Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century
petergelderloos.substack.com
arguments to go around

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1803761

Original title (which I find a bit too click-baity):

Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century

  •  cacheson   ( @cacheson@kbin.social ) 
    16•1 year ago

    I’m guessing that when you hear “socialism”, like most people you think of state socialism. USSR, China, etc, as well as the various political parties trying to implement socialist policies through the electoral process. The socialist movement has always had a significant anarchist faction as well. Basically, things went like this:

    • State socialists: Right, we’re going to do state socialism
    • Anarchists: That’s going to go very badly, let’s do anarchism instead
    • State socialists proceed to do state socialism, and it goes very badly
    • Anarchists: Okay, now that we all have the benefit of historical hindsight, let’s do anarchism now?
    • State socialists: No, we’re going to do state socialism again
    • Anarchists: Oh for fuck’s sake
    •  uniqueid198x   ( @uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
      6•1 year ago

      And its not even a case of “state socialism results in state violence” (it does, continously), its that planned economies make it so that small errors in judgement result in massive issues. I’m a little tired of the “mistakes where made” crowd like “oopsie we did a The Great Famine”. Contemporary analysis by anarchists and unionists knew already said it wouldn’t work.

      •  cacheson   ( @cacheson@kbin.social ) 
        3•1 year ago

        Yep. I tend to be skeptical of anarcho-communism, but at least it fails gracefully. Worst case scenario, people just start trading again. I still want people to try it, because what if they’re right? Or what if they’re not completely right, but we learn something useful?