Pol Pot and Bakuinism.

[Palingenisis]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?

[scarletghoul]

This is a very good point. From the little I've read about Pol's student days in France I know he at least read some Kropotkin. And the Khmer Rouge state structure is perhaps the least centralised in socialist history (aside from Spain etc).

Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?Agreed. Abolishing money and so on are ideas which you'll find in many Anarchists but not so many MLs..

Of course he was not a full on Anarchist, but seems to have been strongly influenced by it alongside Marxism-Leninism and of course Khmer nationalism.

I had not considered it in relation to Bakunin before, you could be onto somethin

[bricolage]

in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist".
Bakunin's view on organisation and the 'invisible dictatorship' was certainly reactionary and elitist but lets not pretend he is the only person to have ever had such views on the left. Essentially this how pretty much all Maoist groups, especially at the early stages when they are small, function. In any case this is definitely not an idea that is unique to Bakunin, hell even Blanqui was saying it before him.


Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers.
Did he say this?
I haven't read much Bakunin and don't really care too much for him but in 'The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State' he doesn't seem to express these views at all;

The difference is only that the communists imagine they can attain their goal by the development and organization of the political power of the working classes, and chiefly of the proletariat of the cities, aided by bourgeois radicalism. The revolutionary socialists, on the other hand, believe they can succeed only through the development and organization of the nonpolitical or antipolitical social power of the working classes in city and country, including all men of goodwill from the upper classes who break with their past and wish openly to join them and accept their revolutionary program in full
(Note: By communists he is effectively referring to Marxists and socialists as anarchists. I wouldn't read too much into this, it was just a way of distancing himself from Marx more than anything else).


The future social organization should be carried out from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, starting with the associations, then going on to the communes, the regions, the nations, and, finally, culminating in a great international and universal federation.


Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human.
Did this not stem more from the Cultural Revolution (albeit a specific interpretation of it) more than anything else?

[Palingenisis]

Of course he was not a full on Anarchist, but seems to have been strongly influenced by it alongside Marxism-Leninism and of course Khmer nationalism.

I had not considered it in relation to Bakunin before, you could be onto something

Yes but we have to remember that Bakunin himself even after his conversion to anarchism never managed to free himself from the emotional excesses of Pan Slavism....As group that came out of the Communist Left recently pointed out "Bakunin rigorously criticised all kinds of state and particulary the democratic conceptions of people's and free state. He unfortunately mixed this understanding with a nationalist and racist vision of the events, which would inevitably lead him to consider some races as statist and others as non-statist; he placed the affirmations of social democracy regarding people's and free state, in the framework of a German statist plot." (http://gci-icg.org/english/freepopstate.htm ).

That would fit in very well with Pol Pot's views of the "specialness" of the Khmer people and his hatred towards the Vietnamese, etc.

[revolution inaction]

this is clearly a troll tread attempting to discredit anarchism by associating it with the khmer rouge. the idea that the polices of the khmer rouge have some connection to hte ultra left is particularly ludicrous, glen beck could not do better.

[Palingenisis]

Did he say this?
I haven't read much Bakunin and don't really care too much for him but in 'The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State' he doesn't seem to express these views at all;


Yes he did...."Bakunin looked to "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization."[29] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#cite_note-ReferenceA-28)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#cite_ref-ReferenceA_28-0

[Palingenisis]

this is clearly a troll tread attempting to discredit anarchism by associating it with the khmer rouge. the idea that the polices of the khmer rouge have some connection to hte ultra left is particularly ludicrous, glen beck could not do better.

Actually it came out of an email conversation with another comrade and I was curious to get other people's views....Also the title refers to Bakuninism and not anarchism as a whole and in the OP today I clearly state that much of the anarchist movement today doesnt owe much to Bakunin.

[Roach]

It probably is an coincidence, but even the Khmer Rouge flag had similarities with common anarcho-communist symbolism.(not that I insinuating an anarcho-pol-potist conspiracy)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/75000/images/_79176_khmer_rouge_flag300.jpg

[bricolage]

Yes he did...."Bakunin looked to "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by bourgeois civilization."[29] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#cite_note-ReferenceA-28)
Reading that text he does place the 'rabble' in opposition to 'the upper layer, the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers'. I'm not sure but it seems his conception of 'lumpenproletariat' might be broader than what it is commonly thought to mean, unless of course he thinks that all the working class is the 'aristocracy of labour'. That being said the whole labour aristocracy thing is much more common to Maoists and certain others Leninists than any anarchists. To be honest the more I write in this thread, the more I'm suggesting Bakunin as a proto-Maoist!

[Palingenisis]

Reading that text he does place the 'rabble' in opposition to 'the upper layer, the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers'. I'm not sure but it seems his conception of 'lumpenproletariat' might be broader than what it is commonly thought to mean, unless of course he thinks that all the working class is the 'aristocracy of labour'. That being said the whole labour aristocracy thing is much more common to Maoists and certain others Leninists than any anarchists. To be honest the more I write in this thread, the more I'm suggesting Bakunin as a proto-Maoist!

The whole point is the phrase "unpolluted by bourgeois civilization". It cant be doubted that Bakunin celebrated "elemental wildness".

However you are correct that most anarchists today under the influence of Council or Left-Communism reject the reality of the "Labour Aristocracy" which is one that Marx and Engels accepted (though they held a correct line on lumpen elements which Bakunin didnt).

[Kiev Communard]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?


Pol Potism can be best described as some kind of "National Primitivism", combining the features of such crypto-far right ideologies as National Anarchism and Anarcho-Primitivism.

[bricolage]

However you are correct that most anarchists today under the influence of Council or Left-Communism reject the reality of the "Labour Aristocracy"
They don't 'reject the reality' of it, they deny it is 'reality'.

[bricolage]

The whole point is the phrase "unpolluted by bourgeois civilization". It cant be doubted that Bakunin celebrated "elemental wildness".
Where does he ever talk about 'elemental wildness'?

[Palingenisis]

http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/pit.htm

http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ai.htm

Two interesting if slightly over stated and eccentric essays on certain elements in anarchism that would further connect it with the Khmer Rouge....Particularly the first one.

[Widerstand]

I swear, next time people discuss Anarchism vs Leninism someone will bump in and say "OH YEAH? ANARCHIST REVOLUTIONS ARE SHIT LOOK POL POT!!!!!".

. thats all .

proceed. :crying:

[revolution inaction]

The whole point is the phrase "unpolluted by bourgeois civilization". It cant be doubted that Bakunin celebrated "elemental wildness".

However you are correct that most anarchists today under the influence of Council or Left-Communism reject the reality of the "Labour Aristocracy" which is one that Marx and Engels accepted (though they held a correct line on lumpen elements which Bakunin didnt).

seeing that anarchist communism existed well before either council or left communism thats a peculiar thing to say

[bricolage]

seeing that anarchist communism existed well before either council or left communism thats a peculiar thing to say
I think she is saying that most that call themselves anarchists today are more influenced by council communism and left communism than original social anarchists like Bakunin. I don't think this is completely true but there is some merit to the statement, more so though in regards to council communism than left communism, especially 'partyist' variants such as Bordigism.

[Kléber]

The Khmer Rouge were basically a medieval-style peasant rebellion in modern times. There is a sliver of truth to the OP's argument, especially when you look at Mao's background as an anarchist and how Maoism (and its Cambodian variant) perpetuates some key ideas of Russian anarcho-populism such as a focus on the peasantry as the revolutionary class, "non-hierarchical" pretensions about organization, rejection of the theory of productive forces, etc. A comparison with between Maoism and Makhnovism would be more interesting though.

However, I'm afraid this thread is compromised by Palingenisis' blatant desire to stick the knife in some particular group, and claw for "certain elements" that prove the allegations. Note how Mao is left out of the analysis even though he picked up anarchist ideas from Li Dazhao and later served as an inspiration to the Khmer Rouge. Most anarchists, a hypothetical resurrected clone of Bakunin or Kropotkin included, would have distanced themselves from the CPC and the CPK, as did the real Chinese anarchists when they started to get rounded up in the early 1950's. I know nothing about Cambodian anarchists though, finding out about them might settle this discussion.

[Palingenisis]

However, I'm afraid this thread is compromised by Palingenisis' blatant desire to stick the knife in some particular group, and claw for "certain elements" that prove the allegations. Note how Mao is left out of the analysis even though he picked up anarchist ideas from Li Dazhao and later served as an inspiration to the Khmer Rouge. .

Maybe because Mao Zedong came to reject his youthful flirtation with anarchism and was a faithful student of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who applied the science of revolution to the realitiies of China while Pol Pot and his "Organization" simply werent....:rolleyes:

[revolution inaction]

I think she is saying that most that call themselves anarchists today are more influenced by council communism and left communism than original social anarchists like Bakunin. I don't think this is completely true but there is some merit to the statement, more so though in regards to council communism than left communism, especially 'partyist' variants such as Bordigism.

well in my experience modern anarchists are more likely to read things by council communist than bakunin, but i think that since anarchists had reached many of hte same conclusions that the council communist came to earlier it may well be that the anarchists influenced the council communists first.
also the same thing, could be said of kropotkin, malatesta, mahnov and other communist anarchists, thay are all far more influential than bakunin now.

[revolution inaction]

Maybe because Mao Zedong came to reject his youthful flirtation with anarchism and was a faithful student of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who applied the science of revolution to the realitiies of China while Pol Pot and his "Organization" simply werent....:rolleyes:

a faithful student .. science ? do you have any idea what science is or do you just use it as an important sounding word to give you statements more weight?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Two points:

1) COAR was written more by Nechaev than it was by Bakunin (although I guess it's also supposedly co-written by Bakunin). Nechaev would go on to write more about the secret organizational structure, although the name of that particular work in which he talked about "revolutionary cells" escapes me. Some historians believe that people like Lenin and Stalin actually accepted some Nechaevite beliefs & practices when they came to power.

2) Bakunin meant something different when he refered to "lumpenproletariat" than what Marx meant by the term.

[Kléber]

Maybe because Mao Zedong came to reject his youthful flirtation with anarchism and was a faithful student of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who applied the science of revolution to the realitiies of China while Pol Pot and his "Organization" simply werent....:rolleyes:
Mao did not reject all of anarchism; he may have locked up the actual anarchists once in power, but he remained committed to two fundamentally un-Marxist positions (which he learnt from fellow ex-anarchist Li Dazhao): that the peasantry is a revolutionary class that can establish socialism, and that human willpower, in the form of massive countryside projects fueled by peasant labor, can allow a semi-feudal, colonized country to outpace the development of more advanced industrial powers and thus disprove Marxist economic theories.

These two ideas - focus on the agricultural poor and rejection of the theory of the productive forces - are essentially the same as those ideas of Pol Pot's which supposedly make him an "anarchist." Mao's seizure of power at the head of a peasant army, and the disastrous "Great Leap Forward," that left 20 times as many dead as Cambodia's GLF-inspired economic experimentation, make Mao just as "anarchist" as Pol Pot.

Obviously you are being a subjective favoritist by drawing a stark distinction between Mao and Pol Pot. The fact that the CPK received weapons, training and ideological inspiration from the CPC speaks otherwise.

[The Feral Underclass]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?

You have an inaccurate understanding of what Bakunin meant about the invisible dictatorship.

Bakunin never believed that "peasants" were more naturally positioned for a revolution than urban workers. He simply rejected Marx's idea that the urban working class were the only significant force for a revolution.

And Bakunin never thought that everything from a past culture should be "swept away". I don't know where you've got that understanding.

[The Feral Underclass]

Bakunin's view on organisation and the 'invisible dictatorship' was certainly reactionary and elitist

That's only if you accept the Marxist interpretation of it.

[The Feral Underclass]

People should read Bakunin: The Creative Passion (http://www.amazon.com/Bakunin-Creative-Passion-Mark-Leier/dp/0312305389) by Mark Leier.

[Barry Lyndon]

Mao did not reject all of anarchism; he may have locked up the actual anarchists once in power, but he remained committed to two fundamentally un-Marxist positions (which he learnt from fellow ex-anarchist Li Dazhao): that the peasantry is a revolutionary class that can establish socialism, and that human willpower, in the form of massive countryside projects fueled by peasant labor, can allow a semi-feudal, colonized country to outpace the development of more advanced industrial powers and thus disprove Marxist economic theories.

These two ideas - focus on the agricultural poor and rejection of the theory of the productive forces - are essentially the same as those ideas of Pol Pot's which supposedly make him an "anarchist." Mao's seizure of power at the head of a peasant army, and the disastrous "Great Leap Forward," that left 20 times as many dead as Cambodia's GLF-inspired economic experimentation, make Mao just as "anarchist" as Pol Pot.

Obviously you are being a subjective favoritist by drawing a stark distinction between Mao and Pol Pot. The fact that the CPK received weapons, training and ideological inspiration from the CPC speaks otherwise.

Kleber, how else were the Communists in China supposed to make a revolution without the peasantry, given that over 80% of China's entire population was in the countryside? Especially after the CCP's urban working class base was massacred out of existence by Chiang Kai Shek in 1927 in Shanghai and elsewhere.

What were they supposed to do? Just sit on their hands and wait for Kuomintang China's horrific hybrid of neo-colonial capitalism and feudalism to develop into a advanced industrial capitalist state, and then have a revolution? That sounds an awful lot like what the Menshiviks wanted to do in Russia in 1917.

Lenin was also denounced by orthodox Marxists at the time for trying to have a revolution in a partially industrialized nation with, like China, a huge peasant population, Trotsky himself being such a critic almost to the last minute before the October Revolution. I dont see you calling Lenin 'un-Marxist'.

Oh, wow, a 'Marxist' is repeating death tolls manufactured by the bourgeoisie. The figure of 20-40 million dead in the Great Leap Forward has very little basis-it was reached by contrasting actual birth rates with projected birth rates. That means that people who were not even born were added to the death toll. Many of the deaths that did occur were in natural disasters, obviously not Mao's fault. Over 7 million people died due to famine and typhus epidemics during the Russian Civil War, do you blame all those deaths on Lenin?
Article title: Did Mao Really kill millions in the Great Leap Forward?
http://monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm

For all his faults, you cannot compare Mao to Pol Pot- Maoist China trained millions of doctors, teachers, and engineers-Pol Pot had them killed. The average life expectancy in Cambodia under the Khmer Rogue was barely 30- under Mao it went from 32 to 65.
The PRC supported the CPK just like it supported the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao- as allies against imperialism. The horrors of the Khmer Rogue occurred after Mao's death and with the support of his political arch-enemy Deng Xiaopeng.

[Devrim]

Kleber, how else were the Communists in China supposed to make a revolution without the peasantry, given that over 80% of China's entire population was in the countryside? Especially after the CCP's urban working class base was massacred out of existence by Chiang Kai Shek in 1927 in Shanghai and elsewhere.

This makes it sound like they weren't in alliance with the KMT, and could at all have seen it coming despite people telling them it was going to happen. In fact when alliance with the KMT was first proposed at the CPC's second congress by the International's delegate Sneevliet, there was vigorous opposition within the party to it.

Chen Tu-hsiu expressed the two options open to the party clearly:


The Chinese revolution has two roads: one is the one that the proletariat can mark out and by which we can advance our revolutionary objectives; the other is that of the bourgeoisie and this will ultimatly betray the revolution in the course of its development

The Comintern understood this as Mikhail Borodin the delegate to the CPC from 1923-27 said the task of the Chinese Communists and the Chinese working class was to “do coolie service for the Kuomintang”.

By the time of the 1927 uprising in Shanghai where 800,000 workers were activly involved in a general strike, Chang had already been attacking communists for two years. Yet still the CPC invited the nationalist forces into the city. And what did they do? They massacred workers and communists.

The CPC must share the blame for the massacre of workers and communists in 1927.


What were they supposed to do? Just sit on their hands and wait for Kuomintang China's horrific hybrid of neo-colonial capitalism and feudalism to develop into a advanced industrial capitalist state, and then have a revolution? That sounds an awful lot like what the Menshiviks wanted to do in Russia in 1917.

Through its own actions and the massacres the CPC had already ruined itself as a party of the working class What would communists have done? They would have gone back to the working class and tried to rebuild. The CPC was no longer a communist party though. Through its alliances with, and 'coolie service' to bourgeois nationalism, it had lost any working class character.

Devrim

[Kléber]

Kleber, how else were the Communists in China supposed to make a revolution without the peasantry, given that over 80% of China's entire population was in the countryside? Especially after the CCP's urban working class base was massacred out of existence by Chiang Kai Shek in 1927 in Shanghai and elsewhere.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The 1927 purge which was aided and abetted by the Comintern doesn't justify the CPC setting up a bourgeois government which repeatedly repressed workers and leftists. Mao's tactics during the war could be justified if the resulting government had been a genuine workers' state - of course that did not happen because the conservative Stalinist leadership had abandoned the goal of proletarian revolution in favor of "New Democracy" and a "Bloc of Four Classes." In fact the Trotskyists offered to join the CPC in a United Front but they were rebuffed, as Mao's clique had a shoot-to-kill policy on suspected Trots.


What were they supposed to do? Just sit on their hands and wait for Kuomintang China's horrific hybrid of neo-colonial capitalism and feudalism to develop into a advanced industrial capitalist state, and then have a revolution? That sounds an awful lot like what the Menshiviks wanted to do in Russia in 1917. That's not what the Trotskyists did, they were in clandestine opposition to the GMD and the Japanese occupiers, and many formed partisan units that were betrayed by Mao's party. What the CPC should have done after 1949 is not do a hostile takeover of the unions, ban strikes, suppress other communists and leftist authors, sided with the army to crack down on leftist agitators during the Cultural Revolution period, nor sided with US imperialism against the Soviet Union and its satellites.


Lenin was also denounced by orthodox Marxists at the time for trying to have a revolution in a partially industrialized nation with, like China, a huge peasant population, Trotsky himself being such a critic almost to the last minute before the October Revolution. I dont see you calling Lenin 'un-Marxist'. Lenin and Trotsky led the formation of a proletarian dictatorship in 1917. Mao's party established a bourgeois republic in 1949. But yes, the fact that a workers' revolution was possible in Russia proves it could have been possible in China as well, and is all the more possible today.


Oh, wow, a 'Marxist' is repeating death tolls manufactured by the bourgeoisie. The figure of 20-40 million dead in the Great Leap Forward has very little basis-it was reached by contrasting actual birth rates with projected birth rates. That means that people who were not even born were added to the death toll. 17-30 million is the official figure from the Chinese government and most Maoists admit it and say it was due to mistakes by the leadership. The "Great Leap famine" was the most horrific result of bureaucratic incompetence in the history of Stalinism.


Many of the deaths that did occur were in natural disasters, obviously not Mao's fault.Disasters had occurred in the previous ten years, from 1949-59 but they were prevented from causing famines by the maintenance of a grain reserve to supply afflicted regions. As the Great Leap Forward began, all of China's surplus grain was used to pay off debts to the Soviet Union in the final "fuck you" gesture which kicked off the Sino-Soviet split. In addition, rapid agricultural and social experimentation destabilized the agricultural economy. Despite early successes of the GLF, some risky ideas got out of hand, especially in several provinces with more enthusiastic leaderships. Many peasants who were obliged to work on mass projects skipped entire harvests or ruined harvests by using Lysenkoist methods like the "Sputnik Fields." This would not have been as bad if there was still a grain reserve, and if there was perfect weather and not a single natural disaster at the time, but the party-state's failure to plan for that (as it had for the past decade) or even take it into account while the GLF policies were ongoing, shows a vast disconnection between the Party leaders and the masses who did starve by the millions. Even revolutionary leaders like Peng Dehuai were purged for resisting the over-reporting wind and pointing out the famine conditions.


For all his faults, you cannot compare Mao and Pol Pot- Maoist China trained millions of doctors, teachers, and engineers-Pol Pot had them killed. The average life expectancy in Cambodia under the Khmer Rogue was barely 30- under Mao it went from 32 to 65.There were doctors, teachers, and engineers in Cambodia. And Mao's party also had a system of suppressing "bad class elements" based on hereditary labels they inherited from their fathers, and Maoists "struggled" a great many doctors, teachers, and engineers of the "black categories" during the Cultural Revolution period. The Pol Pot regime may have been quantitatively more extreme, viewed over its comparatively short history, but had the same qualitative outlook as Mao at his most radical periods.


The PRC supported the CPK just like it supported the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao- as allies against imperialism.That was not quite the case to the end of the 1970's as China invaded Vietnam on behalf of its Cambodian friends.


The horrors of the Khmer Rogue occurred after Mao's death and with the support of his political arch-enemy Deng Xiaopeng.The Maoist radicalism of the Khmer Rouge ran directly contrary to the policies Deng is known for, since he was an opponent of the Great Leap Forward. Also the Khmer Rouge had already killed a great number of people prior to the war. Deng did not change everything at once and the Cambodian-Vietnamese War started only a few days after he took office; the PRC still had a close political and military relationship with Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge still got aid from China even after the fall of the Gang of Four just like Toussaint Louverture still had French support for a few years after Thermidor, despite being a "lost sentinel" of the more radical revolutionary traditions of the parent state. Don't tell me you subscribe to the view that everything became state-capitalist the moment Mao died.

[Kléber]

The average life expectancy in Cambodia under the Khmer Rogue was barely 30- under Mao it went from 32 to 65.
I forgot to answer this point. A Khmer Rouge apologist would say they didn't have enough time, and the Indian bourgeoisie also ramped up India's life expectancy so does that mean "Nehruvian socialism" was legit?

[Leo]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?


Maybe because Mao Zedong came to reject his youthful flirtation with anarchism and was a faithful student of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who applied the science of revolution to the realitiies of China while Pol Pot and his "Organization" simply werent....

To be fair, I don't think pointing out some superficial parallels that can be drawn between Bakunin's ideas and some characteristics shared by most if not all varieties of Stalinism is a particularly impressive effort to distance Pol Pot from "Marxism-Leninism". Pol Pot's party adhered to "Marxism-Leninism", not to anarchism or Bakuninism - this is the fact. The basically substitutionist and secretive way the Communist Party of Kampuchea operated and viewed the world was fundamentally the way all illegal Stalinist organizations operate. The singe party regime they formed was identical in form to other Stalinist states. The position of the Khemer Rouge on the peasantry was nothing but the contemporary Maoist position - natural, since the Khemer Rouge. Democratic Kampuchea itself was simply a Chinese puppet state and the Khemer Rouge a Chinese puppet government. In essence, nothing, nothing at all seperated the Khemer Rouge from the Maoist variant of Stalinism. Of course, they too paid lip service to the workers among the peasants, and they too held "the people" as their main concept. Democratic Kampuchea was defined as the "State of the people, workers, peasants, and all other Kampuchean labourers". The difference between Democratic Kampuchea and other Stalinist regimes was that the former was particularly brutal and genocidal. Nothing else. Separating Pol Pot from his Chinese patrons is impossible. If you consider Mao "a faithful student of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who applied the science of revolution to the realitiies of China" (and one has to lack any knowledge of what Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao wrote to declare Mao to be a "faithful student" of the former three) you have no other option to consider Pol Pot a faithful servant of their as well who simply "applied the science of revolution to the realities of" Cambodia. Everything he did, he did with the backing of the Chinese, after all.



Bakunin's view on organisation and the 'invisible dictatorship' was certainly reactionary and elitist That's only if you accept the Marxist interpretation of it.

What Bakunin said is on public domain and can be read by anyone - and anyone who reads them, who does not have a sentimental liking of the so-called "founder of anarchism" because of this title will see them as they are.

It is a misfortune that anarchism is still being identified with Bakunin. To be honest, I don't think anarchism deserves this. Anarchists claiming that the obviously anti-anarchist ideas of this rouge elephant are simply misunderstood are not helping the situation.


well in my experience modern anarchists are more likely to read things by council communist than bakunin, but i think that since anarchists had reached many of hte same conclusions that the council communist came to earlier it may well be that the anarchists influenced the council communists first.

I don't think this was the case to be honest. I don't think the council communists looked at the anarchists very favorably in terms of their ideology and theory.

[Dimentio]

Pol Potism can be best described as some kind of "National Primitivism", combining the features of such crypto-far right ideologies as National Anarchism and Anarcho-Primitivism.

Factually yes. Somewhat reminiscent of Linkola's ideal society.

Yet, Pol Pot reached those results from a wholly different brand of thought, so not entirelly correct.

[F9]

I (thankfully) have yet to face a "bakuninist", so i dont think there is much to discuss, almost all of the "great men of leftism" had one two or more stupid ideas, so i tend to just put those behind, and of course i really dislike getting an ideology after a one wo/mans ideas.If the good are more than the bad, then we have something positive for the person, on the opposite, s/he dont worths mention.

[Palingenisis]

The position of the Khemer Rouge on the peasantry was nothing but the contemporary Maoist position - natural, since the Khemer Rouge. Democratic Kampuchea itself was simply a Chinese puppet state and the Khemer Rouge a Chinese puppet government. .

Contemporary Maoism does not believe that the peasantry are particularly pure compared to the urban proletariat who Pol Pot believed to be "polluted" by civilization. It believes that the peasantry is a class that either must ally itself with the working class or with reaction, and one which while during the revolution maybe very revolutionary afterwards can very easily become counter-revolutionary. The idea that in Maoism puts the peasantry before the urban working class in a Trotskyite slander. After the suppression that followed on 1927 and the defeat of Communist forces building up an army from the peasantry (and rural working class) became a political necesscity. Mao wasnt a utopian. He was a serious politican who dealt with realities. What else should he have done? Lay down and die?

[Palingenisis]

I (thankfully) have yet to face a "bakuninist", so i dont think there is much to discuss, almost all of the "great men of leftism" had one two or more stupid ideas, so i tend to just put those behind, and of course i really dislike getting an ideology after a one wo/mans ideas.If the good are more than the bad, then we have something positive for the person, on the opposite, s/he dont worths mention.


None of the anarchists I have ever met have anything in common with him. Thats why this is in the history section.

[The Feral Underclass]

I would call myself a Bakuninite. You can't be a social anarchist without being so, really.

[F9]

I would call myself a Bakuninite. You can't be a social anarchist without being so, really.

I cant agree with this at all.And you werent from the people i expected to hear something like this.Why would we need to associate ourselves with one historical figure to be social anarchists?Do you agree with everything he said?I dont think so, so its kinda stupid for someone to label himself after someone else.I respect bakunin, have inspired from him, but there is no way i would call myself after him.
I would thought about it for Malatesta though :D(not really, not even at his case)

[The Feral Underclass]

Why would we need to associate ourselves with one historical figure to be social anarchists?

We don't "need to", it's just historically dishonest if we don't recognise people for the contributions they've made. I'm not just a Bakuninite, I'm a Malatestaite and a Kropotkinite etc etc.

I don't think there's anything wrong with associating our movement, history and ideas with people who laid the foundations for its existence. I'm not saying we should idolise them in the way that Marxists do with Marx, Trotsky and Lenin (that's why I avoided calling myself a Bakuninist), but we should be honest about our tradition.


Do you agree with everything he said?Apart from the anti-Semitism, pretty much.


I would thought about it for Malatesta though :D(not really, not even at his case)Cute :wub:

[Leo]

Contemporary Maoism does not believe that the peasantry are particularly pure compared to the urban proletariat who Pol Pot believed to be "polluted" by civilization.

This was not the official position of the Khemer Rouge, however. The official position was that "petty-bourgeois intellectuals" were polluted. There were similar policies against the same lot in China, although not as brutal. As for the peasantry, the issue was not one of purity. The position of both the Chinese Maoists and the Khemer Rouge was that the peasantry was the main revolutionary dynamic of society.

That documentary you have watched might not have been the best source on the Khemer Rouge.


It believes that the peasantry is a class that either must ally itself with the working class or with reaction, and one which while during the revolution maybe very revolutionary afterwards can very easily become counter-revolutionary.

No, this is not the maoist position. Mao's position is that peasants (and more specifically poor peasants) are the main revolutionary force in society, "vanguards of the revolution" (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_2.htm#s8) (this position isn't fully formed until 1927, in 1926, while emphasizing that the peasantry is revolutionary, Mao still attributes the role of leadership in the revolution to the working class - from 1927, the position is that the Chinese proletariat is not capable of leading the revolution).


The idea that in Maoism puts the peasantry before the urban working class in a Trotskyite slander.

:rolleyes:


After the suppression that followed on 1927 and the defeat of Communist forces building up an army from the peasantry (and rural working class) became a political necesscity. Mao wasnt a utopian. He was a serious politican who dealt with realities. What else should he have done? Lay down and die?

Mao wasn't a utopian, this is true - by 1927, he had become a cunning bourgeois politician thanks to his experiences in the Kuomintang and a would-be bourgeois general. What remained of the Communist Party of China after the repression and the massacres that followed the crushing of the Shanghai uprising, was more Kuomintang than communist (the remaining elements who had been intransigently against supporting the Kuomintang were to be liquidated from the party soon). Most of the militants of the party had participated in the workers' rising and had been murdered by the Kuomintang. Since October 1925, Mao was the Propaganda Director of the Kuomintang. His acts, both political and military, were guided by his interests as a bourgeois politician.



Do you agree with everything he said?

Apart from the anti-Semitism, pretty much.

So you are fine with the Slavic nationalism, the populist orientation denying the central role of the working class in the revolution, the concept of the invisible dictatorship, the practices of plotting and conspiring and so forth?


I'm a Malatestaite and a Kropotkinite.

Which is a bit like saying you are a communist and a social-democrat at the same time.


I don't think there's anything wring with associating our movement, history and ideas with people who laied the foundations for its existence. I'm not saying we should idolise them in the way that Marxists do with Marx, Trotsky and Lenin (that's why I avoided calling myself a Bakuninist),but we should be honest about our tradition.

I think one of the deepest problems of the revolutionary anarchist tradition, among which I include the AF, is that it has never managed to clearly and more importantly historically separate itself from those anarchists who have betrayed, who worked with the bourgeoisie, who held reactionary or at least anti-anarchist ideas and so forth. When the social-democrats supported the war, the marxists tore another asshole in their asses, not only did they utterly and ultimately condemn them but they traced their position on the war to the smallest details of their theories. This split - a historic split - lived on, so did the historic split from the Third International with its degeneration. Yet today, it is possible to find among revolutionary anarchists, who are internationalists, those who say they like Kropotkin, even those who describe themselves as Kropotkinites, and who would, most probably, say that Kropotkin simply "made a stupid little mistake" about that war thing, but was generally alright.

And meanwhile, the genuine anarchist proletarian revolutionaries like Albert Parsons, August Spies, Johann Most, Voline, Camillo Berneri, Jaime Balius and even Malatesta are virtually unknown compared to wankers like Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?

There have been a number of so-called "Marxist-Leninist" groups that have gone the Bakuninist route.

That part on cultural nihilism scares me, actually. I like cultural revolution in many things, but I'm pretty sure there's cultural revolution on the one hand and cultural nihilism on the other.

BTW, I don't think the Jacobins' calendar or introduction of the metric system are examples of cultural nihilism. *Personally* I'd like to see the "International Phonetic Alphabet" adopted as the universal alphabet for all languages and taught in all schools. I'd like to see a new calendar that replaces the seven-day weekly cycle with a ten-day weekly cycle, with new months. The new beginning year shouldn't be like the Khmer Rouge's Year Zero, but perhaps refer to some universally acclaimed critical year in the past.

Those are just pet peeves of mine, and unlike the Khmer Rouge, I know my priorities.

[∞]

Pol Potism can be best described as some kind of "National Primitivism", combining the features of such crypto-far right ideologies as National Anarchism and Anarcho-Primitivism.

Its not "Anarcho" anything, he commanded a state

[Devrim]

We don't "need to", it's just historically dishonest if we don't recognise people for the contributions they've made. I'm not just a Bakuninite, I'm a Malatestaite and a Kropotkinite etc etc.

I don't think there's anything wrong with associating our movement, history and ideas with people who laid the foundations for its existence. I'm not saying we should idolise them in the way that Marxists do with Marx, Trotsky and Lenin (that's why I avoided calling myself a Bakuninist), but we should be honest about our tradition.

Is there an actual difference in meaning. I have never known what it is. I know Trotsyists get offended by it, but I have never known why.

Devrim

[The Feral Underclass]

-Ite means an association with. -Ist means to practice the beliefs and principles of. The difference is between one of connection and one of idolisation.

[Zanthorus]

it may well be that the anarchists influenced the council communists first.

Even in his latter anti-partyist and spontaneist phase Pannekoek thought of anarchism as the ideology of the French artisan class. I think it's highly unlikely that there was any anarchist influence on Councillism, as the theory was formed whilst it's militants were members of the Communist International.


We don't "need to", it's just historically dishonest if we don't recognise people for the contributions they've made.

To be honest, you'd be hard pressed to find out exactly what 'contributions' Bakunin made to the Communist movement that couldn't be found in plenty of other militants.


When the social-democrats supported the war, the marxists tore another asshole in their asses, not only did they utterly and ultimately condemn them but they traced their position on the war to the smallest details of their theories. This split - a historic split - lived on, so did the historic split from the Third International with its degeneration.

You obviously haven't been paying attention to the Communist Party of Great Britain :D

[The Feral Underclass]

To be honest, you'd be hard pressed to find out exactly what 'contributions' Bakunin made to the Communist movement that couldn't be found in plenty of other militants.

Well. Erm. Social anarchism.

[Devrim]

-Ite means an association with. -Ist means to practice the beliefs and principles of. The difference is between one of connection and one of idolisation.

It doesn't quite make sense to me. Why would Trotskyite be looked upon as an insult if it just meant association with?

Personally, I had always presumed it was some sort of deep English language phonetic thing like the way you form different nationality adjectives depending such as German, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese, depending on how the name of the country ends.

To give to examples from the left that don't fit into your explanation at all. 'Bennite' and 'Stakhanovite'. The first referring followers of Tony Benn the English Labour politician, and the second to those who emulated Alexey Grigoryevich Stakhanov in the Soviet campaign to increase labour exploitation. Neither of these ever takes an '-ist' and in the case of Stakhanov they were as you put it, 'practi[ng] the beliefs and principles of'.

The bit about idolisation seems to me to be just something you have thrown in yourself, which isn't linguistically connected.

Devrim

[Palingenisis]

There have been a number of so-called "Marxist-Leninist" groups that have gone the Bakuninist route.

That part on cultural nihilism scares me, actually. I like cultural revolution in many things, but I'm pretty sure there's cultural revolution on the one hand and cultural nihilism on the other.

.

What other Marxist-Leninist groups do you see as having gone down the Bakuninist route?

Cultural nihilism is scarey. I believe though that capitalism in its decadent phase is inherently culturally nihilistic as it tends to reduce life to immediate sensation and desperately searches for superficial novelty.

There is no doubt that in the early years of the cultural revolution the red guards among whom there were ultra-leftist and even delinquient elements were allowed to run rampage which in the medium term opened the way wider for the revisionists to push China unto the capitalist road.

[The Feral Underclass]

It doesn't quite make sense to me.

It makes sense to me.


Why would Trotskyite be looked upon as an insult if it just meant association with? I don't know or care why Trotskyists get offended.


The bit about idolisation seems to me to be just something you have thrown in yourself, which isn't linguistically connected.And?

[bricolage]

It doesn't quite make sense to me. Why would Trotskyite be looked upon as an insult if it just meant association with?
I *think*, emphasis on the word think, that while both terms originate from the Bolshevik party Trotskyist was taken on by followers of Trotsky whereas Trotskyite remained a slur against any one seen as a traitor or 'enemy of the people'. So Trotskyists self-defined themselves as such whereas Trotskyite was always something thrown upon you as a pejorative term. To an extent this continues today.

[bricolage]

That's only if you accept the Marxist interpretation of it.
What's the other interpretation of it? I've only really gone on what I've seen as direct quotes from Bakunin. The 'Marxist' interpretation though would seem to fit in with how he acted in his lifetime, ie. thinking he could single-handedly launch a Lyon Commune.

[Palingenisis]

To be honest, you'd be hard pressed to find out exactly what 'contributions' Bakunin made to the Communist movement that couldn't be found in plenty of other militants.


Very few people can rant quite like Bakunin.

[AK]

Brilliant trolling, OP. I'm going to thank every one of your posts in this thread because I never thought it possible that someone could associate the head of a repressive state with anarchism.

[revolution inaction]

I think one of the deepest problems of the revolutionary anarchist tradition, among which I include the AF, is that it has never managed to clearly and more importantly historically separate itself from those anarchists who have betrayed, who worked with the bourgeoisie, who held reactionary or at least anti-anarchist ideas and so forth. When the social-democrats supported the war, the marxists tore another asshole in their asses, not only did they utterly and ultimately condemn them but they traced their position on the war to the smallest details of their theories. This split - a historic split - lived on, so did the historic split from the Third International with its degeneration. Yet today, it is possible to find among revolutionary anarchists, who are internationalists, those who say they like Kropotkin, even those who describe themselves as Kropotkinites, and who would, most probably, say that Kropotkin simply "made a stupid little mistake" about that war thing, but was generally alright.


i think it is much worse to associate your believes/politics entirely with a person or group of people so that every thing you say or do politically must be found it there texts, it's to treat politics as if it where a religion.

If we are doing science we don't throw away everything done by say, newton, who was wrong about many things but advanced science that the time he was active. nor do we name our ideas after individuals and try and find justification for our theories in the texts they wrote.
Infact its kind of a bad thing in modern anarchism/communism that so much theoretical stuff involves looking back at historical writings, and i think it is a product of how there is not currently a living anarchist/communist movement.

[Devrim]

i think it is much worse to associate your believes/politics entirely with a person or group of people so that every thing you say or do politically must be found it there texts, it's to treat politics as if it where a religion.

I am not sure if it is worse, but it is still problematic.


]If we are doing science we don't throw away everything done by say, newton, who was wrong about many things but advanced science that the time he was active. nor do we name our ideas after individuals and try and find justification for our theories in the texts they wrote.

While I agree with your main point, I don't personally like the term 'Marxist', your example is actually wrong. People do talk of 'Newtonian physics', but perhaps a better example is 'Darwinism' which is widely used.


Infact its kind of a bad thing in modern anarchism/communism that so much theoretical stuff involves looking back at historical writings, and i think it is a product of how there is not currently a living anarchist/communist movement.

Yes, I agree. It is also important not to discard the past though.

Devrim

[F9]

Brilliant trolling, OP. I'm going to thank every one of your posts in this thread because I never thought it possible that someone could associate the head of a repressive state with anarchism.

S/he didnt.I dont know if there was a try, but there hasnt been a connection with anarchism and pol pot.There is the try to associate bakunin with pol pot, but bakunin is far from been anarchism.If s/he tried, it was a poor effort, if not, its a simple(and pretty pointless tbh) discussion;).

[Die Neue Zeit]

What other Marxist-Leninist groups do you see as having gone down the Bakuninist route?

Red Army Faction, Red Brigade, etc.

[The Feral Underclass]

What's the other interpretation of it? I've only really gone on what I've seen as direct quotes from Bakunin.

What are these direct quotes? Bakunin clarified his position in Program of the International Brotherhood. (http://marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program.htm)


The 'Marxist' interpretation though would seem to fit in with how he acted in his lifetime, ie. thinking he could single-handedly launch a Lyon Commune.

Bakunin was part of a general organising committee within a broad movement. What are you talking about?

[bricolage]

What are these direct quotes? Bakunin clarified his position in Program of the International Brotherhood. (http://marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/program.htm)
"Denouncing all power, with what sort of power, or rather by what sort of force, shall we direct a people's revolution? By a force that is invisible, that no one admits and that is not imposed on anyone, by the collective dictatorship of our organization which will be all the greater the more it remains unseen and undeclared, the more it is deprived of all official rights and significance"

The 'is not imposed on anyone' bit is all well and good but why does the organisation remain 'unseen and undeclared'?


Bakunin was part of a general organising committee within a broad movement. What are you talking about?I was talking about September 1870 when he travelled to Lyon and immediately declared 'the state is abolished', holed himself up in the town hall with the most minimum of supporters before being removed by the National Guard. The whole thing was done with little to no connections to anyone actually in Lyon and failed accordingly.

[The Feral Underclass]

"Denouncing all power, with what sort of power, or rather by what sort of force, shall we direct a people's revolution? By a force that is invisible, that no one admits and that is not imposed on anyone, by the collective dictatorship of our organization which will be all the greater the more it remains unseen and undeclared, the more it is deprived of all official rights and significance"

The 'is not imposed on anyone' bit is all well and good but why does the organisation remain 'unseen and undeclared'?

The 'invisible dictatorship' was the idea of a leadership of all, rather than a specific clique of leaders. The leadership that is unseen and undeclared references the idea that a movement must exist without a leadership.

I'm afraid I can't find any references right now, but if I look again and find some, I will post them.


I was talking about September 1870 when he travelled to Lyon and immediately declared 'the state is abolished', holed himself up in the town hall with the most minimum of supporters before being removed by the National Guard. The whole thing was done with little to no connections to anyone actually in Lyon and failed accordingly.

I've not heard this before. Can you provide me with some documentary evidence?

[scarletghoul]

Brilliant trolling, OP. I'm going to thank every one of your posts in this thread because I never thought it possible that someone could associate the head of a repressive state with anarchism.
I guess people like Makhno and the spanish anarchist leaders don't count cuz even though they are repressive they deny that it's a state, so that makes them cool...

Really the only qualitative difference in practise is that Anarchists deny that it's a state, while Marxists accept it as a state. It's perfectly possible for an ultra-left communist state leader to be influenced by Anarchism or Bakunin.

Colonel Gaddafi's Green Book for example also has some Anarchist influence, with its emphasis on direct democracy.

Oh and lets not forget that Anarchists of the CNT no less actually joined and served the Popular Front government..

[bricolage]

The 'invisible dictatorship' was the idea of a leadership of all, rather than a specific clique of leaders. The leadership that is unseen and undeclared references the idea that a movement must exist without a leadership.
But in the quote I gave he refers not to leadership but to the 'collective dictatorship of our organization' which I would take to mean the entire organisation, not just its leaders. It seems to be suggesting the totality of the federation, movements whatever must remains hidden and unseen. I could understand this for security purposes but in a time of revolution, which he is talking about, it seems less relevant.


I've not heard this before. Can you provide me with some documentary evidence?Ummm, I don't really have my notes to hand (they are in a box somewhere) but I will look for them tomorrow.

In the meantime here is the 'state is abolished' poster; http://www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/documents/abolish-state.htm
I don't recognise any of the other names of the document so can't really say anything much about that. It says there that he arrived on the 14th and the poster went up on the 25th, the timeline from Stewart Edward's book on the Paris Commune writes that on the 28th 'Bakunin's attempted revolution fails in Lyon', I'd imagine that also means the 25th was when it started.

Here is a document from the IMT that references it. Of course being the IMT it has to be taken with a pinch of salt but it squares with most of what I have read and seems to take most of it from Carr anyway(the rest of the document doesn't seem very good to be honest;


What this meant in practice can be seen in 1870 in Lyon. A spontaneous popular rising had placed bourgeois radicals in command of the town, and Bakunin set up his own “Committee for the saving of France’ and at a public meeting on 24 September declared amongst other things that, “The administrative and governmental machine of the State, having become impotent, is abolished.”...and “All existing municipal organisations are suppressed, and are replaced in all federated communes by Committees for the Saving of France, which will exercise full powers under the immediate supervision of the people.”
Within 3 days the National Guard took over the headquarters of the rising. Bakunin’s adventurist attempt to abolish the state by decree had taken no account of the real relations of power, the mood of the masses or the social forces in play. He had simply rushed to Lyon, declared his own “Committee for the Saving of France” and the abolition of the State.
The State however, not having caught on to Bakunin’s liberatory wisdom, crushed the rebellion and arrested its leaders. Bakunin escaped to prepare new decrees and phantom committees in the future. (Carr, p 417-22)http://www.marxist.com/noam-chomsky-marxism-authoritarianism1151004.htm

Interestingly here is a review the AF did of the book you mentioned earlier where it speaks of 'Bakunin’s participation in the political insurrections in Dresden (1848) and Lyon(1870)'. maybe there is something in there.

[bricolage]

Really the only qualitative difference in practise is that Anarchists deny that it's a state, while Marxists accept it as a state.
No, the difference is that you and others have a wholly reductionist conception of the state as 'class rule' or the exercise of physical control, a conception that to be honest is more Weberian than anything else. Its utterly useless and leaves no way to distinguish between any entity that utilises physical force.
You speak of repression which completely ignores the fact that no anarchist has every defined a state by repression, furthermore by conflating repression with statehood it leaves the door open to the idea that any entity that exercises repression must be a state, which is quite frankly ridiculous.

[Ovi]

4 pages about the connection between Bakunin and Pol Pot. In the spirit of doing something revolutionary, I should probably start a thread about how Mussolini was a Marxist, and how Lenin was actually a fascist.

[Devrim]

The 'invisible dictatorship' was the idea of a leadership of all, rather than a specific clique of leaders. The leadership that is unseen and undeclared references the idea that a movement must exist without a leadership.

Yet Bakunin actually talked very specifically about the people who would make it up. I think he referred to less than one hundred people across Europe.

Devrim

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think he referred to less than one hundred people across Europe.

Devrim

"The numbers of such individuals, then, need not be huge. A hundred tightly and seriously allied revolutionaries will suffice for the whole of Europe. Two or three hundred revolutionaries will be enough to organise the largest of countries."

Incidentally, some individuals who were involved with Bakunin's "international brotherhood" claimed that the whole project was no more than a social club. Although others like Michael Schmidt dispute that.

[hardlinecommunist]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist". Than there is seeing the peasants and the lumpens as more "pure" revolutionary material because of their being more "natural" than urban workers. Than there is the cultural nihilism and wanting to sweep everything away that belongs to the past culture as opposed to intergrate from it what is truelly human. Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism? What was the name of this Pol Pot documentary that you watched yesterday i know that there are several that have been made .

[The Feral Underclass]

Yet Bakunin actually talked very specifically about the people who would make it up. I think he referred to less than one hundred people across Europe.

Devrim


"All that a well-organized society can do is, first, to assist at the birth of a revolution by spreading among the masses ideas which give expression to their instincts, and to organize, not the army of the Revolution – the people alone should always be that army – but a sort of revolutionary general staff, composed of dedicated, energetic, intelligent individuals, sincere friends of the people above all, men neither vain nor ambitious, but capable of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the instincts of the people."

The idea was not to have a secret organisation who would spring up and lead the masses or create some overt dictatorship, but that, as conscious men and women, would assist the "masses" in forwarding their agenda, either through thought or with ideas or practical help.

[The Feral Underclass]

But in the quote I gave he refers not to leadership but to the 'collective dictatorship of our organization' which I would take to mean the entire organisation, not just its leaders. It seems to be suggesting the totality of the federation, movements whatever must remains hidden and unseen. I could understand this for security purposes but in a time of revolution, which he is talking about, it seems less relevant

But he is talking specifically of a temporary collective of activists, not an entire movement. The movement is the workers, the collective dictatorship refers to those conscious, dedicated men and women who fight along side them "armed" with ideas and practice, but who should remain unseen and undeclared. I.e. not people who seek leadership, but who work within the masses, for the masses.

As for the Lyon thing. I know he was in Lyon, but he was there as part of an organising committee. I've never heard of him going their alone and proclaiming the end of the state. Although that could well have happened.

[Zanthorus]

Well. Erm. Social anarchism.

Actually, Bakunin was beaten to the punch by the one man all anarchists love to hate (http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm) ;)

[Widerstand]

Actually, Bakunin was beaten to the punch by the one man all anarchists love to hate (http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm) ;)

Anarchists hate Marx? What fancy alternate dimension do you grace with your presence? Unless you talk about Anarcho-Capitalists/Individualists.

[Zanthorus]

Anarchists hate Marx? What fancy alternate dimension do you grace with your presence? Unless you talk about Anarcho-Capitalists/Individualists.

I was perhaps being a bit hyperbolic there, but there is definitely some hostility from some areas of the anarchist movement to Marx and Marxism. Kropotkin hated "German Authoritarianism" so much he supported the western powers in world war one.

[The Feral Underclass]

Actually, Bakunin was beaten to the punch by the one man all anarchists love to hate (http://www.marxists.org/archive/rubel/1973/marx-anarchism.htm) ;)

You simply don't understand anarchism.

[Zanthorus]

You simply don't understand anarchism.

Maybe not, but simply accusing me of not understanding anarchism without elaborating is not very helpful.

[The Feral Underclass]

Maybe not, but simply accusing me of not understanding anarchism without elaborating is not very helpful.

Read. You take the time to read things in opposition to anarchism, why not try reading something about anarchism. Don't depend on me for your knowledge.

[Zanthorus]

Read. You take the time to read things in opposition to anarchism, why not try reading something about anarchism. Don't depend on me for your knowledge.

Well, I used to consider myself an anarchist, and I have read a fair amount of anarchist works. I think I have been through everything on the MIA's Bakunin archive, as well as a couple of things by Malatesta, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and Bookchin. I have the AFed's blog on RSS, and I've dipped in and out of the anarchist FAQ. It's not exactly conducive to debate if you just tell me to 'read'. I'm still not exactly sure what your problem is. I posted an article, which I thought was fairly good, by Maximilien Rubel on the closeness between Marx's thought and anarchism. Then you tell me I "simply don't understand anarchism".

[black magick hustla]

There is a bulk of anarchist theory (as in the anarchist part, and not the marxist part which most anarchists worth their salt have embraced). I don't think it is very sophisticated but it exists. The anarchist part of social anarchism descended from radical liberalism. Some of the most radical of liberals, like Godwin, disliked the state. Bakunin talks about the natural rights of man and Rocker, if I remember, trashed marxism as mechanistic and he talked very favourly of liberals like Locke. The idea that centralization of power makes tyrants was already echoed in the Anti-federalist papers. I am not saying anarchism is liberalism, but it does have an element of it, whether for the good or the bad. This is one of the reasons I distanced myself from anarchism. Anarchist ideas already echoed in romantic poetry too.

Neverthless, a lot of anarchists had a better sense of class balances than the vast mayority of marxists. A deep suspicion of authority does sometimes engender a good dose of skepticism.

[bricolage]

As for the Lyon thing. I know he was in Lyon, but he was there as part of an organising committee. I've never heard of him going their alone and proclaiming the end of the state. Although that could well have happened.
I imagine he knew some people there through the International (although most of them in France were Proudhonists, I'm not sure how close they were to him). The link I posted above is to the 'state is abolished' document.

I'll leave the 'invisible dictatorship' stuff as I don't really know enough about it to comment much more.

[The Feral Underclass]

Well, I used to consider myself an anarchist, and I have read a fair amount of anarchist works. I think I have been through everything on the MIA's Bakunin archive, as well as a couple of things by Malatesta, Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and Bookchin. I have the AFed's blog on RSS, and I've dipped in and out of the anarchist FAQ. It's not exactly conducive to debate if you just tell me to 'read'. I'm still not exactly sure what your problem is. I posted an article, which I thought was fairly good, by Maximilien Rubel on the closeness between Marx's thought and anarchism. Then you tell me I "simply don't understand anarchism".

That's quite dishonest. You posted that link in the context that Marx had invented social anarchism...:bored:

[Zanthorus]

That's quite dishonest. You posted that link in the context that Marx had invented social anarchism...:bored:

Well, going by the general definition of anarchism that social anarchists like to use, Marx's communism is a form of social anarchism. Further, he theorised it long before Bakunin. And in fact he also made a critique of the 'free', 'people's' state that Bakunin was endlessly chirping as the characteristic of the 'authoritarian socialists'. Certainly there is no direct descent from Marx to what is now called 'social anarchism', but I don't think it's far off the mark to say that Marx was the first to adopt such a theory.

[The Feral Underclass]

Well, going by the general definition of anarchism that social anarchists like to use, Marx's communism is a form of social anarchism. Further, he theorised it long before Bakunin. And in fact he also made a critique of the 'free', 'people's' state that Bakunin was endlessly chirping as the characteristic of the 'authoritarian socialists'. Certainly there is no direct descent from Marx to what is now called 'social anarchism', but I don't think it's far off the mark to say that Marx was the first to adopt such a theory.

But anarchism is far more than that! This is what prompted me to say "you simply don't understand anarchism".

[The Feral Underclass]

I imagine he knew some people there through the International (although most of them in France were Proudhonists, I'm not sure how close they were to him). The link I posted above is to the 'state is abolished' document.

I'll leave the 'invisible dictatorship' stuff as I don't really know enough about it to comment much more.

I seriously suggest you get hold of a copy of Bakunin: The Creative Passion (http://www.amazon.com/Bakunin-Creative-Passion-Mark-Leier/dp/0312305389) by Mark Leier. It seems like you can get hold of a really cheap second hand copy. I promise you won't regret it. It's accessible; it's light hearted and humorous; it's reasoned and measured, and it's passionate about the man's life and ideas, which I found to be really refreshing. It's probably the best Bakunin biography I've read.

[gorillafuck]

Could it not be argued that instead of discrediting Marxism-Leninism that the Khmer Rouge discredit rather certain tendencies within Ultra-Leftism?
Bakunins "tendency" does not exist anymore.


The idea was not to have a secret organisation who would spring up and lead the masses or create some overt dictatorship, but that, as conscious men and women, would assist the "masses" in forwarding their agenda, either through thought or with ideas or practical help.
You mean a vanguard type group?

(with a couple hundred people in all of Europe?)

[AK]

I guess people like Makhno and the spanish anarchist leaders don't count cuz even though they are repressive they deny that it's a state, so that makes them cool...
You'd be wrong in thinking that I am a strong supporter of Spain and the Ukraine. I recognise the existence of social hierarchy and I'm open to the possibility of class distinctions within each society.


Really the only qualitative difference in practise is that Anarchists deny that it's a state, while Marxists accept it as a state. It's perfectly possible for an ultra-left communist state leader to be influenced by Anarchism or Bakunin.
I'm not sure there about the class distinctions/lack thereof in Spain and Ukraine (from many accounts, there were no class distinctions). While it may be possible for a head of state to be influenced by Anarchism, I can say for sure that they're doing it wrong.


Colonel Gaddafi's Green Book for example also has some Anarchist influence, with its emphasis on direct democracy.
...which we fail to see replicated in Libya. Gaddafi is all mouth and nothing more than Bourgeois.


Oh and lets not forget that Anarchists of the CNT no less actually joined and served the Popular Front government..
For the purposes of fighting fascism (and let's not forget I'm not a dogmatic supporter of the CNT, unlike a few others on this board, so don't take this as me thinking that action was right). The Soviet Union which you support up mostly up until Stalin's death invaded Poland and made a temporary non-aggression pact with Germany - for the purposes of fighting fascism. So we're even here.

[The Feral Underclass]

B
You mean a vanguard type group?

(with a couple hundred people in all of Europe?)

If you want to call it a vanguard, be my guest. And I really don't think there's any need to fetishise the numbers.

[nuisance]

Infact its kind of a bad thing in modern anarchism/communism that so much theoretical stuff involves looking back at historical writings, and i think it is a product of how there is not currently a living anarchist/communist movement.
Na, there's plently of new anarcho/anti state literature out there, but it seems that alot of anarchists don't want to reach out of the security of their own dogma.

[Zanthorus]

For the purposes of fighting fascism.

Yes, I believe it was Bordiga who said that the worst product of fascism was 'anti-fascism'.

[∞]

I guess people like Makhno and the spanish anarchist leaders don't count cuz even though they are repressive they deny that it's a state, so that makes them cool...

Really the only qualitative difference in practise is that Anarchists deny that it's a state, while Marxists accept it as a state. It's perfectly possible for an ultra-left communist state leader to be influenced by Anarchism or Bakunin.

Colonel Gaddafi's Green Book for example also has some Anarchist influence, with its emphasis on direct democracy.

Oh and lets not forget that Anarchists of the CNT no less actually joined and served the Popular Front government..

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTOcK0aXsjsDiU9SH-HzgD268-jEZQlpI7PT9xZA70qjHhwY78&t=1&usg=__QexoSIXVXMsaapr5rhmECLwl2YA=

http://classicruby.blog.com/files/2010/06/bullshit.jpg

[ZeroNowhere]

I'm fairly sure this ain't Chit-Chat, mate.

[milk]

It probably is an coincidence, but even the Khmer Rouge flag had similarities with common anarcho-communist symbolism.(not that I insinuating an anarcho-pol-potist conspiracy)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/75000/images/_79176_khmer_rouge_flag300.jpg

That isn't the Khmer Rouge flag, and has been wrongly identified as belonging to them over the years. The ‘Khmer Rouge’ seen on the streets of Phnom Penh on the morning of April 17 1975, displaying this flag, weren't Khmer Rouge at all, but members of a small organisation called the Monatio (National Movement). Not much is known about how this group was created, but it’s generally thought that it was set up by high-level civil servants in the Lon Nol government, including his younger brother Lon Non, as a last-ditch attempt to present themselves as friends to the in-coming Khmer Rouge armies on April 17 1975. Those who took to the streets were students and soldiers, some of them dressing up in Khmer Rouge-syle black garb and red-checked krama. They seized the city’s radio station and broadcast a pre-recorded message, welcoming the peasant soldiers who were filing into the city from all directions, and then proposed a talk on the conditions of surrender. But apparently, the real Khmer Rouge weren’t impressed, proceeded to disarm and disperse them along with the rest of the population, whether genuine urbanite or peasant refugee. The leaders in the higher levels of the civil service were executed.

The version of the Monatio flag here with the blue and red diagonally-split background is the correct version, seen (http://einestages.spiegel.de/hund-images/2008/03/31/92/fa667a7d7c5a5d492ca145f13ca6c576_image_document_la rge_featured_borderless.jpg) on the streets that morning.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Monatiobanner.PNG

The one you posted up is the incorrect version of it.

This is the fairly conventional flag of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge):

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6245/cpk.jpg

[Dimentio]

I have heard that Pol Pot was influenced by Sartre, but the source is a christian nut.

[syndicat]

I watched a documentary this morning on Pol Pot and what struck me is similiarities between his thought and praxis and Bakuin(ism) (I acknowledge that a lot of contemporary anarchism owes more to council-communism and syndicalism than it does to Bakuin) in that the whole way that the core of the "organization" remained secret goes almost completely hand in hand with Bakuin's stuff about "Invisible dictatorship" and also would seem to flow out of what he wrote in "cathecism of a revolutionist".

this is bullshit. "Catechism of a revolutionist" wasn't written by Bakunin, it was written by Nechaev. And Bakunin was a syndicalist.

[bcbm]

this is bullshit. "Catechism of a revolutionist" wasn't written by Bakunin, it was written by Nechaev. And Bakunin was a syndicalist.

presumably they meant this (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1866/catechism.htm)

[milk]

I have heard that Pol Pot was influenced by Sartre, but the source is a christian nut.

For imported influences on Pol Pot you need the French Communist Party's interpretation of Stalinism, the developmental models of Maoism and the organisational methods of the Vietnamese Communists.

[PirateJenny]

The image that Roach posted is not a Khmer Rouge flag.

Here is a quote on it:

"Lastly, above we have two images, one accurate, the other not so, regarding a flag which has been wrongly attributed to the Khmer Rouge over the years. The ‘Khmer Rouge’ seen in the photos and video weren’t Khmer Rouge at all, but members of a small organisation called the Monatio (National Movement). Not much is known about how this group was created, but it’s generally thought that it was set up by high-level civil servants in the Lon Nol government, as a last-ditch attempt to present themselves as friends to the in-coming Khmer Rouge armies on April 17 1975. Those who took to the streets were students and soldiers, some of them dressing up in Khmer Rouge garb. They seized the city’s radio station and broadcast a pre-recorded message, welcoming the peasant soldiers who were filing into the city from all directions, and proposed a talk on the conditions of surrender. Apparently, the real Khmer Rouge weren’t impressed, broke them up and dispersed them along with the rest of the population, whether genuine urbanite or peasant refugee. The leaders in the higher levels of the civil service were executed.

The version of the Monatio flag at the top with the blue and red diagonally split background is the correct version, seen on the streets that morning. The one below it is the wrong approximation of it, and which has been used lazily by all manner of people, from those who write Wikipedia articles to a news organisation like the BBC."

[milk]

The image that Roach posted is not a Khmer Rouge flag.

Here is a quote on it:

"Lastly, above we have two images, one accurate, the other not so, regarding a flag which has been wrongly attributed to the Khmer Rouge over the years. The ‘Khmer Rouge’ seen in the photos and video weren’t Khmer Rouge at all, but members of a small organisation called the Monatio (National Movement). Not much is known about how this group was created, but it’s generally thought that it was set up by high-level civil servants in the Lon Nol government, as a last-ditch attempt to present themselves as friends to the in-coming Khmer Rouge armies on April 17 1975. Those who took to the streets were students and soldiers, some of them dressing up in Khmer Rouge garb. They seized the city’s radio station and broadcast a pre-recorded message, welcoming the peasant soldiers who were filing into the city from all directions, and proposed a talk on the conditions of surrender. Apparently, the real Khmer Rouge weren’t impressed, broke them up and dispersed them along with the rest of the population, whether genuine urbanite or peasant refugee. The leaders in the higher levels of the civil service were executed.

The version of the Monatio flag at the top with the blue and red diagonally split background is the correct version, seen on the streets that morning. The one below it is the wrong approximation of it, and which has been used lazily by all manner of people, from those who write Wikipedia articles to a news organisation like the BBC."

That was written by me. It's a quote from a post I made at my blog here (http://padevat.info/2010/05/04/a-hammer-and-sickle-in-the-shadow-of-angkor/).

Also, here's an earlier post I made about the Monatio group mistaken for the Khmer Rouge, and their flag, here (http://padevat.info/2009/10/14/on-the-monatio/).

[PirateJenny]

Sorry, I would have referenced your blog. However, I am prevented from posting links at present since I am a new user.

I have tried to post links several times.

[milk]

Sorry, I would have referenced your blog. However, I am prevented from posting links at present since I am a new user.

I have tried to post links several times.

No problem Jenny. I wasn't bothered about a reference, so no need to apologise. I pretty much did the same as you in my response to Roach earlier. See post #89.