‘The libertarian socialists came to be called “anarchists” because that’s what they were called by their enemies’.
June 2024 by Z Network by Tom Wetzel at Anarchist News. 36 comments from thefreeonline on Telegram here: t.me/thefreeonline
Zoe Baker’s book and videos Means and Ends are a comprehensive look at the revolutionary class-struggle anarchist movement as it existed and developed in the period from the International Workingmen’s Association of 1864-78 to the defeat of the anarchist and syndicalist-inspired revolution in Spain in 1939.
Although the book is not about the writings of famous anarchist authors, she often uses quotes from people like Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta to illustrate points. The author concedes that she only knows English and thus could not consult writings that have not yet been translated into English.
The book does not talk about all the various political tendencies that have used the “anarchist” label but mostly focuses on the main class-struggle oriented tendency which she calls “mass anarchism.”
Because the retreat from class is a common feature in the writing of various anarchists since World War 2 — from George Woodcock to Murray Bookchin and contemporary post-modernist anarchists — I have chosen to use “class-struggle anarchism” to refer to the political tendency this book is about.
People in that movement did not use the term mass anarchism which was first coined by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt in Black Flame. This term makes a certain sense, though, because of the orientation of that movement to mass struggle and building and participating in formally organized, democratic mass organizations such as worker unions, tenant unions, and independent women’s groups.
Origin
Zoe Baker starts out by honing in on the very specific anarchist tendency that her book is about. This political tendency first emerged as an organized political force within the framework of the International Workingmen’s Association (“First International”).
At a congress of the International in 1869, the majority of the delegates voted in favor of ownership of land by the whole society. This viewpoint was called “collectivism.” Among this collectivist majority, a tendency emerged who opposed a strategy oriented to the politics of parliamentary elections and parties and opposed the goal of gaining state power. This tendency often referred to itself by labels such as “federalist” and “revolutionary socialist.” The word libertarian was first used as another name for anarchism by Joseph Dejacque in 1857.
Thus “libertarian socialist” or “libertarian communist” were also labels used by this tendency.(p. 24) Many did not call themselves “anarchists” initially because anarchism was identified with Proudhon at that time. This emerging federalist, libertarian socialist tendency had significant disagreements with Proudhon.
From the 1840s on, Proudhon had advocated a strategy called mutualism. This was a gradualist strategy of social change through the building of worker cooperatives, with the aid of loans from a “people’s bank.” Proudhon thought the cooperatives could grow to eventually take over more social functions.
Proudhon opposed social ownership of the land, advocating private ownership by those who work the land, such as a peasant farmer. The federalist libertarian socialists did not support Proudhon’s mutualism but “advocated revolutionary…unionism and the simultaneous abolition of capitalism and the state through an armed insurrection, which would forcefully expropriate the capitalist class.” (p. 24)
As Baker points out, the opposition to Proudhon is an example of why the emergent class struggle-oriented federalist socialist or anarchist tendency cannot be defined simply by their proposal for abolition of the state as other socialists also advocated this.
Baker uses the term collectivist in two different ways. She initially defines it as proposing social ownership of the land. Later she talks about an internal disagreement among the class-struggle oriented anarchists between “anarchist collectivists” and “anarchist communists.” Here she is using a distinction explained by Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread. In Kropotkin’s terminology, “collectivists” were people such as James Quillaume. Nestor Makhno or Ricardo Mella who advocated remuneration for work effort in a libertarian socialist society (p. 90).
Workers would be given certificates based on hours worked which they could use to obtain consumer goods. This is similar to Marx’s proposal in A Critique of the Gotha Program. Kropotkin, on the other hand, advocated a proposal of free-to-user provision for all needs — in keeping with the principle, “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”
Kropotkin explicitly opposed remuneration for work effort. People advocating Kropotkin’s view were called “communists.” But according to the original definition of “collectivist,” “communists” would also be “collectivists” since they advocated social ownership of the land. In reality, the principle of remuneration for work effort and the principle of free-to-user pubic goods and services are compatible. Indeed, the Spanish CNT “libertarian communist” program of 1936 advocated both.
At the Hague Congress of the First International, a split developed. In the preparations for that congress, the Marxist faction sent out blank delegate mandates to people who did not actually represent sections of the International. Marx and Engels used their spurious majority to expel Bakunin and concentrate authority in the hands of the General Council. Subsequent meetings of the Belgian, Spanish, Italian, British, Dutch, French and Swiss Jura sections of the International repudiated these decisions, Baker informs us. (p. 23) Delegates from the Spanish, French, Italian, American and Swiss Jura sections then met at a congress in St. Imier in September, 1872. This congress then led to a series of congresses of the International through 1878. This series of congresses are sometimes called the “St Imier International.” As Baker points out, this label is anachronistic because the delegates who met at St. Imier did not see themselves as founding a new international, but continuing the international founded in 1864.
Nonetheless, the federalist, libertarian socialist tendency was more dominant in the congresses of the St. Imier International. This change represented the real coming together of the class-struggle oriented anarchist tendency. Baker has a quote from Luigi Fabbri (secretary of the Italian Syndicalist Union) in 1922 where he points to the 1872 St. Imier congress as the real beginning of the modern anarchist movement.(p. 26)
How did this tendency acquire the anarchist label? Baker says the libertarian socialists came to be called “anarchists” because that’s what they were called by their enemies. In particular, Marx and Engels tended to confuse the class-struggle oriented federalist socialists with Proudhon.
Baker is quite clear that there is a sharp difference between the class-struggle anarchist movement and other anarchist tendencies such as “individualist anarchists” or anti-organizational “insurrectionary” anarchists. There were at times sharp polemics between the mass anarchists and people who espoused these other varieties of anarchism. However, mass anarchism was often developed by worker autodidacts who could be quite eclectic. For example, Emma Goldman claimed to sympathize with individualist anarchism and even with Nietzsche.
Social Theory: Oppression and Liberty
The class struggle anarchist tendency that Baker is describing did not have a common well-developed social theory — and differed from Marxism in that way. This means that aspects of Marxism were often an influence on anarchist thinking. As Baker points out, American anarchist Albert Parsons read both Marx’s Capital and the Communist Manifesto. Nonetheless, anarchist social theory was more elastic than the Marxism of that era in certain ways. In anarchist social theory various distinct and somewhat autonomous sources of oppression were often identified — such as subordination of workers to employers, the oppression inherent in the state, and the subordination of women in patriarchist society. In particular, the state was seen as a distinct source of oppression. Anarchists did generally adhere to the class theory of the state, as in this passage from Bakunin:
“The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the priesthood, the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and finally, after every other class has been exhausted, the bureaucratic class.”
Even so, Baker also notes: “Rather than positing a one-sided perspective in which the modern state was created by capitalism, anarchists held that the modern state and capitalism cocreated one another.”( p. 74)
Thus the state has a certain autonomy as a distinct source of oppression. In addition to its role of defending the existing capitalist setup, the state has a top-down hierarchy with the people at the top of the state able to “make laws and issue commands at a societal level that others must obey due to the threat or exercise of institutionalized force.”(p. 76)
Rather than reducing oppression to the wage-labor/capital framework, “anarchists understood that humans are oppressed by a myriad of …social structures that must be abolished …[including] racism, patriarchy, homophobia, hierarchically organized religion, and authoritarian modes of education.” (p.78) Although intersectionality is a more recent term, Baker recognizes the intersectional nature of the anarchist conception of class struggle politics. And thus she situates both anarchist feminism and black anarchism as “parts of a more general trend within modern anarchism…to emphasize the manner in which all structures of oppression form an interlocking web.”(pp. 357-358)
The concept of oppression in anarchism is understood in terms of a naturalistic conception of positive freedom as a potential based in human nature. Thus oppression is understood as a feature of structures or practices in society that suppress or trample positive freedom. Freedom, as Baker writes, was “conceptualized [by] anarchists in two main ways: not being subject to domination or having the real possibility to do or to be.” (p. 62). Thus Emma Goldman wrote in 1914 that “true liberty…is not a negative thing of being free from something…Real freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active opportunity.”(p. 64)
Thus “anarchists advocated the abolition of capitalism because it is based on the oppression and exploitation of the working class.”(p. 72) In order to gain access to the goods and services they need to survive, workers have to purchase them with money. “Given their social position, they sell their labor to capitalists for a wage.” This means wage labor is not voluntary. In addition, wage labor is based on domination and subordination “as capitalists and landlords have the power to command workers to do as instructed.” (p.72)
Anarchist Vision of a Self-managed Society
The anarchist vision for the kind of libertarian socialist society they proposed falls directly out of this theory of liberty and oppression. The vision proposes a society where self-management is generalized. Baker describes (pp. 83-84) the anarchist vision as consisting of four components:
- Society as a whole would own the land, raw materials and non-human means of production but “those who occupy or use” the land or other means of production “directly control and self-manage the relevant sphere of production.” Thus the class division would be abolished as there would be no oppressor class set over the workers.
- “Workplaces and communities would be self-managed…through general assemblies in which everyone involved has an equal say in collective decisions.”
- “Markets and money would be replaced by a system of decentralized planning.”
- The capitalist detailed division of labor would be done away with by having “physical labor” and the work of planning and making decisions “shared among the producers. People might “specialize in certain skills…but they would not be limited to one sphere of activity.” This re-organization of the jobs would go hand in hand with a reduced workweek.
I have two caveats here. First, the anarcho-syndicalist unions used not only worker assemblies as part of their goal of worker self-management of the union, but also election of revocable delegates as in shop steward councils and union congresses. This was also held to prefigure the organizational methods for control of industry and social planning, as in the council system described by Abad Diego de Santillan in After the Revolution [1935]. The idea is that these delegate bodies would be grounded in, and controlled by, the base assemblies.
My second caveat is about the proposal for abolition of money. We know that various class struggle anarchists in that era advocated for remuneration of work through some form of certificates that could be used to obtain consumer goods. This is one of the functions of money and assumes a price system.
An oral history interview with Saturnino Carod in Blood of Spain illustrates one of the issues here. Carod was a farm labor union leader and a member of the Aragon Regional Committee of the CNT in 1936. In the interview he says he opposed abolition of money because he believed a price system was necessary for social accounting purposes.
Theory of Prefigurative Practice
An essential feature of “mass anarchism” was a theory about the causal connection between the methods of action and organization that are dominant in a period of increasing social conflict and the type of social order that would result from social transformation derived from those practices. Baker calls this the “theory of practice”:
“Anarchism’s commitment to the unity of means and ends was grounded in the theory of practice, which maintained…that as humans engage in activity, they simultaneously transform themselves and the world around them. An anarchist society would be produced over time by people engaging in horizontal systems of association and decision-making and…continuously creating and re-creating both anarchist social relations and themselves as people with the right kinds of capacities, drives and consciousness for an anarchist society.” (p. 118)
In a period where movement-building and social consciousness and working class confidence has developed to the point it becomes possible to change the structures of the dominant institutions — a moment where revolution is “on the agenda” — working people can only ensure that they end up in power in the workplaces and society when the smoke clears if they have a movement they control which drives the changes in society.
To the degree that the movement that drives the change is characterized by assembly-based democratic practices and a political commitment to direct rank-and-file power, that politics and those practices then “prefigure” workplace and community self-management in the society that emerges through the action of that movement. Although the term prefigurative was coined in the 1970s by Carl Boggs, who wasn’t an anarchist, Baker insists that this concept was central to anarchist thinking about strategy.
The “theory of practice” was also the reason for anarchist rejection of the politics of parties and elections and rejection of the state socialist idea of gaining state power to build socialism. Baker describes four reasons for the anarchist rejection of an electoralist and parliamentary strategy:
- “The economic ruling classes would never allow their power and property to be voted away and abolished by peaceful and legal means.” The overthrow of the power of the boss classes could only happen through the building of a powerful working class movement “to forcibly overthrow their oppressors.” (p. 145)
- Immediate improvements could be won within capitalism through mass direct action. Direct action included “strikes, rent strikes, combative demonstrations, riots, armed uprisings, prison escapes, industrial sabotage, boycotts, civil disobedience and providing illegal abortions.” (p. 133)
- A focus on a strategy of electoral politics would encourage people “to look to politicians…and look to the next election rather than taking direct action themselves.” (p. 146) This would thus fail to develop the traits of class consciousness and confidence which is needed for the process of developing the working class into a revolutionary force.
- Bakunin had predicted that people elected to government offices would be transformed by their position, which forces them to become “managers of the bourgeois state and the national economy.” (p148) The history of European socialist parties has shown how the process leads the politicians to moderate their rhetoric and commitments in order to secure middle class votes and stay in office.
If we look at the centrally-planned, state-owned economy built by the Bolsheviks in the course of the Russian revolution, we can see that their emphasis on an activist minority (“vanguard party”) seizing the economy through a hierarchical state bureaucracy prefigured the emergence of a new mode of production in which the party leaders, state-appointed managers, elite planners and top military brass became a new managerial oppressor class, set over the working class. At the time, anarchists tended to use the “state capitalist” label for the new mode of production in Russia, as Baker notes. But I think this was a bit superficial, based on the similarity between the top-down managerial hierarchy and Taylorist practices adopted by the Bolsheviks and capitalist economic management in major capitalist countries. As time would show, the internal dynamics of the USSR’s economy were rather different as it lacked the characteristic capitalist dynamic of constantly seeking ways to reduce labor hours per unit of output, for example.
Syndicalism
Syndicalism was the most important strategy developed by mass anarchists in the period Baker is studying. This was a proposal for methods of action and organization that could ensure worker self-management of unions, develop militancy, and contribute to the development of class consciousness, confidence and broad links of solidarity over time. Thus through a protracted process, the working class could develop a powerful social movement, forming a counter-hegemonic “class front” (to use a more recent term) with the power to potentially overthrow capital and the state. Although class formation is a term of Marxist origin, syndicalism was based on the idea that a more direct actionist, federalist and self-managed form of unionism would be an effective means to further the process of class formation. This process of internal development among working people was implicit in the syndicalist idea of grassroots, self-managed unionism having a dual role — as a means to fight for improvements in the present capitalist framework, as well as preparing a working class movement with the capacity to overthrow capitalism in an “expropriating general strike” where workers build organizations to self-manage the industries.
I have some disagreements with Baker’s discussion of syndicalism. To start with, a problem is the way the French word syndicalisme, the Italian word sindacalismo, and the Spanish and Portuguese word sindicalismo are translated. These words are merely the word for unionism in the respective languages, but the author tends to translate them as syndicalism. This leads to confusion. The word syndicalism in English was coined in the early 1900s to refer to a radical approach to unionism that developed in the years just prior to World War 1, influenced by both anarchist and Marxist worker militants.
The early 1900s were the beginning of the period of collective bargaining in various capitalist countries, and this often led to the emergence of a paid union bureaucracy that gained control through its position in negotiations. To make their job easier they often opposed strikes or other forms of militancy. Baker discusses a case where a mass strike wave developed in the French CGT union in 1919 but had to be organized from below by the rank-and-file due to opposition from the national executive.
Thus anarchist militants in the unions began to work out various organizational tactics to prevent the domination of unions by a paid bureaucracy as a separate layer outside the workplace. The tactics included horizontal federalist organization to keep control in the local grassroots unions, term limits for officers, emphasis on the leadership on the job through shop stewards and delegate systems.
These tactics were designed to implement the libertarian conception of worker self-management of the union, and to prevent a bureaucracy from being a roadblock to increased militant action. Thus the word syndicalism by World War 1 came to refer to this libertarian approach to unionism. As Baker documents, many of the ideas characteristic of syndicalism were already advocated by the federalist, libertarian socialist tendency in the First International.
The linguistic confusion about “syndicalism” comes out in Baker’s discussion of what she calls “neutral syndicalism.” This should really be called “neutral unionism.” This refers to the “political neutrality” that was a characteristic of the French CGT in the 1890s to early 1900s under the Amiens charter.
As Baker points out, the French CGT had numerous political tendencies among the worker members, including electorally oriented reformist socialists as well as anarchists and various types of radical unionist. The anarchists in the CGT interpreted “political neutrality” differently than the supporters of state socialist parties. For the anarchists, this meant merely independence of political parties.
But the anarchist militants pursued all sorts of political struggle by the union, as against militarism. The reformist socialists complained that this violated the agreement to political neutrality.(p. 260) The anarchist militants supported politics by means other than the politics of parties and elections. They weren’t actually apolitical in their approach.
The 1890s idea of “union neutrality” was later dropped as revolutionary syndicalists gained greater influence within a number of mass unions by the time of World War 1. This means that the unions became more explicitly “political” in their militancy and approach to social struggle. This is reflected in this quote Baker uses from Angel Pestaña:
“The evolution of politics following the war has spelt the end of syndical neutrality of the Amiens charter. In the whole world there is not a syndicalist organization existing today that does not practice politics, either directly or as an appendage of a political party.”(p. 275)
As his reference to socialist party-aligned unions suggests, the Spanish phrase organización sindicalista should be translated as “unionist organization,” not “syndicalist organization.”
Baker suggests there are three forms of syndicalism: “neutral syndicalism,” “syndicalism plus”, and anarcho-syndicalism.. “Syndicalism plus” is a term coined more recently by Iain McKay. He is referring to those syndicalists who favor the existence of an ideologically specific anarchist organization as distinct from the union, but as an influence both within the union and in wider society, through things like popular education or “the battle of ideas.” I don’t think this is a “form of syndicalism” but just a view that some anarchist syndicalists hold. In the anarchist movement this viewpoint is called “dual organizationalism.” Dual organizationalists believe there is a positive role for an “organization of tendency,” that is, an explicitly anarchist political organization, in addition to the various mass organizations.
The term anarcho-syndicalism only became a popular way of referring to the libertarian, federalist approach to revolutionary unionism after World War 1. This happened largely because that’s what they were called by the Communists. The period between the Russian revolution and the 1930s were a revolutionary period in working class history as socialist ideas became broadly popular in working classes throughout the world, and various societies experienced mass strike waves, general strikes, civil wars and revolutions.
Thus many syndicalist unions in this period became explicit in advocating “libertarian communism” as their goal. I think this reflects the historical moment as well as the pressure from the Communists who competed for worker allegiance with the anarcho-syndicalists.
Baker suggests that “anarcho-syndicalism” should be defined in terms of a union having this explicit revolutionary goal. I disagree with this because the period between the Russian and Spanish revolutions was a revolutionary moment. Thus the adoption of a revolutionary goal by the syndicalist unions at that time reflected a contingent historical situation. I see anarcho-syndicalism as a living movement defined by its strategy, that is, the methods of action and organization it proposes for the labor movement.
The Spanish CNT was founded in 1910 with a number of anarchist and syndicalist-influenced independent unions in Spain coming together. As Baker points out, the CNT at that time did not define itself in terms of some anarchist vision for a future society. The union was defined by its approach to practice. The CNT had only 50,000 members initially. But the 1919 Canadiense strike was a transformative moment for the Spanish working class.
A small strike at the big electric power utility had been built up into a massive regional general strike in Catalonia — forcing the Spanish government to mandate the eight-hour day for all of Spain. This led to the union mushrooming to 800,000 members. It was at this high point of success — and in the wake of the Russian revolution — that the CNT adopted its commitment to “libertarian communism.”
The Role of the Militant Minority
But anarcho-syndicalism is a living movement, and adapts to changing social circumstances. Looking at building self-managed unions today, I don’t see why this has to be based on some ideological vision of a future society. The idea is to build a self-managed, worker-led movement where workers can develop their social power and solidarity, and thus over time develop a radical goal of social transformation. Baker talks about Malatesta’s disagreement with defining unions in terms of an anarchist goal. He says either this would get in the way of building a majority force or else the commitment would become “mere words on paper ignored by everyone.” I think the presence in a grassroots union of an anarchist “militant minority” — active workers with anarchist ideas — would be more important to preventing bureaucratic degeneration of the union than a paper commitment to building a libertarian socialist society. Baker has a section on the “militant minority” where she writes:
“Mass anarchists believed that it was necessary to participate in social movements as a militant minority in order to ensure that struggles for reforms did not collapse into reformism and, instead, developeda revolutionary mass movement that could launch a large-scale armed insurrection. This means spreading anarchist ideas, acting as key and effective organizers, encouraging…workers to take direct action, and ensuring that formal organizations or informal groups were horizontally structured and made decisions in a manner that prefigured an anarchist society.” (p. 241)
The largest union in Spain today that identifies with the revolutionary legacy of the CNT of the 1930s is the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT). This union claims to be “anarcho-syndicalist.” As far as I can tell from their website, the CGT does not define this in terms of future social transformation but in terms of their approach to unionism. Thus they claim to be advocates of self-managed (autogestionado), assembly-based (asembleista), class unionism (syndicalismo de clase). Class unionism is a form of unionism that brings workers together in struggle and decision-making across the various economic sectors.
Thus, I think it is a mistake to define anarcho-syndicalism as a form of union committed explicitly to an anarchist social transformation. Among the militants who ascribe to the anarcho-syndicalist strategy, they may see the practices of worker self-management of the union, participation in direct self-activity, and horizontal solidarity as the best way to build a vast working-class movement that prefigures a libertarian socialist society.
And it may be that internal discussion of social transformation is going to be needed at some point to prepare the membership for revolutionary tasks. But this is not the same as saying that new self-managed unions built in periods of low-levels of struggle and low levels of class consciousness (like the contemporary era) must have an explicit commitment to an anarchist social transformation from the get-go.
Nonetheless, there was a tendency in revolutionary unionism that did define the union in terms of its anarchist politics. The Workers Federation of the Argentine Region (FORA) sometimes talked about being an “anarchist workers organization.” This ideological unionism is sometimes called forismo. The problem with this view is that it very rapidly led to splits in the labor movement in the South American countries where this practice was attempted. But it would be a mistake to confuse forismo with anarcho-syndicalism in general.
Despite my caveats about Baker’s discussion of syndicalism, I would recommend this book for those interested in learning about the history and character of mass-struggle oriented social anarchism as the book is quite comprehensive in delving into the various ins and outs of social anarchist theory, vision and practice.
Tom Wetzel is the author of Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century.
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There are 36 Comments
«In reality, the principle of
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Fri, 06/21/2024 – 22:44
«In reality, the principle of remuneration for work effort and the principle of free-to-user pubic goods and services are compatible.»
No, they are not. Tom Wetzel has been singing this doltish off-key left-liberal tune since L.J., later of AJODA magazine, I and a bunch of other people were in a stupid anarchist group that met at Wetzel’s place in SF’s Mission District all of the year 1983. That’s 41 years ago now!
You cannot have a little capitalist social relations and a little not-capitalist social relations. You either have capitalist exploitation — the wages system, here spray-painted with water soluble circle-As as «remuneration for work effort.» Or you have fully realized communist society, where market relations in all forms are completely and permanently abolished; call it libertarian communism, free communism, anarcho-communism, libertarian socialism or whatever you want.
The material preconditions for an immediate leap to a post-market society have been amply created by capitalism. Wetzel’s stunted managerial vision in 2024 is qualitatively far to the right of every authentic communist tendency going back to the Conspiracy of Equals in 1796. He should stick to giving out mimeographed leaflets to the coal-stokers at the front gates of the local zeppelin factory with his fellow anachro-swindicalists.
Why these regions?
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 05:43
Where does Baker explain or justify her geographic focus? The beginning of the book includes this:
«I shall rationally reconstruct the revolutionary strategies of anarchism within Europe and the United States between 1868 and 1939. It is important to note that this exclusive focus on one part of the world is an artificial construction.
The real historical anarchist movement was constituted by transnational networks that operated at a global scale and enabled ideas and people to flow between continents. The movements in different countries were so interconnected that a complete history of anarchism in Europe and the United States necessarily includes the history of anarchism in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania—and vice versa. The true history of anarchism can only be written as a global history. My book is a contribution toward this global history but only covers a small fragment of it.»
But it doesn’t explain *why* she chose the places she did to focus on. Only reading English can’t explain it either, as there’s much published work in English by or about anarchists who predominantly lived elsewhere
Unconscious/closet racism
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 09:34
Unconscious/closet racism might be the explanation of the why… Dismissing the role of anarchy in parts of colonial Africa, China, pre-war Japan, Brazil as well as all the lesser obvious anarchistic cultures like the so-called Zomia, grassroots merchant & peasant cultures of the Stans and many other indigenous societies can only come from Westerner short-sightedness, rooted in only acknowledging what is White and written in White languages.
Honk, honk! Go run for Mayor
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 10:42
Honk, honk! Go run for Mayor of Berkeley.
Oh it’s you, the
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 11:31
Oh it’s you, the personalityless troll that copies other based anons’ mannerisms. Welcum backkk, I suppose.
To: class-struggle anarchists
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 09:59
As an anarho-nihilistic radical individualist I’d be -surprise surprise- much disposed of joinging your Struggle if you could ever provide with a *concrete*, palatable, workable and reliable collective project adapted to our current historical context… not the one from 100 years ago. And also one that doesn’t require me/us to first get into jobs for The Man.
But after decades of neo-modernist ancom talk, you still haven’t *any* solid project. ZERO. «0». NOTHING.
Not like the Creative Nothing. Just nothing, but while pretending of a Something. That’s a critic I heard 20 years back from an informed normie young women… back when I was an ancom myself. She was righr back then, and would be even more right today.
«And also one that doesn’t
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 10:24
«And also one that doesn’t require me/us to first get into jobs for The Man.»
Nobody works for a living out of an ideological commitment to wage labor. We are coerced into because we live in a capitalist society.
Have you been on planet Earth long? What do they do back on your planet?
As an actual individualist
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 10:38
As an actual individualist anarcho-nihilist in the world outside of my computer that engages with class-struggle anarchist on the daily, I just want to point out that this goon is not representative of actual anarchists of action who are actually in it and living it.
Additionally, begging red anarchists to give you a purpose might make you want to consider calling yourself what you seem to be calling yourself. Just sayin’!
Kill your internet, 09:59. The fight is offline and it’s joyful as fuck.
Who is representative of who and what, and how?
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 11:32
Very important question for the post-modern era. As I’ll be suspicious of those claiming to represent or even be representative of anyone outside of the Keyboard Organizers that they are.
> Kill your internet, 09:59. The fight is offline and it’s joyful as fuck.
Great… yes… But what are you doing here in the first place?
It’s alright to me to be discussing ideas over the internet, especially on platforms no Javasnitches and no accounts are required. If you got issues with critical commenters perhaps you can go back to comment-free silos/safe spaces like IGD?
Pleeease, class struggle red
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 11:39
Pleeease, class struggle red anarchists, give me purpose and a reason to JOIN YOU I am a nihilist individualist really! Please convince me to join!
For 11:39
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 11:49
For 11:39
Why would anyone be so desperate for your company? If you define yourself in those terms you are almost certainly impossible to take serious and would probably be a drag on any effort with others that you get — no doubt very briefly — involved with.
WHOOSH!
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 12:22
WHOOSH!
*yawn* I never asked anything
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 15:54
*yawn* I never asked anything from you. Especially not coming from a R&B. I just said if you want people to hop on your boat.. well then quit the fantasies on how that boat your ancestors had 100 years was so neat, and get a new boat to start with. Then maybe if it’s a cool battleship equipped with saunas for everyone and rave parties then likely I’ll hop in.
There are no R&Bs here, brah.
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 18:36
There are no R&Bs here, brah. But as it would clearly be ableist for me to continue responding… I’ll leave by just telling you that you’re doing great. Boats are fun. TOOT TOOT!
SooOoo true, real nihilo
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 06:45
SooOoo true, real nihilo-anarchs don’t ask for things, they just take them! There is a subtle nuanced difference between an individualist nihilo-anarch and a doctrinal anarcho-nihilist.
In Spain anarcho-syndicalism
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 11:08
In Spain anarcho-syndicalism spearheaded the most far-going effort to destroy capitalist society and realize communist society seen so far — and then, from an initial position of overwhelming strength, acted to shore up the power of a weak bourgeois state in a period of mass revolutionary unrest, fed proletarians to the capitalist war machine, and ceaselessly gave in to the Stalinist counter-revolution without offering credible resistance.
This was the high point of and the final demise of Tom Wetzel’s brand of politics.
Time moves on. Capitalist society continues to evolve.
Here are some anti-market relations and anti-wage labor real world efforts, as opposed to what pro-wage labor leftists like Tom Wetzel passively muse about.
Anyone can do this, and probably do this better that what’s examined here:
https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/_Textual/KevinKeating_LoveAndTre…
And a closer look at some loser leftist lies:
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/10/18534819.php
One of a number of actions among service sector proles:
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/06/20/18738735.php
40-plus years of anarcho-swindicalism and Tom Wetzel has nothing comparable to show for it…
Rebel ex-slaves, frequently
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 14:06
Rebel ex-slaves, frequently in collaboration with other indigenous peoples in the «Americas», engaged in much wider-scale destitutions of the attempted imposition of capitalism over centuries, frequently in states of open warfare. The Haitian revolution set back enclosure of rural communities there by 2 centuries; Maroon bands controlled much of the Caribbean coast & smaller islands for over a century, while their descendants in Surinam still have a large degree of autonomy today. We’re not even counting quilombolas in «Brazil». (None of this is to knock the Iberians for trying.)
https://archive.org/details/Maroon_the_Implacable_9781604868531
Check these essays.
The Dragon and the Hydra: A Historical Study of Organizational Methods (2006); The Real Resistance to Slavery in North America (2005)
Yeah, and that’s obviously of
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sat, 06/22/2024 – 22:41
Yeah, and that’s obviously of much less relevance to what we face at this point in the 21st century than the already quite distant realities of Russia from Feb. 1917 to March 1918 and Spain from July 1936 to Sept. 1936.
Again, some of the maroon
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 07:45
Again, some of the maroon communities & quilombos still exist today, so they are relevant in the most immediate sense. Besides, idea that «the longer time ago the less relevant it is» hews closer to progressivist enlightenment ideology than reality.
How is what you are talking
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 11:01
How is what you are talking about here relevant to real world class struggles of wage earners in societies like the 21st century United States? That’s obviously what’s being examined here.
That’s for me to find obvious
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 17:22
That’s for me to find obvious while you sit & fume over it. Neither the book nor the review restricts itself to such a narrow time & social category, however.
give me purpose and a reason
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 00:21
give me purpose and a reason to JOIN YOU I am a nihilist individualist really!
I’d run, not walk, to get away from a nihilist individualist, but you can still valiantly serve the revolution — go join some Leninist group. Your mere presence in the ranks of the counter-revolutionaries will totally gum up their efforts — and bring the Stalinists or Trotskyists crashing down to their black destruction! Hey, after the downfall of the old order someone might name a post office after you.
Join Us? No, Join Reality!
Submitted by Wayne Price (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 13:05
Several posters ask for a reason to «join you,» the mass-struggle anarchist-socialists. They accuse us of using «100 year old» ideologies.
Yes, revolutionary class-struggle anarchism is a century old. But so is industrial capitalism (at least). There have been enormous changes in capitalism but the central issues have not changed: the class conflict of capital/labor, the authoritarian state, the authoritarian society. In case you haven’t noticed, more of the world’s population is working class these days than in the time of Bakunin or Marx. Certainly most of the US population works for a wage or salary. You can be as individualist as you like, but if you want to change this rotten society you have to win over the majority of these people. But the U.S. working population is too conservative, and certainly not revolutionary anarchists, you reply. True, which is only to say we are nowhere near a popular revolution. If you want to transform society you should join with us in trying to work out a revolutionary appeal to the majority of the (working class) population. If we cannot, then we are facing ecological, military, and economic destruction.
BTW, this is a fine review of an excellent book.
Oh Wayne. It was just one
Submitted by Nihilist Maggot (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 13:27
Oh Wayne. It was just one goober troll trolling you. And you complied. Sad!
But since you did… let’s see… what’s that (misattributed) Einstein quote about definition of insanity again? You know the one.. Well, it certainly applies here to your persistence.
Also,
«You can… but if you want … you have to …. But …»
Said every failed zealot of whatever, ever. Sure, Wayne, if all the things are in alignment then results will result!
But guess what?
I disagree with much of what
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 17:48
I disagree with much of what Wayne writes, but he goes to bat for what he believes in in a forthright manner, as opposed to the more commonly found adolescent snarkiness.
I disagree with much of what
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 17:51
I disagree with much of what Bibi writes, but he goes to bat for what he believes in in a forthright manner, as opposed to the more commonly found adolescent snarkiness.
Yeah, try again.
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 17:55
Yeah, try again.
I disagree with much of what
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 18:18
I disagree with much of what Elon Musk writes, but he goes to bat for what he believes in in a forthright manner, as opposed to the more commonly found adolescent snarkiness.
I was being sarcastic,
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 18:32
I was being sarcastic, numbnuts. I wasn’t being literal…
I disagree with much of what
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 18:48
I disagree with much of what Kid Rock writes, but he goes to bat for what he believes in in a forthright manner, as opposed to the more commonly found adolescent bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy.
I disagree with much of what
Submitted by anon (not verified) on Sun, 06/23/2024 – 21:04
I disagree with much of what anon troll writes, but , he goes to bat for the commonly found adolescent snarkiness, instead of for what he believes in in a forthright manner.
Really?
Submitted by anarcho (not verified) on Mon, 06/24/2024 – 08:04
» Emma Goldman claimed to sympathize with individualist anarchism and even with Nietzsche.»
Not come across Goldman saying anything positive about the likes of Tucker — in fact, she repeatedly indicated that her ideas (anarcho-communism) were different to Tucker’s.
Anyway, Baker’s book is recommended — covers the period and ideas well.
Prouhon has been shown to be the more vindicated one
Submitted by SirEinzige on Mon, 06/24/2024 – 10:25
While I’m no Proudhonian, his ideas make more sense then what were essentially Russian collectivist entryist tendencies into the ideas that he started in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Anarchism was never geared toward class war or abstract reified collectivity. Syndicalism remains a shitty set of ideas with its goals of the homounion. One big union is to the left what globohomo is the liberalism. They both reek of christian derived universalism. The clASS struggle aspect of anarchism was always a product of too much Marxist influence. That doesn’t work either. Class analysis is fine and there’s better analysis of class then Marx(Proudhon among others) but get lost with that contrived war and struggle. I work with service sector proles, they are simply not interested in any kind of elective struggle. Not even during a strike(which I was a part of last year 2023).
Messy human plurality is what is best for anarchy and paradoxically this means that not every part of the world will be anarchic in practice. Niggas like Shawn Wilbur and Cayce Jamil are doing Proudhon justice and bringing him back into proper focus. The fact remains that the 3 founding figures of modern age anarchism/anarchy are Godwin, Proudhon and Stirner and none of their ideas lead to any type of class war or one big union. That is not what human liberty, anarchy or owness entail.
Russian? Really?
Submitted by anarcho (not verified) on Mon, 06/24/2024 – 11:05
Collectivist anarchism developed within the French section of the International before Bakunin started to champion it. So it is not some kind of Russian import (regardless of what Marx may have thought). And Proudhon was well aware there was a class struggle and he took sides when he had to — look at his famous speech to the French National Assembly. As Bakunin said, «the Proudhonism widely developed and pushed right to these, its final consequences,.»
Likewise with Stirner — he urged the workers to act in their own self-interest, strike and seize the property they created but did not own.
So nothing to do with Marxism, sorry. Which is just a lazy attack which shows incredible ignorance of the history of anarchism, Marxism and the labour movement.
sir ziggles has been here,
Submitted by lumpy (not verified) on Mon, 06/24/2024 – 18:14
sir ziggles has been here, making his ahistorical, jackass claims about anarchism: what it was, is and should become, for many, looong years now. but yes, his strange theories have a tendency to send imaginary terminators back in time to try and change things
Yes really
Submitted by SirEinzige on Tue, 06/25/2024 – 10:17
Of course there were collectivist tendencies in the Western part of Europe as well but they were more pronounced in Russia and Eastern Europe. Also, I’m really homing in on anarcho-communism as I think that was the mistaken road that anarchism went down comparable to(though not as bad as) anarchocapitalism(or anarchopropertarianism). I think that Bakunin, overall, was good and made necessary improvements to PJP but I could do without the collectivism. The better successor to PJP in my book was Armand. He and the subsequent crazier Italians never fell for the collectivist to communist trap.
PJP did adjust his politics for the noise of 1848 and what was going on then but I don’t think that made him a clASS war orientated thinker or someone into violent instrumentality(see his position on the June Days Uprising). He was a gradualist at the end of the day.
As for Stirner, he wasn’t into that stuff at all. Stirner essentially takes the anti-work refusal position which is NOT the same thing as class war. Class war is driven by elective struggle and narratological buy in on a large scale, something Stirner(radical personalist that he was)clearly wasn’t into. Class war is essentially a political impersonal disposition.
The reason the Marxist connection is there is because anarchism/anarchy(whether you take the Proudhon path or the more radical Stirner path) is simply not interested in turning class analysis into an elective historical struggle. That was something that Marx was into and to the degree that anarchists fall for that crap they do end up being influenced by Marxism(Bakunin certainly was) whether they know it or not.
The Free 