Ummm… communists aren’t anti police or anti state control. A communist saying “ACAB” is exactly as inconsistent in logic and belief as the Gadsen Flag -> Thin Blue Line (which is ridiculous, fuck republicans).
Should be an anarchist or black panther flag for the meme to be perfect.
EDIT: I can predict the future argument… “communists are anti police because police are a tool of the bourgeoisie used to protect capital” yes, but only because the laws are bourgeoisie laws, and with a communist state there will be proletariat laws and proletariat police to enforce them, so… “ALL Cops Are Bastards” would be “Your Cops Are Bastards But Our Cops Are Good”
depends on the type of communist. a communist displaying the hammer and sickle? absolutely pro-cop
Thanks a lot for conflating communism with authoritarianism, Lenin.
Lenin, betrayed the revolution after losing an election to actual communists and then wrote about how betraying the revolution and stamping out those pesky communists is fundamental to communism. Somehow.
i mean. there’s a reason the mensheviks stopped working with the bolsheviks in the first place: Lenin was long an enemy of freedom
goddamn dipshit
Well, “communist state” usually just means a state that claims to want to achieve communism. Engels and Lenin considered states like the USSR state capitalist (Source), referring to them as socialist/communist mainly comes from Stalin. Marxists like Lenin are of the opinion that after a communist revolution the means of production are to be given into the hands of the workers. As soon as this is complete, which in China/USSR never happened, the state stops existing as a state and starts dying as it has nothing to do anymore (see “The State and Revolution” by Lenin). Once the state has fully died of the society is communist and (by definition) hierarchy less
It’s not your job to educate me about communist theory, but I’m wondering… So what structures or forces enforce the lack of hierarchy and prevent hierarchies or a state from reforming? It is just a natural consequence of the workers having control of production and like… self-reinforcing?
An authoritarian centralized and planned economy style of “communism” that we’ve actually seen attempted is easier for me to wrap my brain around, and more of what I think of than something fully stateless and hierarchy-less.
The idea is that the only reason why a state needs to exist is to enforce the classes, for example in feudalism the state is required to keep the nobility above the bourgeois. So if there are no separate classes a state won’t form as there is no reason too. Under communism no classes would form as the society is based on the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, meaning no one can be above or below anyone else as long as the society stays true to this principle.
Their are however a lot communists, at least in the 19/20 century that believe communism to be the original form of society (See Friedrich Engels footnotes in the communist manifesto), which would mean states have already formed under communism in the past. This isn’t that discussed as most communists are mainly in a never ending discussion how to achieve communism the “right way”. The main argument to my knowledge is that the means of production created under capitalism makes a communist society rich enough that it prevents people abstaining from the above principle.
Your 2nd paragraph is exactly where my mind already went while reading your 1st paragraph! When I try to think about what a stateless and hierarchyless society would look like and how it would work, the easiest thing for me to do is just look back to before states formed. I’m much stronger on history than communist theory, so that is interesting. I find it a bit far fetched…
I’m especially skeptical when at least the significant approaches attempted historically have been “let’s go basically the opposite way of what we want the end result to be, as a first step, and then once we’ve achieved the strong, powerful, and centrally planned state necessary to undo capitalism, we can just remove it all easy peasy and then things will just be stateless and work out” … seems… yeah… 🤔 lol
That is the main divergence between anarchists and communists. There is a good quote that captures the problem quite well (translated from German):
You say that the state is a tool that can be wrested from the capitalists, but if, just suppose, you want to be a small-time artist, what good does it do you to wrest the anvil from the blacksmith? You can’t juggle with anvils. The only thing you can do with an anvil is be a blacksmith. Remember: it’s not just the worker who sharpens the tool, the tool also sharpens the worker. The state may be a tool, but it’s not a Swiss Army knife, not a Leatherman, not a universal tool. And anyone who knows the stories—I deliberately use the plural here—will, given the problems of revolutionary states with the state, be unable to resist the suspicion that by attempting to take over power, one has already engaged so deeply with the logic of hierarchy that, if successful, one will almost inevitably imitate it rather than deconstruct it.
One idea of George Orwell about socialist revolutions he expressed when discussing animal farm:
I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job
As soon as the revolutionaries have gotten rid of the capitalists they are a obstacle in the way of control by the workers as they have their own ideas on shaping a socialist society that they will try to push on the people.
The Zapatista’s aren’t exactly communist, but they have an interesting system of federation, rotating “leadership” (I think people are randomly selected for most leadership roles), collective decision-making/consensus building, community justice, etc. I think a lot of communes have systems to avoid hierarchy as well. From what I’ve seen, they have their own, different problems, but many have been around for long time, so they “work,” in a sense.
Small communes definitely make sense to me in what they look like and how they work, but it is hard for me to understand how they could scale to nation/global proportions. Unless the idea is that everyone is part of their own small, separate communes… I also don’t see this as feasible because globalism exists and is real, yet doesn’t fit into that model (ironically globalism is most often propagandized as some kind of communist plot when the reality is that it is the epitome of colonialism/imperialism/capitalism, at least the way I see it… maybe that’s only because globalism has been implemented by capitalist empires).
I think the Achilles heel of small communes is healthcare. Everything is fine and good, until someone needs serious hospital care, which is effectively infeasible to provide at small scale from small communities. I think that’s only possible with large institutions but that’s debatable.
The Zapatista territory is pretty large and has a population of somewhere around 300k. It’s a network of autonomous municipalities, so it kind of like a bunch of communes. They have their own schools, doctors, and hospitals; but they are quite poor (they’re mostly indigenous farmers).
An existing power like the state will not simply stop existing. If it loses its purpose, it will simply create a new one for itself. We’ve seen this through history repeatedly, though perhaps the early socialists did not have as much information as we do today.
Hierarchy certainly predates the state and certainly would live on after it. That part seems an even more obvious fiction.
MAGA vs Tankies, just toss em both in the volcano
Get ready to suddenly go from 100% up votes to a influx of down votes as ml users and they alt accounts find you
Let them and hexabear dolts bring it on. I consider any dv from them as a badge of honor.
Their*
“They’re the same picture.”
Republicans will say. “Liberals are such sensitive babies.” But then you will make a little joke about Trump and then they say. “SHUT THE FUCK UP! I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU.”
Why soviet flag?
Soviet cops are bastards too, same with American cops, Chinese cops, UK cops, etc… ACAB means ALL
Red/Black flag is more accurate
Original was probably made by one of the very confused hexabear braincels and op is just repeating it most likely.
Ah yes that “small government but also death penality” crowd.
MAGA logic is this: “Me first, and you: disappear.”
Republican view is “don’t tread on me. Tread on you”
Don’t tread on ME.
It’s right there on their flag! Along with them admitting they’re snakes. Shit, they’re barely trying with this one.
“tread”. Unless Dairy Queen has really changed their image lately.
Thanks
What they mean is they don’t want purple-haired lawmakers forcing them to sit in state-mandated drag shows to listen to performers read chapters of black lesbian fiction in the same NPR tone of intellectual, hushed whispers.
You know, the thing that we all want on the left.
