Anarchists are the philosophical backbone of leftism.... [Archive]

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RadioRaheem84

19th November 2010, 22:24

I must hand it to my Anarchist comrades that I really enjoy the Anarchist FAQ and the very many philosophical swipes at capitalism that they employ. The Anarchist FAQ section on capitalist myths really helped me rid any capitalist presuppositions I had before I became a leftist.

With that though, I've noticed that some of the arguments drifted away from materialism and into idealism. When the Anarchist FAQ section went on to discuss Imperialism, the very short answer to the question was; power. As if power corrupts for powers sake.

I feel as thought it doesn't leave the realm of philosophy and into the realm of science. Did it ever even claim to want to go in that direction?

ChrisK

19th November 2010, 22:34

I don't know a whole lot about Anarchist theorists in general, but I think Bakunin was aiming at that.

As to philosophical swipes at capitalism, those are useless. Using philosophy to attack a system is simply inefficent as you are critiquing the system by talking about meaningless terms and arguing over their meaning.

However, I don't recall many philosophical arguments actually used in the Anarchist FAQ. Which sections did you have in mind? When I can look at those I'll let you know what I fully think.

Muzk

19th November 2010, 23:08

Trots are the brain of leftism.

Rosa Lichtenstein

20th November 2010, 00:17

Chest beating -- doesn't sound like leftism to me...:rolleyes:

RadioRaheem84

20th November 2010, 00:47

Meridian

20th November 2010, 00:54

Excuse my ignorance, but what/where is the Anarchist FAQ section?

Widerstand

20th November 2010, 01:07

Excuse my ignorance, but what/where is the Anarchist FAQ section?

http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnAnarchistFAQ

20th November 2010, 01:42

There are some anarchists who would object to being classified as any part of "leftism" at all.

scarletghoul

20th November 2010, 01:49

I agree completely with the OP and have a few comments to make which could annoy some people

Anarchism, the commitment to destroy all hierarchy and build a completely free classless stateless society, is the motivation behind any real revolutionary communist. In terms of the ideal, Anarchy = *Communism. In this sense, even Stalin was an Anarchist because he believed that his actions would help humanity move towards classless statelessness (a functioning Anarchy).

Now of course the word Anarchism is used to mean more than just someone who desires to create free Anarchy/*Communism (this would include everyone from Nechayev to Stalin). Anarchism has come to mean those who want to create Anarchy immediately, without the transitional workers' state or whatever.

This is where this split occurs, between those who demand the ideal immediately and those who devise a separate method to reach the ideal (this method for Marxists is a workers' state). Unfortunately this means that Marxists and so on are prone to losing sight of the ideal, the goal of complete freedom.

But I also think that this split is false, and can only occur in theory. In practice, even the Anarchists have to set up an authoritarian state/statelike power of some kind to secure the transition to Anarchy. This is not qualitatively different to the Marxist-Leninist states which are set up to secure the transition to the final stage of Communism/Anarchy.

So yeah, to summarise-
All (authentic) Marxists are Anarchists in terms of ideals
All (successful) Anarchists are Marxists in terms of actions

*the higher stage of

revolution inaction

20th November 2010, 02:26

ChrisK

20th November 2010, 11:03

I found the whole Section on Capitalist myths a damning critique of right wing philosophical presuppositions.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I see nothing philosophical about their arguments.

RadioRaheem84

20th November 2010, 15:25

Really? When I read Proudhon or at least the snippets in the Anarchist FAQ, I feel like I am reading Locke or JS Mill in the sense that they're debating the morality of the capitalist system. When I read Marx, I feel like I am reading a sociological study of capitalist society.

ZeroNowhere

20th November 2010, 16:15

Marx undermines all of capitalism's claims to morality anyhow, though. The various justifications for the capitalist's income in abstinence, risk, superintendence, etc, are things which he both directly and indirectly attacks quite consistently, especially the abstinence one in Volume I. The whole 'liberty, equality and fraternity' of the marketplace, as well as the right to property, also very common justifications (one can find it, especially, in Ayn Rand and various libteryins), he points out simply to then later point out that they undergo what he calls a 'dialectical inversion', from freedom to unfreedom, equality to inequality and surplus-value extraction, and fraternity to the contradiction between the social and private characters of capitalist production. The sovereignty of the individual? Well, capital is the rule of things over people, over individuals, so not quite. And so on. Really, I don't think that Marx leaves any of the common moral justifications for capitalism standing.

In addition, morality and normative ethics isn't really philosophy as such*, although meta-ethics, inasmuch as it is the clarification of the concepts used in ethics, is. However, meta-ethics can't make substantive moral claims, and hence cannot defend capitalism.

* Saying 'Abortion is wrong' is not a philosophical statement, and as such neither is saying 'Doing things which lead to net unhappiness is wrong'; one simply refers to the set of all actions falling into the description of 'abortion', the other to the set of 'things which lead to new unhappiness', simply a wider set. 'Do not kill' is fairly wide, but it's still not philosophical.

RadioRaheem84

20th November 2010, 16:28

He absolutely does not, you're right. But you just have to infer all that from his study on capitalism. Ocassionally he'll chime in on how disgusting it is but detractors of Marx usually end up shrugging at Marxist analyisis and say oh well ce la vie, it's not perfect but it's the fairest system man has come up with. The anarchist though shreds that argument with the moral and logical question of capitalism, showing how it actually denies individual liberty. I really look to them to challenge the philosophical presuppositions of objectividts and libertarians.

ZeroNowhere

20th November 2010, 16:54

Marx's entire point, though, and one which pretty much forms the basis of his analysis and is quite explicit through Capital, is that capitalism undermines human control of his own production and history. While I'm actually currently writing an essay on this matter (and I lost some 4,000 words due to negligence as regards saving them properly. Blah), essentially Marx's whole point is that capitalism is the control of human social relations in the form of things over man himself, and hence the undermining of human reason so that it is only asserted in alienated form (ie. 'reason has always existed, but not always in rational form'), and indeed in 'Capital' he often points out how value, etc, is simply the capitalist form of allocation of labour-time in production, a process which even Crusoe must engage in. To be honest I think (and it seems as such from actual debates) that Marx's analysis, properly stated, in fact completely undermines the 'individual liberty' claims. Liberty is, as it were, control, and the denial of human rational control (it 'actually denying individual liberty') is precisely the basis of capitalism. While you may not think that this is explicit enough in Marx (I would argue that it is), nonetheless I think it's fairly easy to make it so in argument.

The problem with many anarchist moral arguments is that what is criticized is capitalism as human hierarchy, as the rule of man over man, whereas the precise point of capitalism is that it's not the rule of man at all; indeed, the author of the Anarchist FAQ has himself ranted about how Marx was actually misrepresenting Proudhon by portraying him as supporting capitalism, ironically enough misrepresenting some of Marx's statements in the meantime. Kropotkin didn't have much of an understanding of what wage-labour was, Malatesta was, well, Malatesta, and so on.

RadioRaheem84

21st November 2010, 00:27

I am in total agreement with your analysis, zeronowhere.

Especially about anarchist thought. I only use it against libertarians and right wingers who also employ the rhetoric of man over man. I too look at it as a systemic problem, one that overides men and becomes dominant.

Like what was said in the Grapes of Wrath by the angry armed Okie about to lose his farm and wanting to shoot someone:

"I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property’s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.”

Nuvem

21st November 2010, 06:57

Anarchists are the philosophical backbone of leftism....

No.

RadioRaheem84

21st November 2010, 07:44

Then who? I rarely find Marxist philosophers. I get more moral arguments from Noam Chomsk than I do David Harvey. Michael Parenti is good, really good actually, so I guess that counts.

WeAreReborn

21st November 2010, 08:10

Really depends on what Anarchist thinker. Some are more philosophical and some are more scientific, ie Kropotkin is more scientific though he did have some philosophy regarding morality. I think it is good to have a balance of scientific and philosophical ideas regarding a tendency. It gives more diversity and can appeal to both kind of people. But I do agree, for my knowledge Anarchy does seem to have the most philosophy behind it. Maybe because it is a broad term with a few specific tendencies stemming from it?

Omi

21st November 2010, 12:50

The more philosophical inclinations of anarchism also made it possible to combine anarchism with a lot of different tendency's, from primitivism to technocracy, syndicalism to environmentalism, individualism to collectivism and so forth. Marxism is much less spread out across other radical philosophies, and in that sense is quite narrow.

penguinfoot

21st November 2010, 17:49

Then who? I rarely find Marxist philosophers. I get more moral arguments from Noam Chomsk than I do David Harvey. Michael Parenti is good, really good actually, so I guess that counts.

There is a huge literature on the place of morality in Marx...Geras, Wood, Brenkert, Buchanan, White, Lukes, off the top of my head. Buchanan, Brenkert, and Lukes are probably the best out of those - Buchanan is good for Marx's critique of legal rights, Brenkert is good for the place of freedom in Marx's moral vision, and Lukes is good for the role of justice in Marx's thought.

ed miliband

21st November 2010, 18:30

Some of you could do with reading George Fontenis' Manifesto of Libertarian Communism:

It was in the 19th Century, when capitalism was developing and the first great struggles of the working class were taking place - and to be more precise it was within the First International (1861 - 1871) - that a social doctrine appeared called 'revolutionary socialism' (as opposed to reformist or statist legalist socialism). This was also known as 'anti-authoritarian socialism' or 'collectivism' and then later as 'anarchism', 'anarchist communism' or 'libertarian communism'.

This doctrine, or theory, appears as a reaction of the organised socialist workers. It is at all events linked to there being a progressively sharpening class struggle. It is an historical product which originates from certain conditions of history, from the development of class societies - and not through the idealist critique of a few specific thinkers.

The role of the founders of the doctrine, chiefly Bakunin, was to express the true aspirations of the masses, their reactions and their experiences, and not to artificially create a theory by relying on a purely ideal abstract analysis or on earlier theories. Bakunin - and with him James Guillaume, then Kropotkin, Reclus, J. Grave, Malatesta and so on - started out by looking at the situation of the workers associations and the peasant bodies, at how they organised and fought.

That anarchism originated in class struggles cannot be disputed.

How is it then that anarchism has very often been thought of as a philosophy, a morality or ethic independent of the class struggle, and so as a form of humanism detached from historical and social conditions?

We see several reasons for this. On the one hand, the first anarchist theoreticians sometimes sought to trust to the opinions of writers, economists and historians who had come before them (especially Proudhon, many of whose writings do undoubtedly express anarchist ideas).

The theoreticians who followed them have even sometimes found in writers like La Boetie, Spencer, Godwin, Stirner, etc. ideas which are analogous to anarchism - in the sense that they demonstrate an opposition to the forms of exploitative societies and to the principles of domination they discovered in them. But the theories of Godwin, Stirner, Tucker and the rest are simply observations on society - they don't take account of History and the forces which determine it, or of the objective conditions which pose the problem of Revolution.

On the other hand, in all societies based on exploitation and domination there have always been individual or collective acts of revolt, sometimes with a communist and federalist or truly democratic content. As a result, anarchism has sometimes been thought of as the expression of peoples' eternal struggle towards freedom and justice - a vague idea, insufficiently grounded in sociology or history, and one that tends to turn anarchism into a vague humanism based on abstract notions of 'humanity' and 'freedom'. Bourgeois historians of the working class movement are always ready to mix up anarchist communism with individualist and idealist theories, and are to a great extent responsible for the confusion. These are the ones who have attempted to bring together Stirner and Bakunin.

By forgetting the conditions of anarchism's birth, it has sometimes been reduced to a kind of ultraliberalism and lost its materialist, historical and revolutionary character.

http://www.afed.org.uk/ace/mlc.html

Zanthorus

21st November 2010, 18:50

Anarchism has undoubtedly played an important part in the working-class movement over the past century, but Fontenis' account of it's origins is less than honest. To begin with, there were major events during which the working-class played a role as an active historical force prior to the formation of the First International, specifically the European revolutions of 1848. During this period the only kind of anarchism was Proudhon's increasingly pacifist and utopian conception. The other forms of socialism were the various Utopians, Blanquists etc and the kind of Communism represented by Marx and Engels. Secondly, the split in the FI was not between 'reformist or statist legal socialis[ts]' and 'revolutionary', 'anti-authoritarian' socialists. Marx and Engels had been condemning Blanquism and 'petty-bourgeois'/'bourgeois' socialism while Bakunin was still a religious nationalist fighting explicitly for a dictatorship over the Russian peasantry. Nor did Bakunin form his ideas as an attempt to express the 'true aspirations of the masses'. His 'ideas' amount to a hodge podge combination of anti-semitism, anti-Germanism, a desire for personal glory, an obsession with all sorts of wacky conspiracies and outright misrepresentation.

RadioRaheem84

21st November 2010, 19:01

Bakunin was a weird one, in my opinion.

penguinfoot

21st November 2010, 19:02

aufkleben, I only read through the extract you posted, but it seems to suffer from the problem of trying to define anarchism in a way that lets the history of your tradition be restricted to those theorists who are deemed to be part of the class-struggle wing of anarchism, like Bakunin and so on - it only admits that people like Stirner are relevant for anarchism insofar as they had ideas that are "analogous to anarchism", and whilst the advantage of this approach may be that it simplifies the history of anarchism and also lets anarchism be presented as something that was focused around class struggle from the moment of its foundation, its problem is precisely that it prioritizes political convenience over the more valuable (not to mention interesting) task of understanding the place of people like Stirner, other individualist-anarchist thinkers, and early anarchists like Proudhon in a complex and broad tradition of political thought. I don't think that anarchists need to adopt a distorted understanding of your/their history. I think it's much more important that political activists (both anarchist and not) acknowledge that the histories of political ideas and ideological traditions are always complex, and can't be understood just by saying that anarchism emerged from and has always been centered around class struggle, or that liberalism, for example, has always had a straightforward commitment to individual rights or the rule of law, because to do so would (in the case of liberalism) ignore the revolutionary role of liberalism in overthrowing aristocratic privilege and, in the Latin American context especially, carrying out land reform against vested interests, often through brutal civil wars. In the same way, I don't think that socialists of any variety should shy away from recognizing that people like Saint-Simon are an important part of the history of socialism, not least because there are many theorists who argue that some aspects of Saint-Simonian thought had an impact on Marx's development and especially his vision of communism, even though we might also, with some justice, recognize that Saint-Simon was a highly elitist and technocratic thinker who believed in society run by scientific experts and who, writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution, had as one of his main ethical and political concerns the preservation of social order.

It's a sign of a political tradition's maturity that it can recognize the problems and complexities of its own history, including the interactions and overlaps between traditions, and that "Manifesto" doesn't really seem to do that. I say this with comradely intentions - as a fascinating and profound political tradition, anarchism deserves a nuanced treatment of its own history, with all that involves.

Bakunin was a weird one

Yet, there are ironic similarities between Bakunin's arguments and some aspects of later Marxist/critical thought. Bakunin looked to the most downtrodden and impoverished members of society ("the most suffering class", as Marx said in another context) as the origin of revolutionary movements, rather than to the most organized and educated workers, whom Marx saw as decisive - and yet the exact same perspective was later posed in a different way by Marcuse, who believed that the unemployed, the disabled, the mentally ill, immigrant populations and so on, were amongst the few groups that had not been incorporated into modern consumer society.

RadioRaheem84

21st November 2010, 19:34

Yes. The Marcuse school did introduce once marginalized groups from left and right movements into the equation.

But did this New Left Tendency also give rise to the later progressive groups to just focus on individual rights issues like gay rights and the environment.

ed miliband

21st November 2010, 19:42

aufkleben, I only read through the extract you posted, but it seems to suffer from the problem of trying to define anarchism in a way that lets the history of your tradition be restricted to those theorists who are deemed to be part of the class-struggle wing of anarchism, like Bakunin and so on - it only admits that people like Stirner are relevant for anarchism insofar as they had ideas that are "analogous to anarchism", and whilst the advantage of this approach may be that it simplifies the history of anarchism and also lets anarchism be presented as something that was focused around class struggle from the moment of its foundation, its problem is precisely that it prioritizes political convenience over the more valuable (not to mention interesting) task of understanding the place of people like Stirner, other individualist-anarchist thinkers, and early anarchists like Proudhon in a complex and broad tradition of political thought. I don't think that anarchists need to adopt a distorted understanding of your/their history. I think it's much more important that political activists (both anarchist and not) acknowledge that the histories of political ideas and ideological traditions are always complex, and can't be understood just by saying that anarchism emerged from and has always been centered around class struggle, or that liberalism, for example, has always had a straightforward commitment to individual rights or the rule of law, because to do so would (in the case of liberalism) ignore the revolutionary role of liberalism in overthrowing aristocratic privilege and, in the Latin American context especially, carrying out land reform against vested interests, often through brutal civil wars. In the same way, I don't think that socialists of any variety should shy away from recognizing that people like Saint-Simon are an important part of the history of socialism, not least because there are many theorists who argue that some aspects of Saint-Simonian thought had an impact on Marx's development and especially his vision of communism, even though we might also, with some justice, recognize that Saint-Simon was a highly elitist and technocratic thinker who believed in society run by scientific experts and who, writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution, had as one of his main ethical and political concerns the preservation of social order.

It's a sign of a political tradition's maturity that it can recognize the problems and complexities of its own history, including the interactions and overlaps between traditions, and that "Manifesto" doesn't really seem to do that. I say this with comradely intentions - as a fascinating and profound political tradition, anarchism deserves a nuanced treatment of its own history, with all that involves.

Stirner did not identify as an anarchist, he was critical of Proudhon and communism, and he probably had more of an influence on Marx and Engels than Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, et al. I see some worth in Stirtner's writings, but I see no reason to consider him an anarchist other than his opposition to the state. If we consider anarchism to be a vague opposition to the state then should we not include Thatcher, Reagan, Ghandi as anarchists? As absurd as it sounds some accounts of anarchism do include these figures. Rats and mice look similar, but they are not the same creature.

penguinfoot

21st November 2010, 20:10

Stirner did not identify as an anarchist, he was critical of Proudhon and communism, and he probably had more of an influence on Marx and Engels than Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, et al

Saint-Simon didn't identify as a socialist as far as I'm aware, because the term socialism only came into frequent usage in the 1830s, after his death, but you will not find a single history of socialism that does not identify him as an important influence on the socialist tradition, if not actually a socialist himself, because he was one of the first thinkers to provide a critique of capitalism or unordered societies based on their inefficiency, especially in terms of what he saw as the parasitical position of those who do not contribute directly to production, and there are plenty of good reasons to include him within the socialist tradition beyond his role in providing that particular critique, such as the fact that he believed in the possibility and desirability of eliminating social conflict, which is arguably one of the philosophical assumptions that distinguishes socialism from liberalism and other political traditions, as well as the fact that he possessed an active and transformative conception of human beings and their relationship with the natural world that anticipates Marx's own emphasis on practice in certain ways - the point being that someone identifying or not identifying as a socialist (or an anarchist or anything else for that matter) can be hardly used as the sole or main criterion for deciding whether that person should be considered a member of (or as having influenced) a political tradition. If we did accept self-identification as our main criterion for deciding whether a theorist is a liberal/socialist/anarchist etc., not only would we have to reject the possibility of Saint-Simon being a socialist, we would have to do the same for all other political theorists who made their main contributions before the 1830s, when the term first came to be used, and we would also have to reject people like Locke, maybe even Bentham, from the liberal tradition, because liberalism, as a political term, only came to be used from about the 1810s onwards!

We may of course question why it matters whether we say that Saint-Simon was a socialist or not, especially when we can just say that he is important for the history of socialism and be done with it. However, what I object to is the idea that you can understand the history of anarchism without acknowledging the importance of Stirner, just as I would object to an attempt to understand the origins of fascism without discussing the role of Sorel, who came out of the Marxist and syndicalist traditions.

he probably had more of an influence on Marx and Engels than Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, et al

What makes you think this?

If we consider anarchism to be a vague opposition to the state then should we not include Thatcher, Reagan, Ghandi as anarchists

People like Stirner didn't just have a vague opposition to the state, though, they believed in the possibility and desirability of a society without organized coercion - which is a much more radical and distinctly anarchist notion than vague opposition - whereas Thatcher et al. did not. I would also argue that Thatcher et al. were not opposed to the state, even in a vague way, but maybe that's another matter.

ZeroNowhere

21st November 2010, 20:18

What makes you think this?Generally such ideas seem to be based upon some kind of break between the 'moral, anthropological' early Marx and the later, 'scientific' Marx, involving the former reading Stirner and moving off towards the latter. Needless to say, this viewpoint necessitates a misreading of the early works. Of course, that's not to say that Aufkleben does believe such, but it's probably worth mentioning.

penguinfoot

21st November 2010, 20:30

I should add that, in 1845, Marx, along with Engels and Hess, supported the formation of a 'Library of the best foreign socialist writers', and amongst the authors who were supposed to be included in this library there were several who fall into the utopian socialist tradition and who might even be considered anarchists, including many utopians who preceded the big three (Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier) who figure prominently in Marx's later writings as well as in The German Ideology, such as Campanella and Godwin. Needless to say, Godwin did not identify as a socialist, and the fact that Marx and co. decided to include him in the library (which was never formed, as far as I can tell) does not show that any of them thought that he was a socialist as such, or that the library was supposed to only include socialists, because they also included theorists who would never be classed as utopians or as socialists themselves, by anyone, but who were presumably seen by Marx and his collaborators to represent the bridge between older schools of thought and more recent ideological developments that did fall into the socialist tradition, as in the case of Bentham, whose materialism was seen to bridge the classical materialists and Owen's materialism. What can be said, however, is that they thought that people like Godwin were important for the socialist tradition, and that it would be difficult to fully grasp the history of socialism without acknowledging their contributions and ideas. Surely the same can be said for the anarchist tradition and Stirner, for example - that even if Stirner was not himself an anarchist (and I think he should be described as such) he still needs to be seen as an important part of anarchism as a political tradition, rather than brushed as aside as someone who ideas were only "analogous to anarchism"?

Generally such ideas seem to be based upon some kind of break between the 'moral, anthropological' early Marx and the later, 'scientific' Marx, involving the former reading Stirner and moving off towards the latter. Needless to say, this viewpoint necessitates a misreading of the early works. Of course, that's not to say that Aufkleben does believe such, but it's probably worth mentioning.

Really? I've never seen Stirner being mentioned in relation to the epistemological break. Who says this? Althusser?

ed miliband

21st November 2010, 20:54

What makes you think this?

Marx spent much more time dissecting Stirner than any of the figures that I mentioned. Whether Stirner really did influence Marx to reject Fuerbach and idealism in favour of materialism is certainly up for debate, but it's just an idea I was putting out there. With the exception of some individualists, Stirner's influence on anarchism was minimal at best, though it seems that his influence has increased since the sixties. Of course, Kropotkin et al didn't seem to view him very positively at all.

People like Stirner didn't just have a vague opposition to the state, though, they believed in the possibility and desirability of a society without organized coercion - which is a much more radical and distinctly anarchist notion than vague opposition - whereas Thatcher et al. did not. I would also argue that Thatcher et al. were not opposed to the state, even in a vague way, but maybe that's another matter.

I agree with the last point in particular, I was just pointing out that Thatcher has been included in accounts of anarchism (Peter Marshall's, for example) on similar grounds to Stirner.

Take Marx, then, who was probably closer to most self-described anarchists than Stirner ever was, why should we not consider Marx an anarchist? He too envisioned a stateless, classless society (to put it very simply), but to argue that Marx was an anarchist would be to make the term meaningless, no? Stirner is much the same, in my opinion.

Amphictyonis

22nd November 2010, 10:06

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/eu/research/ResearchGroups/AnarchismRG/Docs/Bakunin%20and%20Marx%20%28Loughborough%29.PDF

I read his book 'Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis Of His Anarchism' a few years ago and am reading 'Bakunin and Marx: An Unbridgeable Chasm?' now. I'd like to see Marxism and anarchism meld together by modern Marxists admitting the socialist period should be as democratic as humanly possible until the state withers away. I know Marx was planing on writing a detailed critique of the state before he died and in my opinion if it weren't for their personal feud a compromise couldn't been met in their lifetime.
I see no reason why modern Marxists should reject libertarian socialism. Especially Marxists in advanced capitalist nations. It's really a question of what it will take to abolish capital. Taking over the state and abolishing the state seem the same to me so long as when the state is taken over dirrect democracy is implemented as soon as the bourgeoisie have been marginalized. I would imagine keeping some functions of the state going (police/military) would be necessary (socialist phase) but I don't see why it can't be as democratic as humanly possible while accomplishing the task of marginalizing capital.

Widerstand

22nd November 2010, 10:15

I see no reason why modern Marxists should reject libertarian socialism.

Because Anarchists don't wash, stink, eat from dumpsters, are theoretically impoverished and are rapists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1931968&postcount=15). Oh and let's not forget that "ANARCHY IS CHAOS, EVERYONE IS EGOISTIC NO RESPONSIBILITIES!!" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1932067&postcount=17) To name just a few of the stupidities (re-)produced on this forum and IRL.

penguinfoot

22nd November 2010, 17:02

Marx spent much more time dissecting Stirner than any of the figures that I mentioned.

There is a lot about Stirner in The German Ideology, sure, but that text needs to be treated with caution when it comes to understanding and representing the development of Marx's ideas, regardless of whether we're talking about Marx's relationship with Stirner, his theory of history, or anything else. You probably know this already, but although many people assume that there was an actual book that was put together by Marx and Engels and called The German Ideology, what we today call The German Ideology was actually a collection of essays and manuscripts that were written by Marx and Engels in cooperation with Hess and Weydemeyer, and which were never published in their lifetimes or compiled together in a single book, until they were collected and given the name The German Ideology by Riazanov in the 1930s, so what we tend of think of as a coherent if incomplete text and as a very important step in the development of Marxism (Althusser infamously picks it as the moment of the epistemological break, for example) is actually an artificial creation of a later author, and even today there are disagreements about how the different passages should be ordered - the most important problem at least as far as Marx's influences are concerned is that we have no idea who wrote which manuscripts, because even though it is quite easy to tell which handwriting belonged to which of the authors, this does not help us at all, as each of the individuals who had a hand in the writing of the texts would also have copied down extracts that had been written by another author in order to produce multiple copies, especially in the case of Engels, who, so legend has it, was the only person apart from Marx himself who could understand Marx's handwriting, so for all we know all of the stuff about Stirner could originally have been written by Hess or Weydemeyer, or even by Engels, we just don't know that Marx cared enough about him to write over 400 pages on his ideas. This isn't strictly related to our discussion, but you might also be interested to know that, because Bernstein was named by Engels as one of his executors after his death in 1895, he came into possession of the manuscripts that were later turned into The German Ideology, and one of the reasons why there are so many interesting parts of the manuscripts that are crossed out, apart from obvious reasons like the original authors wanting to change the ordering of certain paragraphs or changing their minds on how to express an argument, is that Bernstein was apparently in the habit of crossing out bits that he did not agree with or which he did not see as valuable!

Apart from The German Ideology, I don't know of any other text where Marx might possibly have discussed Stirner at length. I'm not saying that Marx wasn't influenced by Stirner, though - in fact, I've read hardly any Stirner - I'm just not comfortable accepting The German Ideology as decisive evidence, because of the problems and issues with that text. I suppose if I read more Stirner I might be able to arrive at a firmer conclusion.

Take Marx, then, who was probably closer to most self-described anarchists than Stirner ever was, why should we not consider Marx an anarchist?

Let me put it this way: I could understand why someone might want to make a case for Marx being an anarchist, and how they would be able to make that argument without stretching or distorting the meaning of anarchism beyond all recognition, even though I would still think that they were wrong, and I'd imagine that their argument would probably rely on a vague definition of anarchism combined with some loose interpretations of Marx's views, whereas I would never be able to understand why anyone would see Thatcher as an anarchist or as being influential for anarchism, except as the woman who are partly responsible for the poll tax riots (=p) and I'm honestly surprised that Marshall would argue such a thing because I've always been under the impression that Demand the Impossible is well-respected, both academically and by anarchists! In any case, maybe we can both agree that Stirner's influence on the class-struggle tradition of anarchism is fairly minimal, but that his influence for individualist currents of anarchism is much more significant, and that because individualist anarchist thought has been more influential than the class-struggle variety in certain contexts - during much of the early history of anarchism in the United States, for example - and because he's still associated with anarchist thought in the "popular" imagination, we still need to see Stirner as having some bearing on the history of anarchism, even whilst you personally might not see him as being that influential or useful. At the end of the day, I just object to the idea of drawing boundaries around political traditions for the sake of simplicity and convenience rather than seeing political traditions as messy affairs that overlap with each other in complex ways.

Zanthorus

22nd November 2010, 19:11

Stirner's influence on the class-struggle tradition of anarchism is fairly minimal,

I actually do remember reading some stuff about how the anarchist scene in Glasgow during the mid-20th century was inspired a lot by Stirner.

ed miliband

22nd November 2010, 19:34

I actually do remember reading some stuff about how the anarchist scene in Glasgow during the mid-20th century was inspired a lot by Stirner.

Just as me and penguinfoot agreed: his influence was minimal at best. I've heard rumours about egoism influencing Glaswegian anarcho-syndicalism at various points, but I've never seen any evidence of it.

Ovi

24th November 2010, 01:00

His 'ideas' amount to a hodge podge combination of anti-semitism, anti-Germanism, a desire for personal glory, an obsession with all sorts of wacky conspiracies and outright misrepresentation.
How is collectivist anarchism a combination of anti-semitism, anti-Germanism and all that crap?

Widerstand

24th November 2010, 01:21

How is collectivist anarchism a combination of anti-semitism, anti-Germanism and all that crap?

Bakunin's ideas are, collectivism isn't. Bakunin thought authoritarian Marxism was a Jewish conspiracy.

Amphictyonis

24th November 2010, 02:25

I actually do remember reading some stuff about how the anarchist scene in Glasgow during the mid-20th century was inspired a lot by Stirner.

Both Bakunin and later Goldman used Stirners egoist position to form a sort of individualistic socialism (anarchism). Marx even criticized Bakunin for being under the influence of Stirner but I think Bakunin was more influenced by Feurbach.

Ovi

24th November 2010, 02:51

Bakunin's ideas are, collectivism isn't. Bakunin thought authoritarian Marxism was a Jewish conspiracy.
Can't we then say than Marx's ideas were a combination of homophobia and racism? It would be valid, but it would be an ad hominem attack on Marxism, just like Zanthorus' post is an ad hominem attack on anarchism.

ed miliband

24th November 2010, 17:49

Both Bakunin and later Goldman used Stirners egoist position to form a sort of individualistic socialism (anarchism). Marx even criticized Bakunin for being under the influence of Stirner but I think Bakunin was more influenced by Feurbach.

Yeah, Goldman was influenced by Stirner (putting her very much in a minority), but Bakunin? You're talking rubbish.

To quote Mark Leier's (very good) biography of Bakunin:

Bakunin mentions Stirner precisely once in his collected works, and then only in passing ... Stirner's exaggerated individualism ... had little appeal for Bakunin or his fellow Hegelians ... as far as can be determind, Bakunin had no interest, even a negative one, in Stirner's ideas.

Bakunin was a mental though, don't get me wrong.

Zanthorus

25th November 2010, 00:07

How is collectivist anarchism a combination of anti-semitism, anti-Germanism and all that crap?

It isn't. I never said it was.

Can't we then say than Marx's ideas were a combination of homophobia and racism? It would be valid, but it would be an ad hominem attack on Marxism, just like Zanthorus' post is an ad hominem attack on anarchism.

I don't think there's much evidence that Marx was either of those things, in point of fact. Even if they did, neither of them is essential to Marx's thinking. Whereas Bakunin's anti-semitism and love of conspiracies is pretty much essential to explaining his ideas. And my post was not intended to be an attack on anarchism, it was meant to be an attack on Bakunin specifically.

black magick hustla

25th November 2010, 08:16

I don't think the "philosophical" aspect of anarchism is useful at all. Anarchism is meaningful to me because it was one of the particular languages used by the working classes to express rage and to conceptualize communism. But anarchism suffers serious blunders because it is intimately linked with classical liberal political philosophy. Namely, the idea that man has natural rights (Bakunin) and that the state is contradictory to that nature and rights. I think the most serious example of its blunders is the famous debate between Chomsky and Foucault. Chomsky was trying to argue for a moral realist position and Foucult correctly argued that things such as justice are products of history. Now, a lot of modern anarchists have realized this but classical anarchist as it stands is full of these serious blunders.

Fietsketting

25th November 2010, 12:01

Because Anarchists don't wash, stink, eat from dumpsters, are theoretically impoverished and are rapists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1931968&postcount=15). Oh and let's not forget that "ANARCHY IS CHAOS, EVERYONE IS EGOISTIC NO RESPONSIBILITIES!!" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1932067&postcount=17) To name just a few of the stupidities (re-)produced on this forum and IRL.

:laugh:

revolution inaction

26th November 2010, 00:04

syndicat

26th November 2010, 03:48

Whereas Bakunin's anti-semitism and love of conspiracies is pretty much essential to explaining his ideas.

this is complete crap. but it's the sort of sectarian crap I expect from Z.