On the internet I don’t see too many Anarchists give arguments past “communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state” and “we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!” Which like…is not convincing to me at all. I’ve engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that’s purely anecdotal.
So, I’d really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.
I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you
You’re forgetting so easily that most of the industry that’s “required” to support a population has been offshored. Much of it went to a neighbor that in fact has multiple empirical examples of exactly what I’m talking about, with government crackdown being either fully stalled or outright absent.
A revolutionary situation isn’t going to pop out of nowhere and hold contested territory. It’s going to need capillaries in the hinterland so it can support itself with lower recognition and risk. And I’m not going to rehash the explanation of how a good quality of life can be secured mostly independently of gasoline technology here.
Before you started drifting the conversation with selective clapback quotes and refusing to specify an example as I asked for, you were talking about “defending the RevolutionTM” from outside forces. Now you’re talking about adversaries running on idealism popping up inside the territory, who are not a small minority, are not better off in the alternative to capitalism, and who somehow are equipped with everything they need to set up the systen of subordination and oppression again. I’m not sure you’re arguing in good faith.
But my answer to the counter-revolutionaries question is that imperialist infrastructure is harder and lengthier to build and easier to destroy than autonomous infrastructure. It takes months of construction to build a bridge that can carry military equipment, and only 1 well-placed explosive to nullify it. If the power grid and petroleum distribution network were knocked out, the armed forces couldn’t move a mile- and the same would be true of suburban pickup-truck-driving reactionaries, who would more likely shrivel in their subdivisions or get in a gunfight with their neighbors at the first sign of scarcity. Meanwhile for every anarchist it would be a sort of dream come true.
Moving prior to the question of military contention, if an anarchist movement in the West was integrated with the economy like China has been since the 80s, stamping it out would be an act of self-destruction by capitalists. If it wasn’t, attempting to suppress it would still be weakening the metropole by the state turning on its own territory and population. In any given revolution, you don’t start out from square one saying you’re going to annihilate the government. You conceal your intention while you build up your capacities, so that you actually get a chance to act instead of being infiltrated, compromised, and executed.
I had a whole bunch of these discussions with 2 people in my scene IRL years ago, who insisted on the need to conduct conventional warfare or take over the military from the inside, under the assumption that you publicly declare a much larger enemy from the very inception. They had both just gotten out of the armed forces themselves. I call this “army brain”. Anyway, neither of them are still involved in anti-capitalist organizing. One of them moved away and the other got kicked out of the local PSL.