gooey

gooey OP wrote (edited )

Not by revolutionary vigor. Oppertunism was what it was, nothing more.

Ah come on, what kind of argument is that. I said there that it was not perfect. Like how can you even expect perfect communism where capitalism encloses the entire planet, of course it will be tainted by some form of imperfection.

Bakunin was slightly misogynist, Marx mooched off of his friends, Kropotkin supported WW1 Germany.

Does that mean that we throw all their ideas in the trash?

Just pick out what is good and discard the rest, we know what communism is, and if we identify new forms of oppression then we act on it.

So they did their best what they could at the time. Women and LGBT were barely getting liberated, and most revolutionaries were white people with patriarchal tendencies.

Now we know that is bad, so in the past 60 years we have improved our ideology, but you can't blame them in the historical context they did their best.

Communism is not a thing that "happens". It is not a state of affairs.

Yes communism is a goal, it's a state of being in total harmony with nature. Did I claim otherwise?

His intellectual value is questionable at best, considering that his audience isn't the workers, but mostly students,

21 century Anarchism doesn't focus that much on the working class, because the industrial working class is alredy going away in automation. Instead we are trying to be more inclusive and work with groups that we can.

Students are always a good and energetic group that can help us progress society and be the future intellectuals.

Chosmky is not organizing a revolution but rather planting seeds of progressiveness and socialism in the next generation of capable intellectuals who will have the opportunity to be influential.

Plus he also wrote plenty of books that anyone can read and teach their own groups from.

Chomsky is more an indirect influencer, and his material is mostly aimed towards civil societies that look for social issues. He is not a labor activist obviously.

As I said, we want to abolish all forms of oppression, and Capitalism is just 1 of them. It's pretty hard to dismantle Capitalism so focusing on other forms of oppression might be easier.

Calling Chomsky the most Prominent Libertarian Socialist of the 20th century

Sorry, I mean the 2nd half of the 20th century.

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gooey OP wrote

I didn't said it was, it had elements in it, some workplaces were run without money and hierarchy (it's so interesting that whenever a leftist revolution happens, some people immediately abandon greed and money, as if it's just a burden on them, thought ancoms are always a minority, mostly syndicalists prevail as a temporary idea, because communism can only happen after all forms of exploitation and domination dissapear).

The Paris Commune was Radical Socialism as the Wiki page describes and that is fair, that is why I said partially.

Also: Chomsky is a US college Commie with no ties to any Labourers, sitting in his glass castle in MIT, and while he raises some legitimate critiques of Capitalism, his ideas are inherently flawed, in that he doesn't actually offer solutions, nor does he actively aim to help the working class.

That is true. He is a middle-class intellectual. But come on give peace to the man, he is a very valuable intellectual, the most prominent one of Libertarian Socialist school of the 20th century.

Everyone does what they can, and in the capitalist system you can't blame anyone for trying to do their best even if they fail. Capitalism provides limited opportunities for activists /intellectuals.

Chomsky focused his work largely criticizing US foreign policy, Soviet Union, Corporate Media and Politics including Burgeoise criticism, Corporations, Nuclear War and recently Climate Change.

In normal circumstances radical leftists work together with Social Democrats, and that is what he did too, so I don't blame him for that.

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gooey OP wrote

Reply to comment by alesto in The Soviet Union was Capitalist by gooey

Depends on the size of the workplace. Sure there were factories there with 2000 workers, yes they may have elected managers to coordinate things. But elected managers are not the same as central planning, because the workers have ultimately decided the course of action in meetings.

You are confusing organization with domination.

And small shops were totally anarchistic. Barber shops with 10-15 people, run autonomously without leaders, they just discussed things and did it just like that.

There are many coops right now from book stores to coffee shops that are still running in this form today, with total workplace anarchy, however they have to participate in the market so at best they are mutualists:

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gooey OP wrote

Reply to comment by alesto in The Soviet Union was Capitalist by gooey

I am going to address the Catalonia claims because that is what I have researched the most.

Production in Catalonia was being centrally planned by worker council's

How the hell was it centrally planned, tell me? What do you mean by central planning?

Every single shop,factory, was literally run by the workers. They have met every day, discussed how to produce things and worked. They elected 1 or more secretary who would be their delegate that would represent them in their dealings with other groups. The secretary can be called back, it was not an authority.

It was literally a network of worker run establishments.

And yes there was a regional council, but to call that a State, is fucking silly. The council was made up of those secretaries elected by the workplaces, and they elected a comitte to run things. You can see here how the CNT is organized to this day (with a few changes since then):

The regional council simply existed to coordinate larger scale industrial or military operations.

The military didn't have a hierarchy, all soldiers were equal and from the workers and farmers, and groups of 10 elected a leader to coordinate with other groups, so whatever hierarchy they had was symbolical.

It was true direct democracy, where every worker had their voice heard. All complaints were submitted to the regional councils and were discussed in meetings.

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gooey OP wrote

Reply to comment by alesto in The Soviet Union was Capitalist by gooey

  1. It was a battle okay, like any other battle. But look at what the workers did in that zone, one of the first places to separate church and state, pension system, debt forgiveness, labor rights, etc..

  2. Do not confuse the Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates with the later Petrograd Soviet. The former was a genuine worker controlled union, the latter is a centrally planned Trotskyist government.

  3. The Makhno rebels have collectivized the farms, that zone was heavily agrarian so it had less of an industrial working class. It was agrarian communism. But the militia cam from the peasants as well.

  4. Nonsense. The region was controlled predominantly by the CNT-FAI coalition, the state had no authority there whatsoever, were labor unions organized from below, not by a centralized bureaucracy. Direct workplace democracy in every work establishment with elected secretary from every workplace who would join the regional union council. The representatives could be called back at any time, they were not politicians, they were from the workers too. The militia was voluntary, they were armed workers.

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gooey OP wrote

Reply to comment by asstrain in The Soviet Union was Capitalist by gooey

No. Anarchism is about abolishing unjustified hierarchies of domination and exploitation.

It would be best if all hierarchies are abolished but practically in some cases it might be needed.

I know plenty of cooperatives that have elected managers, and they rotate them every week. So every worker becomes a manager at some point, and they all discuss things.

Authority can be kept in check if there is democracy and the hierarchy is temporary.

The FAI zones in Catalonia operated on something like this. Some farms were managed like this, where groups of 10 worked on a farm and they rotated their leaders to avoid them entrenching in their authority.

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gooey OP wrote

Reply to comment by asstrain in The Soviet Union was Capitalist by gooey

Anarcho-Communism doesn't necessarily mean no leaders at all.

It rather looks at unjustified hierarchies. If the hierarchy is temporary and they have no authority but just act as a delegate of some sort, that is permissible.

There was no other practical way to coordinate millions of other people, but it was compensated with democratic values, and every person having a say in politics. It was fully participatory, if everyone participates, then forms of domination are abolished.

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gooey wrote

Reply to by !deleted8070

Should have followed him outside and robbed him of them.

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gooey wrote (edited )

I guess environmental collapse will precede economic collapse; because no matter how much property they own, it'll be worthless once it's on fire / under water, and they won't give up capitalism / their power until there's literally no other option.

But this presumes capitalism is in their control when it's actually a total crapshoot. They can't control how the stockmarket fluctuates.

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gooey wrote

their apologists

Do you consider middle class liberals to be capitalists? People who believe in capitalism as an ideology? Or only the people who own the means of production?

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gooey wrote

I had a long journey getting to the left. My intro to politics was punk rock in the Dubya era - I was basically a lifestylist "anarchist". Didn't really have any background in the theory, and because of that my position wasn't all that solid, and I ended up a Ron Paul libertarian (god I was the worst) by the end of high school. In college I kind of drifted back into being your bog-standard liberal. "Capitalism can work if we just tweak it the right way" and all that shit.

But, during one of my classes I did a project where I was supposed to design a conservation plan for an endangered species. I picked gorillas, which put my focus squarely on the Congo and its history. Somewhere along the line, as I read into the problems facing the region, poured over UN reports, etc., it all kinda just clicked: there was no solving the problems the region was facing under capitalism. There was just too much money wrapped up in it - countries and companies paying various militias for access to resources, that sort of thing. And from there I just looked more and more into other areas of the world where the same kind of shit happened constantly, and all this instability and destruction all came back to capitalism.

It became extremely obvious that the system as it exists now does not and cannot solve the major problems we're facing. And ultimately socialism was the only real option I saw. So yeah. Been a lefty ever since. Was very defeatist about it for a while, but Bernie got my hopes up that we can do something and it's been nice to see the movement so energized lately.

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