critiques of anarchism

[Pierson's]

can anyone point me to some good critiques of anarchism from the perspective of other revolutionary leftists? nothing too complex, a 'you shouldn't be an anarchist because they are not materialistic enoguh' might be good enough. execpet, well i know that one.

maybe something which explains why the central ideas of anarchism (opposition to authority?) are flawed?

thanks.

[9]

Here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/unions/4-errors.htm) is a short paper by Trotsky called "The Errors in Principle of Syndicalism".

Also, I think you will find this section (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/anarchism/index.htm) of the Marxists Internet Archives ("Marx and Engels on Anarchism") very useful.

[Искра]

Here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/unions/4-errors.htm) is a short paper by Trotsky called "The Errors in Principle of Syndicalism".

Also, I think you will find this section (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/anarchism/index.htm) of the Marxists Internet Archives ("Marx and Engels on Anarchism") very useful.
Does somebody have something more? I read all those... nothing special

[9]

Does somebody have something more? I read all those... nothing special

There are also all of these (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/letters/subject/anarchism.htm).

And Trotsky wrote pretty extensively if I remember correctly, but I don't feel like taking the time to dig all of them up right now. I would certainly assume others will have additional information to add, but if for some strange reason there are no more responses, I'll come back and provide more sources when I get home from work tonight.

[Искра]

Thank you, although I checked most of them in the past.

I really don't doubt that Trotsky has critiques of anarchism, after all he was the best in "dealing with the anarchists" ;)

[bricolage]

maybe something which explains why the central ideas of anarchism (opposition to authority?) are flawed?

Anarchists opposed to all authority, only illegitimate authority, this has been a common misconception since Engels first put it forward.


Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker.

[hugsandmarxism]

Kasama's The Historical Failure of Anarchism (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/the-historical-failure-of-anarchism/) written by a then anarchist, who became a maoist :)

Edit: Also, Stalin wrote Anarchism or Socialism? (http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html)

[ZeroNowhere]

Anarchists opposed to all authority, only illegitimate authority, this has been a common misconception since Engels first put it forward.Going by the level of intellect generally shown in these threads, somebody's going to respond to that with 'But everybody is against illegitimate authority!' But then, true Marxists oppose the intellect, with all of its bourgeois principles of non-contradiction and identity, and instead uphold Reason, in a similar fashion to more honest theologians.

Though as to the Bakky quote, technically it's conflating all definitions of 'authority' (it's like saying, "Do I think the proletariat can carry out rebellion? No, the proletariat does not have a can'), though I suppose it's defensible given that he wasn't quite alone there.

Anyhow, at the OP, you're far better off asking for critiques of specific types of anarchism, given that most 'critiques of anarchism' just end up using silly generalizations anyway.

[Искра]

Kasama's The Historical Failure of Anarchism (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/the-historical-failure-of-anarchism/) written by a then anarchist, who became a maoist :)

Edit: Also, Stalin wrote Anarchism or Socialism? (http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html)
I'll read Kasama's text. And then we will start tendency war, ok? :)
Stalin's text is to boring. I read first 4 pages and fall asleep. It's useless. It reminds me of Laver and his critics of "anarchy".

[Pogue]

I don't think its possible to really have a decent thread on revleft criticising a left wing ideology but I'll give it a go.

You oculd argue that anarchism, with tis emphasis on decentralisation and direct democracy, will sturggle to defend a revolution. You could also argue it lacks a 'material analysis of history'.

You oculd criticise the consensus decision making model or even the movement due to lifestylists too I suppose, or argue that an emphasis on individual freedom could overide collectivism to such a point as to weaken the class.

I guess they'd be some of the main criticisms.

The anarchist FAQ is good at responding to these, alot of the questions are criticisms of anarchism which are then responded too if you want to ehar the responses. There are very obvious problems with anarchism which should be discussed and argued over which is why I'm proposing them because I'm essentially an anarchist but also very 'self'-critical.

[hugsandmarxism]

I'll read Kasama's text. And then we will start tendency war, ok? :)

Ok, but afterwards, hold back on the tongue when we kiss and make up ;)


Stalin's text is to boring. I read first 4 pages and fall asleep. It's useless. It reminds me of Laver and his critics of "anarchy".

Don't TL;DR me, comrade. You have my feelings to consider :lol:

[ZeroNowhere]

I'll read Kasama's text. And then we will start tendency war, ok? :)To be honest, what I've read of it so far seems more of a critique of much of the anarchist movement, as well as the anarchist FAQ and such (personally, I think it's overly favorable here. 'Brilliant predictions'? Pfft), but not of anarchism.

[Искра]

You oculd criticise the consensus decision making model or even the movement due to lifestylists too I suppose, or argue that an emphasis on individual freedom could overide collectivism to such a point as to weaken the class.
Why would some one connect consensus only with anarchism? I don't remember having consensus ever.... Nor do I consider it "the most democratic thing".

[Искра]

To be honest, what I've read of it so far seems more of a critique of much of the anarchist movement, as well as the anarchist FAQ and such (personally, I think it's overly favorable here. 'Brilliant predictions'? Pfft), but not of anarchism.
Ok, I'll still read :) I'm interested to find good critics of anarchism. I haven't found one yet.

[Искра]

Do you know any Lenin's critique of anarchism?

[Manifesto]

Do you know any Lenin's critique of anarchism?
Was able to dig some I guess critiques Anarchism and Socialism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/dec/31.htm) and Socialism and Anarchism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/nov/24.htm) a little bit dated though.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

a little bit dated though

Understandable seen as the criteria was critiques from a man who has been dead 95 years.

[Искра]

Understandable seen as the criteria was critiques from a man who has been dead 95 years.
I think you shouldn't mention this. Some people here haven't got over it and they might upset.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I think you shouldn't mention this. Some people here haven't got over it and they might upset.

Mmm, very true. I should be more sensitive about some people's dear leader.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I think you shouldn't mention this. Some people here haven't got over it and they might upset.

OMG WTF!? FUCK YOU FOR INSULTING LENIN! THAT GUY OWNED KRONSTADT AND ANARCHISTS! LONG LIVE LENIN!! /s ;)

[Manifesto]

Understandable seen as the criteria was critiques from a man who has been dead 95 years.
Meant that more in the way that it was almost 20 years before the October Revolution took place so it was not a more current view Lenin had on Anarchists.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Meant that more in the way that it was almost 20 years before the October Revolution took place so it was not a more current view Lenin had on Anarchists.

Yeah I see what you mean. I was just thinking that most of these Marxist philosophers critiques of anarchism are easily rubbished, for reference check the Anarchist FAQ. I think we should be looking to more recent critiques for a constructive debate.

[Искра]

Meant that more in the way that it was almost 20 years before the October Revolution took place so it was not a more current view Lenin had on Anarchists.
He always had bad view on anarchists.
He only wrote positive about anarchists during early stages of revolution when he needed them to get on power. But we should leave this out of discussion since this will lead into massive offtopic. :lol:

[redasheville]

Two Souls of Socialism, by Hal Draper provides an excellent thrashing of early anarchism (Prouhon and Bakunin):

http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/contemp/pamsetc/twosouls/twosouls.htm

[Manifesto]

He always had bad view on anarchists.
He only wrote positive about anarchists during early stages of revolution when he needed them to get on power. But we should leave this out of discussion since this will lead into massive offtopic. :lol:
Just to be clear I never said that he did have a good view on Anarchists.

[Pierson's]

thanks guys, that's a lot of reading!

i'm currently reading the kasama one, and then i thin kthe draper one looks to be the next read.

because there is so much, i'll be avoiding the stalin one (based on jurko's comment).

[Pierson's]

the historical failure of anarchism by christopher day is quite good, if a bit all over the place. i didn't quite understsand the point of some of what the author was saying.
the author has an interesting analysis of the role of militia vs a 'regular revolutionary army'. the decentralised nature of milia menas that the weaker parts will be attacked first, and that attacks are often not coordinated. as well, descision making takes too long.
making war requires authoritarian means, forcing people/units to fight in a particular lcoation, even if that is a very dangerious place.

If we are ready to concede (as the Spanish anarchists ultimately did) that making war involves compromising anti-authoritarain principles we need to look at precisely what measures need to be taken to prevent those compromises from undoing the whole revolutionary project. It seems that there are a number of basic things here: the election of officers, the elimination of unnecesary social distinctions between officers and their troops, a commitment to developing the leadership skills of the rank and file in opposition to relying on officers from the old regime and the like. But these things can’t hide the fundamentally authoritarian nature of an army: absolute subordination to the command structure, drills that psychologically prepare soldiers to take orders, the suspension of basic democratic rights in the course of military engagements and so on.
this seems to me to be the only real attack on the very basic of anarchist principles (in this piece). you can't fight a war and hold onto them.
the other three propositions i can't realy understand what they have to do with anarchism.

the author is attacking anarchism based on history, rather than it's ultimate goals and principles.
ok, based on my reading of the first 10 or so comments, it seems that the author was an anarchist at the time the piece was written (though apparently he then stopped being an anarchist). i guess that's why it isn't so much an attack on the core principle. still, quite an interesting read!
interesting, the author says (in comment 17):

The basic facts around the publication of the article have been clarified already. I wrote the piece still thinking of myself as an anarchist, although in retrospect its pretty clear that the questions I was posing went to the heart of anarchism and could not really be answered satisfactorily within an anarchist framework.
anyway, i didn't bother reading teh rest of the comments, even though i'm sure that teh issues and points raised in teh piece were discussed more througally.

[Pierson's]

the section on anarchism in The Two Souls of Socialism by Draper seems to be either filled with strawmen or attacking ideas that i doubt any anarchist today woudl agree with (e.g. racism and sexism on the part of proudhon).

so much for that piece...

i'm reading bits and pieces of the letters from marx, what i have read seems very time-period specific. that is, i don't know waht he is talking about, beacuse i don't have that time specific knowledge. i'll keep reading...

[redasheville]

the section on anarchism in The Two Souls of Socialism by Draper seems to be either filled with strawmen or attacking ideas that i doubt any anarchist today woudl agree with (e.g. racism and sexism on the part of proudhon).

so much for that piece...

i'm reading bits and pieces of the letters from marx, what i have read seems very time-period specific. that is, i don't know waht he is talking about, beacuse i don't have that time specific knowledge. i'll keep reading...

While Draper's analysis doesn't go beyond Marx's contemporaries (i.e. his criticisms don't apply to the CNT in Spain et al), it does show (in a compressed form, read volume 4 of his Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution for more) the elitist roots of anarchism, a thread that extends through much of anarchist thought and practice, IMO. Many, though certainly not all, anarchists today have contempt for working class struggle (even if it is cloaked otherwise) and this has roots in the ideological basis of anarchism i.e. that the masses are dupes and a need small band of militant anarchists to liberate them (e.g. "propaganda of the deed", a thoroughly elitist concept)*.

What are the strawmen you speak of? And why do anarchists still cite Proudhon and Bakunin as part of their tradition if it is clear that they held such repulsive views?

*To be clear, I do not mean to lump ALL anarchists in a broad stroke (and there are plenty of so-called Marxists who adopt equally elitist views, which Draper addresses)

[ZeroNowhere]

Well, I have a critique of Kropotkin's ideas on labour credits here...
Oh, wait, never mind, the OP was not asking for a critique of one or two anarchists' ideas, but a critique of anarchism. Silly me.

[Dave B]

Stalin's text is to boring. I read first 4 pages and fall asleep. It's useless. It reminds me of Laver and his critics of "anarchy".


Yes the first bit is boring, it gets much more interesting as it goes along.

You might want to start at page '333' or if you get bored really quickly and just want to read the anarchism stuff from pg '357' ish or failing that read it backwards.

http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3 (http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3)



There is I think and interesting article by Hyndman on Kropotkin from towards the end beginning with;



"According to Kropotkin, however, each commune, each individual, could be bound by nothing, and nobody and no number………"

Not that I like Hyndman much, but I think that it shows that there was not the universal antipathy between the Marxists and Anarchists that you had ‘after’ the Bolshevik revolution.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1911/adventure/chap15.html (http://www.marxists.org/archive/hyndman/1911/adventure/chap15.html)

The fact that many Anarchists participated and supported the Bolsheviks until quite late on eg Berkman and Goldman is often ‘forgotten’.

Something that was acknowledged by Lenin himself even if to some extent he was just trying to get support from workers in the West, which was why he tried to get Berkman to endorse his Infantile disorder pamplet.

Eg on the former point.

V. I. Lenin, Letter to Sylvia Pankhurst


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/28.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/28.htm)


I think the point is that the Bolsheviks revised Marxism say from that it held in Stalins Anarchism and Socialism pamphlet to the one it took after they had seized and consolidated power.

Anarchist duly accepted the post power Leninist revision of Marxism as real Marxism and proceeded to criticise it as such.

Even if real Marxists had anticipated that the seed of destruction of a ‘political aristocracy’ had already been sown in Lenins notion of the organisation of the party.


From Leninist historian E.H. Carr chapter 2 volume one, ’The Bolshevik Revolution’, in terms that became prescient considering, events, debates and terminology of what followed ;



Lenin was now declared guilty of fostering a ’sectarian spirit of exclusiveness’. In an article entitled ‘Centralism or Bonapartism?’ he was accused of ‘confusing the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship over the proletariat’, and practising ‘Bonapartism, if not absolute absolute monarchy in the old pre revolutionary style’. His view of the relation of the professional revolutionary to the masses was not that of Marx, but of Bakunin.

Martov, reverting to the idea which he had propunded at the congress, wrote a pamphlet on ‘The Struggle Against Martial Law In The Russian Social Democratic Workers Party’. Vera Zasulich wrote that Louis XIV idea of the state was Lenins idea of the party.

The party printing press, now under Menshevik auspices, published a brilliantly vituperative pamphlet by Trotsky entitled ‘Our Political Tasks’; the present Menshevik affiliations of the author were proclaimed by the dedication..…….Lenins methods were attacked as a ‘dull characture of the tragic intransigence of jacobinism’ and a situation predicted in which , ‘the party is replaced by the organisation of the party, the organisation by the central committee and finally the central committee the dictator’.

The final chapter bore the title ‘The Dictatorship Over The Proleteriat’.


That last 'chapter' incidentally is missing from the MIA and Trot Park Books version, which is ‘understandable’ after reading it.



.

[Nwoye]

Read The State and Revolution. or parts of it

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1

[9]

Well, I have a critique of Kropotkin's ideas on labour credits here...
Oh, wait, never mind, the OP was not asking for a critique of one or two anarchists' ideas, but a critique of anarchism. Silly me.

:rolleyes: Sarcasm?
Frankly, I think it is very unlikely to provide criticisms of 'anarchism' without anarchists of some variety claiming they are based on false pretenses or misconceptions. This isn't because anarchists are slippery or anything nor is it generally a reflection on the critique, but it does actually get to the heart of the problem with modern anarchism: it's a term that has no real objective meaning. It is entirely subjective. "Anarchism" means whatever a given 'anarchist' wants it to mean. It can mean communism, it can mean capitalism, it can mean individualism, lifestylism, third positionism, political apathy, etc. It means countless things to countless different people, many of the meanings diametrically opposed to one another. And while, yes, there are different, contradictory streams of Marxism, they all have - or claim to have - the same theoretical contributions at their foundation.
So bearing these things in mind, it may be easier to get decent critiques (if you are not satisfied with the present responses) if you specify a particular stream of anarchism or a particular historical anarchist group.

[Random Precision]

Paul D'Amato of the American ISO, himself a former anarchist, has written a bunch of articles that critique the foundations of anarchist theory and the anarchist movement as it currently exists, although in many instances his critiques are limited to the American scene, or to lifestyle anarchists. Still I would give them a read:

http://socialistworker.org/2008/03/21/system-workers-democracy
http://socialistworker.org/2008/11/06/a-revolutionary-party
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/27/refusing-to-be-ruled-over
http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/06/marxist-view-of-the-state
http://socialistworker.org/2009/03/26/anarchists-and-change
http://socialistworker.org/2009/05/27/the-means-and-the-ends

[Stranger Than Paradise]

:rolleyes: Sarcasm?
Frankly, I think it is very unlikely to provide criticisms of 'anarchism' without anarchists of some variety claiming they are based on false pretenses or misconceptions. This isn't because anarchists are slippery or anything nor is it generally a reflection on the critique, but it does actually get to the heart of the problem with modern anarchism: it's a term that has no real objective meaning. It is entirely subjective. "Anarchism" means whatever a given 'anarchist' wants it to mean. It can mean communism, it can mean capitalism, it can mean individualism, lifestylism, third positionism, political apathy, etc. It means countless things to countless different people, many of the meanings diametrically opposed to one another. And while, yes, there are different, contradictory streams of Marxism, they all have - or claim to have - the same theoretical contributions at their foundation.
So bearing these things in mind, it may be easier to get decent critiques (if you are not satisfied with the present responses) if you specify a particular stream of anarchism or a particular historical anarchist group.

But you understand that only Class Struggle Anarchists are Anarchists because the ideologies of Individualism and Anarcho-Capitalism entail centralised authority due to their inherent class structures. Class society is not compatible with Anarchism, therefore they contradict its principles. We claim no association to these ideas and reject them as Anarchist in the first place. I know this is what you said, I am making it what I want it to mean. But I feel non-Anarchists revolutionaries should also accept this principle because it is used (not saying you are) often as a critique of the ideology when we don't even see these people as part of our ideology, and they aren't.