questions for "What Is Communist Anarchism?"

[CELMX]

(1) a comparatively small class of persons who make big profits and who are very rich, such as bankers, great manufacturers and land owners - people who have much capital and who are therefore called capitalists. These belong to the capitalist class;
(2) a class of more or less well-to-do people, consisting of business men and their agents, real estate men, speculators, and professional men, such as doctors, lawyers, inventors, and so on. This is the middle class or the bourgeoisie.
This is from Berkman’s “What is Communist Anarchism?” and I have a few questions about it. First of all, doctors and inventors are bourgeois?! I never heard that before, until here. I highly doubt that doctors and inventors (well, maybe some inventors) are there for profit, and they hardly exploit workers. Doctors mostly work by themselves, maybe with assistant nurses, to try and cure people. Many even do this without a steady income, but are volunteers instead. So how are they bourgeois?

The bourgeoisie and the capitalists really belong to the same capitalistic class, because they have about the same interests, and therefore the people of the bourgeoisie also generally side with the capitalist class as against the working class.
Doctors have the same interest as land owners? wth?!
And many inventors have interests of helping people, and just for the love of their profession, not because they’re profit-hungry bastards. Again, I highly doubt many of these would side with the “capitalist class,” whatever the hell that is. imo, there is basically only the ruling, intellectuals, and working class.


by the way, would you say that this book is good and reliable? I really like it, in that it's simple, and gets my attention, unlike Das Kapital, in which I'm zzz after the first couple pages. However, some material frustrates me, because there is some content and ideas that I question, or seem hypocritical. Also, there aren't many hard facts, more like idealism and dreams for the romantic youth.

[Winter]

I don't know about the book itself, but I find it odd how he differentiates the capitalists from the bourgeoisie. They are the same damn class.

As for doctors and inventors exploiting, well, I've seen it many times. Doctors around here are always trying to rush their patients into surgery without even trying alternative options. Surgeries=big $$$$. As long as profit is the incentive, people are going to be exploiting.

[CELMX]

what about the doctors that travel abroad to africa, or some third world country, to sacrifice their lives volunteering to save dieing people?
i don't see a profit motive there.

and, while managers, employers, other cappies of the like exploit for a "living," not all doctors and inventors do that! so what would those people be called? Intellectuals? Do they side with the workers in revolutions?

[Drace]

As for doctors and inventors exploiting, well, I've seen it many times. Doctors around here are always trying to rush their patients into surgery without even trying alternative options. Surgeries=big $$$$. As long as profit is the incentive, people are going to be exploiting.

And theives exploit people too, it doesn't make them bourgeoisie.

Class is defined by a persons position in the means of production.
The bourgeoisie as a class are those who it.

[Winter]

what about the doctors that travel abroad to africa, or some third world country, to sacrifice their lives volunteering to save dieing people?
i don't see a profit motive there.?

I'm not sure how they would make a living, but that's besides the point. It is very noble for these types to do that but if they really wanted to fix the problem they would be a socialist, same with all charitable organizations. Sure, we can keep putting band-aids on the wound, but the blood is going to keep bleeding through until we stitch the wound up by abandoning the capitalist system for socialism.



and, while managers, employers, other cappies of the like exploit for a "living," not all doctors and inventors do that! so what would those people be called? Intellectuals? Do they side with the workers in revolutions?

Well, in order for a full time doctor to travel to third world countries he must have some kind of funds. Maybe he/she is a millionaire? Or maybe they are with some organization that pays for them, but then the question would be how does the organization make money?

As for what class they ought to be labeled in, I think it would be relative. I would say many would probably be considered petite-bourgeois...

[Winter]

And theives exploit people too, it doesn't make them bourgeoisie.

Of course they are. I never said all exploiters have to be of the bourgeoisie though.

[syndicat]

i wouldn't read too much into Berkman's early 20th century class notions. Doctors, lawyers and middle managers aren't capitalists, but they're part of a class that does exert some control over workers. Doctors do so because they have employees, are on boards of hospitals etc. But they're a more bureaucratic or techno-managerial class rather than the capital owner class.

[Ravachol]

i wouldn't read too much into Berkman's early 20th century class notions. Doctors, lawyers and middle managers aren't capitalists, but they're part of a class that does exert some control over workers. Doctors do so because they have employees, are on boards of hospitals etc. But they're a more bureaucratic or techno-managerial class rather than the capital owner class.

Now we hit the point where we see the difference between the Anarchist notion of class and the pure Marxist notion of class.
To put it short, Anarchists base class on more than control of the means of production alone, the 'ruling class' (although I dislike that term) for example, exerts exclusive control over the decision-making process and are, to anarchists, a class enemy as well. I recommend the book Black Flame (http://www.revolutionbythebook.akpress.org/black-flame-the-revolutionary-class-politics-of-anarchism-and-syndicalism-%E2%80%94-book-excerpt/) which deals with it more thoroughly.

[ComradeMan]

The problem with this whole debate is that it could be argued (albeit from an extreme point of view) that someone on welfare is part of the capitalist system and benefits from bourgeois society.

In today's world you can't make sweeping generalisations about professions and trades etc. The average self-employed working class plumber in London probably earns more than a university educated "bourgeois" teacher. The plumber controls his own means of production/resources while the teacher doesn't.

The problem is state government and money and the idea of "I have because you don't have and I won't share".

[syndicat]

Now we hit the point where we see the difference between the Anarchist notion of class and the pure Marxist notion of class.
To put it short, Anarchists base class on more than control of the means of production alone, the 'ruling class' (although I dislike that term) for example, exerts exclusive control over the decision-making process and are, to anarchists, a class enemy as well. I recommend the book Black Flame (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.revolutionbythebook.akpress.org/black-flame-the-revolutionary-class-politics-of-anarchism-and-syndicalism-%E2%80%94-book-excerpt/) which deals with it more thoroughly.

Sorry, but this is wrong. The left-libertarian notion of class is based on the concept of power over others. Even Marx did not base his conception of class on "relation to the means of production." That is a Leninist deviation. Marx talked, correctly, about social relations of production. These are power relations. Relations between groups of peole.

Ownership of the means of production is one such power relation, dominant in capitalism. But managers, laywers, industrial engineers also participate in control over workers in social production. So there is a class in between the top capital owners and the working class in social production in advanced capitalism, based on its relative monopoly over decision-making authority and forms of expertise pertinent to control over workers.