Marxists are also against the state in the long-term but I get what you are saying

What a lot of leftypol type fools don't understand is that Marx and Engels were not opposed to utopian socialism, but that they just disagreed with the methods of explaination, agitation and organization of these previous socialists. They also thought there had to be a transition phase in communism.

I think it was Engels who said approximately: The socialism of yesterday was more primitive because capitalism was more primitive, so I don't blame the utopists for their views. But now, capitalism is more deeply engrainned in our countriesn so our critique can be more thorough.

Marxists are against the state but (unlike some anarchists apparently think ), they don't see the state as a neutral entity that's inherently bad, but the product of irreconcilable class antagonisms.

I mostly mean anti-state in the sense that they believe the state should just be ABOLISHED like that.

People should also realize how ahead of their time these ideas were.

When Engels first said the workers of capitalism will be the new revolutionary class, maybe 2, 3, 4 countries in the world even had any significant capitalism, mostly England. He said England is the richest country in the world, yet has the poorest people. Him being the manager of his father's factory in England was what allowed him to come to these conclusions in the first place.

Germany was still semi-feudal at this time and not even a unified state but rather a collection of kingdoms, fiefdoms and free cities.

Most Germans were still peasants.

The first strikes and labor struggles happened in the 1820s, 1830s. Marx and Engels wrote the manifesto in 1848.
When Lenin first said the urban proletariat will lead the revolution, this class was also quite small. Vast majority of Russians were still peasants. In hindsight we tend to project our current relations onto their times, but knowing their history makes their predictions even brazier

I guess that's also my main problem with anarchism, the idea that the state can just be abolished while irreconcilable class antagonisms are still in place. And that idea comes from the failure to acknowledge that the state itself exists because of those irreconcilable class antagonisms.

Marxism is different from previous socialism in that we take more time to examine the transition periods and put an emphasis on them

Anarchists pay less attention to the transition, like utopian socialists once did, and believe a far quicker change of society is possible

Id agree that the CPI (M) are a lot better than the DSA, but the Communist party of Karela has helped the Indian State in the Indian state pursuit of killing the Maoist and geocoding the Adavasi by helping with operation green hunt. As good as Karela achievements are our end goal isn't basically a social democracy, and of course reformism should be in used of the goal of pushing to revolution, Karela has showed nothing to that and in fact betrayed by participating in reactionary movements. Also theres a huge problem with their economy as they have to send a big amount of migrant labours over seas to send money back to their family.

I actually agree with everything you’re saying. I think the american libertarian ideology is a joke but I wouldn’t say I’m using the term in that way. I call myself a Libertarian Socialist to distinguish myself from socialist’s that believe in state-ownership over the means of production. I’m not really for a vanguard party. I don’t really care for politburo’s. I understand the importance of a state during a transitional period but in my system the worker’s are at the top of the food chain.

if communism is to be defined as a stateless, classless, and money-less society. Then yes, I hope to dismantle the state in the long term. But i’m not anti-state, I just want a worker’s-state.

sorry if i’m not coming across the most articulate rn I just woke up and my ADHD makes it hard to read books.

All good I got ADHD as well

You get what I’m saying though? My issue with Marxist-Leninism is that historically, it seems as though we’ve replaced one oppressive system with another. I also don’t see how state-ownership over the means of production can be defined as socialism.

What form of organizing the economy are you in favor of? Would you think it's possible for a vanguard to be able to represent workers if there's enough party democracy? Could state ownership not work out with direct democracy to some extent?

I agree to some extent, socialism in the future should not look like that of the 20th century, it also simply could not because of different material conditions. I don't think state ownership is by definition not socialist though. I would say Paul Cockshott sums up what my thoughts pretty much are in this passage of his book Towards a New Socialism:

In america’s case, I think moving closer to the nordic model, and then “market socialism” w/ cooperative housing soon after is probably a safe & stable way of fulfilling the needs of the people through the state whilst accomplishing worker-ownership. From there, I would eventually like to do away with markets and slowly wither away the state in favor of a more syndicalist model.

I don’t see his argument for how the soviet system was socialist though.

the main argument I hear against this is “how could this be done through our current electoral system” and to that I say!…

not sure. I think as leftism grows popular throughout the young generations, we’ll see more advocates for socialism enter the political atmosphere.

I could also be sold on a vanguard party if they promise to push policies that move’s us towards direct worker-ownership. I would require an obscene amount of trust in the party to even consider it and even then, political parties change overtime. What happens when we allow the vanguard party to take power, they change their platform, and we the people have no means of challenging them?

It's impossible for the state to be abolished without all states being abolished simultaneously or close to each other. What happens when you have a large region whose state has been abolished and is thriving solely through communities and militias? You get an invasion. Or a power vacuum for unscrupulous groups to have opportunity to take control and begin a new state.

I've never once seen anarchists legitimately take this situation head-on and explain how this wouldn't happen. The conditions for a state to not be needed anymore has to be there before it can be removed from the structure of society. And it's not even close to anywhere like that anywhere on Earth. That's some lowkey Star Trek s*** (which is GOATed imo and what I hope humanity strives for one day, but is not practical currently).

The problem is that private interests will have more control over our political interests than any electoral ideals it could hope for. As socialism becomes a more viable threat, corporations will simply lobby for more and more power to be taken from the government and entrusted upon them. And then they will resort to violence once the force of socialism becomes unbearable. And then we have a fascist system

Imo the primary issue is that LibSocs and Anarchists believe that popularity is an overwhelming force even when unorganized, and that they conflate the concept of socialism with simple populism

But look at the US today. There are entirely popular public issues that are simply ignored in our political system because of inadequacies within it that are exploited by people that are far more powerful than any of us due to organization and collaboration within their class

Socialism cannot be implemented peacefully because the ruling class will not peacefully submit to the usurpation of their power. Why would any class do such? And unless we somehow collapse global capitalism through a massively popular socialist revolution within the USA and it doesn’t simply escape to Canada, Europe, the Pacific, etc, then it will be a threat that must be quashed

socialism is beyond simply allowing popular ideas to truly spread through the working class due to their prolific presence in the economic world. It is about the need to rebuild the mode of production we have to facilitate these ideas as well, because capitalism cannot fulfill these ideals. And a state will be needed to coordinate and defend these ideals against conservatives, fascists, capitalist bourgeois, and other reactionaries who have their own goals that lead to their opposition.

Sure the state doesn’t necessarily have to OWN the economy, but it must exist, and it must be used to successfully fight against the rich in the same way it was used to fight against us

true I'm not an ardent supporter of CPI (M) and their huge beef with Maoists is a mistake, though i dont know the full story behind it; from my understanding, Maoists called CPI (M) revisionary, and CPI (M) thought the Maoists/Naxalites were like Gonzaloids who could give Communism in India a bad name

CPI (M) has been steadily growing over the years and i think they're doing a good job at raising class consciousness, an especially hard thing to do since India is so fragmented among lines of ethnicity/culture/language/religion. ofc their line of thinking that "India is not ready for revolution yet" opens the door to revionism because you can keep repeating this indefinitely

need all the Communists in India to make amends and lead a revolution secretly sponsored by China

I don’t really have a good proposal in how to go forward. Ideally, a vanguard party that legitimately acts in our best interest could take charge. Again, I don’t know if that could be trusted.

i think having check-and-balances is a good thing. If a vanguard party were to take power, I would like to see a model where no authority can act unopposed.

A vanguard party wouldn’t be a vanguard party if they didn’t act in our interests which is the thing

The construction of a state under socialism must specifically enshrine a sense of democratic participation and representation of its workers such that they can advance their interests

The Soviet Union achieved that. China you could debate has achieved it. Cuba has absolutely achieved it. The issue is that we don’t really perceive the centralist platform as “free” because it’s a fundamentally different construction from our liberal electoralism

And the CIA themselves admitted to the USSR not being a dictatorship and actually being run by ordinary people who made up the party

Opportunism is a big issue within parties which is why parties must be well constructed and well ordained before a revolution

If they’re unable to construct a state and a political system under themselves following a revolution then the revolution will inevitably fail