[beaconstudios]

It's misleading to mix up anarchism and marxism-leninism. While both are anti capitalist, ML is the one where you're just replacing one hierarchy (economic power) with another (party membership). Anarchism is fundamentally against coercive hierarchy.

[kragen]

Anarchism is indeed fundamentally against coercive hierarchy, yes, and I apologize for not being clearer about that. That said, Emma Goldman and many other anarchists were delighted to be deported to Soviet Russia until their famous disillusionment; historically speaking, the mainstream of anarchism considered state communism more friend than enemy, until they saw how it worked out in practice. And my own experiences with nominally anti-hierarchical organizations have not given me great faith.

[beaconstudios]

I think a lot of people had a lot of hope in the Soviet Union, especially when there were actual soviet councils involved. It didn't take long to devolve into a regular dictatorship. After all the state was supposed to be a vanguard for the implementation of socialism but power begets power and in the end it existed to serve itself.

I think that's the main reason that most sane leftists* are some flavour of anarchist these days.

* not including social democrats/other liberals in the "leftist" bracket.

[notch656a]

How can one be both anarchist and leftist? Doesn't re-allocating resources in an unprofitable way for the owner require some sort of involuntary transaction, or would you expect owners of capital will all relinquish them peacefully? It seems like capitalism is more compatible with anarchism as capitalism can be contained within voluntary transactions.

[kragen]

It sounds like you would benefit from reading at least the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism.

[notch656a]

Oxford dictionary: noun belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.

That sounds compatible with mere free trade amongst men without any sort of socialism. Seems like leftism wants some involuntary reallocation of capital, but maybe I'm mistaken. If they don't I'd say they're just charitable capitalists.

[beaconstudios]

Anarchism isn't just "no rules or government" as it means in common parlance; it is against coercive hierarchy in general, and capitalism is inherently coercive because it involves denial of access to means of production, and denial of access to necessary resources like food and medicine. Think of anarchism as being more akin to a modern attempt at the tribal system of humanity's prehistory, but scaled up: resources being pooled and shared instead of traded transactionally. There are other interpretations of anarchist productive organisation but that's a common one.

[denton-scratch]

You seem to be confusing anarchism with libertarianism. Libertarianism is basically capitalism on steroids; it's an individualistic, "rules-are-for-little-people" ideology. Anarchism is any of several different kinds of non-hierarchical socialism.

For clarity, by "socialism" I don't mean Robin Hood socialism, taking from the rich to give to the poor; that's coercive. I mean that socialists aim for a more-equal society. So I'm saying that anarchists are people that aim for a more equal society, and hope to achieve that using processes and structures that minimise hierarchy.