AWL publish 'working class struggle and anarchism'

Cool this is like ultra left- redwatch

AWL are a mixed bunch. The Commune seems to cooperate with them a little, and strangely the Network X web has a link to their site

On the other hand i've experienced first hand their attempts to suck in anarchos, i was approached at a student fees protest by someone trying to sell me a copy of 'Barricade' - their belated youth mag. I didn't know it was a trot rag until i'd bought it and looked at the small print to see it was produced by AWL. Before i had done this the bloke was asking for writers for it and i asked whether they would accept anarchist pieces and he got really excited.

Perhaps they just (misguidedly) think they are being non-sectarian?

I'm in the commune so just to clarify some of this...

The Commune was originally set up by two blokes who left the AWL. One of whom has since left The Commune. So the AWL doesn't seem to like the commune, much less want to cooperate with us. And we've never done any joint event or joint initiative that I remember with them.

A lot of us move in similar social circles, and seeing as David was once a member, some of us know most of the people in the AWL. So I can see where you have got that impression but its not really accurate.

@georgestapleton
well being a council communist i like The Commune, i've read most of their pamphlets (got in trouble at work for using up all the ink from printing them all out at once).
i guess i was worried they might have a soft touch toward bolshevism
thanks for clearing that up

A response of sorts

Well, they AWL are at it again... They have reviewed "Black Flame" -- well, tried to as all they have done is expose their utter ignorance of anarchism AND Leninism. It is in three parts:

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/05/10/all-feathered-new-defence-anarchism

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/05/17/how-anarchism-parted-ways-marxism

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/05/24/anarchism-and-commune

The word pathetic does not do it justice. I've made comments on all three parts exposing the nonsense.

I am not sure it is worth the bother Anarcho, but I am still glad you do (especially as you do such a good job)

Jeeesus clearly Bolsheviks and Workers control should be made mandatory reading for AWLers!

Not to be outdone. Workers power is taking a shot at Autonomism

http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2011/04/the-problem-of-autonomism/

Unfortunatly the author makes the mistake of assuming autonomism is all about the autonomy of the individual as opposed to the autonomy of the struggle. It all goes down hill from there.

Enjoy.

That's pretty much the standard Trot line, tho, isn't it?

Just to let yous know, the AWL have asked me to debate "Anarchism and Marxism" at their conference thingy on the 9/10th of July. I asked that the session is free (although donations will be asked for) and that there is an anarchist stall. Both were agreed.

So I'm thinking sometime on the Saturday afternoon would be best -- I'll post when I get confirmation of times. It would be nice if there were lots on our side as the last time I debated them there were about 3 anarchists there. Shame, as I wiped the floor with them (text of that talk is here) -- their speaker was SO bad...

any thoughts?

As regards Bolshevik book burning, Krupskaya, Lenin's missus, was in charge of the libraries and she enforced the following in 1923 as head of Politprosoviet (Educational and Propaganda Dept.)
This was for examination and withdrawal of books from libraries with a list of books to be withdrawn "those that have become obsolete, or are of little value, and to an even greater extent, harmful and counter-revolutionary books". Kant and the Bible were to remain only in academic libraries,( two copies maximum only ) and only given out "under the strictest responsibility of the chief librarians".
The following were to be removed : Descartes, Kant, Mach, Plato, Spencer, Schopenhauer, all theological works and the followuing psychologists were banned: Vvedensky, Hoeffding, James, Taine. Also banned were Carlyle, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Maeterlinck, Nietsche, tolstoy - not his novels) Vladimir Solovyev, Lossky, Grott, Lange. The following novelists were also banned: Octave Mirbeau, Lieskov, Victor Margueritte, Nemirovich-Danchenko. All children's literature to be removed and all agitational pamphlets directed against "the Communist movement, Bolsheviks and peace partisans" and all pre-1917 pro -constitutional democratic literature, pro-civil rights, pro- Constituent Assembly, pr0-universal suffrage etc. in addition all Bolshevik and Soviet agitational and reference literature from 1918-1920 which differed with current Bolshevik approach to land, taxes, free trade, food problem etc, were to be withdrawn.
Many librarians objected, but were then threatened with the Cheka by Krupskaya and were forced to comply.

Forgot to say that Ruskin was also banned, as well as Pinkerton detective stories, the poetry of Esenin, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva and the "boulevard" novels of Count Amori and Verbitskaya. Other writers banned were Voloshin, Gumilyov, Dostoevsky , Blok and Bulgakov.

shit i really want to go to that now, but i've got crucial exams the following week. Would be great if someone could youtube it and post it on libcom. Good luck, i'm sure you won't need it.

If you get a chance, you could mention that Lenin himself acknowledged that what he was implementing in the Soviet Union was in fact state-capitalism. It is funny watching trot reactions to that.

@Battlescarred, on Krupskaya as a librarian cleanser... I would love to have a source for this information, so that I can put it to good and credible use... It is new for me, and quite relevant for some of the discussions I am having now and then..

I've got a couple of AWL and ex-AWL mates who are going. If the session isn't paying for their fulltimers' doll top ups I'll think about coming. The AWL rank and file seem pretty friendly to anarchism, so I think this is definitely worth doing. For a tiny sect, they manage to generate a lot of lib coms. They seem the epitome of Trots who take the libertarian bits of State and Revolution seriously without realising the contradictions, so if you point them out, there's a good chance of getting them to take the consistent class position.

Total aside: has anyone read that awful Hal Draper piece on anarchism in his essay The Two Souls of Socialism? If you want to understand left-trot smears on anarchism it's worth reading, if only for comedy value.

edit: link http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/4-anarch.htm

edit again: I see you quote it in your speech, Anarcho! Which by the way was great. Though it does make anarchism sound a little to free from error to be true. Especially as regards Proudhon and Bakunin. But that's a matter of tone.

Anarchism is free of error. Well, mine is anyway.

Re: AWL debate.

London SF was invited to this, but turned it down due to other priorities. We had participated previously and, if folks get involved, please let us know as I'm sure some of us will be interested.

Maximoff mentions it in The Guillotine at work and I'm sure there will be appropriate sources there.

Yes, it is terrible. Most basic problem is that it assumes we are Proudhonists and Bakuninists, that we view them as Marxists view Marx. Not to mention the selective quoting and difficulty in tracking down sources for his claims. I did some checking on Proudhon and what I did manage to find was NOT what Draper claims he said (I discuss this here).

An Anarchist FAQ has an appendix refuting David McNally's repetition of Draper's work which may be of interest...

Well, no time for that... and we are not Proudhonists and Bakuninists! We have, I hoped, learned from the mistakes and errors of the past... We have made mistakes, of course, by why raise issues irrelevant to modern revolutionary anarchism? I leave that for the Trots

Yes Maximov's The Guillotine at Work but also Bride of the revolution: Krupskaya and Lenin by Robert Hatch McNeal, Mass culture in Soviet Russia by James van Geldern. Also Moura: the dangerous life of the Baroness Budberg by Nina Berberova for Gorky's horrified reaction and his attempts to revers the ban.
Apparently the Bolsheviks actually burnt some books in 1923-4, including Nietzsche. By 1926 Krupskaya had added to the proscribed list by one hundred books, including the Koran.
Somewhat ironic considering Krupskaya's own efforts to read books banned from Tsarist libraries like those of Chernyshevsky.
An old friend of mine has indicated that there is a librarian character in Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward still anguished by the fact that he had to burn Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.

@Anarcho and Battlescarred: thanks for the references! The irony is that, if I remember correvtly, Krupskaya herself clashed with Stalin imposing even more dictatorship...

On Draper: I read his book "Karl Marx' theory of revolution volume VI; critique of other socialism" which has a chapter on anarchism. When I did so, I was still a Trotskiyist by the way, though on my way out (as I discovered later...). Reading it, I was shocked by some of the quotes, especially Bakunin's. In as far as thesse quotes are done fairly - which I doubt - Anarcho's attituse applies : we are not Bakuninists or Proudhonists, we are anarchists, discarding what is wrong in individual anarchists.

I also got the feeling that Draper was criticizing anarchists, not anarchism. What he is really doing is finding as much fault and dirt as he possibly can, in order to 'expose' anarchism. It is a shame really, because, when others do something similar to Marx, Draper exposes them. All his sense of fairness disappears, however, when anarchism enters his view. It is not lack of knowledge or insight. It is, I am afraid, having blinders on, out of sheer anarchophobia.

Well, yes Krupskaya did do that, and fell victim to the monster she had helped create. So no sympathy from me for her.

nice word!

Well, details of the debate are now confirmed. I've blogged here about it but in summary:

They agreed to my demand so this meeting will be free (subject to donations) and that there is an anarchist stall.

I'm working on my speech now. Got 20-5 minutes so the question is, what parts to cover...

I suppose you could throw the council communists a bone as a way of deconstructing the premise of the debate as being Anarchism vs Marxism...

Btw would be nice to make a separate thread for the event so more libcommers know about it.

should note I did not pick the title... but as with my speech at the last debate I had with them back in 2003, this one notes at the start that there are Marxists who are close to anarchism and that by "Marxism" I am referring to mainstream Marxism, namely Social Democracy and its offshoots like Leninism. Sadly, though, these have been the majority tradition within Marxism.

I may list it in announcements at some stage...

Well, the debate has been done and here are my thoughts on the experience:

Leninists are Strange

I will be writing-up and posting my talk shortly, plus a pdf of my special "The AWL versus Anarchism" leaflet (copies available in Freedom Bookshop).

I think Harrison Myers is absolutely right that the debate anarchism vs. marxism is ill posed, and anarchists (also, left communists, autonomists, etc.) need to make every effort to emphasise this. Every time a trot (or social democrats or stalinists operating under the banner of Trotskyism) opposes marxism and anachism, we need to be talking about how anarchists learn a lot from marx and many marxists, often more than they learn from the 'classical' anarchists such as Proudhon and Bakunin. We need to be pointing out that there is more talk about people like Bordiga or Gorter, who were rock solid marxists, amongst anarchists than there ever could be amongst trots. We need to point out that class analysis is often taken far more seriously by anarchists, who routinely reject class colaberationism, than by Trots who create fronts with bourgeois politicians and 'community leaders'.

The real debate is between libertarian communists and authoritarian socialists. We need to take the offensive on this point, and argue that the methods of the authoritarian socialists are completely at odds with their aims, and that this can be shown simply by reading Marx. Though, of course, other thinkers make the point more clearly.