The point of an anarchist critique of the state is to give up on it as an option, not to point out that it could go wrong and to be careful.
There's a difference between having a state and recreating the bourgeois state (or individual parts of it) wholecloth. Also I'm not gonna defend Bakunin or NJR, I don't care about them.
The way systems are organized affects their behavior so you wouldn't want a socialist version of the CIA with the only change being that it's now called the People's Intelligence Agency or something for example because it would end up doing similar shit just under a different ideological cover. Now this doesn't mean you can't have a functioning system of counter/intelligence you just need to be careful in how it's constructed and for it be effectively different it's gonna have to be radically different.
Now I'm sure that seems obvious but it ties into the anarchist critiques of the 'state' as such. Though I'm probably not the best person to defend this since I'm not an anarchist but I have sympathy for the critique. As far as I understand it, the modern idea is to create organizational structures whose functions emerge from the bottom up rather than having a set bureaucracy or formal structure, i.e. a state, dictating what is to be done. It also somewhat hinges on exactly how you define 'the state' but to keep it short, this is obviously easier said than done. There are various proposals to replace what are currently organs of the state with more or less horizontally organized power structures but I'm not interested in the specifics for the point I'm making, you can find them if you're intrigued. Though I will say, the bourgeoisie destroying their own institutions certainly makes this approach easier.
You might be saying that this is just a semantic argument and that still constitutes what is essentially a state but even so, it would be a radically different one. It would have it's own problems to be sure but they'd be very different problems.
Now there are anarchists out there who think even this is too much of a state but frankly if they want no organizational structure at all they're just primitivists and not really worth engaging with. I don't think any serious anarchist believes their revolution wouldn't have at least some level of violence though, not sure where you're getting that idea.
how the fuck else is anyone who currently has property going to give any of it up without a state enforcing it?
I can think of one off the top of my head, make it in their material interest to give it up. You could accomplish this in a variety of ways of course, some more violent/direct than others but the suburbs are particularly weak, they can't sustain themselves without constant supplies from elsewhere for more than a couple days.
As it happens, I think both the anarchist and traditional ML(M) methods of organizing power/production (trying not to say state) are flawed/insufficient. However, that's a whole other topic but if I can clarify anything else I'm happy to.
I don't disagree at all with this, but if this what anarchists think, then yeah, it's just fucking semantics.
Like if you don't want to call a group of guys with guns arresting a guy for charging rent after we've abolished it a "state," go for it.
I mean it definitely is. It's a Proletarian state, but it's still a state.
But if that's what they want, and they get mad if we call that a state, then we can call it something else. I don't care. Not attached to the name.
But what you've described here is essentially the outline of ML ideology. So if that's accurate, what the fuck do we even disagree about except for the name?
if this what anarchists think, then yeah, it’s just fucking semantics.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, the semantic issue is whether having an organizational body that performs traditional state functions qualifies as a state even if the way it carries them out is so drastically different that it'd be more accurate to call it something else, not just that you're avoiding calling it a state because you don't like the word though there is an element of that. Though maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Like if you don’t want to call a group of guys with guns arresting a guy for charging rent after we’ve abolished it a “state,” go for it.
This is a good example actually. A lot of the anarchist (and some newer ML) proposals I know of require universal conscription, which would definitely effect how that scenario plays out and provides a check on the body of armed men that wouldn't be there otherwise. Presumably rent would be abolished anyway but you can sub anything else for it and the example holds. Universal conscription would be considered a self-negating hierarchy because even though you're forcing people to go through whatever military training, the act of going through it provides you with the ability to defend yourself from others imposing things on you, in a similar way to how a teacher-student relationship is considered a justified hierarchy because the goal of it is to make both equals to each other by the end, negating the need for the hierarchy.
But if that’s what they want, and they get mad if we call that a state, then we can call it something else. I don’t care. Not attached to the name.
Definitely some of it is semantics. However, if you call it a state then it makes the transition of the state oppressing certain classes for the people to the state oppressing certain classes for itself a lot easier of an ideological pill to swallow and many probably wouldn't even notice the shift. It sounds petty, I know, but how you justify things does matter especially when it's an entire state apparatus doing it.
But what you’ve described here is essentially the outline of ML ideology
Except it's not, especially when put into practice. That's where recreating bourgeois institutions comes into play, because the USSR did a lot of that after some brief failed experiments. Structurally the various police and intelligence wings of the USSR lined up pretty damn close to the Czarist police and intelligence services. You can make whatever justifications for it that you want but it absolutely affected how those organizations behaved towards the people they were nominally supposed to be defending. Now that was the first attempt so giving it some slack for not knowing better is fair, but basically all of the various really existing socialist states have made the same error so at the very least there's an implementation problem.
So if that’s accurate, what the fuck do we even disagree about except for the name?
That is the problem though, it's at least so far not been accurate to really existing socialist states. Putting a new coat of paint on a bourgeois state and expecting it to abolish capitalism, even just within itself, has historically not worked (the USSR is the best case for this but I'm not gonna get into a debate about how capitalist or not the USSR was I just want to point out that successive states have gotten worse at this, not better). So there's a fundamental problem somewhere in the various ML programs that leads to more or less the same outcome regardless of the intent of the revolutionaries who carry it out. Don't think I'm treating actually existing socialist states unfairly though, they've gotten the closest out of anyone but they haven't succeeded yet. So I think it's more useful to be critical about the ideology/praxis rather than hoping it'll all work out the next time, if there even is a next time.
That's just not true though. Like whatever you think of the USSR, it was a country where you could fuck off from work for three hours to go pick up your kids and no one would ask where you went. It had free healthcare, guaranteed housing and education, no homelessness or unemployment. I'm not about to sing the praises of a police state, but they were at fucking war for 69 years. We have a police state now and that's not even true for us.
It may not be what anyone idealized, far from it, but it's fucking crazy to think it recreated Bourgeois institutions. No one was hoarding wealth while others were homeless.
Ditto to no one succeeding afterwards. What the fuck is Cuba? Or Vietnam? Think about the conditions they emerged from, survive in.
Why bother doing the Cold War if that's true? Why kill Allende? Why terrorize Venezuela? Why kick Evo Morales out of power?
I'm sorry but that's just fucking bullshit dude. A lot of people succeeded without recreating the same institutions.
The rest, yes, is semantics.
Like we could sit argue the minutiae of this and that all day long. About if this or that institution is accountable to the people and delivers the material necessities or not, or whatever.
But at the end of the day, there is no way forward without essentially a gigantically centrally organized apparatus telling people what to do even though they'd rather not. What else is the idea of universal conscription except exactly that?
Especially because most people are gonna be right wing before and after any theoretical left takeover. All the middle and upper classes are not going to acquiese. Shit, plenty of proles won't either.
You can't horizontally organize with people who don't agree with you, and that's most people by definition. They're going to try to bring capitalism back. This never hasn't happened.
So those people are gonna have to be forced by dudes with guns.
That's a state, to me, whether it's organized sweety pie or draconian.
Again, call it something different if you want. But what's the task ahead of us requires.
And it ain't what Bakunin or NJR are talking about. I'll let the rest of the anarchists speak for themselves.
By succeed I mean that capitalism is abolished and that socialism/communism is implemented wherever there are humans. Both are necessary and as of yet neither have occurred.
A lot of people succeeded without recreating the same institutions.
Except they did, just because they didn't recreate all of them does not mean that the ones they did recreate somehow don't/didn't exist. And as time has gone by, they've become more like bourgeois states not less.
Why bother doing the Cold War if that’s true? Why kill Allende? Why terrorize Venezuela? Why kick Evo Morales out of power?
Capitalist states compete to be hegemonic, as capitalism has developed what counts as hegemonic has grown with each successive hegemon. To the point that now it requires a state's hegemony to be global, so any competition on Earth to the hegemon's hegemony will be stopped (or attempted anyway) by that hegemon regardless of whether the competition comes from other would be aspiring capialist states or non-capitalist ones. That the US decided to do a bunch of coup's/war's in countries that didn't want to listen to it does not determine whether or not those countries were anti-capialist and not just anti-US capitalist, let alone socialist. It just means that those rebelling could not be submitted by more subtle forms of control, i.e. market discipline etc.
But at the end of the day, there is no way forward without essentially a gigantically centrally organized apparatus telling people what to do even though they’d rather not.
Lack of imagination is not an effective argument. The key word is 'centrally', that is where anarchists disagree with you and honestly so do many flavors of Marxists. You can call it semantics as much as you want, I can't convince you that the way systems are organized affects the behavior of those engaged in the system if you don't believe it, it's basically a truism. The other issues you raised mostly stem from the material conditions of the countries where they were implemented. States that are more materially well off tend to be less coercive because they can afford not to be (the USSR is a good example of this phenomenon in a single country). Should a revolution actually happen in the first world (especially the US) the revolutionaries would be able to implement less violent means of coercion because the material conditions afford such luxuries as long as they did not choose a model of organization that encourages excessive use of force--hence the universal conscription and such.
What else is the idea of universal conscription except exactly that?
A self-destructive hierarchy. Read some anarchist theory if I'm not explaining it well enough for you.
And it ain’t what Bakunin or NJR are talking about.
Well yeah but like I said, I don't care about them. I was trying to clear some misconceptions you had about anarchism. I'm not trying to convince you to be an anarchist, just that they might have some ideas that are useful for aspiring revolutionaries.
I’ll let the rest of the anarchists speak for themselves.
There's a difference between having a state and recreating the bourgeois state (or individual parts of it) wholecloth. Also I'm not gonna defend Bakunin or NJR, I don't care about them.
The way systems are organized affects their behavior so you wouldn't want a socialist version of the CIA with the only change being that it's now called the People's Intelligence Agency or something for example because it would end up doing similar shit just under a different ideological cover. Now this doesn't mean you can't have a functioning system of counter/intelligence you just need to be careful in how it's constructed and for it be effectively different it's gonna have to be radically different.
Now I'm sure that seems obvious but it ties into the anarchist critiques of the 'state' as such. Though I'm probably not the best person to defend this since I'm not an anarchist but I have sympathy for the critique. As far as I understand it, the modern idea is to create organizational structures whose functions emerge from the bottom up rather than having a set bureaucracy or formal structure, i.e. a state, dictating what is to be done. It also somewhat hinges on exactly how you define 'the state' but to keep it short, this is obviously easier said than done. There are various proposals to replace what are currently organs of the state with more or less horizontally organized power structures but I'm not interested in the specifics for the point I'm making, you can find them if you're intrigued. Though I will say, the bourgeoisie destroying their own institutions certainly makes this approach easier.
You might be saying that this is just a semantic argument and that still constitutes what is essentially a state but even so, it would be a radically different one. It would have it's own problems to be sure but they'd be very different problems.
Now there are anarchists out there who think even this is too much of a state but frankly if they want no organizational structure at all they're just primitivists and not really worth engaging with. I don't think any serious anarchist believes their revolution wouldn't have at least some level of violence though, not sure where you're getting that idea.
I can think of one off the top of my head, make it in their material interest to give it up. You could accomplish this in a variety of ways of course, some more violent/direct than others but the suburbs are particularly weak, they can't sustain themselves without constant supplies from elsewhere for more than a couple days.
As it happens, I think both the anarchist and traditional ML(M) methods of organizing power/production (trying not to say state) are flawed/insufficient. However, that's a whole other topic but if I can clarify anything else I'm happy to.
I don't disagree at all with this, but if this what anarchists think, then yeah, it's just fucking semantics.
Like if you don't want to call a group of guys with guns arresting a guy for charging rent after we've abolished it a "state," go for it.
I mean it definitely is. It's a Proletarian state, but it's still a state.
But if that's what they want, and they get mad if we call that a state, then we can call it something else. I don't care. Not attached to the name.
But what you've described here is essentially the outline of ML ideology. So if that's accurate, what the fuck do we even disagree about except for the name?
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, the semantic issue is whether having an organizational body that performs traditional state functions qualifies as a state even if the way it carries them out is so drastically different that it'd be more accurate to call it something else, not just that you're avoiding calling it a state because you don't like the word though there is an element of that. Though maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
This is a good example actually. A lot of the anarchist (and some newer ML) proposals I know of require universal conscription, which would definitely effect how that scenario plays out and provides a check on the body of armed men that wouldn't be there otherwise. Presumably rent would be abolished anyway but you can sub anything else for it and the example holds. Universal conscription would be considered a self-negating hierarchy because even though you're forcing people to go through whatever military training, the act of going through it provides you with the ability to defend yourself from others imposing things on you, in a similar way to how a teacher-student relationship is considered a justified hierarchy because the goal of it is to make both equals to each other by the end, negating the need for the hierarchy.
Definitely some of it is semantics. However, if you call it a state then it makes the transition of the state oppressing certain classes for the people to the state oppressing certain classes for itself a lot easier of an ideological pill to swallow and many probably wouldn't even notice the shift. It sounds petty, I know, but how you justify things does matter especially when it's an entire state apparatus doing it.
Except it's not, especially when put into practice. That's where recreating bourgeois institutions comes into play, because the USSR did a lot of that after some brief failed experiments. Structurally the various police and intelligence wings of the USSR lined up pretty damn close to the Czarist police and intelligence services. You can make whatever justifications for it that you want but it absolutely affected how those organizations behaved towards the people they were nominally supposed to be defending. Now that was the first attempt so giving it some slack for not knowing better is fair, but basically all of the various really existing socialist states have made the same error so at the very least there's an implementation problem.
That is the problem though, it's at least so far not been accurate to really existing socialist states. Putting a new coat of paint on a bourgeois state and expecting it to abolish capitalism, even just within itself, has historically not worked (the USSR is the best case for this but I'm not gonna get into a debate about how capitalist or not the USSR was I just want to point out that successive states have gotten worse at this, not better). So there's a fundamental problem somewhere in the various ML programs that leads to more or less the same outcome regardless of the intent of the revolutionaries who carry it out. Don't think I'm treating actually existing socialist states unfairly though, they've gotten the closest out of anyone but they haven't succeeded yet. So I think it's more useful to be critical about the ideology/praxis rather than hoping it'll all work out the next time, if there even is a next time.
That's just not true though. Like whatever you think of the USSR, it was a country where you could fuck off from work for three hours to go pick up your kids and no one would ask where you went. It had free healthcare, guaranteed housing and education, no homelessness or unemployment. I'm not about to sing the praises of a police state, but they were at fucking war for 69 years. We have a police state now and that's not even true for us.
It may not be what anyone idealized, far from it, but it's fucking crazy to think it recreated Bourgeois institutions. No one was hoarding wealth while others were homeless.
Ditto to no one succeeding afterwards. What the fuck is Cuba? Or Vietnam? Think about the conditions they emerged from, survive in.
Why bother doing the Cold War if that's true? Why kill Allende? Why terrorize Venezuela? Why kick Evo Morales out of power?
I'm sorry but that's just fucking bullshit dude. A lot of people succeeded without recreating the same institutions.
The rest, yes, is semantics.
Like we could sit argue the minutiae of this and that all day long. About if this or that institution is accountable to the people and delivers the material necessities or not, or whatever.
But at the end of the day, there is no way forward without essentially a gigantically centrally organized apparatus telling people what to do even though they'd rather not. What else is the idea of universal conscription except exactly that?
Especially because most people are gonna be right wing before and after any theoretical left takeover. All the middle and upper classes are not going to acquiese. Shit, plenty of proles won't either.
You can't horizontally organize with people who don't agree with you, and that's most people by definition. They're going to try to bring capitalism back. This never hasn't happened.
So those people are gonna have to be forced by dudes with guns.
That's a state, to me, whether it's organized sweety pie or draconian.
Again, call it something different if you want. But what's the task ahead of us requires.
And it ain't what Bakunin or NJR are talking about. I'll let the rest of the anarchists speak for themselves.
By succeed I mean that capitalism is abolished and that socialism/communism is implemented wherever there are humans. Both are necessary and as of yet neither have occurred.
Except they did, just because they didn't recreate all of them does not mean that the ones they did recreate somehow don't/didn't exist. And as time has gone by, they've become more like bourgeois states not less.
Capitalist states compete to be hegemonic, as capitalism has developed what counts as hegemonic has grown with each successive hegemon. To the point that now it requires a state's hegemony to be global, so any competition on Earth to the hegemon's hegemony will be stopped (or attempted anyway) by that hegemon regardless of whether the competition comes from other would be aspiring capialist states or non-capitalist ones. That the US decided to do a bunch of coup's/war's in countries that didn't want to listen to it does not determine whether or not those countries were anti-capialist and not just anti-US capitalist, let alone socialist. It just means that those rebelling could not be submitted by more subtle forms of control, i.e. market discipline etc.
Lack of imagination is not an effective argument. The key word is 'centrally', that is where anarchists disagree with you and honestly so do many flavors of Marxists. You can call it semantics as much as you want, I can't convince you that the way systems are organized affects the behavior of those engaged in the system if you don't believe it, it's basically a truism. The other issues you raised mostly stem from the material conditions of the countries where they were implemented. States that are more materially well off tend to be less coercive because they can afford not to be (the USSR is a good example of this phenomenon in a single country). Should a revolution actually happen in the first world (especially the US) the revolutionaries would be able to implement less violent means of coercion because the material conditions afford such luxuries as long as they did not choose a model of organization that encourages excessive use of force--hence the universal conscription and such.
A self-destructive hierarchy. Read some anarchist theory if I'm not explaining it well enough for you.
Well yeah but like I said, I don't care about them. I was trying to clear some misconceptions you had about anarchism. I'm not trying to convince you to be an anarchist, just that they might have some ideas that are useful for aspiring revolutionaries.
Fair enough.