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Questions for Anarchists.
Why does anarchists dislike dialectical materialism and (in some cases) historical materialism?
Does anarchism have the same theoretical vigor as Marxism, if so could you say how?
Why do anarchists dislike Marxism today? Is it the conception of parties or the "transitional phase"?
Would you work with Marxists in a revolution?
Why do you call Marxism inherently "authoritarian"?
There's no clear answer as far as I'm concerned as to what diamat is. On a related note it seems basically useless when it comes to actually doing shit, because all it's used for is retelling stuff that happened with a marxist point of view. Then you got marxists coming up like history teachers being all like 'you gotta learn from the past to move forward in the present'. There's more but I'm not in the best of places for this right now. Maybe when I get home.
"Maybe some day... I'll find a way... without you.."
A thing to remember, off the bat, is that anarchism tends to be theoretically quite fluid - different trends emerge unevenly, and different discourses are often put at the service of the same strategies and vice versa. As such, these questions often need to be quite specific - "why did x anarchists y" is often better than "why do anarchists writ large do y". But, I digress . . .
This anarchists takes issue with "dialectical" anything because the Hegelian baggage of the left is often tied to Eurocentric notions about "progress", and to erase local particularities. In particular, anticolonial solidarity has often necessitated jettisoning ideas about how societies (ought to) move from "necessity" toward "freedom".
What anarchism and What Marxism? Certainly, anarchists seem generally less inclined to imagine totalizing systems which they believe apply universally - which I think is a strength, to be honest.
That said, there is also an important tradition of anarchism borrowing liberally from Marxism where it is most useful. From Bakunin's praise of Marx's critique of political economy, to the contemporary popularity of "materialist feminism", anarchists have often been happy to take the best of Marxism and ditch What they see as anachronistic or mistaken.
Why do which anarchists dislike what Marxism? Often it's a practical matter - doing "coalition" work with people whose vision of a coalition is using you as a foot-soldier in their campaign to boost their organization's media exposure, for example, is awful. On the other hand, collaboration in organizing a legal benefit for a Mi'kmaq land defender is no problem. It's all context. I've had amazing experiences with the theoretically most distant "anti-revisionist" M-Ls, and terrible experiences with Trots who claim to be "non-sectarian". So . . .
I hope to work with my co-workers and neighbours in a revolution. I will not be demanding tho see proof of their political affiliations.
I don't. Though one has to wonder why people identify so strongly with a dead individual.
The life we have conferred upon these objects confronts us as something hostile and alien.
Formerly Virgin Molotov Cocktail (11/10/2004 - 21/08/2013)
