The Red Bureaucracy: Authoritarian Socialism vs Libertarian Socialism

• published: 23 May 2014
• views: 14821

In anticipation of comments suggesting Leninists and anarchists should 'unite against the capitalists': http://greatmomentsinleftism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/left-unity.html Notions of anarchists and statists 'uniting' against the capitalists have a pretty clear conclusion every time - the statists get their way and the anarchists get thrown under the bus. In anticipation of Leninists calling me an anti-communist, let me reiterate that I am criticising authoritarian socialism for advocating means which are ineffective in establishing communist ends. I think it is true that the system created in the USSR and so on was merely replacing one hierarchy with another, however unlike anti-communists I do not believe it follows from this that hierarchy is somehow inevitable or written into our genetics. Hierarchy is, however, written into the state. Introduction: 0:03 Defining Socialism: 0:46 Defining The State: 1:43 Libertarian Socialism: 2:20 Authoritarian Socialism: 3:38 Revolutionary Socialism - A Libertarian Socialist Analysis: 4:55 Identification: 5:44 Justification: 8:06 The Efficacy of State Power: 8:37 The Necessity of State Power: 16:55 Conclusion: 21:41 Sources: Lenin - Draft Decree on Workers' Control, October 1917 https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/26.htm Replacing, absorbing and superseding the machinery of workers' control http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm Lenin - The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/mar/x03.htm Petropavlovsk Resolution http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/russia/mett/petro_eve.html Soviet figures on Kronstadt Pukhov Kronshtadtskii miatezh v 1921 g. Leningrad, OGIZ-Molodaia Gvardiia Lenin on state capitalism in Russia http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/21.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/14b.htm Maurice Brinton - The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control: The State and Counter-Revolution http://libcom.org/files/Maurice%20Brinton-%20The%20Bolsheviks%20and%20workers%27%20control.pdf Augustin Souchy - Testimonies of Cuban Revolution http://www.iww.org/history/library/Dolgoff/cuba/9 Frank Fernandez - Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement.pdf John Holloway - Change The World Without Taking Power http://www.edtechpost.ca/readings/John%20Holloway%20-%20Change%20the%20World%20Without%20Taking%20Power.pdf Peter Marshall - Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism https://libcom.org/files/Marshall%20-%20Demanding%20the%20Impossible%20-%20A%20History%20of%20Anarchism.pdf Alexander Skirda - Nestor Makhno--Anarchy's Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921 http://www.amazon.com/Nestor-Makhno-Anarchys-Cossack-Struggle-1917-1921/dp/1902593685 Michael Malet - Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War https://libcom.org/files/%5BMichael_Malet%5D_Nestor_Makhno_in_the_Russian_Civil%28Bookos.org%29.pdf Frank Mintz - Anarchism and Workers' Self-Management In Revolutionary Spain http://www.akpress.org/anarchismandworkersselfmanagement.html Given that all of these sources of my claims come from anti-capitalist authors, can nobody in the comments claim that this is 'bourgeois propaganda', please.