this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society
You'd better go edit the Wikipedia article so people stop thinking communism is stateless.
Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
The "Administration of Things" refers to a fully centralized, publicly owned economy, but without "special bodies of armed men" to enforce class distinctions. Marx's predictions for Communism came from analyzing the trajectory of Capitalism and predicting forward, not engineering an ideal society and working backwards.
Well that's not how politics should work. That's fine for history and making logical predictions. But saying "I believe in pushing for whatever is already likely to happen" is... dumb. Marx is dumb. You should imagine a better future and push for that. Supporting what you already think will win is like buying all the merch for the sports team the experts say is likely to win the sportsbowl.
That's not entirely accurate to what Marx was doing. Marx was studying history and how changes in Modes of Production happen, and advocating for the Working Class to harness that knowledge to create a better future. Kinda like how electricity was some unknown phenomenon until humans studied it and could make it work in our favor, so too can the laws of societal development be studied and harnessed.
I'm not trying to convince you to not be an Anarchist, I'm just trying to make sure you represent Marx accurately. I used to be an Anarchist as well and used to hold similar misconceptions, seeing those misconceptions spread around delayed me actually taking Theory seriously.
Why didn't you just read The Conquest of Bread, Kayanerenko;wa, or Bullshit Jobs? Anarchists can read theory. In fact, anarchists have better theory. Seems like your unwillingness to read is a you problem.
I've read a good bit of The Conquest of Bread, haven't read the others, I may give them a look. I don't think you can make the claim that Anarchists have better theory when you were arguing against the idea that Marx wanted centralization and democratization over decentralization, you haven't seriously engaged with Marx to begin with, though. I think that's only something someone who has meaningfully engaged with both sides can claim.
I personally was an Anarcho-Syndicalist until the Marxist theory and history I read about made more sense to me. I have sympathies for Anarchists, as I was one myself, but personally I agree with Marx more because history has proven his ideas useful and correct.
But it hasn't. People trying to implement Marx keep getting their movements hijacked by capitalists like Stalin and Xi. Marxists can't defend their societies against capitalists.
Anarchists derive our ideas from 60,000 years of history. We have successful movements to draw our ideas from. We follow the example of actually existing communism.
Neither Stalin nor Xi were/are Capitalists, though. There are Anarchist critiques of AES that can be made, but when you start calling Socialists "Capitalist" because you don't agree with the form of Socialism in the USSR or PRC, or believe individuals within the USSR or PRC's leadership to be bad people, you aren't providing accurate analysis. Critique requires accurate analysis, otherwise it just becomes whining. Even the modern CPC considers Stalin to have been "70% good," as well as Mao, Marxism doesn't require blind dogmatic upholding nor demonization of Socialist leaders.
Anarchism doesn't have 60,000 years of history. Systems like the ones Anarchists want have existed for that long, but the desire to intentionally formulate society around such a concept through design and not circumstance is far younger. That doesn't invalidate Anarchism, but recognizing that the intention to orient around Anarchist ideas is a reaction to the increasing excesses of Class Society is an important part of Anarchist theory to begin with.
Moreover, my goal isn't to argue against Anarchism, I'd rather spend my time arguing against fascists and liberals, I just believe you were doing the work of the fascists and liberals by parroting their points about Marxism.
I don't have any critiques against AES. You're the one who wants to argue that ACKSHUALLY, all the socialist societies I mentioned aren't real communism. What's your problem with AES?
My point is that tribal societies had a different Mode of Production from what Socialists advocate for. People generally don't wish to return to tribal societal relations and production, but make current mass manufacturing and technological advancements more democratized and equitable, through public ownership and planning. This isn't a "not real Communism" thing, just an identification that while communal, they aren't what Socialists want to achieve in the modern day.
Do you like Iain M Banks? I love his fiction. Earlier we were talking about how Marx failed to imagine a better society and work back from it. So let's talk about imagination. Banks has a great one. His science fiction series The Culture is about an anarchist society in space, with a technology level far beyond even Star Trek.
I chose my name based on Dune. I think the Fremen are really interesting. In Dune, the Harkonens make the mistake of thinking tribal societies are simple. And then Muad'dib kicks their asses. Dune is about space anarchists struggling. But I actually like The Culture better, because it's about space anarchists succeeding.
You don't seem to want an anarchist society. You can't imagine one with advanced technology and manufacturing. Since your failure is imagination, I think you need fiction. Read Iain Banks. The Player Of Games is a good entry point to the series.
I am plenty good at imagination. I wouldn't say Marx failed to imagine a better world, Communism itself as Marx describes is definitely a better, more just world. The difference with Marx is that Marx focused on analyzing material reality and how we might take advantage of its existing mechanisms and trends to get to a better future for all, rather than try to build a "Utopia" in reality like other Socialists like Robert Owen had tried and failed to achieve.
If you like Anarchist Sci-Fi, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossesed is a classic. A fun, extremely queer (as in gay) webnovel written by a Marxist would be Unjust Depths, about a group of Communists that managed to break away from an undersea empire and establish a small Socialist state that provides for its people, despite lacking the immense wealth of the Empire, and tries to take advantage of political unrest in the Empire to aid in revolution. It isn't a masterpiece but it's certainly very fun.
Then why can't you imagine a society that practices indigenous anarchism with advanced technology? It just kinda seems like you don't think tribespeople can be smart.
I can certainly imagine it, but that doesn't mean it will happen. It just kinda seems like you're a troll trying to paint me as racist for suggesting you look to the indigenous Americans in the Chiapas region practicing Zapatismo, a form of Anarchism.