Anarchism

The anarchist critique:

“Freedom can be created only by freedom, by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organization of the workers from below.” — Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (1873)

You cannot use the state to abolish the state. Any centralized, coercive power — even a workers’ state — will reproduce domination. This is the biggest issue. Marx’s transitional state would not “wither away” — it would entrench a new ruling class (party bureaucrats, intellectual elites, etc.). History (Soviet Union, Maoist China, etc.) is seen as confirmation of this.

Now many anarchists reject historical determinism — freedom isn’t a mechanical outcome of “laws of history.” Revolution must be direct, decentralized, and bottom-up, through worker councils, cooperatives, mutual aid networks, direct action and federations of free communes.

Marx may be fine on the revolution part with anarchists tho but then he adds a step.

“If you take a revolutionary dictatorship, even though it calls itself proletarian, it will inevitably lead to the formation of a new privileged class.” — Bakunin to Marx, 1872 (at the First International)

Now, both Marxists and anarchists are internationalists — they oppose nationalism and see capitalism as a global system.

So take it as 4 steps.

• capitalism needs getting rid of ✅
• revolution is necessary ✅
• dictatorship of the proletariat ❌
• communism ✅ (although this is debatable too, because Marx's opinions and hence some Marxist factions) the communism Marx saw had some issues, but some Marxists agree with our view now despite liking his methods. Bc Marx sees productive labor as central to human self-realization once alienation is overcome.

Now since we've seen the soviets etc, we can see an existing pathway. Nothing on that scale exists for anarchists.