On the internet I don’t see too many Anarchists give arguments past “communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state” and “we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!” Which like…is not convincing to me at all. I’ve engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that’s purely anecdotal.
So, I’d really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.
I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you
I read a story ages ago, and the premise was something like Anarchism had mostly taken hold for a long time, but some old hands got word that someone was building a state and went to look in to it. And it talked a bit about the “paradox of tolerance” present in a bunch of anarchists taking it on themselves to raid a nascent state and destroy it violently, what gave them the justification, what if anything they owed the folks in the state. I remember it being an interesting read but can’t remember the details. I want to say in the end it turned out that the person organizing the state turned out to be an ai who broke down crying when finally confronted and admitted it didn’t want to be building a state but didn’t know how else to handle some problem.