>
the question is. . . rather whether or
> not the writings of Marx
> are heavily [more so than not] influenced by
> economic determinism, and
Sure they were, though this can mean several things, as I have observed, distinguished three relatively unconnected propositions that might be characterized that way.
> whether this is a factor in his conflict with
> Bakunin and Anarchism in
> general.
That's too vague. We were talking about a particular disagreement, whether Marx's commitment to the idea of something like a workers' state and the need to seize political power were connected with "economic determinism" in any of the specified senses. So far you have given us no reason to think so.
>
> >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, etc. . . . "
>
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]
The Slavs excepting the Russians, Poles, and Turkish Slavs -- quite a lot of them!
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.
But that's only one of a bunch of different kinds of conditions mentioned in this passage. In fact, this relatively incidental statement is consistent with a general eclectism about historical causation. It's only evidence of economic determinism if any reference to the explanatory role of economic factors, among others, is economically determinist. Do you believe that?
That is economic
> determinism, and I don't see how you could argue it
> is anything else.
See above. But even if Marx had restricted himself to just saying that some of the Slavs lacked the industrial conditions for progress to socialism, that is not a stroing or interesting sort of ED. Is it objectionable to say that there are some economic conditions for the development of certain kinds of social formations? That seems to be obviously true.
Furthermore there is still no link to views about state power.
>
> 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.
Same can be said about liberal democracy, conservatism, left-wing Marxism, lots of theories that had similar critiques.
Like I said before, I don't see how an
> acknolwedged
> dialectical materialist can dismiss this.
Who's the acknowledged dialectical materialist? Not me! I'm a pragmatist and a lowercase liberal democrat.
>
> Revolutionary marxists like Luxembourg made varying
> and incomplete
> arguements when compared with the extensive
> anarchist critique.
Well, that can be debated. But liberals and conservatives made more extensive critiques tahtw ere quite similar.
> 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.
But the union members in the IWW, and there aren't that many, can't necessarily be claimed as ideological anarchists, or even as following the lead of IAs. Hell, I've been in and out of the IWW, and I'm not an anarchist.
While the
> IWW may be largely a nostalgia cult,
Concedes my point.
it still has
> "real workers".
So does the CPUSA, probably more of them. That doesn't make it a revolutionary workers party.
> 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.
Analyse away. i think moving forward means getting beyong demonstrably failed ideologies like Anarchism and indeed Marxism.
>
> 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.
You can say the same of thefailure of Marxist revolutions.
> 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.
I didn't get this from any Bolshies, but from standard histories of the Russian Civil War. But I don't think anarchism stands or falls with whether some of its leading lights were subject to primitive prejudices -- Bakunin too was guilty of ugly antisemitic rants --even while other distinguished anarchists (like Emma Goldman) were Jewish. Anarchism falls because of its historical record of failure, its lack of practival realism in dealing with the goals it sets itself, and the error of its fundamental premise, that a complex stateless society would be desirable or possible. That would all hold even if your anarchist heroes were all utterly free of prejudice. Likewise, the validity or lack of it of Marxism doesn't depend on whether Marx expressed Germanic chauvinism or even (as he is sometimes charged) antisemitism.
jks
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