Are you a marxist but not a member of a marxist organisation?
- Thread starter hitmouse
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The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
Not really sure what I was hoping for when I started this thread, suppose I was just curious as to whether Marxists (at least as represented on u75) are actually any more or less likely to be involved in formal political groups than anarchists? And what I've learned is that if you make your poll options confusing and vague and give a cop-out option, you will probably not have any useful data to use. 
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
People never look at Marx as what he actually was, an economist who saw that societies change based on ‘technology’ in its broadest term increasing the amount of surplus value. You can’t wish full socialism,much less advanced communism into place any more than you could have a feudal society rather than a slave based one with the tech the Romans had (scratch ploughs no ready access to steel in large quantities etc) . Likewise the merchants of the reformation couldn’t have built their primitive capitalism in place of feudalism without their tech changes ( crop rotation, stored energy access etc etc). To imagine anything else is like those books where the vikings had steam trains.
Views about being the ‘vanguard of the revolution’ come from skipping all those (even more) boring bits in Capital about making fucking shirts…
Communism will come - if it does- when we have post scarcity tech - probably free’ energy and direct production. As with the other changes it will probably be ugly, violent and driven by not very nice people.It won’t be delivered by nice folks selling leaflets to each other.
Besides, whilst his historical analysis is pretty spot on , he could be wrong about the next stages of society. We also might face unseen bottle necks like climate disaster….
Views about being the ‘vanguard of the revolution’ come from skipping all those (even more) boring bits in Capital about making fucking shirts…
Communism will come - if it does- when we have post scarcity tech - probably free’ energy and direct production. As with the other changes it will probably be ugly, violent and driven by not very nice people.It won’t be delivered by nice folks selling leaflets to each other.
Besides, whilst his historical analysis is pretty spot on , he could be wrong about the next stages of society. We also might face unseen bottle necks like climate disaster….
You don't seem to really want to open your mind and learn at all. You just come across as blindly and stubbornly committed to authoritarianism. But the fact is that things were very fucked up before Stalin came along. It started with your precious vanguard party brutally repressing the other socialists and communists (including the anarchists) and co-opting and effectively destroying the worker's councils/soviets. Stalin would have got nowhere without Lenin and Trotsky laying the ground work of a highly repressive, totalitarian police state that murdered those who did not agree with them being in charge.
Stalin learnt alot from those two and inherited their repressive state apparatus, he merely took things to another level, which may well would have happened anyway had Lenin stayed alive, or Trotsky somehow gained power, which he was not capable of doing.
At the end of the day Stalinism and Trotskyism originate from the bossom of Leninism. That is simply a fact.
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Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Trotskyism is Stalinism out of power, and Leninism is just Stalinism as a child
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Nice folk don't sell leaflets
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Aye, I've worked with anarchists in many a campaign and they've been excellent comrades, particularly in anti-fascist and housing campaigns (campaigns which most of the 'trad' commies/trots had given up on in favour of something much blander). Some of them could be the most bloody stupid occasionally, but they weren't the most irritating - an honour which goes to either the SWP or CP because of their insistence on dominating.
I have found the anarchists to be much weaker on issues where a campaign is trying to influence the state to do something (other than simply Abolish XYZ). For instance, he last meeting I went to on anarchism, a couple of weeks back, accidentally, was all about very low level organising, building up little communities that would share stuff. When the matter of climate change came up and it was pointed out that sharing a lawnmower (seriously, the talk was about communal lawnmowers!) wouldn't do much, the response was simply 'yeah, but we can't do owt about that really, and it's not going to be that bad.'
Sadly, with something like climate change, if we wait till we have built up strong enough local communities in such a manner and act on 'pure' principles, that's at least 1billion people fucked.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?” – Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, 1937.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
If we extrapolate from one example to a global scale we look like stupid wankers. And here you are extrapolating from er one example to a global scale
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Not really, I am talking about how focusing solely on small, local, initiatives, while worthwhile, means that the participants will miss the occasions when far bigger and broader action is necessary.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
No it doesn't. And no you aren't. You went to one meeting and you're saying if everything was done like this it's all fucked - extrapolating from your single example. But not everything is or will be done like that.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
I am giving one meeting as an 'example' and pointing out what has been my actual experience of those involved in climate action around here. Anarchists are, probably, pretty good when it comes to some direct action against something specific, but less so when it comes to, say, trying to convince Unite to oppose a third heathrow runway, even tho building it would employ Unite members. I have seen a refusal to engage with anything that would simply, and boringly, put pressure on the government - cos 'governments are the problem.'
That meeting was particularly bad, as a couple of the other anarchists there agreed, but what else could I expect from a former Class War parliamentary candidate?
I very much doubt that they were matched by others. With the Peasants of Aragon by Augustin Souchy is a ground level tour of the most anarchistic area, very detailed, honest and contemporary. Have you read it?
Groups like the Friends of Durruti were the militants, but there were others. And as I've already said, lessons can and have been learnt from the spanish revolution - it's strange that you insist on saying that's not possible.
That then begs the question - why do you double down on stubbornly being in favour of state capitalist dictatorship?
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belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Nope, only so many books I have time to read, but I'll look that out.
I have never said any such thing. There are lots of lessons to be learned. I just don't think anarchists have learned the right ones
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
So it wasn't you who posted asking if everywhere acted the same then. Tell you what, why not read your posts so you know what you've said
I find Marx's critique and analysis of capitalism very useful (unlike Leninism). And the org I'm in (the ACG) has published a Compendium of Capital by Carlo Cafeiro (considered by Marx himself in his day to be the best work on his ideas). What I don't agree with Marx on is his solution to capitalism, which was predicted by Bakunin and Kropotkin to end up as an even worse tyranny than what preceeded it, and was certainly predicted by them to be a complete disaster and a form of tyranny.
Being a member of the SWP years ago taught me a lot about the 'revolutionary' leftist parties. I have heard about significant problems with most, if not all of them (including the Socialist Party and Militant tendency). Many (if not all) of them being corrupt cults that party organisers and CC members use as careers and power trips, helped along with 'democratic' centralism - which is just a way to undemocratically impose the will of the central committee on the party.
I knew people who were involved in the workings of the party, more so than I was, who experienced first hand the top-down corruption of the SWP. These comrades criticised and left the party and it showed them what Leninist ideology was. Before they had these experiences they were committed party members. Many of these people went over to anarchism, some of them were permanently put off of being involved in politics after what they went through in the SWP. It was through a comrade that became an anarchist that I learnt about anarchism and decided to leave the party myself and get involved with anarchist stuff. My comrades considered anarchism, or libertarian communism, to be a more genuine, authentic form of communism. And before the Bolsheviks seized power and bastardized the words socialism and communism it was libertarian communism/socialism that was the dominant strain.
Militant were just as bad as the SWP at trying to opportunistically take over campaigns, and destroy them when they couldn't do that - the anti-Poll Tax campaigns were a good example of that. I mean it was the likes of Tommy Sheridan who came out of that lot, says it all really.
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You should read it, especially as it's free online. I'm sure theres plenty of stuff you've not read. And theres clearly plenty you need to learn frankly.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
No it wasn't. you seem to have added some words from your own imagination
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
So tell me, what is it that we haven't learnt?I just don't think anarchists have learned the right ones
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Anything.
Tbh, I cant be arsed going around in tedious circles with you just posting up summat you've copied from a libcom article. If you want a thread discussing the ins and outs of the spanish revolution. start a thread on it or bump an old one.
Anyway, i thought I was on ignore. Seems we can't believe a word (some) anarchists say.
Which is basically the same as not learning anything. Which is what I said you were saying.There are lots of lessons to be learned. I just don't think anarchists have learned the right ones
Exactly my point. And complete bollox.
Must admit I'm surprised. You come across as very SWP.
So why argue that you were not saying that? This is why you just come across as a troll. You don't participate in a proper discussion, you are just a frustrating waste of time trying to 'communicate' with.
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