How many anarchists are part of the punk subculture?

[KR]

So i would like to know how many anarchists are actually punk anarchists. Is it a small minority, a large minority or a majority?

By the way i was unsure were to put this so mods move it if it is in the wrong place.

[Tim Cornelis]

It differs per country.

In countries with marginalised anarchist movements the anarchist movement tends to be half punk, but as the anarchist movement grows the punk percentage of the movement decreases relative to the growth of the movement (if that makes sense).

The Netherlands has a small movement and I suspect over half of the anarchists could be considered "punk", but if we look to Spain I see no or little punk activity in the anarchist movement:

http://www.cnt.es/sites/default/files/mani2_0.jpg

[Jimmie Higgins]

7,831

Edit: the last time I checked, but it could be more now.

[Le Rouge]

7,831

Edit: the last time I checked, but it could be more now.

More
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

[bcbm]

most of the punks became hipsters, the rest are boozed up n gutters

[NewLeft]

http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/



Question 39: Do you consider yourself a part of a specific subculture (e.g. punk, hippy)?

Anarchism is often associated with the punk subculture. We wanted to see how true this is.

1 713 said they are not part of a subculture and 146 did not answer this question. This leaves us with 645 people (37.7%) who do consider themselves to belong to a subculture.

The most common answers were:

Punk: 289 (44.8% of everyone who belongs to a subculture, 11.5% of all people who took this survey): this includes punk, anarcho-punk, hardcore punk, crust punk, hippy-punk, post-punk, people who used to be punks, academic punks, cyberpunks, folk punk

Hippy: 66 (10.2% of everyone who belongs to a subculture, 2.6% of everyone who took the survey)

Hardcore: 25

Goth: 20

The dominant subculture amongst participants is punk, at 11.4% of everyone who took the survey.

[Ele'ill]

Punk anarchists used to be regular anarchists until they took an.. On a serious note, even in the totally hipped-out areas of the US here there seems to be about a half and half split at meetings and marches. Not all punks are active leftists either, I'd say a small number of people from that subculture are.

[genstrike]

Why does it matter?

[Robespierre Richard]

More importantly, how many punks are in the anarchist subculture?

[Gorra Negra]

A trend, that's all.

[Zealot]

A few, since Anarchism tends to appeal to the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie.

[workersadvocate]

I was going to guess that most are looking for their Ron Paul buttons right now.

[Nox]

Over 9,000!!!

(I'm not included in that number)

[Old Man Diogenes]

A few, since Anarchism tends to appeal to the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie.

Ignoring the deliberately inflammatory nature of this comment, what is it about anarchism that makes it particularly attractive to the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois?

[Zealot]

Ignoring the deliberately inflammatory nature of this comment, what is it about anarchism that makes it particularly attractive to the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois?

I think your user-title is a good clue, "Individualist Anarchist". I'm not making a sweeping generalization, but typically those who are knee-jerk anti-authoritarians in response to the failures of capitalism and neo-liberalism are attracted to "Anarchism". There are the individualist self-proclaimed rebels, punk nihilists and narcissists and on the right is the worst of them such as the anarchotopian-capitalists, libertopians and self-styled "dissidents". Often these people stem from the irate bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and frequently leads to Anarchists who have a confused set of priorities, such as Individualism.

Lenin summed this up nicely in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch04.htm)
"Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge."

Engels also exposed Bakunin and Anarchism in 1872 in his letter to Thoedore Cuno (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/letters/72_01_24.htm) and his work On Authority. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)

[Os Cangaceiros]

A few, since Anarchism tends to appeal to the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie.

sick burn dood

[ed miliband]

I think your user-title is a good clue, "Individualist Anarchist". I'm not making a sweeping generalization, but typically those who are knee-jerk anti-authoritarians in response to the failures of capitalism and neo-liberalism are attracted to "Anarchism". There are the individualist self-proclaimed rebels, punk nihilists and narcissists and on the right is the worst of them such as the anarchotopian-capitalists, libertopians and self-styled "dissidents". Often these people stem from the irate bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and frequently leads to Anarchists who have a confused set of priorities, such as Individualism.

Lenin summed this up nicely in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch04.htm)
"Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge."

Engels also exposed Bakunin and Anarchism in 1872 in his letter to Thoedore Cuno (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/letters/72_01_24.htm) and his work On Authority. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)

lolololol citing Engels when attempting to denounce anarchists as "bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie".

[Zealot]

lolololol citing Engels when attempting to denounce anarchists as "bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie".

Except, of course, that Engels was a Revolutionary who didn't have his politics confused and wasn't a punk who alienated himself from society, he worked his ass off in order for the Communist movement to grow.

[hatzel]

Ahaha bare japes punks own factories, guysss, they teh bourgeoisie!!!

I've never been all that enamoured by punk. It just feels boring, and considering that's kind of what the last generation did to be rebellious, I can't really look at it as anything other than some antiquated imitation of itself, so what's the point?

That said, if some punk came to me and said there were an anarchist (as if some hipster came and said they were a communist, or anybody adhering to some kind of subculture declared their leftiness) I'd be instantly suspicious of their revolutionary credentials. I always get that "or well maybe you're just saying you're an anarchist because that's what you're 'supposed' to do when you have such stupid hair and eventually you'll get bored of that hair and cut it and won't need to be an anarchist anymore"-feeling. A bit like the "hah commie yeah sure come back to me when you don't care about pissing your parents off anymore yeah?"-feeling. Or the "let's see how all this turns out after you graduate"-feeling. Tonnes of feelings all over the place! But maybe that's just because I'm a big ol' meanie...

[Qayin]

punks dead

[ed miliband]

Except, of course, that Engels was a Revolutionary who didn't have his politics confused and wasn't a punk who alienated himself from society, he worked his ass off in order for the Communist movement to grow.

Given the position Engels held in society it would have been kinda hard for him to be alienated from it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

That said, if some punk came to me and said there were an anarchist (as if some hipster came and said they were a communist, or anybody adhering to some kind of subculture declared their leftiness) I'd be instantly suspicious of their revolutionary credentials. I always get that "or well maybe you're just saying you're an anarchist because that's what you're 'supposed' to do when you have such stupid hair and eventually you'll get bored of that hair and cut it and won't need to be an anarchist anymore"-feeling. A bit like the "hah commie yeah sure come back to me when you don't care about pissing your parents off anymore yeah?"-feeling. Or the "let's see how all this turns out after you graduate"-feeling. Tonnes of feelings all over the place! But maybe that's just because I'm a big ol' meanie...

Yeah, I'm instantly suspicious when someone with tight pants talks to me about communism, too.

[Os Cangaceiros]

punks dead

If punk's dead then how come they've been trying to kill it in Indonesia?

[Tim Cornelis]

I think your user-title is a good clue, "Individualist Anarchist". I'm not making a sweeping generalization, but typically those who are knee-jerk anti-authoritarians in response to the failures of capitalism and neo-liberalism are attracted to "Anarchism". There are the individualist self-proclaimed rebels, punk nihilists and narcissists and on the right is the worst of them such as the anarchotopian-capitalists, libertopians and self-styled "dissidents". Often these people stem from the irate bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and frequently leads to Anarchists who have a confused set of priorities, such as Individualism.

All the tendencies you just named are either minority currents within anarchism, or not anarchist at all. Talking about strawmen!

[Искра]

Goti your picture of CNT is kind of funny, especially when I was at CNT's demos.

Old people in CNT are like regular people you meet on streets, but a lot of young people are into subcultures, mostly skinhead and punk. I don't see what's peoples problem with subcultures. They are part of growing up in consumerist society. Face it and embrace it: oi, oi, skinhead get your hair cut ;)

[Sasha]

Im really into punk and I'm an anarchist of sorts but detest most anarcho-punk, I mean I love sincere political punk like seein'red (who are more maoist anyways) but the whole circle A on your studded jacket never been my thing.
With the exception of parts of the crust subculture most lifestyle punks their politics don't go much deeper than "anarchy equals you can't ***** about my drug and booze abuse".
So I would say that while most anarchist listen to punk most punks are not anarchists as we on this board understand anarchism.

[Zealot]

All the tendencies you just named are either minority currents within anarchism, or not anarchist at all. Talking about strawmen!

Except that, as Newleft's post has shown, almost 40% of anarchists surveyed admitted to being part of a subculture.

Interestingly, we see on Q12 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q12) that around 65.5% are from the middle class, with working class anarchists only amounting to 28.4%. They note that:

"In our experience, some anarchists - especially non-working class ones - appear to suffer from what we have come to call "class guilt", which gave us cause for concern about the accuracy of the results."
Emphasis mine. They go on to add:
"Anarchists who took this survey are overrepresented in the middle classes and upper classes and underrepresented in the poor and working classes. The initial implication is that anarchists generally have an above average class background. However, our results could be significantly distorted by varying degrees of access to the Internet. "

As for their confused politics, this is shown amply in Q22 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q22) where it is stated "half of participants have experimented with three or more different forms of anarchism." And for the lulz, the way that Anarchism would supposedly be achieved was answered in Q47 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q47) with the following results:


Building and extending autonomous communities: 1 422
By practicing mutual aid: 1 163
Revolution of everyday life: 1 140
General strike: 1 069
Through education: 900
Violent overthrow of the system: 736
I don't think it will be achieved: 316
I don't believe in revolution, the system will slowly change: 267


In Q25 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q25) they voted overwhelmingly that anarcho-capitalism wasn't genuine anarchism. However, in Q23 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q23) we read that only 20% of anarchists viewed anarcho-capitalist tendencies as problematic, Individualism and Lifestylism were at 12% and 13% respectively. Apparently the other 55% felt Crimethinc and religious anarchists were more problematic. It's nice to know where their priorities lie.

In conclusion: Anarchism is the bastion of the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and their politics. And the reason for this was given in my previous post.

[Leftsolidarity]

Except, of course, that Engels was a Revolutionary who didn't have his politics confused and wasn't a punk who alienated himself from society, he worked his ass off in order for the Communist movement to grow.

Now I'm a Marxist but I'm going to say fuck you on this comment because it is completely down to your personal beliefs.

"Except, of course, that Engels was a Revolutionary"

Yes, and what revolution was he in? None, that I can think of. Great writer though.

"who didn't have his politics confused"

Maybe to you. Others might think he did. Also, this puts it as a single set answer. You (and Engels) might seem very confused to an anarchist.

"and wasn't a punk who alienated himself from society"

Yes, and here's where my "fuck you" comes most into play. You obviously have nothing to do with the punk culture and look down your nose at us. All punks are just individualists who alienate themselves from society right? There aren't a number of punks who do a lot of work in their communities and hold Marxist/Anarchist views......





Stop stating your personal views as concrete facts and stop looking down your nose at people just because they have a different culture than yourself.

[Tim Cornelis]

Except that, as Newleft's post has shown, almost 40% of anarchists surveyed admitted to being part of a subculture.

Except, you were attacking all forms of lifestyle- and individualist anarchism, not class struggle anarchism.



Interestingly, we see on Q12 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q12) that around 65.5% are from the middle class, with working class anarchists only amounting to 28.4%. They note that:
"In our experience, some anarchists - especially non-working class ones - appear to suffer from what we have come to call "class guilt", which gave us cause for concern about the accuracy of the results."
Emphasis mine. They go on to add:"Anarchists who took this survey are overrepresented in the middle classes and upper classes and underrepresented in the poor and working classes. The initial implication is that anarchists generally have an above average class background. However, our results could be significantly distorted by varying degrees of access to the Internet. "

You would find similar results in most left-wing movements. This is because in times of low intensity class struggle the people attracted to revolutionary left-wing movements will generally be "middle class" (which by the way would be working class in Marxist terminology).


As for their confused politics, this is shown amply in Q22 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q22) where it is stated "half of participants have experimented with three or more different forms of anarchism."

So? I went from individualist anarchism to collectivist anarchism to communist anarchism. It's only natural that you develop your politics. Most Marxists don't stick with Marxism, but develop towards Lenin, or Trotsky, or Stalin, or Mao. Which requires a step or two. What this shows is that people actually consider and think about their politics as opposed to just accept it and turn it into dogma. You prove nothing.


And for the lulz, the way that Anarchism would supposedly be achieved was answered in Q47 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q47) with the following results:


Building and extending autonomous communities: 1 422
By practicing mutual aid: 1 163
Revolution of everyday life: 1 140
General strike: 1 069
Through education: 900
Violent overthrow of the system: 736
I don't think it will be achieved: 316
I don't believe in revolution, the system will slowly change: 267


What's your point? How do you expect a revolution to come about?

Without educating the working class, without a violent overthrow, without creating alternative institutions (occupy factories, set up communes), without strikes? Most of the answers are commonly accepted by both Marxists and anarchists.


In Q25 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q25) they voted overwhelmingly that anarcho-capitalism wasn't genuine anarchism. However, in Q23 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q23) we read that only 20% of anarchists viewed anarcho-capitalist tendencies as problematic, Individualism and Lifestylism were at 12% and 13% respectively. Apparently the other 55% felt Crimethinc and religious anarchists were more problematic. It's nice to know where their priorities lie.

Again, what's your point? Crimethinc, by the way, is usually considered to be very much a lifestylist tradition.


In conclusion: Anarchism is the bastion of the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and their politics. And the reason for this was given in my previous post.

A completely unfounded fallacious conclusion. By extension of your logic, revolutionary socialism is a bastion of white politics as a survey on revleft showed that the vast majority of revleft are white.

Marxism is a bastion of bourgeois and petty bourgeois politics.

After all, Marx was born into a family that owned vinyards (means of production); his father became a lawyer and lived in a ten-room property. Shit, even I (who was born in a "midde class" family) have only lived in a six room house, while Marx lived in impoverished times. Marx was even sent to private education.

Marx was petite-bourgeois.

Friedrich Engels was an industrialist, the highest of the highest in the capitalist order, the haute-bourgeoisie.

Engels was bourgeois.

So... that means that Marxism is completely and utterly a bourgeois tradition, except, except of course that the socio-economic background of people does not change the nature of their fucking politics--elementary common sense.

Yet you dare to denounced anarchism as bourgeois and petty-bourgeois because some 2,000 people clicked a button on an internet survey (which includes non-anarchists such as nonarchists/stateless capitalists).


You are beyond ridiculous.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Unfortunately, Exoprism, beyond the obvious problem of using an online survey to characterize a political philosophy, the "class problem" really transcends anarchism and is a problem of the whole left, at least in the west. Most of the Marxist-Leninists I've met have come from "privileged" backgrounds; one of the main breeding grounds is in the university system, after all (although that's not to say that all students are "privileged", far from it). That goes for me, too, my parents are "self-employed", they're not working class as it's traditionally understood, certainly not proletarians. For my own part, though, I have done "prole work", and I'm not ashamed at all of my background. Not one tiny bit.

That's just a function of the era we live in. Claiming that anarchism has always been a "petty bourgeois" ideology really is a fool's errand, though, unless you want to go ahead and explain why Italy alone had almost a million members within it's main anarcho-syndicalist union at it's peak during the early 1920's. It's only the crudest of Marxist-Leninist stereotypes who engage in such unsophisticated demagoguery.

[hatzel]

Oh RevLeft and your resident fools, always there with golden comedy moments :) One more thing to add, though:


However, in Q23 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q23) we read that only 20% of anarchists viewed anarcho-capitalist tendencies as problematic

To be honest seeing anarcho-capitalist tendencies as 'problematic' would be pretty much on the same level as calling the threat of a reptilian invasion of Earth in support of our capitalist overlords 'problematic.' Sure, it probably wouldn't be all that great if it ever happened, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Because that shit doesn't actually even exist outside of the blogs of people in their parents' basements, and even if it did, it's so laughably unworkable that if it were ever to be implemented it would totally collapse in about 20 seconds and then we'd be back exactly where we were before that whole little escapade. Don't see why I should waste my time finding that bullhonky problematic. I'd much rather direct my attention to the very real threat of those seeking to reestablish the Egypt of the Pharaohs in all its minute details. Complete with wamp pyramids all over the shop and enforced worship of Ra and all those other dudes and dudettes. You'll thank me when that doesn't happen. You'll thank me from the bottom of your heart!!!

[Zealot]

LOl Exoprism... get a life

Hilarious, nice analysis of Marxism and Anarchism.


"Except, of course, that Engels was a Revolutionary"

Yes, and what revolution was he in? None, that I can think of. Great writer though.

The Prussian Uprising of 1848.


Marxism is a bastion of bourgeois and petty bourgeois politics.

After all, Marx was born into a family that owned vinyards (means of production); his father became a lawyer and lived in a ten-room property. Shit, even I (who was born in a "midde class" family) have only lived in a six room house, while Marx lived in impoverished times. Marx was even sent to private education.

Marx was petite-bourgeois.

Friedrich Engels was an industrialist, the highest of the highest in the capitalist order, the haute-bourgeoisie.

Engels was bourgeois.

So... that means that Marxism is completely and utterly a bourgeois tradition, except, except of course that the socio-economic background of people does not change the nature of their fucking politics--elementary common sense.

Because you're missing the point. I said Anarchism has a tendency to attract the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie for the reasons stated above, and with them comes the influence of bourgeois politics and individualism. As for the class-background of Marx and Engels, it's an irrelevant point because of what they contributed to revolutionary thought, not only through their writings but through their actions. Whereas certain stripes of anarchists from the same background ("rebels", individualists, lifestylists etc.) are not revolutionary orientated at all.

[Red Noob]

As for their confused politics....


Building and extending autonomous communities: 1 422
By practicing mutual aid: 1 163
Revolution of everyday life: 1 140
General strike: 1 069
Through education: 900
Violent overthrow of the system: 736
I don't think it will be achieved: 316
I don't believe in revolution, the system will slowly change: 267



So theoretical methods implies confusion and misunderstanding of politics?

Hell I'd vote for 3 or 4 of those methods, and I'd do you one better and put some of them into practice.

[hatzel]

So theoretical methods imply confusion and misunderstanding of politics?

Please remember that any answer other than 'parliament shall be stormed by the glorious vanguard, with a gun in one hand, a Soviet flag in the other and the collected works of Lenin in their magically-appearing third hand, to then establish a single-party state' is proof of confusion and abandonment of the concept of revolution. This is widely known.

[Искра]

Hilarious, nice analysis of Marxism and Anarchism.Cause music and fashion are so important for class struggle :rolleyes:

[ed miliband]

How should a true class warrior dress, out of interest? 'Cos if you have any sense of style you are obviously a petit-bourgeois counter-revolutionary, and if you dress in rags you're a lifestylist hippie (and bourgeois, no doubt).

What do true proletarians wear?

[PhoenixAsh]

Except that, as Newleft's post has shown, almost 40% of anarchists surveyed admitted to being part of a subculture.

Interestingly, we see on Q12 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q12) that around 65.5% are from the middle class, with working class anarchists only amounting to 28.4%. They note that:

"In our experience, some anarchists - especially non-working class ones - appear to suffer from what we have come to call "class guilt", which gave us cause for concern about the accuracy of the results."
Emphasis mine. They go on to add:
"Anarchists who took this survey are overrepresented in the middle classes and upper classes and underrepresented in the poor and working classes. The initial implication is that anarchists generally have an above average class background. However, our results could be significantly distorted by varying degrees of access to the Internet. "

As for their confused politics, this is shown amply in Q22 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q22) where it is stated "half of participants have experimented with three or more different forms of anarchism." And for the lulz, the way that Anarchism would supposedly be achieved was answered in Q47 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q47) with the following results:


Building and extending autonomous communities: 1 422
By practicing mutual aid: 1 163
Revolution of everyday life: 1 140
General strike: 1 069
Through education: 900
Violent overthrow of the system: 736
I don't think it will be achieved: 316
I don't believe in revolution, the system will slowly change: 267


In Q25 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q25) they voted overwhelmingly that anarcho-capitalism wasn't genuine anarchism. However, in Q23 (http://www.anarchistsurvey.com/results/#Q23) we read that only 20% of anarchists viewed anarcho-capitalist tendencies as problematic, Individualism and Lifestylism were at 12% and 13% respectively. Apparently the other 55% felt Crimethinc and religious anarchists were more problematic. It's nice to know where their priorities lie.

In conclusion: Anarchism is the bastion of the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and their politics. And the reason for this was given in my previous post.


Wait....you first cite Lenin to discredit Anarchy and then you use burgeoisie class stratification to show they are not working class? :confused:

Then you cite E. on the topic of Authoritarianism? Interesting.

So basically you are all over the place?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think your user-title is a good clue, "Individualist Anarchist". I'm not making a sweeping generalization, but typically those who are knee-jerk anti-authoritarians in response to the failures of capitalism and neo-liberalism are attracted to "Anarchism". There are the individualist self-proclaimed rebels, punk nihilists and narcissists and on the right is the worst of them such as the anarchotopian-capitalists, libertopians and self-styled "dissidents". Often these people stem from the irate bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and frequently leads to Anarchists who have a confused set of priorities, such as Individualism.

Lenin summed this up nicely in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch04.htm)
"Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge."

Engels also exposed Bakunin and Anarchism in 1872 in his letter to Thoedore Cuno (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/letters/72_01_24.htm) and his work On Authority. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)

There are many people who identify with anarchism but are really liberals just as there are many young people I've met over the last few years who call themselves socialist and then say, "because I support Obama and want health care". We're at a low starting point politically and the last wave of radicalism in the US was not fully linked with working class struggle and in the 30+ years since there's been a full-on attack by the ruling class on the working class and movements in general. So if a lot of people who call themselves anarchists have sort of mixed or non-revolutionary politics, it has less to do with the ideology than with the situation we find ourselves in today.

Then, even accepting the arguments you put forward, there's absolutely no argument for anarchism appealing the members of the bourgeois. Even the fake "anarchism" of anarcho-caps only appeals to the interests of the petty-bourgoise. So I don't know where you are getting that claim from.

However, I do think early anarchism did have a historical link to petty-bourgeois politics and in many places that was the group who adopted anarchist ideas first. It appealed to anger at capitalism and the de-skilling of crafts. But working class movements at the end of the 1800s tended to be a counterbalance and working class politics became a much more central to anarchism - this was particularly true after the Russian Revolution and many anarchists initially supported the revolution and then. Marxism also has strains influenced by petty-bourgeois interests: reformism and democratic-socialism (as in your Lenin quote). After WWII anarchism lost some of this working class focus and adapted to other influences such as pacifists - similar things happened with the Marxist movement too, so again, it was more the historical situation of post-war boom and decline in working class militancy.

Furthermore, it's crude to call anarchism an ideology of the petty-bourgeois based on that survey. A analogous survey of socialists would have to include democratic-socialists and people who confuse Keynesianism for socialism and no doubt you'd get a similar response. Revolutionary socialists usually just draw a line separating themselves from the non-revolutionary mutations of marxism and while there are similar attempts by many revolutionary anarchists, generally (at least in the US) the more informal nature of the anarchist movement means that these criticisms are more diffuse.

Lastly, the links there are between contemporary anarchism and punk as a subculture, are actually to do with anarchist organizing in the 1990s where there was a concerted effort by some anarchist formations to recruit from and embed themselves within the punk scene. In a time of low struggle and a ruling class offensive, these anarchists saw punk as a subculture that appealed to openly dissatisfied working class youth. I don't really see any inherent problem with that (although I do think it sort of created a limited audience for anarchism since the punk subculture disproportionately included white male youth).

[Old Man Diogenes]

I think your user-title is a good clue, "Individualist Anarchist". I'm not making a sweeping generalization, but typically those who are knee-jerk anti-authoritarians in response to the failures of capitalism and neo-liberalism are attracted to "Anarchism". There are the individualist self-proclaimed rebels, punk nihilists and narcissists and on the right is the worst of them such as the anarchotopian-capitalists, libertopians and self-styled "dissidents". Often these people stem from the irate bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie and frequently leads to Anarchists who have a confused set of priorities, such as Individualism.

Lenin summed this up nicely in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch04.htm)
"Little is known in other countries of the fact that Bolshevism took shape, developed and became steeled in the long years of struggle against petty-bourgeois revolutionism, which smacks of anarchism, or borrows something from the latter and, in all essential matters, does not measure up to the conditions and requirements of a consistently proletarian class struggle. Marxist theory has established—and the experience of all European revolutions and revolutionary movements has fully confirmed—that the petty proprietor, the small master (a social type existing on a very extensive and even mass scale in many European countries), who, under capitalism, always suffers oppression and very frequently a most acute and rapid deterioration in his conditions of life, and even ruin, easily goes to revolutionary extremes, but is incapable of perseverance, organisation, discipline and steadfastness. A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries. The instability of such revolutionism, its barrenness, and its tendency to turn rapidly into submission, apathy, phantasms, and even a frenzied infatuation with one bourgeois fad or another—all this is common knowledge."

Engels also exposed Bakunin and Anarchism in 1872 in his letter to Thoedore Cuno (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/letters/72_01_24.htm) and his work On Authority. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm)

You just said 'Anarchism', you didn't specify whether it was individualist or social. If we're going to just attack each others ideas, I think Marxist-Leninism 's pretty awful too.