@Radical_EgoCom it seems implied in this question that if you don't have a revolutionary plan ready, you're not an anarchist.
Oh well
That's not the implication. It's simply a question to anarchists as to how they plan to overthrow capitalism without a vanguard party, if they have one.
@Radical_EgoCom The global capitalist system doesn't need to be overthrown, because at some point it will inevitably fall by itself. Its unsustainability is a known fact. IMO the more important question to focus on is how to cultivate the resilience to not let it drag us down with it. As the old systems start to slowly decay and crumble, local networks of mutual aid will grow to fill in the cracks out of necessity. I hope that at some point such local and communal solutions will overtake capitalist states as people witness the old systems failing to protect them.
Now, an argument could be made that we can't afford to wait around for fossil capitalism to cause things to get that bad. I'm much too pessimistic to think that any large scale revolution could be achieved before the masses start to lose their bread and circuses. Things will have to get worse before they get better, but they're already slowly getting worse and will continue to do so for a long time. May we live in interesting times.
That's false. Capitalism will not fall by itself. Capitalism has ways of self-sustaining itself and prolonging its existence. When capitalism is in decay, fascism arises to maintain capitalism's existence through force, specifically by smashing proletarian movements that would otherwise push for the abolition of capitalism and the creation of socialism. If we just wait around for capitalism to die on its own, fascism will arise and destroy any chance of it dying.
That's an incorrect assessment of the nature of fascism. Fascism does not destroy capitalism. Capitalism existed in some form in all of the previous fascist states of the past. Capitalism didn't die under fascism. It was allowed to survive and evade the brewing proletarian led abolition of capitalism due to the authoritarian force of fascism stomping out all proletarian movements and workers' rights.
You're claim that fascism, being capitalism in decay, will destroy itself is untrue. Tell me, is Germany still capitalist? What about Italy or Spain? Yes? But they were fascist countries, so by your logic, capitalism shouldn't exist in those countries. Fascism is unstable, but when it inevitably fails, it doesn't result in the abolition of capitalism. It results in the restoration of the old, or very similar, capitalist order, which is literally the whole point of fascism.
@Radical_EgoCom I'm not talking about the stability of a political system in and of itself. I'm talking about sustainability in the context of a global climate crisis, soil degradation, overfishing, global biodiversity loss etc. etc. In a word, polycrisis. Switching between unsustainable capitalism and unsustainable fascism won't change the fact the underlying capitalist mode of production is unsustainable and thus by definition has to end at some point, willingly or not.
And so I return to my original comment: The problem then is to not let the system take us down with it.
Still, your claim that capitalism will abolish itself isn't true. Capitalism is inherently unsustainable and will inevitably end, but if there's no working-class movement to actually abolish capitalism when it's weak, then capitalism will just continue to sustain itself through its various tactics of prolonging its survival, such as fascism. Ultimately, capitalism will have to be forcefully overthrow by the proletariat because it's not going to die by itself.
@Radical_EgoCom I think abandonment is more accurate than abolition to describe what I'm thinking of.
Economy exists within ecology. Historically, when capitalism has ceased to benefit the commoner, fascism has swooped in. Tyranny requires constant effort. My hope is that at some point in the future the ecological and environmental stresses applied on the economic system will force the state to spread its resources so thin that cracks open for communal solutions to grow in. Solutions that meet the needs of the people better than the increasingly strained state struggling to maintain control at the larger scale.
Sure, that could result in a collection of syndicates forming an armed opposition against the state, but that may not be necessary. If the state is so strained that it can't take care of its citizens, at some point it would just become irrelevant in the shadow of the communal networks.
Your "solution" for getting rid of capitalism isn't a solution at all. It amounts to waiting for capitalism to mess up the environment and society to a severe degree and then hoping that it just dissolves by itself. Any solution that relies on hope doesn't have the assurance necessary for me or many other rational people to take it seriously.
@Radical_EgoCom Is it in your opinion unsustainable? If yes, then it will end. There's no way around that. And there's no need to wait for anything to join a local anarchist group. Plenty already exist.
One could argue that fantasizing about a socialist revolution like it's the early 1900's is more far fetched. The concessions made to the workers and the huge gains in living standards since then have pretty much defused the threat of that happening in any large enough scale in the developed world. Or IDK maybe in the US workers have it bad enough, but there's other problems to deal with over there. For example that a considerable portion of the population has been programmed to violently resist any such movements by the red scare and all. In the rest of the developed world one would have to wait until capitalism messes up society so badly that the common worker is convinced about the need for a communist revolution. (If you look at the polls, they're currently voting the polar opposite of that.) But that would necessitate *waiting around for capitalism to mess up the environment and society to a severe degree.*
Yes, my solution relies on hope. I don't think a solution exists that doesn't.
Revolution is still possible despite the living standards of workers increasing and constant anti-revolutionary propaganda. Despite the living standard growing for workers, workers still face many of the same problems of wealth inequality, poverty, unemployment, etc, and there is the ever growing wage disparity that only gets bigger and bigger each year. The living standards may have gotten better, but the workers are still suffering, and as long as they are, they will have an...
...incentive to engage in the proletarian revolution. As for the propaganda against the proletarian movement, it may be numerous, but the way to combat propaganda of lies is with propaganda of truth, of the experiences and struggles of the working class and the necessity of revolution against capitalism. There is more propaganda against workers than for them, but that can change as workers organize, network, and gain more avenues of propagating their ideas and, in turn, more support.
What people want doesn't change what has to happen in order for a proletarian revolution to be successful. People may not want to live in a vanguard one-party state, but that doesn't make it any less necessary.
@Madaligned @Bl4ckst4r @aumalatj
1/3 The idea of a vanguard party being necessary isn't just opinion (it is not a subjective belief based on personal feelings), it's a hypothesis, a proposed explanation for how a revolution realistically has to be done, one that is based on logic and evidence. The logic behind the necessity of a vanguard party derives from the fact that the revolutionary people need ideological unity and strategic/tactical cohesiveness in order to be successful, and...
@Madaligned @Bl4ckst4r @aumalatj
2/3 ...therefore, supporters of vanguard parties conclude that a vanguard party that promotes revolutionary ideology, organizes the masses strategically and tactically, and helps guide them towards their revolutionary goals is a requirement for a revolution to succeed. The evidence for this comes from practically every single successful revolution in history, all having some kind of political organization that led the revolutionary masses to success.
@Madaligned @Bl4ckst4r @aumalatj
3/3 There may have been successful revolutions that had no kind of vanguard party, but given that the vast majority of them did, I would say that those instances are the exception and not the rule.
@Madaligned @Bl4ckst4r @aumalatj
Is there any logical or evidence-based basis for this disagreement, or is it based on subjective personal preference?
@andho @Bl4ckst4r @Madaligned @aumalatj
I don't see how that logically follows at all.
@aumalatj @andho @Bl4ckst4r @Madaligned
That still doesn't disprove the logical basis for the necessity of a vanguard party.
@Radical_EgoCom making ourselves ungovernable in a thousand different ways. Centralized efforts to overthrow and socialize will also have single points of failure and advance singularly powerful people who will inevitably be singularly corrupt due to the nature of power, whereas a balkanized/indigenized continent will be harder to govern and more naturally address the needs of its people.
Given climate collapse this may happen anyway, and indeed has been previewed with state cannabis legality
A centralized effort is necessary, though. The tasks that have to be followed out during a revolution must be done with all of the revolutionaries united ideologically, strategically, and tactically. A centralized effort would ensure this unity, as it would allow everyone to be united by ideology, tactics, and strategy by having them all be united under a centralized vanguard that embodies all of these traits.
@Radical_EgoCom maybe, but that presumes that we all agree as to the tasks that need to be carried out.
A power vacuum is surely dangerous, but consider futile efforts to control splintered bands with divided loyalties like middle eastern "warlords." America is already almost fifty countries (with even more micro-nations within, indigenous and otherwise) so it's barely a union. We're also seeing armed governor and Fed clashes.
I don't dream of a nuclear United Socialist States of America.
Regardless of your rather valid criticisms of American governance, a centralized effort of some kind is still necessary for a successful revolution for the reasons I listed above.
A single vanguard party to lead a country on a revolutionary path isn't a bad thing. Such a vanguard party provides many benefits to a revolution, such as having the ability to unite the masses without having counter-revolutionary forces sway people off the revolutionary path. There is a possibility of corruption, but the best thing to do would be to eliminate corruption and its possibility from the party instead of abandoning the party centralization and all of its benefits.
@Radical_EgoCom ah yes, just eliminate corruption among a small extremely powerful cabal of people organizing an overthrow of a huge country without themselves getting assassinated (yet somehow remaining accountable to The People) it's such a good thing that the country is already so experienced at accomplishing that and not defaulting to fascism, self-serving greed, and "might makes right"
If that was more likely than distributed horizontal resistance I think we'd have fixed society already
A centralized state is far more effective of an option for a post-revolutionary period than immediately transitioning to decentralized, non-hierarchical statelessness. A centralized state can effectively deal with counter-revolution and enemy countries due to all power being centralized on it, whereas a decentralized non-state system would not have the control over all means and resources necessary to make quick decisions or fully eliminate counter-revolution.
1/2 I know that hierarchy and authority can lead to abuses of power, and such abuses should be avoided at all cost, but the potential for hierarchy and authority to be corrupted doesn't mean that some form of hierarchy and authority won't be necessary during a revolutionary period, particularly after the fall of capitalism. I still say that hierarchy and authority will be necessary during the transition from capitalism to communism because of the effectiveness of having a centralized...
2/2 ...state would have in that necessary work be done and threats can be immediately eliminated, all things a centralized state can do specifically because of the control it would have over society. I know that such a system could still be corrupted, but given the benefits it provides, it would be better to try and prevent corruption from occurring within the state instead of getting rid of it.
You've completely mischaracterized my position and strawmanned it to ridiculous degrees. Please argue against what I say I support instead of making up things that I support that makes me look like some deranged maniac who put no planning into my ideas when I've spent the last couple of comments throughly explain the logic and reasoning behind what I believe. I've been respectful to you and only argued against what you've said, and I only ask that you do the same.
As for your first comment, it's clear who would benefit from a vanguard party that is aligned with Marxist-Leninist ideology, that being the proletariat, the class that would be the ruling class of this new society. I agree that I may not have alleviated the concerns some may have of abuses of power, but that's because I wasn't trying to. I was trying to explain why, despite the potential of abuses of power, hierarchy and authority will be necessary after the abolition of capitalism.
1/3 You're wrong. I've said plenty. My character limit hasn't limited me in any significant way because I've constantly sent multiple comments to single responses and you know that. I haven't engaged in any circular reasoning. The premise of my argument was not used to prove my argument, which is what a circular argument is. Nothing that I've talked about has been remotely fantastical. My argument has consistently maintained a logically cohesive structure. I'm not going to tolerate...
2/3 ...you constantly insulting me. First you essentially accused me of supporting a bloody and illogical revolution when everything I've said prior indicated the opposite, and now you're saying that my argument in favor of a vanguard state that I've presented logical argumentation for is equivalent to the, seemingly, completely illogical position of specific anarchist who idealisticly want to rush into their desired goal with no cohesive plan.
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