Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century

Great essay.

no matter the color of one’s flags, the calculations of statecraft remain the same.

When Marx pushed the International to abandon its historic mission of creating autonomous workers’ organizations in order to form political parties and go on a fool’s errand to capture the State, it was the State, predictably, that captured them.

Nailed it.

State socialism is a recipe for disaster, because the mechanisms of the state will always win out in the end. Access to institutionalized, hierarchical authority inevitably leads to that authority coming to be in the hands of those who are most determined to gain it and hold it. And they can, and thus enough of them sooner or later will, use that authority to further their own interests rather than the interests of the people they're meant to serve.

There really is no other possible outcome. In a hierarchy (which a state is by definition), psychopathy is effectively rewarded. A person with principles and empathy will exercise restraint - there will be things they're not willing to do in order to gain and hold power and wealth. A person who does not possess principles or empathy won't be constrained - they'll be free to do absolutely whatever it takes to gain and hold power and wealth, and they will. So those without principles or empathy will have an advantage in the hierarchy, and over time, they'll come to dominate.

This is why the current anti-capitalist movement in the west bothers me. Yes - capitalism as it exists in the world today is a horrifically destructive beast and it's likely not too much of an exaggeration to say that left unchecked, it will destroy anything and everything of value to the people at large.

But the focus on capitalism alone is not and cannot be an effective solution ,since history has clearly shown that state socialism is also a horrifically destructive beast.

And that's because, and really rather obviously if one stops and looks at it closely enough, the fundamental problem is the state.

Really, when it gets down to it, the only differences between state capitalism and state socialism are the specific hoops the tyrants have to jump through in order to gain and hold power and wealth, and the specific ways the destruction they bring manifest. The fact of their abuse, and the resulting destruction, remains, since those are consequences not of the specific economic system in place, but simply of the existence of institutionalized, hierarchical authority.

And that, in a nutshell, is exactly why I'm an anarchist.