Ignoring the bit on “vanguardism bad and Marxism ancient” for now, though I disagree vehemontly with both. One thing that you bring up is that a lot of the currently or formerly existing anarchist societies depend on outside production and donation. It simply isn’t feasible to produce, say, a smartphone horizontally. You need rare earths, highly trained individuals for circuit manufacturing, incredible amounts of previous capital and continuous organization of labor and logistics to make it all come together. The anarchists can either concede that smartphones are unnecessary (along with anything else that takes such huge production scales to create), or concede that they depend on outside production that can do so.
Marxists do focus on class, the mode of production, the base. Marxists focus on the liberation of all peoples, not just those within our immediate communities. And to be fair, most anarchists also tend to care about liberation for everyone, not just their immediate communities, but the key difference is that Marxism does not depend on everyone believing the same thing, or rely on production from the outside. Marxism focuses on the liberation of all oppressed peoples and the satisfaction of everyone’s needs, forever.
Social relations are core to Marxism. The economy is just one such social relation, but there’s also culture, hegemony, art, and class itself. You cannot have Marxism without analysis of social relations.
Ignoring the bit on “vanguardism bad and Marxism ancient” for now, though I disagree vehemontly with both. One thing that you bring up is that a lot of the currently or formerly existing anarchist societies depend on outside production and donation. It simply isn’t feasible to produce, say, a smartphone horizontally. You need rare earths, highly trained individuals for circuit manufacturing, incredible amounts of previous capital and continuous organization of labor and logistics to make it all come together. The anarchists can either concede that smartphones are unnecessary (along with anything else that takes such huge production scales to create), or concede that they depend on outside production that can do so.
Marxists do focus on class, the mode of production, the base. Marxists focus on the liberation of all peoples, not just those within our immediate communities. And to be fair, most anarchists also tend to care about liberation for everyone, not just their immediate communities, but the key difference is that Marxism does not depend on everyone believing the same thing, or rely on production from the outside. Marxism focuses on the liberation of all oppressed peoples and the satisfaction of everyone’s needs, forever.
Social relations are core to Marxism. The economy is just one such social relation, but there’s also culture, hegemony, art, and class itself. You cannot have Marxism without analysis of social relations.