From here

Once the proletarian state possesses political power and controls the means of production, it will “wither away” over time as it suppresses the bourgeoisie and moves toward a classless society. While the state must exist while class distinctions remain, it becomes superfluous in a classless society. The use of force is no longer necessary to suppress class antagonisms, because there are no classes. Lenin includes a long quote from Engels to explain this phenomenon, a portion of which is sampled below:

As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished’. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase ‘a free people’s state’, both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists’ demand that the state be abolished overnight.” (From Anti-Düring)

If you agree with the premises behind this argument, the conclusion must follow. If the state arises from class antagonisms in society and exists for the purpose of class suppression, it must therefore exist while there are classes (even during a proletarian revolution!) and start to die off once class is abolished. Engels’ description, “the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production,” explains the change in the nature of the State very well. Lenin points out that under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the State is no longer “the State” proper, but a different kind of institution altogether.

Thank you for your service

No problem, thx!

I def recommend reading about the US’s many campaigns historically to accuse their enemies of doing the thing they themselves are guilty of. A few good ones off the top of my head are Paul Williams - Operation Gladio and William Blum - Killing Hope

Off the top of my head (and without researching this further) simple things like minimum wage increases have happened, and while it took alot of fighting, that is accomplished by voting.

Minimum wage, the 5-day work week, and other workers gains took decades of violent struggle and organizing by socialists, communists, and anarchists in nearly every country.

My point is that the rulers of a city or town might not be capitalists.

That’s not how it works in any capitalist country. Political power is subservient to economic power, and is toothless without it.

np

You might have to use one of the archive.today mirrors. A lot of ISPs block them for some reason.

Homophobia / sexualized violence. Banned.

I apologize for being too combative… it just gets exhausting for us to debunk the same points over and over again, especially since the US has a near total monopoly on anglophone media sources.

We should oppose actual genocide, like the one Israel is carrying out on the Palestinian people with US help, not fake ones like the “white genocide” or “uyghur genocide” which are employed against perceived enemies of the white/western world.

Even locally, it would take some incredible magic for the capitalists who rule a given city or town’s politics, to enact or enforce laws than go against their interests / profits, especially without a fight. Scale isn’t relevant here, since local elites use the city/town police as goons to protect their property.

Unless you can give some examples, I don’t believe it, and I certainly can’t think of any time in my city’s history where they’ve willingly allowed something against their interests.

The entire “authoritarian” vs “anti-authoritarian” distinction doesn’t correspond to reality, and isn’t real. There is no history of any human society, that doesn’t make rules, norms, and customs for their group, and enforce them.

“Authoritarianism”, just like “Totalitarianism”, are only used to demonize workers and working-class movements who dared to construct systems existing outside of capitalist authority. Even the historical anarchist experiments found that they needed to enforce rules if they didn’t want to deconstruct within days, and were also labelled as “authoritarian” by opponents to their left and right.

there is always a chance, no matter how small, that it will make things better.

Read my comment below, because it gets into this. It can’t make things better, because it historically has never done so, only protests with the threat of violence from below (and completely outside of bourgeios democracy) have.

Losurdo calls this period (From ww1 - ww2), the Second Thirty-Years War, because war and pogroms never really halted in eastern europe after ww1.

Some more context for anyone wandering over from an anti-communist / pro-capitalist space:

Socialists view democracy under capitalism to be impossible. Most current-day systems are better labeled as Bourgeois Democracy, or democracy for the rich only, which socialists contrast with proletarian democracy. Under capitalism, political parties, representatives, infrastructure, and the media are controlled by capitalists, who place restrictions on the choices given to workers, limit their representative options to vetted capitalist puppets, and limit the scope of public debate to pro-capitalist views.

Bourgeois democracies are in reality Capitalist Dictatorships, resulting in legislation favorable to the wealthy, regardless of the population’s actual preferences. The Princeton Study, conducted in the US in 2014, found that the preferences of the average US citizen exert a near-zero influence on legislation, making the US system of elections and campaigning little more than political theater. Multi-party, Parliamentary / representative democracy has proven to be the safest shell for capitalist rule, regardless of voting methods or differing political structures, for countries as diverse as Australia, Japan, Sweden, the UK, the US, South Korea, or Brazil.

Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle more accurately defined Democracy as rule by the poor, and they considered states based on elections to be anti-democratic Aristocracies, since only the wealthy and ruling families have the resources to finance elections. They contrasted this with random selection / sortition, and citizen’s assemblies, as being the defining features of democracy, both of which are non-existent in the countries listed above. Today, liberal / parliamentary “democracies” are dominated by wealthy candidates, and entrenched political families, with Capitalists standing above political power.

This system of sham elections acts as a distracting theatre piece, giving the illusion of democracy, whilst in reality it serves to platform capitalist views, make them appear more popular than they are, and manufacture consent for the system itself.

Some more resources:

• Red Phoenix - Pacifism - How to do the enemy’s job for them. Youtube Audiobook
• Halim Alrah - Why liberal democracies are a sham.
• What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn’t Sweden socialist?
• On the unraveling of the Nordic welfare states: increasing inequality and forced austerity.
• Scandinavia’s covert role in western imperialism
• Why can’t you acheive socialism through voting in our current democracies?
• Paul Cockshott - On Socialism and Democracy. 2 3
• Comrade Hakim - Why electoralism always fails.
• Why not just vote leftists into office: what’s wrong with democratic socialism?

Authoritarian checklist:

• You want to exist outside of US domination and control.
• End of list

100%. Its about identifying with “the team”, and declaring your allegience to the US system, not about substantive democracy.

Don’t care, go back to your anti-communist safe spaces where they let you whine about the tankies / commies or whatever term you liberal witch-hunters are using.

Gotta love the liberals coming over here to whine about the “tankies”.

Not happening. Go ahead and post your “victims of communism” source tho.

to manipulate Tibet or persecute Uygurs

The people selling this false narrative are white supremacists, not the Tibetan or Uyghur people.

I’m a Klansman because I lean to supporting Taiwan’s independence?

Taiwan is pretty much if the US confederates lost the civil war, then escaped to Cuba, killed all the people there, and set up a state. Read about what mass killings the Kuomintang did to the indigenous peoples of Taiwan when they escaped there.