If you want to see what the anarchists said you should read the deliberations of the St Imier Congress of September 1872. This was convened by the Jura Federation but it included representatives from the Spanish and Italian Federations. It unanimously repudiated the decisions of the Hague Congress and denied the newly formulated authority of the General Council. It defended and re-affirmed the autonomy of national sections and denied the principle of majority decisions. Its second resolution was to declare a Pact of Solidarity between the sections represented, Its third resolution called for the destruction of any political power, and rejected compromises on the road to revolution.
"The Congress meeting at St Imier declares:
1. That the destruction of all political power is the first duty of the proletariat
2. That all organisation of a so-called provisional revolutionary power to enable this destruction cannot be but one more illusion and will be as dangerous for the proletariat as all the governments in existence today
3. That rejecting all compromise to arrive at the accomplishment of the social revolution, proletarians of all countries must establish, outside of all bourgeois politics, the solidarity of revolutionary action."..
The autonomy of sections within the International was a given, it was not just "Bakuninist" ideology but a common and widespread opposition to the General Council . The issue was over organisation rather than ideology, though it could be argued here that they were intimately entwined. This opposition had very real differences within it and it would be thoroughly misleading to caricature the split in the International as one between "Marxism" and "anarchism". These terms themselves did not really appear until after the split had been accomplished.
Marx first used the term "anarchist" in a pejorative sense in his Les pretendues scissions de l'Internationale in March 1872. This was a semi-veiled attack on the Alliance and the term was used in its traditional sense as during the French revolution to denote promoters of disorganisation, here this being opposition to the General Council.
The other side of the coin was the development of the term "Marxist" . It was first used in Reponse de Quelques Internaux in June 1872 in the Jura Bulletin. It attacked Marx and his followers on the General Council, whose aim , it noted " was to have all the federations led by men who consent to be loyal to Marx, and to crush under the most horrible calumny all those who want to keep their independence and their dignity".
It directed its fire at the "Marxist conspiracy" and described Marx's son in law Lafargue as the "apostle of the Marxist law", the law being whatever Marx dictated. This refers to Marx's instructions to Lafargue to procee to Spain to break the hold of "Bakuninism" there at which he had had little and not very long-lasting success. "Marxist" was used to describe the grouping within the International around Marx himself. As the Reponse observed, many of the Jura Internationalists had read Capital : " They had read it, and all the same they had not become Marxists; that must appear very singular to this naive son-in-law. How many are there, on the other hand, on the General Council , who are Marxists withiout ever having opened the book of Marx".
James Guillaume developed the theme in the Memoire de la Federation Jurassienne in 1873 where he made frequent references to the "Marxist coterie" and the "Marxists". referring to the group around Marx and his supporters in the General Council.
It would be naive to deny that a group of militants existed around Bakunin , or rather that Bakunin was in vclose contact with militants who shared his outlook, who had some of them, indeed developed their own ideas remarkably similar to Bakunin, within the workers movement.
It would be equally naive to deny the same state of affairs existed with Marx, as Malatesta has noted.
Aug 2 2010 16:28
Aug 2 2010 17:09
It should be noted that the Pact of Solidarity developed at St Imier included as well as the Jura, Spanish and Italians, - French and American sections and was adhered to a little later by the English, Belgians, Portuguese and Danes. Again, it should be reiterated that there were serious political differences between all these sections, but that what united them was their opposition to the manouevres of the General Council and the campaign of calumny led by it ( If you want to talk about racketeerism and its origins you have to go back a little earlier than Bolshevism and probably even further back than the First International with the scissions in the Communist League of 1848 onwards).
It should be remembered that Marx himself, so eager to tar Bakunin with the brush of dubious activities, was himself a victim of two French police agents. Because he had no concrete proof of the continuing work of the Alliance, as borne out by the findings of the commission set up at the Hague Congress; Marx resorted to personal slander,. Among those involved in these calumnies were the agents Van Heddeghem and Dentraygues both members of the Marxist coterie. Bakunin reported that Marx had said to him: "are you aware that I am presently at the head of a secret communist society so tightly disciplined that had I said to one of its members: "Go kill Bakunin" he would have killed you".
As Otto Ruhle wrote referring to the exclusion of Bakunin from the International in 1872:" Marx had triumphed over his despised adversary, but, not content, with severing all bonds of party fraternity between hinmself and his rival, he had indulged his hatred further by attacking his honour. Bakunin, at least if the Congress was to be believed, had omitted to pay Marx back a 300 ruble advance for a translation of Das Kapital: and Marx, the Marx who was immersed in a thousand shady deals and who lived his whole life long on other people's money, made out this out to be a hanging offense.
It was legitimate for him to battle for an objective policy to which he looked, to the exclusion of any other, for the liberation of the proletariat. He was within his rights to summon the International together to try to get rid of Bakunin, for Bakunin was doing all in his power to thwart him and his policy. But for him to seek to triumph objectively through recourse to methods as shameful as blackening his adversary was a dishonourable course that did not besmirch Bakunin but did besmirch its author. We see here the fatal aspect to his character: nothing ever took priority for Marx over his self-regard: not political matters, not the workers' movement , nor the interests of the revolution. That a gathering of international revolutionaries ready at the drop of a hat to blow private property and bourgeois morality sky high should have driven out, outlawed and expelled, on the denunciation of its leader, the most gifted, most heroic and most fascinating of its number because of some alleged infraction of the bourgeois laws of property, was one of the bloodiest jests in history".
Otto Ruhle, Karl Marx, 1937.
In doing this, Marx followed the same manouevres he had employed within the Communist League, which had led to its wrecking and impotence.
Aug 2 2010 21:01
Quote:
We, who were known in the International as Bakuninists and who were members of the Alliance, made loud outcries against the Marxists because they tried to make their own particular programme prevail in the International. Yet, setting aside the question of the legality of their methods, which it is fruitless to dwell upon now, we did just what they did; we sought to make use of the International for our party aims. The difference lay in the fact that we, as anarchists, relied chiefly on propaganda, and, since we wanted to gain converts for the anarchist cause, emphasized decentralisation, the autonomy of groups, free initiative, both individual and collective, whilst the Marxists, being authoritarians as they were, wanted to impose their ideas by majority strength -which was more or less fictitious- by centralisation and by discipline. But all of us, Bakuninists and Marxists alike, tried to force events rather than relying upon the force of events
This sounds like a quite fair summary of the events
Aug 2 2010 21:49
What ever one thinks of Marx's tactics, he never stooped as low as Bakunin did in this dispute.
In a post script dated October 1983 to his article "Marx théoricien de l'anarchisme" (Marx, theorist of anarchism) the Marxologist (and council communist) Maximilien Rubel wrote referring to Bakunin:
Quote:
What to think of an "anarchist" or a "revolutionary communist" who believes and affirms that the Jew Marx is surrounded by a "crowd of little Jews", that "all this Jewish world", "a bloodsucking people" is "intimately organised (... ) across the differences of political opinions", that it is "in large part at the disposition of Marx on the one hand and of the Rothschilds on the other"?
Rubel gives the source as "Bakounine, Rapports personnels avec Marx. Pièces justificatives No 2. p. 124 sq.", written in 1871, and quotes Bakunin as writing there:
Quote:
"That can seem strange (...) Ah, it's that Marx's communism wants the strong centralisation of the State, and where there is State centralisation, there must be a State Central Bank, and, where such a bank exists, the parasitic nature of the Jews, speculating on the labour of the people, will always find a means of existing . . ." (p. 125)
Aug 2 2010 22:03
Re: Bakunin's 'secret Alliance', my reading of events was that the Alliance for Social Democracy wasn't secret, it was open, but it was a front for Bakunin's secret 'International Brotherhood'. Bakunin tried to have the Alliance accepted into the First International, in order to have a 'state within a state within a state', as Nikolaievsky says in Marx, Man and Fighterm Chapter 20, Decline of the International. This book doesn't appear to be online, but the Chapter dealing with the Hague Congress is on marxists.org here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1872/hague-conference/introduction.htm
Battlescared's post raises the central issue which divided the Marxists ('State-socialists') from the Bakuninists ('anti-authoritarian communists') - what was the role of the International? In the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune, the General Council saw the need for a much longer political preparation of the working class in elections and party building, whereas the Bakuninists were still stuck in the mode of insurrectionism. The General Council proposed that,
Quote:
In its struggle against the collective power of the possessing classes, the proletariat can only act as a class if it constitutes its own distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the possessing classes. The forming of a political party by the proletariat is indispensable in order to assure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate object, the abolition of all classes. The coalition of working-class forces, already obtained in economic struggles, must also serve as a lever in the hands of that class in its struggle against the political power of its exploiters. The lords of the earth and the lords of capital always use their political privileges to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies and to enslave Labour, and therefore the conquest of political power is the great duty of the proletariat.
What was at stake here was two conceptions of organisation: one centralised and disciplined, yet open and on a mass basis; the other federalist, 'anti-political', conspiratorial. The latter was outmoded, based as it was on a yet undeveloped proletariat and hanging on to the traditions of the past, the former much more in tune to the objective conditions in the more capitalistically advanced countries (and thus the future of the less developed ones) and interests of the working class.
BTW Noa, the first part of the series on organisation is here:
The 1st International and the Fight against Sectarianism
http://en.internationalism.org/node/3677
Putting to one side the personalities, can we agree that what's at odds here are two different visions of organisation?
Aug 2 2010 22:49
Battlescared
I am still not clear whether you agree with Malatesta about the existence of the secrete Alliance. If Malatesta is correct the International's expulsion is justified. One has to asked what was going on if this secrete society existed which must have meant that not only Bakunin but others also lied to the international and their comrades about its existence.
Aug 2 2010 23:18
Bakunin attitude to Marx is expressed clearly in his letter to Herzen in 1869, where he does express his admiration for Marx and his role in developing the International (which I think Mehring quotes) but then goes on to say:
Quote:
"I should never forgive myself if, from motives of personal revenge, i destroyed or diminished his undoubtedly beneficial influence. I may, and probably will happen, that I shall have to enter a conflict with him, not for a personal offense, but on a matter of principle, state communism of which he and the party lead by him, English and German, are fervent supporters. The it will mean a life and death struggle. But all in good time: the moment has not yet come. spared and praised him for tactical reasons, out of personnel calculation. How can you fail to see that all these gentlemen together are our enemies, and form a phalanx which must be disunited and split up, the more easily to destroy it
Bakunin that talks about how 3/4 of the international would turn against him if he attacked Marx (which speaks volumes about the regard that Marx was held in)
Quote:
But if I begin the war by attacking his rabble, I shall have the majority on my side, and even Marx himself, who has him, as you know, big dose of malicious satisfaction at other people's troubles, will be very pleased that I have abused and told off his friends
Quoted in Paul Thomas's Karl Marx (pages312-313)
Thus, Bakunin himself state's that he was planning a life and death struggle with Marx. So I am not sure where the idea of poor old Bakunin the hard done by comes from.He entered the International (which he states Marx played a fundamental role in developing )with a conscious understanding that at some point going to wage a carefully thought out war against Marx. Marx's awareness of Bakunin's intentions had firm foundations, even if Marx did not have all the evidence then.
Aug 3 2010 00:05
I only give here a summary and some of the relevant fragments of the (7300 words) Palinorc's text (dated 2001) about Rackets!. Palinorc's thought seems close to the ICC (e.g. believe in decadence), which means he was probably a former member.
Palinorc posits that rackets have existed since the dawn of civilization. The first part of the text is written in a detached documentary-style, like a description of the life of frogs in the Brazilian rain-forest: 'rackets can grow to ominous size and influence' , 'their reduced size forces them to an unstable and precarious existence. At most, they become pressure groups for parties that have gone beyond the racket stage' , 'Most rackets have a relatively short existence', 'The guru is usually male, though rackets run by female gurus have been known to exist',...
Palinorc writes that, contrary to ideologies for the state (provided by Plato, Hobbes, Hegel, Schmitt, etc.), rackets lack a significant and visible system of ideological justification: 'What they are, they conceal, under many layers.' , 'There are many doctrines justifying Leviathans, but rackets lack this shielding. Their real function of domination is incognito.'
'Bolshevism, like Marxism in general, has little understanding of rackets', because 'Bolshevism itself arose as a political racket,..'
Palinorc lists the analyses of the 'racket phenomenon' made by different political writers (Machiavelli, Etienne de La Boétie, Simmel, Adorno, Weber, Debord, Perlman and Camatte).
The state (or Leviathan which is the author's preferred name) is itself a racket, the biggest of them all in fact, which all the smaller, or normal rackets strive to influence/attain access to/work for/conquer. The internal organisation of rackets 'mimics statist functions' and their leaders form a sort of 'portable mini-state'.
Modern political rackets's general characteristics are:
1) They gyrate around a guru
2) despotic hierarchy. No racket is ruled by consensus or by transparent participatory methods
3)Rackets have a political platform To them influencing others means recruitment, not contributing to an ongoing clarification of consciousness
4)recruits are systematically persuaded by the guru’s infallibility. Once recruited, the racket’s goals is to alienate individuals further by making them sever many of their links with society.
5) internal dissension, splits and competition from rival rackets. Political divergences are rarely addressed – they are replaced by personal factionalism and competition for positions in the hierarchy.
6) Paradoxically, the survival of rackets depends on internal factionalism and external enemies. These centripetal and centrifugal ‘crises’ are both carefully stage managed
7)The more virulent rackets attempt to organise themselves in military fashion.These rackets tend to exist more in the peripheries of the system, where Leviathans are weak and depend mostly on naked terror to survive.
The social base for political rackets and their gurus is provided by the following atomised individuals: "... ‘outs,’ the unemployed or underpaid journalists, lecturers, college graduates and undergraduates, ‘lawyers without clients and doctors without patients’ [Marx], educated ex-workers in search of a white-collar position – in short all that motley army of impecunious or starving intellectuals, who are dissastified with the existing system and very often militantly active in the various radical or fascist movements."
The text then jumps around a bit more passionately (i.e. ranting); Palinorc talks about the political party (which is the ideal form of capitalist class rule), the defeats it lead to for the proletariat, its inherent totalitarianism, Jacobin Leninism, the Red Terror, anecdote of the POUM (the execution of two friends, both thieves. They died without showing fear, facing the rifles, and shouted: ‘Long live the CNT’..), ICG as a product of the ICC is just another racket, etc.
His own vision of the tasks of revolutionaries is that 'A new revolutionary movement –which means most of humanity in motion – can only arise in a revolutionary period', before that, 'individuals who partake of critical views can only hope to disseminate them in small discussion circles. This doesn’t require any formal structure, ‘membership’ or unwritten power agendas. The racketeering principle is broken up in these loose, transient, but committed projects.' And he concludes:
palinorc wrote:
Individuals can contribute to humanity’s emancipation if they help to clarify the general goals of a world community (communism) during a revolutionary period. Their role is not to lead or to create a party. They are part of the population which is becoming revolutionary as a whole. Before that period, they should try to clarify among themselves basic questions about Leviathan and communism. They should try to anticipate what the future may bring. Revolutionaries belong to humanity, and their ideas – if they are truthful – belong to humanity’s quest for biophilia and may contribute to and hasten mass communist consciousness. Belonging to a racket adds nothing to this quest. On the contrary, all ‘revolutionary’ rackets are training grounds for future Orwellian policemen.
Frequent themes about rackets is that they advance the loss of individuality and atomisation/alienation;
Palinorc wrote:
Rackets are essentially conservative, even if some of them, the Marxist and anarchist ones, spout radical or emancipatory messages.But joining a racket is usually exhilarating at the beginning, when the new recruit is convinced that his participation will shape history and that he’s joining a collective venture to help humanity. He also feels that he’s found a heroic community of like-minded comrades. Joining a racket has this hidden libidinal dimension, which explains the enormous attachment and zealotry of the members. At the beginning, a recruit is unaware that he’ll be persuaded to lose most of his individuality and free time, and that the false community of the racket will only accentuate his alienation.
Aug 3 2010 04:23
These texts on rackets sound like a call for everyone to become hermits. The problem is defined in a political context, but the overall message is that people who organize into a group of some kind are doing a disservice to themselves and to every other human. It just sounds like a call to nihilism. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.
Aug 3 2010 04:36
Quote:
Thus, Bakunin himself state's that he was planning a life and death struggle with Marx. So I am not sure where the idea of poor old Bakunin the hard done by comes from.He entered the International (which he states Marx played a fundamental role in developing )with a conscious understanding that at some point going to wage a carefully thought out war against Marx. Marx's awareness of Bakunin's intentions had firm foundations, even if Marx did not have all the evidence then.
The letter to Herzen is from October 1869, when Bakunin had entered in the IWA near a year ago. So, I'm not sure how this letter would be a proof that Bakunin had planned attacking ("or going to wage a carefully though out war against") Marx before entering in the International.
I'm not really interested in the old "Marx was good, Bakunin was a shit" -or vice versa-, but fragments of private letters out of context don't mean anything. Bakunin had been suffering attacks by some 'Marx's collaborators' (according to Bakunin...who sometimes tended to be a little 'paranoic'). The curiosity about all this history, it's that Wilhelm Liebknecht and Bebel had helped to spread some of these rumours and slandering, and in the that year IWA's Congress (I think it was Basilea) Bakunin reproached his attitude to Liebknecht, and a "Jury of Honour" was convoked, which condemned Liebknecht.
Aug 3 2010 06:37
These were the other two articles in the series about the split in the International
http://en.internationalism.org/node/3744 - on the proceedings of the Hague congress
http://en.internationalism.org/node/3753 - on the problem of political adventurism
Although we might deal a bit differently with the notion of anarchism now, the articles make it clear that the main issue behind these conflicts was not really anarchism in the programmatic sense but two fundamentally opposed conceptions of organisation.
Aug 3 2010 06:57
Beltov wrote:
Battlescared's post raises the central issue which divided the Marxists ('State-socialists') from the Bakuninists ('anti-authoritarian communists') - what was the role of the International? In the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune, the General Council saw the need for a much longer political preparation of the working class in elections and party building, whereas the Bakuninists were still stuck in the mode of insurrectionism. The General Council proposed that,
Yeah participating in elections was totally worthwhile then cos capitalism wasn't decadent or something. 
Insurrection actually did make (slightly) more sense then, on the other hand.
Aug 3 2010 07:51
Beltov wrote:
What was at stake here was two conceptions of organisation: one centralised and disciplined, yet open and on a mass basis; the other federalist, 'anti-political', conspiratorial.
LOL! Someone from the ICC saying Marxists have open organisations and anarchists are conspiratorial. You should try looking in the mirror mate.
Aug 3 2010 08:13
Was Bakunin really an anarchist?
Aug 3 2010 08:40
He was part of a left communist clan that infiltrated the heart of the anarchist movement for 20 years 
Aug 3 2010 09:11
Are the ICC really communist?
Aug 3 2010 12:37
Is parasitism not just the equivalent of trolling/flaming on the internet? And although to my knowledge there hasn't been made a theory of flaming/trolling here, I bet most people have some thoughts about the phenomenon. Same for parasitism; I bet most people in leftist organizations have some thoughts about parasitism and adventurers, but they don't have a theory about it. I think this can sometimes be more 'dangerous' in the sense that individuals with different opinions are ad hoc denounced as unconstructive, self-consumed, etc., while the making of a pamphlet about adventurers at least opens up a terrain for theoretical discussion rather than letting it stay in the back of the mind (I can imagine that racket-theorists will respond that all this is in reality done to create a deceiving image of openness, etc.).
Aug 3 2010 13:11
The term anarchist is about as useful as the term marxist or communist. They all are used to describe a thousand different things. And I'm not really that interested in using the writings or actions of a long dead revolutionary as a peg to hang my ideas on.
Rather than us being the descendants of previous revolutionaries, I'd suggest that the current grouplets are all linked to the 1960s upheavals and the rediscovery of the workers struggles of the past. And that is why the ICC saw us all as enemies back in the 70s. They believed they were the "pole of regroupment", the existence of other groups with similar politics was a threat to that.
Aug 3 2010 14:13
Where did we all look for historical inspiration: only a few before or back to the previous revolutionary wave? The workers' movement has a history and we cannot ignore that. One of things that struck me about the ICC and the other Left Communist groups when I moved towards revolutionary politics was there rooting themselves in this history. A history which was totally unknown to me and most of the rest of humanity: one which any Left Communist group should be proud of founding its positions on.
The ICC did not see itself as a sole pole of groupment, which is why we choose the name current, otherwise why did we participate in the international conferences of the Communist Left in the 1970's? We also did not and do not see the other Left Communist groups as a threat. We are not in competition with them, in some form of beauty contest. The main thrust of our effort has been to try and develop a long term work of discussion and where necessary a common stand, with the other groups of the Communist Left. This work by necessity involves polemics with each other, but not with the aim of some form of trial of strengthen but with the aim of clarifying the differences and agreements between us. We have also made rigorous critiques when we believed another Left Communist group has made a serious error, but always with the object of trying to convince them of this error: and not doing them down or kicking them whilst they are down. Some may see this a hostility but see it as a basic act of solidarity with another proletarian organisation which is in difficulties.
Aug 3 2010 14:34
revolut
The information on the court of honour against Wilhelm Liebknecht was very interesting (any sources for further information?). We are for such courts of honour and think they are very important for stopping the developing of an atmoshphere of hostility, suspicions, distrust which can only undermine the workers' movement: pity that this tradition and concern has been lost!
Aug 3 2010 14:53
Ops
Aug 3 2010 16:47
ernie #112:
That mean, simply, that we don't have any proof that Bakunin had the intention of starting an attack against Bakunin before he entered in the IWA. The rest are speculations. About the question "What sort of revolutionary activity is that?". It's quite obvious that the militancy of both groups ("marxists" and "bakuninists") in the IWA was often motivated not by a constructive and revolutionary spirit, but by a sectarian imposition of their aims (political, but sectarian and personal too), that wasn't revolutionary at all. Of course, we can admit that they really though that only their own program was a great contribution to the liberation of the working classes ("the road to the hell is full of good intentions", it's said), but Chekists and 'revolutionary' who supported the collaboration between classes thought the same (with the obvious difference that they didn't contribute in a practical and theoretical level as people like Marx or Bakunin did).
I think that Malatesta's fragment express well that situation. Anselmo Lorenzo, a Spanish anarchist and one of the founders of the First International in Spain, expressed in a similar tone:
Quote:
"The followers of Bakunin, were very far away of their own concept of freedom. I could observe it in the meetings of the Socialist Alliance sections in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona, where the alliancists practiced the propaganda more with the skillfull imposition than with the persuasion and the enlightened discussion. Between one and others [i.e, the "marxists" and "bakuninists"], the workers, with their systematic ignorance and with their obvious lack of will and energy, keept with us as perfect letargy or they were impassioned by the nearest charismatic militant, and only a few of the workers maintained the real principle's program of the International, which defended the emancipation of the proletariat....The General Council -led by Marx- had became a obsession to my comrades: they talked constantly about it, y suspecting that I was in the [Spanish] Council some kind of Lafargue's spy, they asked me about several issues, in order that I made compromising declarations. The surprinsinly of the case was that the war feed against the General Council didn't follow any logical rules, because if authoritarian was the [Marx's] Council, the Spanish one was excessive reglamentary, an authoritarian one in a different way....
We weren't members of a organization who worked from below to above, but a group of enlightened theorician who imposed their theories from the top of our superiority, of privileged origin, and who were followed by the submission to a radical fashion. Marx and his sectarians, Bakunin and his, by one hand the Emancipation [the marxist newspaper in Spain], and in the other the Alliance and the Federal Council, didn't recognize, although they proclamed constantly, that the emancipation of the workers was the duty of the same workers, but they acted as if the workers, as disabled under age, should be liberated involutary, without their own will".
About the "jury of honour", J. Guillaume gives a brief description in his biographical account about Bakunin:
Quote:
In the summer of 1869, Borkheim, a friend of Marx, repeated in the Berlin journal Zukunft (“The Future”) the old libel that Bakunin was a Russian agent, and Wilhelm Liebknecht, a founder of the German Social Democratic party, at various times continued to spread this falsehood. When Bakunin met Liebknecht at the Basel Congress, he challenged him to prove his charges before an impartial “court of honor.” Liebknecht explained that he had never personally slandered Bakunin, but had only repeated what he read in the papers, primarily the Zukunft. The court of honor unanimously found Liebknecht guilty and signed a statement to that effect. Liebknecht admitted that he was wrong and shook hands with Bakunin, who then set fire to the statement, using it to light his cigarette.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/bakunin.htm
Aug 3 2010 18:08
According to this article the Bolsheviks had a bit of a soft spot for Bakunin. The Russian Marxist Martov, on the other hand, denounced Lenin as a latter-day Bakunin:
Quote:
The Menshevik Lev Martov, upon hearing Lenin's vow to bypass the bourgeois-democratic revolution and proceed directly to socialism, announced to his readers that Lenin had merely "rehashed the old ideas of Bakunin" and returned Russian revolutionary thought, after its difficult evolution from Bakunin to Marx, "back to Bakunin" again. From exile a number of Lenin's opponents renewed their campaign to discredit Bolshevism through analogies with Bakuninism. In 1919, Pavel Aksel'rod criticized observers in the west who "extol Bolshevism as the most revolutionary, consistent form of Marxism and acclaim the Bolshevik tyranny as a Communist dictatorship of the proletariat," when in fact, he believed, Bolshevism represents "a savage and pernicious throwback to Bakuninism." In an essay on "The Russian Forebears of Bolshevism," the literary scholar and former Socialist Revolutionary Marc Slonim wrote that the Bolsheviks found a "spiritual kinsman" in Bakunin, whose "anarchist statelessness" and destruction through popular instinct they fulfilled "from the moment they came to power." As late as 1924, alienated Mensheviks continued to dissociate Leninism from Marxism. Paraphrasing emigre press reports of a "scandal" at Lenin's funeral, one memoirist claims that a delegation of Mensheviks placed a funeral wreath on Lenin's coffin with the inscription, "From the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Mensheviks to V. I. Lenin, the most outstanding Bakuninist among Marxists."
Maybe there is some common ground after all between the Bolshevik-Leninist ICC and Bakuninist anarchists.
Aug 3 2010 18:33
I think that associating Bakunin with Lenin and the Bolsheviks was a common socialdemocrat cliché in that time.
Aug 3 2010 19:05
888 wrote:
Beltov wrote:
Battlescared's post raises the central issue which divided the Marxists ('State-socialists') from the Bakuninists ('anti-authoritarian communists') - what was the role of the International? In the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune, the General Council saw the need for a much longer political preparation of the working class in elections and party building, whereas the Bakuninists were still stuck in the mode of insurrectionism. The General Council proposed that,Yeah participating in elections was totally worthwhile then cos capitalism wasn't decadent or something.
Insurrection actually did make (slightly) more sense then, on the other hand.
I'd like to reiterate this point as it may have been written in too unserious a tone. I find the supposed "historical" analysis of the ICC particularly weak and unconvincing. It's pretty obvious that participating in elections in 1870 was just as useless then as it is now, but the ICC and other Marxists have various dubious theories to justify why it was correct then and wrong now.
Aug 3 2010 20:04
888: Thought decadence theory is obviously bollocks it's central to the politics of the ICC as without it their foundations crumble. In fact I'm sure I saw that the British and American sections were going to bring out a paper with the snappy title 'The decadence of capitalism' but I don't know if anything ever came of it.
Aug 4 2010 00:43
It's probably rare for a discussion like this to take place on Bakunin's expulsion and other issues concerning the IWA, so I appreciate the info revolut and others provided and the fact that other topics have been raised on the thread, but I'm afraid that I'm not able to elaborate on my point with raising Mehring's account of events; maybe instead of me doing the hard work of showing how the ICC ignores Mehring's points, I could ask where or how the ICC thinks Mehring's account would miss the point, though Alf's first link above was helpful in that respect.
Aug 4 2010 05:44
888 wrote:
888 wrote:
It's pretty obvious that participating in elections in 1870 was just as useless then as it is now, but the ICC and other Marxists have various dubious theories to justify why it was correct then and wrong now.I agree that this is a big inconsistency in the ICC position and such a big departure from Marx's own view and endorsement of Bakunin's that I'm not sure they are entitled to be classified as "Marxists" (a term invented by Bakunin which Marx rejected). Something like "Anarcho-Bolsheviks" or "anti-parliamentary Bolsheviks" would seem more appropriate.
Aug 4 2010 09:26
capricorn wrote:
[ Something like "Anarcho-Bolsheviks" or "anti-parliamentary Bolsheviks" would seem more appropriate.
Then you could sweep youself out with an iron broom.
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