First of a series of Educationals on Anarchist Communism
Introduction to Anarchist Communism: Capitalism, Class, and the State: Wednesday, March 5th, 7pm.
First in a series of online educational meetings about anarchist communism convened by the Anarchist Communist Group.
Before we show the goals and solutions of anarchist communism we must examine what kind of enemy we’re faced with.
From the start anarchist communists saw the link between the oppressive systems of both capitalism and the State. They understood capitalism as private ownership of the means of production, with a market economy driven by profit, wage labour (wage slavery) and private property rights. They saw the capitalist class as exploiting the working class by extracting surplus out of the workers, toiling to produce an extra amount of wealth for which the working class is not paid. They see both capitalism and the State as exploitative and hierarchical.
Whilst the State has its own interests, it is intimately linked with the system of capitalism. It acts as the agent of capitalism, protects private property, and defends the rich through its armed forces, police and legal system. On a world level, the State protects the wealthy though institutions like the G20, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It imposes false notions of nationalism and militarism and acts as the facilitator of wars.
Anarchist communists share a view of capitalism as an exploitative and debasing system with many socialists. Where they part company, is over whether the State can be used to help bring about a just, free and non-exploitative society. They argue that those who take positions within the State apparatuses are corrupted by status, power and wealth. The State is a structure that develops bureaucratic, military and policing elites.
Both anarchist communists and revolutionary socialists believe that the working class must bring about a revolution to topple the capitalist class. However, many Marxists argue that as the State is an instrument of class rule, then workers need their own State to overthrow capitalism. Some believe that this can be achieved by taking over the State through elections, or by smashing the old State through revolutionary action and creating a new workers’ State.
Anarchist communists argue that the State cannot be used as a liberating tool. It is, as has already been said, an apparatus that fosters bureaucratic, political, military and policing elites. A so-called workers state would only result in a new ruling class of bureaucrats, exploiting workers as if the State was a capitalist corporation. Anarchist communists feel that this has been proved by historical developments as with Russia and China.
Instead, anarchist communists believe that a stateless society organised around workplace and neighbourhood councils and committees, and voluntary associations, can provide all the coordination and organisation necessary for a new society built on need not profit.
Meeting is free, register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introduction-to-anarchist-communism-capitalism-class-and-the-state-tickets-1255908810059?aff=erelexpmlt
Comments
However, many Marxists argue…
Which clearly contradicts what their espoused teacher taught:
But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.
The centralised state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature—organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship by the proletariat.