/marx/ - Marxism

>>1343
>>1365
This is a caricature of anarchism.
Anarchists have always been acknowledged class struggle and materialism, and I may add, were the first to recognize the necessity of an armed revolution over electorialism in bourgeois politics.
Lenin's State and Revolution is basically anarchist, maybe except the focus on centralization around the communist party. You can say what you want about Lenin's politics and there's much to be said, but when the alliance of the proletariat and peasantry enabled Lenin and the bolsheviks to take power, the rhetoric of the party was indeed libertarian and very resembling of anarchism.
The real historical difference between marxists and anarchists is that anarchists consider that a dictatorship of the proletariat commanded by a minority in the state becomes either reformist (in the case of bourgeois politics) or dictatorship over the proletariat, like apparently you yourselves have admitted. Pic related.
Please sharpen your critique. I'm willing to bet the majority if not all the posters on this board have never read anarchist theory directly, but depended on other people (either marxists or "anarchist" lifestylists) to give them a distorted, mischaracterized caricature of anarchism.
Cheers.

>>2003
>and I may add, were the first to recognize the necessity of an armed revolution over electorialism in bourgeois politics.
How so? The Communist Manifesto is hardly a call for reformism.

>Lenin's State and Revolution is basically anarchist
No it isn't, otherwise it wouldn't be a text cited as one of the fundamentals of Marxist literature. Nothing Lenin says it is in contradiction to what Marx and Engels said.

>dictatorship of the proletariat commanded by a minority in the state becomes either reformist (in the case of bourgeois politics)
Apparently you don't understand how class dictatorships work. Establishing a proletarian dictatorship via bourgeois politics is quite impossible.

Anarchists can be sincere revolutionaries, and there were quite a few who worked with the Bolsheviks, with the Communist Party of Spain, etc., but the ideology itself is petty-bourgeois.

A good read: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/worldwidemovements/anarchisminrussiatoc.html

>>2004

>How so? The Communist Manifesto is hardly a call for reformism.
The Communist Manifesto is hardly a call for anything. It is mostly propaganda.
However, you can find some things on its suggested programme that resemble reformist proposals, in Chapter 2 of the Manifesto, such as "heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
This assuming you actually want to use the Communist Manifesto as the ultimate expression of marxism, despite Marx and Engels' later objections to their own manifesto.
I am not saying that Marx and Engels were reformists. They did, however, at different points in their lives advocate electoralism among the proletariat as a way to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Such attempts have systematically devolved into reformism (and I think most leninists would agree here).
Anarchists merely predicted such an outcome before formal marxist parties were even consolidated in elections.

>No it isn't, otherwise it wouldn't be a text cited as one of the fundamentals of Marxist literature. Nothing Lenin says it is in contradiction to what Marx and Engels said.
What this really says is the Marx and Engels upholded anarchist positions at some point in their lives.
I don't think there is essentially something wrong with this. Marx and Engels were human beings who made mistakes and changed their opinions. The Marx of The Civil War in France (1870) and Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) isn't the same Marx of The Communist Manifesto (1847).
Even then, I wouldn't say that Marx and Engels even agreed among themselves all the time. So, for instance, Marx, in his correspondence, criticizes the Paris Commune: "quite apart from the fact that [the Commune] was merely the rising of a city under exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could be".
Meanwhile, in Engels' preface of The Civil War in France, said "Of late, the Social-Democratic Philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat".

>Establishing a proletarian dictatorship via bourgeois politics is quite impossible.
Quite. Which is why anarchists were criticizing the marxists' position of electorialism as practically since its conception.
They criticized, for instance, some comments in The Class Struggle In France such as " But the German workers did a second great service to their cause in addition to the first, which they rendered by their mere existence as the strongest, best disciplined and most rapidly growing Socialist Party. They supplied their comrades of all countries with a new weapon, and one of the sharpest, when they showed them how to use universal suffrage." and "The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat, and Lassalle had again taken up this point."

>Apparently you don't understand how class dictatorships work.
You appear to have misunderstood me. I agree that the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be established via bourgeois politics. Which is why anarchists, and later leninists, argued that the reformist approach can only end in failure.

>Anarchists can be sincere revolutionaries, and there were quite a few who worked with the Bolsheviks, with the Communist Party of Spain, etc.
What you are really saying is that the sincerity of a revolutionary is entirely dependent on his/her allegiance with the leninist party, which apparently you have proclaimed as the the "sincere" revolutionary agent by definition.
Needless to say, I disagree.

>but the ideology itself is petty-bourgeois.
And how would you arrive to such conclusion? I am aware that this is a common accusation of leninists and marxists in general towards anarchists, but they never seem to manage to give a successful explanation (other than "anarchists disagree with leninism which is by definition the only proletarian ideology and hence are petty bourgeois").

>A good read: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/worldwidemovements/anarchisminrussiatoc.html
I'll get around reading that when I get the time. Skimming it now I get the impression it will be yet another marxist mischaracterization of anarchism.

But, say, if State and Revolution was indeed a leninist work, how come Lenin had soviets forcefully disbanded when they lacked a bolshevik majority?
If the concept of soviets is really alien to anarchism, how come the Kronstadt rebellion, which demanded the restitution of soviets, was repressed?

For a more extensive exposition of anarchism and marxism, see http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secHcon.html
Pay special attention to the section of "What parts of anarchism do Marxists particularly misrepresent?"

>>2005
>The Communist Manifesto is hardly a call for anything. It is mostly propaganda.
The definition of a manifesto is "a public declaration of policy and aims." Presumably you've read the Manifesto, and it most certainly calls for things, not to mention it ends with the declaration that the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains.

>This assuming you actually want to use the Communist Manifesto as the ultimate expression of marxism
No one was suggesting that, but you can't separate the Manifesto from their latter work. They continued to elaborate on the doctrines they set forth in The German Ideology and in the Manifesto in new conditions.

>They did, however, at different points in their lives advocate electoralism among the proletariat as a way to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
No they didn't. When they wrote the Manifesto it was at a time when bourgeois-democratic forces in the German states were active and the question of the day was what attitude the proletariat should take in relation to these forces. Calling for an income tax, as well as the other democratic demands, cannot and were not confused with socialism until anti-communist conspiracy theorists took them out of context.

Marx and Engels did express the *possibility* that socialism could come about by democratic means. After all, nothing can be entirely discounted. But they never gave it much stock and constantly attacked those who had reformist or opportunist positions such as Lassalle.

>Anarchists merely predicted such an outcome before formal marxist parties were even consolidated in elections.
Can you give actual evidence of this? As Engels noted in the "Principles of Communism" (1847), the communists "see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words."

>What this really says is the Marx and Engels upholded anarchist positions at some point in their lives.
And what would those be? Some of Marx and Engels' earliest disputes were with the "individualist anarchists" associated with Stirner, then you had "The Poverty of Philosophy" as a direct rebuff to Proudhonism and the struggle against Bakuninism in the First International. It was actually the anarchists who wound up incorporating elements of Marxism in their own outlook, with Bakunin praising Marx's work "Das Kapital" and anarchist analysis of economics basically being a dumb-downed version of Marxism.

As for the Paris Commune, you've confirmed that your knowledge of Marxism is slight. The dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism are not synonymous, the former builds the latter. The Paris Commune was the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it was obviously in no position to build socialism, both because it was confined to Paris and because of the great many contradictions and inconsistencies in its work (which, BTW, included the participation of Proudhonists.)

You're also confusing "electoralism" with the idea that Marx and Engels were speaking of the SPD and similar parties seizing power by parliamentary means. In reality both men spoke of *using* parliaments as a tribune for agitation. It's why Lenin advocated forcefully for the entry of Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, even when there was literally no hope of the Bolsheviks ever coming to power that route. Bourgeois-democratic freedoms give greater opportunity for the working-class to operate. Bourgeois democracy, legal trade union work, etc. are attacked by reaction whenever the workers actually take advantage of them.

>What you are really saying is that the sincerity of a revolutionary is entirely dependent on his/her allegiance with the leninist party, which apparently you have proclaimed as the the "sincere" revolutionary agent by definition.
It is of course theoretically possible for an anarchist to be entirely misled and to give his life fighting against what should be seen as his class allies (see: some of the sailors at Kronstadt), but there were plenty of anarchists, just like there were plenty of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc. who saw the successful road of the Bolsheviks and joined them, along the way gradually shedding their earlier mistaken views.

>but they never seem to manage to give a successful explanation (other than "anarchists disagree with leninism which is by definition the only proletarian ideology and hence are petty bourgeois").
Because the methods anarchists use to carry out their activities are characteristic of the petty-bourgeois (most blatantly Bakunin's ultra-conspiratorial work), because anarchism itself was always strongest where backward elements of the working masses existed (this included many of the agricultural laborers in Spain, as well as the peasants in soldiers' uniforms at Kronstadt.)

>how come Lenin had soviets forcefully disbanded when they lacked a bolshevik majority?
Give the context for this. During the civil war some soviets were disbanded by the force of the Red Army and militias and rebuilt, because counter-revolutionaries (not just self-styled "leftists" but avowed anti-communists and reactionaries) would come to power on the basis of demagogy or intimidation.

>If the concept of soviets is really alien to anarchism, how come the Kronstadt rebellion, which demanded the restitution of soviets, was repressed?
I don't recall anyone claiming that the concept of soviets was alien to anarchism, although certainly the ideas of syndicalism, mutualism, etc. which treat every council or workplace as an island unto itself are basically petty-bourgeois positions.

The Kronstadt mutiny basically expressed the sentiment of peasants who were alarmed by the policies of "War Communism." That is why most of the other demands of the sailors dealt with agricultural matters and basically represented a call for letting the peasant do as he wanted with his own plot of land.

>>2008

>The definition of a manifesto is "a public declaration of policy and aims."
Yes. In other words, propaganda.

> Presumably you've read the Manifesto, and it most certainly calls for things, not to mention it ends with the declaration that the proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains.
Yes - it calls for support for the Communist Party. Throughout it is a brief exposition of Marx and Engels' ideas. I'm not sure how the closing statements of the manifesto are supposed to be a call for something concrete, it is more of an abstract call and/or a promise of liberation from the Communist Party (which the workers should support according to them).

>No one was suggesting that, but you can't separate the Manifesto from their latter work. They continued to elaborate on the doctrines they set forth in The German Ideology and in the Manifesto in new conditions.
Which isn't to say that they never had any objections to their earlier work.

>Marx and Engels did express the *possibility* that socialism could come about by democratic means. After all, nothing can be entirely discounted. But they never gave it much stock and constantly attacked those who had reformist or opportunist positions such as Lassalle.
From The Class Struggles in France: "But the German workers did a second great service to their cause in addition to the first, which they rendered by their mere existence as the strongest, best disciplined and most rapidly growing Socialist Party. They supplied their comrades of all countries with a new weapon, and one of the sharpest, when they showed them how to use universal suffrage." and "The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat, and Lassalle had again taken up this point."

>Can you give actual evidence of this? As Engels noted in the "Principles of Communism" (1847)
By "consolidated" I mean taken at least a majority of political power. This hadn't happened in 1847.
Bakunin has this to say in L’Égalité, August 14, 1869: "Let us suppose that the workers, made wiser by experience, instead of electing the bourgeois to constituent or legislative assemblies will send simple workers from their own ranks. Do you know what will happen? The new worker deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, living and soaking up all the bourgeois ideas and acquiring their habits, will cease being workers and statesmen and become converted into bourgeois, even more bourgeois-like than the bourgeois themselves. Because men do not make positions; positions, contrariwise, make men. And we know from experience that worker bourgeois are no less egotistic than exploiter bourgeois, no less disastrous for the International than the bourgeois socialists, no less vain and ridiculous than bourgeois who become nobles... To urge workers to win political liberty without first dealing with the burning question of socialism , without pronouncing the phrase that makes the bourgeoisie tremble – social liquidation – is simply to say: 'Conquer political liberty for us, so that we can use it against you later on.'”
If you want something prior to that, as early as 1840, with What is Property? Proudhon had already declared the futility of reform as long as private property standed.

>And what would those be?
Almost all of his praise for the Paris Commune, for one.
For your bashing of the "Proudhonists" in the Commune later on, the Commune was essentially modeled after Proudhon's The Federative Principle.
Marx and Engels' praise such as "From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognise that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment."
Certainly, there are points at which the only difference between marxists and anarchists seems to be marxists call the form of proletarian organization a "state" while the anarchists call it "federation".

>"individualist anarchists" associated with Stirner
I'll make no comment on this as the "individualists anarchists" are divorced from the socialist anarchists and I have no interest in defending their position.
Marxists would do well to acknowledge this divide.
However, given Marx's history of criticism to anarchism, I wouldn't be surprised if Marx's critique in The German Ideology was less than accurate.

>>2008

>then you had "The Poverty of Philosophy" as a direct rebuff to Proudhonism
There is no such thing as Proudhonism. Notice anarchists don't name their ideologies after the (great) men who helped construct or formalize their base or programme.
So in anarchism you have branches such as anarcho-communism, mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-collectivism etc.
Meanwhile, the marxist doctrine is precisely called "marxism", and their branches are named after people such as marxism-leninism, trotskyism, marxism-deleonism, marxism-leninism-maoism, etc.
But I digress.
As far as Proudhon and Marx's relationship is concerned: Marx had originally much esteem for Proudhon. He gave much praise to What is Property? (in a similar vein as Bakunin giving praise to Das Kapital later on).
Marx's words in The Holy Family: "As the first criticism of any science is necessarily influenced by the premises of the science it is fighting against, so Proudhon's treatise Qu'est-ce que la propriété? is the criticism of political economy from the standpoint of political economy. -- We need not go more deeply into the juridical part of the book, which criticizes law from the standpoint of law, for our main interest is the criticism of political economy. -- Proudhon's treatise will therefore be scientifically superseded by a criticism of political economy, including Proudhon's conception of political economy. This work became possible only owing to the work of Proudhon himself, just as Proudhon's criticism has as its premise the criticism of the mercantile system by the Physiocrats, Adam Smith's criticism of the Physiocrats, Ricardo's criticism of Adam Smith, and the works of Fourier and Saint-Simon."
What can be seen here is that Marx's theory borrowed from Proudhon as it borrowed from Ricardo, Smith, Hegel, and a number of others.
So where does that leave Poverty of Philosophy?
Well, Marx did actually like Proudhon's work so much he invited him to become part of his circle of penfriends. Proudhon's reply of May 1846 appeared to have upset Marx, with Proudhon talking about things like anti-dogmatism and admitted reluctance to bloody revolution.
He urged Marx to read a work of his that would soon be published explaining his positions on Marx's proposals. The work in question was, of course, Philosophy of Poverty. So we have a situation in which Marx held animosity towards Proudhon stemming from a bit of disappointment on him, who didn't embrace Marx's positions as he had hoped. Hence Poverty of Philosophy.
The problem here is that most marxists do not feel inclined to actually read Philosophy of Poverty; it is enought to know that Marx opposed it an allegedly brilliantly criticized it in Poverty of Philosophy. The truth is that Poverty of Philosophy is mostly a re-statement of Proudhon's views, which are mischaracterized as to appear the opposite.
Personal problems and the civil war in France precluded the possibility of Proudhon writing a rebuttal of his own, however, in his copy of Poverty of Philosophy we can find notes such as “what Marx’s book really means is that he is sorry that everywhere I have thought the way he does, and said so before he did. Any determined reader can see that it is Marx who, having read me, regrets thinking like me. What a man!”. He called the critique in question “a tissue of vulgarity, of calumny, of falsification and of plagiarism” written by “the tapeworm of socialism.”
I could suggest further, as other people have done, that Marx's critique is possibly an attempt to make a name for himself and his ideas in France, using Proudhon's popularity as a french socialist to do so.
In any case, despite the personal animosities both men held against each other, Marx still had very nice things to say about the Commune which was built around Proudhon's ideas. One has to wonder whether the divide is an ideological or personal one.

>the struggle against Bakuninism in the First International
This horse has been beated to death so hard it looks like it is moving.
I could give an account of the events but I am sure you have your own accounts that contradict it, so it is hard to see a point here.
Suffice it to say nearly all of the things that Bakunin was accused of were in fact fabricated, either directly by Marx and his allies, or facilitated by a deceptive worm known as Sergey Nechayev.
I'm sure you will have some things to say about the not-so-secret alliance of Bakunin. More on that later.
I should also point the fact that many of the tensions between Marx/Engels and Bakunin stemmed from the fact that the former were anti-slavic, while the latter held prejudices against the germans.

>>2008

>It was actually the anarchists who wound up incorporating elements of Marxism in their own outlook, with Bakunin praising Marx's work "Das Kapital"
Anarchists built on Marx's contributions, yes. Is this supposed to be a bad thing? Should anarchists' and marxists' history of conflict mean that anarchists should reject everything that comes out of the mouth of a marxist? Ludicrous, not the least because the line that divides both ideologies is actually somewhat slim, more so because there aren't set divides on whether people hold determined ideology (this illusion is cause for many misunderstanding among marxists and anarchists).
But if building upon other people's analyses is wrong, where does that leave Marx? Not only did he incorporate Proudhon's thought in his own work, he also built on many other philosophers and economists. Does this invalidate marxism?

>anarchist analysis of economics basically being a dumb-downed version of Marxism.
It is odd that you suggest that anarchists "stole" their economical analysis from Marx while at the same time claiming that is is "dumb-downed". Was Bakunin's russian translation of Das Kapital an inferior version? Did he subvert the authentical marxist thought with anarchist blasphemies? Was it actually part of a secret conspiracy to corrupt the russian youth with impious anarchist thoughts?
What this conclusion really suggests to me is that some marxists believe that anarchists aren't actually encouraged to read Marx and Das Kapital, because, honestly, the idea of reading actual anarchist theorists is alien to most marxists.

>As for the Paris Commune, you've confirmed that your knowledge of Marxism is slight. The dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism are not synonymous, the former builds the latter. The Paris Commune was the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Well, it's good to know that my knowledge of marxism is slight because I make a slightly different reading of one of Marx's comments than yours. Never mind that marxist theory's terminology has never been consistent and multiple interpretations of different passages can be made. So we have marxists who claim that socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the culmination of the dictatorship marked by the "withering away" of the state is a distinct phase called "communism".
Yes, I am well aware the Marx and Engels, most of the time anyway, used socialism and communism interchangeably, and that it wasn't specifically Marx or Engels who coined the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", or that they never used the term "dialectical materialism" or other such trivia.
I'm talking about the concrete meaning of the terms, not semantic games that appear to be all the rage whenever anarchists and marxists debate.
But, hey, let's say you are right. Then Marx and Engels' approval of the Commune must have meant that they agreed with Proudhon.

>but it was obviously in no position to build socialism, both because it was confined to Paris and because of the great many contradictions and inconsistencies in its work (which, BTW, included the participation of Proudhonists.)
So the Commune couldn't build socialims/communism/anarchism etc... because there were Proudhon supporters in it. Are you serious?

>You're also confusing "electoralism" with the idea that Marx and Engels were speaking of the SPD and similar parties seizing power by parliamentary means. In reality both men spoke of *using* parliaments as a tribune for agitation. It's why Lenin advocated forcefully for the entry of Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, even when there was literally no hope of the Bolsheviks ever coming to power that route.
Well, I'm sure that many anarchists would have criticisms of such approach as well (as a "tribune for agitation"). Which is one of the actual differences between anarchists and marxists. Notice it concerns merely the practicality of a revolutionary tactic.

>Bourgeois-democratic freedoms give greater opportunity for the working-class to operate. Bourgeois democracy, legal trade union work, etc. are attacked by reaction whenever the workers actually take advantage of them.
We agree on this, for what is worth (so did Bakunin, et al).

>>2009

>It is of course theoretically possible for an anarchist to be entirely misled and to give his life fighting against what should be seen as his class allies (see: some of the sailors at Kronstadt),
So you are saying the my previous statement is true? i.e. that
>>What you are really saying is that the sincerity of a revolutionary is entirely dependent on his/her allegiance with the leninist party, which apparently you have proclaimed as the the "sincere" revolutionary agent by definition.

>but there were plenty of anarchists, just like there were plenty of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc. who saw the successful road of the Bolsheviks and joined them, along the way gradually shedding their earlier mistaken views.
So there were anarchists, mensheviks, srs, etc. who became bolsheviks. What is this supposed to mean? Some bolsheviks then became trotskyists or mls or kruschevite-revisionists or what have you. There are also many marxists who have become anarchists. What is the point here?

>Because the methods anarchists use to carry out their activities are characteristic of the petty-bourgeois (most blatantly Bakunin's ultra-conspiratorial work)
Bakunin had no "ultra-conspirational work", at least in the sense that marxists seem to assume. The only conspiracy he promoted was against the tsarist police state. Apparently marxists need to be reminded that while Marx spent the 1850s publishing articles and works Bakunin was rotting in solitary confinement in Peter-Paul Fortress, the most notorious and terrible prison in the whole of the tsarist empire, if not the world at the time. A prison reserved for the most important political dessidents.
Taking this into account it is easy to see that the "secret" nature of the alliance was a matter of survival. Lenin would know, the social-democratic party faced similar issues.
I am not aware of what accussations against the alliance you subscribe to, but it is worth noting that the alliance had strict organizational rules that forbade, among other things, any member from taking a position in state or any such other that could create a conflict of interest or a change in his/her revolutionary conciousness. The role of the alliance was merely the guidance of the revolutionary movement through trusted revolutionary people that could give such movements some from.
Sound familiar? Yes, that was pretty much the purpose of the vanguard bolshevik party. With the exception that the alliance, unlike the bolshevik party, was forbidden from taking the state apparatus.
You can find connections between Bakunin's earlier alliance methods, Nechayev's realpolitik and the bolshevik theory if you cared to look.
Even considering all of that, anarchists after Bakunin (arguably even Bakunin himself later in his life) rejected such secret measures in favor of practices such as syndicalism (which, apparently contrary to popular marxist belief, was also one of Bakunin's recommended practices).

>because anarchism itself was always strongest where backward elements of the working masses existed (this included many of the agricultural laborers in Spain, as well as the peasants in soldiers' uniforms at Kronstadt.)
This as opposed to Lenin's rule in tsarist, feudalist Russia, or Mao's in feudalist China, or Pol Pot's in feudalist Cambodia...
And yes, I am aware of the expectancies of Lenin from Europe, but that flopped and regardless his support still stemmed mostly from his statements in State and Revolution, which as I pointed out earlier is a libertarian, nearly anarchist programme.

>Give the context for this. During the civil war some soviets were disbanded by the force of the Red Army and militias and rebuilt, because counter-revolutionaries (not just self-styled "leftists" but avowed anti-communists and reactionaries) would come to power on the basis of demagogy or intimidation.
Well, yes, that was what the red army and the bolsheviks said in their justification statements and propaganda. Of course I have sources describing the disbanding and gerrymandering of anarchists and other left soviets.
But of course I think that the bolsheviks lied a lot of the time while you think that the bolsheviks told the absolute truth and everyone else lied, so we have reached an impasse.

>>2009

>I don't recall anyone claiming that the concept of soviets was alien to anarchism, although certainly the ideas of syndicalism, mutualism, etc. which treat every council or workplace as an island unto itself are basically petty-bourgeois positions.
Yeah, so much of an "island unto itself" that anarchists viciously rejected the idea of federations or forms of organization among syndicates and communes... wait.

>The Kronstadt mutiny basically expressed the sentiment of peasants who were alarmed by the policies of "War Communism." That is why most of the other demands of the sailors dealt with agricultural matters and basically represented a call for letting the peasant do as he wanted with his own plot of land.
The Kronstadt demands:
Immediate new elections to the Soviets; the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers and peasants before the elections.
Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant associations.
The organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces; no political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In place of the political section, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups; the abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
We demand that handicraft production be authorised, provided it does not utilise wage labour.
Literally one point deals with peasant autonomy, and even the insofar as there was no exploitation of other workers or peasants.
I honestly don't get this generalized animosity of leninists towards peasants when Lenin himself pretty much relied on support of the peasantry to carry out his coup. The flag of the Soviet Union even had the famous hammer and sickle to represent the alliance of proletariat (hammer) and peasantry (sickle).
Also there seems to be an insinuation that Kronstadt was exclusively a peasant revolt; it wasn't. The peasantry, the proletariat and army factions were involved in it.
As for "War Communism", it was a policy that went against the State and Revolution programme as described when the bolsheviks took power (and it was in motion before the civil war even broke out).

I'm not here to debate the merits of anarchism vs marxism.
I am merely suggesting that you actually read anarchist theory before opening your mouths and claiming ludricous things such as "anarchists reject class struggle", "anarchists refuse to defend the revolution", "anarchists reject materialism", etc.
Or don't, it's up to you. This is a circlejerking anon board in the asshole of the internet, anyway.

>Yes. In other words, propaganda.
Propaganda can take diverse forms though. In content the Communist Manifesto and Lenin's The State and Revolution are far more alike (both discuss historical subjects as well as then-present phenomena, both give suggestions as to future endeavors, etc.) than, say, a pamphlet calling on workers to boycott a business or whatever. Just dismissing the Manifesto as "propaganda" is silly.

>it is more of an abstract call and/or a promise of liberation from the Communist Party (which the workers should support according to them).
The point is that the idea that Marx and Engels were inclined towards reformism whereas anarchists were always consistent revolutionists is silly, especially since Proudhon (for example) held reformist positions.

>Which isn't to say that they never had any objections to their earlier work.
But the Marx and Engels of 1848 were still the same in 1878 as far as their fundamental views on economics, philosophy, etc. went.

>From The Class Struggles in France: [...]
Yes, and? That has nothing to do with claiming that socialism can be achieved via parliamentary reforms. The securing of democratic liberties is quite distinct from that. Bakunin's quote commits the usual anarchist error of forgetting that the struggle for these liberties is often a staging ground for the struggle for socialism, e.g. the Bolshevik struggle for democracy in the years leading up to 1917, and once the bourgeois-democratic revolution was proclaimed Lenin pointed out its gains could only be defended by transforming it into a socialist revolution, by not stopping half-way but by overthrowing the Provisional Government and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.

>For your bashing of the "Proudhonists" in the Commune later on, the Commune was essentially modeled after Proudhon's The Federative Principle.
Regardless of how influential Proudhonism was in the formation of the Commune, the fact is that it was precisely such influence (and not just that of Proudhonists, of course.) Working-class struggles can be led under the banner of wrong ideas, whether they succeed with such banners is another matter.

>Certainly, there are points at which the only difference between marxists and anarchists seems to be marxists call the form of proletarian organization a "state" while the anarchists call it "federation".
It might seem to be that way, but in reality there were many things separating Marxists and Anarchists. One good read on this subject is a compilation of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin which can be found here: http://bookzz.org/book/2379950/e6843d (titled "Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism.)

>Marxists would do well to acknowledge this divide.
They do, but it's a fact that many of the criticisms Marx and Engels applied to Stirner were also applied to subsequent anarchists.

>There is no such thing as Proudhonism.
This is a strange thing to say when soon after you claim there is such a thing as "Marxism-DeLeonism." Proudhon's doctrines were clearly distinct from those of other anarchists, just as Stirner's are. Note that there is a term known as Stirnerism, but most just use "individualist anarchism," just as most people would call Proudhonism mutualism. Leninists could also call themselves Bolsheviks (some do on occasion) and Marxists could (and obviously do) call themselves Communists.

Your comments on Proudhon reduce the differences between Marx and him to the personal sphere, which it seems is something you favor doing since you want to build a bridge between Marxism and Anarchism, but which is misleading. As for Bakunin, whatever you think of the veracity of the charges against him, the important point is that Marx and Engels were given ample opportunity to further examine and criticize Anarchist doctrines as a result of the struggle waged within the First International. But yeah if you want the Marxist side see: http://bookzz.org/book/2373688/81955a ("History of the Three Internationals" by William Z. Foster.)

>Anarchists built on Marx's contributions, yes. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
I wouldn't characterize their subsequent analysis as "building on" Marxism, but the point still stands that the anarchist analysis of economics is far more reliant on Marxism than any similarly broad subject analyzed by Marxists is reliant on anarchist interpretations.

>It is odd that you suggest that anarchists "stole" their economical analysis from Marx while at the same time claiming that is is "dumb-downed".
I don't see the contradiction. Someone can be guided, for example, by a very vague notion of concepts like historical materialism or of the role of the proletarian vanguard without actually having read the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin or others. Naturally their understanding will be quite simplistic and further diluted by the quite likely influence of other, non-materialist doctrines. I was referring to the fact that attempts by anarchist economists to try and forge their own analysis of economics independent of Marxism often seems to me like underdeveloped Marxism or Marxism through a grainy filter.

>So we have marxists who claim that socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the culmination of the dictatorship marked by the "withering away" of the state is a distinct phase called "communism".
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin all used the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" to refer to a transitional phase. If you could find Marx and Engels confounding the DOTP with socialism or communism then I'd like to be aware of them having done so.

>So the Commune couldn't build socialims/communism/anarchism etc... because there were Proudhon supporters in it. Are you serious?
The overriding issue was the fact it was confined to a city and isolated from the rest of France. The fact that its policies were inconsistent, and that the influence of petty-bourgeois and idealist forces was considerable (and a chief cause for such inconsistency), was also an important factor in its downfall.

>So you are saying the my previous statement is true?
No, there were those (anarchists and non-anarchists) who held views at variance with the Bolsheviks for a number of reasons but were still regarded by them as sincere revolutionaries, one example being Eugene Debs.

>So there were anarchists, mensheviks, srs, etc. who became bolsheviks. What is this supposed to mean?
That Marxists do consider it possible to work with anarchists and others with mistaken views depending on the situation, so long as they side with the forces of progress in effect. Thus there were Mensheviks who sided with the Bolsheviks after 1917, and there were Mensheviks who joined with the White Army.

On Bakunin's ultra-conspiratorial work (and actual examples of it), see the relevant chapter in that Yaroslavsky book I linked to in an earlier post.

>This as opposed to Lenin's rule in tsarist, feudalist Russia
The Bolsheviks were strongest among the working-class of Petrograd and other urban areas by the time of the October Revolution. Many peasants in 1917-1918 were still under the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries who at times held quasi-anarchist positions. Makhno's movement was peasant-based and distrusted city-dwellers.

>Yeah, so much of an "island unto itself" that anarchists viciously rejected the idea of federations or forms of organization among syndicates and communes... wait.
In Catalonia many of the factories under the anarchists did, in fact, operate as islands unto themselves as admitted even by those sympathetic to them.

>Literally one point deals with peasant autonomy,
Note the mention of "right of assembly" and "freedom" for peasant associations, the call to legalize the "Left Socialists" (i.e. Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who carried out an armed insurrection against soviet power and who were based on the peasantry), etc. Obviously the demands of the mutineers had to be as general as possible, but the influence of the petty-bourgeois peasant outlook can still be seen.

>I honestly don't get this generalized animosity of leninists towards peasants when Lenin himself pretty much relied on support of the peasantry to carry out his coup. The flag of the Soviet Union even had the famous hammer and sickle to represent the alliance of proletariat (hammer) and peasantry (sickle).
Besides the fact I already noted that many peasants initially placed their faith in the SRs rather than the Bolsheviks, the alliance of the proletariat and peasantry is led by the working-class, this was always stressed because it was the working-class which could actually liberate the peasantry and integrate them into the new life, away from the archaic small plots of land and social system they were accustomed to.

>it was a policy that went against the State and Revolution programme as described when the bolsheviks took power
The State and Revolution wasn't published until after the October Revolution.

>>2059
>I quote the first few sentences from the opening preface:
The actual significance of the book is in the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin contained within, not the brief preface written by a Soviet author. That being said, he wasn't "conflating" Stirner and Bakunin, he was pointing out that Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin shared common features which originated from anarchism being a petty-bourgeois ideology.

To give another example, one can easily find common features in the work of Lenin, Luxemburg and Bebel (among others) but obviously no one would claim that they had identical views on various subjects, despite their similar attacks on reformism and revisionism and their revolutionary activities.

Or, to give yet another example, Khrushchevite, Titoite and Maoist revisionism all have their "peculiarities" but share common features as well (such as bourgeois nationalism.)

>The State and Revolution was released as a compatriot to the April Theses in 1917 -- in other words, it came out in April 1917.
It was written in August-September 1917 and he also intended to return to the work at a later date in order to deal with a number of subjects in greater detail.

>If you look at the URSS, you find that the state actually improved upon the use of the instruments of repression previously utilized by the Tsar, and so on.
Russia under the Tsar was a half-feudal regime with all the incompetence that goes with such a status. If in the USSR instruments of repression were "improved upon" it was because, first, they were wielded by the working-class against a tiny minority of the population and, second, because of the steps taken to create a modern society. I'm sure the present-day Russian security organs are "improved upon" the Soviet-era ones simply due to the introduction of new technologies and whatnot.

As for "the tyrannic actions of the Soviet Union," under Khrushchev and his successors a dictatorship of the new bourgeoisie was established which did indeed repress the working-class, but under Lenin and Stalin the security organs were geared towards defending the workers and, yes, establishing "tyranny" against the bourgeoisie, the same way the bourgeoisie exercised "tyranny" against the feudal counter-revolutionaries in past centuries.

>coined as "primitive socialist accumulation" by Preobrazhenskiy
Preobrazhensky was one of the leading ideologues of Trotskyism in the 20s, just because he used the term does not mean that it was followed under Stalin.

>Where, then, exists the workers' ownership over the means of production? Where was Socialism actually existing in the Soviet Union?
To quote a Soviet definition from 1952:
>Under both socialism and communism the economic foundation of society is the public ownership of the instruments and means of production and an integrated socialist system of economy. There are no contradictions between the productive forces and the relations of production; there is complete conformity between them. Neither under socialism nor communism is there social oppression. There are no exploiting classes, no exploitation of many by man, and no national oppression. Under both socialism and communism the national economy is developed according to plan, and there are neither economic crises, nor unemployment and poverty among the masses. Under both socialism and communism everyone is equally bound to work according to his ability.
>Socialist society affords full play for the development of the productive forces. The level reached by socialist production makes it possible for society to give effect to the principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work." This means that the products are distributed in accordance with the quantity and quality of the work performed.

Working-class control was exercised not just through the proletarian politics of the vanguard, but through the work of the trade unions, of the soviets, etc. One good work on this subject: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1ZP6ZurgOg-R1pjc2NVQkQxYmM/edit

>See: The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, Maurice Brinton
Brinton's work is full of holes. See the posts in this thread by the user "ComradeOm" for examples: http://www.revleft.com/vb/were-soviets-closedi-t118798/index.html?p=1573437

As for Spain, that's a silly distortion. The policy of the PCE was to lead the popular front government to victory against a fascist revolt assisted by Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany. Through its leading role in the anti-fascist struggle the PCE became a numerically large party. The Bolsheviks also had a great infusion of new members in 1917 and in the first few years in power, and no doubt if the struggle in Spain had been successful there would have been a widespread review of the membership to weed out those who failed to live up to the demands of the position of party member.

There were also various anarchists who sided with the popular front (including Durruti) and who fought alongside the communist, socialist and republican forces against fascism. As for factories and fields, in various cases anarchists had taken them by compulsion and had mismanaged them. Furthermore, as Stalin pointed out in his letter to then-PM Caballero, it would have been a grave error to alienate from the side of the Republic vacillating elements.

In the end the PCE had become far more powerful by the end of the war than it had at the start. That is why a coup against the Negrín government was carried out (and in fact had the support of a few anarchists who joined with the right-wingers in "saving Spain from communism.")

>Yes, but at what costs? Forced and coercive collectivization?
The collectivization campaign (I assume you're referring to that in particular since that was the peasants rather than the workers) was a mass movement, it can't be reduced to simple "force" as if the whole peasantry was being enroached upon by the big bad Bolshevik state.

One good academic read on this for example: http://bookzz.org/book/936296/93946c ("The Best Sons of the Fatherland" by Lynne Viola)

I don't really see why one has to emphasize the spontaneous nature of the soviets as if this somehow is an indictment of Bolshevik policy. The Bolsheviks sought to give these soviets leadership, to ween them away from petty-bourgeois forces. It was precisely through having the most consistent stands and by directly challenging the powers that be that the Bolsheviks gained the support of the majority of the soviets by the time of the October Revolution (as noted by Rabinowitch and a number of other bourgeois analysts.)

The Bolsheviks pointed out that workers' control couldn't be exercised by factories acting autonomously from each other, but only through working together under central leadership. There are two handy collections of Lenin's writings on the subject of Soviet economics which I myself scanned:
* https://archive.org/details/OnWorkersControlAndTheNationalisationOfIndustry
* https://archive.org/details/QuestionsOfTheSocialistOrganisationOfTheEconomy

>The first phase of the counterrevolution was the legalization and regulation of those accomplishments of the revolution that appeared irreversible. A decree of 7 October by the Communist Minister of Agriculture, Vicente Uribe, legalized certain expropriations--namely, of lands belonging to participants in the Franco revolt. Of course, these expropriations had already taken place, a fact that did not prevent the Communist press from describing the decree as "the most profoundly revolutionary measure that has taken place since the military uprising."
Apparently the fact that these expropriations were given official sanction (i.e. were backed up and given protection by the state and the forces of the popular front) is of no significance because of... some reason. It also overlooks the fact that communists partook in these expropriations. The decree was a declaration that all those who sided with the Francoists (and this was obviously not an inconsiderable amount of the bourgeoisie and landowners) would be deprived of their economic power.

For a good read on the subject of the Spanish Civil War (which also directly discusses May 1937, the Aragon front, anarchist control of industries, etc.) see "Spain, the Unfinished Revolution" by Arthur H. Landis: https://espressomarxist-leninist.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/espana.pdf