[lbo-talk] Bakunin on Marx

[Lenin's Tomb]

On 6/30/07, Peter Ward <peterhartward at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've always had my doubts about marxian socialism. To me, the reason
> seems like plain common sense; and, in the case of the Soviet Union,
> seems to have been borne out by history: Power, in whatever
> manifestation, negates the well-being, material and moral, of most of
> the population (and probably damages those "with" to a much larger
> extent that is usually admitted).

Why don't you read Bakunin's letter to Albert Richard? Despite his
wholesome 'anti-authoritarian' abuse of communists as elitist and
authoritarian, he plotted an "invisible dictatorship", which his elite
and secret organisation would run after the revolution. Say what you
like about the Bolsheviks, but they never tried to make themselves
invisible except to the Tsarist monarchy. Bakunin was deeply
authoritarian: it doesn't get any conspiratorial and elitist than what
he had in mind. In fact, there is a huge tradition of authoritarianism
and elitism within anarchism, and it usually expresses itself in terms
of a mania for secrecy, conspiracy, aversion to the masses, etc (cf
Goldman's views about the ignorant masses and the need for intelligent
minorities).

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1870/albert-richard.htm