>
> [From Wikipedia, alas]
>
> Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber has distinguished the two philosophies as follows:
>
> • Marxism has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse about revolutionary strategy.
> • Anarchism has tended to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practice
This is true, but of course it's not the only definition. I know a number of very sensible anarchists. One was MC at my wedding and he can facilitate a meeting like no-one else - using Robert's Rules, naturally.
I have lost track of which thread it was, but I thought shag made some interesting points the other day about positive and negative freedom in the anarchist tradition. I don't think there's much fundamental difference between anarchists with a conception of positive freedom and other socialists; they don't so much fetishise the state as a big bad evil and recognise that political organisation will always be with us, the point is to democratise it. Here's our friend Murray Bookchin on the matter (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/whither.html):
"At one extreme of anarchism is a liberal ideology that focuses overwhelmingly on the abstract individual (often drawing on bourgeois ideologies), supports personal autonomy, and advances a negative rather than a substantive concept of liberty. This anarchism celebrates the notion of liberty from rather than a fleshed-out concept of freedom for. At the other end of the anarchist spectrum is a revolutionary libertarian socialism that seeks to create a free society, in which humanity as a whole--and hence the individual as well--enjoys the advantages of free political and economic institutions.
"Between these two extremes lie a host of anarchistic tendencies that differ considerably in their theoretical aspects and hence in the kind of practice by which they hope to achieve anarchism's realization. Some of the more common ones today, in fact, make systematic thinking into something of a bugaboo, with the result that their activities tend to consist not of clearly focused attacks upon the prevailing social order but of adventurous episodes that may be little more than street brawls and eccentric "happenings." The social problems we face--in politics, economics, gender and ethnic relations, and ecology--are not simply unrelated "single issues" that should be dealt with separately. Like so many socialists and social anarchists in the past, I contend that an anarchist theory and practice that addresses them must be coherent, anchoring seemingly disparate social problems in an analysis of the underlying social relations: capitalism and hierarchical society...
"Supporters of the socialistic tendencies in anarchism, which I have called social anarchism, never denied the importance of gaining individual freedom and personal autonomy. What they consistently argued, however, was that individual freedom will remain chimerical unless sweeping revolutionary changes are made that provide the social foundations for rounded and ethically committed individuals. As social anarchism has argued, the truly free individual is at once an active agent in and the embodiment of a truly free society. This view often clashed with the notion, very commonly held by individualistic or, as I have called them, lifestyle anarchists, that liberty and autonomy can be achieved by making changes in personal sensibilities and lifeways, giving less attention to changing material and cultural conditions."
etc. etc.
Mike