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/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

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  1. How would anarchists respond to the criticism that, over 150 years of organized anarchist thought (from Bakunin and the International in 1866 onward, or even Stirner before that), their analysis of exploitation has remained largely vague and general?
  2. How do anarchists explain the origins and development of exploitation? And how would they account for the evolution of society without relying on concepts like class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as scientific tools?
  3. Are anarchists generally committed to social ownership of the means of production, or do they tend to favor small-scale production and some forms of private ownership? How would they address the claim that anarchism is just bourgeois individualism turned on its head?
  4. How do anarchists propose to organize and educate workers for class struggle while refusing participation in bourgeois political institutions? How would they avoid offering what critics call one‑sided, disconnected fixes, especially when global coordination seems necessary and anarchism’s individualist tendencies may undermine it?
  5. How would anarchists respond to the observation that anarchism lacks a unified doctrine, elementary revolutionary teaching, or basic theory? How do they view the historical fragmentation of the workers’ movement often attributed to anarchist influence, and what can be learned from the short‑lived anarchist “state‑like” experiments?
  6. How would anarchists avoid the charge that rejecting bourgeois politics in practice ends up subordinating the working class to bourgeois politics—all under the guise of being “above” or “outside” traditional political action?

anarchists when they succeed reinvent marxism
marxists when they succeed reinvent capitalism
capitalists when they succeed reinvent anarchism

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A lot of your questions are just out of scope. Might as well criticize atheism for not having rules against rape and murder.

  1. Sorry if "the bosses and the state exploit the workers" is too vague for you
  2. Most anarchists use the framework of class struggle and desire a dictatorship of the proletariat, they usually don't pretend it's all scientific though
  3. You'll find a mix of both, just like in china except the big bourgeoisie would be killed
  4. Unions, social movements, popular education
  5. You can say the same thing about marxism given how revised to sunday it has been by billions of pseuds and opportunists, just the fate of old political movements
  6. Doing an insurrection and taking over is traditional enough for anarchists, they don't feel like they need to vote

>>2831925
> Sorry if "the bosses and the state exploit the workers" is too vague for you
It is vague. How does this exploitation occur? What are its characteristics? What makes someone a worker and what makes someone a boss? These all need to be addressed sufficiently well to proceed.
> Most anarchists use the framework of class struggle and desire a dictatorship of the proletariat, they usually don't pretend it's all scientific though
What else is anarchism then based on if not on scientific methods applied to organization? How does this anarchist proletarian dictatorship differ from the Marxist one? From the Leninist?
> You'll find a mix of both, just like in china except the big bourgeoisie would be killed
I am asking a more fundamental question. Are anarchist for or against small production? Are they for large scale industry?
> Unions, social movements, popular education
Yellow unions? All unions? Every social movement? What is "popular education"?
> You can say the same thing about marxism given how revised to sunday it has been by billions of pseuds and opportunists, just the fate of old political movements
Not really. There are some fundamental texts from Marx and Lenin that outline the general idea. There's a communist manifesto that almost all Marxists in some part accept. Is there such a unified declaration of anarchist principles?
> Doing an insurrection and taking over is traditional enough for anarchists, they don't feel like they need to vote
How do you "do" an insurrection? How do you "take" power? What is "power"? I wasn't even close to talking about parliamentary politics, but it seems you, as most anarchist, make every politics equally bourgeois…

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>>2831873
Left libertarian is here.

>1

Useless bullshit. There's nothing wrong with throwing out vague metaphysics from the 19th century.
>2
The core of exploitation is coerciveness and inequality of bargaining power.
>concepts like class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat
>as scientific tools
Lolwhat.
>3
>do they tend to favor small-scale production and some forms of private ownership
I do.
>How would they address the claim that anarchism is just bourgeois individualism turned on its head?
It's not a serious claim. Just an evaluation from a Marxist. The real claim would look like some inconsistency in the logic of the opponent. Your shit is just a cry 'I DON'T LIKE YOU'.
>4
>How do anarchists propose to organize and educate workers for class struggle while refusing participation in bourgeois political institutions?
In no way. I don't mind people participating in civil society and 'liberal democracy'.
>5
>How would anarchists respond to the observation that anarchism lacks a unified doctrine
There is such a thing and it's cool. Variety is the spice of life.
>6
I wouldn't.

>>2831948
Terrific bait, too perfect. 10/10

a significant chunk of leftypol marxists seem aggressively, proudly ignorant. The type to refuse to read anarchist's writings on a variety of subjects and then act like their own ignorance is a gotcha

>>2831978
>to read anarchist's writings
I can name Marxist writers that people should read and they more or less cover a more or less unified view of things. Can the same be said of anarchists? Is there any canon? This is like saying, oh, you're criticizing protestants, but you do not know the particularities of every sect. Well, yes, science requires abstraction and generalization, and I agree that I might make mistakes when doing these processes, so I would appreciate if you can you tell me at which point did I say something that's not in line with 'general' tendencies of anarchism.

>>2831978
>The type to refuse to read anarchist's writings on a variety of subjects and then act like their own ignorance is a gotcha
This is unfortunately most people, and not at all unique to leftypol.

>>2831873
1&2. Most early "classical" anarchists fully embraced Marx's analysis of exploitation and therefore saw no need to develop a separate theory in this respect.

3. Yes, anarchists are communists.
4. The proletarians don't need to be "educated for class struggle", struggling under the proletarian condition is a material fact of their everyday lives. Revolutionary minorities can only help them to understand why and encourage them to develop class autonomy. Participation in bourgeois political institutions is the role of would-be managers on the left wing of Capital, not communists.
5.The workers' movement has never had a unified doctrine. The Marxist milieu has always contained just as many internal contradictions and fragmentation as the anarchist milieu.
6.This "charge" is merely a product of your own Bernsteinite inclinations

>>2831873
>1. […] their analysis of exploitation has remained largely vague and general?
Because exploitation is indeed vague and general. The form of exploitation that a woman endures in the first world is not the same as what an indian worker living in the slums of Dubaï endures. Meticulously defining exploitation as XYZ conditions leads to the possibility of your theory being made obsolete despite its kernel of truth.

>2. […] How do anarchists explain the origins and development of exploitation?

Exploitation, broadly speaking, is simply when one individual is deprived of his agency, of potential self-realization, by external constraints imposed on him. This varies tremendously from which currents of anarchism you're interested in but the broad definition of exploitation under anarchism is closer to the concept of alienation from Marx than the economic definition of exploitation

>3. […] How would they address the claim that anarchism is just bourgeois individualism turned on its head?

Bourgeois individualism occurs when a member of the bourgeoisie realizes his alienation but doesn't escape the categories inherent to his social position. Libertarians are an example of bourgeois individualism, because they understand that the state or other institutions can hinder their individuality but they fail to grasp that private ownership of the means of productions or money are also imposef categories. They fail to do so because they've integrated so deeply the illusion of money that they cannot escape it and come to mistake self-emancipation for maximizing wealth

>4. How do anarchists propose to organize and educate workers for class struggle while refusing participation in bourgeois political institutions?

There's a difference between organizing to raise awareness and to commit political acts, and participating in bourgeois politics. In theory communists should have similar means of organizing because they shouldn't be participating in bourgeois politics. Anarchists usually have their own organizations and parties by which they vehiculate their messages

>5. How would anarchists respond to the observation that anarchism lacks a unified doctrine, elementary revolutionary teaching, or basic theory?

That's because the word "anarchism" is an empty signifier. It's like saying "socialism". Of course there won't be a unified doctrine for "anarchism", but there is one for communalism, for anarcho-communism, for anarcho-primitivism etc.

>5. […] How do they view the historical fragmentation of the workers’ movement often attributed to anarchist influence

Thank god anarchists did so because otherwise communism would only be known as the failed bureaucratic mess that was marxism-leninism. I don't think MLs actually understand how much they've fucked the movement lol

>6. How would anarchists avoid the charge that rejecting bourgeois politics in practice ends up subordinating the working class to bourgeois politics

I think that you're referencing a very specific type of anarchist methodology, popularized in the west, which consists essentially of "opting out" of society and to go live in the woods or something along the lines of that. This is not necessarily representative of the movement as a whole. Rojava and the Zapatistas didn't do this sort of actions, they were militarily trained and went around capturing cities. The sort of anarchism that you describe in the west occurs because class antagonisms are simply not that prevalent, to the point where a local population would willingly abandon the state for a new form of social organization. Therefore, it's not that opting out is the best strategy, but simply that given the material conditions in the west, you can't really declare war on the state without mass approval, which is something practically unfeasible to get.

>>2832007
Interesting, thanks for writing this up. I don't think I agree with some parts of what you said, but that's okay. I just want you to know your effort didn't go to waste.

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>>2832011

>>2832005
>Most early "classical" anarchists fully embraced Marx's analysis of exploitation and therefore saw no need to develop a separate theory in this respect.
>Most
Name the minority

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>>2832058
Tat is that you?

>>2832069
いいえ、私ではありませんよ(ウインク)

>>2831874
giga trvth tsar bomba

>>2832007
>Because exploitation is indeed vague and general.
Isn't the point of capitalistic production that exploitation is now in wage-work? That changes the entire MoP and society with it. Hardly 'vague' to describe something particular? I agree that you can stratify and categorize exploitation in many different ways, but at its core, wage-work is what has to be abolished? This is what makes capitalism possible, no? The kernel is the general, not the most particular, right?
>Exploitation, broadly speaking, is simply when one individual is deprived of his agency, of potential self-realization, by external constraints imposed on him.
Not to pull out Das Authority, but this definition means someone who depends on a timed process (like production) is exploited, because his agency is deprived for a couple of hours, or some set of time. How is this more useful than the wage-work outlook? Exploitation and alienation are different beasts, they are surely interconnected, as all things are, but capitalist alienation is a consequence of capitalist (wage-work) exploitation, they aren't, and cannot, be equal problems…
>They fail to do so because they've integrated so deeply the illusion of money that they cannot escape it and come to mistake self-emancipation for maximizing wealth
Isn't this just idealism + voluntarism at the end of your analysis?

The entire answer to 4. is a non-sequitur. Bourgeois politics means the politics the bourgeois state curates. I am asking: do anarchists refuse participation in bourgeois institutions on principle, or do they accept that they can be in certain circumstances used to advance the cause of socialism.

>That's because the word "anarchism" is an empty signifier. It's like saying "socialism".

Better communism than socialism, and even then, the core of communism is i) abolish private property, ii) abolish the parasite state and replace it with the proletarian dictatorship. From the conversation here it seems i) is not something all anarchists agree on and ii) they do not accept the idea of proletarian dictatorship while agreeing to abolish the state.

>failed bureaucratic mess that was marxism-leninism

This is a very dismissive and childish take. Sorry I don't think this is a serious reply.

The sixth point is the only one I almost fully agree with out of what you've written.

>>2832111 (me)
>>That's because the word "anarchism" is an empty signifier. It's like saying "socialism".
>Better communism than socialism, and even then, the core of communism is i) abolish private property, ii) abolish the parasite state and replace it with the proletarian dictatorship. From the conversation here it seems i) is not something all anarchists agree on and ii) they do not accept the idea of proletarian dictatorship while agreeing to abolish the state.
Actually, no, I redact this point. This is practically solved through some kind of Internationale organization, which I know anarchists have.

>>2832111
>Isn't the point of capitalistic production that exploitation is now in wage-work?
You're presupposing a definition of exploitation here and localizing it in the mode of production.

>but at its core, wage-work is what has to be abolished?

>How is this more useful than the wage-work outlook?
The point to abolish is domination. Now, I agree that wage-labor is a form of domination, and thus requires its overcoming, but restricting yourself to wage-labor can make your theory redundant. For instance, how would you give power to the people in the chinese rural communes under Mao ? They didn't have wage-labor, yet were dominated. Simply abolishing wage-labor means nothing if you're reproducing domination under different forms. Bourgeois women can be dominated by their husbands and alienated from their potential, yet they do not get exploited under a wage-labor form. If exploitation is your only lens of analysis, you risk being unable to explain certain forms of domination.

>capitalist alienation is a consequence of capitalist (wage-work) exploitation

Not really, it's more that capitalism exhibits multiple form of alienations. But most importantly, alienation from species-being isn't based upon capitalism, it's based upon potentiality for self-realization.

>do anarchists refuse participation in bourgeois institutions on principle, or do they accept that they can be in certain circumstances used to advance the cause of socialism.

Anon the whole point of marx's critique of bourgeois politics is that they can't be used to advance the cause of socialism at a qualitative level. The "principle" you speak of is simply feasability and is not found within bourgeois politics

>This is a very dismissive and childish take

No I'm being entirely serious. Apart from Cuba, there exists no marxist-leninist state that hasn't reverted back to a capitalist MoP. The quasi-entirety of criticism directed at communism or alternatives form of organization is based on the soviet experience. Had we not had the very few anarchists experiments, we would literally have no easy counter-factual to hand for those saying "communism must inevitably fall into stalinism". You might not think that this is a serious matter, but the entirety of the movement since the 1970s has been oscillating between reformism or alternative forms of leninism precisely because the USSR fucked up so much. It's no wonder that trotskyists seethe so much at you guys given that you've essentially held the monopoly of "communism" despite very heavily distorting it.

>>2832141
>You're presupposing a definition of exploitation here and localizing it in the mode of production.
Capitalism and wage-work has become universal via de-colonization and market liberalization, sans a few lone states like DPRK. I'm not taking a definition and looking for an example, I'm looking at the most general 'exploitation' and defining the mode of production around it. The first is idealist, the second is materialist. There's no longer the Chinese rural commune you talk about. Closest you have are some indigenous peoples with some non-capitalistic society, but these are <1% of the entire world. Not to say they shouldn't be allowed to practice their lives how they please, but it is weird to build your worldview based on such a small, marginal, and disappearing community.

>The point to abolish is domination

Sorry, but what does this mean? Domination is a vague term. It can be a purely subjective feeling. Like you seem to know the words but then you don't know how to use them. <Bourgeois (?) women can be 'dominated' (?) by their husbands, and alienated from their potential (??)
Alienation from potential? This is a word salad.

>the whole point of marx's critique of bourgeois politics is that they can't be used to advance the cause of socialism at a qualitative level

What? This is not true at all. Later on as Marx's view of the state developed he came to the idea that what needs to be abolished is the bureaucratic-military state machine, not the state in its totality… the bourgeois institutions of no use will be abolished, not all institutions… And you are again not addressing the question: would an anarchist (party) ever participate in a bourgeois parliament? Communists would, for example, but not as a principle, but as a strat.

>the entirety of the movement since the 1970s has been oscillating between reformism or alternative forms of leninism precisely because the USSR fucked up so much

This is the kernel of truth in your post. I don't agree with how you got to the point or the conclusion you draw from it, but I don't want this to become a debate about merits of state socialist and anarchist organization for the umpteenth time.


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