foreign invasions and production reorganization. You need quick, decisive action during a revolutionary period or collapse follows even before “bad actors” become a problem.

The working class must seize state power - whether through a vanguard party, council republic, or equivalent to suppress the bourgeoisie, defend the revolution, and transition from capitalist commodity production towards planned economies to satisfy needs. Of course, the state must fulfill the immediate goals to no longer become necessary and for the state to wither away in a timely manner - else, and I agree with Anarchists here, the revolution will degenerate (into red bourgeois states) usually with the help of ‘bad actors’, as seen with USSR and China.

Also as a short addendum, comparing societies of today to primitive egalitarian horizontal societies is an error - these societies operated under radically different productive forces, population scales and social complexity, production was localized and individualistic. Today’s production is inherently social, large-scale and global, requiring entirely different forms of coordination and past forms simply cannot be revived or even be compared.

To preface, I’m a Marxist and not an Anarchist, our frameworks differ substantially.

I agree that “but what about bad actors” criticism is quite bad, but for different reasons. They don’t “spawn in” out of nowhere and ruin systems, the opposite is the case - it’s the system that produces them through inequalities, ideology and reward mechanisms. Capitalism rewards antisocial, domineering behavior because competition, capital and power accumulation demands it in order to “be successful”. This is something inherent to the system and its structures, not something you can fix simply by moral policing, so focusing just on the individual is a mistake.

The vertical power structures like the state aren’t there merely for individual power hoarding, but rather it’s a structure of class domination - the bourgeoisie control over proletariat. Enforcement and protection of private property (such as factories/company offices/other means of production), legal systems controlling who gets into power and what they can change, education and media promoting the status quo are but a few examples of this. The state isn’t merely there to preserve itself, it’s there to preserve the capitalist system.

Oligarchs are only a symptom and not the issue, don’t get distracted. Removing the oligarchs or so called “bad men” won’t suddenly make things right, as capital/wealth concentration are structural features of Capitalism and not some anomaly caused by a group of bad actors.

This isn’t an issue that can be fixed by better taxation or social protections or reformism like that - workers will keep getting exploited and earn less than the value they produce and staying relatively poor/powerless, bourgeoisie will keep getting disproportionately more capital (with reforms only slowing it down slightly) and power as a result, and inevitably will work towards erasing these reforms to have their rate of capital accumulation grow further and we’re back at having oligarchy.

That is assuming these reforms can actually be implemented, which massively overstates the power of boycotts/protests and our liberal democracies in general - sure, they can sometimes happen under pressure like in the case of postwar welfare states, The New Deal, social democracies from back in the day when they actually did things, but these happened as concessions under the pressure of a possible revolution, later got reverted and look where we are now.

Thanks for sharing! Though, given today’s world and seeing the state of movements that want to change the present state of things (communism, anarchism), I would argue it’s even worse now.

According to this letter, 100 years ago there was theory but no practice - people would sit in their little book clubs and theorize, dreaming about a possible world and all that jazz. Now, if you look at your average anarchist (and communist but to a much lesser extent), there’s neither theory nor practice. Very often, it’s treated as an identity, a mere individualistic lifestyle choice or just a mere aesthetic (I hate solarpunk for this especially) rather than an actual coherent movement that aims to change society.

Without theory, you don’t know who the true enemies are, it’s a recipe for falling into traps and ideology laid by our current system and its narratives (like electorialism) and just in general results in blind, frustrated action that is more than likely to be counterproductive due to police crackdowns. Without practice, the movement places its faith onto future generations to try the plan in the real world, and put themselves at a severe risk of fizzling out. Without both, the movement is a farce.

That’s pretty much rainbow capitalism, which is but a small part of liberalism.

In reality, liberalism is much worse when it comes to things like human rights, singing it’s praises and championing democracy and freedom while committing/supporting atrocities, like Bill Clinton administration’s war crimes, Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq, EU’s anti-immigration barbarism, Trudeau’s arms sales, current Israel Palestine genocide, etc.

It’s baffling how many regular people call themselves liberal while not seeing the contradictions/utter hypocrisy. Even on ideological level, you can’t support things such as equality and free-market economics, they directly go against one another.

Lithuanian here who signed the petition like a year or so ago.

There’s a decent chunk of Lithuanian gamers, but social medias and spaces that they inhabit are primarily in Lithuanian language such as Facebook, Lithuanian gaming groups on Discord/TikTok and things like that. Rarely there are some odd Lithuanians like me who venture out to the English speaking web to sites such as Reddit, but there’s no guarantee the initiative will be found or if the person will care enough to sign it.

Granted, take what I say with a spoonful of salt as I don’t actively seek out or look for Lithuanian digital spaces at all, this is based on my experience with friends and acquaintances.

Gonna have an unpopular take here, but pornography and sex work under our current system shouldn’t be celebrated as a “bastion of freedom”, given how it’s selling access to one’s body and sexuality as a product. Even if they agree to it consensually, the choice happens in a world where money decides what people can or can’t do, if one is going to survive or not. This makes the concept of “real consent” complicated, because the need of money, much like the need of food or essential goods can force people into doings they wouldn’t freely choose if survival wasn’t on the line.

Given this, one could definitely consider it commodified rape - it’s not necessarily violent like forced rape, but it’s still shaped by money, power, and pressure in a system where people’s bodies get turned into things to be bought.

The law does suck ass and shouldn’t be supported though, the issue stems with a system where our survival depends on money (with selling your body being a way to get by) and not individual morals. I fully agree with Yidit when he says that it’ll just cause sex work to become more dangerous by moving it underground.

Signed it, but I wonder how much of an actual problem is it in the EU. Whenever I hear of conversion therapy, it’s usually from within US.

Not an anarchist but a revolutionary Marxist, and I don’t really have any Anarchist literature to share on this topic but here’s how I understand it:

Essentially, both Anarchism and Communism operate within “production for use”, which sees things being manufactured for use and to satisfy people’s needs rather than for profit as commodities to be sold on a market, and so this necessitates economic planning - after all, how else would the community know what and how many goods they need to produce/trade for?

Anarchist economic planning is done communally via local assemblies with them also communicating their productive capacities (like what they can make and the manpower) and needs they cannot fulfill locally with other communes, creating a regional federated network of sorts. These federations would then coordinate with other federations globally which is where all the transportation networks and production chains requiring continental and planetary integration get handled.

How I imagine this would play out in reality is essentially an order based system, where factories making certain component would make X amount of goods, ship them over to their next step of assembly where they would be further developed or turned into a complex finished product and distributed to the corresponding communities.

And to address some of the comments I see here - the whole idea of “everyone producing as a hobby” or “everyone does work only when they feel like it” is absolute bs and is a surefire way to peoples needs not being met. If you’ve been told that you need to produce something like 100 tools or 100kg of grain as your quota to meet the needs, then it doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not - you gotta produce it, especially if its an essential good like food. Do not be detached from reality voluntarist utopian, read economic books like Marx or Kropotkin and whoever else Anarchists have - ground your claims in coherent doctrine.

At least his critique is clear and coherent.

If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.

Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.

Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.

Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.

Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:

• Lenin, The Tax in Kind

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.

And I’m adamant that it’s a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a “one drop rule”, it’s literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it’s managed or ideological labels put onto them.

You’ve done a really good job misrepresenting my argument, keep it up.

That is another western chauvinist talking point.

Yeah, any critique of 3rd world communist countries is western chauvinism, therefore we should avoid looking at those countries through objective materialist perspective and uncritically support them just because they’re third-worldist - that’s something an imperialist crakkka like me should know.

That any development of industry (the primary task of countries who’ve just freed themselves from colonial rule), is a “betrayal” of socialism, because it didn’t go according to whatever the given critic laid out as sufficiently socialist enough, and that only the western critics of socialist countries have the correct plan.

I’d like you to point out where I said that industrialization is bad. The argument is literally about how the development was achieved and I concluded that it was through (state) capitalism and capitalist mode of production rather than socialism, even saying how it’s good that they managed to build up wealth. I explicitly didn’t moralize this either, this is literally how these countries materially functioned.

My critique also comes strictly from Marxism which is essentially the basis for communism regardless of culture, but sure.

China specifically can’t be called state capitalist in the slightest, considering that the CPC stands above the political system

You’re confusing political power with class relations, the key isn’t who holds political power but what social relations of production are. If a state (CPC controlled or otherwise) oversees an economy where wage labor, capital accumulation, commodity exchange persists, then it’s still state capitalism.

What no theory does to you.

Yeah, if you’re operating within Stalinist ML bubble. Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently “true”, and it can be healthy to read other communist sides/perspectives. Some recommendations would be Marx’s writings, Lenin, Bordiga if you want a lesser known but still respected Leninist who’s critical of ML’s/Stalinism.

No one claims magic here, and it’s true - a transitional DOTP period must happen, but it’s not a license to preserve the capitalist relations indefinitely. The fundamental relations of production that I’ve mentioned must be consciously dismantled over time as a precondition for socialism, that’s what the proletarian dictatorship is literally for. If not, then it’s only a matter of time until the state reverts to bourgeois control disguised as “socialist”.

Nationalizing capital while leaving value production intact leaves capitalism functionally preserved, read Critique of the Gotha Programme by Marx where he makes this explicit - converting private to state property without abolishing wage labor/value mediation and calling it Socialism is literally Lassallean nonsense.

Capitalist production is not magically nullified by the presence of a party member or state shareholding either: workers still sell their labor-power, surplus value is still extracted, production is for market sale or in other words, capitalist mode of production prevails at full force. Legal oversight is a managerial form, not an abolition of class relations.

Meanwhile the success in question: The 3rd world communist countries have managed to more or less industrialize and build up wealth, but under (state) capitalist system with all the bells of whistles which are markets, commodity production, wage labor, etc. In other words, they used capitalism to build up wealth.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually think they had some absolutely amazing policies for the workers like free housing and social benefits, and good on them for building themselves up. However, this has nothing to do with socialism (socialist mode of production in this case) or communism as it was achieved with, and is therefore a win for capitalism - the same system that drove colonialism and the system that had already built up wealth for ‘non-socialist’ feudal/agrarian countries in the 19-20th century.

EDIT: Damn, judging from the amount of upvotes, it genuinely feels like walking into a bar and everyone drawing a gun and pointing at you. This is probably the most antagonistic I’ve been towards ML (or MLM/Dengist/Maoist) ideology and it’s kinda disappointing how there’s no actual non-ML Marxists to be seen here.

Love me some opportunism to appease reactionaries and get them to vote for you. Many such cases!

Though to be fair, the exact same sentiment is here in Lithuania, people hating Ukrainians cause they earn more while doing less or so the narrative goes, and it’s one of those issues that people complain about but don’t actually expect to be solved. Whoever gets into office likely won’t act on their campaign promises to put “poles first”, unless they really want to play into the whole “nationalistic hero batting for the cultural community of the nation” shtick.

I love how the conversation went from “all billionaires are bad eat the rich!!” to “hey this good billionaire is talking smack about a bad billionaire, time to defend them from criticism because they did good thing”