this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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First of all, I want to say that I appreciate your viewpoint, it's far more constructive than the other user essentially saying "Marxism bad."
The issue I take with your descriptor is that eventually production and distribution do become necessary. States arise due to class relations, and class relations arise due to modes of production. In cooperative-based production and distribution, ie cells producing largely for themselves but also exchanging through mutual aid, eventually class distinctions do rise historically, even if people resist that. We cannot just return to hunter/gatherer lifestyles.
I agree that mutual aid is a great tool, especially in times of struggle and in systems like capitalism where the wealthiest plunder the wealth created by the working classes, but this ultimately is derived from production, which necessitates analysis of the mode of production.
Communism is less about an end goal, and more about a continuous process to create a society that meets the needs of everyone. It isn't about sacrificing until some day a better society can be achieved, it's about building that better society outright and being aware of the social transformations it goes through as production and distribution are collectivized and the state and class wither away.
Oh I absolutely could spend a lot of mental effort trying to explain "marxism bad" (It would actually be Vanguardism bad, marxism ancient) but I just don't care enough. I have no interest in being antagonistic (except maybe for a couple of quips), cause it's not going to change anything.
Production and distribution (henceforth economy) is necessary there isn't a magical grace period where people stop needing food. For any anarchist system to work they need to have an economy. The anarchist systems that exist right now solve this by relying on donations and members having jobs. As more and more anarchist systems start popping up (although this is probably never going to happen) this would transform to a more independent/self-sustaining system. But what that system looks like doesn't really matter, because whatever it is will be determined by the ones who make it.
This is the ultimate difference between anarchism and everything else, and the reason why I think so many people bounce off it. Anarchism requires belief in people. That whatever system they come up with will work and compliment others who will be able to build their own systems: Economic, social or political.
Anarchy is a process of creating social structures that defy oppression, control and manipulation, and believing that these structures will be able to solve the problems they face. It's not just about economy but about the connections people form. When I look at communists I see only economic analysis: Class, Production, Ownership. Concepts which are secondary to the thing that actually matters: eliminating oppression and exploitation, not just economic, but also social and political.
You sound cool and seem to have enough patience to counter ML-propaganda. Hope you stick around :)
I'm in a mood to be social for a bit. I don't really have any IRL outlet so this will have to do.
Also it seems hexbear took intrest in my post and for better or worse I've decided to engage them: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/59334692
Ugh. Well, good luck if you try to engage in such a bad-faith space.
A deep comment thread without a single intentional misquote and 'so you hate pancakes' tactic. Love to see it.
This sounds like utopianism, and i don't know if it's whether you didn't do a thorough job of explaining anarchism or that this is actually what anarchism is.
That's not what anarchism is. It's just what I currently think of when discussing anarchism. Anarchism is nothing more than opposition to authority. And while there are common beliefs there is no single understanding of what exactly that means or looks like.
The reason it seems utopian is because our current society rewards selfishness and greed, so it feels like a society that doesn't seem to regulate them is missing something. Anarchism regulates them by using social pressure.
That's what all post-capitalist forms of socioeconomic organization aim to do anyways, so it is a necessary step
I was referring to this part of your comment:
I don't want to speak on whether anarchism as a concept is possible or not—it can be depending on material realities—I'm more speaking to your concept of "that system will be established if and when more anarchies pop up (which you're skeptical of yourself)". So my question is this:
What's to be done in the interim? You've acknowledged that multiple anarchic communes are highly unlikely to spring up anytime soon, so how do you get there?
What exactly are you advocating for really?
Getting people involved. Creating spaces where anarchic relations are the norm, and letting these spaces naturally grow, split and transform. What I'm talking about isn't a single political system that people follow but rather a different way to approach everyday interactions with each other. It's not "we need to take over factories and farms and start establishing collective production and ownership". It's "we need to create anarchic connections with the people who work in the farms and factories and build relationships to exchange resources among ourselves without money". I don't advocate for the destruction of the state because the path I want to take to anarchism ignores the state entirely. (or at least until they start shooting at me).
anarchism, marxism, feminism, egalitarianism, anti-racism. these are all deeply interrelated utopianist movements.
Utopian here meaning unrealistic, not what's ideal
Technically utopianism refers to the practice of imagining a better society and thinking you can implement it through fiat, ie by convincing everyone to agree with you. It's like theorycrafting a society and thinking that you just need to convince everyone it's the way.
Examples include the Owenites and Saint-Simone, both of which tried their own little isolated societies that they tried to get others to copy, but they fizzled and died. Marxism advanced upon this by looking at socialism not as something to create in a vacuum, but as the logical next step in class struggle, ie feudalism gave way to capitalism which gives way to socialism which gives way to communism due to the unfolding of dialectical processes and relationships (in example, the centralization of production into monopoly in capitalism kills competition, increases the proletariat with ratio to capitalists, and paves the way for central planning and collectivization of production and distribution).
Utopianism is unrealistic, but it isn't defined by that.
That's a strict Engelsian application of the term. Maybe i should've used idealistic. Particularly in reference to this portion of their comment:
Also i think it's best if Marxists abandon this framing:
It sounds teleological and gave rise to the many erroneous anarchist critiques we're now dealing with. You can say that the internal contradictions that capitalism present create the possibility for socialism, but that by no means guarantees it
I'd agree that idealistic (vs "idealism") would be more accurate.
As for the bit on historical progression, it was a simplification. Russia was semi-feudal when it became socialist, China and Vietnam were colonized agrarian countries, Cuba was essentially a plantation, etc. Progression in modes of production isn't so much a strict order but instead a natural progression, and moreover the point is that the driving factor behind their development has been class struggle and evolution in technology changing how we live, produce, and distribute.
ah. alright. okay. got it. that's on me. what i was describing would be more eutopian then
No worries👍
Ignoring the bit on "vanguardism bad and Marxism ancient" for now, though I disagree vehemontly with both. One thing that you bring up is that a lot of the currently or formerly existing anarchist societies depend on outside production and donation. It simply isn't feasible to produce, say, a smartphone horizontally. You need rare earths, highly trained individuals for circuit manufacturing, incredible amounts of previous capital and continuous organization of labor and logistics to make it all come together. The anarchists can either concede that smartphones are unnecessary (along with anything else that takes such huge production scales to create), or concede that they depend on outside production that can do so.
Marxists do focus on class, the mode of production, the base. Marxists focus on the liberation of all peoples, not just those within our immediate communities. And to be fair, most anarchists also tend to care about liberation for everyone, not just their immediate communities, but the key difference is that Marxism does not depend on everyone believing the same thing, or rely on production from the outside. Marxism focuses on the liberation of all oppressed peoples and the satisfaction of everyone's needs, forever.
Social relations are core to Marxism. The economy is just one such social relation, but there's also culture, hegemony, art, and class itself. You cannot have Marxism without analysis of social relations.
Of course if an anarchist community desires smartphone they will depend on other anarchist communities for the resources to build it or to acquire what they build. One of his early points is that in an anarchist world there will be a lot of anarchist communities and they will be different to one another because different people, different needs but that doesn't mean they will fight, they will co-exist, respect each other, depend on each other and share.
The exact quote was:
For some the concept of leaving is difficult, because in some of the systems the individual doesn't have a choice but anarchism is also about choice.
The sheer complexity and international logistics required to produce a smartphone far surpasses what can be created in relatively small communities, and horizontalism works better at smaller scales. A commune focused entirely on mining rare earths is going to have different class interests than one focused on semiconductor production, and at the scales these are currently produced at already horizontalism begins to break down.
If we imagine a global world of decentralized, interconnected anarchist cells, we need to grapple with how the geographical division of labor and resources will impact this mutual aid, or if it will eventually give way to competition and the resurgance of capitalism. Marxism's analysis of the continual growth in scale, complexity, and interconnectedness of production fits nicely with humanity taking a conscious role in this development and direct it towards satisfying needs rather than profits.
Anarcocapitalism can very well be one of those communities as long as it doesn't extinguish the freedom of choice of communities that don't want to partake in that and respects their choice and their living space.
People can figure it out, we are just not ready as a species our greed is too big and Marxisms is another proof of that greed.
That depends on capital being constrained by humanity, which has never been the case until socialists have overtaken the state and collectivized the principle aspects of the economy. Capitalism itself cannot exist without a state. This in turn overtakes and subsumes the surrounding communities. Anarcho-capitalism cannot last for more than an instant.
This is how I think about my own anarchism.
I don't disagree with you that class distinctions would naturally arise from the systems of production and distribution, but I don't see that as a problem really. There are some features of human society that feel analogous to gravity, in that they exist as functionally immutable forces that we must learn to navigate around and through. Even if we somehow achieved what we would consider to be a utopia, it's realistically not going to stay that way — there would inevitably be some event or new development that would disrupt the balance of things. Such change isn't necessarily bad, especially if we respond to it properly. It is inevitable though, which is why I find it useful to think of it as a process. I can't remember who I heard this from, but a phrase I like is "my goal isn't to make anarchism, but to make more anarchists"
I don't consider myself a communist, but I like your comment because it highlights how much we have in common. A communist society wouldn't necessarily be non-anarchist, and vice versa.
For now though, I find myself happy to shelve most ideological disputes with communists, because we're so far away from either an anarchist or communist society that it seems more productive to use our common ground to strive towards a world that both of us would agree is better.
One thing I want to clarify, communists do wish to work towards the full collectivization of production and distribution to suit the needs of all. Our stance is that the transition to such a society will be long, but that transitional state is also good. We want to be the droplets of rock that bore through mountains, through persistence and the carried weight of generations. I do agree that anarchists and communists should work together, especially in combatting the US Empire as the world's hegemon.