No.1813002[View All]
Dear Statists:
How, why, and under what conditions do you think the State would "wither away"?
What exactly does this process entail, I mean what are the details of it exectly? Which institutions do you image are you going to just disappear spontaniously? And how do you ensure they'll stay withered away for good?
And what if the politicians at the frontline of your Vanguard Party decide they would actually, quite like to keep power now even though the pre-requisite conditions for such a "withering away" has been met?
In other words, what if the Party leader falls to corruption due to their powerful position? Then what are you going to do about it? What if he and his loyal followers and his furture successors tell you, eternally, that the conditions for withering away, or in fact any reduction in the State haven't been met?
The concept of the great "withering away" has always struck me as the least well explained part of Communist thought. For otherwise very materialist and smart individuals, it seems like the last hold out of unexplained magical thinking. "It will just happen okay, don't ask for any proof, or examples, or theory explaining it!"
If you can't explain how it will occur then surely it's time Auth-Leftists just admitted they never wanted a classless society from the get-go? And if you can explain it, why do you think it is so rarely, or so poorly explained?
111 posts and 22 image replies omitted. Click reply to view. No.1815988
>>1813232 >le minority vs majority These reductionist terms do not help anyone, Anon. Tools of coercion are derived from individual actors, performing to hierarchies determined by individuals. The state is simply the mechanism to which individuals conjoin to draw the curtain to hide their individual powerlessness. It is not the state that grows the food, but the farmer, and they who shall not work for the farmer, or by proxy in some contract, shall not be entitled the fruits of their labor, there is no need for a "state", or a third party, it is a mutual arrangement.
No.1815992
>>1815983I guess I know much more about anarchism than an internet stalinist, crazy, I know
Societies like ancient Athens, where a citizen majority were able to keep a foreign minority in legal bondage at the status of human property is why many anarchists do not blindly support "democracy"
There's a reason anarchists promote societies of consent rather than societies of coercion, a coercive society will never have a hard time creating slaves or committing genocide
No.1815997
>>1815992>what if [ridiculous thing] happened in democracy?is nothing more than an elitist liberal prejudice to justify the belief that people can't rule themselves.
No.1815998
>>1815997The only people I see on this site regularly justifying why people cannot rule themselves are self-described MLs
It's interesting that you think "majority rule" is synonymous with "self-rule", I wonder if any slave, who are always a minority population for your info, agree with that
Do you think the slaves of Athens thought the rule of the majority was the way to go?
Or perhaps there should also be a necessity for consent such that the majority can't do something like, say, conquer another group of people and compel the smaller population to do all the physically demanding tasks so they can enjoy lives of relative leisure, which has happened multiple times throughout history?
Or are you going to continue to pretend that democratic Athens, a place more democratic than modern liberal states, did not exist?
Is nuance something sloshering around that smooth brain of yours, or are the two alternatives tyranny of the majority or tyranny of a minority?
Does the notion of having a society not based on domination trouble your smooth western brain?
No.1816072
>>1815998>It's interesting that you think "majority rule" is synonymous with "self-rule", I wonder if any slave, who are always a minority population for your info, agree with thatYeah democracy is self-rule, it means people (citizens) going to the agora and ruling themselves. Slaves weren't part of the people, they were property.
>Or perhaps there should also be a necessity for consent such that the majority can't do something like, say, conquer another group of people and compel the smaller population to do all the physically demanding tasks so they can enjoy lives of relative leisure, which has happened multiple times throughout history?If a "society of consent" consents to genocide, how is this any different than genocide by coercive society? Republicanism is all about consent and you see where it leads to.
No.1816076
>>1816072>Yeah democracy is self-rule, it means people (citizens) going to the agora and ruling themselves. Slaves weren't part of the people, they were property.Imagine the kind of retarded idealist nonsense you're forced to spew to justify democracy as an unassailable approach
<Uhhh it was actually great dummy, except for the people that didn't count as people because the majority decided they didn't Genuinely why do the nitwits that gather here like flies on shit call themselves communists? You fuckers will now shill class society if the majority decides to impose one? Fuck what a den of morons.
Do MLs collectively get stupider when they debate anarchists?
>If a "society of consent" consents to genocide, how is this any different than genocide by coercive society? <Why would you say a society that requires consent wouldn't lead to genocide and slavery? What if people decide they want to be massacred or enslaved?This is the sort of shit tanks come up with when they're arguing with anarchists
This absolute fucking nonsense
No.1816394
>>1815978Ancient athens wasn't majority rule, it was minority rule by slave owning men with birthright citizenship.
>Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there might well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica.[4] Citizen families could have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 would have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian War.[25] This slump was permanent, due to the introduction of a stricter definition of citizen described below. From a modern perspective these figures may seem small, but among Greek city-states Athens was huge: most of the thousand or so Greek cities could only muster 1,000–1,500 adult male citizens each; and Corinth, a major power, had at most 15,000.[26]
>The non-citizen component of the population was made up of resident foreigners (metics) and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous. Around 338 BC the orator Hyperides (fragment 13) claimed that there were 150,000 slaves in Attica, but this figure is probably no more than an impression: slaves outnumbered those of citizen stock but did not swamp them.[27] No.1816461
Marx was wrong, the state won't wither away and that's a good thing.
No.1816465
There would have to be a massive increase in the forces of production and a change in the mode of production.
No.1816470
>>1815979>They lost because the enemy was always 100 times more powerfulthis sounds like a complete ass-pull. let's take the Spanish Civil War as an example, for which we only need to go to Wikipedia to find that the Republicans and the Nationalists were quite evenly matched by 1938. the CNT-FAI by 1937 was about 1.5 million strong, which compared to the Spanish population of 25 million in 1937 is certainly nothing to sneeze at, especially compared to the POUM. but also if your strength is but 1% of the enemy then don't go picking fights
>Yes, you need a organization of equal or greater material powerthat is a necessary but not sufficient condition. you need to be able to counter threats at all scales. if the enemy is well-organized while your defense consists of disorganized cells, then even a material superiority matters very little. the best you can hope for is guerilla tactics once you've already been conquered (and such tactics cannot last forever)
I had a discussion similar to this with a local anarchist who proposed that an anarchist revolution could defend itself from well-organized threats by spontaneously forming the necessary structure and dissolve it later. next time I meet him I plan on asking what he thinks of Stalin who put that theory to the test by purging the Red Army of much of its officer corps prior to invading Finland, with disastrous results
No.1816629
>>1816470>cites Spanish population circa 1938Except we both know that the Spanish Civil War was not fought naked and barehanded, and that
>>1815979 is not referencing the sheer army size disparities, but the difference in weapons and tech. The Nationalists outweighed the CNT-FAI in support from the Axis and Stalin.
The nature of disorganized cells was designed for fighting occupying forces in small skirmishes, dwindling their numbers, and I agree against an overwhelming well-organized force, resistance grumbles. However, an organization of cells into a larger regime can still be established on anarchist principles, and there have been countless examples in modern history, from East Asia, Middle East, beyond, of guerilla tactics being successful against an overwhelming force. These instances were largely local cells, and while albeit almost entirely hierarchical, an anarchist cell could function just as properly.
No.1816693
>>1814425The party is not the same as the proletariat. Claiming to act in the proletariat's interests doesn't automatically make it true. Look at literally the rest of the fuckign sentence you quoted:
<capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie.It's right there black and white that the vanguard is a specific subset of the people who will lead the whole of them.
No.1816696
>>1816470>which we only need to go to Wikipedia to find that the Republicans and the Nationalists Why are you lying though?
The nationalists vastly outpowered the Republicans, thry had strong international aid, an (iirc donated) air force.
No.1816707
>>1816461This is what Stalin unironically believed according to Molotov btw
No.1816711
>>1816698no contradiction!
No.1816718
>>1816461So many shit thrown both sides, but no one seems to bring exact quote about what Marx considered as "state" in his work logic - "the organ of class domination, of the oppression of one class by another".
Thats incomplete definition in the breadth of how we perceive state, because its not useful in terms of actual economics, institutions and society without political economy context.
No.1816721
>>1816707Why must you lie? Stalin very clearly believed in the withering of the state. He talks about it on Economic problems of the USSR.
No.1816750
>>1816721It's not a lie, in his memoirs Molotov states that privately he and Stalin disagreed about the state under communism and whether communism was possible in one country.
No.1816769
>>1816750Ok then. I don't find old Molotov's memoirs very trusty to be honest. But I do remember Stalin in the 1930s having some "doubts" about the state, though fascism had a lot to do with them. It could be that.. maybe by the 50s he'd changed his mind.
No.1816835
>>1816693the vanguard isn't a group of people "claiming to act in the proletariat's interests" its the most advanced section of the working class. if there is a workers party, that would be the most advanced section. your incorrectly putting the cart before the horse and insisting on it
No.1816865
>>1816835What do you mean by "advanced" Anon? This idea of MLism always confused me, how does one obtain "vanguardism"? Do they have 1000+ hours of Marxist study?
No.1816924
>>1816865>What do you mean by "advanced" Anon?the people who are most class conscious, the ones who are organized, the ones who join a workers party. in any movement there will be a section of people who are more serious and more willing to take part in the struggle. the people that actually get up and go to the demonstration or meetings not the ones who post online. that is the vanguard, its an emergent part of the mass movement not some group who comes from outside to impose itself on the masses.
No.1816935
>>1813002Pet boug nonsense. Why is it important for the state - as a class dictatorship of the proletariat to "wither away" anyway?
Anti-statism reeks of lib toddler individualism. If you want to be free of communal bonds and cultural expectations go live in the woods alone.
The State won't wither away. It will be obsoleted. When every man can be self-sufficient without relying on the products of industrial (mass) production, agriculture, there is no need for production to be organized at the scale it is today. Engels specifically talking of abolishing the distinction between city and countryside is very much related to this.
But this won't be achieved unless replicators are invented tomorrow and we find a source of energy that is plentiful, cheap to exploit and universally accessible. Or we find several different Earths where 8 billion people can separately live as "free" hunter gatherers.
Obviously none of this will happen anytime soon.
No.1816940
>>1816935The state and the dictatorship of the proletariat are totally different things. But then again, you have the nuclear flag.
No.1816965
>>1816940The state is the instrument of class dictatorship. The will of a class culminated in a set of institutions.
The "State" (under direction of the proletariat) and the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" are the same, because without the necessity of dictatorship of the proletariat vis-a-vis the bourgeoisie, reactionary forces, and the need to organize production, there is no need to speak of either.
When class and the division of labor itself have been abolished , there remains neither dictatorship nor state.
No.1816968
All these Marxist-Leninist fuckers have read are the “Communist Manifesto” and “Economic Problems of the USSR.”
Have they even read the first paragraph of “Capital” vol.1???
Dictatorship of the proletariat is NOT socialism and that’s only state capitalism!!!
No.1816970
>>1816930Also Stirner is post-left. Not a leftist. The dumb uygha who put him there should kill himself asap.
No.1816971
>>1816970stirner arrived at the same conclusions marx did lol
No.1816979
>>1816968>Communism is a state of affairs to be established, not a movementt. Kultural Marx
No.1816982
>>1816970NOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKKKKK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
Sorry for the terror, it was necessaryT. Karl Marx
No.1816990
>>1816968>Everything is state capitalism>REAL communism has never been triedThis attitude has nothing to do with Marxism. It's residual western Christian ideology. Where Revolution is the apocalypse, Communism is heaven (and cannot be established on Earth), and where every attempt is ruined by some sinful Judas (Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Lenin himself) betraying The Revolution
Workers seizing Power (and ceasing to be "oppressed") tarnishes them with Sin (Worldliness). The only revolutions unbetrayed are those that failed, the only revolutionaries that died as Communists are those that were Martyred in service of a failed cause
It's brainrot that has nothing to do with communism.
No.1817231
>>1816990>omfg if you dont believe weve ever reached a classless stateless society then youre a christianwhat the fuck am i even reading lol
No.1817237
>>1817234Can you give me an example of a dotp?
No.1817242
>>1816990>>1816979Take your meds, you schizo pseud. Literally arguing against shit nobody's said.
>>1816935>Why is it important for the state - as a class dictatorship of the proletariat to "wither away" anyway?>The State won't wither away. It will be obsoleted.>>1816965>When class and the division of labor itself have been abolished , there remains neither dictatorship nor state.? You're answering yourself while being autistic about terms.
>this won't be achieved unless replicators are invented tomorrow and we find a source of energy that is plentiful, cheap to exploit and universally accessible. Or we find several different Earths where 8 billion people can separately live as "free" hunter gatherers.Oh you're retarded. Nevermind.
No.1817357
>>1816990they hated him because he told them the truth
Vivek Chibber makes much the same argument btw. we're allowed to notice religious influence in Eastern Marxism, but not in Western Marxism
No.1817359
>>1816979it's actually both. the meaning of many words is context dependent
No.1819142
>>1817234Woah its communisms fault that the capitalist hegemon collapses and so gives way to smaller capitalist states filling in the void
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