On Tue, 25 Oct 2011, Mike Beggs wrote:
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."
Well, it is to be hoped that both anarchists and Marxists as defined here are disappearing breeds.
As to the alleged "Marxist" tendency, he is probably empirically correct: the false claim to a "Theory of Revolution" has been the primary basis for Democratic Centralist (Stalinist/Trotskyist) Parties. Thee is no such beast. Several times over the last 5 or 6 years I've posted in respect to the "scope and limits of theory," on the assumption that one of the main sources of Bad Theory has been the lazy assumption that theory itself need not be theorized (or subjected to meta-critifque). Back in 1970, Peter Camejo (then president of YSA) gave a speech with the arrogant speech entitled "How to Make a Revolution." It consisted of two strands: useful banalities or rules of thumb, with no theoretical value and false theory: claims to universal validity to further banalities, some useful, some nonsense. The most useful contribution of the Chinese Revolution to Marxist thought is denied by "Maoists" and ignored by most other Marxists. ("Maoists" deny it because if they accepted it they would have to admit that there was no such thing as "Maoism.") That contribution is the distinction between "Theory," which has to hold in some sense "universally," and Thought: which is focused on concrete conditions under given spatial and temporal limitations. They claimed (whether 'sinerely' or merely to keep peace in the 3I I do not know) that the _theory_ of Marxism-Leninism was good in all nations during the entire period of the transition from capitalism to socialism. (This was implicit in the Chinese word for "ism.") "Mao _Thought_ however was the interplay between the CPC and the ever-changing conditions encountered in the struggles of the Chinese Revolution. It has no 'grip' ouside those conditions and could not be applied to the conditons faced by other revolutionary movements. (What one thinks of "Marxism-Leninism" as a theory is irrelevant here: what is relevant is the distinction between Theory and Thought.
(To be continued - I hope; it's getting late and I'm getting sleepy.)
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