There are various very silly cliches and misunderstandings about anarchism, communism and capitalism. Many people have almost no idea what these systems are, or believe the most basically inaccurate things. It's not arrogant to say that if it happens to be the factual case, as it seems to indeed be. Instead we should accept that knowledge is low and make an effort to increase it. These below are the main cliches I have thrown at me - time and time again - and my attempt to answer them:
1. ‘You want a perfect system.’
Not true. Socialists, communists and anarchists do not have a 100% perfect utopia as a direct aim, or even an eventual aim. Its just incorrect and a waste of time to say so. What they wish for is a BETTER system - which is a very different point, and one that is achievable.
Perfect world = impossible.
Better world = possible.
It's simple. The complicated bit is HOW we build that better society, what will it look like, which approaches works best.
A key point connected to this is the daft idea that communism and anarchism are some alien condition, some impossible utopia hugely different from our present lives. I think that is not the case. I think, in our daily lives we are ALREADY doing and thinking the kinds of things we can call ‘communist’ or ‘anarchist’, but without seeing them as that. We call it politeness or ‘thats just normal’. But, in essence, a communist or anarchist society is one in which people are polite to each other, respectful, nice, formally equal, everyone can take part, everyone is of value. All things we try to do already, no? And which actually happen a lot already, in our everyday lives.
So as to our ability to make a better society: we are half doing it already.
2. You always blame society!
Another related cliche is that lefties always blame society and never themselves, they don't take individual responsibility. My fellow Scot Darren McGarvey in his good book 'Poverty Safari' (which by coincidence has a photo of the infamous Red Road flats in Glasgow, where I lived for a year) talks about how he had a deeply ingrained habit of blaming society and that it was only when he began to face up and understand how much his own actions contributed to his bad situation that he started to make real changes. If people blame ONLY society or wider forces, and never consider their own individual actions then I agree that is a bad approach.
It seems to me that for most people the problem is the opposite: rather than blaming society too much, they blame themselves too much. Or well off people blame poor people for not sorting themselves out. That is also a bad approach. Quite a lot of the time it really IS wider social, political and economic forces that are the root of X problem in our lives. Take for example, something that has affected me a lot in the last 10 years or so: the fall in books sales and general economic downturn as a result of the 2008 banking crisis. Here are some stats about it from Statista. We can see that in the US book sales feel quite considerably, specifically at the time of the banking crisis. And have still not quite recovered to the level they were as far back as 20 years ago.
Now to what extent was that my individual fault? Very little surely. And yet that has caused me to lose at least 25% of my book related income over the last ten years (I can give details about exactly how it has, but a bit too much to go into here and not the focus). Now of course I have an ability to adjust to this, to move into other areas, change my work etc. There are things I can do as an individual. But the actual cause of the problem is wider forces, right? So, shouldnt I quite rightly criticise those wider forces? Does it make sense to blame myself when it seem factually the case that the problem was mainly caused by things outside my individual control? And millions of people are affected like this - they are made redundant, the factory leaves their town, central government reduces the grant to local government so the hospital near you is closed, etc.
But, Darren's point is still a good one: the left needs to examine its own approach and develop a way of thinking where we consider both the wider causes AND our own actions. and make strong efforts in both ways, combined. Ok, fine, let's do that.
3. ‘I don’t want to be a slave of communism, I want to be free!’
The communist Rosa Luxemburg wrote: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently” meaning that the real communists and anarchists do not want to FORCE you to do A or B, or think THAT way or THIS way. Those are totally opposite to the kind of society that communists and anarchists want. I favour a form of anarchism, and it has freedom at its very core: “In short, Anarchism means a condition or society where all men and women are free, and where all enjoy equally the benefits of an ordered and sensible life.” ( Alexander Berkman, 1929).
In my view, it’s capitalism that is the system of little freedom. How free are the majority of people who are only one or two pay checks away from poverty? Where is their freedom when they HAVE to come work at times set by others, have to do work set by others, on a type of work they don’t value much or even hate, and take orders from people they consider idiotic, but can’t question. When the products of their work are useless stupid things that sometimes actively cause harm to others and the environment. When the financial value of their work goes, in large part, to the boss, to the already very rich owner. When they can be laid off from work, thrown on the scrap heap, whenever capitalism goes through one of its regular ‘teenage tantrums’ and the economy nose dives into recession. Where is the freedom in a system in which, as soon as you get together to try to collectively protest your bad situation the police arrive to hit you on the head and pepper spray you? And if that doesn’t work the army turn up.
All that is freedom? Oh boy…
4. ‘Capitalism has problems, but there is no alternative to it!’
Three wrong in a row! You deserve some kind of prize. This is flat out wrong. Margaret Thatcher infamously insisted in the 1980s that ‘there is no alternative’. A simple point: there ARE several alternatives and we CAN chose to try them if we wish. There is nothing stopping us, apart from ourselves.
The main question facing us is: ‘which system works best to help us create the kind of society we want?’
But how can we decide that if very few people know what capitalism, communism, anarchism etc actually are? What or who stops us from knowing these important things? So the very first step, that surely most people can agree on, regardless of the political view, is: let's actually know what we are dealing with. Let's get to the level that most people in society know what the alternatives really are. If the majority of people, with a good understanding and sufficient consideration, decide that capitalism is the best approach on offer, then ok, fine.
But we are FAR from that state right now.
5. ‘Some group of nasty violent people would spoil an anarchist/communist society’
That one is a genuine concern, I think, but not insurmountable. We have to think of how society would work differently then. Such greedy nasty people in a fully functioning anarchist society would be seen rather in the same way as wife beaters are now. It would be shameful, disgusting, not rewarded as it is now, not seen as glamourous. Also, why would people go through years of struggle against the capitalist power elites only to then let another group of violent elites takes over? They would have learned lessons in that initial struggle that can then be applied to preventing an internal elite group from stealing control.
And who would join that nasty violent group? It would be a society run by the people for the people - so who would join the nasty violent group if the vast majority of people felt the system was run by them and as benefiting them? If there were some large group who had a grievance they could deal with that from inside the system - it would be a system that welcome dissent and took opinions into account. If there was a large pressure for the system to change, then it would change. Even to the point of putting itself out of existence. If people in general decided ‘Oh this anarchism thing is not working. Lets go back to capitalism! Or maybe we could try some other system’. Then that is exactly what they would do. No anarchist police will come out and say ‘NO! you cant!’ A key point of anarchism is that WE ourselves will chose what system we want - including if we no longer want anarchism.
How about now? Are we free to chose now? Not really. They say we can vote, but most of the time voting does not seem to bring about much change. When we get together in big groups to complain and say ‘we don’t like this system!’ what happens? The Police arrive, then more police with big sticks and guns, and if that is not enough the army arrives, and the powerful elites FORCE us to stop complaining, by hitting us, or putting us in prison or shooting us. That is the horrible violent elite system that many of us have....RIGHT NOW.
6. ‘Human nature does not allow anarchism/communism.’
Dohh! People often say that 'we can never have a communal based system because people are greedy and selfish’. Firstly, this is not a fact, even though its almost always put over as a fact - it’s an opinion. An opinion heavily influenced by the media and what the dominant want us to think.
Of course people can be greedy and nasty and selfish, SOMETIMES. But we can also be kind, nice, polite and considerate too - right? And quite a lot of the time. In my opinion and my experience the cooperative aspect happens considerably more than the nasty aspect. I don’t see people fighting over some computer in every shop, stabbing each other over a packet of frozen peas, cheating their best friends every chance they get, etc. I see people moving out of each others way most of the time, saying sorry if they bump into you, waiting in line patiently at the post office, holding doors open for old ladies, etc. That appears to be what at least 90% of every day life is like, in most places.
Still, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the selfish aspect is stronger than the cooperative aspect. If so, then the LAST thing we should have is a system in which people are rewarded for being greedy and selfish! Which is what capitalism is. Does that not just make us more negative in our behaviour? It does not seem like a good idea to make that side of our behaviour even worse. It's a bit like handing the bully a big stick.
With communism or anarchism - the real ideas - the system would aim to BALANCE our tendencies to be greedy and selfish with structures and policies that encourage cooperation, fairness and consideration. So, we would end up with a system with LESS negative behaviour. This makes sense to me and does not go against human nature, it takes it into account and weaves it into a larger workable pattern.
7. You think people are stupid
We often see this one. If some leftie says 'People are fooled by capitalism into not knowing their best interests' (the infamous 'false consciousness of Gramsci and co) then we often see someone replying 'You think people are stupid, don't you? You liberals are so arrogant! You think only you know what's right.'
Nah, mate, nah...
What i think is that most people are very smart and capable. A presumption of that type is at the root of a lot of left wing thinking - that we ARE intelligent, that we can organize things ourselves, that we don't need bosses and our betters to do it for us. We are capable of running the factory ourselves, of deciding policy ourselves, or working out how our lives should be.
So, left wingers don't think people are stupid... but they do think we are being fooled and cheated.
They think most of us have been cheated into not understanding some of the basic issues at hand and the options available. Misled and distracted into not thinking about 'politics', which really means considering how society should be run. Why? Because it suits the elite powers that people do not have much knowledge of such things and that we have poor critical thinking skills. That makes sense. Of course they would want that. Why would they wish for their power and wealth to be challenged?
Charles P. Pierce has written a book called Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. In it he says: "The most dangerous aspect of Idiot America is that it encourages us to abandon our birthright to be informed citizens of a self-governing republic. America cannot function on automatic pilot, and, too often, we don't notice that it has been until the damage has already been done."
But is it really the case that people have a low knowledge of these things? Well, that can be easily established - just ask them! Various surveys have been conducted to ask people about the meaning of 'socialism', 'capitalism', etc. For the most part they indicate that, no, most people dont really know what those words mean. I take this from a right leaning website, REASON, that notes:
"...a 2010 CBS/New York Times survey found that when Americans were asked to use their own words to define the word “socialism” millennials were the least able to do so. According to the survey, only 16 percent of millennials could define socialism as government ownership, or some variation thereof. In contrast, 30 percent of Americans over 30 could do the same..."
Now, note that this right wing website tries to put it over in a way that is critical of young people compared to the wider population, concluding that therefore young people's recent renewed interest in socialism is only because they don't really know what it is! I will freely agree that most young people don't understand the options well - but for what reason? Because your capitalist beloved society has cheated them out of that knowledge. It has tried to push them towards shallow consumerism, mindless computer games and celebrity. It has closed down programs in social sciences and humanities, and down played any university courses that encourage critical thinking. It has pushed students deep into debt so that they have to pursue some narrow money making work, rather than develop themselves fully, etc...
And yet, despite all that...there is a renewed interest in alternatives to capitalism. Could it be that actually there is something good about the alternatives? Over more than 200 years it keeps coming back, no matter what you do, dear old capitalism. Are you worried yet?
Look again at that statistic - only 30% of Americans can define socialism? Isn't 30% a pathetically small figure? We are not talking about choosing a new microwave or iphone, we are talking about the options we have in front of us for running a system that will affect every aspect of our lives...and the lives of our friends and family. Shouldn't something THAT important be well known by 90% of us? Yes, it should.
So, the problem is not that people are stupid, but that we are being fooled. What left wingers want is for us to know the options available for as to how we organise our societies, to understand how important it is, to have enough knowledge to make an informed choice and then...to choose.
That's a reasonable aim, surely.
8. ‘Communism was tried and failed!’
This one is MOSTLY wrong, but with some points to make us stop and think. Still, its pretty clear to anyone who cares about historical accuracy that the horrible state dictatorships of Stalin and Mao etc were never really communist, they just pretended to be. I could put on a Nurses’ hat and say ‘Im a Nurse!’ but if i don’t help anyone, never care for any sick people, never go to a hospital, in fact I deliberately go around HURTING people… then am I a real nurse? Am I following the guidelines of how a nurse is supposed to act? No. Same with Stalin and Mao. They just said they were communist, but did not act in real communist ways. They did not follow the basic guidelines of what communism was supposed to be, and outright broke several of them. So what ended in the late 1980s was NOT communism, it was a kind of horrible state dictatorship.
This was known even in the 19th century. In the 1860s and 1870s the anarchist Michael Bakunin argued with Karl Marx and warned: “…revolution is only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that when it is concentrated in those of a few ruling individuals it inevitably and immediately becomes reaction." He meant that is a new power elite, like Lenin and Stalin, control the communist revolution then it would become distorted and not real communism. Even right in the middle of the Russian revolution some people saw that this would not be the kind of communism they wished, that things were going wrong: "It is vital to form a socialist govt from all the parties of the Soviet...we consider that a purely Bolshevik govt has no choice but to maintain itself by political terror. We cannot follow this course." This was noted by a moderate communist in Russia, late 1917.
Noam Chomsky has noted: “In the stages leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, there were incipient socialist institutions developing in Russia -- workers' councils, collectives, things like that. And they survived to an extent once the Bolsheviks took over -- but not for very long; Lenin and Trotsky pretty much eliminated them as they consolidated their power.” Or later during the Spanish Civil War the Soviet controlled communist party was so authoritarian and anti-revolution that some sarky bugger coined the slogan ‘Vote communist and save Spain from Marxism!’ So, if it was known even at the time that this was at best a perverted version of communism why have you not learned that yet? You’ve had a long time to work it out!
Another point: we can NOT, therefore, say ‘Communism was tried and failed’, because the thing they forced through was considered by many to not be communism. Therefore the test is invalid. That is a basic aspect of science. You can only say: ‘We did an experiment on X and we found X to be not useful’ if you design a good experiment, a real experiment that actually tests X. If you set out to test X but actually test Y by mistake, then the results can not be used to decide about X. Now if capitalism is such a great system then ok , lets have a REAL test. Let’s set up a social experiment in which town A is anarchist, town B is socialist and town C is capitalist. Lets give them ten years, with no violence against them, no media and education saying ‘A is bad, C is good’, no power elites distorting the facts, etc. Just a objective, bias free experiment (as much as we can, anyway) - and then lets SEE which of the systems works best! Why, I wonder has this experiment not been done yet? What are the capitalist elite scared of? That their precious capitalism might not prove the best one?
Also, why the defeatist wimpy attitude? Business people are always talking about admiring a positive ‘can do’ approach to business, of tackling problems head on and overcoming them. Often using military metaphors of ‘attacking’ the problem, starting a new ‘campaign’ to ‘capture’ some market. So, how come when we are thinking about the much more important task of organising a good society they are so defeatist, negative and weak? In that situation they surrender at the first defeat, throw down their arms and raise the white flag. Why so cowardly then? Or to use another analogy: If we fail our driving test once, twice, even three times do we then conclude 'Ok, its 100% impossible for me to ever drive a car!' Or do we stay strong and focused on our goal - think about what we've done wrong, and do better next time?
Last point here, if 'communism was tried and failed' then how is it that an officially communist country is now the 2nd largest economy in the world?
'Duh! because they became capitalist, Sean!' I hear some conservatives cry.
Oh did they? So China now is your idea of an capitalist state, is it? A place where the central party decides policy, locks up and kills people who go against it, blocks out words it does not like online, pressures HK to suppress freedom, etc. Thats capitalism is it? Surely supporters of capitalism would want to say 'No, that's state dictatorship. They are using elements of capitalism in their economic policy, but the communist party is still in power and they don't act in democratic ways.'
Ok, so do you see how your are making my case for me? My point is that even though Stalin and Mao SAID they were communist, they had the words communist on their badges and party meetings, etc... their actual actions were, to a very large extent, not communist, but something else.
To which conservatives reply 'Ha, thats just evading something you don't like.'
But now conservatives seem to be saying 'Even though China SAYS they are communist, they have the words communist on their badges and party meetings, etc... their actual actions are, to a very large extent, not communist, but something else.'
How is it ok for supporters of capitalism to say that but not ok for me to say almost exactly the same thing? You cant have it both ways, folks. If China now is 'pretend communism but actually something else', then the same thing applies to them in the 1950s and 1960s etc. And to the USSR. So you are supporting my point.
OR, if you think that China now really IS communist (with capitalist elements), then you cant say 'communism was tried and failed', can you? Because a certain form of communism is now so successful that its become the 2nd largest economy in the world.
So which is it?
NB Images on this page from our award winning book (well, it did!) Portraits of Violence:
https://seanmichaelwilson.weebly.com/portraits-of-violence.html
Hey Sean, you should start a political career! Lots of food for thought here. I agree with most of it. I'm not sure yet how we can realize a real anarchist or communist society, but as you said, we'll never know unless we try.