Response to Zhenli: Marxism vs Anarchism
Original post can be found here: https://taiyangyu.medium.com/marxism-vs-anarchism-dfc32e8c7a78
Now, I agree mostly with their central claim that Marxism is very much distinct from anarchism. It is indeed a common misconception that Marxists and anarchists agree about the eventual goal but disagree on the method (although I sometimes explain it this way to laymen for simplicity). This is because Marxists have a completely different framework of analysis they apply for everything, from the state to capitalism to history and society. However, the problem with this article is that they continue to spread inaccurate generalizations about what anarchists believe that are typical of Marxists. Now, anarchism is a very broad ideology with different sects that believe in many different things, but anarchist communism as understood in the mainstream general sense, which I assume is what they were arguing against on Marxist grounds, is portrayed inaccurately in the article. There are two main things talked about in the article that I want to address:
The nature of decentralization as suggested by anarchists
Utopianism vs materialism
Decentralization is very commonly misunderstood by Marxists. Zhenli in their article claims that “decentralized communes would inevitably try to trade with each other, and this trade lays the foundations for the restoration of money,” and that “if producers are decentralized, but they come into contact and want to trade, a market economy is the natural result of this.” The problem with this is the assumption that “decentralization” means the establishment of multiple small, isolated communities which engage in relations separate from other communes. Almost like little nation-states. This makes no sense. Communes are simply collections of individuals freely associating. Federalism means the voluntary association of many such communes. A system of production based on federalized syndicates is in no way contradictory to large scale production. In fact, it is wholly a myth that anarchist thinkers favor small-scale production. All the way back in the beginnings of anarchism, Proudhon argued that it "would be to retrograde" and "impossible" to wish "the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision, – that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words” (Property is Theft!).
Kropotkin also recognized the importance of large scale production, writing that “if we analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of them the co-operation of hundred, even thousands, of workers gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic steamers cannot be built in village factories” (Fields, Factories and Workshops). Decentralization for anarchists do not mean the decentralization of production or even social life, it means the decentralization of power only.
What is instead advocated by anarchists is, like I mentioned before, federations of syndicates or communes to enable large-scale production. However, what about the distribution of these products? Just like production, a decentralized planned economy is not dependent on breaking down to the smallest scale and then engaging in trade. As long as every actor has a say in the plan being enacted, that plan is by definition decentralized, as it is a voluntary federation of individual communities.
Now, Zhenli’s argument that anarchism is utopian and therefore unattainable/undesirable is perhaps even more typical Marxist reasoning. First of all, their justification for dialectical materialism was simply circular reasoning, saying the equivalence of “dialectical materialism is good because it is scientific, because it is dialectical materialism, so it is good.” The idea that Marx was not prescribing but describing fall apart when you realize that many of his predictions fell flat on their faces, an example being revolution stemming from developed industrial countries before agrarian developing countries. Does this detract from historical materialism at all?
Anthropological evidence also detract from Marx’s historical determinism. I have written about The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow in an earlier article. In that book, they present a lot of contemporary anthropological research that demonstrates a variety of different types of social organizations in early society, from hierarchical to egalitarian. How could those organizations exist according to Marx when the early humans all had the same relation to the means of production? Just because history eventually went in one direction does not mean it is the only possible direction it could have gone in.
Zhenli also argues against moralism, and writes “saying you can build an economic system by starting from moral philosophy makes about as much sense as saying you can build a smartphone starting from moral philosophy.” This shows they have no idea how ethics works. Morals are simply a prescriptive system of what one should or should not do. An action, such as building a smartphone, necessarily entails an end in the act itself. Why are you building a smartphone? This inevitably leads to a moral discussion, as its simply a discussion of what one ought to do. Why, according to Marx, should people engage in socialism? If it is again justified by saying it’s inevitable, we just go back to the earlier point. There’s nothing in the 21st century that show us capitalism is inevitably going to collapse. In fact, it has demonstrated the opposite. Capitalism has managed to find a middle ground and stabilize, compared to the capitalism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Socialist thinkers have been predicting capitalism’s downfall since the 18th century, but those in power are not stupid. They are consciously adapting the system to be more stable. There’s no inevitable force that is driving capitalism to collapse. It has to be a conscious choice made by the people to abandon the old and adopt the new. To dogmatic Marxists, that is “idealist” and “utopian” thinking - but in the 21st century, it is simply the truth of the facts laid out before us.
In conclusion, orthodox Marxism is an outdated ideological system that really needs a overhaul. I guess the Maoists are trying, but man, they’re Maoists.
