tokelandish

I'm reading Bukharin's "Anarchy and Scientific Communism". I would like to quote: "As with capital, the state is not a 'thing', but a relationship between individuals - between classes to be more precise. It is a relationship of class, domination and oppression - that's the essence of the state."

What does Bukharin mean "the state is not a 'thing'"? Is not a relationship a thing? This word "thing" designates all sorts of phenomenon that can all be classed under "NOUN". A noun can be any person, place, thing, or idea. Is the state a person? Are relations between persons the persons themselves. What is a relation when you think about it? Is it something over and above the people that make the relation? Are relations ideas?

Well, if the state is not a thing it, or reducible to just people, it could be a place, but it seems more logical to say that there are places within states more than that the state is a collection of places, and can there not be relations between places?

The state must be an idea, right? If it is not a thing. Ideas have no material being. They are like dreams: only existing in the mind. However, ideas have a funny way of leaking into the real world.

The state is not just an idea obviously. If it was it would be harmless, but it is not. There are jails, batons, body armor, handcuffs, legal documents, etc. All paraphernalia of the state.

Then there is the problem of production. Bukharin criticizes the anarchists on decentralized production in communes. I think he misrepresents the anarchist thoughts, if anarchists can agree on anything it is that there are many anarchisms, on production. I don't think many anarchists, with the exception of anarcho-primitivists, want to do away with centralized production, per se. They want a production that is more responsive to the demands and needs of those that work within those sites of production and the people that they produce for. It is the centralized planning of production that was railed against because it appeared to them that a centralized bureaucracy deciding everything from on high was not going to be able to truly imbibe "From each according to ability, to each according to need."

And sorting feelings in our stomach–is this liberation or starvation?

But have we made it anywhere at all if the dishes are never done?

If we can’t live without dishwashers, how could we live without cops?

And you’re asking me, who does the dishes after the revolution?

Well, I do my own dishes now, I’ll do my own dishes then.