Ask Lemmy

The anarchist conception of communism is more like communalism, while the Marxist conception is more like collectivism. 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.

None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general. In this sense, Marxist communism does believe in using state authority to oppress the bourgeousie and reactionaries, just like capitalists use the state to oppress the working classes and revolutionaries.

Anarchists are cool, but they're really only a minority of communists worldwide. Whatever you think "authoritarianism" is (as far as I'm concerned if you believe in having a state at all, then that state will exercise a monopoly on violence and will be repressive) it describes almost every single communist on planet earth. The game of splitting hairs on what does and doesn't count as a "tankie" achieves nothing but divide a movement that has common cause.

If I'm being forthright, I'll just go ahead and ask: if anarchists are the only communists, why even have the concept of "tankies" at all? Why not just say you're pro-anarchist and anti-communist? From my perspective, all that the whole thing of saying that there supposedly are communists who aren't "tankies" achieves is create two categories:

• Real people who exist in the real world and have actual, flawed political movements
• Imaginary perfect people that only exist in your head

Then because you can find real examples of the first category, you can find the flaws they have, and compare them to the ideal people in the second category. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there really are a ton of Marxists out there that figured out the secret to having a perfectly consistent anti-authoritarian ideology that is still distinct from anarchism. If you could let me know who they are, that'd be awesome.

We live in a dictatorship of capital, you're not going to be able to get consent from capitalists to overthrow them.

If you're intersted in revolutionary change you're going to be authoritarian to someone. The capitalists not going to be on board for getting their property redistributed.

If you're not interested in revolution you're the compatible left