Huey P Newton on Anarchism

[Charles Xavier]

We should understand there is a difference between the rebellion of the anarchists and the black revolution or liberation of the black colony.
This is a class society; it always has been. This reactionary class society places its limitation on individuals, not just in terms of their occupation, but also regarding self expression, being mobile, and being free to really be creative and do anything they want to do.
The class society prevents this. This is true not only for the mass of the lower or subjugated class. It is also true within the ruling class, the master class. That class also limits the freedom of the individual souls of the people which comprise it.
In America, we have not only a class society, we also have a caste system and black people are fitted into the lowest caste. They have no mobility for going up the class ladder. They have no privilege to enter the ruling structure at all.
Within the ruling class they’re objecting (resisting?), because the people have found that they’re completely subjected to the will of the administration and to the manipulators. This brings about a very strange phenomenon in America, that is, many of th e rebelling white students and the anarchists are the offspring of this master class. Surely most of them have a middle class background and some even upper class. They see the limitations imposed upon them and now they’re striving, as all men strive, to get freedom of the soul, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement without the artificial limitations from antique values.
Blacks and colored people in America, confined within the caste system, are discriminated against as a whole group of people. It’s not a question of individual freedom as it is for the children of the upper classes. We haven’t reached the point of trying to free ourselves individually because we’re dominated and oppressed as a group of people.
Part of the people of this country – which is a great part- are part of the youth themselves. But they’re not doing this as a group of people because, as a group, they’re already free to an extent. Their problem is not a group problem really, because they can easily integrate into the structure. Potentially, they’re mobile enough to do this: they’re the educated ones, the “future of the country,” and so forth. They can really gain a certain amount of power over the society by integrating into the rulership circle.
But they see that even within the rulership circle, there are still antique values that have no respect for individualism. They find themselves subjugated. No matter what class they’re in, they find themselves subjugated because of the nature of this class society. So their fight is to free the individual’s soul.
This brings about another problem. They’re being ruled by an alien source that has nothing to do with freedom of individual expression. They want to escape this, to overturn this, but they see no need to form a structure or a real, disciplined vanguard movement. Their reasoning is that, by setting up a disciplined organization, they feel they’d be replacing the old structure with other limitations. They fear they’d be setting themselves up as directing the people, therefore limiting the individual again.
But what they don’t understand, or it seems that they don’t understand, is that as long as the military-industrial complex exists, the structure of oppression of the individual will continue. An individual would be threatened even if he were to achieve t he freedom he’s seeking. He’ll be threatened because there will be an organized lower group there ready to strip him of his individual freedom at any moment.
In Cuba they had a revolution, they had a vanguard group that was a disciplined group, and they realized that the state won’t disappear until imperialism is completely wiped out, structurally and also philosophically, or the bourgeois thoughts won’t be changed. Once imperialism is wiped out they can have their communist state and the state or territorial boundaries will disappear.
In this country the anarchists seem to feel that if they just express themselves individually and tend to ignore the limitations imposed on them, without leadership and without discipline, they can oppose the very disciplined, organized, reactionary state . This is not true. They will be oppressed as long as imperialism exists. You cannot oppose a system such as this without opposing it with organization that’s even more extremely disciplined and dedicated than the structure you’re opposing.
I can understand the anarchists wanting to go directly from state to non-state, but historically it’s incorrect. As far as I’m concerned, thinking of the recent French Revolution, the reason the French uprising failed is simply because the anarchists in the country, who by definition had no organization, had no people that were reliable enough, as far as the mass of the people were concerned, to replace DeGaulle and his government. Now, the people were skeptical about the Communist Party and the other progressive parties because they didn’t side with the people of medium living. They lagged behind the people, so they lost the respect of the people and the people looked for guidance from the students and anarchists.
But the anarchists were unable to offer a structural program to replace the DeGaulle government. So the people were forced to turn back to DeGaulle. It wasn’t the people’s fault; it was Cohn-Bendit’s fault and all the other anarchists who felt they could just go from state to non-state.
In this country – getting back home to North America now – we can side with the student radicals. We would try to encourage them and persuade them to organize and weld a sharp cutting tool.
In order to do this they would have to be disciplined and they would have at least some philosophical replacement of the system. This is not to say that this itself will free the individual. The individual will not be free until the state does not exist at all, and I think – I don’t want to be redundant – this cannot be replaced by the anarchists right away.
As far as the blacks are concerned, we are not hung up on attempting to actualize or express our individual souls because we’re oppressed not as individuals but as a whole group of people. Our evolution, or our liberation, is based first on freeing our group, freeing our group to a certain degree. After we gain our liberation, our people will not be free. I can imagine in the future that the blacks will rebel against the organized leadership that the blacks themselves have structured. They will see there will be limitations, limiting their individual selves, and limiting their freedom of expression. But this is only after they become free as a group.
This is what makes our group different from the white anarchists – besides he views his group as already free. Now he’s striving for freedom of his individual self. This is the big difference. We’re not fighting for freedom of our individual selves, we ‘re fighting for a group freedom. In the future there will probably be a rebellion where blacks will say, “Well, our leadership is limiting our freedom because of the rigid discipline. Now that we’ve gained our freedom, we will strive for our individualistic freedom that has nothing to do with organized group or state.” And the group will be disorganized, and it should be.
But at this point we stress discipline, we stress organization, we do not stress psychodelic drugs and all the other things that have to do with just the individual expansion of the mind. We’re trying to gain true liberation of a group of people, and this makes our struggle somewhat different from the whites.
Now, how is it the same? It’s the same in the fact that both of us are striving for freedom. They will not be free – the white anarchists will not be free – until we are free so that makes our fight their fight, really. The imperialists and the bourgeois bureaucratic capitalistic system would not give them individual freedom while they keep a whole group of people based upon race or color oppressed as a group. How can they expect to get individual freedom when the imperialists oppress whole nations of people? Until we gain liberation as a group, they won’t gain any liberation as individual people. So this makes our fight the same, and we must keep this in perspective and always see the similarities and the differences in it.
There’s a tremendous amount of difference in it, and there’s a due amount of similarity between the two cases. Both are striving for freedom and both are striving for liberation of their people, only one is advanced to a degree higher than the other. The anarchists are advanced a step higher, but only in theory. As far as actuality of conditions, they shouldn’t be advanced higher because they should see the necessity of wiping out the imperialistic structure by organized groups just as we must be organized.

[Pogue]

I'm going to respond to this as if it was being said now, by perhaps the OP, as an attempt to have a dig at Anarchism, which no doubt it is itnended as, despite any cover calls of 'spurring debate' or whatever.



Within the ruling class they’re objecting (resisting?), because the people have found that they’re completely subjected to the will of the administration and to the manipulators. This brings about a very strange phenomenon in America, that is, many of th e rebelling white students and the anarchists are the offspring of this master class. Surely most of them have a middle class background and some even upper class. They see the limitations imposed upon them and now they’re striving, as all men strive, to get freedom of the soul, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement without the artificial limitations from antique values.
Blacks and colored people in America, confined within the caste system, are discriminated against as a whole group of people. It’s not a question of individual freedom as it is for the children of the upper classes. We haven’t reached the point of trying to free ourselves individually because we’re dominated and oppressed as a group of people.



What about black anarchists, or anarchists such as myself who don't come from a middle class background and who earn the minimum wage? Seriously, there are much better ways to criticise anarchism than age old strawman stereotypes.


This brings about another problem. They’re being ruled by an alien source that has nothing to do with freedom of individual expression. They want to escape this, to overturn this, but they see no need to form a structure or a real, disciplined vanguard movement. Their reasoning is that, by setting up a disciplined organization, they feel they’d be replacing the old structure with other limitations. They fear they’d be setting themselves up as directing the people, therefore limiting the individual again.


No, we just don't believe the a vanguard and a state can lead to a classless, stateless society. I don't think this man really knows what anarchism is.


In Cuba they had a revolution, they had a vanguard group that was a disciplined group, and they realized that the state won’t disappear until imperialism is completely wiped out, structurally and also philosophically, or the bourgeois thoughts won’t be changed. Once imperialism is wiped out they can have their communist state and the state or territorial boundaries will disappear.
In this country the anarchists seem to feel that if they just express themselves individually and tend to ignore the limitations imposed on them, without leadership and without discipline, they can oppose the very disciplined, organized, reactionary state . This is not true. They will be oppressed as long as imperialism exists. You cannot oppose a system such as this without opposing it with organization that’s even more extremely disciplined and dedicated than the structure you’re opposing.
I can understand the anarchists wanting to go directly from state to non-state, but historically it’s incorrect. As far as I’m concerned, thinking of the recent French Revolution, the reason the French uprising failed is simply because the anarchists in the country, who by definition had no organization, had no people that were reliable enough, as far as the mass of the people were concerned, to replace DeGaulle and his government. Now, the people were skeptical about the Communist Party and the other progressive parties because they didn’t side with the people of medium living. They lagged behind the people, so they lost the respect of the people and the people looked for guidance from the students and anarchists.

And that Leninist revolution in Cuba turned into dictatorship like all the other ones. I don't understand why its so shocking that anarchists rebelled against this.

This manr eally doesn't seem to know his stuff. We're defeated because we want to go from state to non state? Does he even know what that means? We don't beleive we'll just make the jump. We think we will have to defend the revolution. We just think that a workers state, far from defending a revolution, actually crushes it, as it did in Russia.

The idea that Cuba will be free 'when Imperialism is defeated' is totally ridiculous. How and when will Imperialism be defeated then? Will this lead to the Cuban beurecracy suddenly giving up all its power and privilige for working class power? Yeh, thats how the ruling class operates :rolleyes:

People were skeptical of the Communist Party because it was thoroughly corrupt and conservative and social democratic, like the rest of the international Stalinist parties. It betrayed the workers movement and everyone recognised that. People of 'medium living'? What, so the 10 million strikers were all middle class then? Not only is this prat ignorant of political theory he is also seemingly ignorant of history too.


But the anarchists were unable to offer a structural program to replace the DeGaulle government. So the people were forced to turn back to DeGaulle. It wasn’t the people’s fault; it was Cohn-Bendit’s fault and all the other anarchists who felt they could just go from state to non-state.
In this country – getting back home to North America now – we can side with the student radicals. We would try to encourage them and persuade them to organize and weld a sharp cutting tool.
In order to do this they would have to be disciplined and they would have at least some philosophical replacement of the system. This is not to say that this itself will free the individual. The individual will not be free until the state does not exist at all, and I think – I don’t want to be redundant – this cannot be replaced by the anarchists right away.


Actually, the working class did set up soviets, some in workplaces and many in communities. it is documented in the book of events called 'When Poetry Ruled The Streets'. Because we are not vanguardists we do not believe we will tell the people what to do the way Leninists do in all their arogance. This revolution was defeated due to the wranglings of theunions and Communist Party in trying to crush it. The workers were given a 10% pay increase across the board which they settled on. I think this shows a lack of class conciousness, fostered through the Stalinists and the buerecratic unions.

That revolt wasn't even at the stage of seizing power, so to say the anarchists didn't have a plan is ridiculous. I know this man clearly knows fuck all history but it wasn't even an anarchist revolt. it was just an autonomous working class revolt.

This idiot doesn't seem to realise that the sole meaning for existence of anarchism isn't 'individual liberty' regardless of what assorted Leninist hacks seem to think. It is a libertarian perspective on class struggle, brought about as a critique of the authoritarian methods, practices and consequences of authoritarian socialism, especially Bolshevism (i.e. this informed alot of post 1917 anarchists perspectives).


As far as the blacks are concerned, we are not hung up on attempting to actualize or express our individual souls because we’re oppressed not as individuals but as a whole group of people. Our evolution, or our liberation, is based first on freeing our group, freeing our group to a certain degree. After we gain our liberation, our people will not be free. I can imagine in the future that the blacks will rebel against the organized leadership that the blacks themselves have structured. They will see there will be limitations, limiting their individual selves, and limiting their freedom of expression. But this is only after they become free as a group.


What is it with these arogant self-professed leaders who think they speak for 'blacks' as a homogenous group? There are black cops, black workers, black men, black women, black presidents, black CEOs. So what is he on about? What happened to a class analysis? Are we substituting a skin colour for an economic reality now? This piss poor analysis is embarassing.


This is what makes our group different from the white anarchists – besides he views his group as already free. Now he’s striving for freedom of his individual self. This is the big difference. We’re not fighting for freedom of our individual selves, we ‘re fighting for a group freedom. In the future there will probably be a rebellion where blacks will say, “Well, our leadership is limiting our freedom because of the rigid discipline. Now that we’ve gained our freedom, we will strive for our individualistic freedom that has nothing to do with organized group or state.” And the group will be disorganized, and it should be.

Oh shit it continues. So what about black anarchists? I know alot of these. They've existed throughout history including the time when Newton was writing this. How did they arrive at there conclusions?

And once more, since when was anarchism about individual liberty? We believe in class struggle and communism - i.e. the collective liberty for the working class he talks about, as opposed to say, some vague concept of 'racial liberation' which only seeks to divide the working class.


But at this point we stress discipline, we stress organization, we do not stress psychodelic drugs and all the other things that have to do with just the individual expansion of the mind. We’re trying to gain true liberation of a group of people, and this makes our struggle somewhat different from the whites.
Now, how is it the same? It’s the same in the fact that both of us are striving for freedom. They will not be free – the white anarchists will not be free – until we are free so that makes our fight their fight, really. The imperialists and the bourgeois bureaucratic capitalistic system would not give them individual freedom while they keep a whole group of people based upon race or color oppressed as a group. How can they expect to get individual freedom when the imperialists oppress whole nations of people? Until we gain liberation as a group, they won’t gain any liberation as individual people. So this makes our fight the same, and we must keep this in perspective and always see the similarities and the differences in it.
There’s a tremendous amount of difference in it, and there’s a due amount of similarity between the two cases. Both are striving for freedom and both are striving for liberation of their people, only one is advanced to a degree higher than the other. The anarchists are advanced a step higher, but only in theory. As far as actuality of conditions, they shouldn’t be advanced higher because they should see the necessity of wiping out the imperialistic structure by organized groups just as we must be organized.

No, Huey, I wont be free until my class, and the whole of humanity subsequently, is free.

While I have dealt with this as if it was written in the here and now (which is obviously impossible because Newton is now dead) I understand it what written in a different time. I think it shows a level of ignorance still. I think the way things have gone just shows how wrong he was then. I can only hope Newton realised the fact that some other Panthers did, i.e. that alot of white people were living in as bad conditions as their black brothers and sisters. Why? Because they were working class. Because we need self-emancipation as a class, not follow some class collaborationist vague concept of 'racial liberation'.

[Misanthrope]

So basically, anyone that identifies their viewpoint as anarchist is bourgeoisie, highly educated and has a great potential for social mobility, so they aren't apart of the struggle and shouldn't even be concerned about changing the system. So for him, even people with the potential to become capitalists are reactionary.

He cites the French revolution as the greatest example of (failed) anarchism. He continually labels the anarchists as racially white and whatever ideological standpoint he represents as racially black, the working class has no race. And he generally just rambles about his straw man view of anarchism, that anarchists want to jump right from capitalism to communism, ignoring the fact that many anarchists are gradualists.

"Racial struggle" which Mr. Newton obviously upholds takes away from realizing class struggle.

[An archist]

I have no idea what the state of the anarchist movement was when Newton wrote this, but this text doesn't seem really relevant today. As far as I can tell, it's more a critique of the stereotypical hippie: white, middle class, unorganised and high most of the time.
It's interesting, but it doesn't seem to touch any of the problem of the actual anarchist movement.

[PRC-UTE]

I have no idea what the state of the anarchist movement was when Newton wrote this, but this text doesn't seem really relevant today. As far as I can tell, it's more a critique of the stereotypical hippie: white, middle class, unorganised and high most of the time.
It's interesting, but it doesn't seem to touch any of the problem of the actual anarchist movement.

Really?

Even today there are plenty of anarchist drop-out lifestyleists. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/your-politics-boring-t114928/index.html?highlight=crimethinc)

[Agrippa]

Huey was a Leninist bureaucrat who ran the Black Panther Party into the ground, but not before totally restructuring it into a reformist entity that only served to further fatten the waist-lines of the bureaucrats within the group. (in other words a precursor to modern-day NGOs)

Huey did more, with his textbook Leninist skulduggery, to drive brilliant-minded, black revolutionaries to the anarchist wing of Leftist politics than any anarchist could ever do, and for that, we anarchists owe him a lot. :D

Further reading:
http://libcom.org/library/anarchist-vs--leninist-lorenzo-ervin
http://libcom.org/library/authoritarian-leftists-lorenzo-ervin
http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-black-revolution-lorenzo-ervin
http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/19
http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/12
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/anarchy.html
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/balagoon.html
http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/rbg-street-scholars-think-tank/23010-what-black-liberation-army-bla.html

[Charles Xavier]

Huey was a Leninist bureaucrat who ran the Black Panther Party into the ground, but not before totally restructuring it into a reformist entity that only served to further fatten the waist-lines of the bureaucrats within the group. (in other words a precursor to modern-day NGOs)

Huey did more, with his textbook Leninist skulduggery, to drive brilliant-minded, black revolutionaries to the anarchist wing of Leftist politics than any anarchist could ever do, and for that, we anarchists owe him a lot. :D

Further reading:
http://libcom.org/library/anarchist-vs--leninist-lorenzo-ervin
http://libcom.org/library/authoritarian-leftists-lorenzo-ervin
http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-black-revolution-lorenzo-ervin
http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/19
http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/12
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/anarchy.html
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/balagoon.html
http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/rbg-street-scholars-think-tank/23010-what-black-liberation-army-bla.html


And what have you done with all that he's given you? Eat Vegan food and talk about how much you hate cops even though for the most part you are not victimized by them personally? I mean I'm not going to say the Black Panther Party was adopting the correct line but what is the alternative? Anarchism?

[Agrippa]

Eat Vegan food

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

You don't know me very well. My diet is mostly comprised of beef, eggs, and whole milk. What does that have to do with Huey Newton's thoughts on anarchism?

Your mindless criticisms of anarchism are as insubstantual as Huey's. You both rely on idiotic and nonsensical ad hominem attacks and non sequtiors ("ANARCHISTS ARE WHITE BOYS", "ANARCHISTS ARE VEGAN PUNKS", etc.) to sides-tep the main point: bureaucratic modes of organization (such as "democratic centralism") exist to curtail freedom.

[Charles Xavier]

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

You don't know me very well. My diet is mostly comprised of beef, eggs, and whole milk. What does that have to do with Huey Newton's thoughts on anarchism?

Your mindless criticisms of anarchism are as insubstantual as Huey's. You both rely on idiotic and nonsensical ad hominem attacks and non sequtiors ("ANARCHISTS ARE WHITE BOYS", "ANARCHISTS ARE VEGAN PUNKS", etc.) to sides-tep the main point: bureaucratic modes of organization (such as "democratic centralism") exist to curtail freedom.

I am not suggesting that all anarchists are vegan hippies but a large percentage of them are. And the ones that aren't are involved in mostly ineffectual actions that aren't organized in any general way.

I don't find my party to have bureaucracy at all. In fact the vast majority of the important discussions and actions are done at the club level where as the general work is done at a central convention.

[Agrippa]

Uhhh...ok, can we focus on documented historical examples instead?

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I mean I'm not going to say the Black Panther Party was adopting the correct line but what is the alternative? Anarchism?
Um, yes?

[An archist]

Really?

Even today there are plenty of anarchist drop-out lifestyleists. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/your-politics-boring-t114928/index.html?highlight=crimethinc)

Fair enough, but the point remains. He doesn't criticize anarchism itself, but a popular stereotype of anarchists being, white middle class dopeheads.
That's basically the same criticism most anarchists here on RevLeft have, only we dont generalise it to the entire anarchist movement.

[Agrippa]

Fair enough, but the point remains. He doesn't criticize anarchism itself, but a popular stereotype of anarchists being, white middle class dopeheads.

It's not like there weren't any white middle class Leninist dopeheads during the 1960s. :D

[Sugar Hill Kevis]

I trashed the posts on sectarian rep. You can't actually view the specific users and their comments who repped another user. Plus, it was kind of off topic.

Why people insist on stereotyping people from other tendencies is always beyond me (anarchist are dumpster diving, unorganised or MLs are humourless, red alert fanatics). I'm paraphrasing Holden here, but to characterise all anarchists by lifestylism or dopeheadedness is similar to characterising all leninists by the Sparts.

[*Red*Alert]

I'm going to respond to this as if it was being said now, by perhaps the OP, as an attempt to have a dig at Anarchism, which no doubt it is itnended as, despite any cover calls of 'spurring debate' or whatever.



What about black anarchists, or anarchists such as myself who don't come from a middle class background and who earn the minimum wage? Seriously, there are much better ways to criticise anarchism than age old strawman stereotypes.



No, we just don't believe the a vanguard and a state can lead to a classless, stateless society. I don't think this man really knows what anarchism is.



And that Leninist revolution in Cuba turned into dictatorship like all the other ones. I don't understand why its so shocking that anarchists rebelled against this.

This manr eally doesn't seem to know his stuff. We're defeated because we want to go from state to non state? Does he even know what that means? We don't beleive we'll just make the jump. We think we will have to defend the revolution. We just think that a workers state, far from defending a revolution, actually crushes it, as it did in Russia.

The idea that Cuba will be free 'when Imperialism is defeated' is totally ridiculous. How and when will Imperialism be defeated then? Will this lead to the Cuban beurecracy suddenly giving up all its power and privilige for working class power? Yeh, thats how the ruling class operates :rolleyes:

People were skeptical of the Communist Party because it was thoroughly corrupt and conservative and social democratic, like the rest of the international Stalinist parties. It betrayed the workers movement and everyone recognised that. People of 'medium living'? What, so the 10 million strikers were all middle class then? Not only is this prat ignorant of political theory he is also seemingly ignorant of history too.



Actually, the working class did set up soviets, some in workplaces and many in communities. it is documented in the book of events called 'When Poetry Ruled The Streets'. Because we are not vanguardists we do not believe we will tell the people what to do the way Leninists do in all their arogance. This revolution was defeated due to the wranglings of theunions and Communist Party in trying to crush it. The workers were given a 10% pay increase across the board which they settled on. I think this shows a lack of class conciousness, fostered through the Stalinists and the buerecratic unions.

That revolt wasn't even at the stage of seizing power, so to say the anarchists didn't have a plan is ridiculous. I know this man clearly knows fuck all history but it wasn't even an anarchist revolt. it was just an autonomous working class revolt.

This idiot doesn't seem to realise that the sole meaning for existence of anarchism isn't 'individual liberty' regardless of what assorted Leninist hacks seem to think. It is a libertarian perspective on class struggle, brought about as a critique of the authoritarian methods, practices and consequences of authoritarian socialism, especially Bolshevism (i.e. this informed alot of post 1917 anarchists perspectives).



What is it with these arogant self-professed leaders who think they speak for 'blacks' as a homogenous group? There are black cops, black workers, black men, black women, black presidents, black CEOs. So what is he on about? What happened to a class analysis? Are we substituting a skin colour for an economic reality now? This piss poor analysis is embarassing.



Oh shit it continues. So what about black anarchists? I know alot of these. They've existed throughout history including the time when Newton was writing this. How did they arrive at there conclusions?

And once more, since when was anarchism about individual liberty? We believe in class struggle and communism - i.e. the collective liberty for the working class he talks about, as opposed to say, some vague concept of 'racial liberation' which only seeks to divide the working class.



No, Huey, I wont be free until my class, and the whole of humanity subsequently, is free.

While I have dealt with this as if it was written in the here and now (which is obviously impossible because Newton is now dead) I understand it what written in a different time. I think it shows a level of ignorance still. I think the way things have gone just shows how wrong he was then. I can only hope Newton realised the fact that some other Panthers did, i.e. that alot of white people were living in as bad conditions as their black brothers and sisters. Why? Because they were working class. Because we need self-emancipation as a class, not follow some class collaborationist vague concept of 'racial liberation'.

Huey P. Newton is my hero! :thumbup1:

[bcbm]

Yawn.

[Plagueround]

And what have you done with all that he's given you? Eat Vegan food and talk about how much you hate cops even though for the most part you are not victimized by them personally?

Have you ever been beaten by a cop? I have. It was hands down the most degrading and humiliating thing I have ever experienced in my life, not to mention the sheer physical pain (which included broken ribs and teeth). People will take you more seriously if you don't resort to this kind of crap.

[bleh]

Having flipped through various panther texts and their newspaper in the past I have the impression that most, if not all, of them had very little idea about what anarchism is. The term anarchist is usually used to describe a individualist radical liberal or a "hot-headed" leninist who favors more militant action then is perceived necessary by his/her peers. For instance Eldredge Cleaver, with whom Newton and Seale broke, was generally described as an 'anarchist' by his detractors even though he was no such thing. Even in an interview a few years ago Seale said:

Seale: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. But I told Eldredge, "Hey, man! You're always trying to be in the limelight." Eldredge wanted to do some crazy shit in the Party, which nobody understood.
Q: Like what?
Seale: He wanted to go out and do dumb shit, like shoot people and stuff. Eldredge was an anarchist, as far as I'm concerned. [laughing] He wanted to be the leader, he wanted things to happen out there. We were talking about programs in the Party: "Free Breakfast" and things like that--organizing certain things--because we had been reading the Red Book, Ok? About Mao Tse Tung. How you have to help the people to win the people on your side. So we had to go into the community. Eldredge wanted to go out with guns all the time, and send people out to do dumb stuff, and I had a conflict with that.
And this isnt a misconception limited to the Panthers. Tom Hayden wrote a responce to the Newton piece above (largely agreeing with him) which uses the same defenition of anarchism:

Second, Huey argues that sooner or later we will need organizational machinery to pull together the revolutionary forces in this country. Huey draws an important distinction between the black community and the white radical youth. Among the blacks there is a widespread sense of collective problems requiring collective, organized action; but Huey calls the young whites "anarchists" because of our supreme concern for personal freedom.
There are some legitimate reasons for this anarchism on the Left. We have seen too many "protest" movements integrated as pressure groups into the power structure. We know that power resides in the action of people, not in the eloquence of their "spokesmen." We do not want to build into our movement the values of the larger society: hierarchy, elitism, stifling bureaucracy. We are bored by the sectarian "marxist vanguards" always leafletting us.
But are we not coming to see from experience that the system we face is organized on a worldwide basis? That we face a long battle? That terror and repression will certainly strike our movement? That the mass media is unreliable, that only our own organs and media will prove we exist?
In our present state of spontaneity, we can create a mass awakening, we can continue to break down the authority of the rulers through our defiance. We can count on continuous, growing forms of spontaneous rebellion.
But we cannot defend ourselves against, much less contest and challenge, the power of the State without organized power of our own. We cannot expect people to make long-term committment unless there are vehicles of struggle for them to relate to, unless they see organizations which are concerned about their lives.
We need a revolutionary organization made strong by the participation and diversity of people in it, one that stimulates people to struggle for power where they live and work and study, one in which people can prepare to take control of their own lives by contesting the power of those who immediately oppress them. We need an organization based on the concept of revolutionary coalition put foward by Eldridge Cleaver, a coalition seeking "liberation in the colony and revolution in the mother country."
The first step must be in the mass recognition that individualism, "doing our own thing", will never bring down the Empire. The cultural revolution of youth, like the cultural nationalism of blacks, is a necessary -- but not a sufficient -- condition for making revolution.
In addition to program and organization, Huey has argued that whites should be ready to employ self-defense, Eldridge replied, to explain differences between Panthers and Yippies, replied, "They only use toy guns."
However both Newton and Cleaver seemed to be familiar with some of Bakunins works (primarily Revolutionary Catechism), athough all they seemed to get out of him is some revolutionary idealism. I'm guessing that the cold war had a negative effect on the political clarrity of people and this is where the misunderstanding comes from.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

However both Newton and Cleaver seemed to be familiar with some of Bakunins works (primarily Revolutionary Catechism), athough all they seemed to get out of him is some revolutionary idealism.
I thought the Catechism was a) by Nechayev, not Bakunin, and b) really, really bad?

[x359594]

I thought the Catechism was a) by Nechayev, not Bakunin, and b) really, really bad?

According to his book Soul on Ice, Cleaver read The Revolutionary Catechism while in prison and resolved to model himself after the ideal revolutionist described there.

At that time, The Revolutionary Catechism was attributed to Bakunin as sole author, although scholars disputed this attribution even then, but this controversy was not generally known to radicals of the 1960s.

From Bobby Seale's remarks above, it's clear that Cleaver tried to embody the lessons he learned from Nechayev's book at every oppertunity, with bad results for all.

Probably Seale's understanding of anarchism dervives from his knowledge of The Revolutionary Catechism as wrongly attributed to Bakunin, the "father of anarchsim" and from Cleaver's promotion of it.

[Devrim]

I thought the Catechism was a) by Nechayev, not Bakunin, and b) really, really bad?

There are two different documents:


The Revolutionary Catechism or Catechism of a Revolutionary refers to two documents:


a manifesto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto) written by a Russian anarchist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Russia) Mikhail Bakunin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin) in 1865-1866[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catechism#cite_note-0);
a manifesto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto) written by Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Nechayev) between April and August 1869.



Devrim

[Os Cangaceiros]

As far as actuality of conditions, they shouldn’t be advanced higher because they should see the necessity of wiping out the imperialistic structure by organized groups just as we must be organized.

*Sigh*

For the forty millionth time, anarchists are not opposed to organization. You would have thought that we'd cleared that up sufficiently somewhere in the time period after Engels made a critique of the "Bakuninists" that ran along the same lines...

[Sasha]

context context context people.
if you would asume that "anarchists" in this text refers to "SDS & wheater underground types in the 60's" it actualy makes alot of sense.
i asume that this is who Newton meant and that he suffered from that so typical american handicap of not being able to look further that your own front door before you make statements

[Raúl Duke]

context context context people.
if you would asume that "anarchists" in this text refers to "SDS & wheater underground types in the 60's" it actualy makes alot of sense.
i asume that this is who Newton meant and that he suffered from that so typical american handicap of not being able to look further that your own front door before you make statements

I agree

Actually, when I first looked into this thread I thought exactly about context.

I doubt that at the time, in the U.S., anyone know much of actual anarchism considering that, at least this was my impression, they were pretty minuscule and insignificant at the time. The New Left in the U.S. was mostly SDS (although at some points of the decade they were a pretty good organization) and a myraid of Leninist or Leninist-influenced groups (in Europe however one sees more the presence of autonomists and situationists; at least in France and Italy respectively).

Thus I doubted that in this article Newton was actually discussing about real anarchists or anarchism. However, one could say it's dishonest of the OP for posting this as an attempt to "criticize" anarchism by using Newton's article as one big strawman of actual present anarchism.

[Luís Henrique]

There are two different documents

Which of them has that bullshit about "honour"?

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Which of them has that bullshit about "honour"?

It is about twenty odd years since I read them, but if you are refering to the following point it is Nechayev:


6. Tyrannical toward himself, he must be tyrannical toward others. All
the gentle and enervating sentiments of kinship, love, friendship,
gratitude, and even honor, must be suppressed in him and give place
to the cold and singleminded passion for revolution. For him, there
exists only one pleasure, on consolation, one reward, one
satisfaction -- the success of the revolution. Night and day he
must have but one thought, one aim -- merciless destruction.
Striving cold-bloodedly and indefatigably toward this end, he must
be prepared to destroy himself and to destroy with his own hands
everything that stands in the path of the revolution.

It is a pretty crazy doccument. It can be found here:http://www.spunk.org/library/places/russia/sp000116.txt

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

It is about twenty odd years since I read them, but if you are refering to the following point it is Nechayev:

Yes, thanks. That's the bit I was referring to. I have seen this gem attributed to Bakunin, too. I hope this is a misattribution?


It is a pretty crazy doccument.

It is. It is also quite reactionary. And, to use a favourite word, absolutely authoritarian.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Yes, thanks. That's the bit I was referring to. I have seen this gem attributed to Bakunin, too. I hope this is a misattribution?

I think so, but if you sit down and read Bakunin, he comes across as much more authoritarian than most anarchist woul imagine him to be, but then again I would assume that most of them haven't read him.

Personally, whatever mistakes he made, I think that Marx's idea of workers' organizations controlled by the workers. Themselves sounds much better than conspiritorial secret internationals.

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

I think so, but if you sit down and read Bakunin, he comes across as much more authoritarian than most anarchist woul imagine him to be, but then again I would assume that most of them haven't read him.

No doubt they haven't. In fact, I suspect there is no actual reason for reading Bakunin any more. Who needs to understand the proper relations between abstractions like Freedom, Justice, and other XVIII century idealisations?

But even then, I suspect that this unreading alone cannot account for the fervent upholding of the mistification that Marx was authoritarian while conspiracy nuts like Bakunin were "libertarian" (in the old, undistorted meaning of the word). I fear that wholly different concepts of "freedom" and "authority" must be at play here.


Personally, whatever mistakes he made, I think that Marx's idea of workers' organizations controlled by the workers. Themselves sounds much better than conspiritorial secret internationals.

It sounds much more anti-authoritarian, too.

Luís Henrique

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I think so, but if you sit down and read Bakunin, he comes across as much more authoritarian than most anarchist woul imagine him to be, but then again I would assume that most of them haven't read him.

Personally, whatever mistakes he made, I think that Marx's idea of workers' organizations controlled by the workers. Themselves sounds much better than conspiritorial secret internationals.

Devrim
True. Marx got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong; Bakunin got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. Good thing we're communists and not religious sectarians, so we're not obliged to defend either one as gospel, eh?

No doubt they haven't. In fact, I suspect there is no actual reason for reading Bakunin any more.
Only in the same sense that there's no actual reason for reading Marx anymore (in that you can read more accessible, updated introductions to their ideas written by other people).


But even then, I suspect that this unreading alone cannot account for the fervent upholding of the mistification that Marx was authoritarian while conspiracy nuts like Bakunin were "libertarian" (in the old, undistorted meaning of the word). I fear that wholly different concepts of "freedom" and "authority" must be at play here.
On the question of revolutionary organisation, Bakunin was more authoritarian than Marx; on the question of a post-revolutionary society (which is, I think, a pretty big, important question) Bakunin was more libertarian.

[Devrim]

On the question of revolutionary organisation, Bakunin was more authoritarian than Marx; on the question of a post-revolutionary society (which is, I think, a pretty big, important question) Bakunin was more libertarian.

I don't quite understand how you can say this seeing as Marx deliberately avoided making blueprints for a post revolutionary society.

I also don't understand how anarchists can criticise the Bolsheviks for being 'vanguardist' whilst at the same time defending Bakunin.


No doubt they haven't. In fact, I suspect there is no actual reason for reading Bakunin any more.

I don't think that anarchism today is really 'Bakuninist' at all. Nor do I think he was a very interesting writer anyway.


Only in the same sense that there's no actual reason for reading Marx anymore (in that you can read more accessible, updated introductions to their ideas written by other people).

As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that modern anarchism is 'Bakuninist'. I think that its political basis is more formed by a critique of Bolshevism in the Russian revolution.

Marx does have something to offer, but can be difficult to read. I would tend to avoid 'accessible, updated introductions' as they usually end up using Marx to justify their own ideas, which are often diametrically opposed to what Marx envisaged.


True. Marx got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong; Bakunin got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. Good thing we're communists and not religious sectarians, so we're not obliged to defend either one as gospel, eh?

I think that Marx got a lot of stuff wrong. I think what we need to take from Marx is parts of the method. Whether he managed to apply it correctly himself on every occasion is a different question.

Devrim

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I don't quite understand how you can say this seeing as Marx deliberately avoided making blueprints for a post revolutionary society.
But he insisted on the necessity of a worker's state (or at least never came up with any real critique of how such a state could be dangerous), which Bakunin opposed.


I don't think any contemporary anarchists would defend Bakunin's terrible positions on organisation. I do defend, for instance, his opposition to the formation of a new state, and his preference for federalism over centralism.
[quote]Marx does have something to offer, but can be difficult to read. I would tend to avoid 'accessible, updated introductions' as they usually end up using Marx to justify their own ideas, which are often diametrically opposed to what Marx envisaged.
True.

[ZeroNowhere]

But he insisted on the necessity of a worker's state (or at least never came up with any real critique of how such a state could be dangerous), which Bakunin opposed.But that has nothing to do with post-revolutionary society, so Devrim's point would still stand.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

But that has nothing to do with post-revolutionary society, so Devrim's point would still stand.
:confused: Surely the question of whether or not to have a worker's state after the revolution has everything to do with post-revolutionary society?

[Devrim]

But he insisted on the necessity of a worker's state (or at least never came up with any real critique of how such a state could be dangerous), which Bakunin opposed.

Please can you quote Marx on this. Then we can discuss what you are talking about.


I don't think any contemporary anarchists would defend Bakunin's terrible positions on organisation. I do defend, for instance, his opposition to the formation of a new state, and his preference for federalism over centralism.

He didn't prefer federalism over centralism. He prefered a secret organisation led by himself.

Do you support the idea of a proletarian dictatorship? If so how do you see it being applied. If not could you explain how you see the post revolutionary period.

Devrim

[JohnnyC]

:confused: Surely the question of whether or not to have a worker's state after the revolution has everything to do with post-revolutionary society?
State can only exist during revolutionary period (dictatorship of proletariat).Revolution is over when international bourgeois is destroyed and classless society is established.Obviously, society without class antagonisms have no need for a state.Also the state during the revolutionary period will have nothing in common with today's capitalist state, if you want to know what Marxists think the state will look like during a revolution you should read the The Civil War in France by Marx and State and Revolution by Lenin.

[ZeroNowhere]

:confused: Surely the question of whether or not to have a worker's state after the revolution has everything to do with post-revolutionary society?But Marx didn't advocate a workers' state after the revolution. To the contrary: "Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." In other words, the DotP exists only under capitalism (as in communism, there would be no proletariat), during proletarian revolution ('revolutionary process of transformation of society', 'revolutionary transformation of capitalism into communism', etc). That is, the DotP is merely the political form corresponding to revolution (the use of force in the interests of one class to expropriate the expropriators, and hence end class society in general. In this they can only use 'economic measures', such as ending their status as salariat). Marx contrasts this to the current 'dictatorship of the bourgeoisie', which comes up because the bourgeoisie, unlike the proletariat, can establish themselves as a new ruling class expropriating the surplus labour of others. And, of course, the political rule of the producer cannot coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery (to paraphrase Marx from 'The Civil War in France'), hence stuff like the USSR can't be said to be a 'workers' state' (let alone a 'degenerated WS', which can only generally be defined as... The political rule of the producer coexisting with the perpetuation of his social slavery). Also, saying that the USSR was 'a workers' state, not capitalism!' is idiotic. So yeah.


if you want to know what Marxists think the state will look like during a revolution you should read the The Civil War in France by Marx and State and Revolution by Lenin.The former may be worth reading (or just skimming through if all you want is to see Marx saying that the proletariat had to adopt delegates subject to recall and so on, which is probably what is being referred to), the latter is not.

[Luís Henrique]

True. Marx got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong; Bakunin got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. Good thing we're communists and not religious sectarians, so we're not obliged to defend either one as gospel, eh?

Let's not confuse non-sectarianism with ecleticism. We are not sectarians; we can approach not only Marx or Bakunin, but any political theorist - including, for instance, Alfred Rosenberg or Ayn Rand - with an open mind. The result of our reading, however, does not need to be the same in each case; we would agree that the proper place for Rosenberg or Rand is the garbage basket, or at best the Museum of Pseudoscience. What are our conclusions about Marx and Bakunin? To me, Marx stands because of his devastating critique of capitalism. His analysis of concrete situations (18th Brummaire, etc) may or may not be correct in detail; he uses the proper method. What can you say about Bakunin? Why should I read him? What methods and insights can I grasp from this reading? The need for the immediate abolition of State following "revolution" (ie, the mere uprising, not the actual transformation of society)? Or abstruse notions about the relations between Freedom and Justice?


On the question of revolutionary organisation, Bakunin was more authoritarian than Marx; on the question of a post-revolutionary society (which is, I think, a pretty big, important question) Bakunin was more libertarian.

If Bakunin made any provisions, nevermind how "libertarian", about the post-revolutionary society, then he was more "authoritarian" than Marx, who evidently thought that these were questions to be decided by... post-revolutionary people.

Luís Henrique

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Please can you quote Marx on this. Then we can discuss what you are talking about.
Sadly, I can't remember that many quotes on the subject, but a quick bit of digging found this (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm) (certainly not his best-known or most important work, but still relevant)


So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists... will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers.

As little as a factory owner today ceases to be a capitalist if he becomes a municipal councillor.
Bakunin was aware of, and warned of, the danger that workers seizing state power in the name of communism would cease to be a part of the working class and would develop their own class interests; Marx wrote this prediction off. I think Marx's mistakes on the subject are more in the form of having a blind spot than in specifically saying things that were wrong.
As far as his better-known works go, there's also that bit in the Communist Manifesto, where he calls for stuff like


A heavy progressive or graduated income tax...
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

All of which imply support for a centralised state.



Do you support the idea of a proletarian dictatorship? If so how do you see it being applied. If not could you explain how you see the post revolutionary period.
I'm not convinced that dictatorship of the proletariat is a particularly useful term to use, but I agree that there will be counter-revolutionary forces that will need to be suppressed, if that's what you mean.

What are our conclusions about Marx and Bakunin? To me, Marx stands because of his devastating critique of capitalism. His analysis of concrete situations (18th Brummaire, etc) may or may not be correct in detail; he uses the proper method. What can you say about Bakunin? Why should I read him? What methods and insights can I grasp from this reading?
As I said, I think the history of 20th century state "socialism" bears out Bakunin's predictions quite well.


If Bakunin made any provisions, nevermind how "libertarian", about the post-revolutionary society, then he was more "authoritarian" than Marx, who evidently thought that these were questions to be decided by... post-revolutionary people.

A) But, as mentioned above, Marx did make provisions for what should be done when the proletariat had overthrown the bourgeoisie. I'd consider that to be post-revolutionary, myself.
B ) Bakunin's provisions about post-revolutionary society were largely concerned with preventing the emergence of a new ruling class. I don't think he was authoritarian on this point (although he was on many others).

[Devrim]

I think that it is a little disenginious to call upon a section of the Maifesto, which Marx and Engels were both later highly critical of to charecterise their views.

I think that when we discuss the views of revolutionaries two centuries ago we should be careful to remember that it was a completly different historical epoch.

I don't think it was possible for individuals to lay out plans for how to organise society in that period, and if they did it they were wrong, as Marx later realised on this particular point.

In my opinion the basic ideas of how to the working class could take control of society were not developed by 'intellectuals' sitting writing in isolation, but by the working class itself in practice. Nobody really had any idea of how the working class could seize power until the class manifested it methods, the mass strike and workers councils, itself just after the turn of the century.

Perhaps we can look at the Paris Commune as some sort of precersour to this. It certainly caused Marx to completly revise his ideas. Again an example of theory being based in the experience of the class itself.


I'm not convinced that dictatorship of the proletariat is a particularly useful term to use, but I agree that there will be counter-revolutionary forces that will need to be suppressed, if that's what you mean.

So you may not like the term, but how do you envisage workers surpressing these counter-revolutionary forces?

Devrim

[The Ungovernable Farce]

I think that it is a little disenginious to call upon a section of the Maifesto, which Marx and Engels were both later highly critical of to charecterise their views.
I definitely wasn't being intentionally disingenuous there.


I think that when we discuss the views of revolutionaries two centuries ago we should be careful to remember that it was a completly different historical epoch.

I don't think it was possible for individuals to lay out plans for how to organise society in that period, and if they did it they were wrong, as Marx later realised on this particular point.

In my opinion the basic ideas of how to the working class could take control of society were not developed by 'intellectuals' sitting writing in isolation, but by the working class itself in practice. Nobody really had any idea of how the working class could seize power until the class manifested it methods, the mass strike and workers councils, itself just after the turn of the century.

Perhaps we can look at the Paris Commune as some sort of precersour to this. It certainly caused Marx to completly revise his ideas. Again an example of theory being based in the experience of the class itself.

I'd totally agree with all that?


So you may not like the term, but how do you envisage workers surpressing these counter-revolutionary forces?

As I'm sure you'd agree, it's not for me to lay out a blueprint for how the struggle will take shape, but I think the experiences of events like the Paris Commune, Spain 36, etc etc give us some ideas as to how it'll look. For instance, I think it's safe to say that workers' councils will be involved. I do think that, as well as suppressing the counter-revolutionary forces, it's also vital for the workers to prevent hierarchies emerging within the revolutionary movement that could lay the basis for a new state and a new ruling elite, and, as I understand it, this criticism was first voiced by Bakunin. Hence why I still think he's useful.

[ZeroNowhere]

On the Conspectus:

Bakky: "So the result is: guidance of the great majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxists..."
Marx: "Where?"
Bakky: "... will consist of workers. Certainly, with your permission, of former workers, who however, as soon as they have become representatives or governors of the people, cease to be workers..."
Marx: "As little as a factory owner today ceases to be a capitalist if he becomes a municipal councillor..."
Bakky: "and look down on the whole common workers' world from the height of the state. They will no longer represent the people, but themselves and their pretensions to people's government. Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of the nature of men."
Marx: "If Mr Bakunin only knew something about the position of a manager in a workers' cooperative factory, all his dreams of domination would go to the devil. He should have asked himself what form the administrative function can take on the basis of this workers' state, if he wants to call it that."

Now, please explain how Marx was wrong here. Also note that the 'administrative function' Marx discusses here (as well as mentioning in the Critique of the Gotha Program) are ones comparable to, as he says, a democratically elected manager in a co-operative factory, the freely recallable delegates he had praised the Commune for (though he was perhaps giving it too much credit, but nevertheless...), and implied support for in his attacks on 'representative democracy' in his critiques of Hegel. Marx clearly thinks that this does not imply 'domination', as Bakky alleges, and is also quite clear that having an administrative position could not make somebody suddenly cease to be a worker, just as Al Gore being a politician doesn't prevent him from also being a capitalist. He also refers to delegated municipal councillors in the Paris Commune.

Quote from Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right:

"The separation of the political state from civil society appears as the separation of the deputies from their mandators. From itself, society delegates to its political existence only the elements . . . . The delegates of civil society are a society whose members are connected by the form of instruction or commission with those who commission them. They are formally commissioned, but once they are actual they are no longer commissioned. They are supposed to be delegates, and they are not."

Some more relevant quotes from the conspectus:

Bakky: "What does it mean, the proletariat organized as ruling class?"
Marx: "It means that the proletariat, instead of struggling sectionally against the economically privileged class, has attained a sufficient strength and organization to employ general means of coercion in this struggle. It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as class. With its complete victory its own rule thus also ends, as its class character has disappeared."

Bakky: "We have already stated our deep opposition to the theory of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers, if not as final ideal then at least as the next major aim -- the foundation of a people's state, which, as they have expressed it, will be none other than the proletariat organized as ruling class. The question arises, if the proletariat becomes the ruling class, over whom will it rule? It means that there will still remain another proletariat, which will be subject to this new domination, this new state."
Marx: "It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened."

Also, you did not give any evidence of the DotP being post-revolutionary (which would contradict the comment in the critique of the Gotha Program). Also, as I said in my critique of the Anarchist FAQ, getting into a war of who predicted the RR best is a pretty silly idea. For, among other reasons, this:

"What I know or believe about the situation in Russia impels me to the opinion that the Russians are approaching their 1789. The revolution must break out there in a given time; it may break out there any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine which only needs a fuse to be laid to it. Especially since March 13. This is one of the exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of people to make a revolution, i.e., with one small push to cause a whole system, which (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov's) is in more than labile equilibrium, to come crashing down, and thus by one action, in itself insignificant, to release uncontrollable explosive forces. Well now, if ever Blanquism--the phantasy of overturning an entire society through the action of a small conspiracy--had a certain justification for its existence, that is certainly in Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder, once the forces have been released and national energy has been transformed from potential into kinetic energy (another favourite image of Plekhanov's and a very good one)--the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times as strong as themselves and which will seek its vent where it can, according as the economic forces and resistances determine.

"Supposing these people imagine they can seize power, what does it matter? Provided they make the hole which will shatter the dyke, the flood itself will soon rob them of their illusions. But if by chance these illusions resulted in giving them a superior force of will, why complain of that? People who boasted that they had made a revolution have always seen the next day that they had no idea what they were doing, that the revolution made did not in the least resemble the one they would have liked to make. That is what Hegel calls the irony of history, an irony which few historic personalities escape. Look at Bismarck, the revolutionary against his will, and Gladstone who has ended in quarrelling with his adored Tsar.

"To me the most important thing is that the impulse should be given in Russia, that the revolution should break out. Whether this fraction or that fraction gives the signal, whether it happens under this flag or that flag matters little to me. If it were a palace conspiracy it would be swept away tomorrow. There where the position is so strained, where the revolutionary elements are accumulated to such a degree, where the economic situation of the enormous mass of the people becomes daily more impossible, where every stage of social development is represented, from the primitive commune to modern large-scale industry and high finance, and where all these contradictions are violently held together by an unexampled despotism, a despotism which is becoming more and more unbearable to the youth in whom the national worth and intelligence are united--there, when 1789 has once been launched, 1793 will not be long in following."

Anyways, on to the next point.


As far as his better-known works go, there's also that bit in the Communist Manifesto, where he calls for stuff likeSure, but for that one has to understand his perspective at the time. Him and Engels were expecting a crisis accompanied by revolution to break out early in the 1850s, similar to the 1848 revolution, with Marx writing several articles in 1850 implying that there would soon be a crisis (the absence of one caused him to begin reconsidering his ideas on crisis in 1851 and overhauling them after the 1857 crisis, during which he was hardly as active as in 1848), and therefore there would be no way for the proletariat to be communist before the revolution, rather they would have to implement reforms that were unstable (not impossible, mind, simply unstable under capitalism), and would have to be defended against the capitalist class, and through this they would have to continue to further outstrip themselves until they eventually centralized all means of production into the hands of the proletariat, thereby leading to the abolition of the proletariat, and formation of "an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." He also viewed it as possible for the proletariat to use the state machinery without modification in order to carry out this struggle.

Now, while it's usually argued that he broke from this view of the state machinery due mainly (or only) to the Paris Commune (which still isn't the huge paradigm change most Bakuninists like to present as having resulted from the commune), I would argue that he had already done so in the Eighteenth Brumaire in 1852. Compare these two (long, sorry, but the context was important) passages:

"It is immediately obvious that in a country like France, where the executive power commands an army of officials numbering more than half a million individuals and therefore constantly maintains an immense mass of interests and livelihood in the most absolute dependence; where the state enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends and tutors civil society from its most comprehensive manifestations of life down to its most insignificant stirrings, from its most general modes of being to the private existence of individuals; where through the most extraordinary centralization this parasitic body acquires a ubiquity, an omniscience, a capacity for accelerated mobility and an elasticity which finds a counterpart only in the helpless dependency, in the loose shapelessness of the actual body politic - it is obvious that in such a country the National Assembly forfeits all real influence when it loses command of the ministerial posts, if it does not at the same time simplify the administration of the state, reduce the army of officials as far as possible and, finally, let civil society and public opinion create organs of their own, independent of the government power. But it is precisely with the maintenance of that extensive state machine in its numerous ramifications that the material interests of the French bourgeoisie are interwoven in the closest fashion. Here it finds posts for its surplus population and makes up in the form of states salaries for what it cannot pocket in the form of profit, interest, rents and honorariums. On the other hand, its political interests compelled it to increase daily the repressive measures and therefore the resources and the personnel of the state power, while at the same time it had to wage an uninterrupted war against public opinion and mistrustfully mutilate, cripple, the independent organs of the social movement, where it did not succeed in amputating them entirely. Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power, and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresistible, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it.

"This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its vast and ingenious state machinery, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half a million, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes the body of French society and chokes all its pores, sprang up in the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system, which it helped to hasten. The seignorial privileges of the landowners and towns became transformed into so many attributes of the state power, the feudal dignitaries into paid officials and the motley pattern of conflicting medieval plenary powers into the regulated plan of a state authority whose work is divided and centralized as in a factory. The first French Revolution, with its task of breaking all separate local, territorial, urban and provincial powers in order to create the civil unity of the nation, was bound to develop what the absolute monarchy had begun: centralisation, but at the same time the extent, the attribution and the number of agents of governmental power. Napoleon completed this state machinery. The legitimist monarchy and the July monarchy added nothing but a greater division of labour, growing in the same measure as the division of labour within bourgeois society created new groups of interests, and, therefore, new material for state administration. Every common interest was straightway severed from society, counterposed to it as a higher, general interest, snatched from the activity of society's members themselves and made an object of government activity, from a bridge, a schoolhouse and the communal property of a village community to the railways, the national wealth and the national university of France.

"Finally, in its struggle against the revolution, the parliamentary republic found itself compelled to strengthen, along the repressive measures, the resources and centralisation of governmental power. All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor."

-Eighteenth Brumaire (1852)

"But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

"The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France.

[...]

"During the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary control – that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes – became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes; with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism.

"After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830, resulting in the transfer of government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferred it from the more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois republicans, who, in the name of the February Revolution, took the state power, used it for the June [1848] massacres, in order to convince the working class that “social” republic means the republic entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist bulk of the bourgeois and landlord class that they might safely leave the cares and emoluments of government to the bourgeois “republicans.”

"However, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois republicans had, from the front, to fall back to the rear of the “Party of Order” – a combination formed by all the rival fractions and factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their joint-stock government was the parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its president. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate insult towards the “vile multitude.”

"If the parliamentary republic, as M. Thiers said, “divided them [the different fractions of the ruling class] least", it opened an abyss between that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still checked the state power, were removed by their union; and in view of the threatening upheaval of the proletariat, they now used that state power mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war engine of capital against labor.

"In their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses, they were, however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased powers of repression, but at the same time to divest their own parliamentary stronghold – the National Assembly – one by one, of all its own means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the “Party of Order” republic was the Second Empire.

"The empire, with the coup d’etat for its birth certificate, universal suffrage for its sanction, and the sword for its sceptre, professed to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved in the struggle of capital and labor. It professed to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and, finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of national glory.

"In reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the savior of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power, apparently soaring high above society and the very hotbed of all its corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin. Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form of the state power which nascent middle class society had commenced to elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the enslavement of labor by capital.

"The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of “social republic,” with which the February Revolution was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic."

-The Civil War in France, 1871.

And, of course, the celebrated passage about the Communards revolting against not a particular form of state, but against the state, is quite similar to a lesser known passage from, interestingly enough, 'The German Ideology' (in 1845), as well as a passage from 'The Jewish Question':

"Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour [note that this is what Marx would have later referred to as 'abstract labour', as opposed to useful labour, which, of course, would not be abolished]. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State."

-The German Ideology

"[O]nly when man has recognized and organized his “forces propres” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished."

- On the Jewish Question.

Though this is a bit of a digression, I suppose there is some relevance, since it's a pretty common view that Marx suddenly took some 'libertarian turn' in 1871. To the contrary, the Paris Commune only served as a final proof to his already formulated idea that the working class cannot take hold of the ready-made state machinery, but must instead 'smash' it (further proof that Marx was a crappy poet, IMO). Hence Marx's reference to the Eighteenth Brumaire, "... If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire you will find that I say that the next attempt of the French revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is essential for every real people's revolution on the Continent." Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Marx didn't make any explicit statements of his later views on 'planks', so far as I know, but his own practice then still involved the use of programs and such (for example, he thought that, though he disagreed with some of Guesde's 'immediate demands', the program in general was positive and based on demands that had arisen 'spontaneously from the workers' movement', to paraphrase), though for a different reason, that is, in order to, by helping the workers in struggle, help to increase the unity and strength of the working class. This is why Engels could later state, "Yet our programme is a purely socialist one. Our first plank is the socialisation of all the means and instruments of production. Still, we accept anything which any government may give us, but only as a payment on account, and for which we offer no thanks." So, from "revolutionary measures" (as Engels put it), they went to supporting workers' movements under capitalist 'stasis', if with methods I would disagree with (eg. 'immediate demands' in programs for political parties).

But one thing that we can be sure of is that Marx never (at least since when he became a communist rather than a leftist Hegelian) advocated the measures as 'post-revolutionary', and Engels was quite clear in a critique of Heinzen (who treated the measures, or very similar ones, as an ends rather than means) that all that they would lead to if treated as an end is an unstable form of capitalism. He also later made it clear that there were no countries except England (along with Paris and a few 'big industrial centres', which aren't a countries) where the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie existed at the time, thus making revolution impossible in retrospect, which may have explained their focus on 'revolutionary' times brought about by crises as a deus ex machina rather than the building of a revolutionary movement capable of bringing about revolutionary times.

Edit: And apparently the Commune came up while I was posting this. How appropriate.

[Luís Henrique]

Sadly, I can't remember that many quotes on the subject, but a quick bit of digging found this (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm) (certainly not his best-known or most important work, but still relevant)

Well. Perhaps the source of disagreement can be found in the Manifesto, a few lines above the platform you quoted later in your post:


We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.Emphasys mine.

As we see, Marx - and consequent Marxists after him - consider the uprising that deposes the bourgeois government of the day not to be The Revolution. Revolution is what comes with it, beggining with it and after it: the uprooting of the conditions of reproduction of the bourgeois society. If to anarchists the revolution is an event that is complete in 24 hours, then we are talking about different things.


Bakunin was aware of, and warned of, the danger that workers seizing state power in the name of communism would cease to be a part of the working class and would develop their own class interests;Let me concede this point: Bakunin seems to have said something to that effect. Was it a product of "awareness" or was it a simple disconnected intuition? Was Bakunin able to explain why this would happen? (And, after all, was this what happened, or, as some others argue, the Russian Revolution was doomed to become a bourgeois revolution, either because of the belated development of productive forces in Russia, or because of its isolation due to the defeat of Revolution elsewhere?)

I fear Bakunin had no better reason to suspect a "proletarian State" would degenerate into a new ruling class than some abstract algebra of Freedom & Justice, totally conceived in Enlightenment philosophical terms, and completely divorced from the material conditions of class struggle.

I may be wrong, and perhaps you can point us to some text by Bakunin that makes the reasoned case for his "suspicion" without resorting to abstract, hypostasiated, bourgeois conceptions.


As far as his better-known works go, there's also that bit in the Communist Manifesto, where he calls for stuff like

All of which imply support for a centralised state.As devrim explained, this is a centralised State during revolution, not after revolution.


I'm not convinced that dictatorship of the proletariat is a particularly useful term to use, but I agree that there will be counter-revolutionary forces that will need to be suppressed, if that's what you mean.In other words, you realise the proletariat will necessarily have to take dictatorial measures against the bourgeoisie; you just don't like calling that the "dictatorship of the proletariat".


As I said, I think the history of 20th century state "socialism" bears out Bakunin's predictions quite well.As above, I fear this remains entirely to demonstrate.


B ) Bakunin's provisions about post-revolutionary society were largely concerned with preventing the emergence of a new ruling class. I don't think he was authoritarian on this point (although he was on many others).And exactly how he proposed to avoid the emergence of a new ruling class?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Well, it appears this discussion isn't as interesting as I would think. But I am going to make a new attempt.


Bakunin seems to have said something to that effect.

And so did my grandmother, who as the uneducated peasant she was, always said, "only the flies change, the shit is always the same". Or "only the dogs change, the bone is always the same", perhaps; after all, she was uneducated but not impolite. Now, I doubt Bakunin's intuition about the "development of a new class" from the "proletarian State" Marx proposed was much more profound than this. Common sence, a deep distrust in human nature, etc. Combined with a great trust in himself - he was different, he would never push himself into a position of privilege if trusted with power. Thence his beliefs in a secret, benevolent dictatorship, directed by him and by people like himself.

And then we can objectively look at how Bakunin reacted to actual or perceived authoritarianism. I am not going to bring into discussion his Confession; I understand that the conditions in the Russian prisonal system were set to extract things like that from people. But then we have his personal reaction to Marx, whom he considered "authoritarian", and in fact, who prompted him to create his "theory", if we may so call it, of a new ruling class.

Now, I am not going to assert that Marx wasn't personally authoritarian; perhaps he was. But what disgruntled Bakunin was not this; instead, it was Marx's insistence on democratic controls by the rank and file that upset him. He was not going to subject his own, naturally generous, greater than the world, nature to the control of who know what possibly selfish, envious, petty rank-and-file workers. This was "authoritarian" to him.

And why do I think this was what happened with Bakunin? Because we have the quite documented history of his relationship with a truely authoritarian personality: Nechayev, of whom it can be safely said was a dog in search of the old bone of power. Bakunin's reaction to this extremely - and malignantly - authoritarian personality was by no way similar to his reaction to Marx's.

Far from being repealed by Nechayev's brutal authoritarianism, he was fascinated with it - to the point that he convinced his friend Herzen to finance Nechayev's shadowy activities. It should be pointed that Herzen by no means shared Bakunin's infatuation with Nechayev; on the contrary - as it would happen to a normal, self-confident, mature personality - he was quite horrified by Nechayev; it was only his long time affection to Bakunin that made him yeld.

It should be pointed more, perhaps, that Nechayev was by no means an unsuspect character by the time. Many circles of revolutionaries, both in Russia and in the Russian diaspora, believed him to be an agent provocateur for the Third Department; a belief that was based on Nechayev's recurring practice of setting up Russian oppositionists by sending them "revolutionary" correspondence that he knew would be found out by the Okhrana, resulting in their prison (it seems that the suspicion was, after all, false - Nechayev didn't set up Russian oppositionists in order to do police's job, but for the not less despicable reason of getting rid of real or perceived rivals inside the movement). It is hard to believe Bakunin was not aware of these rumours; he must have rejected them for his own reasons.

And then we have the cooperation between Bakunin and Nechayev. I am not going to extend myself on whatever political writings were the product of such cooperation or of Nechayev's own mind. There are those who insist that Bakunin must have been at least the co-author of the infamous "Cathecism", but I see no reason to discuss this.

The kernel of the Bakunin-Nechayev cooperation was not there, but in the political swindling they attempted against each other; Nechayev lied to Bakunin that he had escaped from the Petropavlovsk fortress (something Bakunin, with his own experience of the Russian prisonal system should have put into more earnest question) and that he was the leader of an expanding secret network of Russian revolutionaries that was to soon start a general uprising against the tsarist regime. Bakunin, for his part, invented a non-existing organisation and issued Nechayev a document entrusting him the representation of such organisation in Russia.

Childishness apart - it is hard to believe a grown up would make such teenage foolishness as part of an earnest attempt into fostering revolution - there was a fundamental assimetry in such game of reciprocal lies: there is no reason to believe that Nechayev was for a moment fooled by Bakunin's foolish plot. On the contrary, it was his awareness of the totally ficticious nature of Bakunin's "organisation" that made him able to profit from this document to do what he did - setting up a strictly top-down, bruttaly authoritarian and totally unacountable cabal in Moscow, which was to end up in the murder of one of the conspirators (the one, of course, who started doubting the existence of an international organisation behind Nechayev, and who dared expressing these doubts) and the consequent imprisonment of Nechayev.

Here Bakunin was in no moment suspectful of the formation of a new ruling class, in no way critical of the authoritarianism of Nechayev's methods. On the contrary, he gladly provided Nechayev with a political instrument for exerting this authoritarianism. Is this the person who had a prophetic glimpse of what would happen if the working class was to "take power" and establish a "proletarian state"?

How came such prophetic abilities didn't play any role in the much more obvious case of Nechayev?


As I said, I think the history of 20th century state "socialism" bears out Bakunin's predictions quite well.

Or rather on the contrary, his "intuition" about Marxist methods was based on completely different issues, and in fact the first successful proletarian uprising was to degrade into a brutal dictatorship against the masses due to completely unpredicted (by Bakunin, at least) factors, unrelated to his idea that power necessarily corrupts, and so it takes "uncorruptible" exceptional personalities to lead a revolution?

Luís Henrique

[willdw79]

The Black Panther Newspaper can be viewed here. I just uploaded my collection to scribd.

http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/15612115/2l62mwiu6qy16yeoehcw

[Outinleftfield]

Within the ruling class they’re objecting (resisting?), because the people have found that they’re completely subjected to the will of the administration and to the manipulators. This brings about a very strange phenomenon in America, that is, many of th e rebelling white students and the anarchists are the offspring of this master class. Surely most of them have a middle class background and some even upper class.

Haven't finished reading it yet. But just had to point out in America the bulk of what people consider "middle class" is part of the proletariat, that is they sell their labor for a wage. They are just that part working in jobs that tend to pay more. This is part of embourgeoisment, which divides the proletariat and makes people who are essentially the same class feel like they are in different classes and identify with class interests outside of their class.

Except for small business owners and some lower-level managers the bourgeoisie in America is what people call the upper class.