> 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
Incidentally, I hear that Bookchin is more of a Marxist these days than an anarchist. More or less, he's gotten pretty confused in his old age.
Anarchists have many different takes on Marxism. There are plenty of anarchists who can be said to be opposed to "Marxism." At the minimum level, most anarchists are opposed to any form of communism or socialism that is authoritarian, hierarchical, vanguardist, or democratic centralist.
I think I'm with Chomsky with his take on Marxism, in that he questions why anybody would label themselves as adhering to an ideology named after one person. At the same time, I understand that the word is a convenient label for a body of thought and practice over the past 150 years. I can understand why many Marxists are reluctant to give up the term. Many anarchists knee jerk when they hear the word, ignoring the fact that there are many different flavors of Marxism, including our kindred spirits among the libertarian Marxists.
It would probably help everybody if they spent some time reading material outside of their usual circles.
It was good to see that books from Tariq Ali and Barbara Eherenreich were on yesterday's Washington Post bestseller list. A refreshing development for Book World, which is always dominated by books about dead presidents, the civil war, and Nazi Germany.
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"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."
-- Jeremy Hardy, The Guardian (UK)