this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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The reason this is sloganeering and not a valid point is that this is also an argument against buildings, screwdrivers, the internet, trains, etc. The fact is, tools depend on who uses them, and the state is not outside of class struggle but within it, meaning the proletariat can run the state to its own ends as it withers.
Bruh, you're taking a metaphor at face value instead of just understanding that it is, yes, a simple slogan meant to represent a much larger idea. A very common anarchist slogan, in fact.
It wasn't meant to be a point. It isn't an argument against any of what you stated because it isn't itself an argument. It is just a slogan that represents a more in-depth point.
No, the proletariat cannot just use systems of oppression and hope it withers against its fundamental design. That's just naive, wishful thinking that doesn't understand how the system works to reinforce itself.
Tools also depend on their design to function in a specific way. You can try to saw away at a tree with a hammer all day but you'll never cut it down. So the answer isn't to use their tools to do something they weren't designed to do but to build/use different tools altogether.
The state is a tool of class oppression, and withers with respect to its basis being eliminated, that being class. Collectivizing production and distribution erases the basis of class, and thus the state. Communalism, as in creating distributed cells that only own what's internal to their cells, does not collectivize production and distribution across the whole system, but instead perpetuates class distinctions and therefore keeps the basis of the state. You can see this in action in Catalonia, where the anarchists were forced by necessity into forming statist structures in order to actually combat the fascists.
Yes it does still collectivize production; it just does so in a decentralized method. You don't need centralized authority to be a collectivist.
You have no understanding of what anarchism is.
Oh and of course, the lame fallacy that because it failed it means it can never be a thing. Tell me again how that worked out for the communist projects around the world? Oh, right, those imperialist nations totally don't have clear class distinctions and any day now they will just willfully give up their newly gained authority over the masses... any day now....
Communalization is not the same as collectivization. When individual cells only own what's internal to them, this perpetuates petite-bourgeois structures, not collectivized production and distribution across all of society. I was an anarchist prior to becoming a Marxist-Leninist, I know what I'm talking about regarding the driving distinction.
Secondly, socialist countries are going strong, and none of them are imperialist. They of course have class distinctions, the elimination of class permanently is a global phenomenon in the context of an international market. Marxism doesn't posit states will "give-up" authority, or that the masses don't already have the authority in socialism, but that state structures will wither. Hierarchy very much persists in communism, as administration is a necessity for large scale production and distribution, but what we recognize as the state does not.
I've read anarchist theory, please explain how communalist cells interconnected in a decentralized fashion is the same as one system with collectivized production and distribution. I'm not "drunk in authoritarianism," I just understand that hierarchy isn't axiomatically bad, and that in many cases it exists by necessity.
Trying to make a smartphone without hierarchy is a recipe for rampant deaths in mining accidents, missed shipping times for raw materials, shoddy fabrication of semiconductors, disasters at air and sea, and huge differences in material wealth for the different parts of the supply and production chain leading to class distinctions and a new state.
Communes/cooperatives are neat in the context of capitalism and socialism in certain applications, but aren't the basis of communist society, socialized/collectivized production is, because only that forms the basis of classless society.
You haven't really responded to my points, just insulted me or told me I'm wrong without elaborating on why. This is extremely unconvincing.
You can read it all you want but you authoritarians don't understand shit that isn't hierarchy. I'm not about to open fucking theory books on a damn memes sub. God you fucking .ml's are insufferable
I understand plenty, you can drop your wholly unearned smug superiority complex.
Ah yes, the communist brain must simply be incapable of understanding anarchist ideas. That's the only possible explanation for any disagreements with it.