We've had two self-styled "anarchists" on this list in the past (neither of whom had much in common with any "anarchist" position currently expressed on this list. One, Chuck Munson, expressed his anarchism through a number of ways, the two most prominent being virulent attacks on Cuba and utter contempt for all leftists. The other, Gordon ____, entered into reasonably civilized conversation with others, but the two positions I remember best were (1) a suggestion that biology teachers, instead of teaching evolution, teach "scientific method." He also attacked as elitists all those who did not take the right-wing scam, the M.I.A. movement seriously. Angelus does not mention Murray Bookchin, a long-time anarchist leader in the U.S., but late in life he became so disgusted with "life-style" anrchists that he ceased to use the term any longere to describe himself. He wrote an interesting pamphlet entitled "Listen! Marxist," which I read long ago but remember only dimly. I believe the pamphlet tended to identify "Marxism" with "Marxism-Leninism," a _very_ common position at mid-century. And then there is that tendency which identifies itself with the IWW: a bit odd, since there exists an anecdote of Bill Hayward, standing in the national office and strapping on a .44, announcing that he was on his way to New Mexico to wipe out that nest of anarchists there. And my great uncle, who organized sheepherders in Idaho for the IWW also had among his books Stalin's Foundations of Leninism. Finally (finally only in my own knowledge) there is the local anarchist group, "Common Action (Free School)." Jan did some web research on the phrase and found that this tendency (or tendencies going by that name) is both widespread in the U.S. and reflects a historically aware anarchist tradition. No "it" indeed.
And of course, someone reading this list over the last months would be pardoned for equating "Anarchist" with "Anyone who takes Graeber as Sacred Text." And contempt for anarchism is implicitly defined as failure to read whole and carefully the Sacred Book. I don't know what Graeber's own response to this implicit definition of anarchism would be.
Back to Common Action. I have no idea of their relationship to Graeberism; they are not rubes, however,& represent a fairly sophisticated acquaintance with anarchist history. We have worked with them closely on occasion, and my personal view is that anyone in B/N who is unable to work with Common Action or spurns such a relationship has merely exiled him/herself from significant leftist activity. But they are at times a bit (shall we say) ticklish to work with. They have uncomfortably warm relations with local libertarianism. They are at the very least cool towards the idea of defending democracy in the u.s. or resisting the "Corporate attack on democracy," the reason being that no democracy exists in the U.S. but this suspicion has not as yet prevented them from cooperating in activities organized around these slogans. (The extreme 'tolerance' of libertarianism I would associate with a greater concern with the power of the state than with the dominance of capitalist relations. They reject the idea of leadership abstractly; how deep this goes I do not know.
I would welcome some explanation from anarchists or friends of anarchists on this list of the anarchist response to the concept of a Constituent Assembly as marking the (at least temporary) dissolution of the capitalist state. It seems to me that that marks a useful "final goal" from the perspective of which one can try to understand the present. (I obviously remain strongly influenced by Luxemburg's Stuttgart speeches.) John Adams remarked of the Constitutional Convention that it operated with no other constraint but those of wind and water. That is not a bad description of any Constituent Assembly. To what extent does such a concept (or its rejection) operating 'in the background' as it were _mark_ significant political differences in the present. If it does, are those differences so acute as to materially affect cooperation in the anti-capitalist struggle?
No doubt there are other anarchist currents which neither Angelus nor I has mentioned. And does one's response to Graeber indelibly mark one's politics?
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Angelus Novus Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2012 1:24 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] More on BB antics and their defenders
Eric wrote:
> How come opponents of BB and anarchism never take it seriously (or,
in shag's terms, respect it)?
The problem is rooted in the ambiguity of the very term "anarchism".
On the one hand, there's "Anarchism" properly speaking, a historical tendency within the labor movement tracing its roots back to the Bakunin wing of the First International, and later theoretically elaborated by thinkers like Kropotkin, and reaching its organizational and political zenith in the Spanish CNT-FAI. This is basically the "Anarchism" dealt with in Daniel Guerin's book, with which Noam Chomsky identifies. This represents something like a defineable trend within the left, and it can be analyzed as such.
Then there's "anarchism", which is just a nebulous term that newly radicalizing people apply to themselves in order to emphasize their distance from both Social Democratic electoralism as well as the various self-styled "Bolshevik" organizations. The problem with criticizing this kind of "anarchism" is that there isn't really anything to criticize, since it means something completely different depending on the individual using the term. So you have anarchists who reject voting, anarchists who vote, anarchists who reject labor unions or permanent organizations, anarchists who believe in those things, anarchists with a concept of "capitalism", and anarchists who reject such conceptualizing.
In other words, when you ask why "it" isn't taken seriously, that's because there isn't any one singular "it" to criticize. Instead there is a multiplicity of various "its" that all happen to use the same label. It's not that anyone regards "it" with contempt or dismissal; it's simply that "it" doesn't really exist. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk