On the internet I don’t see too many Anarchists give arguments past “communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state” and “we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!” Which like…is not convincing to me at all. I’ve engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that’s purely anecdotal.

So, I’d really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.

I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you

  • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    4 months ago

    Thanks for your response! I’m gonna do a brief response to each topics:

    First: I support your method in engaging in both side’s theory, that’s the way to do it imo, so good on you for that! I’m not against marxist criticism if it’s informed by the knowledge of anarchist theory (lots of the shitthrowing around marxism and anarchism comes from people not engaging with source material from the other side only criticism of said source material which i try to avoid, that’s why i read marxist literature as well).

    Second: What you say is true, there’s a lot of anarchists (especially on the internet) who are applying this double standard (they generally come from a place that the two ideologies can’t be synthesised at all) but there are some who think there can be a synthesis between the two ideologies, apart from the essay about Spain i would also suggest Daniel Guerin’s For a Libertarian Communism (and Guerin in general, i think he’s pretty underrated) to see where it could end up. Hell i’ve even read texts praising Tito on The Anarchist Library.

    Third: You’re right, informal reproduction of social hierarchy is a problem that anarchists are grappling with, since some people will be more confident and less anxious in these situations. I’m not that well versed on the theory on that but one essay i found helpful is this one. Apart from that what i can advise you is to, if you are in a situation like that is to ask the people organising, what they will do in order to avoid this happening, like, will the people who seem more withdrawn given a platform deliberately? Will the people who tend to get asked everything willingly step back? I think this is an important problem to grapple with especially in the mentally gripping system we live in, but also i think that there could be (and maybe there are i just don’t know about them) methods to reverse it.