this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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zhenli explains anarchism's reliance on idealism (cw: critical discussion of tendencies)
[...]Second, it ignores the actual, real distinction between Marxists and anarchists, which is centralization and decentralization, originating from differing views on historical materialism and idealism.
Anarchists want to break up society into decentralized units, they see the centralization tendency of capitalist society as a bad thing and want to smash it and build an entirely new and different society out of a void, while Marxists see the development of capitalist society as in fact laying the foundations for socialism which it will be built on top of, i.e. it will be centralized.
Bukharin explained this brilliantly a century ago.
It is very important to understand that anarchists aren't simply Marxists who want to get to statelessness faster. They are in many ways the polar opposite of Marxists, the gulf that separates Marxists from anarchists is just as large as pretty much any other ideology.
Anarchists reject historical materialism and view history through an idealist lens, believing that all new societies are "conjured out of a void" as Bukharin put it, and thus they believe this new society can be anything they want it to be, if they can imagine it then it can be implemented.
Marxists on the other hand, with a historical materialist analysis, see new systems as inherently being built upon new conditions brought into existence by the old system, i.e. socialism cannot be anything we want it to be but must be built upon foundations created by capitalism itself.
Hence, Marxists see the centralization tendency of capitalism as the basis for what socialism will be built upon, while anarchists not only do not hold this view, but they view the conditions capitalism is bringing forth as a bad thing that must be entirely destroyed.
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