Countering accusations of Eurocentrism in anarchism and internationalist communism.

[Commie73]

I had what i would probably describe as the misfortune of today debating with someone who described themselves as both a muslim and an anarchist. Whilst my initial challenge to them was arround their nationalism or construction of an religious identity around oposition to western colonialism. They argued that a form of anarchism emerged in middle eastern islamic communities over a thousand years ago and that this showed my definition of liberatory communism to be wrong. When I pointed out that sure, examples of primitive communism have emerged all over the world what does this have to do with contmeporary anarchism I was accused of eurocentrism and reductionism. Now I have my own conclusions as to this debate, but i want to see what other people say, how do we or should we challenge reactionary nationalist and religious currents which claim to be in the tradition of workers liberation, but in practice show otherwise?

[promethean]

I had what i would probably describe as the misfortune of today debating with someone who described themselves as both a muslim and an anarchist. Whilst my initial challenge to them was arround their nationalism or construction of an religious identity around oposition to western colonialism. They argued that a form of anarchism emerged in middle eastern islamic communities over a thousand years ago and that this showed my definition of liberatory communism to be wrong. When I pointed out that sure, examples of primitive communism have emerged all over the world what does this have to do with contmeporary anarchism I was accused of eurocentrism and reductionism. To be honest, they could have been only talking about the history of anarchism in the middle east. To dismiss that would probably be a bit Eurocentric. It is useful to know such histories. Their insisting that their form of anarchism refutes liberatory communism could mean that they are not a anarcho-communist. Not all anarchists are anarcho-communists.

However, anarchism or internationalist communism are not 'Eurocentric'. This is just a baseless slander thrown about by anti-worker nationalists of various types.


Now I have my own conclusions as to this debate, but i want to see what other people say, how do we or should we challenge reactionary nationalist and religious currents which claim to be in the tradition of workers liberation, but in practice show otherwise?Nationalism and most mainstream religions are opposed to workers liberation. It is not possible to be a nationalist and religious current and still claim to be for workers liberation.

[hatzel]

A few communist and anarchist currents are pretty Eurocentric, yes; they quite obviously emerged from specifically European politico-philosophical environs, building upon the epistemological and ontological assertions of the Enlightenment and the social history of Europe. Explicitly non-Western politico-philosophical ideas play are given no part to play in much socialist thought, and those references to non-Western socio-economic history are usually 'detached,' the product of Western observers filtering non-Western realities through Western preconceptions. Generally resulting in caricatures and misunderstandings. Whether this is a result of the assumption that the Western understanding of knowing and being are necessarily superior to their non-Western counterparts, who knows...

Latin America and Africa are showing themselves to be particularly productive in developing anarchist and communist currents which are not merely aping those of the West, but are both philosophically coherent in non-Western environs and fitting to their social reality.

The best way to counter the accusation is to ensure that it isn't true, and to guarantee that one's political philosophy - if it is to have global relevance - is not built on totalising Eurocentric assertions.

[brigadista]

dont think your reference to "primitive communism" would have helped your argument there if i understand you correctly

[Rafiq]

So is he openly Middle Easterno-Centric? :glare:

[promethean]

A few communist and anarchist currents are pretty Eurocentric, yes; they quite obviously emerged from specifically European politico-philosophical environs, building upon the epistemological and ontological assertions of the Enlightenment and the social history of Europe. Explicitly non-Western politico-philosophical ideas play are given no part to play in much socialist thought, and those references to non-Western socio-economic history are usually 'detached,' the product of Western observers filtering non-Western realities through Western preconceptions. Generally resulting in caricatures and misunderstandings. Whether this is a result of the assumption that the Western understanding of knowing and being are necessarily superior to their non-Western counterparts, who knows...

Latin America and Africa are showing themselves to be particularly productive in developing anarchist and communist currents which are not merely aping those of the West, but are both philosophically coherent in non-Western environs and fitting to their social reality.

The best way to counter the accusation is to ensure that it isn't true, and to guarantee that one's political philosophy - if it is to have global relevance - is not built on totalising Eurocentric assertions.
Not sure what you are including among such totalising assertions. In most cases however, descriptions of political traditions as being Eurocentric tend to be very vague. The description of Eurocentrism can be mostly applied to liberal 'anarchists' like Noam Chomsky, who openly claims to be mainly inspired by the Enlightenment and the classical liberal tradition that developed in European conditions. However, class struggle anarchism cannot be truthfully described as Eurocentric. The same goes for Marxist traditions that uphold the primacy of class struggle. Class struggle is not a peculiar European phenomenon, nor is it a totalising European assertion. Simply having a few original thinkers living in a particular geography does not make a political tradition centric to that area, unless the tradition explicitly limits itself to certain conditions unique to that region. Liberal 'anarchism' of the likes of Chomsky certainly limits itself to unique political conditions found in the West. However, with the penetration of capitalism to all corners of the globe, the same cannot be said of class struggle politics.

[Comrade Jandar]

I want to address multiple things in this post. Firstly, the claim that marxism and anarchism are eurocentric is true to a certain extent; these theories came into being in Europe as opposed to elsewhere because Europe was first to experience the Industrial Revolution. Secondly, the society that Marx or Bakunin advocated could not simply occur at any point in history as it was dependent upon the existence of the proletariat. Thirdly, using terms such as "class struggle" anarchism or social anarchism are redundant. Anarchism as a philosophy and political theory was created and developed within the First International. Anarchism is a tendency of libertarian socialism and those who claim the label of anarchist and are not socialists, are in fact not anarchists.

[Commie73]

In this discussion I had been arguing the line that quite a few people have stated here that anarchism is a part of the workers movement, and that class struggle is universal. What I meant when I characterised his ancient islamic anarchism as "primitive communism" I accept was using the term wrong. What i meant, which i argued in the discussion, was that this historical movement is like the diggers or other early collectivist currents, they can be kinda interesting, but they are not really relevant to class-struggle today and have nothing to do with the anarchist movement which actually emerged around the middle of the 19th century.

But I think the main problem I had with his arguments was that he held a very chauvenist anti-colonial position that kinda saw the struggle as the middle-east and oppressed countries against the capitalist west.