Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you’re talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn’t do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one’s a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice. Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying “Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can’t have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority”.

Basically you're arguing against the state, which we sure both want. The abolishion of class society, meaning one class is not subjugating it's will on another, be it capitalist or a socialist state bureaucrats.

I think that without a state you cannot abolish the existing forces that give rise to class society as it's not a even playing field between labour and capital. You need a form of authority to make the reorganization of political economy possible.

The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you’re ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.

authority is that of the council

authority

How are you not aware of what you're saying? Do you want me to do an anarchist caricature of going to the restaurant like you did in your example? Only the proper application would be of the building the restaurant and how noone likes to do the actual work of building it as everyone is free not to do it. There's no authority. If you tell me that the hunger is the authority im going to laugh

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (13 children)

Basically you’re arguing against the state, which we sure both want.

You are aware that communism, too, not just anarchism, is a stateless society?

(Side note: In the ole socialist definition of "state". Both still qualify for the modern political theory definition of state which bogs down to "a people, a territory, a type of governing system (organisation)". Gotta be careful with that one it often gets confused).

I think that without a state you cannot abolish the existing forces that give rise to class society as it’s not a even playing field between labour and capital.

Indeed, without state power labour would have the upper hand. You saw that in the Russian revolution where workers very quickly formed soviets and kept things running. Then the Bolsheviks re-established state power, deliberately destroying horizontal worker organisation with hierarchical structure, and everything went to shit.

Then, going back a tiny bit:

The abolishion of class society, meaning one class is not subjugating it’s will on another, be it capitalist or a socialist state bureaucrats.

How do you envision a state without state bureaucrats?

Only the proper application would be of the building the restaurant and how noone likes to do the actual work of building it as everyone is free not to do it.

How do you come to the conclusion that nobody likes building things? Doubly so if there's a couple of people around who like cooking for the community who could really use a nice place to provide their services?

There's actually interesting modern polls around this, made in the context of UBI: The overwhelming majority say that if they received UBI, they'd still be working about as much. Maybe get another job, maybe cut down hour a bit, maybe take a sabbatical to do learn a new trade and switch there, but overall the wheels would keep churning at about the same speed. Meanwhile, the same overwhelming majority, when asked what other people would be doing, said "they'd stop working". That kind of mind-bug is a mixture of capitalist realism and hierarchical realism, the notion that people need to feel the whip to be motivated to be productive. That without imposition of force, humanity as we know it would cease to exist: We'd lose our zest, our creativity, our ambition, our love for one another, everything. That humanity is an inherently asocial species, held together by the powers that be. That we need to be domesticated to be ourselves.

[+] brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A superpower which doesn't exist any more, it was torn apart by its own lack of productivity and internal contradictions.

The industrialisation went quickly, true, but heavy industry was the only thing the Soviet Union ever got remotely good at, its state apparatus failed to incorporate advances made elsewhere, heck it was so bad that the GDR started its own chip programme because the Soviets wouldn't and they needed chips to stay competitive in the market of industrial machinery. Did you know that in the 80s VW Wolfsburg was full of GDR-built machines? They used the proceeds to buy things that are necessary to keep Prussians happy and not rebelling, such as coffee (I'm being absolutely serious here coffee was a big political issue in the GDR).

Meanwhile, rapid increases in lifespans and living standards aren't exactly rare because it's not actually that hard to get half-way decent when you start from a point of utter destitution.

The USSR did achieve nothing special in that regard, and definitely nothing special enough to justify the abuses that come with their approach.

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