what does anarchism add to marx?

Blanket, universal statements about transition are things Marxist and anarchist theorists are both guilty of, but I think where a lot of anti-authoritarian Marxists/post-Marxists and many anarchists can agree is that transition will be reflexive towards each unique situation. I also think it might warrant a new thread!

Marx is Ricardian only insofar as he begins with Ricardian economics, and then turns it inside out. Ricardian (like Smithian) value theory presents value as an objective property of the commodity, and the commodity as a naturally-occurring ontological category in all human society, while Marxian value theory presents value as a social property of the commodity, which is itself the alienated expression of a social relation specific to capitalist society; they're basically the total opposite of each other.

Cheers Tim.

You also need to note that there isn't a clear distinguishing line between anarchists abolition of the state and marxists capture of the state, sometimes marxists by capture of the state just mean the abolition of the state and it's replacing by instruments of working class self-management (think soviets) which is something anarchists generally would not classify as a state. While at other times marxists actually do mean the capture of the bourgeoisie state and adapting it towards working class rule, with capturing the state. Which can get quite complicated if a certain political group uses both of these interpretations at the same time (I have this problem particularly with trots), and if you throw in distinctions between fighting for reforms inside of capitalism and how things would look under socialism that are not always explicitly stated, it can get quite hard to distinguish what a certain marxist parties means by capturing state power.

Guilty as charged

I don't often hear of a Marxist party whose idea of capturing state power means abolishing the state and replacing it with working-class self-management through soviets. Certainly, there are Marxists (Leninists, Trotskyists, etc.) who support "soviets"; I do not deny that. But usually in their vision, such soviets are subordinated to the bourgeois-state, which in turn, is occupied by the leaders of the revolutionary party, hence why it's often called a workers' state.

Well in state and revolution Lenin argues for the destruction of the bourgeosie state and the replacing of that with soviets (I think he calls it the replacing of the state with the armed proletariat), although it also kinda depends how you phrase your questions, But if you know how to manipulate radical leftist terminology you can often get the abolition of the state and replacing it with soviets answer out of most marxist party people, of course if you phrase your questions in normal anarchist terminology you will probably get something like you said out of them. Although it can also kinda depend on if they want to recruit you.

Also its not called a workers state because the bourgeosie state gets occupied by party hacks, its called that way because it signifies the transition from a state in the interest of the bourgeosie (a bourgeosie state) to a state in the interest of the working class (a workers state).

What makes a state a workers' state? How does it embody the interests of the working class? The Leninists seem to think that a state controlled by a minority vanguard, which possess all the "right" proletarian-oriented ideas, makes it a workers' state.

Even if Lenin supported soviets down on writing, he didn't support it in practice. And that's not cool man!

I couldn't agree less here and actually I think your example is really telling of leninist/trot sleight of hand. OK. Theoretically capture the state, in some contorted way, could mean the abolition of the state. Then you say think soviets? But how did soviet become part of the communist nomenclature? It wasn't through the writings of Marx or his contemporaries, but to the Russian revolution where the state was 'captured' and the soviets were more and more sidelined in favour of the bureaucratic state. It is absolutely impossible to 'think soviets' in relation to the capturing of the state without highlighting how utterly incompatible they were. Sorry. Rant over .

This is borderline tautological. I think you need to explicate further what you mean by 'state' before you can make such a bold claim.

Ok first and for all I am not defending these views here I am just stating the views I have encountered so far.

Note that pretty much the entire marxist left (with the exception of certain groups of left-communists) at the moment claims allegiance to Lenin while espousing quite different views, so leninism can mean a bunch of different things to different people.

Now from what I have encountered generally there seems to be more of a view towards the view of the vanguard as a group that influences the proletariat towards seizing power, but it can change quite easily depending on how you structure your questions or which person in the party you talk to. Note that leninist marxism and the radical left in general have a very thick layer of terminology that shapes their rhetoric which basically makes trying to get to the actual views of a certain person very difficult, so for example the word vanguard can mean entirely different things to different people even in the same ideology and party.

Also note that if I remember it correctly Lenin makes a copernican turn in state and revolution and changes his definition of state about in the middle of the book, from an armed group of people that raises itself above a society and imposes itself onto it to simply a neutral institute that enacts the class interests of the class in power at that time (although don't quote me on this as it has been quite a time since I read it). And yes Lenin acted counter to the views expressed in state and revolution, I noted it simply because it is generally adored heavily in the Leninist left.

Well I actually asked the exact same question to a trot once and he said that the phrase "capture the state", means capturing state power and placing it in the hands of the proletariat in the form of the soviets. So capturing the state and smashing the state (I think thats the exact phrase Lenin uses so I should have used that instead of abolishing the state) can mean the same thing for them. Note my point on thick layers of terminology within the radical left.

I don't mean anything here I am just retelling what I have heard by these people, and honestly I couldn't tell you what they mean by state because of the contradictory and narrative distorted answers I have gotten so far (see also my point on Lenin changing his definition of the state). Now the point is that I am pretty sure that most of the Leninist marxists I know have no interest at all in interpreting Lenin in the sense of a bunch of party bureaucrats occupying the bourgeosie state (at least in theory), and I included the definition of a workers state in the sense of a state in the interests of the workers as something most of them would agree with.

Also note that a it tends to be quite difficult to discuss this with anyone because of the massive problems involved with different uses of the same words across the radical left and the fact that everyone inteprets the same texts differently and that everyone who disagrees with someone else on a certain text can just easily say they are misquoting the text in question, so my comments on Lenin might as well be regarded as massively distorted by pretty much everyone else. Which is one of the reasons why I don't like to do these cross-ideological discussions with most people, as it makes me feel like a theologist overanalyzing and deconstructing passages of the bible.

It's true that Lenin advocates smashing the bourgeois state machinery and replacing it with the soviets/the armed proletariat. However, he doesn't seem to believe this will immediately abolish the class system and the need for coercion, but simply reduce/"decentralise" it to some extent.

Nevermind that "soviet power" and the "general arming of the proletariat" all vanished soon after 1917.

[Emphasis added]

Agreed that this discussion seems kinda academic, though (or is it "scholastic"?).

Indeed, but this is generally interpreted in the sense of soviets and the armed proletariat fighting off the inevitable response of the bourgeoisie as in the counter revolution, as after the seizure of power by the proleteriat certain parts of the bourgeoisie and their supporters might still exist and launch an attempt to destroy the revolution, in this sense a class structure might still exist and in this sense you still need a "state" as in the armed proletariat to fight off this counter revolution. Which is again not necesarily in contradiction to anarchist views.

Also from this point comes the marxist misinterpretation that anarchists don't want to fight off the counter revolution, as they reject a state. Which is for example what the entire trotskyist interpretation of the Spanish revolution of 1936 is based around, namely that anarchists didn't want to seize power based on their theory and rejection of the state, their constant references in regards to the "objective conditions" they constantly use for justifying the bolsheviks being oddly missing here.