More Anarchist or Communist?

I’m firmly rooted in my beliefs as an anarcho-communist, but what does that mean? Am I an anarchist or a communist? How can one be both? Every political label has a built-in identity crisis, but few produce quite as much confusion as anarcho-communism. People squint at it like it’s a glitch in the ideological matrix: “Are they more anarchist or more communist? Which part matters more?”

Here’s the honest answer: you can’t pull the two apart without breaking the whole thing. Anarcho-communists aren’t halfway between the two. They’re the union overlap in the Venn diagram. Let’s break it down:

Anarchism: The Method

Anarchism begins with one foundational argument: hierarchy is not self-justifying. If someone claims the right to rule you, the burden of proof is on them. And good luck making a convincing case.

For anarchists, freedom isn’t something the state grants. It’s something the state obstructs. No kings, no presidents, no vanguards, no bosses, no landlords. Human beings coordinate their own lives without coercive authority. So when anarcho-communists talk about society without a state, they aren’t being edgy. They’re being consistent.

Communism: The Goal

Take the classic communist vision:

No classes

No private ownership of the means of production

No wage labor

No markets

No state

Marx called this the “higher phase of communism.” The endpoint. Anarcho-communists don’t disagree with that goal. They disagree with the path.

Where Marxists-Leninists picture a transitional state to shepherd you into communism, anarcho-communists see the contradiction immediately: You can’t build a stateless society by strengthening the state.

To them, that’s like saying the way to eliminate fire is to pour gasoline on it “temporarily.”

So which matters more? This is the fun part:

They’re anarchists in strategy and communist in outcome.

If you ask Marxist-Leninists then anarcho-communists are “too anarchist” because we reject the transitional state.

If you ask a market anarchist they’re “too communist” because we reject markets entirely.

If you ask an anarcho-communist then we’ll tell you the question is wrong. We see anarchism and communism as two sides of the same project: a society without domination, whether political or economic.

For us, you can’t be truly anarchist if you still allow economic hierarchy, and you can’t be truly communist if you preserve political hierarchy. Authority and exploitation are one machine with two gears.

So what’s the cleanest definition? Anarcho-communism is communism without the state and anarchism without the market. No bosses, no state, no landlords, no wage slavery, just cooperative, decentralized, freely associated communities handling things together.

The “more anarchist or communist?” debate only makes sense from the outside. From within, the two are inseparable.

What I take from Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin, and Chomsky

American politics are broken. Not just crooked or corrupt, but structurally, irredeemably broken. Corporate power is propped up, sociopaths are rewarded, and it dangles just enough hope to keep people from revolting. Voting feels like choosing flavors of decay, while the wealthy buy policy and workers beg for crumbs.

Instead of looking to the ballot box ever four or two years for salvation, I’m looking to four thinkers: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Peter Kropotkin, and Noam Chomsky. I’m not looking to them as prophets, but as strategists, builders, and demolition experts. Each of these people offer a different tool for ripping this thing apart and reimagining what politics could be. I’m not interested in dogma. I’m interested in results.

From Marx, I take the foundation that class struggle is everything. Marx didn’t give us a blueprint. He gave us a lens, a way to see power for what it is. Capitalism isn’t just unfair; it’s a system that demands exploitation to survive. You can’t vote away the class war. You have to understand that politics is economics in disguise, and that real change starts by confronting the structures that divide labor from power.

You want to change America? Then start by naming the enemy: capital.

From Lenin, I take the strategy that power doesn’t surrender, it gets taken.

Lenin knew that moments of chaos don’t organize themselves. He built a disciplined machine not to preserve power, but to capture and redirect it. I don’t want a vanguard party or a permanent state, but I do believe in planning, timing, and coordination. American politics love spectacle but fear movement. If we want to be more than angry individuals yelling online, we need to move with purpose. The system isn’t going to implode on its own. You either build power or beg from it.

From Kropotkin, I take the vision that mutual aid is not utopia but strategy.

This country is obsessed with bootstraps and billionaires. Kropotkin said fuck that. Cooperation is how we survive, and always has been. Fuck waiting for the state to save us. Let’s build networks, councils, co-ops, and clinics … parallel structures that meet people’s needs now, not after the revolution. Politics don’t just happen in voting booths. It happens in kitchens, strike lines, and occupied buildings. Real change starts when we stop asking permission and start taking care of each other.

From Chomsky I take the filter, meaning if an institution can’t justify its power then burn it down.

Chomsky taught me to look at power and say: “Prove you deserve to exist.” The state, the police, the military-industrial complex, corporate media … none of them pass that test. He also taught me to not waste time reinventing the wheel. If a structure is doing harm then dismantle it. If it’s helping people then democratize it. Reform what you must. Abolish what you can. Build what they fear.

American politics are a shell game designed to keep us chasing scraps while the ruling class counts profits. I’m done playing. If we want to change things then we have to stop trying to fix a broken system and start building a new one from the ground up.

The state won’t save us. The market won’t feed us. But we might if we finally get to work.

Trumpism vs Conservatism

Once upon a time, conservatism had a brand. You might not have liked it–hell, you might have hated it–but you knew what it stood for: limited government, free markets, family values, and a worship of Ronald Reagan that bordered on the religious. It was buttoned-up, corporate-friendly, and polite at dinner parties. Conservatism had talking points, a think tank for everything, and just enough moral panic to keep the suburban vote.

Then came Trump.

Traditional conservatism is like a country club: exclusive, outdated, and pretending it’s still 1955. It champions small government while bloating the military. It preaches personal responsibility while handing tax breaks to the wealthy. It’s a polished ideology, wrapped in American flags and “founding father” cosplay, with a Constitution in one hand and Ayn Rand in the other.

At its core, conservatism believed in institutions such as courts, constitutions, and capitalism. You could argue with it, debate it, but it had a script. Trumpism burned the script though.

Trumpism isn’t an ideology. It’s a vibe. A movement built not on principles but on performance. Trumpism is what happens when conservatism gets radicalized by reality TV, Twitter algorithms, and decades of right-wing media rage. It’s not about shrinking government. It’s about weaponizing it. It’s not about free markets, but about loyalty, tribalism, and the illusion of “winning.” Where conservatism says “let’s preserve tradition,” Trumpism screams, “Burn it down unless it worships me!”

Trumpism didn’t evolve from conservatism. It hijacked it. It slapped a red hat on it, handed it a flamethrower, and said, “Say something racist on live TV.” Suddenly, the old guard–McConnell, Bush, Cheney–look like moderates. Even Mitt Romney, the human embodiment of corporate power is now “too liberal” for the party he once led.

This isn’t a party shift. It’s a personality cult, draped in the decaying skin of the GOP.

If you’re hoping this ends with a return to “normal,” good luck. “Normal” is what built the staircase Trump descended. Conservatism laid the foundation. Trumpism built the casino on top and rigged every slot machine to spit out conspiracy theories and bootlicking.

But here’s the thing: we don’t have to pick between Reagan’s America and Trump’s circus. The problem isn’t just the flavor of right-wing decay, it’s the whole rotten system. Conservatism and Trumpism are two wings of the same vulture, circling the corpse of a world built on exploitation. So…

What if we stopped trying to salvage this system altogether? What if we built something beyond it? No billionaires, on bootlickers, no CEOs, no bosses. No political theatre where our choices are a condescending suit or a fascist clown. Imagine direct democracy. Mutual aid instead of tax breaks for mansions and yachts and private jets. Housing and food because you’re alive, not because you’re useful to a corporation. Community defense instead of bloated police budgets. Power, not hoarded at the top, but shared at the roots.

We don’t need Trumpism or conservatism. We need liberation. Burn the script. Burn the stage. Tear it all down and re-build something worth living in.

“All Libertarians Are Scum”? Not So Fast

Recently, I told someone I was a libertarian socialist. Their response? “All libertarians are scum.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that sort of reaction. And I get it–libertarian is a poisoned word in the U.S. For most Americans “libertarian” evokes the image of a smug tech bro hoarding Bitcoin, quoting Ayn Rand, and arguing that child labor laws are tyranny. That brand of libertarianism–individualist, capitalist–has dominated the label in the U.S. for decades.

But that’s not what libertarian socialism means.

Libertarian socialism is anti-authoritarian leftist tradition. It’s about dismantling both state and capitalist hierarchies. It stands opposed to top-down government and to concentrated private power. It believes freedom doesn’t mean “I get to exploit people without interference.” It means collective self-determination, mutual aid, and horizontal organization. It’s about organizing society around human needs and not profit.

If you’re familiar with anarchism, council communism, or even some strains of syndicalism, you’ve brushed shoulders with libertarian socialism. It’s the politics of Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky, and the Zapatistas in Mexico–not Ayn Rand and Elon Musk.

The confusion stems from a linguistic hijacking. In much of the world–especially in Latin America and Europe–libertarian has long been associated with the left. The term was originally used by anarchists to distinguish themselves from authoritarian Marxists such as Stalin and Pol Pot. In fact, in 19th century France, libertaire was often a stand-in for anarchist, especially when anarchism was censored of criminalized.

But in the U.S., thanks for Cold War politics, capitalist rebranding, and a lot of Koch brothers’ money, “libertarian” came to mean something closer to “I think poor people should die faster.” The right-wing libertarians here have tried to claim the whole world, but that doesn’t mean they own it.

So when I say I’m a libertarian socialist, I’m not trying to split the difference between Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders, I’m saying I want a world without billionaires or bureaucrats. I’m saying we need both freedom and equality, not as competing values, but as inseparable ones.

Here’s the core idea:

You’re not free if you spend your life working for someone else just to survive.

You’re not free if your boss can dictate your every move because they control your livelihood.

You’re not free if the government props up corporations while criminalizing poverty.

Libertarian socialism rejects the false choice between “state control” and “corporate control.” We want neither. We want self-control. We want power in the hands of communities, workers, and individuals, not oligarchs and technocrats.

So no, not all libertarians are scum. Some of us are trying to burn down the same systems you are, just from a different angle.