The debate continues between advocate market anarchism and an advocate of a central government (by an Objectivist).
In the quote seen below, the Objectivist attacks the market anarchist by pegging anarchism as ultimately collectivist, referring to Marx and Engels as a case in point.
Again, I find the argument interesting, however much I disagree with it.
As anyone here come across this line of argument and how was it dealt with.
Thanks.
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To the matter of fact: Marx and Engels were first anarchists. They considered State as tool of oppression of the working masses and thought that with advance of Communism State will wither away.
"As the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but as it arose, at the same time, in the midst of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the stat e, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. Thus, the state of antiquity was above all the state of slave owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital." (Engels, Origin, p. 283.)
According to Marx, it (communism) would involve both the elimination of the state system and private property and the creation of a classless, stateless, propertyless, moneyless, religionless, nationless (no national conflicts), non-exploitive, and self-governing society
“Marx and Lenin” http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/fattah/COURSES/modernthought/marx.htm
“The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a state in the proper sense of the term. It is the proletariat organized as the ruling class. Unlike other states in history, whose role was to enable minorities to suppress majorities, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the instrument of the vast majority to suppress the tiny exploiting minority; its establishment represents victory in the battle for democracy.
The main tasks of the dictatorship are to expropriate the capitalists (those whose property has not already been nationalized), suppress capitalist resistance, and develop the nationalized means of production as rapidly as possible in order to over come relative scarcity and shorten the workday, thus allowing all workers to participate in the affairs of society.
As these tasks are fulfilled, the state will wither away.” The Marxist theory of State by Ron Tabor
http://www.spunk.org/library/pubs/lr/sp001715/marxron.html
Engels’ conclusion, for all practical purposes his last word on the question, was:
". . . the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another. and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap."
Marx and Engels on the State and Society by Ernie Haberkern
This is not an incident that first anarchists were socialists who adopted Marxist theory of State...” The anarchists, in common with all socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that the now prevailing system of private ownership in land, and our capitalist production for the sake of profits, represent a monopoly which runs against both the principles of justice and the dictates of utility.”(Encyclopedia Britannica)
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy...
Bakunin, for example described himself as collectivist-anarchist
Kropotkin wrote “ It is only today that the ideal of a society where each governs himself according to his own will (which is evidently a result of the social influences borne by each) is affirmed in its economic, political and moral aspects at one and the same time, and that this ideal presents itself based on the necessity of Communism, imposed on our modern societies by the eminently social character of our present production”( Anarchism, its philosophy and Ideal by Peter Kropotkin)
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/philandideal.html
Would you also call founder fathers of Anarchism “crack pot intellectuals”? Actually, if you would, you will be right on the money.
The “anarcho-capitalists” who hijacked the idea of anarchism from socialists still share with them the view on State as a tool of oppression. They failed to see the role of State in protection of natural rights. Even your ability to write your diatribes against State is firmly secured by the State. State protects your right to own computer, which otherwise would be taken from you by the first occasional burglar, State enables the function of Internet by endorsing net of very complex business contracts, State protects Mr. Perigo's intellectual rights to own SOLO PASSION etc...etc...etc...Marx and Engels understood that the only society which could exist without State is society without property rights (and therefore without any rights) which is Communism. Anarchism denies State as protector of rights and therefore denies rights as such. And this is the whole shabby secret of so called anarcho-capitalism-which is Marxism in disguise and contradiction in terms. Anarcho-capitalism is fried ice indeed. I could carry on with many other citations from many different anarchist sources but I know that this would be in vain. You are as big as your capacity of evasion, which is astonish-for you whatever you disagree with, is simply doesn't exists.