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Debating the right to exist
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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I do think hating socialist states with the same or worse ferocity that capitalist states get is a serious misjudgement. Administration is necessary for large scale production and distribution, whether you count that as a state or not. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society would have no class, but would still have administration.
Administration and protocols do not need to be centralized, and in fact centralization is a weakness.
The fediverse, and TCP/IP more broadly, even the physical structure of the internet kind of prove that, even compromises by existing within the context of forced hierarchal structures like capitalist ownership and legal accountability by authoritarian states.
Centralization and authority is a weakness and allows for corruption and everything to go to shit. Do we not remember reddit, here?
Shit just needs to make an effort towards compatibility. A little slack to kludge things together where it's needed, and people who genuinely give a shit about systems working.
Coordination has costs, and pretending you can force it with men with guns is just absurd. Let everybody bend, dont pretend you can have a system with perfect efficiency, and allow slack where it's needed. You'll end up with a better more efficient system overall.
It does not require authority, centralization, or punishment. Openness is a perfectly good substitute.
Centralization is a tool that has uses, as does decentralization. Coordination at scale, with critical safety conerns, often requires centralization. Decentralization is just as vulnerable to corruption. Socialist states have used both in combination to achieve dramatically positive results, with collectivization and central planning being the backbone of said systems.
Doubt. Please explain, possibly with examples; practices incidents etc.
It's not immune. It's not 'just as vulnerable'. You have to compromise a lot more stuff to fuck a decentralized system. If you've ever read cop doctrine; even they know this. They really love finding leaders; makes their jobs so much easier.
A quick example is local government vs regional government. Local governments do not have the same focus at a regional level that regional governments would over several local governments, while regional governments do not have the same view local governments would in detail.
As for decentralization being just as vulnerable, I mean that in the sense that fractured systems are easier to pit against itself. The US is a two party dictatorship, and is incredibly corrupt because of it.
Okay i think I can safely stop taking you seriously here
Not a bug, working as intended (posadism looking real good about now)
Um... So, wow, have you watched the news in the past decade?
Again, you're thinking in the paradigm of what is and pretending you can understand everything, thinking a more abstracted perspective should necessarily corellate with authority, and thinking perspective and authority should be both bundled and personalized.
Edit: you're also not explaining how this actually helps with anything. What's your area of expertise?
Why would me giving an example of decentralization leading to corruption not be deserving of being taken seriously? The US uses its decentralized structure for corruption, as it does use centralized structures. My point isn't that both are bad, but that both have proper and improper use-cases.
As for perspective vs authority, I'm well aware that one can see without having any power to change anything. I also know that that can become remarkably inefficient and result in catastrophe. We can make hierarchies accountable, democratic, etc, but the fact remains that they exist because of their utility and often necessity. Simply imagining a system devoid of hierarchy and trying to theorycraft it doesn't actually mean it will function in real life.
Okay we clearly have different definitions of words. Have you ever actually been here?
To the US? Yes, I live here. Having a 2 party system is more decentralized than a one party system. Centralization is a spectrum, not a binary.
Where's the second one?
DNC and GOP. They are united in that they both support capital, but are pit against each other to divide the working class. It's an example of theatrics, and the disunity of the system to prevent real systemic change. Same with how separation of powers is used.
Decentralization and centralization can both be used for good and for bad, and both have use-cases.
I've tried to explain to you for soo many times that anarchists argue that administration does not equal a command-and-control authority.
Some cases need binding control, especially related to industrial environments and hazardous working conditions. We develop methods of organizing and structuring ourselves often because it's useful, not because it benefits the person with a broader scope of responsibility, kinda like strategians vs tacticians. Those in these positions can be elected, chosen based on merit, etc, and will serve for greater prosperity than had these positions been avoided out of a moral objection to hierarchy.
Sure, let's say something like a lock out tag out mechanism. Person unplugs dangerous machine, puts a sign on the power button, and either nobody turns it on until its fixed, or nobody touches it until the person who put the sign on is out of its guts. This is not hierarchal authority, and in fact everyone having this power, levelling it, increases workplace safety. This is in fact communication. It's a veto.
Identifying roles with individuals² necessarily creates hierarchy and reduces communication bandwidth. I think the idea that you need to have one consciousness one individual one will responsible for things above a certain scale is insane and backwards, it comes from an insecurity and an unwillingness to adapt.
Quite frankly, you cannot comprehend all of a large system. You can't comprehend all of the road traffic in a medium sized city. Can't be done. Your brain just isn't enough, and the more you try, the more you abstract and reduce, the more you enforce demands based on your reduced abstract understanding, the more you get into the surreal shit show that was the late soviet union's industrial system¹. The atrophy and distortion is unavoidable unless you work from the bottom up.
Even in your industrial example, having everyone's eyes and everyone's³ voice, including their veto on a process will get you a better end result.
The harder you squeeze the higher functions of society, the more easily they slip out of your grasp. You must trust, you must allow others agency, you must understand that you do not understand and not fucking pretend.
If you must have a hierarchal model, I can recommend maszlow's–which on a civilizational level isn't all that far off a Marxian analysis of progress. Sorry for the ramble; am very high rn.
¹not that there was a single thing wrong with the USSR at its worst that isn't wrong with the united States today, and worse besides that make it harder to use as a clear example, please read like an adult and dont make me baby your tankie ass because your imaginary fantasy of your state-daddy you've never been to built from 50 year old propaganda pieces is beyond criticism and was without flaw. You can love shit that wasn't perfect, it's fine.
² a lunch huddle, Bob being kind of a safety nerd, and the informal back channels kludges and black markets that literally always grow organically in any rigid authoritative system that needs to actually work, sometimes to everyone's benefit and nobody's acknowledgement, sometimes at great cost. When roles like coordination and safety are a group responsibility everyone keeps at least half an eye out, and some fucking nerd always does at least as much as a dedicated manager would.
³everyone who gives a shit, at least. Workers at a factory cross training and coming up with ways they could do better, all reading different industry publications giving them different perspectives at the weekly meeting or next refactoring is going to get you better productivity safety efficiency and QOL gains than any amount of distant bosses or consultants could do, and the same between factories, industries, etc. The same is true for farms, gardens, cottage industry, mines, etc.
You're dramatically misunderstanding my point, to the point that you're making the same strawman argument Mises did to try to "debunk" socialism. Coordination and administration does not require a single person having total view, that's not how broad systems work. You need several levels of abastraction and coordination, which can be done by teams of people, you can't have a fully flat system at large scale without running into massive problems.
The people doing the actual work, if allowed to see the bigger picture, even piece by piece, will do this better than 'bosses'.
People with different experiences and who tend towards different roles will have different perspectives, different understandings all rooted in some aspect(s) of the actual function of the thing.
Having a weekly team meeting or culture of conflict resolution serves all the same purposes as a dedicated executive, with none of the inefficiencies and substantial gains in both psychological maturity and worker agency to do their shit better.
Responding to inputs from all directions rather than a rigid up/down tree based structure makes more adaptive more realistic systems with fewer kludges and more honesty.
Strategians and tacticians serve different roles because they see different levels of the battlefield, and footsoldiers can see what they directly interact with but are not privy to understanding the full battlefield. Having a fully horizontal organization is shooting yourself in the foot, we develop intra-class hierarchies like managers not because of class society, but because of the added complexity of large-scale production and distribution.
You seem pretty committed to changing as little as possible and not looking at actual scientific math-backed organizational science (read 'brain of the firm').
You seem really committed to fantastic delusions that hierarchal organization functions like you say it does any time it's implemented.
And you seem committed to roles being personified, to people only doing one thing.
Let's say, for example: Sam, who works at the steel butt plug factory, can't be up on the latest sex toy industry publications ¹ and nerd out about it at lunch with their co-worker Alex², who reads the wikis and reports of other factories who work with steel², and Morgan, who has a degree in metallurgy and user-reviews kink³, while they all try out their latest product (a little large on small bodies, put a warning on the box?) and the vegan chili fries at the new diner down the street, while Dave, who doesn't really care and just thinks its fun to say 'i work my ass off at the buttplug factory on Tuesdays', fucks off to get tacos because even though money isn't a thing anymore, 'taco Tuesday' is alliterative and he's all about that. Then go back to the factory for the weekly job cross-training half day. You've got more expertise more perspective and more adherence to any decision reached at that table than you do in any c suite. No authority was exercised, everyone who wanted a say got a say, and the system is better coordinated more fun and probably more efficient than under any centralized system. Maybe they also have a weekly 'do we need to refactor?' meeting.
Tell me how the hypothetical steel bbutt-plug factory would be improved by a single manager who does no other work
¹they're kind of a freak
²an entirely different kind of freak
³totally normal
I'm a Marxist-Leninist, I'm committed to building socialism in the real world, not trying to come up with a hypothetical scenario where management is superfluous. Factories work at the scale of hundreds to thousands, not 4 people living an idyllic life, and these factories have massive supply chains ingoing and outgoing. Management becomes necessary at scales like these, because coordination at such scales cannot be all horizontal.
Project Cybersyn was a real, socialist, working system, comrade and it was based on the same principles as brain of the firm.
It was also an example of centralized economic planning and administration, too.
Tankies are like Christians; you've all read exactly one book¹, and decided that was enough and you know everything.
¹counting 'capital' as one, admittedly a much better one on every metric but entertainment value and metalness
I've read quite a bit more than just Capital. I don't think trying to have a "theory measuring contest" is useful, nor does it actually constitute a point.
No I just think you're all fucking idealists.
I understand your claim, it just doesn't hold water.
'Materialism' is not just an aesthetic and flavor of idealism to project, dear.
Nope, it was decentralized. Read up on the theory, dawg.
If you call that system centralized, then most anarchists want to establish a centralized system.
It was a centralized system of bottom-up reporting and top-down management, it was an experiment in cybernetics first pioneered by the soviets and most ambitiously by Allende in Chile. The top-down management aspect is part of what made it so successful. I have read up on theory, don't worry.
As @Horse@lemmygrad.ml already replied to you:
Read the damn book. Sometimes it is in fact necessary to read more than a sentence from wikipedia to understand a new idea. This one's worth it.
Edit: nvm. The Wikipedia initial blurb also mentions devolving decision making in the main thing. Didn't even read that much.
It was a centralized system of bottom-up reporting and top-down management, it was an experiment in cybernetics first pioneered by the soviets and most ambitiously by Allende in Chile. The top-down management aspect is part of what made it so successful. I have read up on theory, don’t worry.
Have you actually read anything about this topic? Besides the Wikipedia page you're contradicting?
Yes, I have. I am not contradicting it, information was sent to the central level and decisions sent back based on those inputs, typically aided by cybernetic algorithms.
Central planning.
Sometimes. For some things. Not always. Especially for simpler products with fewer parts!
A steel butt plug factory could convievably have a dozen or so employees and be perfectly fine, make lots of butt plugs. How many people seriously need to work on that? You're either casting them or machining them, plus some finishing, maybe testing and packaging–and it's a product that benefits from being fewer pieces. I just used butt plugs because it's fun to say and ive seen sex toy factories and single piece metal thing factories, so it isn't a complete ass pull when i think about how stuff is made.
You seem obsessed with these ideas you have in your head, with no attention to reality. You're being very idealist for someone who claims not to be.
Again, you're conceptualizing jobs=people. You're shackled to capitalist abstractions and unable or unwilling to see past them. It's incredibly frustrating because I have to restate every principle every time, and be really pedantic.
No, your example is a hypothetical concocted specifically to imagine a case where management isn't as useful. Even a small factory that needs less than a dozen people for a niche product needs complex supply chains, and moreover is an extreme minority of the total production and distribution. My point wasn't that everyone needs a direct manager, my point is that management exists because it does solve problems when implemented correctly that horizontalism does not. This gets increasingly complex at larger scales.
I'm not "shackled to capitalist abstractions," you're trying to make a point by describing a tiny portion of hypothetical production and trying to layer it over all of production and distribution. This is idealism.
... and you refuse to understand again.
I understand, I just disagree with you.
No, you refuse to understand what anarchists understand as authority (just like Engels did).
It's been explained enough to you already that I can rule out anything but refusal to understand.
No, I have heard and understand your explanations, I just disagree with them. I used to be an anarchist myself, you aren't explaining anything foreign to me.
You've clearly not understood the definitions. If you don't engage with the definitions, you can't seriously engage with the arguments.
Obviously, not one with a clear grasp on anarchism, if you think that the only anarchist objection to hierarchy is "moral" in nature.
I do understand the definitions, again, I disagree with your arguments. Simple as that. As for being a former anarchist, I know that anarchists don't only object to hierarchy on moral grounds, but the way you framed it made it seem as such.
Again: I disagree with your assumption that you do. If you really do, then you refuse to engage with them on purpose, which is worse.
I don't see any pointein carrying on this conversation. I've stated my point. I expect you to write your final "nuh-uh!" without any signs of will that you actually want to engage in any discussion, but I will not further engage, because I see talking to you pointless.
I tried to have a conversation, and all you did was refuse to respond while insulting me. I doubt I could have done anything to convince you I was willing to have a conversation beyond just lying and saying I agreed with you, so I do agree that us speaking seems to be pointless.
Disengage.