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Cake day: September 29th, 2024

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  • That is the main divergence between anarchists and communists. There is a good quote that captures the problem quite well (translated from German):

    You say that the state is a tool that can be wrested from the capitalists, but if, just suppose, you want to be a small-time artist, what good does it do you to wrest the anvil from the blacksmith? You can’t juggle with anvils. The only thing you can do with an anvil is be a blacksmith. Remember: it’s not just the worker who sharpens the tool, the tool also sharpens the worker. The state may be a tool, but it’s not a Swiss Army knife, not a Leatherman, not a universal tool. And anyone who knows the stories—I deliberately use the plural here—will, given the problems of revolutionary states with the state, be unable to resist the suspicion that by attempting to take over power, one has already engaged so deeply with the logic of hierarchy that, if successful, one will almost inevitably imitate it rather than deconstruct it.

    One idea of George Orwell about socialist revolutions he expressed when discussing animal farm:

    I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job

    As soon as the revolutionaries have gotten rid of the capitalists they are a obstacle in the way of control by the workers as they have their own ideas on shaping a socialist society that they will try to push on the people.



  • The idea is that the only reason why a state needs to exist is to enforce the classes, for example in feudalism the state is required to keep the nobility above the bourgeois. So if there are no separate classes a state won’t form as there is no reason too. Under communism no classes would form as the society is based on the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, meaning no one can be above or below anyone else as long as the society stays true to this principle.

    Their are however a lot communists, at least in the 19/20 century that believe communism to be the original form of society (See Friedrich Engels footnotes in the communist manifesto), which would mean states have already formed under communism in the past. This isn’t that discussed as most communists are mainly in a never ending discussion how to achieve communism the “right way”. The main argument to my knowledge is that the means of production created under capitalism makes a communist society rich enough that it prevents people abstaining from the above principle.


  • RmDebArc_5@feddit.orgtoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldRepublican Logic
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    22 days ago

    Well, “communist state” usually just means a state that claims to want to achieve communism. Engels and Lenin considered states like the USSR state capitalist (Source), referring to them as socialist/communist mainly comes from Stalin. Marxists like Lenin are of the opinion that after a communist revolution the means of production are to be given into the hands of the workers. As soon as this is complete, which in China/USSR never happened, the state stops existing as a state and starts dying as it has nothing to do anymore (see “The State and Revolution” by Lenin). Once the state has fully died of the society is communist and (by definition) hierarchy less