AUT: Re: Marxism not worth defending

[fabian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Fabian Tompsett)]

It would seem that the variety of anarchists responding to my arguments are
as much concerned to criticise Marxism as defend anarchism, as if anarchism
is principally some sort of anti-marxism. This is similar to the UK's
<<Anarchist Year Book 1999>> when the editor remarks that they are not
Marxist Leninists.

It seems a bizarre way of arguing as no-one is defending Marxism. Indeed it
is not worth defending.

Iain Mckay says:

>Anarchists, in contrast, have their writers and we take what
>we find useful and reject the rest. With Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. we do
>not worship everything they said or did -- rather we read them and take
>what is relevent. Being anarchists and not Bakuninists (or whatever) we
>can do that -- perhaps marxists are jealous of this freedom and wish
>they could do the same with marx? But they cannot, being MARXists.
>Little
>wonder Marxist theory is so slow to adapt to new ideas and situations
>(and those that do are a small minority and generally end up sounding
>like anarchists -- not a coincidence).

I think this can be very true and indeed supports the point I am making.

If we are to go through and extract what is useful from anarchist writings,
we are clearly using other criteria than that they are anrachist writing to
guage whether they are useful.

For different anarchists they use different criteria as they have different
goals. Leaving aside the anarch-capitalists as essentially irrelevant
(Capitalists have always completely ignored any states they can overwhelm,
and  respect laws principally when it is profitable). Thus
anarcho-feminists adapt anarchism to the goals of women's liberation,
anarcho-communists to the overthrow of capitalism, and
anarcho-individualists to acheiving their individual goals.

What I am suggesting is that rather than resticting themselves to 'their'
writers anarchist-communists could benefit from reading more broadly, still
take what they "find useful and reject the rest". However, then they would
no longer be emmeshed in ideological <<movement>> of people defined by
their reading material, but indeed become communists and participate in
more open and clearer way within a communist movement. Such a movement is
defined in terms people actively involved in the class struggle seeking to
overthrough capitalism, wage-labour, the nation, the state and other
reified social relations.

Iain McKay tried to fend of criticism:
>Perhaps if criticism's of anarchism are relevent (rather than attacks on
>individual anarchists for being less than perfect) we would pay them
>more concern. After all, saying "Proudhon was an anti-semite" hardly is a
>meaningful critique of anarchism. Who would take "Rousseau was sexist" as a
>critique of democracy? Or "Marx was anti-slav and made racist comments" as a
>critique of Marxism?

The issue is not whether these individuals were less than perfect (which
would mean in the first place looking at them from a perspective they did
not share), but understanding them and their ideas in context.

Thus Proudhon's antisemitism is linked to his patriotism. The problem is
anarchists like Larry Gambone try to revive Proudhon and even extol his
patriotism. When this is combined with his defense of working class
conservatism (see his article in <<Red and Black Notes>>) this starts to
get distinctly worrying. In the UK anarcho-patriots like Richard Hunt (of
Alternative Green) are now teaming up with the masonic-elitist Jonathan
Boulter (of the Anarcho-Nihilist Accords) to launch their Anarchist
Heretiic shindig. This is what makes proudhon's anti-semitism relevant.
In a short piece of argument, I did not feel it necessary to go into
greater detail.

As for Rousseau's sexism, this would seem to be relevant in the denial of
bourgeois subjectivity to women, in terms of granting them the vote or even
the right to own property in some circumstances.

As for Marx's anti-slavism and racist comments, they are of course very
relevant:
His anti-slavism, which was more marked in Engels with his theory of
"non-historical people" is particularly pernicious in that they supported
the elision of minority peoples into large more sustainable 'nations'. In
their theory these were to be the building blocks not merely of capitalism
but also the transitional society. Non-historical people were categorised
as being 'backward' in a way reminiscent of the British categorisation of
backward tribes in India.

Likewise his racism goes beyond getting upset when his daughter married a
<<nigger>>:

>Whilst
>> English workers faced destitution rather than work with confederate cotton,
>> Proudhon was arguing for support of the confederacy.
>
>Actually, he argued that the political structure of the confederacy was
>better than the centralised Union. In the Principle of Federation he
>stated that slavery was not compatible with federalism. Oh, and Bakunin
>supported the North (like Marx). What does that imply for anarchism
>other than the anarchists are human and say and so things other
>anarchists disagree with.

Marx's support for the North and indeed the racist Abe Lincoln shows a
complete failure by him to think outside a euro-entric framework. He never
took up the issue of the self-emancipation of the slaves and their attempts
to seize control of the planations which were suppressed by the union
forces. He never discusses the reconstruction in the South, which included
having governements with working class people (i.e. ex-slaves) in them. He
never discussed the full ramifications of the complex political process
involving both the Northern Army of occupation, the freedmen, the ex-slave
owners, carpet-baggers and poor whites . . .

(If anyone knows where to find a good analysis of this I would be very
interested!)

This precisely the point, not to support either north or south but to look
for the self-emancipation of the working class.

Iain McKay remarks:

>While we do agree on certain basic positions, anarchism
>should be diverse -- it is how it grows and develops.

whereas the marxist sects emerge through a process of continual
fragmentation as they find issues to disagree upon and hence to distinguish
themselves from each other. Thus amongst the multitude of marxist sects
there is clearly as much diversity as amongst anarchists.

>>Likewise as soon as the founding Fathers of
>> @narchism are criticised, we are told that some anarchists don't like them
>> anyway. Yet they continually pop up as icons of the history of @narchism.
>
>Actually, what we say is that we are *not* person-ists (i.e. not
>Bakuninists, Proudhonites, whatever). We do not think them icons nor do we call
>ourselves after them.

Well, whenever I visit my local @narchist bookstore (Freedom), I go past a
wall display which features a series of icons of prominent anarchists,
including Proudhon and Bakunin!!! It would be useful to know who this 'we'
is who not thinking of such people as icons? Clearly it is not all
anarchists (unless Freedom is run by some personists posing as anarchists).
However if it is a faction within this putative anarchist collective
identity, it would be useful too have it identified.

And this perhaps touches on the crux of the matter:
Whereas marxists continually set-up ever smaller splinter groups
distinguished by a continual refinement of political positions(i.e.
chiselling), anarchists define themselves as a broad movement where such
distinctions are lost (i.e. amplic)

Both fail to find unity in diversity because both function in ideological ways.


Harald expresses the point thus:
>I must I admit that I find this debate rather absurd as far
>as what is under discussion is everything from (for instance)
>Errico Malatesta to Sex Pistols. I know that this is precisely
>"Leutha Blisset"'s point with his being "caught in the halls of
>mirrors" picture, though he might as well have referred the Sex
>Pistols to the halls of mirrors of "pro-situs".
>
>Despite this, it does not take much of a genius to see that
>(for instance) Malatesta and the Sex Pistols is not the same
>phenomenom. You might as well ask the marxist on this list
>to answer for everything from the "bordigaist-primitivist"
>Jacques Cammate to Stalin, and to whether or not these are/
>were "authentic" marxists. Both marxists and "pro-situs" -
>"unauthentic" by definition - as well as anarchists should of
>course answer for the late Fredy Perlman has ever said. And
>does really the U.S. magazine "Anarchy" as well as "Hakim Bey"
>have their roots in marxism, in as far as they are inspired
>by "pro-situ" currents and knowing the Situationist Inter-
>national debt to Marx? Both Toni Negri and the Norwegian deep-
>ecologist Arne Naess seem to love reading Spinoza, so can we
>so to speak discern a deeper relation here?

As marxist are chiselling, they do not have to answer for everything anyone
who has called themselves as marxist for.i.e. to the extant they defend
marxism it is as a method rather than a movement, and hence the
denunciation of those who do not use the method properly is de rigeur. (Not
that the marxists on this list are as such.) Thus with the pro-situs, they
are defined precisely because they failed to understand what the
Situationist International was doing, and far from being inspired bu the SI
were inspired by the spectacle of the SI rather than its substance.

Whilst I would agree that Malatesta and the sex pistols do not have the
same substance, as they are recylced by @narchism they function at the same
phenomenalogical level. As regards Negri and Naess (about whom i know
nothing I might add), if they both engage in the critique of substance this
does not imply that the substance of their critique is one and the same.

I can no longer hide my disappointment that one of the practical issues I
raised on 12/12 has not been addressed despite this debate being posted on
anarchy-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

>It is currently unclear whether the Mayday conference in London
>will be limited anarchists. The event is decribed as a festival of
>"anarchist ideas and
>action". As many of the ideas and actions they want to discuss often
>actually originally emerged elsewhere, it is to be hoped that the discussion
>wont be restricted to how these ideas have been derived in anarchist
>circles. The previous conferences at Bradford (1998) and Glasgow (1999)
>defined themselves more broadly.

It would be useful to have more information on this event, unless it is
just going to be an anarcho-gleefest where 'unacceptable' opinions are
projected onto an amorphous other identified as 'marxism', which is then
driven into the wilderness . . .

Leutha Blissett

P.S.
Jamal wrote:

>There was a problem a few years ago with anarchism drifting too far
>towards postmodernism and away from class struggle.  This problems seems
>to have now been resolved as all anarchists recognize capitalism as the
>enemy, it's just that some place different priority on fighting it.

This is good news indeed! What happened to those anarchists who thought the
class paradigm reinforces the bosses right to rule. . . Or is that an
indiscrete question?




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