Anarchist Theory - Use it or Lose it

[The Insurrection]

This is a very interesting article that proposes the argument that many ideas taken for granted on the revolutionary left find their origin in anarchism, and that Marxists have in many instances recuperated anarchist ideas and tactics.

People should read the article and give their opinion.

Anarchist Theory - Use it or Lose it (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/anarchist-theory-use-it-or-lose-it)

[Die Neue Zeit]

The ultra-left fetishes for general strikes, mass strikes, councilisms and other ad hoc stuff all come from Bukharin, unfortunately.

[ComradeOm]

*Shrugs* If you go back far enough you'll find that it all pretty much blurs into that primordial socialist soup. Trying to delineate exactly who first critiqued what is pretty much pointless. Trying to score tendency points off this ("anarchism has an advantage over Marxism"?) is even sillier

But then that's what a lot of this article comes down to. For example, suggesting that "Proudhon had also produced an analysis of exploitation that predates Marx’s in Capital by 2 decades" pretty much ignores that nothing that Proudhon produced resembles the detailed critique of Kapital. That's not to say that Proudhon was necessarily wrong, although Marx certainly thought he was, but that it's absurd to suggest that it somehow pre-empted the economic analysis of Kapital by two decades. The rest of it is similarly either mistaken or just silly in its attempt to put ideologies in nice little boxes

[JustMovement]

Not much to use, so I guess ill have to lose it.

[bricolage]

The ultra-left fetishes for general strikes, mass strikes, councilisms and other ad hoc stuff all come from Bukharin, unfortunately.
all power to the ad hoc!

[Os Cangaceiros]

It's an OK article, I agree with the sentiment in a very general sense, but the excessive use of exclamation points is annoying.

Look, a lot of what Marxists say about Bakunin is sloppy and ignorant. Almost none of them actually read Bakunin, and just shrug him aside as that conspiratorial wingnut Marx disbanded the International over. And that's partially true; some of the things Bakunin wrote, both before and during his "anarchist period" are kind of wing-nutty. A good collection of his works, though, that i own, called "The Basic Bakunin", shows that he actually did write several things of worth, including several statements that I consider to be downright prophetic when one looks back on the history of 20th century socialism. Bakunin's analysis of the French Revolution, the internationalism of the worker's movement or his indictment of the cooperative form are all good.

He lacks the exhaustive writing power of Karl Marx, but most socialist authors don't match up to that level of output, including ones praised by certain segments of Marxism, such as Leon Trotsky. All in all I think Bakunin is an underrated figure who's well worth reading.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Almost none of them actually read Bakunin, and just shrug him aside as that conspiratorial wingnut Marx disbanded the International over.

Um, just because "almost none of us" read him doesn't mean that all of us haven't. When we criticize what the material to which I referred to above, it is precisely because we have read Bakunin:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/classical-marxism-and-t165389/index.html

[Os Cangaceiros]

That's why I said "almost none". If I meant all Marxists didn't read Bakunin, that's what I would've typed.

[Tim Finnegan]

The article makes some decent point, but the worn-out "anarchists vs Marxists" tone gets on my nerves. If you're actually arguing for a substantial overlap in content, and presumably arguing for some degree of synthesis, then expressing that in a confrontational tone is a really clumsy way of going about it. (The author also doesn't exhibit a very good understanding of Marxism as something historical, instead treating the various points he criticises as expressing nothing more than the personal or ideological defects of given Marxists, in contrast to anarchist writers like Bookchin whose critique of Marxism was developed from a solid understanding of its historical development.)

(Edit: For comparison, I'm going to link Bookchin's Listen, Marxist! (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bookchin/1969/listen-marxist.htm), and I recommend that anyone with a bit of spare time, anarchist or Marxist, give it a read.)

[Искра]

Is this written by the author of Anarchist FAQ? I know that he's publishing his silly articles on this site. If that's true, well his name would usually be enough for me not to read article. But I’ve read it because I’m writing something on anarchism.


There are no “What Bakunin really meant” books because there is no need as anarchists writers are (almost always) clear and comprehensible.This is funny. Really… because I started to read Marx and Marxists (while I was an anarchist), because anarchists bollocks didn’t make any sense, they were chaotic and incomprehensible. Take Bakunin for example. Or even worst – Bonanno. Although its true that there are many good anarchists writers, such as: Kropotkin, Maximoff, Rocker, van der Walt, Makhno, Mett etc. But on the other hand, Marxists are not hard to read at all. After all only post-modernist assholes are hard to read, but that’s why nobody likes them.


In short, we anarchists had argued for all these so-called “Marxist” positions first.Oh, Jesus. :rolleyes:Just like anarchists were for “libertarian” freemason conspiratorial organising before Marxists. This is really funny because you could almost shrink all anarchist “philosophy” into: we are always right, but.... And here we go, but what? Anarchists are right but when their time “came” they cooperated with bourgeoisie and they can’t even admit that but they whine: oh, its not our fault, Stalinists fucked up revolution. Yes they did, but so did CNT.


Could they not find any anarchists to discuss that?Better not to :laugh: (sorry :blushing:)


Worse, one of the invited speakers is Trotskyist Hillel Ticktin, whose ideological guru advocated (and practised!) party dictatorship[4] (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/anarchist-theory-use-it-or-lose-it#_ftn4) and who crushed strikes[5] (http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/anarchist-theory-use-it-or-lose-it#_ftn5) (and anarchists!) to remain in power – and will, I am sure, happily do the same! This is just LOL :lol: It's like saying that I don't wanna go to discussion where anarchists speek because anarchists almost killed Bukharin :lol:


This ignorance of Proudhon is striking and can be ironic at times.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/index.htm

Later, it’s interesting that he uses SWP and Cliff as somehow big argument against Marxists. It’s like using Labour Party to criticise insurrectionary anarchists.

Also, his fetish with Proudhon who was against working class actions and later even for state, not to mention that he supported capitalist market economy and commodity production, is fucking bizarre.


So I think we anarchists have a lot to be proud of. We have contributed greatly to the socialist project and, unlike some tendencies, scientific theoryThis is hilarious. I really can’t recon anything which would connect anarchism with science. I don’t want to disrespect or anything, after all Marxism and anarchism are primarily political ideologies, but anarchists from Bakunin to Kropotkin used Marxist analysis because it was based on scientific method and that’s what anarchists didn’t have.


Yes, indeed – we mean it and we (usually) said it firstOh, grow up you historical revisionist :lol:

[ZeroNowhere]

Is this written by the author of Anarchist FAQ?
Yes. You can tell because it's pretty much identical to everything else he writes.

[Искра]

Yes. You can tell because it's pretty much identical to everything else he writes.
Yeah, that is the problem.

[Art Vandelay]

You can definetly tell who it is written by and I do not agree with everything he says but he does make some good points. However Anarchists should be trying to find common ground with marxists not push them away.

[Kronsteen]

ComradeOm is right. A classless postrevolutionary state where production is according to need and humans devote themselves to their own development in whatever interests them...sounds quite anarchist to me.

The main difference seems to be ideas of how we get to this postcapitalist situation. Create the seeds of it within capitalism in the hope they'll bloom, or become so hard and disciplined that you can smash capitalism, which will give humanity the space to bloom on its own.

(The sectarian hatefests aren't all their different either :(.)

[o well this is ok I guess]

I always hate it when this or that anarchist go about saying "but proudhon thought of this first".
All it really demonstrates is their impotency of coming up with anything new.

[The Insurrection]

I always hate it when this or that anarchist go about saying "but proudhon thought of this first".
All it really demonstrates is their impotency of coming up with anything new.

Can you explain how that sentence makes any sense...

[Desperado]

I listened to McKay do this lecture at the bookfair, and found it very frustrating despite my love for anarcho-theory.

That's because there was almost nothing on actual anarchist theory. There was an awful lot of pettily slagging off Marx - most of it terribly (taking the ML biased and shallow interpretations as Marx's word - at the very end he acknowledged council communism and autonomism as separate). It was just a tendency rant, loads of "Marx in 1862 said...but Proudhon in 1842 said...). Obviously ideas are just borrowed, recycled and improved. I'm sure at some esoteric Adam Smith convention they're all crying that Proudhon took on his labour-theory. Placing anarchism in a tendency war with Marxism as such just discredits its original and independent theory. The reality is that Marx was a brilliant thinker which we should be critically using as anarchists, not throwing away to the Stalinists, and that we should also be looking at our own colourful theory besides. Tell me about nihilism, platformism, insurrectionism, free-love, federalism and the Conquest of Bread. If I wanted a tendency rant I could just do some reading here.

Anarchist theory - Use it or just have a self-defeating ignorant jab at Marx.

/rant