this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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The SPD, to this day, still works towards democratic socialism. It's been in the programme since the start. They have a lot of "belly-aches" along the way and they're often called traitors but, well, if they weren't leftists they could hardly betray the left, could they.
And Marxism-Leninism is state capitalism, not socialism. Maoism doesn't even have public healthcare, Bismark was more of a socialist than that.
"Democratic Socialism" is a bit of a misnomer. It usually means one of two things, achieving Socialism via liberal democracy (impossible, as was proven by Rosa Luxemburg) or creating a Socialism via revolution but recreating liberal democracy, and not Socialist democracy, which is contradictory. In reality, therefore, it remains a Social Democratic ideology that upholds Capitalism but wishes to expand safety nets, and therefore isn't Socialist at all.
As for State Capitalism, that refers to a specific period of time, namely the NEP. The economy of states guided by Marxism historically are guided by public ownership and central planning, which was core to Marx's conception of an eventual Communist society. "State Capitalism" refers to a specific formation where a Socialist State employs a market-focused economy and heavily guides it in a manner to achieve quick development, as Marxists believe public ownership and central planning is incredibly difficult to build "from the ground up" but that Markets readily create the infrastructure for public ownership and central planning through competition.
Err what.
Lenin's economy. Market-focussed. I'm just going to leave that standing there, uncommented.
See I don't even disagree, in principle, with the statement "The SPD does not know how to bring about socialism". Only Anarchists do. Thing is: The SPD's approach is still way more on the money than anything tankies have ever come up with.
With respect to Rosa Luxemburg, I am referring to Reform or Revolution, an excellent work.
For the uncommented bit, I am not sure the point you are making here. The goal of Socialism is not a fully publicly owned and planned economy, those are the means once industry has developed enough to make such a system practical. Russia was extremely underdeveloped when the NEP was employed. I think reading Marx might help you understand a bit more:
In a country where such a process hadn't yet become more developed, the Marxist answer is to create the foundations for public ownership and planning through a highly controlled and temporary market-focused economy, which was done away with.
The bit on the SPD is a bit silly, you claim that they are on the money yet have never created any form of Socialism, while Marxists have. You can be an Anarchist if you think that's best, that's your choice, but I recommend reading Marx if you want to better critique Marxists.
Liberals do not want to critique Marxism, they wish to endlessly dismiss it
Yep, eventually twisting into knots to defend movements that haven't accomplished anything as "truly practical."
Sure bud. Tell yourself that. While the USSR ultimately reached the stateless part, no actual groundwork for socialism was laid so banditry took over once the Bolshevik power structure collapsed. What followed was a free-for-all until the KGB got its shit together and... instituted imperialist nationalist capitalism. That organisation really hasn't changed since the times of the Tsar.
The Bolsheviks did not build resilience against any of that because building a society which is resilient against rule of minority groups seeking to exploit the masses would have undermined their own rule. The whole thing is inherently self-contradicting, Anarchists have been telling that Marx himself long before either of us were born so stop telling us to "read Marx". Rather, you read "On Authority" and identify the strawmen.
"Stateless" doesn't mean "governmentless," though the dissolution of the Socialist system nearly a century after its founding does not mean they never had a Socialist economy. Further, such a system did not "exploit the masses," it achieved massive working class victories such as free healthcare and education, doubled life expectancy, over tripling literacy rates to be higher than the Western world, and democratized the economy.
On Authority doesn't strawman anything.
According to the original socialist "state == hierarchical rule" definition, yes it does. Even Marx, even the Soviets, admitted that and did not confuse "real existing socialism" (sic) with actual communism.
Congratulations, you understand sarcasm.
Irrespective of the veracity of that statement: Not something I said. Not the point.
Maybe you would be able to spot the strawman if you tried less hard to misunderstand my previous post. Something about resilience against something? Necessary preconditions?
You're actually quite far off about Marx and the State, and are presupposing the Anarchist as the "legitimate" and "original." For Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other non-Anarchist Socialists, the state was the tool of class oppression. The goal of Marx and Engels in their analysis was to show that the centralization of Capitalism leads to public ownership and planning, not decentralization. From Engels:
Further along:
Anarchists seek abolition of hierarchy, Marxists seek abolition of classes. You can be an Anarchist, but don't distort Marx to suit your ends.
If there is hierarchy, there are classes.
Curiously, btw, you overlooked this:
No. Classes are social relations to the Means of Production. A manager is not a separate class from the worker, but the business owner is. The Anarchists take issue with hierarchy, not classes, yet a commune in the global context consists of Petite Bourgeoisie, all interested in the success of their commune but not necessarily others. The Marxists take issue with classes, seeking full collective ownership for all of humanity. It's an important distinction that guides philosophy, the Anarchist crituque of Marxism is the preservation of hierarchy while the Marxist critique of Anarchism is the preservation of class distinctions.
I ignored the second part because I didn't think it important to address. I don't care to debate Anarchism with you, just correct your misconceptions with Marxism so if anyone else reads this they won't just go along with what you say.
If there is hierarchy then there are different social relations to the means of production: A worker does not have the same relation to the means of productions as the central committee, and under hierarchy that difference in relation goes beyond the (unavoidable) division of labour (roughly and bluntly, management/organisation vs. pounding metal), but involves difference in power: To counter the worker's organic power over the means of production (being the ones actually operating stuff) the central committee has to furnish means of rule, such as gulags, propaganda, catch 22s, you name it.
The solution to this conundrum is to see that the power of the workers does not have to be countered. That, if the central committee is willing to actually meet the workers at eye level, to listen, this will be reciprocated by the workers valuing the committee’s input, and broader overview of the situation, and also acknowledge necessities imposed by larger factors, based on trust and common interest. Thus the difference in relation to the means of production loses its power dynamic and management vs. pounding metal is no more of a difference than using a machine vs. repairing it. All are workers. Thus, therefore: To abolish class, you have to abolish hierarchy.
And IDGAF about "misconceptions of Marxism", I'm not a history nerd. Marx was wrong a lot, that's the larger issue, the one actually materially relevant.
Not necessarily. Managers are not separate classes from workers, management is a form of labor. Same with econic planning. What you describe as "managers meeting workers at eye level" is what historically has happened in Socialist countries, and is what is advocated by Marxists. You should look into the various democratic structures in AES countries, I can make recommendations for sources if you wish.
Either way, I understand that you don't care to represent Marx or AES accurately, that's why I wanted to correct the clear misconceptions you had. Again, you can be an Anarchist and think Marx wrong while not understanding Marx, that's your right and your ability, I just want to make sure that Marx is being measured by what he actually wrote on his own terms and not as though he were an Anarchist.
Specifically in Russia, yes, that indeed happened. Until the Bolsheviks putsched and took power away from the councils. There was a January revolution and an October counter-revolution.
Originally you wanted to say "Socdems are not socialists", which is how this whole thing started. The point here is that yes, that might be the case, but if you claim that ineffectiveness is something that disqualifies you (because the purpose of a system is what it does) then MLs are even worse off because they're right-out counter-revolutionary. And insofar as modern Marxists don't fall into that category, such as council communists, they're essentially syndicalists. Slightly different theory, same praxis, and definitely "revisionist" in the eyes of MLs.
The strawman in On Authority is Engels completely misrepresenting Anarchist critique of power, in a very comical way: "Oh, you anarchists are complaining that looms force you to pull levers". Ergonomics of levers aside, the critique always was "we don't want you to tell us when to pull the lever and when to take a break". You can make suggestions, you can explain your reasoning, if you do that you have done your job as a manager and things are going to happen like that because they make sense to us, if not, if you demand obedience, then you're a boot in our face and need to fucking go.
Well, since you insist on distorting history, I'll leave you with Soviet Democracy for historical record on the democratic structure of the USSR. The Bolsheviks carried out the revolution and created the first Socialist state. It certainly wasn't Anarchist, but it was Marxist and thus counts as Socialist.
As for MLs being "counter-revolutionary," I don't know how you make the claim that the only Marxists to succeed in revolution are somehow "counter-revolutionary." Seems you have a martyrdom fetish, the second Leftists succeed they cease to be Leftists. Blackshirts and Reds is a good critical account of the USSR.
I have no clue why you think the tiny subsection of western Marxists that make up "council communists," popularized a century ago and promptly abandoned due to having horrible theoretical analysis, are "modern Marxists." Marxism-Leninism is the most common and successful form of Marxism by far and is the guiding ideology of several Socialist states today, like Cuba. Unless you're trying to say that only Westerners can truly understand Marx, and that the millions of Communists in the Global South that have spent their lives building Socialism are simply incapable of grasping Marx, then there's no reason to think council communists are much of anything. Personally, I think we should look to those who actually have succeeded in revolution to see what they have to say.
As for management, management needs authority, to deny that fact is to deny QA workers the ability to exert authority over production if the products are toxic, or to deny the health and safety officials the authority to stop unsafe production, or education officials to maintain standards for engineering education. Relying on every single decision to be democratically held would grind production to a halt in a day and to not do so is to recognize authority as necessary. If you agree that some people should be voted to have this necessary authority, then congrats, you agree with Marxist-Leninists.
I think it's clear enough to anybody else by now that you really have no clue what you're talking about with respect to Marxism, I've made my case so I think we are done here.
It is often said that Anarchists bow, on the matter of boots, to the authority of the bootmaker. But, truth be told: If they make shoddy shoes, no we don't. Good managers don't order people around, they organise. They are servants to the collective project.
Strawman. I don't care how the shoemaker affixes the sole, what matters is that it makes sense in the context of the end-product being a shoe that fits. I may not be able to figure out how to construct a good shoe, but I can judge the result by virtue of having feet. It's the same with management. One problem tankies, particularly of the so common Yankee persuasion, have I think is that corporate culture is so utterly broken in America that they can't even imagine working under good management. Thus you get the slave thinking that the only way out is for themselves to become the master, and then history repeats. The master/slave dialectic is already a diagnosis, building onto it, also as inversion, just further neurosis.
You can deny the power inversion the Bolsheviks caused all you want, how the selection for council positions was done such that an on-paper bottom-up organisation became in practice a top-down one, but it won't change the actual history. The purpose of the system is what it does and what the Bolshevik counter-revolution did was to put people like Stalin and Beria into power, riding on the back of the easily abusable power relations that Lenin created, which I grant at least had ideals. The same power relations which, after the dissolution of the USSR, allowed banditry to fill the power vacuum.