Memes

You can't collectivize all of production and distribution if you keep smashing the state, you'll just create a bunch of communalist cells at best, at worst you'll recreate capitalist relations and a new state. The state must wither, and it does so by erasing the basis of the state, ie by erasing class. You can't erase class without collectivizing all of production and distribution.

Anarchism is primarily about communalization of production. Marxism is primarily about collectivization of production.

When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.

For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.

For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.

Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.

Trotskyist permanent revolution bullshit.

Guardrails are only enforceable by the state. Without the state to smash capitalism and enforce guardrails against corruption and the power of greed, capitalism and authoritarianism will always step in to fill the power vacuum.

This is why communism has always failed within a few months to a few years of initiation: lack of guardrails and laws that are effectively enforced against capitalism or authoritarianism. It’s why every “communist” state in history devolved into an authoritarian, anti-communist political structure very, very quickly. Hell, even in Russia communism was effectively dead by 1918.

We are so close to having the technology to implement direct participatory democracy (A.K.A., political communism), where things like presidents and premiers and politicians in general just don’t exist, and only minor functionaries and coordinatinative councils remain to carry out the people’s directives.

What is still needed, however, is a highly educated and literate population that values education, facts, and meritocracy - thereby suffocating conservatism and strangling it to death - and for that population to have an exceedingly tiny level of economic inequality, such that the wealth is returned properly into the hands of the Working Class that created it, and most people can then acquire the mental headspace to focus on more than just daily survival needs (as in, focus on community-level or even nation-level subjects).

A strong state is not necessarily a dangerous one. What makes ours dangerous is that power is concentrated at the top, with those who have money (capitalists) calling the shots. A distributed, citizen-directed state that is utterly immune from money and power hierarchies can be built that will only ever feel oppressive to those who are inherently abusive, greedy, and malicious.