>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.
As i've pointed out before, the question is not one of pure consistency [and im not argueing that marx of bakunin were an ideologically 'pure' anything of any philosophical strain] but rather whether or not the writings of Marx are heavily [more so than not] influenced by economic determinism, and whether this is a factor in his conflict with Bakunin and Anarchism in general.
>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,
Yes, the dating is wrong... and it was a very quick qoute, and it should have been obvious that far from presenting a detailed case, I was making a quick point about Marx was in fact an economic determinist. If you want me to make a more detailed case, let me known, and I'll pull out ye old Marx & Engels reader and analyse a few works for you.
>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.
What it says is that Marx believe that in order for the "slavs" [as his germano-chauvanism shines through] to move forward [I assume we all agree that for Marx this means towards socialism] there has to be a determined industrial condition that the slavs, broadly, have not met. That is economic determinism, and I don't see how you could argue it is anything else.
>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 don't take the extreme accuracy of anarchist theory regarding Marxism as proof of everything anarchists espouse, rather, I see it as credible evidence that anarchist theory must be right about something, or else its just a fluke. Like I said before, I don't see how an acknolwedged dialectical materialist can dismiss this.
Revolutionary marxists like Luxembourg made varying and incomplete arguements when compared with the extensive anarchist critique. One can view them as libertarian marxists who adopted some anarchist doctrine into their theories [even Lenin adopted much anarchist doctrine, alebit dissasociated from a vital context].
>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.
There are many workers in the IWW, or at least in chapters like Portland and Vancouver that do real organising in real workplaces and what not. While the IWW may be largely a nostalgia cult, it still has "real workers". The same goes for the various anarchist federations around the world.
>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.
You can call the self-critical analysis of anarchists "rationalizations" all you want, it doesn't change their self-critical nature and the desire of anarchists to analyze defeat and move forward. That's what platformisms all about.
No anarchist revoltion has ever failed "under its own weight". Rather, the overwhelming objective circumstances of such revolutions have crushed them in situations that cannot possibly be regarded as wholly dependent upon the actions of the anarchists themselves. For example, in Spain [while great advances were made and anarchism established in many areas] not only did the Marxists betray the revolution and worked against the anarchists [even trying to "liquidate" them as Pravda observed approvingly], but the western "democracies" economically supported the fascists while Hitler and Mussolini threw their full wait behind the fascists.
Not only is anarchism against the philosophical idealism you accuse it of, your stab against Mahkno is complete out of place. He never was an anti-semite, and to re-hash Bolshevik slander and lies in such a manner is dishonest at best. You should know better. Mahkno addresses the question of anti-semitism within the ranks of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army himself in his collection of "Essays Against the State". In the anarchist army of the Ukraine, the punishment for anti-semetic acts was death. In fact, there was an entire artillery unit of jewish anarchists, who fought together not because they were segregated but because they all spoke Yiddish in common more fluidly than any other language, and was better for battlefield communication. Many jewish peoples fought heroically under Mahkno, and further, the jewish anarchist community long ago refuted the Bolshevik lies against him.
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