Difference between Anarchism and Left Communism?

I believe we do not have a very clear article on modernism. But the way I see it is; it is in a way (post)modernism. I like the way Loren Goldner is using the term post-modernism in order to define the post-war CP member intellectual-bureaucrats who saw the fact that CP's industrialisation policies were only effective in a certain era; where peasant question remaied, and where national capital necessitated some kind of leftist ideology to turn peasants into workers in a special context; WW2 or decadance in proper.

However after or close to the return of the crisis, the more intelligent cp intellectuals came to see that the old stalinist schemes are not working anymore, that the issue is no longer to develop a military industry and a corresponding stalinist miltarism.

So they turned to democratist, identity centered ideologies; castoriadis is the most clear expression of that. But he is still an exeption. Most people like deleuzei foucault etc were ex-cp members. Claimed that we are a "new era", whereas it was not the truth...

Interestingly, I've never really come across this position in an anarchist context. I've always associated it with Dauve.

I'd be extremely interested in any anarchist sources, predating Dauve, which say something similar.

~J.

Have you read Paul Avrich's Anarchist in the Russian Revolution. It is an extremely interesting book which deal with the Anarchists responses to the revolution through good use of original sources. You may find what you are looking for there.

Ta.

~J.

You are talking about how labour hierarchy came to be under capitalism, I am talking about how it is imposed, and by whom, and what effect it has on workers. Nowhere did I say that the capitalist state just decreed hierarchy in its first day of existence, and that it didn't evolve from "the very rules of capitalism." To be perfectly honest, I don't get your debating style. Why do you always ignore what is actually being said and come up with this long-winded and super-erudite explanation? I get it, you read books, you are smart, but can you please stay the fuck on topic?
Today, in our society, hierarchy IS imposed from above, through laws and cultural norms. It is an observable reality.

One who? Did I fucking say the healthcare system is a "form of hierarchy" and should be opposed on that basis?
Guaranteed health care is a real material benefit for all workers, including myself, so why the hell would I oppose it? Yes, it is hierarchical, but unlike racism, sexism, wageism and so on, it has actual benefits.
I am not arguing against the state from an anarcho-capitalist POV. This is something you made up because you like doing that. The state must be opposed because it enforces and defends capital, not because it hinders it.
But please, do go on and indulge yourself in whatever namecalling and trumped up accusations you wish to concoct, if it makes you happy.

Did I say it was "at the root"? I said it was an instrument by which capital maintains itself. I did not fucking say it was at the root.

Yes, that is true. It is a structural explanation for how hierarchy actually works within capitalism, so I don't see how it contradicts anything I said. Sexism is a consequence of the woman's relationship to the MoP, but it is also reinforced through social and cultural norms. It does not exist as a mere material effect of capital. It is imposed and confirmed, every day.
If patriarchal culture took no steps to vilify and dehumanize women, then the role of the "proletarian wife excluded from public production" is no longer justified, and appears for what it is, an act of violence.
To say that all inequalities exist because of capital, and to not explain how these inequalities are reinforced and reproduced daily is the worst kind of economic reductionism, that orthodox Marxist historiography is usually so guilty of.

Except this missed out an important point; for many workers today the struggle isn't just against capital (some may not even see their struggle in these theoretical terms), but against specific forms of hierarchical discrimination which are much more obvious to them than capital; these include sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and so on. To actively support struggles against these hierarchical forms of discrimination does not mean to ignore the root cause. But to ignore this discrimination and say "look, I understand your house was burned down by racists, but I only fight against capitalism per se, cause that's the root cause" is to be a doctrinaire leftist piece of shit. If you've ever experienced discrimination of any kind, you know how important and real hierarchies are amongst workers.

How do you socialize society by maintaining hierarchy? I'm genuinely curious, because it seems like a contradiction in terms.
Defending revolutionary gains in this crucial period of the revolution has to be made by the class itself, so what exactly is the hierarchy that you're proposing? Is it a party type structure as in the Russian case? or what? And if you're not talking of a vanguard, then give me a concrete example of the kind of hierarchy you think would be needed in a revolutionary context.

I don't think there is such a thing as "bureaucratic manner." An actual bureaucracy is a class separate from the workers that exists to serve its own purposes and maintain itself at any costs (as in Stalinist countries). Workers freely organizing production and distribution does not constitute a bureaucracy. Obviously there will be people who are more competent than others when it comes to planning and designing things, but it does not follow that these people have to become a class-for-itself, separated from the rest of the workers. The only way this can happen is if there is a state to enforce it; otherwise workers will simply regulate bureaucratic excesses as they arise.

Ok then. I agree that some people will do certain jobs that they are good at, while others will stick to what they know best. We won't all take turns at being surgeons. That's not what I mean when I speak in favor of abolishing hierarchy.
What I mean rather is that no worker will receive special favor for whatever reasons, whether for cultural, biological, professional, or whatever, reasons. As long as "to each according to their need from each according to their ability" is actually maintained, hierarchy, as I understand it, is impossible.

Yes the goal won't be achieved immediately, but the method of achieving it must be implemented immediately and completely, and I don't think Marx would have disagreed. Socialism only means an "intermediate state" for Lenin et al. For Marx, whatever the remnants of the old system, as long as there is waged labour enforced by a state (as in the case of the Bolsheviks) there can be no talk of actual socialism. Now insofar as you agree that even the "initial" stages of socialism must include the abolition of wage slavery and unequal access to resources, then I don't think we disagree.

It's interesting that you decry the vagueness of "hierarchy" as anarchists understand it, and yet it is definitely more to the point than your notion of state. The most common definition of state, and the one I am using here is " "a body politic, especially one constituting a nation." This is why I think the notion of a proletarian state is an oxymoron, because workers' councils were never national political bodies, but assemblies, often ad hoc, where workers decide on issues that concern and affect them.

Again, I think this is a false linguistic problem (a consequence of you using a different definition of state than me). Certainly I hope you're not saying that the soviets arose as a national political body, regulated by a Party, because that would be obviously false. The Soviets existed well before the Party, and the Bolsheviks imposed themselves on the soviet system, as Lenin and Trotsky clearly admitted.

Maybe I phrased it wrongly. Actually abolishing all class differences will clearly not happen overnight, but this must be our project from the very beginning. If you say "well you can't have socialism right away, so let's not try to abolish all hierarchies, because it won't happen overnight anyway", then you are clearly moving in a counterrevolutionary direction. A global gift economy is a long-term goal yes, but we must be resolute about wanting to bring it into being from the beginning, because we've all seen what happens when you take the "gradualist" state-socialist approach.

You can say that in retrospective yes. But to the peasants who were taken from the natural routine of small-scale subsistence agriculture and thrown into the "dark satanic mills" of the emerging industrial centres, it most definitely didn't seem revolutionary or progressive. To decide what was revolutionary at some moment in history based solely on your current situation is ahistorical and non-materialist.

So because the bourgeoisie could "abolish" feudalism by imposing state power 300 years ago, that means that today workers can use state power to abolish capitalism? This is nuts. It is the most idealistic and ahistorical load of nonsense I could ever hope to hear.
Workers must use the means that are appropriate to the society they live in today, one that is fundamentally different than that which existed 300 or so years ago. The state appeared in its most developed form as a way to enforce and guarantee property; to think that it can be used for a purpose that contradicts its very reason of existence is absurd.

What good is opposing certain individuals who "cling to their privileged positions" as long as the system which makes such privilege possible in the first place is left in place?

well getting passed the equal wages part, which is clearly useless, instant recallability and rotation is what defines a council, not a state. Again, if by state you mean council, as I have described it above, then we don't disagree.

Anarchism is not a what-if theory. Workers have associated freely to defend their interests against the state, since the state's earliest inception (i.e. even before capitalism became fully developed). Anarchism has been attempted in various places and forms over a long period of time, whereas this "dictatorship of the proletariat" bollocks was never implemented except by the Bolsheviks who clearly understood it very differently from Marx.