Anarchism vs. Marxism

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sun May 5 18:56:30 PDT 2002



>The anarchists on this list can correct me, but I never had the impression
>that anarchists are opposed to Marxism; they are simply opposed to
>vanguardism and top-down hierarchical organization that discourages debate
>and bludgeons any attempt at critical thinking with the mallet of
>"democratic centralism."
>
>Joanna
>

Historically this is not correct. The term "Marxist" was practically coined by Bakunin as a pejorative epithet to label the "scientific socialists"--as Marx preferred to call his views; he never used the term Marxist, except to say that he wasn't one (as in that letter of Engels to Bernstein of Nov 2-3, 1882 that someone so kindly referred me to a few weeks ago). The antagonism persisted when Kautsky and other adopted the term in a positive sense--anarchists thought that Marxists were bureaucratic, top-down, statist, etc. The conflict broke into open warfare in the Spanish civil war, memorialized in Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, among other places. In the New Left, the conflict was renewed again, see e.g., Murray Bookchin's pamphlet from 1969, Lisren Marxist! (Directed to PLers in SDS). How things stand today, I don't know, my impression--the aanrchsits on the lists can correct me if I am wrong--is that contemporary anarchsim is rather low on ideology and hasn't much animus against Marxism, which it regards as desd, stidgy, and irrelevanr politically. jks

_________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list