Statism and Anarchy

[Genosse Kotze]

Alright, admittedly I'm not an Anarchist but since I would like to know more about this--more than one could learn on wikipedia--I started reading Statism and Anarchy, which I've been told is essential reading if you're serious about Anarchism. I'm only about a quarter of the way through and haven't gotten to the breakdown of Anarchism yet but what I've been reading so far has been rather off-putting.

Now, when reading books written in the 19th century, and much later one will still come across this, I've gotten somewhat used to taking authors' narrow-mindedness (racism, sexism and the like) with a grain of salt. Even in some of Marx's writings certain statements like these can be found, so I'm not looking to hold Bakunin to a higher standard, but so far as I've read anti-Semitism, and anti-German sentiments, combined with Russian chauvinism seem to be central to his thinking.

In talking about the newly unified German empire being the greatest force of reaction at the time (more on this point in a bit) he describes it as being "the triumphant reign of the Yids, of a bankocracy under the powerful protection of a fiscal, bureaucratic and police regime..." (pg. 12). Now, I know this was written after he had a falling out with Marx (both Jewish and German) and got booted from the 1st International (admittedly a shitty thing for the Marxist faction to have done) but damn.

What he's been describing in the book thus far has been Germany's replacement of France as the big Imperialist power in Europe after the Franco-Prussian war. And this seems to really delight Bakunin because he gets to unleash some serious hate on Germans. Furthermore, he claims that "from the reformation onward Germany has never ceased to be the principal source of all reactionary movements in Europe" (pg. 10). Well, ok. Who really cares who the most reactionary country in Europe was in the 19th century, but from what I've learned it was really the Russian empire who crushed a lot of the uprisings throughout Europe at that time. It really shouldn't matter which empire was doing it, both of them were piggish, imperialist entities, but Bakunin is quite the little apologist for Tsarist Russian reaction. "Who can doubt... it [Russia] greets every new act of state brutality and triumphant repression, every fresh instance of a popular uprising drowned in the people's blood with the most heartfelt sympathy? But that's not the question. The question is...does it have a determining voice in European affairs?...The answer is no"(pg.11).

All the anti-German sentiment and Jew hating is one thing, but this whole "oh, my emperor is better than yours" game is something that seems wholely counter to, at least what Marxism ,and I would hope Anarchism, is all about.
I really apologize for making this so long and kind of boring, but if there are any anarchists who would care to comment, please do.

[abbielives!]

Bakunin was more of an agitator than a theoretician.
also don't bother with wikipedia, the anarchist section is controled by free marketeers, many of us have been banned for trying to make the artilce more accurate.

if you are interested in anarchism i would recomend David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

free here:
http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm14.pdf

[Comrade Marcel]

You can find some good things in Bakunin, but of course when it came to hsi differences with Marx he was wrong.

His criticisms of authority, the state, religion, etc. are good.

But it seems to me you are very preceptive and have already discovered his errors and reactionary side.

[Organic Revolution]

With all theory, you have to remember that some ideas will be wrong, and some right, its all a matter of what you sift through.

But with Bakunin, remember that he didn't become an anarchist until late in his life, so he could have still hung on to his statist theories.

[Genosse Kotze]

Ok, I finished the book a few days ago and I must say it was pretty lame except for the last chapter where he finally starts talking about something other than how Germans have deficient characters, which make them all docile and reactionary, and 19th century politics. Ok, it's a good history book, way better than any text book you might get for a European history course, but it has very little to do with any sort of theory except for the very end.

However, it wasn't a whole loss. He did manage to come up with something I found very insightful (albeit too brief). In his condemnation of religion he said: "For the people the church is a kind of celestial tavern...in church and tavern alike they forget, at least momentarily, their hunger, their oppression, and their humiliation, and they try to dull the memory of their daily afflictions, in the one with mindless faith and in the other with wine. One form of intoxication is as good as the other"(pg. 207). Now, this argument is really nothing new; we've all heard the saying "religion is the opium of the masses" but the term "celestial tavern" is, I thought, a pretty clever, and better way to put it. But that’s not what I found most perceptive.

He basically says that religion is the whipping boy of bourgeois or seriously limited revolutionaries. “They must shock the bourgeois world but not anger it, and they must attract the revolutionary youth but avoid the revolutionary abyss. There is only one way [to do this]: to direct all of their pseudo-revolutionary fury against the Lord God…since we ourselves are convinced atheists we are obliged to give full expression to our lack of belief—I will go further and say our hostile attitude toward religion….[however] we should not place the religious question in the forefront of our propaganda among the people. It is our profound conviction that to do so is synonymous with betrayal of the people’s cause. It is our direct obligation to place before the people the principal question on the resolution on which their liberation depends. But that question is…the economic and social question, economic in the sense of social revolution and political in the sense of destruction of the state. To occupy them with the religious question is to distract them from their real cause and thus to betray it” (pg. 208-9). Bingo! Although he really failed to convince me in the book that destruction of the state is the supreme task at hand, he is absolutely correct to point out that just as religion is used to defuse any revolutionary potential brewing within people by supplanting it with tales of burning bushes and silly parables, to focus primarily on religion’s destructiveness diverts people away from pursuing the true bane of our existence in the same way religion does. Bakunin goes on to say that as people’s material conditions change, so too will their attitudes towards religion. “Thought follows from life and in order to alter the former one must first of all change the latter. Give the people a broad human existence, and they’ll amaze you with the profound rationality of their ideas” (pg. 207).

There were some other paces where he makes some good points but his treatment of religion was by far my favorite (perhaps I should post this in the religion thread in OI). If anybody knows of any other anarchist books which are better than Statism and Anarchy please recommend one because I still don’t understand what our anarchist comrades are all about.

[abbielives!]

Alexander Berkman- What is Communist Anarchism?
this one is a simple intoduction
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archi...whatis_toc.html (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/berkman/comanarchism/whatis_toc.html)

Noam Chomsky- Manufacturing Consent
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5...cturing+consent (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730&q=manufacturing+consent)

Anarchism in America
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=58...n+america&hl=en (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5896151564855675002&q=anarchism+in+america&hl=en)

an anarchist FAQ
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/