this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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Teachers and doctors do not make their own laws.
I gave you reasons, you're reverting to vague responses to make generalized truisms that aren't true when analyzed specifically.
You're not engaging with my reasoning about why bureaucracy is entirely different at all.
They don't need to make their own laws to be able to abuse their positions. You're still looking at different categories within the same class as evidence of being a different class, but that's not how class works. Administration plays a necessary functional role in society, and the class character of administration comes from the distribution of ownership and control of political and economic power.
Yeah but that's a strawman. Abusing ones position ≠ the extent of control one has when they can literally write the law.
It's far worse, and the kind of power they have makes them an entirely distinct class that is incomparable to merely corrupt doctors or teachers. Doctors and teachers can't collude and compound their influence into being above the law, literally rewrite the law, be the law and easily shut down all inquiry that would hurt them or their group's interests. Doctors and teachers don't have anything like this, and their power is strictly restricted to medical/educational settings.
Having the ability to legislate does not mean one is an entirely different class. You're stuck on this idealist notion of class that divorces it from what actually determines class, that being the relationship to ownership of the means of production and distribution. Administrators that earn wages for their labor are aligned with factory workers that do the same, and both share the class interest of collectivizing production and distribution.
You're insisting that it isn't, and you're providing me with the Marxist understanding of class, but you haven't really done much to show why my reasoning is incorrect.
I think when you are saying "in lieu of," you mean "such as," not "instead of" like in lieu of means. I had assumed you were attempting to be a Marxist, but very confused, now I better understand that you are coming at this from an anarchist angle.
Your reasoning is incorrect because the interests of administrators in socialism and other workers are the same: collectivize production and distribution. They do not recieve their income via "state profits" or other such ideas, but instead as wages, same as the rest of the working class. This is why the state is not inherently opposed to the working classes and can be controlled by them.
I am indeed approaching this from an anarchist angle.
Are the wages of administrators:
Yes and no, usually it's higher but not the same difference as what classes are paid, like how doctors and factory workers are both proletarian but doctors get paid much more.
Kinda? You can't do that without a good deal of reason, or you'll have public backlash.
Their ability to do 2) is a big part of why I don't think they're the same class, and wage gaps with government officials is often much more stark with them living lifestyles that ordinary workers can't even dream of living.
I also do not believe they need good reason to do so, or to make other laws that benefit them directly or indirectly. Bureaucracy routinely does things in their interest first and foremost without it seeing much pushback.
You have a hypothesis, but it doesn't actually map out to the experience of socialist countries. For example, wealth inequality in the USSR was far lower than Tsarist Russia or the modern Russian Federation:
Systems like recall elections and anti-corruption campaigns exist to keep corrupt officials in check, and socialist forms of democracy require administrators to be elected, either literally working their way up from the bottom as in the PRC, or through other forms of candidate proposal and approval like in Cuba.
So your main criticism is historical evidence for anarchist models?
Nope, my main criticism is from the perspective of a historical materialist. Communalization of production goes against the direction society is heading in in such a fashion that it would completely eliminate key industries like medical production beyond what can be manufactured in small communities or a couple linked ones, nothing comparable to modern mass manufacturing. It would be a dramatic loss in productive capability, and would further give rise to capitalism once again as these communities begin to compete.
So your main criticism is that anarchism isn't feasible because it cannot reproduce mass manufacturing?
That's part of it, yea. The next mode of production is built on the foundations of the existing mode of production, this has happened every time a change in mode of production has occured. The modern era of mass manufacturing has built the bedrock of socialism, of a coordinated and collectivized system of production and distribution with the working classes on top of society.
Anarchism has no such basis in modern society, and every time it has been attempted it has either been extremely small, extremely short-lived, or both. We cannot simply build a society by imagining it, we have to examine historical trajectory. This is what turned socialism from utopian to scientific, and enabled the establishment of long-lasting socialist states that dramatically improved the world.
I'm trying to summarize your primary criticism into one line here.
I don't really think you can, my problems with anarchism are multi-layered and comprehensive, not something simple to be summarized into a single line. I've given more than enough to work off of if you want a discussion on that, I feel.
I'm not trying to unravel your entire outlook, just respond to your best argument. Is there one you'd put at top?
To put it in the simplest terms possible, and in a single sentence:
Anarchists reject historical materialism, and this rejection leads anarchists to idealist analysis that manifests in the form of utopianism, whereas Marxist advancements in philosophy led to the development of dialectical materialism and its application forming the aforementioned historical materialism and modern scientific socialism.
...Anarchists don't reject historical materialism? Historical/scientific cases for anarchism exist.
Anarchists necessarily reject historical materialism. There is no basis for anarchism as it arises from capitalism, as I explained earlier. When I say scientific socialism, I do not merely mean a scientific case for socialism. That's why I linked the articles for terms, so that I can be more clear in my point without having to explain what I mean by each line.
From a communist standpoint, sure.
Elaborate, my standpoint is generally the communist standpoint, with the communist critique. Can you refute my point?
Not a communist, so no, I can't.
You said you could, though. I explained my problems with anarchism, can you refute the concepts of historical materialism, etc. or alternatively explain how anarchism indeed does follow these concepts?
Either the concepts I agree with need to be refuted, or anarchism needs to justify itself as adhering to them, both are potential avenues for overcoming my strongest and simplest argument.