AWL publish 'working class struggle and anarchism'

I got as far as the Makhno bit and gave up. Fucking atrocious.

i got this far

so basically anarchist communist don't exist

Why are some seemingly sensible and nice people in the AWL
Worth linking to this, a reply to a similarly ridiculous piece: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/sr.html

(ex-libcommer?) dee tears that apart quite nicely in the comment

Its worth pointing out that the AWL have been trying to be friendly with SF in London for sometime. Probably with an eye to absorbing us, because apparently "we have very similar politics" according to some of their members (I kid you not!). So I guess this rather poorly understood and badly written piece was partly written with us in mind.

They could have at least got someone who wasn't utterly uninformed to write it then...

They're offering to give space in their paper and online for someone to write a response. Someone should take them up on it...

It's all true you know ......not

Suggested Jim, suggested! Actually I reckon dee should do it.

What a pile of crap -- really, really bad. A few examples...

[Proudhon] did not even see industrial capital as exploitative. In his view only financial and merchant capital were exploitative.

Not remotely true -- Proudhon was quite explicit that exploitation was a product of wage-labour, of workers' selling their labour/liberty to a boss, that it happened in production.

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/proudhon-and-marx-on-exploitation

And, let us be honest, there are very, very few mutualists around -- invoking Proudhon is irrelevant because most anarchists are revolutionaries, not reformists! Still, why mention that?

Bakunin did not see the working class as the central agent of revolution. He considered peasants and the urban unemployed, beggars, petty criminals, etc. to be much more potent revolutionary forces.

absolute nonsense:

H.2.2 Do anarchists reject "class conflict" and "collective struggle"?

H.2.7 Who do anarchists see as their "agents of social change"?

H.2.8 What is the relationship of anarchism to syndicalism?

The Makhno movement had no idea how to organise towns. . . . At the two workers' conferences which the Makhnovites organised in the area they controlled in October 1919, the big majority of the workers were hostile to the Makhnovites.

I guess the workers really liked how Lenin introduced one-man management and loved it when Trotsky militarised them! No idea what the second assertion is based on. Still, the bolsheviks did not have to worry about workers expressing opposition -- they organised revolutionary committees to impose their party dictatorship and crushed any strikes which happened.

See this reply to an ISO attack on the Makhnovists:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/on-the-bolshevik-myth

In times when working-class organisation and struggle have run at a high level, many anarchists have gone over to anarcho-syndicalism, i.e. to much the same idea as Marxists about the centrality of the wage-working class and its everyday struggles.

I guess that makes Bakunin a Marxist! Still, Marx was clear in thinking Bakunin's syndicalism was wrong:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/syndicalism-anarchism-and-marxism

Those workers' councils will be the foundation of the future workers' state.

The idea of workers councils being the framework of socialism dates back to Bakunin, not Marx. And the whole point of Bakunin's critique of Marx was that a "workers' state" was a contradiction in terms -- if the workers were in charge, it was not a state; if there was a state then a minority ruled, not the workers.

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/the-revolutionary-ideas-of-bakunin

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/review-bakunins-statism-anarchy

In short, the AWL should be ashamed of themselves. They should know better, particularly as I did crush them in debate a few years back in London:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/marxism-or-anarchism

They were terrible -- as bad as this crappy article. But what can you expect from Trots?

Thanks for the reference to the anarchist writers site, i'm much interested.

Do the AWL have a policy of recruiting anarchists with not much theoretical knowledge on the grounds that 'we're basically the same, so we might as well work together' and then feeding them this sort of line. I've seen it tried too many times to be confident that its a coincidence.

i don't know about the awl but spew definitely do that

WP have revolution which has always had an anarchistic sheen to it, while AWL seem to operate through a series of fronts which are nominally anarchist facing. No Sweat, Feminist Fightback and Workers Climate Action.

I feel I should point out that Feminist Fightback is not a straight AWL front: only one or two members of AWL attend regularly (meetings are regularly 15 or 20), and while occasionally they "intervene" more heavily in general the politics and activity of the group are independent. AWL has its own women's paper, "women's fightback", and would (I believe) prefer to launch an organisation round that - indeed, probably will do if they can accrue the basis for it outside FF, which has too many people critical of Trotskyist organisational norms and the Labour Party to work well for it as a front.

AWL doesn't particularly make an effort to recruit self-identifying anarchists, though they do operate in milieus (Climate Camp), and often with slogans, which mean they're competing for people who'd otherwise be attracted to the libertarian left. e.g. loudly denouncing SWP for support of Hamas (whilst keeping quiet about their own support for Fatah, KLA, FLN, etc.)

Well, I've expanded upon my post above and placed it on their webpage -- and contributed a few more.

I will wait to see if they are left there and if anyone bothers to reply. I wonder what they will say about the Trotsky quotes I gave?

A truly terrible article. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I find this stuff interesting because I'm a bit of a trainspotter when it comes to the far left. Spending time correcting their outright falsehoods will not be as effective as examining why they continue to attack anarchism on such an obviously poor basis.

I don't know much about Workers Liberty, they have a small branch here in Australia, but if they are true to the bolshevik form, correcting them on a factual basis will have zero effect on their argument. To actively engage with the history of mass anarchist practice, which is not above reproach, would involve the risky act of acknowledging it exists, and has existed in parallel with the far more shameful practices of stalinist, leninist and trotskyoid parties.

Even if you do accept that Proudhon is the "father of anarchism" (which most anarchists would not), anarchists are not obliged to accept everything that Proudhon's said or did anymore than AWL must accept Trotsky's every move and word, despite there being a better case for the latter.

Why do they engage in this kind of argument? They either do not expect it to be questioned (unsurprising in authoritarian groups) or do not worry that they will be shown to be lying. More to the point:

I actually agree with Randall here (not the Bookchin part which is obv bullshit), btw. What I think it reveals, though, is what motivates writing a deliberately misleading article. Why would they would find that such a concern and why do they need to rely on Proudhon (not an anarchist), the Zapatistas (not anarchists), Bookchin (whose anarchism, at best, was confused and ultimately denied by him personally) to denounce not-really-anarchism popularised during the anti-globalisation protests? That motivation, I would say, is the "explosion of people identifying broadly as "anarchists" " (his scare quotes, not mine). That's the level the article should be critiqued at. The content of the argument is ephemeral to the actions justified by this concern.

Trots, eh?

I would agree with asking why they do this -- I think it is an attempt to stop their members investigating anarchism by demonising it. Leninists rarely read anarchist works, so this kind of nonsense can be written so that the members (and readers) will not read further....

Well, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rocker, Guerin and a host of others think he was an anarchist. I think he was an anarchist, as do many others. He was a reformist anarchist of course, and was wrong on many things. That does not stop his works basically defining what anarchism is and laying the foundations upon which revolutionary anarchism was built.

So, yes, we are NOT obliged to accept everything Proudhon said (as I explore in my review of System of Economic Contradictions he said some wise things and some very stupid things)-- just as we are not obliged to accept everything Bakunin or Kropotkin said. However, it would be foolish to deny the obvious impact of his ideas on revolutinary anarchism.

Part of the problem is that Proudhon is someone lots of people quote but few read. Hopefully my new anthology of his writings (Property is Theft!) will show modern libertarians why the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc., considered him important.

They quote Proudhon because, firstly, some of his ideas were just plain wrong -- e.g., on strikes, reformism -- and so can be used to smear revolutionary anarchists by implication (they usually fail to mention that Proudhon was alone in that position!). Secondly, as I said, Proudhon is someone few anarchists have actually read so they can get away with nonsense about him (e.g., the silly assertion he did not think industrial capital was exploitative). Thirdly, because of these two facts they can set the tone of a piece and ensure that their members will not pursue looking into anarchism.

As I've said before, most anarchists have not read Proudhon and so are usually willing to tolerate Marxists talking complete nonsense about him (starting with Marx!) in ways they would not tolerate if it were Bakunin or Kropotkin.

Oh, and I should note that once, long ago, I used to think Proudhon was not an anarchist as well. Then, like Daniel Guerin, I actually read him. That changed my mind -- and the wealth of material in the new anthology I've edited will show how much Proudhon influenced revolutionary anarchism (and Marxism!).

My point isn't that Proudhon wasn't highly influential on early anarchists, he was, but I maintain he wasn't an anarchist, and we are not Proudhonists. Selective Proudhon quotes won't reveal a lot about why anarchy is the current watchword, but like you say, it isn't meant to. The poverty of Leninism and its antecedents means this is how many of them interact with Marx; studying without much critique – which is why the call themselves Marxists, I guess. That they project this onto anarchists isn't that surprising, and they probably find the fact that we can easily dismiss problematic aspects of Proudhon infuriating.

I agree claims to Proudhon's anarchism (or not) are debatable, but maybe a discussion for another thread. It doesn't really impact on the argument that the WL article examines Proudhon in particular because looking at relevant examples of contemporary anarchism would defeat the purpose of the article. Seems like we're in agreement pretty much.

I'm open to being convinced on Proudhon, btw. Will check out your articles.

AWL are rabid dogs not worth talking to. I'm guessing they're giving anarchists all this 'attension' because no one else on the Trot left wants to talk to them.

The bastards spend an unhealthy length of time 'chatting up' anarchos in London. It's like being verbally molested by an anaemic sexual predator. This clearly is an attempt to extend their 'trendy' recruitment model to recently radicalised student youths who rejected the left during the recent troubles. So watch out if they offer you some lollies...you might get more than you bargained for!

It is hard to say why they do it. The ICC has done the same thing too, and I am not sure if its done through sheer ignorance or lack of understanding, or wanting to portray anarchism like that. I don't think that anarchism today is 'Bakuninism' either for that matter.

To give a very charitable reading of these sort of things they might know little about anarchism beyond what Marx and Lenin wrote on it.

I find it quite bizarre to write an article today in England about anarchism without even mentioning the two main anarchist organisations, the AF and SolFed.

Devrim

They now seem to have reposted the article, shortened, so the one that appears at on the front page at the top doesn't have any inconvenient comments (although the new version hasn't taken on board any of the criticisms... I sometimes post on things as dee, it was the name of my first email address as well, and I was the dee on that article.

edit: They've now sorted their website so the anarchism article does have the comments

Does anyone feel this way? Seriously?

Anarchists whom I know, not in SF, who object to AF do so from almost entirely from a anti-organisation stand point.

TomU's comment that JoeMaguire quoted illustrates my point. A major problem in arguing factually with trots is their insistence on treating anarchist organisations as interchangeable with Leninist parties. In my experience, they just can't get their heads around it. (When they do, it's usually at the point of leaving the organisation!)

Why? So we can be sucked into their self-perpetuating vortex of insular debate? What does this prove? We have plenty of material, practical activity to be getting on with that isn't engaging with malicious Trots with ulterior motives. You well know this Posi!

EDIT ignore them and I'm against SF having a relationship with them. We honestly have loads going on. Why would we try to divorce ourselves from the anarchist ghetto only in order to jump into the leftist one?

I only know 1 AWL guy and he was sound as tbh, even joined the local IWW branch which the only active members are anarchists.

I find it hard to see why he's in such an party like the AWL though because he doesn't seem to match up with them.

Maybe if he was part of a bigger branch I might have a different opinion of him...

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/03/09/anarchism-marxism-and-polemic

They've struck again! This time publishing real names of the posters who commented below the article!

Should people even be indulging these ignorant wankers in debate?

you want more lulz/rage, here's the AWL's powerpoint presentation on anarchism given by the author in 2008 at their dayscool if. beyond clueless.

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/01/06/anarchism-today-powerpoint-presentation