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The Long Game's avatar

Anarchism and communism are diametrically opposed. The ancap ancom thing is think tank nonsense. It's designed to divide anarchist into a two-party style system.

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Vlad the Inhaler's avatar

This made me LOL:

"Landlords would be groundskeepers for tenant unions, their job would be maintaining the homes the flow of money could stay the same but it would be a more level field between the tenants and those that would like to maintain homes for others."

Ah, yes, that well-known type of person who just enjoys "maintaining homes for others." One of the fundamental problems that any utopian, non-hierarchical society would face is: who's going to take out the trash? Who's going to clean the toilets? Who's going to dedicate their lives to technically demanding, difficult and periodically dangerous, but not necessarily intellectually or emotionally fulfilling jobs like electrical work, plumbing or any of a number of skilled trades? Who will choose to do road repair or maintenance when it's 90 degrees out? How do we get people to do the jobs that society needs to get done, but no one really WANTS to do?

The capitalist answer is: you require people to have money, and you pay them that money only when they do useful things. The communist answer is basically the same, but with the significant addition of central party control of the jobs and coercion of the workers. And the anarchist answer is... "don't worry, man, it'll all be cool!"

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Cartoons Hate Her's avatar

Honestly, I'm a liberal and nowhere close to being a communist but he made some interesting points IMO! I wouldn't have published this if I thought he was just saying "it'll all be cool."

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Vlad the Inhaler's avatar

I certainly don't object to you publishing his thoughts, and agree that it can be interesting to engage with forms of radical leftism as a thought exercise from time to time. It's just that, when you've got someone quoting thinkers like Krapotkin or Bakunin (or Marx and Engels, for that matter), I think it's fair to ask: shouldn't we be learning from history, at some point? All of these ideas have been tried to a certain extent, and all of them have failed, often ringing up impressive body counts in the process. Yes, they sound nice, because they're fundamentally utopian and utopias are nice. But when your political program depends, critically but also usually implicitly, on the idea that "once we remove the evil capitalists, all will be well and everyone will act in harmonious unity for the betterment of all," I think it's fair to wonder, well, why didn't that work in 1905, or 1917, or 1949, or 1972, or whatever?

If there's an answer to that question, great! But if the answer is, let me tell you about Nikolai Bakunin... I feel like someone's trying to sell me a computer powered by the amazing technology of vacuum tubes.

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John Hennigan's avatar

A "hotel front desk worker" enabling the system he purports to oppose.

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Victor Thorne's avatar

That's not a great argument, people have to eat. I doubt anarcho-communism would work for a number of reasons, but it's necessary to spell those reasons out rather than resorting to a gotcha.

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John Hennigan's avatar

Such a great defense of the ignoramus.

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Victor Thorne's avatar

What, specifically, makes you categorize him as an ignoramus? You should back your claims up with logic, not just insult people.

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The Long Game's avatar

Actually, it's not meant to be a defense. People have to eat. Do you also tell plantation slaves that they should just stop working because otherwise they are supporting the system? Think about what you're saying.

And then make an argument based in principle. There are mountains of legit arguments against socialism.

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