this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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There is overlap especially when you don't confuse communism as the broader framework with state communism or even worse soviet communism.
Have you read "On Authority" by Engels?
I have, its a terrible "rebuttal" of anarchist criticism of marxism, conflating self-defence with authority.
That is the thing though, until you abolish class contradictions states are the most effective way of protecting the revolution and suppressing the bourgeoisie. So authority does equal self defense in a real, meaningful way.
No, since states can get couped. The most effective way of protecting the revolution is gathering the masses which can happen without the state, indeed, it has happened multiple time throughout history.
Could you point to examples?
Anarchists in civil war in spain (until some of them decided to fuck off), I would say the makhnovshchina defended itself pretty well with the scarce resources they had, greek anarchists with their decades old squats, bolivian grassroots movements who helped Evo Morales get in power in Bolivia, etc.
And the fact that Engels wrote it proves that there were people in the movement even in those early days who disagreed.
I have an idea of what a state is, but what's a "soviet"? That's not an English word.
What does "soviet" mean in Russian?
I know you're being cute but "soviet" is indeed a word in English: http://dict.org/bin/Dict
And it means what I intended it to mean, the official state ideology of the USSR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideology_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union
That sounds bland, I like the idea of council communism better.
How do you say "council communism" in Russian?