>This hasn't exited a lot of discussion, but a few points. You want to focus
>on Marx's own views, fine. If you want to ignore almsot everyone else I
>mentioned on the grounds that their views don't have currency in workers
>movement, that's silly. By that criterion, no anarchist views are worth
>attention either, and haven't been for 65 years or so. Anarchism today is a
>hobbyhorse of declasse surburban kids, that's the sorry reality; not that
>Marxism is in better shape, being mainly a hobbyhorse of a handful of
>graduate students and professors and a few thousand "cadre" in self-styled
>vanguard organizations.
Both the Anarchist and Marxist movements in North America, and abroad, are in somewhat better shape than you claim - although it wouldn't be innacurate to say that on the whole they are "on the ropes", and specifically in North America there is a lot of intrusion from the "rugged individualism" and severe political repression here into all radical political spheres - the politics of self-proclaimed anarchists such as "Chuck0" are ample evidence of this. [While im not in their ranks, I don't see anything wrong with declasse suburbanites being in the ranks of a revolutionary movement, and Bakunin spoke highly of the potential for the declasse to join such movements].
>Anyway, there are three possible senses in which Marx's views have a streak
>of economic determinsim. None has any connection with Marx's
>anti-anarchsim, his ideal that the first task of the proletariat is winning
>the battle of democracy (as he puts it) and setting upa workers state.
While the rest of your arugements are well known, and I would agree that Marx did not always have an absolutist relationship with economic determinism, I think the links even as you have put them are clear.
However, I would disagree that Marx's anti-anarchism doesn't have any connections with his economic determinism.
For example, in criticising Bakunin [and his revolutionary pan-slavic past, which Bakunin had long since denounced in favour of revolutionary socialism], Marx wrote in 1871 in Neue Rheiniseche Zeitung: "Apart from the Russians, the Poles, and perhaps the Tukish Slavs, no Slavic people has a future, for the simple reason that they lack the indispensable historical, geographical, political, and industrial conditions for independence and vitality". It this isn't a clear cut example of Marx's economic determinism manifested in one of his short-sighted anti-anarchist diatribtes, I don't know what is.
>Your idea that the Marxist revolutions have not panned out, so MArx's
>theory of state is wrong, is a better way of going at it, but the brush is
>to broad. It does not explain the connection between that theory and the
>failures of the revolutions. The failures might be due to something else.
I'm not denying that the failures *might* be due to something else, what I'm saying is that they are more than likely due to the same reasons that anarchist theory attributes them to. The reason, quite simply, is that anarchist theorists from Bakunin onwards, half a century before the first Marxist revolution, predicted with astonishing accuracy the forms that Marxist mass organisation [there is an exception, Marxist revolutionaries adopted some anarchist forms of agitation that many did not foresee], revolutionary state apparatus, and eventual counter-revolution would take. That this theoretical framework can be consistently and accurately applied to every single Marxist revolution in history tells me that Bakunin's, and indeed Anarchism's, theoretical insight into the revolutionary process is a good one. One would have to argue that the astonishing 100% accuracy of anarchist theoretical insight in the fate of Marxist revolution was mere conincidence, and that's something no dialectical materialist could reasonably accept.
>Btw, what doi you attribrute the failure of anarchist revolutions to, or
>the lack of such revolutions (apart from Spain 1936-37)?
This is a very broad subject, but I'll get into it a bit. I think it's important to realize, first of all, that the anarchists of the Ukraine in 1917 carried out a significant revolution, and that anarchists have formed critical segments of other revolutions throughout history [namely the Cuban revolution].
If we look at European history, we see the Franco-Prussian was was a really crucial factor in the determination of how Marxism and Anarchism shaped europe. After German victory, the Marxism of the highly industrialized [and reactionary] German working class [at least the most priveleged sectors of it] became predominant in Europe, as it was already so in England. In France, Spain, Italy, and the French-Swiss, Anarchism held considerably more sway than Marxism [and indeed, in these places Anarchism still holds more sway than the purely revolutionary forms of Marxism existent today. One could also argue this is now true of Germany as well, and is contested in Britain. although, this owes largely to the poverty of any mass revolutionary movement in the latter country]. With Germany close to Russia, this led to a strong influence of Marxist thought in Russia, where Bakunin had rightly foreseen immense revolutionary possibilities.
The failure of the Russian anarchists during the Russian Revolution was that they were disorganised, and only became organised [into the Black Guards, etc.] too late to prove a decisive factor in fighting the White forces, those who allied with them, or Bolshevik counter-revolution [which would become economically blatant with the NEP].
By contrast, the Ukrainian anarchists were as well organised as they could be given the circumstances, formed the NABAT anarchist federation of the Ukraine, and fielded an anarchist army led by Nestor Mahkno [among others]. Their contribution to fighting the counter-revolution was essential, and they managed to route Denikin's advance on Petrograd through the Ukraine by defeating his Crimean Army group [the General in charge of which later defected to Trotky's Red Army] and facilitate the establishment of peasent and worker soviets. The Ukrainian anarchists were defeated by Bolshevik treachery, and overhwlemingly force of arms. Instead of fighting the Red Army on the Russian front of the Ukraine, the Anarchists had made a strategic decision to persue a route of the remaining White Army forces that had so systematically terrorized the countryside.
Mahkno, along with his comrade the Russian anarchist Arshinov, had a great deal to say about the failure of the Russian Anarchist movement to organise itself and effectively provide a revolutionary alternative to the Bolsheviks, and in exile they [along with other prominant anarchist exiles] under the name of Dielo Trouda published a document entitled "The Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists". It was crude, short, and the lack of clarification on many of its points led many anarchists to believe it was an attempt to "Bolshevize" anarchism [which it wasn't, especially seeing as Mahkno was the Bolshevik regimes greatest anarchist enemy]. Essentially, the document and practice formed what is now known as the "platformist" tradition within anarchism, and this is what I self-identify with [and as such organise with an anarcho-communist federation and support anarcho-syndicalist organising, etc.].
Currently, the platformist tradition within anarchism is, next to anarcho-syndicalism, one of the most vibrant and effective. For example, the anarchists who have been doing so much work in Argentina, and who played prominant roles in the bread riots and start of the insurrection there, are from the platformist OSL [Libertarian Socialist Organisation, translatde] federation. There are platformist federations in the UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Lebanon, Canada and the US, Urugauy, Italy, and more.
I realize this is just a "barebones" reponse to your question, but I could literally write volumes in response if I had the time [and volumes have been written]. I could better answer more fully and in-depth a specific query as to some of the issues I've raised, since they all stand on 'shaky ground' without the volumes witten to elaborate upon them.
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