IDK how Western anarchists think anything will be built. Are people supposed to just spontaneously self-organize to build solarpunk high speed rail?
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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I'm not an anarchist, but a lot of people here are misrepresenting anarchism. Anarchists don't reject coordination or planning, only hierarchical state control. Large infrastructure would be built by federated councils, unions, and communes, with common plans and technical bodies coordinated by accountable, recallable delegates. Central coordination without a state hierarchy is entirely possible.
My disagreement with anarchism is different: I think only a state with a strong coercive apparatus can survive sustained imperial pressure and capitalist encirclement.
Central coordination without a state hierarchy is entirely possible.
Its not a state, its a insert extremely convoluted term that does everything a state does
These gentlemen think when they have changed the names of things, they have changed the things themselves. That is how these profound thinkers mock the whole world.
- Engels
In fairness, a lot of socialist theory has a distinction between a "state" and a "government". The former is the repressive apparatus (police, army and ideological state aparatuses) and the latter consists of the civilian administration which deals with centralised organisation of labor/economy. This is why marx could describe a "stateless society" as developed-communism.
But in that case we again land on square one problem of pushing the communism button instantly.
Yeah. I'm an ML
And if inevitably the projects reach outside of the commune line into another commune line, how would the intercommunal council be called lol. At what point do you just have a state without calling it a state?
You can call a federation of communes a "state" if you want. Anarchists are not against this kind of "state". As long as power flows bottom-up by delegation and recall.
Sounds a lot like democratic centralism.
The "delegation and recall" part of it? Totally! The "vanguard party" and "DotP" parts? Not so much.
sorry i'm not good at telling tone and maybe i'm just not smart and not proficient at theory but is this not like the soviet system
Early Soviets maybe, before war communism, for like less than a year... There was a reason anarchists tried to assassinate Lenin as a counterrevolutionary.
mmm yeah thats true but either way the idea of from the bottom going to top governance is something characteristic of most AES innit? genuine question
Definitely!
the person in the commune who likes to build high-speed rail will do it in exchange for produce from the person who likes gardening. I'm not joking.
Anarchists don't seem to put much thought into how their ideas will be translated into reality. The most complex organization they can envision is basically a street gang that paves roads instead of dealing drugs. As based as it sounds it's clearly inefficient yet anarchists seem more interested in vibes and less interested in results.
This applies to just about any left wing organizing effort, at least in Eastern Europe.
All of them will have been doing some real praxis. Either it's theory, organizing protests, running food kitchens, other sort of mutual-aid etc.
Each of them wants to define what Marxism really is, assuming they even get that far to read marx and maybe whole 5 people here. Each year they throw more books at me and I have entertained them and respectably read their books.
Have they read my recommendations? No. They'd rather go debate with a liberal. Our governments have been stealing money from pension funds, medical funds, they've been stealing and plundering while we do nothing about it.
And I have never seen a leftist group here try to do anything to secure those funds instead. They deal with the consequences of consequences, but never take it a step further. Just like how they will blame USSR for collaborating with Nazi's but ignore the fact that Western allies pushed them into that position.
Thus I have come to my conclusion, after years of both practical experience (real world interactions) and theory, they have conditioned us into what's known and Splitting in psychology, we have Extremes, but we don't have that much Radicals.
The difference between a Radical and Extremist mindset is that they are both willing to make huge amounts of sacrifices, but one of them is grounded in reality while the other is metaphysical. A radical can shake hands with their enemy and then come out of there uncompromised. An extremist will kill all hostages to save a few.
Yep, 20 billions people shifting the industry and the agriculture during the spanish civil war was definitely just a big street gang. You seems to be misinformed
as long as no one is telling them what to do, that is the most morally important aspect i've come to find
Anarchists don't seem to put much thought into how their ideas will be translated into reality.
Is that true, or is that just what you assume about anarchists based on internet memes? Have you actually read anarchist theory?
I think the real problem is that half the people here, including said anarchists, have only seen the memes. Let's throw books at each other for the next seventy years dammit!
Anarkids: Let's dismantle the state and return to small localized productions instead of large industrialized labor.
Disabled people, the elderly, people who live in remote rural regions with insufficient arable land: 😕
Anarchists being the left version of libertarians is a hill I will die on.
Left-wing Libertarians/Libertarian Socialists are pretty much indistinguishable from Anarchists.
They do love to call themselves left-libertarians.
‘Libertarian’ was practically synonymous with (left-wing) anarchism before rightists co-opted it.
Still the ideology of both those isn't much more complex than : "big gov bad, no rules no masters no toilet paper"
Libertarian literally was just the euphemism for anarchist when calling yourself the later could get you arrested.
It was intentionally reclaimed when it fell into obscurity by i want to say Rothbard I think who was angry liberal meant a social progressive and not what we now think a libertarian is.
I thought libertarianism originally was 1700s rich kids trying to find an ideological excuse to give their chamber maid syphilis.
That's being a Libertine
I stand corrected, though I do see some similarities.
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