RE: AUT: Re: Marxism not worth defending

[Paul Bowman <Paul.Bowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

	Not true. Marxist sects are more like each other than different.
	And, each sect refuses to cooprate with the other and believs
that it is
	the true vangaurd of the world revolution.. whjereas anarchist
groups work
	together in harmoney, dispite their differences.  All anarchist
disputes
	are temporary, whereas Marxist ones are eternal.

Work together in harmoney? Come off it. I can only speak from British
experience, but the anarchist groups big enough (DAM/SolFed, old Class
War Fed) were well known for their annual punch-ups thinly disguised as
annual conferences. Old CW conferences ended with chairs flying through
the air as often as not. Anarchists are, IMHO as badly behaved and prone
to the usual petty feuds, jealousies, etc. as any other political
tendency. Besides the mention of "true vanguards" makes me suspect Jamal
is conflating the term marxist and leninist.
This whole argument appears fairly daft to me but I will make one point.


The term "marxist" is itself problematic because, depending  how you
define it, either everyone's a marxist or no-one is. If by "marxist" you
include all those who see their political tendency taking at least some
insights from Marx then anarchists (for example) are clearly "marxists".
Although Bakunin never delivered on his offer to do the Russian
translation of Capital, Carlo Cafiero's translation was the standard
Italian text until well after WW1. Indeed the Italian International
(Cafiero, Malatesta, Costa et al) were clear that Libertarian Communism
was merely taking "Marx Beyond Marx" by stating that the common
ownership of the products of production was the necessary complement to
the common ownership of the means of production. If, OTOH, you restrict
"marxism" to those who claim to believe that every word Marx wrote is
true and the collected works represent a complete system, then no-one is
a "marxist" because no-one claims such a thing.

The perceived split that people identify themselves with one side or the
other came about as a result of the Second International expelling
anarchists at the London conference of whenever it was (1890s ish?).
However, even this was not a particularly political argument. The 2
International and the various attempts to reform it (3rd, 4th,
god-knows-what-else Internationals) can be criticised from many
viewpoints, but the important one from a libertarian communist
perspective, is that none of them were communist (in the sense of
seeking to abolish money rather than nationalise the banks). The dispute
over labels is a distraction from the debate over programmes.






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