I’ve read Kropotkin. His conquest of bread was utopian to the highest degree; the overarching idea was “people will just come together when they see how good anarchism is, trust me. They just will”. It had nothing on Marx or Lenin. I’ve heard mutual aid was good and there were good things to learn in there, so maybe I’ll give it a read when my schedule frees up.
As you are a student of political philosophy, you said you’ve read Marx, but have you done the exercise of understanding marxism? The three fundamental components of dialectical materialism, the LTV (less important for philosophy students), and the class struggle, and how they relate to each other? Many people tell me they’ve read Marx, but they didn’t really go the whole way. I think one way of reading something you disagree with is pretending you agree with it, to understand what the author actually said and why.
But ideology is preceded by the material world, the material conditions people find themselves in – people don’t pick their ideology out of thin air. Marxism and marxism-leninism is the ideology of the proletariat (as it will liberate them). Anarchism has long been regarded as the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie by marxists, as it will liberate the petty bourgeois. Proudhon’s land-credit plan was to make everyone into a bourgeois (he took that up after meeting Marx, while not understanding contradictions; you cannot solve a contradiction by removing only one side of it).
But once again, I think results speak volumes. If anarchism was the vanguard of the revolution, I think many of us here would turn towards anarchism. The objective problem of anarchism in the 21st century is that it hasn’t had any success. Anarchists can’t even seem to agree what is anarchism and what isn’t, and while we have some issues doing that on the marxist side as well sometimes, I’ve seen anarchists say that any revolution that fights against authority is anarchist in nature. The Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War were not fought entirely by anarchists, yet anarchists make it seem as though they were the driving force behind the movement.
In fact, to segue back into authority, let’s look at the Paris Commune. Marx said the communards should have marched directly to Versailles with their weapons to seize the government before the army had a chance to reassemble. Kropotkin, on the other hand, claimed the Commune was neither anarchist nor “authoritative and semi–religious communism of 1848” but actually it was anarchist because the “people” organised themselves. “The revolution of 1871 … sprang spontaneously from the midst of the mass”.
And where did that get them? Killed like we’d never seen before after three months. Marching on the French government was an authoritarian move; the people of Paris would have exacted their authority on the government, and then on the French people. Yet Kropotkin, while extolling the virtues of the commune, cleverly forgets to fit in their demise, and how the two are linked. Of course the army would march on Paris – there was no way they would let their biggest city secede. Of course they would make an example out of them – the proletariat revolting would mean the end of the bourgeoisie, as a class and as individuals. I cannot fault the Communards for not necessarily realising this (I wasn’t there, I didn’t live that context), but I can fault Kropotkin for claiming that theirs was actually the right path, because it was anarchism. And anarchism is all that is good, and declaring a “popular” revolt is good even if you die at the end, while seizing the government is bad.
So which is more authoritarian? Seizing the government so you can ensure the success of your revolution, or letting things run their course even if you know you will die at the end?
I think this article is quite relevant here, describing how “the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism”. That applies to anarchism even more.
I’ve read Kropotkin. His conquest of bread was utopian to the highest degree; the overarching idea was “people will just come together when they see how good anarchism is, trust me. They just will”. It had nothing on Marx or Lenin. I’ve heard mutual aid was good and there were good things to learn in there, so maybe I’ll give it a read when my schedule frees up.
As you are a student of political philosophy, you said you’ve read Marx, but have you done the exercise of understanding marxism? The three fundamental components of dialectical materialism, the LTV (less important for philosophy students), and the class struggle, and how they relate to each other? Many people tell me they’ve read Marx, but they didn’t really go the whole way. I think one way of reading something you disagree with is pretending you agree with it, to understand what the author actually said and why.
But ideology is preceded by the material world, the material conditions people find themselves in – people don’t pick their ideology out of thin air. Marxism and marxism-leninism is the ideology of the proletariat (as it will liberate them). Anarchism has long been regarded as the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie by marxists, as it will liberate the petty bourgeois. Proudhon’s land-credit plan was to make everyone into a bourgeois (he took that up after meeting Marx, while not understanding contradictions; you cannot solve a contradiction by removing only one side of it).
But once again, I think results speak volumes. If anarchism was the vanguard of the revolution, I think many of us here would turn towards anarchism. The objective problem of anarchism in the 21st century is that it hasn’t had any success. Anarchists can’t even seem to agree what is anarchism and what isn’t, and while we have some issues doing that on the marxist side as well sometimes, I’ve seen anarchists say that any revolution that fights against authority is anarchist in nature. The Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War were not fought entirely by anarchists, yet anarchists make it seem as though they were the driving force behind the movement.
In fact, to segue back into authority, let’s look at the Paris Commune. Marx said the communards should have marched directly to Versailles with their weapons to seize the government before the army had a chance to reassemble. Kropotkin, on the other hand, claimed the Commune was neither anarchist nor “authoritative and semi–religious communism of 1848” but actually it was anarchist because the “people” organised themselves. “The revolution of 1871 … sprang spontaneously from the midst of the mass”.
And where did that get them? Killed like we’d never seen before after three months. Marching on the French government was an authoritarian move; the people of Paris would have exacted their authority on the government, and then on the French people. Yet Kropotkin, while extolling the virtues of the commune, cleverly forgets to fit in their demise, and how the two are linked. Of course the army would march on Paris – there was no way they would let their biggest city secede. Of course they would make an example out of them – the proletariat revolting would mean the end of the bourgeoisie, as a class and as individuals. I cannot fault the Communards for not necessarily realising this (I wasn’t there, I didn’t live that context), but I can fault Kropotkin for claiming that theirs was actually the right path, because it was anarchism. And anarchism is all that is good, and declaring a “popular” revolt is good even if you die at the end, while seizing the government is bad.
So which is more authoritarian? Seizing the government so you can ensure the success of your revolution, or letting things run their course even if you know you will die at the end?
I think this article is quite relevant here, describing how “the fetish for defeat is one of the fundamental characteristics of Western Marxism”. That applies to anarchism even more.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/western-marxism-loves-purity-and-martyrdom-not-real-revolution