[lbo-talk] Bakunin on Marx

[Chuck]

andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> Sagradia Famiglia is a architectural masterpiece, a
> monument to the human spirit. Blowing up Chartres and
> Notre Dame would crimes against humanity. The Taliban
> underscored their barbarism when they blow up the
> Buddhist statutes in Afghanistan. The Hindu fascist
> goons who destroyed the ancient mosque in India
> obliterated centuries of history and irreplaceable
> beauty. You don't have to be religious to regard these
> as priceless treasures. What would you say about the
> Protestant hit squads who went through the ex-Catholic
> churches smashing irreplaceable statues and smashing
> priceless stained glass windows? Would you approve of
> a mass assault on the great religious art of the world
> -- burn The Last Supper and Gruenwald Christs, take
> jackhammers to Michelangelo's Pieta and St. Peter's,
> rip up the Cranach and Durer Adam and Eves, and while
> we are it, shred the Kelmscott Bible, the Book of
> Kells, any old Vedas that exist? There's a lot wrong
> with blowing up churches, comrade.
> 
> Obviously you are not thinking, Chuck-O -- it's
> reflexive stupidity like this (there is no other world
> for it) that gives ideological fanaticism a bad name.

I'm anti-religion. Your arguments aren't very persuasive. You've even 
shifted this discussion from the destruction of a few crappy Catholic 
churches to the destruction of landmarks. I have plenty of reservations 
about destroying landmarks, but then I'm also keenly aware that the 
institutions which those landmarks represent are oppressive, horrible 
insitutions.

Blowing up Notre Dame is a crime against humanity? Jesus Christ! Talk 
about hyperbole!

Have you ever visited Notre Dame? I have. It's a nice old church, but 
nothing to write home about. I'd be more interested in saving some of 
the bigger gothic cathedrals.

And where is it written in stone that these landmarks have to last 
forever? Eventually they will crumble into dust and be replaced by 
something else.

But this is all irrelevant, because we're talking about Spanish 
anarchists who destroyed churches that were the everyday base of power 
for religious people who supported the fascists. I see the actions of 
the Spanish anarchists and others as being understandable given the war 
they were fighting against the Fascists.

> Please notice (a) that I am not a Marxist, much less a
> Stalinist or  Marxist Leninist, (b) I don't give the
> Bolshevists and Stalinists a pass on their butcheries
> and didn't here; (c) I agree with whoever it was that
> said that the relevant comparison point, if you are
> doing body counts, is before the Bolshies got state
> power, since the anarchists never wielded real power,
> and btw didn't wield the power they did in a very nice
> way, and finally

Right! Anarchists never wielded power! Which is the whole fucking point!

That's one reason why anarchism is better than Marxist-Leninism.

> (d) Let's stop this silly old battles:

Well, you say this and then attack anarchism below. What's your point?

> 1) Stalinism is a dying religion and has been for 50
> years, with no more chance at state power than Howard
> Stassen. Antistalinist Marxism is politically
> irrelevant and has been historically even more
> irrelevant than Stalinism. 

Stalinism isn't dying. It's dead. But authoritarian leftism lives on.

> 2) Anarchism stopped being a force in US political
> life around the time of the Palmer Red Raids. Like the
> CPers, the anarchists do some good activist/reformist
> work with some fire-breathing rhetoric, but that'
> about it.

What a bunch of nonsense.

> Consequently it is really quite immaterial whose
> irrelevant movement is nastier. We are not going to
> get anywhere until we stop fighting debates that even
> few of the faithful give a flying fuck about any more.

My movement is incredibly relevant! I wouldn't spend every day working 
to build it if I thought it was "irrelevant."

Bu then, I'm plugged into it enough to know that your dismissal of 
anarchism is laughable.

Are we going to go on to something more interesting or are we going to 
continue with these pointless exchanges?

Chuck