Marx vs. Bakunin

[Искра]

Here's an interesting article regarding Marx-Bakunin conflict: http://thecommune.co.uk/2010/09/14/marx-bakunin-and-the-question-of-authoritarianism/#more-5850

Article is questioning Bakunin's authoritarianism.


David Adam casts doubt on the traditional narrative regarding the question of authoritarianism in the Marx-Bakunin conflict


Historically, Bakunin’s criticism of Marx’s “authoritarian” aims has tended to overshadow Marx’s critique of Bakunin’s “authoritarian” aims. This is in large part due to the fact that mainstream anarchism and Marxism have been polarized over a myth—that of Marx’s authoritarian statism—which they both share.1

[the desire to rebel]

Hi :D
Well, I think the reason why Bakunin called Marx an authoritarian was mainly because he supported the creation of a "worker´s state" , while Bakunin and the libertarian socialists, saw the dictatorship of the proletariat as a method that would ultimately lead to a privileged elite ruling in the name of the people (I think history has proven Bakunin right).
Now, the article regards the conflict between them during their time in the international, Bakunin used the fact that Marx banned him and his followers from the organization as proof that he was indeed an authoritarian, and Marx said that the ban was necessary because Bakunin was "plotting" against the group.
However I think that writing about a conflict between two men that is almost 150 years old (which i just did lol) will lead to nothing, there are big differences between marxists and anarchists but i think we can debate them out. :)

[Искра]

You should read that article, because this is kind of against what you just said. Marx didn't talked about big bad "worker's states". Btw. check this one also:

http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/karl-marx-the-state.html

Same author.

[Susurrus]

Yeah, I've never seen Marx's conception of the DotP as contrary to anarchism.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Wow, I haven't ever really looked into the whole Marx-Bakunin conflict but Bakunin seems shady as fuck.

[the desire to rebel]

Wow, i hadn´t really given much thought, i mean I´ve read some of Marx and Engels´writings, but I always disagreed with the dictatorship of the proletariat, but coming to thik about it, I always criticized that theory mainly because of Bakunin´s judgement on it (it seems he misunderstood, so like i did) .
So I want to apologize for being kinda dogmatic on the topic, it´s just that every time I read or heard about "state power" I would instantly relate it to a priviliged few taking control of the state and a party ruling everyone (leninist vanguardism)
Thanks for the articles, and sorry.

[Makaru]

Wow, I haven't ever really looked into the whole Marx-Bakunin conflict but Bakunin seems shady as fuck.

Exact same reaction I had. He seems like that guy you're trying to organize something with who won't focus on working and would rather develop wild and unproductive conspiracies to suit his fantasies.

I haven't read Bakunin's work yet but now when I do I'll be able to keep this in mind. Thanks for posting it!

[The Douche]

Bakunin organized a secret society, the goal of which was to directly control revolution, and to gain control of the international. That's why Marx had him removed. I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.

[Искра]

I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.
That is a problem, because anarchism is kind of based on prejudices regarding Marx which come from this conflict.

[Tim Cornelis]

The problem is that anarchists and Marxists have two different definitions of a state and both use their definition to attack the other leading to both creating strawmen.

Marx and Engels asserted that since anarchists opposed the state they oppose violence to defend the revolution because the Marxist definition of a state is "organised violence to supress another class".

Whilst anarchists have often argued that the DOTP was a state of minority rule.

Like Susurrus said:


I've never seen Marx's conception of the DotP as contrary to anarchism.

[Hit The North]

So all we're left with now is our disagreement over what kind of political organisations we organise?

Cool :thumbup1:

[The Douche]

That is a problem, because anarchism is kind of based on prejudices regarding Marx which come from this conflict.

In my experience, most mature and experienced anarchists already know this fact, and have little problem with marx, and whatever problem they do have is not related to his dispute with Bakunin.

I mean, I read about the true nature of the split when I was probably 16...

[promethean]

The problem is that anarchists and Marxists have two different definitions of a state and both use their definition to attack the other leading to both creating strawmen.

Marx and Engels asserted that since anarchists opposed the state they oppose violence to defend the revolution because the Marxist definition of a state is "organised violence to supress another class".

Whilst anarchists have often argued that the DOTP was a state of minority rule.

Like Susurrus said:
Engels was a bourgeois dickhead. Don't take his pamphlets defending authoritarian rule seriously.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Bakunin organized a secret society, the goal of which was to directly control revolution, and to gain control of the international. That's why Marx had him removed. I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.

Yes, Bakunin indeed tried to use the organization for his own purposes:


From the fact that Bakunin tried to merge, with the IWMA, first the League of Peace and Freedom and then the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, it can be claimed (and many have done so) that he was seeking to take control of Marx's organization. This interpretation is one-sided, betraying an insufficient degree of comprehension of Bakunin's tactical program. The purpose that Bakunin gave the Alliance was to provide the International with a real revolutionary organization. In order to understand fully the logic of this tactic, it is necessary to recall Bakunin's philosophical orientation, particularly the conception of dialectical contradiction as he discussed in his 1842 article.

He then goes on to talk about how, while Bakunin respected Marx's scholarship, he regarded him as a "compromising Negative", and that the International needed some real revolutionary impetus that Marx wasn't giving it. Bakunin was a swashbuckling pirate who only wanted to negate, negate, negate.

But really, the conception of the revolutionary organization that Bakunin came up with and was later realized in the Spanish FAI, or maybe Nabat in the Ukraine, isn't significantly different from basic Marxist ideas related to "vanguardism". I think this is the most important point to make in this discussion.

see also: http://www.revleft.com/vb/interesting-quote-malatesta-t156529/index.html


Wow, I haven't ever really looked into the whole Marx-Bakunin conflict but Bakunin seems shady as fuck.

Honestly I don't know why Bakunin is so shirked aside by people, including anarchists. He wasn't perfect, and went through a bunch of wishy-washy ideological stages, including Christian fanaticism. He was also an anti-semite, and was an "anti-intellectual" even though he received a prestigious in Russia and was generally very well read and educated. But he also had some remarkably prophetic insights into what the revolutionary movement would eventually turn into, and he was an arch-typical revolutionary. He had a spine of steel.

He was all about destruction, burning the fucking social order to ash in a giant hellish supernova of revolutionary terror and blood. Creating a new social order? Eh, he wasn't quite as interested in that. I'd be willing to bet that there are days in every leftist's life when they see things more Bakunin's way than Marx's. I know I've had them.

[Zederbaum]

Bakunin organized a secret society, the goal of which was to directly control revolution, and to gain control of the international. That's why Marx had him removed. I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.
I wouldn't share that view. Bakunin didn't make a secret of his political views and there wasn't an organisation any more secret than him writing letters to various people around Europe, which hardly constitutes a conspiracy of any sort.

Bakunin's Alliance for Social Democracy became in effect a Swiss section of the International and it argued its politics as openly as anyone. He outlined the a version of what I suppose nowadays could be described as "Platformist Syndicalism", although in practice most Platformists don't have the orientation towards the mass organisations that their theory insists upon.

Bakuninism was gaining in popularity within the First International. At the time, the circumstances were more favourable to his political strategy rather than Marx's, hence its relative popularity in Italy, Spain, and France. Marx's base was very weak as the Germans weren't a serious force at this stage and he relied a lot on English trade unionists as an organisational weight.

They jumped ship in fright of the Paris Commune, leaving Marx a chief without any Indians as is evident by the rapid withering of Marx's International after the Bakuninists and the Belgians were ousted.

Marx's problem was not that Bakunin was about to personally take control of the International - Bakunin never had the personal following capable of that - it was that the influence of Bakuninist ideas - to use a shorthand - were beginning to come out on top.


He was all about destruction, burning the fucking social order to ash in a giant hellish supernova of revolutionary terror and blood. Creating a new social order? Eh, he wasn't quite as interested in that.

To be honest I think that is a bit of a caricature. Sure, at times Bakunin could use flowery language, specifically when he used the Hegalian terminology of negation but on the whole his politics amounted to building up solidarity via militant trade unionism and constant infusions of revolutionary thinking by a conscious minority.

He did see the potential for revolution arising out of the Franco-Prussian war, just as Lenin spotted it in WW 1, and he had no illusions about the ruling class's capacity for destruction and the dire struggle that they would put up in a revolutionary situation, but he was a long way from having a mania for social destruction.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Bakunin organized a secret society, the goal of which was to directly control revolution, and to gain control of the international. That's why Marx had him removed. I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.

Bakunin basically demonstrated why left diversity within an organization should be limited to forums, networks, currents, platforms, and tendencies - and why the limiting of audience access to intra-party discussions, the overemphasis of representative voting and top-down appointments, the bullying or threatening to split unless their views are adopted across the board, the attempts to replace party media with their own, the exhibiting of other unprofessional behaviour in striving to be a political and organizational majority, the refusal to act in accordance with agreed-upon action, and the abstention from presenting majority viewpoints in addition to their own - a.k.a. factions and factionalism, already given a bad name by the mainstream, should be permanently banned.


To be honest I think that is a bit of a caricature. Sure, at times Bakunin could use flowery language, specifically when he used the Hegalian terminology of negation but on the whole his politics amounted to building up solidarity via militant trade unionism and constant infusions of revolutionary thinking by a conscious minority.

Constant infusions of revolutionary or "revolutionary" agitation by a tiny conscious minority, perhaps, but not much in the way of political education or what is usually derided as "propagandism."

[Искра]

Nice to see discussion developing.


Bakunin-Marx conflict really did mark both ideologies. Even, today anarchists have real distorted image of Marx and Marxism because of this conflicts and myths which came out of it. Ok, cmoney you have read about whole conflict when you were 16 years old and you believe that most of anarchists know “the true story”. But this is not a case, at least from my experience. Ok, maybe the difference is that you come from USA and I come from Croatia which means that you have greater access to certain literature while we in Croatia do not have (especially few years ago when Internet was more expensive and not so developed).

I pointed out why I think that this conflict is still quite important: because when you have a good read on it you see how anarchism and Marxism were close and that Marx is not an evil-centrist. Of course, this is past event and it’s not as important as present situations or conflicts are, but good study could provide some kind of a platform for cooperation, but also certain frame for questioning anarchism, Marxism, vanguards, secret societies and mass organisations in order to adapt to present historical situation.

[Belleraphone]

I've always seen Bakunin as wanting to abolish state power to further proletarian ends and Marx as using state power to further proletarian ends. I do think DoTP is contrary to anarchism because those proles that do hold the power will eventually turn bourgeois and stab their comrades in the back.

[promethean]

I've always seen Bakunin as wanting to abolish state power to further proletarian ends and Marx as using state power to further proletarian ends. I do think DoTP is contrary to anarchism because those proles that do hold the power will eventually turn bourgeois and stab their comrades in the back.
Did you read the article in the original post or this one (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/karl-marx-the-state.html)? Your thinking is quite wrong. Marx did not advocate using state power for anything. You are confusing Lenin for Marx. Marx's position was always against the state. This was pointed out by Marx in 1844 in his essay, On the Jewish Question (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/). In a society divided by class, to speak of a state that exists in a neutral space claiming to treat all classes equally is a contradiction in terms.

[Belleraphone]

Did you read the article in the original post or this one (http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/karl-marx-the-state.html)? Your thinking is quite wrong. Marx did not advocate using state power for anything. You are confusing Lenin for Marx. Marx's position was always against the state. This was pointed out by Marx in 1844 in his essay, On the Jewish Question (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/). In a society divided by class, to speak of a state that exists in a neutral space claiming to treat all classes equally is a contradiction in terms.
Didn't Marx favor the state as a transition phase?

[Paulappaul]

no

[Dave B]

I think it is true to a certain extant that Bakunin anticipated Leninism; and basically accused Marx of being a closet or secret (what we call now) Bolshevik.

However the essence of what we call and criticise as Bolshevism today was in Karl’s and Fred’s day called and criticised as Blanquism.

But Karl & Fred denounced Blanquism, and therefore its later Russian variant, Bolshevism; just as Trotsky the Menshevik denounced Bolshevism as the essence of Blanquism, drawing on Engels.

Trotsky; Our Political Tasks (the last chapter) A Dictatorship Over The Proletariat



Thus we have charged our Ural Comrades with Blanquism. ……………..…… we consider it highly useful to quote Engels on the question of the role which the Blanquists ascribe to themselves at the moment of the socialist revolution.

“Trained in the conspiratorial school, accustomed to the strict discipline required in a conspiracy, they acted on the view that a relatively small number of determined and well organised people may, under favourable circumstances, not only capture the power, but through the application of powerful merciless energy maintain it until they succeed in rallying to the revolution the masses of the people and grouping them around the small handful of leaders. This requires, above all, the strictest dictatorial centralization of power in the hands of the new government.”

(Marx “The Civil War in France”, Engels’ Preface to the third German Edition).


And from Works of Frederick Engels 1874

The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune


From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/06/26.htm

Which is exactly what the Bolsheviks did and said, thus;


V. I. Lenin THESES ON THE FUNDAMENTAL TASKS OF THE SECOND CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

Published in July, 1920


On the other hand, the idea, common among the old parties and the old leaders of the Second International, that the majority of the exploited toilers can achieve complete clarity of socialist consciousness and firm socialist convictions and character under capitalist slavery, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie (which assumes an infinite variety of forms that become more subtle and at the same time more brutal and ruthless the higher the cultural level in a given capitalist country) is also idealisation of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy, as well as deception of the workers.

In fact, it is only after the vanguard of the proletariat insert (the bolsheviks/blanquists), supported by the whole or the majority of this, the only revolutionary class, overthrows the exploiters, suppresses them, emancipates the exploited from their state of slavery and-immediately improves their conditions of life at the expense of the expropriated capitalists -- it is only after this, and only in the actual process of an acute class struggle, that the masses of the toilers and exploited can be educated, trained and organised around (or more like under) the proletariat …(actually the bolsheviks/blanquists)…, under whose influence and guidance, they can get rid of the selfishness, disunity, vices and weaknesses engendered by private property; only then will they be converted into a free union of free workers.

http://www.marx2mao.net/Lenin/TSCI20.html

And



. But the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of that class…… (or entire)……., because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts (by imperialism in some countries) that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship.

It can be exercised only by a (blanquist) vanguard



http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/30.htm


There was also some cross over on revolutionary method between the ‘insurrectionism’ of Bakuninism and Blanquism (and for that matter Bolshevism) particularly as regards secret brotherhoods/societies etc.

Hence ironically perhaps the Mensheviks as Marxists also accused the Bolsheviks of being Bakuninists.


In fact Fred predicted in a letter to Vera Zasulich (later Menshevik) that Blanquism would appear and play a part in the forthcoming capitalist Russian Revolution.

The basic idea being that these kind of people would overthrow feudalism in Russia under a set of illusions and fantasies about what was achievable and end up introducing the inevitable capitalism or as it turned out the state capitalism.



Marx-Engels Correspondence 1885 Engels to Vera Zasulich In Geneva


Well now, if ever Blanquism--the phantasy of overturning an entire society through the action of a small conspiracy--had a certain justification for its existence, that is certainly in Petersburg. Once the spark has been put to the powder, once the forces have been released and national energy has been transformed from potential into kinetic energy (another favourite image of Plekhanov's and a very good one)--the people who laid the spark to the mine will be swept away by the explosion, which will be a thousand times as strong as themselves and which will seek its vent where it can, according as the economic forces and resistances determine.

Supposing these people imagine they can seize power, what does it matter? Provided they make the hole which will shatter the dyke, the flood itself will soon rob them of their illusions. But if by chance these illusions resulted in giving them a superior force of will, why complain of that? People who boasted that they had made a revolution have always seen the next day that they had no idea what they were doing, that the revolution made did not in the least resemble the one they would have liked to make.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885/letters/85_04_23.htm


Although in one of the greatest jokes in history; Lenin was not so blind as his more modern followers as to think that capitalism, albeit state capitalism, wouldn’t have to follow feudalism in Russia.

In that sense he could see more clearly than the Blanquists.

So who will overthrow feudalism in Russia and introduce capitalism?

“we will”.

[ZeroNowhere]

Didn't Marx favor the state as a transition phase?Yes, essentially. It does depend somewhat on what you mean by 'transition phase', but he did support the political rule of the working class under the capitalist mode of production as the means of revolution. Indeed, that was the immediate aim of communists, rather than the establishment of any ready-made utopia.

[promethean]

Yes, essentially. It does depend somewhat on what you mean by 'transition phase', but he did support the political rule of the working class under the capitalist mode of production as the means of revolution. Indeed, that was the immediate aim of communists, rather than the establishment of any ready-made utopia.
Can you provide the source for your first statement about the political rule of workers under capitalist mode of production?

[ZeroNowhere]

Can you provide the source for your first statement about the political rule of workers under capitalist mode of production?

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.


The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery [Eh, Trots?]. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule.


Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.(Emphasis mine. Elsewhere in the work, Marx refers to the, "revolutionary process of transformation of society." Note that the period referred to is the transformation of the one into the other by revolution, in other words the revolution itself, and hence does not do away with capitalism and introduce a new mode of production by itself.)


And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.


Bakunin:The question arises, if the proletariat becomes the ruling class, over whom will it rule? It means that there will still remain another proletariat, which will be subject to this new domination, this new state.

Marx: It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened.


Bakunin: The people are not scientific, which means that they will be entirely freed from the cares of government, they will be entirely shut up in the stable of the governed. A fine liberation!

The Marxists sense this (!) contradiction and, knowing that the government of the educated (quelle reverie) will be the most oppressive, most detestable, most despised in the world, a real dictatorship despite all democratic forms, console themselves with the thought that this dictatorship will only be transitional and short.

Marx: Non, mon cher! -- That the class rule of the workers over the strata of the old world whom they have been fighting can only exist as long as the economic basis of class existence is not destroyed.(The parenthetical comments on Bakunin are by Marx.)




N.B. as to political movement: The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.

On the other hand, however, every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight-hour day, etc., law is a political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. If these movements presuppose a certain degree of previous organisation, they are themselves equally a means of the development of this organisation.


And out of this very contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the community the latter takes an independent form as the State, divorced from the real interests of individual and community, and at the same time as an illusory communal life, always based, however, on the real ties existing in every family and tribal conglomeration – such as flesh and blood, language, division of labour on a larger scale, and other interests – and especially, as we shall enlarge upon later, on the classes, already determined by the division of labour, which in every such mass of men separate out, and of which one dominates all the others. It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another (of this the German theoreticians have not the faintest inkling, although they have received a sufficient introduction to the subject in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher and Die heilige Familie). Further, it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do.


With the disappearance of an exclusively wealth-possessing minority there also disappears the necessity for the power of armed oppression, or state power. At the same time, however, it was always our view that in order to attain this and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew. With the disappearance of an exclusively wealth-possessing minority there also disappears the necessity for the power of armed oppression, or state power. At the same time, however, it was always our view that in order to attain this and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew.


The tactics which, since 1848, have brought Socialists the greatest success are those recommended by The Communist Manifesto: "In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, the Socialists always represent the interests of the movement as a whole ... They fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class, but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future of that movement."

Consequently they take an active part in all the phases of the development of the struggle between the two classes without in so doing losing sight of the fact that these phases are only just so many preliminary steps to the first great aim: the conquest of political power by the proletariat as the means towards a new organisation of society.


To conquer political power has, therefore, become the great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this, for in England, Germany, Italy, and France, there have taken place simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the political organization of the workingmen’s party.



I do not see what violation of the social-democratic principle is necessarily involved in putting up candidates for any elective political office or in voting for these candidates, even if we are aiming at the abolition of this office itself.

One may be of the opinion that the best way to abolish the Presidency and the Senate in America is to elect men to these offices who are pledged to effect their abolition, and then one will consistently act accordingly. Others may think that this method is inappropriate; that’s a matter of opinion. There may be circumstances under which the former mode of action would also involve a violation of revolutionary principle; I fail to see why that should always and everywhere be the case.

For the immediate goal of the labor movement is the conquest of political power for and by the working class. If we agree on that, the difference of opinion regarding the ways and means of struggle to be employed therein can scarcely lead to differences of principle among sincere people who have their wits about them. In my opinion those tactics are the best in each country that lead to the goal most certainly and in the shortest time.


We have seen: a social revolution possesses a total point of view because – even if it is confined to only one factory district – it represents a protest by man against a dehumanized life, because it proceeds from the point of view of the particular, real individual, because the community against whose separation from himself the individual is reacting, is the true community of man, human nature. In contrast, the political soul of revolution consists in the tendency of the classes with no political power to put an end to their isolation from the state and from power.

And so on.

[kerryhall]

I am an anarchist, and I have no problems with Marx really, but I do have problems with Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Stalin.

That said, I also have a problem with the Marxist idea of running a socialist party for office using the current system. Or am I misinformed and is that just a straw man?

[Azraella]

I am an anarchist, and I have no problems with Marx really, but I do have problems with Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Stalin.

This is my attitude. In fact, I'm influenced by libertarian Marxism.


That said, I also have a problem with the Marxist idea of running a socialist party for office using the current system. Or am I misinformed and is that just a straw man?


Different Marxists promote different things. Some might propose reform and others like our friendly M-Ls here, propose a revolution. Marxist ideas are varied, as are anarchist ideas; it is a disservice to lump every Marxist together in that same boat.

[Искра]

Marxism-Leninism, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao have nothing to do with this thread. Read articles I posted.

Marx and Engels were for political parties and using the current parilamentary system.

[Qayin]

Bakunin was a sophist and an anti-semite who accused Marx of being a Rothschild agent

[Искра]

Most of the revolutionaries from 19th century were anti-semite. Especially if they came from Russia. Also, Marx was anti-Slav (like a Hegel), so what?

[tir1944]

Point is that Marx didn't publicly discredit Bakunin on the basis of him being a Slav.

[thriller]

Most of the revolutionaries from 19th century were anti-semite. Especially if they came from Russia. Also, Marx was anti-Slav (like a Hegel), so what?

He was also racist and anti-Semitic in his earlier years. People change though.

[Die Rote Fahne]

He was also racist and anti-Semitic in his earlier years. People change though.

It's a shame how so many fall for bourgeois false talking points like this.

[kerryhall]

Marxism-Leninism, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao have nothing to do with this thread. Read articles I posted.


Of course, I was just pointing those out specifically to show how an anarchist feels.



Marx and Engels were for political parties and using the current parilamentary system.


In that case, other anarchists and I have that specific disagreement with Marx, preferring to use our limited time and resources on direct action, such as anarcho-syndicalism. I believe that this was a disagreement between Bakunin and Marx in the first international.

[thriller]

It's a shame how so many fall for bourgeois false talking points like this.

Talking points? The racism thing or the change thing?

[The Insurrection]

Bakunin organized a secret society, the goal of which was to directly control revolution, and to gain control of the international. That's why Marx had him removed. I don't think there is even serious debate about that anymore.

That's not accurate in the slightest. This inaccuracy has been discredited by Mark Leier's book.