this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm
This is all so wrong. First of all, most anarchist advocate for prefiguritive politics, or "building a new world within the shell of the old" which is why things like Food Not Bombs exists, along with many many other anarchist projects specifically aimed at building a stateless, moneyless, classes society. They don't NOT want to simply abolish the state completely overnight.
Anarchists have come up with a WHOLE lot of ways that a society could be run, and they generally don't think that there's a one size fits all solution that would work for everybody.
You haven't read a single thing about anarchism that didn't come from a Marxist source, have you?
There still has to be a point where there is a state and then a point where there is not. Are you advocating for seizing control of that state before it seizes to exist, or does your political program want to stay outside of the state until the state stops existing?
The fact that anarchists can't agree on a unified course of action is a big part of the reason why all these different ways of running society that people have dreamed up remain firmly in the realm of fantasy.
I'm not an anarchist but in their defense, while anarchism proper has never had lasting success the Zapatistas are much less centralized than other socialist experiments and have taken a lot of inspiration from anarchist principles. Left unity should mean that we take an earnest and good faith approach to learning about what we have in common, not just seizing any opportunity to dunk on the other "team."
Also, even MLism still recognizes that different contradictions demand different approaches. Marx doesn't prescribe a one-size-fits-all approach either. For some revolutions the right move is a guerilla struggle. For others a general strike. For others it's about landless peasants doing protracted struggle. So on and so on.
I generally agree that there's no one size fits all approach. However, any effective organization needs to be grounded in material reality. Discussing concrete examples of organization like Zapatistas is useful because they are achieving something tangible, but saying that people dreamed up plenty of ways to organize society is not very useful of itself.
There are at least six feuding Marxist orgs where I live, I don't think this is a valid critique of anarchism.
Sure, in initial stages you'll have many different orgs. This was the case during Russian revolution as well. However, eventually a single unified vanguard emerges and people get on the same page regarding how to move forward. There is no mechanism for creating a unified vanguard under anarchist approach where there is no central authority by design.
Good point.
What does "Commune" entail in this context?
A Commune, in Marxist-Leninist theory, is a revolutionary political-economic structure where the proletariat collectively owns and democratically controls the means of production, abolishing capitalist hierarchies and bourgeois state machinery. It is rooted in the analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871 by Marx and Engels who saw it as a prototype of proletarian dictatorship. The key aspect of a commune is that it embodies direct workers' democracy, dismantling the separation between state and society. Lenin further expanded this as a transitional framework where a decentralized network of soviets composed of laborers self-govern, eroding class distinctions and advancing toward a stateless, classless communism.
Are there any examples of this 'late stage Communism'? I thought it was more about the central planning aspect. And if not are the USSR/China/Russia even Communist?
Late-Stage Communism must be global, so no, it hasn't existed yet. The USSR and PRC are examples of Socialist countries governed by Communist parties trying to bring about Communism.
Does a global expansion require imperialism? Getting the entire world to sign up before dissolving sounds pretty mission impossible.
If by Imperialism you mean millitant expansionism, no. If by Imperialism you mean the form of economic extraction practiced by countries like the US, also no. The basis for the abolition of borders isn't one of legalistic matters, but economic redundancy. Borders become more and more unnecessary in more and more interconnected economies, and even become a barrier on progress, ergo they will wither over time much the same way the state would.
Spreading revolution is not imperialism. Imperialism isn't just "when I invade another country" it has a specific economic meaning
The contradictions of capitalism are universal and inherent to the system. Much the contrary, as soon as the major seats of global financial capital are defeated I don't see why the unwashed masses of the world would wait very long to seize power. As the system currently stands, comprador colonial governments only maintain stability because they can buy weapons and maintain large armies thanks to the imperialist powers.
It's an ideological competition between different ways of organizing society. We have a western model of capitalist organization and the socialist model advanced by China. The western model is visibly failing in every regard right now, so there is every reason to expect that more and more countries will look to Chinese model as a result.
I feel like the Chinese model is already way too far into pragmatism to ever idealistically flip the switch to abolishing their state at the endgame.
The abolition of the state isn't a legalistic choice, but a result of the abolition of class. The abolition of class is an economic result, not a legalistic choice either.
I think you're confusing the state with all government and structure, which isn't what Marxists are talking about when we speak of the withering of the state.
There won’t be a moment where the “abolish capitalism and the state” button is pressed. That’s not how these things works. They are intractable society wide slow changes like a glacier that move slow but cannot be stopped. Was there a moment where feudal kings pressed the “abolish feudalism” button and the rich became the new rulers? No, it was a hundreds year long process of lurching progress