(Sorry for any possible English mistake, I thought about this and wanted to read someone’s idea on or against it but I can’t find if there is a movement like it and what it would be called)

Like, we probably all agree that we are against capitalism but in order to achieve socialism (or directly communism) you must first develop the proletarian class as it is what is going to start the revolution.

So is there something like anarcho-communism, where they are opposed to having a socialist state as a way to develop communism, but that still believes in the importance of a socialist state in a utilitarian way to develop it’s own group of revolutionaries ?

An idea according to which a socialist state will never achieve communism (for whatever reason, like the small difference between classes under socialism before it turns into communism that might become reactionaries and roll back change even under a dictatorship of the proletariat or something else) but there is going to be one more revolution starting from the (relative) bottom in the socialist state.

Because from my basic understanding of ML for example, the transition between socialism and communism is supposed to be smooth. But maybe I’m wrong ? Feel free to correct me on anything.

  • miz@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    10 months ago

    (this might ruffle some feathers but it directly addresses your question and gives background on anarcho-communism. yes it is sectarian but it is critical, not name-calling.)

    aimixin on statelessness and the true distinction between anarchists and Marxists:

    Anarchism is almost polar opposite to Marxism. The fact we agree on statelessness is a nonsensical talking point, for two reasons.

    First, it ignores that Marxists and anarchists define the state entirely differently, meaning that anarchists want to implement things we would consider a state but then say it’s not a state. This makes the whole “statelessness” distinction largely useless. Anarchists will implement states anyways but then claim it isn’t one.

    Second, it ignores the actual, real distinction between Marxists and anarchists, which is centralization and decentralization, originating from differing views on historical materialism and idealism.

    Anarchists want to break up society into decentralized units, they see the centralization tendency of capitalist society as a bad thing and want to smash it and build an entirely new and different society out of a void, while Marxists see the development of capitalist society as in fact laying the foundations for socialism which it will be built on top of, i.e. it will be centralized.

    Bukharin explained this brilliantly a century ago.

    Communist society is, as such, a STATELESS society. If this is the case - and there is no doubt that it is - then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and marxist communists consist of? Does the distinction, as such, vanish at least when it comes to examining the problem of the society to come and the “ultimate goal”?
    No, the distinction does exist; but it is to be found elsewhere; and can be defined as a distinction between production centralised under large trusts and small, decentralised production.

    …Our ideal solution to this is centralised production, methodically organised in large units and, in the final analysis, the organisation of the world economy as a whole. Anarchists, on the other hand, prefer a completely different type of relations of production; their ideal consists of tiny communes which by their very structure are disqualified from managing any large enterprises, but reach “agreements” with one another and link up through a network of free contracts. From an economic point of view, that sort of system of production is clearly closer to the medieval communes, rather than the mode of production destined to supplant the capitalist system. But this system is not merely a retrograde step: it is also utterly utopian. The society of the future will not be conjured out of a void, nor will it be brought by a heavenly angel. It will arise out of the old society, out of the relations created by the gigantic apparatus of finance capital.

    —Bukharin, Anarchy and Scientific Communism

    It is very important to understand that anarchists aren’t simply Marxists who want to get to statelessness faster. They are in many ways the polar opposite of Marxists, the gulf that separates Marxists from anarchists is just as large as pretty much any other ideology.

    Anarchists reject historical materialism and view history through an idealist lens, believing that all new societies are “conjured out of a void” as Bukharin put it, and thus they believe this new society can be anything they want it to be, if they can imagine it then it can be implemented.

    Marxists on the other hand, with a historical materialist analysis, see new systems as inherently being built upon new conditions brought into existence by the old system, i.e. socialism cannot be anything we want it to be but must be built upon foundations created by capitalism itself.

    Hence, Marxists see the centralization tendency of capitalism as the basis for what socialism will be built upon, while anarchists not only do not hold this view, but they view the conditions capitalism is bringing forth as a bad thing that must be entirely destroyed.

    A wide gulf separates socialism from anarchism, and it is in vain that the agents-provocateurs of the secret police and the news paper lackeys of reactionary governments pretend that this gulf does not exist. The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism. Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small, producer.

    —Lenin, Socialism and Anarchism

    Anarcho-communism has its basis in peasant communism. Peasants were not able to— without the leadership of the proletariat— be a revolutionary class due to their extreme isolation from one another, but they were exploited by landlords, so they still shared a collective interest.

    When the proletariat did begin to unite them, many pushed for this collective interest to be realized, i.e. to get rid of the landlords, which would transform society into a society of decentralized collective farms, where everyone is still isolated, but they own their own means of production directly.

    Anarcho-communist ideas came out of feudal society from the peasantry. Peter Kropotkin grew up observing feudal Russia and his ideas are very agricultural-centered. Peasant communism is a reactionary ideology that has no historical basis and only managed to have some small-scale implementation by attaching themselves to proletarian revolutions.

    I really despise this insistence that Marxists are just anarchists who disagree on the state. Marxism and anarchism are almost polar opposites to one another. The gulf between Marxists and anarchists is just as wide as between Marxists and right-wing libertarians.

    Maybe at times they could be strategic allies, in the same sense Marxists can sometimes work with right-libertarians on anti-war issues, but they are in no way similar to us and it is dangerous to pretend they are.

    • miz@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      10 months ago

      as a follow-up, here’s aimixin on transition in modes of production, it’s not exactly what you asked about transition but it’s relevant:

      Marxists do not claim people should just work for society because of some selfless feelings, Marx was personally annoyed with people who constantly said this and commented on it himself:

      Communists do not oppose egoism…The Communists do not preach morality at all. They do not put to people the moral demand: love one another, do not be egoists, etc…the Communists by no means want to do away with the “private individual” for the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a statement of the imagination.

      —Marx, The German Ideology

      The reason Marx saw a post-capitalist society as having socialized production, where people work for society, is because they have to. But, I know what you’re thinking, “that’s authoritarian!” But you’d be misunderstanding, he did not believe people would work socially because the government would tell them to at gunpoint or that owning a private business would be against the law.

      No, he thought they would work socially because any other sort of economic arrangement would simply not be possible. Even if you changed the laws to allow for starting a private business, you still could not start one, because it would just not be something feasible people could do.

      Why? Because Marx observed that in all capitalist societies, private enterprises always grow in scale, and the proportion of small businesses to big is continually shrinking. The more this goes on, the smaller the proportion of businesses owners to workers in a society becomes, the more and more small businesses go bankrupt and people the business owners then become regular workers.

      Why does this happen? Because the government outlawed private businesses? No, because as businesses grow in size, the smaller businesses that can’t keep up eventually just can’t compete and are less efficient and go bankrupt.

      Not only this, but as businesses get bigger, the barrier of entry constantly rises. Can you start a small business in your basement to compete with Samsung? Of course not, you need hundreds of billions of dollars in capital to even begin to compete!

      Again, it’s not the government making it illegal to own a business. It’s the physical conditions of everyday life making it simply impossible to own one no matter what the laws say.

      It is a misunderstanding of Marxism to think that what Marx had in mind was just to make all private businesses illegal. Rather, the vision he had was to nationalize the “big industry” which has already grown so large that there is hardly much competition anymore anyways, and then to use it to try and speed up economic development, because this will make more of the small business sector grow into big businesses, and then eventually they too can be nationalized.

      Hence, Marx argued for a gradual, “by degree” nationalization process, alongside encouraging rapid economic development, “the development of the productive forces.” Not just making all private enterprise illegal.

      People would work for this big industry because there would simply be no other industry to work for and it would not be physically possible for them to start a small business even if the laws allowed them to.