anarchism as nationalism reborn

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Tue Oct 16 11:12:24 PDT 2001


On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 12:03:16 -0400 Chuck0 <chuck at tao.ca> writes:
> Jim Farmelant wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 09:32:45 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi
> <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> > writes:
> >
> > Didn't Peter Kropotkin support the Allied side during WW I?
> >
>
> I believe he did, but he's been getting shit about that ever since.
> Again, a distinction should be made between personal positions and
> principled political positions.

Well, how would you then draw the distinction? Remeber at the same time Plekhanov also supported the war, and that position did stem from his more general political viewpoint, which involved subscribing to a particular Marxist analysis of Russia, which saw Russia as requiring a long period of capitalist development before it could become socialist. Therefore, Plekhanov was willing to endorse class collaboration with the Russian bourgeoisie and as it turned out this class collaboration went as far as giving support to their wars. In other words Plekhanov's "social patriotism" stemmed from his particular take on Marxism.

My question would be, was something similar going on with Kropotkin, or are you contending that his support for the war did not follow from his more general political positions, amd may have contradicted them?

Jim F.


>Anarchism is opposed to
> electoralism,
> for example, yet some anarchists vote for personal reasons.
>
> Chuck0
>
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