Marx and Thoreau

[Orange Juche]

I'm writing a paper for a college course, and I choose to write a peice comparing and contrasting Marx and Henry David Thoreau and their ideas.

Anyone have any ideas? Anything that can help? Sources online?

[More Fire for the People]

Thoreau was a libertarian, advocate of anarchism, individualist, pacifist, and Christian. Marx was an advocate of communism, socialist, activist, and materialists. They're opposites.

[violencia.Proletariat]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 25 2006, 11:20 PM
Thoreau was a libertarian, advocate of anarchism, individualist, pacifist, and Christian. Marx was an advocate of communism, socialist, activist, and materialists. They're opposites.
Please demonstrate where Thoreau advocated anarchism. His mysticism prevents him from being an anarchist because anarchism accepts the Marxist material conception of the world.

[Orange Juche]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 25 2006, 11:20 PM
Thoreau was a libertarian, advocate of anarchism, individualist, pacifist, and Christian. Marx was an advocate of communism, socialist, activist, and materialists. They're opposites.
But do you have any links or anything like that which could help as sources?

[apathy maybe]

Firstly a big bullshit to violencia.Proletariat. Some anarchists accept the Marxist material conception of the world. However, not all do.

Thoreau was an anarchist, he advocated for a society where there were no rulers, no leaders, no government. He may not have fitted your perfect conception of anarchism, but neither do I. Yet I would say that I am more of an anarchist then you are in some ways (open minded for one).

In his work Civil Disobedience (which I link to below), he advocates no government.


Originally posted by Hopscotch Anthill
Thoreau was a libertarian, advocate of anarchism, individualist, pacifist, and Christian. Marx was an advocate of communism, socialist, activist, and materialists. They're opposites.I would disagree that they are opposites. Both wanted a society free from capitalism and government (state). Yes they had differing opinions on some issues (such as materialism), but I feel that they shared more opinions with each other then with capitalists.

Besides which, communism, in the end result, is a form of anarchism.



(And working backwards up the thread ...) MeetingPeopleIsEasy have a look at Wikipedia for some background on both, also good for Christian Anarchism and Individual Anarchism to a certain extent (the Marx articles might be vandalised, but read them anyway). Also do a search around RevLeft.

I would recommend Civil Disobedience by Thoreau as a good work to start with (can be found http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html and http://www.panarchy.org/thoreau/disobedience.1848.html ).

Anyway, good luck.