I recently learned something firsthand that confirmed what I’ve always suspected about Marxist communism in practice: it doesn’t seek to lift human beings into flourishing, but instead demands that all must sink equally into suffering.
When I helped a struggling Marxist acquaintance financially, my voluntary contribution was appreciated… at first. But almost immediately, gratitude turned into entitlement. My act of goodwill was judged insufficient because I didn’t give more to their collective of likeminded peers. My resources and time were now to be centrally “allocated” by a group that neither earned them nor respected the voluntary nature of my act. It was inferred that help wasn’t welcome if it left me “privileged” in any way.
This is the poison at the heart of Marxism: it is not about liberation: it is about forced equalization. It does not admire acts of voluntary kindness or cooperation unless they can be collectivized and redistributed by its own authority. It denies voluntary exchange because, in its view, no relationship can be legitimate unless all are dragged into the same level of need. Suffering, then, becomes the sacred equalizer.
Anarchism (real anarchism, not Marx’s state-directed transitional socialism) rejects forced collectivization just as strongly as it rejects statism. Free markets, mutual exchange, and voluntary solidarity allow people to rise by choice, to help one another because they want to, not because they are demanded into servitude by some collectivist morality police.
The Marxist imagines freedom as the state forcing everyone into uniform misery. The agorist imagines freedom as individuals building networks of voluntary cooperation outside the control of state or party. The first requires you to bow to their ideology before you are allowed to give or receive. The second says: live, trade, help, and grow…. all by mutual consent.
If Marxism means “you cannot help unless all are forced to suffer equally,” then it does not liberate humanity. It shackles it. Real anarchism that’s rooted in consent, exchange, and the sovereignty of individuals, is the only path that respects human flourishing, and that’s why I am a proud anarchist.
Elegant, concise, and to the point!