Whoever is making the decisions about distribution and factory management is effectively a state at that point

This is objectively false. You can do all these things and not have a state. See: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works

You’ll need a military to keep your neighboring countries from taking all your stuff/people/land, and you’ll need some kind of police force to keep those few assholes you have internally from just kidnapping people or stealing everything that isn’t nailed down whatever

As you have pointed out here, the state will always be the enemy of progress, will stand in the way of and disrupt every attempt at creating a more equitable society (which must exist apart from a state, since a state will always trend toward fascism, without exception).

For this reason, most anarchists start practicing our ideals immediately and do not await a revolution. We try to educate people and inform them. We work imperfectly within desperately broken and inequitable systems to introduce more equity and justice.

Want to see an example of this in action? Look up the Zapatistas.

Oh look, the “capitalism is human nature” folk have arrived!

Thoroughly debunked propaganda. Blocked.

Good point. I always browse by new, so I forgot that that’s a thing.

I guess that explains why posts seem to start with some productive discussion, but then tend to get derailed over time. It gets exhausting having to explain the very basics over and over again, but maybe I need more patience. I too grew up propagandized, and thankfully I’ve had some people help me learn.

Communism does not require a state. What part of “a stateless, classless society” are you failing to grasp?

Even state authoritarian communist nations at least ostensibly seek a stateless, classless society. That’s the whole fucking point.

And you don’t need a state for those other things either. Do you think anarchists just throw shit at the wall and hope for the best? There are functioning anarchist communities which have no state. If they did, then they wouldn’t be anarchist.

That distribution doesn’t have to be top down. And as communism is a stateless society, the entire concept is predicated on the absence of top down distribution. Read up on democratic confederalism, parecon, project cybersin (admittedly done with the presence of a state but there’s nothing about the system the necessitates one).

The CNT-FAI, zapatistas, rojava, and free territories of ukraine can all speak to decentralized militias. For auth-left examples just check out maoist militant orgs, they drew a ton of inspiration for anarchists in how to manage militias.

Most anarchists are prison abolitionists, I’m not going to summarize that one, look into it if you wish

Market economies can and have existed in horizontal societies. There’s nothing inherently contradictory regarding trade regulations in a horizontal society

Well of course, there would be no nation ideally, so the concept of a national scale is a bit incompatible in a way, isn’t it? As you pointed out in another comment, the existence of nations only threatens progress and equity! They can and do disrupt any such attempt. I mean, look what happened to the Spanish anarchists, and what the US has done every time a remotely leftist movement has taken hold in Latin America.

I don’t agree with the Marxist-Leninists, but even for them the end goal is (at least in theory) to advance to statelessness and classlessness. We anarchists don’t agree that such a thing can be achieved via a state. A state will never offload its power. Its whole shtick is coercion and control, and it will hold onto that at all costs.

utopia

Very few anarchists would use this term. The concept of a utopia is rather antithetical to anarchism, by most people’s assessment. “Utopia” implies a perfect society with no room to progress. I doubt such a thing is possible, and I think it might be rather harmful to imagine we’ve arrived at perfection. It would stifle progress, now wouldn’t it?

People grossly misunderstanding both anarchism and communism: nothing new under the sun lol

That’s assuming anarchists agree with Marx’s definition of the state. Which, famously, they don’t. It’s far too nebulous to be useful for analysis, theory or prefigurarion. Marx isn’t the end all be all of left wing politics. Here’s a short video going into more depth on anarchist criticisms of the Marxist conception of the state.

To quote Malatesta “Anarchists, including this writer, have used the word State, and still do, to mean the sum total of the political, legislative, judiciary, military and financial institutions through which the management of their own affairs, the control over their personal behaviour, the responsibility for their personal safety, are taken away from the people and entrusted to others who, by usurpation or delegation, are vested with the powers to make the laws for everything and everybody, and to oblige the people to observe them, if need be, by the use of collective force.”

If you’re going to debate anarchist ideas, you should use anarchist definitions so at the very least you understand what you’re criticizing.

Definitions matter and communism has been understood as a stateless, classless, moneyless society for as long as the term has existed. The only people who would contest that definition are either ignorant or anti-communist actors who have a vested interest in muddying the waters. And I don’t think those individuals should have the final say on what is and isn’t communism.

Lenin didn’t practice or install a communist society, and as you’ve noted, he didn’t intend to. Council communists and even libertarian marxists (Marxist autonomists for example) are both horizontal ideologies and despite some linguistic differences from anarchism, I consider them comrades. They can call it a state if they want, anarchists would disagree. But if the only difference between us and them is definitions, I don’t really see an issue. That’s something that can be debated post-revolution

Unfortunately, it’s just another in a long line of people who completely misunderstand anarchist theory and instead argue with a figment of their own imagination, based on years of propaganda.

On one hand, I should have more patience to educate people like that citing books and real-life examples. On the other hand, after a post’s been up for nearly a day, I get fucking exhausted with explaining to yet another person why they are completely off base. I come online to escape the people like that who I’m surrounded by in my backwards-ass red state. If they’re really interested in knowing why they’re wrong, they can reference my other comments. But I don’t have time for them.

“Now I am become chad, winner of arguments” -Facebones, father of the Terachad, after winning the first argument

Is that how you spell that? Jesus I’m stupid

That’s a lovely haiku. Don’t sell yourself short.

Thank you!

I’m just a cheap knockoff

I refuse to accept this