Alright, so I've always thought that I wasn't a communist, but a libertarian socialist...

Alright, so I've always thought that I wasn't a communist, but a libertarian socialist. But now I've been doing some more in-depth reading and I think that a lot of my beliefs actually align with Marx in his original words. I don't fucking know though, so can someone help me out and share some of the most influential/compelling criticisms of communism? I think it might help me understand again why I disassociated from communism before in the first place.

>hurr durr muh 174720 gorgillion murdered

Maybe The Road to Serfdom, I haven't read it though. Capitalism and Freedom has a little bit of criticism not a whole lot though. I plan to read Das Kapital and The Road to Serfdom this summer

Idk, it seems like that's just the result of a bad adaptation. I think I might agree with what Marx wrote about a transition over time happening naturally as capitalism becomes obsolete.

you're probably closer to proudhon than marx

>libertarian socialist
There's no such thing. You're a libtard LARPing, and a crutch to fascism.

Marx was literally a libertarian m8

So I think I agree with his actual writings a lot but "communism" has become a term associated with authoritarianism and violence and shit. Fuck

Fascism will come to the west before Communism. Stupid political ideology.

>libertarian socialist
Isn't that contradictory? You're either a memer or you have no capital but still suck up to those that do.

Personally I've always been a liberal Stalinist, but now I've been doing some more in-depth reading and I think that a lot of my beliefs actually align with Marx in his original words.

/pol/ brainlet detected, Google Bookchin

Hate that guy, especially his critique of radical greens is terrible.

Due to the incalculable greed of man, Communism in pure form is best relegated to smaller, tighter knit communities.
After all, nothing feels worse to a hard working man than being as unrecognized for working hard as his lazy companion is for lounging about and looking busy rather than working

Marx advocated for authoritarianism and violence.

So?

Marx's diagnosis is absolutely correct, but his weakness is in overestimating the revolutionary potential of the proletariat in overthrowing capitalism.

marxism is pure evil

Well, you seem to be hung up about communism's association with authoritarianism and violence. I'm just pointing out that it isn't a perversion of Marx' opinions.

marx was racist and sexist

Zionists can't be socialists by definition. Try reading instead of spamming names you've seen in posts.

Bookchin was motivated to reject proletarian internationalism and self-determination by his support fo the Zionist State.

>totally a socialist
Even anarchists don't hold him in high regard.

An example of a smaller, tigher knit community where socialism also abjectly failed were the original Mayflower pilgrims. The exact problem which you diagnose was experienced by them per their initial compact-idea (a common store, disincentivizing excess production/superiority/effort generally), but they later modified (each keeps his own spoils as he sees fit to toil) and consequently prospered.

A libertarian socialist society can exist, and similar situations have already existed in Spain and Ukraine and Mexico. However as Engels said years ago, the transition of power can never be libertarian because a revolution involves one class dominating another and enforcing its will upon society.

Yeah the USSR really did ruin everything

Can you imagine if the first socialist revolution had been in a wealthier country with a strong liberal tradition? Imagine if the Netherlands had been the face of communism rather than the remains of the Tsarist autocracy

>being scared of an analytical framework
lmao

The best critique of Marx is Hegel. No, not joking. Hegel preempts so much of what Marx does theoretically that it's disappointing how his rationalism can't be beat.

Now, you may say rationalism is a dead horse, but if you do you'd do worlds better going with Nietzsche and claiming communism as your own will to power rather than claim it as some superior ethical life.

>A libertarian socialist society can exist, and similar situations have already existed in Spain and Ukraine and Mexico
Only during war-time and never longer than several years. You do realise that the realities of war are different than those of peacetime?

>ukraine
>libertarian socialist
I didn't know conscription was a libertarian socialist policy.

How does Hegel preempt Marx's materialist critique of spirit/reason? In Phil of Right Hegel foreshadows a lot of the problems Marx addresses like alienation and false consciousness and Pöbel, but Marx's materialism seems like a different animal from Hegel's critique of spirit.

Because Hegel anticipates Marx's reasoning and shows it can't be good enough to answer its own problems. Marx isn't a genius for seeing capitalism creates the proletariat and rabble, Hegel himself acknowledges it. Marx isn't a genius for seeing society (material and ideal) as the source of ills, Hegel too sees it. He isn't a genius for seeing alienation, Hegel too sees it. What, then, is it that Marx actually gets over Hegel? Capital, and only through Hegel's systematic logic itself.

Marx's view of alienation is poor compared to Hegel's far more radical grasp of it. His fetishization of labor and species being is outdone by Hegel's analyses of Spirit. His solution is preemptively denied by Hegel's own anti-utopian concept which denies Marx's early form of universal individual collapse, and finally Hegel is really able to make a positive form of sublation the likes which Marx aspires yet cannot cash out.

I don't defend the philosophy of Right, just in general there are big disagreements I have with it without reading it, but when it comes to force of argument Hegel has the more grounded ones overwhelmingly.

This is to do with 'pure theory', as opposed to historical theory. Historical theory isn't fit for theory precisely because it is historical in nature, and as such historical materialism is in Marxist form a sham theory of history. It only becomes convincing with considerable weakening, at which point its allure subsides since it hardly says much of interest.

>but muh theory and practice
Hegel already foresees it and critiques its limits.

You can't will history by strength of theory nor mere practice, and empirical history is not moment by moment rational and subject to such an understanding. History is its own beast, and no one has a hold on it. A theory of history can only be a theory of the practice of history, not our individual practices or lifetimes, but of great moments and movements as a whole. Theory and practice are one only in the object that has a knowing which is its own being, and this is only in pure logic.

Every communist country that has ever existed