Talk:Anarchism and Marxism

I have started this page as discussed with User:Fifelfoo at Talk:Anarchism. Possible additions include:

• developing a fuller section on the historical conflict between anarchists and Marxists;
• developing a section on the ideological conflict between anarchism and Marxism;
• a discussion of the common roots of modern anarchism and modern Marxism;
• developing a section on the methodological similarities (dialectical materialism and class analysis) between Marxists and anarchists -- 'class struggle' anarchists in particular.

I think this could be a very useful and interesting article! --Sam 11:33, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

From Anarchism:

Some critics of anarchism suggest that it is a rhetorical form, whereby individuals can cloak the pursuit of their own interests behind an interlocking web of abstract concepts. Some anarchists speculate that freedom is unconstrained desire. Marx suggested that this desire was the material basis of the Anarchy of the market. Both Marxism and some forms of anarchism use the fluid manipulation of concepts through historical materialism, which links ideas with their social basis. Hence these historical materialists dismiss the idea of freedom as unconstrained desire, arguing that it is a politics for those who do not know what they want. The prominance of the idea that freedom is unconstrained desire in the English-speaking world may explain the development of anarchism in the West into an identity politics, albeit with a dissident White identity.

This is nonsense, read the organizational platform of the libertariam communists, looks at the workers solidarity movement, the zabalaza anarchist communist federation. From the Bottom up is NOT empty rethoric, the key difference is the relationship between revolutionary militants and the masses, anarchists try to participate in popular struggles trying to lead them by example into organized action instead of imposing it upon them by the threat and use of violence. The organizations they build reflect this, that is why they advocate the voluntary association of workers in base assemblies and the free federation of workers via mandated spokepersons or delegates. They work and fight as equals not rulers. The same could be said of many marxists, however, when they accumulate enough power most abandon this way of doing things and build a hierarchical and bureaucratical rule OVER the working class.

By lumping anarchists with individualists you use an old chicanery, it is the same as lumping trotskyists and stalinists together and accusing both of defendind peaceful coexistance.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.235.193.58 (talk • contribs) 19:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)

I first created the Anarchist Objections to Capitalism page, then moved it per suggestion to Anarchism and Capitalism (someone has since decapitalized "capitalism", heh) -- there was a redirect from here to Anarchist Objections to Marxism but to be consistent I've redirected the redirects so that this is where the Anarchism vs. marxism (though mostly from the anarchist viewpoint) debate should unfold, as it did originally. Expand it! --albamuth 05:29, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This article, from where I stand, lacks rigor and useful information.

--GTubio 07:33, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't a (very) large part of this article be concerned with the historical relationship between Anarchists and Marxists? It's discussed on other pages, but not in detail, which is strange considering it's importance. I'm suprised the Spanish Revolution, the Ukrainian guerillas, Goldman and Berkman, Cuba, China and so on hasn't come up.

Or is that all worthy of it's own page, or does such a page already exist? --Ragnor Ironpants 16:40, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of information about the split of the First International, which was primarily a fight between Marx and Bakunin, I believe. However I do not have the background to elaborate on it. --albamuth 20:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I made a number of revisions:

There was a half-paragraph discussing the consequences of the supposed fact that no Marxist revolution has been led by workers, which I removed in its entirety. Not only is the premise false - the Russian revolution for one was led by the Bolsheviks a clear majority of whom, by that point, were workers - but there were several major inaccuracies in the following discussion, e.g. identifying the "labor aristocracy" thesis as a basic tenet of Leninism when it is highly contested.

I added a very brief discussion of the Marxist position on the relation between class and other oppressions, and the criticisms of it. I also added a very brief discussion of Marxist positions on inevitability, and the famous Luxemburg phrase.

I removed "agricultural workers" from a list of non-working-class groups, because agricultural wage-laborers, in contrast to peasants, are working-class by the Marxist definition. A related problem in the sentence below I could not solve, and would appreciate help with:

Key differences thus include the fact that Anarchists do not differentiate between peasants, lumpen, and proletarians and instead define all people who work for wage labor as members of the working class, regardless of occupation;

This is self-contradictory. Peasants, by definition in the standard use of the term, do not work for wage labor. They own land or rent it and live by eating or selling the crop they grow. I am not an anarchist, and I do not know whether anarchists usually believe that peasants are not workers or whether they believe that some people who don't work for wage labor are still workers, but one or the other must be the case.

An aside - there's a general pro-anarchist and anti-Marxist bias in this article. I'm not going to try to correct all of it, just noting the fact. Kalkin 00:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it has a clear pareconist view, wich is not the position of many in the anarchist movement (to wich pareconists contestedly belong).

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.235.193.58 (talk • contribs) 19:50, 2 Jul 2006 (UTC)J

The section describing views of the state is seriously biased towards anarchism/against Marxism. There are a number of language-strength issues, and space allocation issues, and there is a tendency to conflate all Marxist views with Leninism, or even with Stalinism - Marxists of course agree that the state is an instrument of class rule (contra this article, so do some anarchists), but have widely varying views on its relationship to the revolutionary process. I don't have time to fix it at the moment but I'm putting the POV tag until I do. Kalkin 05:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I cut the following paragraphs:

The Marxist class analysis has consequences for how Marxists relate to the liberation movements of groups such as women, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, and cultural minorities (such as homosexuals). Marxists support such liberation movements, not only because they are worthy in and of themselves, but also on the grounds that they are necessary for a working-class revolution, which cannot succeed without unity. However, Marxists believe that attempts by oppressed people to liberate themselves will fail to achieve their full aims unless they are organized along class lines, because the bourgeois within each oppressed group will beyond a certain point betray its struggle, and because under capitalism, social power rests at the point of production.

Anarchists and others criticize Marxists for giving class priority in this way and in explaining the causes of historical change, arguing that to do so denigrates other oppressions, which operate with their own independent dynamics. Anarchists see all liberation movements by oppressed people as fundamentally legitimate, be they "proletarians", "peasants", or others, without needing to fit these movements into a predetermined schema for revolution. However, this position is not the only one throughout the anarchist movement, many anarchists believe that single issue struggles are extremely limited in their scope altough they participate (as Marxists do) in them, trying to advance their positions and methods in an anarchist way.

This crummy multiple-axes-of-oppression argument is in fact often lobbed against Marxists, but in my experience more often by liberals than by anarchists. In fact a lot of Anarcho-Syndicalist and -Communist groups are a lot more rigid in their adherence to class-only analysis than Marxist parties. In absence of any citations, I'm cutting. Bacchiad 13:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm putting it back. I've heard it from anarchists personally, but better, I've got a citation. Michael Albert, certainly one of the most prominent anarchist theorists, makes precisely this criticism in his debate with Alex Callinicos here.

Please note that many anarchists (historically, both well known militants as well as organizations) disagree with Alberts. That is why I added: "However, this position is not the only one throughout the anarchist movement, many anarchists believe that single issue struggles are extremely limited in their scope altough they participate (as Marxists do) in them, trying to advance their positions and methods in an anarchist way." I would also like to add at the end "towards classist and revolutionary positions" If you agree, add it.

You can check anarkismo.net to see that class struggle anarchists, anarchocommunistss and plataformists share this view, and that they have been the majority of anarchists (the CNT in the thirties in Spain, the FORA in the first decades of the twentieth century in Argentina, and many more). Its numerical, political and historical weight should not be ignored (we are talking about hundreds of thousands of adherents and many important insurrections).