How do those two approaches contradict one another?
The disagreement is over the methods. Marxist approach is to create a vanguard of professional revolutionaries and to use this vanguard to guide the revolution. Anarchists reject this approach because it creates central authority.
As marxist-leninist revolutions have shown, trading away freedom for a dream of equality only produces new ruling classes (do you think the Red bureaucracy was starving in USSR? no they were just a new privileged caste).
This is a misinformed statement since there was no “ruling class” in USSR. People in the party came from the regular population, and anyone was free to join. Let’s just take a look at where the leaders of USSR came from. Khrushchev grew up in a village, Brezhnev came from a metalworker family in a small town in Ukraine, Gorbachev came from a village. This is the ruling class you’re talking about.
Meanwhile, bureaucracy is necessary to run any large organization. I’m not sure on what basis anarchists think that they’re going to avoid having bureaucracies. Go look at large cooperatives like Mondragon, they’re large bureaucracies.
Also anarchist understanding of freedom is not the same as liberal. Liberal freedom is based on conflicting interests (game theory), where anarchist freedom (while it admits there can be conflicts) supposes more freedom for me plus more freedom for you equals more freedom overall (not “my freedom starts where yours stop”).
Anarchists very clearly put personal freedom above improving material conditions, as you’re doing when you talk about “trading away freedom for a dream of equality” when referring to USSR. Either you have some central authority, and all the bureaucracy that goes along with it, or people are free to do whatever they like, at which point people who don’t see things your way are free to do what liberals, fascists, and other ideologies incompatible with anarchism want to do.
What scale are you referring to? Arguably we couldn’t have a self-organized planetary government, but why would we need one in the first place? The Commune is the scale on which everything is provably possible and makes the most impact in everyone’s lives. The difficulty would reside in transitioning from a production based on destructive (extractive) multinational supply chains to a low-tech production, which might be impossible in a free society.
The scale of over 7 billion people living on this planet. Your views are held by a tiny minority of the people living in this world. Most people are not interested in your primitivist vision.
Large-scale self-organized societies certainly have existed. The zapatistas movement (based on dual power from below) and to some extent the Rojava commune (based on democratic confederalism, not exactly anarchism) are large-scale modern societies moving towards more freedom and equality for all (though nothing is perfect and there’s lots to criticize).
Zapatistas do not consider themselves anarchists, and dual power is certainly not exclusive to anarchism or in any way at odds with Marxism. Everybody on the left supports moving towards more freedom and equality.
Why would you need a Nation State for food housing and education? We’ve had those things far longer than Nation States have existed, and many communities/regions have such services without having a Nation State. The zapatistas of Chiapas come to mind for example.
You do need a nation state to defend yourself again capitalist states who are the dominant force in our world. All zapatistas or Chiapas do is find a way to exist within such states at the mercy of the state. This is not a path towards any sort of global liberation.
Side-note: i’m definitely not well-off and certainly welcome incremental changes. I’m an anarcho-communist not a post-left anarchist and i don’t hold contempt for eg. unions.
You’re pretty well off compared to these kids. Capitalism is a global terror, and anybody living in the imperial core implicitly benefits from imperialism which is a direct result of this system. Even the worst lifestyles in US are subsidized by even more horrific exploitation in the colonies.
Marxists aren’t satisfied to simply build communes while allowing such horrors to continue. We want all workers across the world to be liberated from the yoke of capitalist exploitation.
Not exactly, but we make an explicit assumption that people are not stupid sheep and that given power and information everyone will be capable to make sensible decisions.
This has nothing to do with being stupid. The reason capitalism is a dominant system in the world is because it’s able to effectively compete with other ideologies. Humanity isn’t homogeneous, and things that may be abhorrent to you or me will always be appealing to a significant portion of the population. Hierarchies we see in our society arose many times throughout human history because they’re ultimately effective at preserving themselves and rooting out ideas that threaten them.
Ask anyone whether everyone should be housed or not, they’ll tell you sure but they don’t know how because the empty dwellings are protected by the police and you risk legal trouble by housing yourself. Now imagine the State doesn’t exist, people in a neighborhood would just list empty dwellings and homeless folks, change locks and rehouse everyone: problem solved.
This goes back to the “magic happens” problem. The state is a highly organized entity that has central command of the police and the military. It’s pretty clear that federalist efforts that anarchists advocate are not sufficient to challenge such organization. We have over a century of evidence to that effect. There is a good reason why actual militaries have a strict command and control structure as opposed to being federalist efforts.
And again, if a miracle happened, and anarchists somehow managed to overthrow this organized violence, then there is nothing stopping this sort of organization reforming because there is no central authority to keep it in check.
The zapatistas live almost in a rural society except they have electricity and some internet connection, they are not suppressed because they live like that and don’t represent a real threat, if they ever were to industrialize they would get fucked up in less than the blink of an eye. While I appreciate their fight and resistance and would take their government any day over the current one dominating Mexico, I don’t think they’re a super example since (even though things have improved in their government in comparison to capitalist one) they still have vast numbers of people living under poverty, and they’re going to keep it that way because they lack the organization and resources to improve it.
The disagreement is over the methods. Marxist approach is to create a vanguard of professional revolutionaries and to use this vanguard to guide the revolution. Anarchists reject this approach because it creates central authority.
This is a misinformed statement since there was no “ruling class” in USSR. People in the party came from the regular population, and anyone was free to join. Let’s just take a look at where the leaders of USSR came from. Khrushchev grew up in a village, Brezhnev came from a metalworker family in a small town in Ukraine, Gorbachev came from a village. This is the ruling class you’re talking about.
Meanwhile, bureaucracy is necessary to run any large organization. I’m not sure on what basis anarchists think that they’re going to avoid having bureaucracies. Go look at large cooperatives like Mondragon, they’re large bureaucracies.
Anarchists very clearly put personal freedom above improving material conditions, as you’re doing when you talk about “trading away freedom for a dream of equality” when referring to USSR. Either you have some central authority, and all the bureaucracy that goes along with it, or people are free to do whatever they like, at which point people who don’t see things your way are free to do what liberals, fascists, and other ideologies incompatible with anarchism want to do.
The scale of over 7 billion people living on this planet. Your views are held by a tiny minority of the people living in this world. Most people are not interested in your primitivist vision.
Zapatistas do not consider themselves anarchists, and dual power is certainly not exclusive to anarchism or in any way at odds with Marxism. Everybody on the left supports moving towards more freedom and equality.
You do need a nation state to defend yourself again capitalist states who are the dominant force in our world. All zapatistas or Chiapas do is find a way to exist within such states at the mercy of the state. This is not a path towards any sort of global liberation.
You’re pretty well off compared to these kids. Capitalism is a global terror, and anybody living in the imperial core implicitly benefits from imperialism which is a direct result of this system. Even the worst lifestyles in US are subsidized by even more horrific exploitation in the colonies.
Marxists aren’t satisfied to simply build communes while allowing such horrors to continue. We want all workers across the world to be liberated from the yoke of capitalist exploitation.
This has nothing to do with being stupid. The reason capitalism is a dominant system in the world is because it’s able to effectively compete with other ideologies. Humanity isn’t homogeneous, and things that may be abhorrent to you or me will always be appealing to a significant portion of the population. Hierarchies we see in our society arose many times throughout human history because they’re ultimately effective at preserving themselves and rooting out ideas that threaten them.
This goes back to the “magic happens” problem. The state is a highly organized entity that has central command of the police and the military. It’s pretty clear that federalist efforts that anarchists advocate are not sufficient to challenge such organization. We have over a century of evidence to that effect. There is a good reason why actual militaries have a strict command and control structure as opposed to being federalist efforts.
And again, if a miracle happened, and anarchists somehow managed to overthrow this organized violence, then there is nothing stopping this sort of organization reforming because there is no central authority to keep it in check.
The zapatistas live almost in a rural society except they have electricity and some internet connection, they are not suppressed because they live like that and don’t represent a real threat, if they ever were to industrialize they would get fucked up in less than the blink of an eye. While I appreciate their fight and resistance and would take their government any day over the current one dominating Mexico, I don’t think they’re a super example since (even though things have improved in their government in comparison to capitalist one) they still have vast numbers of people living under poverty, and they’re going to keep it that way because they lack the organization and resources to improve it.