Re: AUT: a rejuvenated communist

["Paul Bowman" <paulbowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In reply to Chris,
Chris you wrote many things I agree with albeit I don't necessarily agree
that what I originally advanced is in contradiction with those things in the
way you appear to think. But I'll spare everyone the line by line bit. On my
main point tho' <it is impossible to get rid of value exchange and the wage
relation
without abolishing the state> I wasn't entirely clear where you ended up in
relation to that. As for fetishising money, if I was suggesting we abolish
money and replace it with "labour chits" or some other such scheme then I'd
agree, but that's not what I was saying.

I think however, I may have spotted one of the differences in starting
points which may account for our talking past each other somewhat. You said
(in passing):
> I feel that anarchism (again, not all, but much of what I have read) tends
...
Here you are using anarchism as an analogue of "marxism". That is a
collection of texts that can be read and by extension a school of thought
and analysis. Now it is true that anarchism is used in this way to refer to
the past thought/discourses/deeds/whatever of those who called themselves
anarchists. But the main meaning of anarchism as a term, is as a goal, a new
society in contrast to the present, much as socialism or communism. In this
way it would be possible to believe that all of the existing corpus of
self-declaredly anarchist thought to be stuff and nonesense and yet still be
an anarchist because that was the goal you were aiming for. It would also be
possible to find oneself in agreement with enough of Marx's work and that of
some of those who refer to him, to accept being part of some marxist
tradition and yet still be aiming for an anarchist society. So much for
labels, why not simply avoid the confusion by declaring onesself simply a
communist and saying that communism naturally implies a stateless society?
For the simple reason that there are still many people who call themselves
communists but are, in fact, not. Further it has been a recurring feature of
the state capitalists who self-identify as marxists to label their communist
opponents within marxism as anarchists. It is important under these
circumstances for the recipients, rather than protesting that they've never
read Proudhon in their life, to be clear what it is they are actually being
accused of. Namely having the revolutionary aim of destroying the state
organs of coercion and control - and then be happy to accept that that is
indeed their intention - or if it isn't figure out what it really is that
they _are_ aiming for.

It's late, I'll finish there. Yours for a stateless, classless society.



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---