A brief overview of the Socialist legacy of the 20th century
A brief overview of the Socialist legacy of the 20th century
arguments to go around
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/1803761
Original title (which I find a bit too click-baity):
Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century
I read and commented over there, but I will add: this really drives home the importance of creating ground-up power structures that are not dependant on and exist in opposition to the state. When the goal becomes statism, the result is never not a state.
Agreed, i have heard of dual power amd parallel power structures. We need a lot more of them.
I guess maybe the sobering part of this read was the fact that maybe revolution will take a lot longer than we thought...so maybe our focus should be on building alternate community institutions and forming connections instead of focusing on big events like protests.
Protests can still get concessions from the state. The problem historically has come when the protest leaders get elected.
I agree, though protests are still useful for networking and movement-building (and sometimes they achieve some of their goals). But yeah, they shouldn't be our sole focus.
(I say this as someone who tends to avoid protests due to social anxiety, so take it as you will.)
So I am a little confused about what the author is saying here. He seems to be saying let's not repeat the past mistakes of socialism but let's do socialism again but make it work this time? This just seems like another person saying we haven't actually had a socialist system yet so we should try to actually try it. I don't know. Can anyone clarify this one for me or at least offer their interpretation.
I'm guessing that when you hear "socialism", like most people you think of state socialism. USSR, China, etc, as well as the various political parties trying to implement socialist policies through the electoral process. The socialist movement has always had a significant anarchist faction as well. Basically, things went like this:
- State socialists: Right, we're going to do state socialism
- Anarchists: That's going to go very badly, let's do anarchism instead
- State socialists proceed to do state socialism, and it goes very badly
- Anarchists: Okay, now that we all have the benefit of historical hindsight, let's do anarchism now?
- State socialists: No, we're going to do state socialism again
- Anarchists: Oh for fuck's sake
And its not even a case of "state socialism results in state violence" (it does, continously), its that planned economies make it so that small errors in judgement result in massive issues. I'm a little tired of the "mistakes where made" crowd like "oopsie we did a The Great Famine". Contemporary analysis by anarchists and unionists knew already said it wouldn't work.
First of all, do you know the difference between Socialism, Marxism, Anarchism and Communism? If not, you can start by checking out this quick run-down (disclaimer: this video is made by a Marxist).
Now, what OOP is saying is that we know from historical evidence that state socialism (like Marxism) always ends badly, one way or the other, but we also know that anarchism and libertarian socialism do work, so we need to push for that without falling in the pitfall of believing that 'this time state socialism might work'.