As far as I can make out, you respond to my criticism that Marx is not a consistent economic determinist,a nd that when he is it doesn't affect his his views about the workers' need to have a state-like entity, at least initially, in two ways.
1) You quote a sort of anti-Slav swipe from the NRZ, which you attribute to 1871, which must be a mistake because the NRZ was shut down in the 1840s, in which M says that the Slavs -- apart from the Russians, Poles and Turkish Slavs --have "no future," whatever that means because "they lack the indispensable historical,
> geographical, political, and industrial conditions
> for independence and
> vitality". That may be silly statement, and it is
hard to test, but only one factor in the list is
arguably economic ("industrial"), so that this
supports the view that Marx is often not an economic
determinist. The quote does not bear on the need for
workers' state.
2) You say generally that Bakunin and other anarchists were prophetic about what happened in Marxisst states, so their general theory must be correct. Of course this has no relevance to economic determinism, unless you think that the accuracy of that prediction validates everything that Bakunin et al said, including his interpretations of Marx. Moreover the argument is a bad one as a validation of anarchist theory. The same point were made by revolutionary Marxists like Rosa Luxemberg, liberal democrats, and of course conservatives. They can't all be right.
I disagree with you about the sorry state of Marxism and anarchism here and abroad. There is no revolutionary movement, and least of all a revolutionary working class movement, of any sort worth considering anywhere. Maybe the Zapatistas, neither anarchist nor Marxist, are an exception, but they are highly local. In the advanced countries, there is zippo. As to your statement that there's nothing wrong with declasse suburbanites joining the anarchist revolution, I'd say, except self-delusion; it's no better than the similar sort of people joining the RCP. There are no workers there. I do not say this with any cheer, but facts is facts.
I think the volumes written about the failure of anarchist revolutions (and I have read some of them) are rationalizations, if they are offered to explain why we should be that sort of anarchists despite the failure. It's like Leninists blaming everything but themselves for their own failures. In fact, there have been some more or less successful Marxist revolutions, by some standards, anyway, but anarchism has an unbroken record of failure and defeat. We can admire the heroism and idealism of anarchists (some of them, anyway, not that antisemitic pogromchik Mankho), just as we can that of many Marxists. but it's really time to stop recyclung failed programs as the future's hope.
jks
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