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.
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.