I want to take this seriously, as many western anarchists still take Anark’s words as persuasive arguments against Marxism and Marxism-Leninism.

The first claim is that Marxist-Leninist-led revolutions have only ever established bourgeois rule, and only ever in feudal or colonized countries. The latter is partially correct, but leaves out countries like the GDR, and Russia’s conditions were arguably capitalist, not truly feudal. The former statement is demonstrably false, in every socialist state the bourgeoisie has been stripped of political power as a class and the proletariat has siezed control.

What Anark is trying to do is equate mass industry with capitalism, obfuscating the role class plays and the social relations that form the mode of production and distribution, in order to dogmatically point to similarities between capitalism and socialism as evidence of relative equivalence. This is a metaphysical error, over-emphasizing similarities and ignoring key, fundamental differences.

Instead, socialist economies are run with public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy, and with proletarian control of the state. This combination means that surplus value is directed towards pro-social ends, rather than privatized profits for the few. Administration is not a class, but a category of job, with no associated exploited class like capitalist/proletarian, lord/serf, master/slave. Even in bourgeois societies where some of the surplus is directed towards appeasing workers, this is done in service of protecting the domination of capital and thus pales in scale to what socialist societies can achieve.

The next statement falls apart immediately, the idea that since Marxism-Leninism uses “bourgeois” revolutionary tactics, it can only result in “bourgeois” rule. We already discussed how Marxism-Leninism establishes proletarian rule, so I’ll not retread old ground. The idea that I want to focus on is that Marxism-Leninism in capitalist societies does achieve similar direct results as it does in colonized and semi-feudal/feudal countries. In this, Anark is correct, but incorrect about the nature of the result. Anark’s entire argument rests on the misunderstanding of class society, the rest falls apart like a house of cards.

The next bit, about nationalization, is similarly partially correct. Nationalization within bourgeois society does not achieve socialism, it entrenches capitalist domination. That is why it isn’t merely public ownership that matters, but the class character of the state. Anark then follows that up with the idea that the state under socialism “becomes the capitalist,” and that workers “remain alienated.” This was already debunked when I discussed the difference between directing surplus towards social ends or private profits. A working class state running production collectively towards pro-social ends, as happens in socialist society, is not the exploitation of one class by another but instead one class becoming the master of their own development.

The next bit, about supposed “persuasion,” also falls apart. Anarchism is largely western. In existing socialist struggles, it is Marxism-Leninism or derivatives that have the most support. Marxist-Leninist parties gained their power through broad support of popular policies, such as Land Reform in Cuba or Peace, Land, and Bread in Russia, or the mass poverty elimination campaign in China, etc. Communist parties maintain their popular support through delivering popular policy.

To top it off, Anark blames capitalists correctly identifying Marxism-Leninism and Marxist-Leninist states as their greatest adversaries as the biggest arguments against socialism. Shouldn’t bourgeois fear be legitimizing? We already know the “State Capitalism” idea is wrong from my explanation several paragraphs upward. What Anark is in reality describing is the difficulty western anarchists run into with trying to spread their idea of socialism and running into bourgeois fears of existing, real socialism. This presents an obstacle for western anarchist organizing based on the weakness of western anarchism’s understanding of socialism, compared to correct bourgeois fears of socialism in real life.

Anark’s comments here are a house of cards, where the bottom cards are all soggy and collapsing.

Bonus, & malus:

this guy is a known goof. i participated in a group debate with him many years ago and he just talked over everyone, it was very annoying without even delving into his dumb politics

This presupposes that all Marxist-Leninists want to do is nationalize industries while leaving the structure and machinery of the bourgeois state intact. This is of course nonsense and backwards. It’s not for nothing that communists always talk about establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because everything else flows from that. The bourgeois state is not simply seized, but smashed and replaced with a proletarian state that has a fundamentally different class character and a fundamentally different power structure. Compare the structure of liberal democracy with that of Soviet Democracy or China’s Whole Process People’s Democracy. They are night and day.

At some point in your journey you really have to shed the idealist “we can achieve utopia in one revolution” veil. Those that don’t become Western Leftists, concerned with theoretical questions and victories but with nothing to show for it. It’s a comforting crutch to rely on, but eventually you have to ditch it and learn to walk anew.

I swear, if I hear some anarchist use the word authoritarianism one more time…

1. Anarchist leftism has only ever achieved… nothing. He’s seriously trying to portray the fact that MLs fought off colonialism and destroyed feudalism as bad things?

2. “Bourgeois = bad word, so let me use it here, even though my statement makes absolutely no sense historically or theoretically”

3. So the anarchist thing to do is maintain the status quo and keep the bourgeois in charge. Goes hard with number 2

4. You know what’s not persuasive to a “proletarianized” population? Having no state, so the fascists and capitalists can just get back in charge after massacring a few thousands of workers for good measure.

5. “It’s unpersuasive because I say so”. Meanwhile, Chinese policies are the most popular they’ve ever been among their people.

6. This is so stupid it needs its own point. Anarchists have spent decades trying to equate ML with state capitalism. And this idiot not only downright admits that it’s propaganda, but he also blames MLs for causing it. Meanwhile, all previous comments are just him propagating the myth that ML = state capitalism. And yet, he still recognizes how anti-socialist and catastrophic that is to the movement.

I’d like to hear how he thinks power can be taken from the bourgeoisie without them using violence to retaliate! How do people like him actually manage to believe that the ruling class would ever let go of power without bloodshed? These anarchists seem to talk a lot like liberals do.

“most successful anti-socialist propaganda ever devised” are you kidding me, just LOL. If the bourgeoisie loves Marxism-Leninism, why don’t they use it as a containment ideology, why don’t they fund, invite, and otherwise support ML writers, thinkers, and activists. Why are ML thinkers not promoted to the upper echelons of academia. Why was it Chomsky on that jet with Epstein and not any ML figure.

In Indonesia for example, Marxism-Leninism is explicitly mentioned in the laws criminalizing communism. Meanwhile, anarchists are still allowed to exist although they do face repression. In Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and other countries, although they don’t mention Marxism-Leninism specifically, their ban of communism or “totalitarian ideologies” is mainly aimed at Marxism-Leninism. Anarchists are unaffected by these laws, even if again, they still face repression.

under the “rule” (or nonrule since they’re so ideologically opposed to power) of anarchists, what is the alternative to consolidation and streamlining of industry under one unified, centralized, and organized proletarian control, other than operating a bunch of uncoordinated individual “worker owned” local-scale enterprises? Just thinking about anarchists running (or un-running) a rail system or (classically) pharmaceutical production, and I can only imagine it would be worse with less regulation/standardization than currently operated by DOTBs. And forget about scaling up from small business and cottage industry, bigger=bad is in the same ideological spirit as “power corrupts absolutely”.