I did watch it, just posting a 4 minute video from an anarchist YouTuber doesn't mean I immediately need to agree with it. Anark coats it as a Marxist critique, but it's thoroughly an anarchist critique attempting to claim higher and universal legitimacy by invoking Marx and Engels, but what Marx and Engels described as state capitalism was Bismarck's Germany, which had the large firms and key industries absolutely privately owned with minor exceptions like railways.

The state in Bismarck's Germany played a hand in directing the private economy, while retaining class relations. It wasn't because they had a state, it's because the base of production was capitalism, subject to the M-C...P...C'-M' circuit. Anark's critique is ignorant at best to dishonest at worst. Here's Engels directly speaking about it:

For only when the means of production and distribution have actually outgrown the form of management by joint-stock companies, and when, therefore, the taking them over by the State has become economically inevitable, only then — even if it is the State of today that effects this — is there an economic advance, the attainment of another step preliminary to the taking over of all productive forces by society itself. But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism. If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

Instead, what needs to happen is proletarian revolution, and gradual appropriation of property into the hands of the new, proletarian state, until all property is collectivized and the proletarian state is no more:

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: "a free State", both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific inefficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.

So yes, I did watch it. It's one of those videos that only really makes sense to people that haven't put in the time to take Marxism seriously, and just want to quotegrab Marx and Engels to give their points higher legitimacy. Even Anark's examples of Chile and Yugoslavia were more market-focused and less collectivized, Yugoslavia in particular relied on IMF loans to keep going. Anark's mislabling of socialism as intrinsically worker-ownership and not collectivized ownership pretty much leaves only anarchism and anarchist adjacent ideologies as socialist. And, the USSR and PRC, Cuba, etc. do have worker democracy:

I'm sorry I took your video seriously, I guess? I dunno, were you just wanting me to concede the point outright?

im sorry to hear that after all of this u continue to claim the state is an extension of its people, and continue to mix representation and delegation. or for that matter, the myth of the state abolishing itself, which has no basis in reality.

ill give up on explaining this to u now.
just one small thing: its spelled Bismarck, not Bismark.

Yes, after all of this I hold to the Marxist understanding, you haven't offered any compelling reason to abandon it, and have, to the contrary, shown a poor understanding of Marxism on both your's and Anark's parts. I'll correct a few of your misclaims about my stance here, though, for any popping in afterwards:

The state is an extension not of its people. The state is an extension of the ruling class, and the ruling class is determined by the base mode of production. A bourgeois state is one where private property is the base mode of production, and a proletarian state is one in which collectivized ownership is the base mode of production. As all property gets collectivized, class disappears, and so too does the need to oppress other classes, as everyone has equal ownership, leaving only instruments like social planning, administration, management, etc in place. That's the economic and historical basis of the elimination of the state.

As for delegates vs representatives, I understand the difference you claim they have, I just don't hold them as foundationally different to the point that one or the other invalidates the entire social basis of production.

Thanks for the Birmarck correction. Doesn't invalidate my points, but I'll make the correction regardless. If you have more questions, I'll be more than happy to answer.

Now make a comic about the redfascists shooting anarchists, or the (I am assuming leftcom) shooting anarchists.

Caucausing isn't really comparable to coalitions in my opinion, because all the formalisms are missing.

Bernie Sanders has no actual power within the party, no matter how many people voted Democrats because of him.

Compare the situation to an actual multi-party system with coalitions. Sanders would have his own party and there would be 1-3 other parties that are currently part of the Democratic party. Each of these parties would collect separate vote shares which would lead to some of these parties being larger and others smaller. Voters would have to choice to express which exact political direction they prefer instead of just having a binary choice.

After the election, coalitions would be formed. These coalitions wouldn't have to be along the current party lines, but e.g. moderate republicans and moderate democrats could form a coalition with eachother. This way, coalition-based multi-party systems tend towards moderate compromises, while two-party systems tend towards extremism.

In a multi-party system centrists represent reason and compromise, whereas in a two-party system they represent boring blandness.

In a coalition, each of the coalition partners hold power, because everyone of them can end the coalition. This means, more compromise is necessary and someone like Sanders cannot just be ignored for decades.

Horsehoe theory is misguided itself, it was pitched purely to distance liberalism from fascism when historically they are linked, and to demonize those who support collectivization over privatization. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

Where else should we have a serious discussion?

I've never seen such unjustified condescension, my god.

For almost all of human history, the current center of the the western Overton window would have been considered far, far left. Does that mean that monarchism and feudalism is the true center, and liberalism is actually the same as being to the far right of monarchism?

the dictatorship is a communist one

A dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the bourgeois are actually the same thing, you idiot, you imbecile.

The holocaust was the result of pretty effective management, only possible with the latest technology, courtesy of IBM.

What lesson do libs and anarchists take away from the holodomer anyway? Don't try to redistribute grain or stop hording during a famine?

I thought maga communism was a joke.

We all wish it was...

Horseshoe theory is literally just

Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.

You are assuming no ideological changes of opinion are possible or useful.

People that vote right wing aren't better off just because they voted that way. They're not tyrants oppressing the left, they're fellow citizens who get oppressed just as much. Their vote for the winning team doesn't win them anything.

The solution to right-wing banding isn't left wing banding, it's disbanding the right wing by showing its voters that they're being had. And that takes a cohesive and functional alternative.

Leftist "infighting" is healthy. It's a process of discovering these alternatives, and it regularly churns out consensus issues such as consent-based queer rights, veganism, not funding genocide, and how the US government is now fascist.

Over time these issues get normalized through leftist action until liberal centrists rewrite the histories as if they are responsible for producing them through liberal democracy.

To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).

Daily reminder that the DNC does not acknowledge that the US government is now fascist. Uniting under a common front doesn't mean we fight fascism together, it means we canvas for votes until we're black bagged one by one.

Ultimately it is important to vote in every election for a candidate that has a good chance of actually getting in to represent you, but that is just one day every year or two. Everything else should be dedicated to finding and testing these alternatives.

In a comic strip club.

SPLITTERS!

Yeah, that really nails it.

I was considering putting scare quotes around "communism", but refrained in order to avoid an argument about what is and isn't really communism. Yet here we are. So much for left unity! ;D

Of course. Real Communism is everything except AES. As soon as leftists begin making any kind of public policy decisions, they become reactionaries because the anti-communists in the US media told me so.

We're already seeing this in the NYC Mayoral Race and Mamdani isn't even elected yet.