RE: Anarchists and Leninists

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Xxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

> wonder if there are any historical reasons as to why anarchism is so
> appealing  in places like Canada, Australia and Germany. what type of
> lessons should Marxists draw from history about this?

And Joan Cameron wrote:

My general impression is that North American popular culture is infected
with a particularly virulent form of petty bourgeois individualism
(there's that label again!)[snip]

Response (Jim C): Personally I think Joan is on to something here. Being
petit-bourgeois refers not to one's class or strata origins, but rather to
one's present-day positon, interests, values, lifestyle and mindset. The
typical anarchists, like the typical petit-bourgeois, are caught up, IMHO,
in a whole culture of narcissism, instant-gratification,
ultra/methodological individualism, theatrics = action, quantity = quality
and immersion "in the moment". So tripping from one demo to the next, with
no organizational links to those putting on the demo, and no ongoing
grass-roots work on the issues that are the subject of the demo, becomes
"revolutionary action"--no notion of the concept of simple tourism
masquerading as revolutionary "action". Ultra-theatrics, carnival partying,
vitriol, quote-mongering and sporadic/unplanned "incidents" and spamming
various e-mail lists become synonomous with "real" revolutionary "action".
While decrying "bourgeois liberties" and "rights", and labelling those who
utilize them to their limits for tactical reasons as "reformists", the
anarchists are themselves are relying precisely on those same bourgeois
"liberties and rights"--they do not do their sporadic theatrics in places
like Videla's Argentina or Pinochet's Chile or other places with full-blown,
naked and ultra-repressive fascism.

When you read their accounts of various demos, they read like travel pieces.
"We did this, we went to the barricades, the cops did that, the tear gas got
turned loose...In their accounts there is very little discussion about the
concrete issues that were the subject of the demos, about useful stats and
primary research for ongoing work, about the debates, or about some
techniques and alternate media for grass-roots organizing etc. Then we hear
the stuff about TUBs and not wanting to be near any demos run by TUBs (are
all the workers there also unworthy of attention and linking up with?; maybe
they don't go near real workers because many of them lack the experience of
having had a real job next to real workers and/or are wrapped up so much in
their own rap and self-created personnas and therefore not able/willing to
talk to--and more importantly listen to--real oppressed workers and other
oppressed groups).

Then after these self-described anarchists get back from a few hard days of
revolutionary heroism (do you have any idea how heroic and tiring it is to
yell "2-4-6-8 now it's time to smash the state" through megaphones?) they
get on the e-mail lists, remember quantity = quality, and run through the
same old tired and very irrelevant stuff: Bakunin vs..., Kropotkin vs...,
and yes even Stalin vs Trotsky...

Of course they rarely publish and distribute their own newspapers (the
really oppressed do not have internet or access to it) and just go on and on
with the same mindless and narcissistic crap talking to the conerted on
their own lists or invading and trashing other lists to get the attention
they so obviously seek and need.

Jim Craven