this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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They really don't. They are using it very simplistically.
Marx's descriptions of centralization have both analytical and prescriptive/predictive components. Marx is saying that the caoitalist system creates a toop for its own demise through the concentration of workers and production. That this, along with exploitation, makes oroletarians revolutionary. They can be made class conscious, much of it organically through their relation to production, and they can wield power, organizing and directing their own labor.
This means that Marx predicts where to focus efforts for building revolution, not whether a successful revolution must be centralized. Anarchists made major co yributions to the development of the proletariat because they saw the same dynamic.
Where Marx would diverge is in his position that the state is a necessary tool for oppressing the bourgeoisie, which some, but not all, Marxist anarchists would disagree with. Not all anarchists focus on the immediate abolition of the state, they instead promote, say, workers councils, in Russian you would call them soviets.
Via the logic of dual power those others means of organization are also just states by another name.
Now, the fact that Marxist anarchists will disagree with forma of centralization post-revolution might seem like something that makes them non-Marxist, but I would disagree. I think this puts them in a category of Marxists that accept Gus key insights but also level reasonable criticisms. It does not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
For example, if disagreeing with a conclusion Marx (and Engels) drew from their work meant you were not Marxist, there would be no Marxists alive today, because they constantly predicted imminent revolution in places like Germany. It was, in fact, the periphery or quasi-periphery that was more fruitful, tying national liberation to anti-imperialism, and Germany took a capitalist path. These are the developments of Lenin, Mao, etc - not adhering exactly what Marx said, but taking it seriously as a science and allowing informed experiment. The material base for revolutiom is even something that has been, arguably, happened upon and only after it seems to work, gets developed into theory. This is good revolutionary science, though: their lessons do tend to bear fruit.
A lot of this is plainly obscurantist, whether you mean it that way or not. The basic handwave of "Marx was wrong about some things" without actually investigating the character and defensibility of any given claim that is contrary to Marx (it being contrary to Marx isn't even the point, claims need to be evaluated just in general) is a line of deceptive rhetoric useful only to create arbitrary confusion and slip in bad ideas if not into people's beliefs then at least into respectability. It's a tool of revisionism (that thing that Lenin was constantly banging on about, remember?).
It's such a ridiculous strawman on top of it because absolutely no one on this board is a classical Marxist. We probably have more genuine Posadists than classical Marxists. This is a critique for impressing idiots.
I would furthermore say that throwing out centralization is throwing out Marx's model of development, his idea that capitalism must collapse or necessarily develop into socialism. The whole point of it is that monopolies a) give workers a working machine for centralized production that b) can be directed in a socialized manner like production is already "socialized" under capitalists.
Without centralized production, which is a key point of Marx, a revolution can only be petite-bourgeois. Without a robust system of controls on the relations between little polities or however big you think is okay for centralization (since it's still centralization, just of more, fragmented entities), there is nothing stopping the ones with more or more-critical natural wealth from exploiting the poorer ones, since production still exists on a large scale even if government does not. There is nothing preventing them from allowing their poorer neighbors to collapse and then proletarianizing them. At least, nothing but charity, but as has been established for centuries under capitalism, if your system is dependent on charity to function, it doesn't really function and is waiting to fail. In short, centralization is needed to prevent individual petite-bourgeois cooperative polities from subjugating their neighbors.
Are you a Marxist, or an eclectic anarchist who fancies some of what Marxists happen to say? If you're an anarchist, go off, site rules dictate that that is none of my business, but don't pretend to be a Marxist because you co-opted passages from Marxists that you enjoy why using obscurantist bullshit to excuse dismissing what you don't like.
Given the vagaries of your polemic I think you may want to cool it down a bit.
Parent's citation does not go much deeper than asserting Marx's ideas held to this idea and so you can't be Marxist without it. It does not, in fact, justify it coherently, elevating it beyond "Marx said" and into "this is actually an essential component". It just states the latter. You actually end up doing the same in this comment.
I directly responded to the citation provided and explained why an uncritical adherence to everything Marx said, including this topic, is itself unscientific and will 100% guarantee that you will be wrong. So a person actually need to justify a point beyond "Marx said" and justify why it is essential and not, say, something he was objectively wrong about.
It is not deceptive, it is simply fact, and again you should cool it.
The arbitrary confusion of not assuming Marx was a God that was right about everything? What on earth are you talking about?
Instead of vague editorializations, do your best to just be direct and specific.
Understanding that Marx was not correct about everything and that there are components up for scientific investigation is very basic Marxism-Leninism. Which you know, of course, but you seem compelled to be absurdly maximalist in this response.
The topic of discussion is whether you can be a Marxist anarchist. Parent linked a poorly constructed argument for why you can't be and I am replying to that. It is trivially obvious that classical Marxism is not the topic and that this is not an attack on everyone that favors (vaguely stated) centralism, but a defense of our comrades against poor polemics.
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It, of course, is not. As I explained and as you do not actually contradict in your comment.
Yes I already discussed central colocation as centralization that Marx was talking about. Maybe I should be more literal and expound at length just in case someone wants to pedantically jump in 5 comments deep?
Great, did you actually read what I said about this? You are not addressing the point I made.
For what purpose was it key? I already described it. It was, you know, the point I made about the acceotability of our Marxist anarchist comrades. Maybe you'd like to talk to them on the anarchism comm?
You have now deviated from discussing Marx's core principles and into the specifics of how to address revolution developed later, a clear reference to the historical context of the Bolsheviks. This was their answer to the petty bourgeois nature of the peasantry after the revolution, after all.
If I were using your approach towards me, I would say you were deceptively swapping the premise of our disagreement to focus on your sectarian preferences to have them masquerade as a relevant critique. But that would be uncharitable and uncomradely, don't you think? I think you did so accidentally and organically because you are being defensive about Marxism-Leninism-qua-Lenin, which is of course not really the topic in the first place. Marxist anarchists can develop on classical Marxism just like the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, did. And a few can even develop on Marxism-Leninism and synthesize from there, which IMO is quite a feat.
To be honest, at the moment I would rather not feed into your behavior by answering.
I see you have followed the thesis-body-thesis method of writing an essay, though the thesis is just a thinly-veiled "fuck you" with no substance behind it.
I clearly acknowledged Marx could be wrong and how productive critique that remained Marxist was performed, my point was obviously that the vagaries about Marx being able to be wrong disguise that there is a difference between different contradiction to Marx, whether they are criticizing some application of the system as being incorrect or they are revising the basic system itself. Do you understand? There are different types of "critique" and some of them are revisionist, the latter kind specifically. Keeping in epistemic suspense about if Marxism is actually correct, that doesn't make the revisionists ipso facto wrong, but it makes them not Marxists, just Marxist-inspired maybe-socialists.
You can find lots of helpful information about the utility of centralization even in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. My apologies for not providing a reference. Not everything the Bolsheviks did was due to innovations by Lenin, and I argue that here it was a straightforward application of Marx's model of development and the "victory of democracy".
Edit: furthermore, and I suppose this is my fault for not being specific, I didn't mean that an existing petite-bourgeois class that is an element of the polity of a newly-socialist nation-state would do a revolt like Ukraine did, though it's not a completely inappropriate comparison, I meant that under some decentralized mode of production in a communist global order, there is nothing preventing the more advantages collectives from developing practically petite-bourgeois relationships as coops exploiting their neighbors. It is true that this bears some similarity to Stalin's view on how to minimize racial violence (or so I've been told), but I'm not getting it from him, just the bare facts of the situation as-stipulated.
I object to the claim of sectarianism. You can be an anarchist, I don't give a shit, but I don't like people wearing Marx's skin.
Not could be wrong. Marx was actually wrong, along with Engels, about many things. This is not contestable. This is why we have to understand what is essential to be "Marxism" or "Marxist" and what is not, because if the standard is just "Marx said something in disagreement with you", then nothing is Marxist. At least, unless you believe revolution first and most strongly arrived in the industrialized European nations and it did so in the early 1900s. I don't think we're entertaining that idea, it is just to drive home the point.
I don't remember seeing this.
No, I am really not sure what you are trying to say with that. It is written very unclearly. But I will repeat myself to say that pointing out Marx is not always right is a direct response to the link OP posted, a poorly-formulated argument. You have taken it upon yourself to treat this like a damnable offense like I'm injecting esotericism, but I am not.
Yes I know what revisionism is.
The first part is something that is neither said nor implied by anybody in this thread nor any Marxist anarchists under discussion.
Yes I have read Engels and taught this text several times, despite your intense condescension. Here is a link for you to review it. I assume the parts you would identify are in Part III, such as "Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more of the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into State property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property."
i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat, as has already been mentioned.
But then beginning on the very next line:
In other words, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering away of the state. No timeline is presented outside of the necessity of abolishing class relations.
Can you tell me how this is incompatible with Marxist anarchists' formulations? Have you ever read them? Do you think they are just stupid and didn't read Marx before creating the entire tendency? There are very silly "Marxists" out there, so this is something you could be saying.
The extensive establishment and integration of the party and state, and therefore extended centralization, were an innovation crafted to their conditions. They discovered it to be necessary, at least from their perspectives, and it's difficult to argue that they were not the most effective faction in opposing capitalist revanchism both external and domestic.
Okay. I'm not sure what to say to this, but I do want to point out that you have ignored basically the entirety of my response.
Can you be a Marxist anarchist?
Do you have some names or books that represent this line of politics? I'm kind of disillusioned by what I perceive as weaknesses in both anarchism and communism and am intrigued by a synthesis.
It is good to read widely and be critical of all, then use this experience to reach a useful synthesis where you do stuff with comrades.
Many ancoms would describe themselves this way. Emma Goldman used various labels but tends to be considered of that school. Most people I know are those I know personally or are of the main canons. Luna Oi's husband is an ancom Youtuber and of course Luna is an ML and they synthesize. That might be a nice place to start because it will be contemporary and it will be from someone definitively in favor of communist revolutions that succeeded.
OK thank you. I'm familiar with Luna and need to resub to her channel.