A little introduction, I’m what you might call a “left anarchist”, an Anarchist Communist. However, in the name of constructive conversation and an in effort to curb my own boredom, I’m starting this thread for any of you that have questions about anarchist history. I’m going to be a History major, that combined with my love for anarchist history makes me quite knowledgeable on the subject. So fire away with the questions.
PS: This is not a place for insulting me or my ideology, first one to say I can’t calculate loses.
ok, heres a confrontational question to get the juices flowing.
in your studies into ‘anarchist history’ are you able to distinguish between socialism and capitalism or is the ‘anarchist history’ a grab bag for whatever group of people strike the pose of opposing the state despite their radically different ideologies and modes of production ?
Non class-struggle* anarchism doesn’t really have too much of a history to be honest. I speak of those that oppose the state entirely as well, not just ones who oppose particular states (I’m not going to call Connely an anarchist just because he was a Wobbly and fought against the state).
*By non class-struggle anarchism I mean: anarcho-capitalism, individualist and Mutualist anarchism (though they do have a history, it’s not very interesting, mostly just setting up businesses/coops and theory), “post left anarchism”, “green” anarchism, primmies etc.
What happened to the people who, when the ‘Spanish Anarchists (anarcho-communists of the Bakunin-Kropotkin type) took over large sections of Spain during the Civil War of the 193Os’, continued to use money? What did they run the risk of?
Welcome to the group Jack. I welcome and mildly criticize your ideology in the same breath. Perhaps we can persuade you to see the morality of free market, not mercantilist, capitalism.
Can you give us a short overview of the hundreds of millions that died in the 20th century due to collectivist philosophies?
Also, what would you say to people who consider anarchism = anarcho-capitalism, because without government, then everything is a free market. In other words, it takes a government to implement any type of collectivist scheme. Your take?
Anarchism has traditionally been defined by those within the anarchist movement as the absence of the influence of government, business and religion in man’s affairs. As such, traditional anarchists cannot see a free market as anarchy, because it necessitates the existance of commerce, the profit motive, currency and banking.
The use of money was (on paper) punishable by death, however this was merely a symbolic move and nobody was ever killed for its use. It was seen as offensive to use it in most places, and its only attempted use (at least, that’s notable, I’m not saying a peasant didn’t buy potatoes at some point) was by foreigners who didn’t understand. For example, George Orwell attempted to tip a bellboy when he was at a Catalan hotel, and he was chastised by the manager and bellboy for such an action, as both were offended by it.
I’m not answering your second question because I want this thread to be constructive and not degenerate into back and forth useless arguements.
The comparison of Marxism-Leninism to Anarchist Communism is…poor. Though you can lump both as socialist (though, the extent of worker control in the Eastern Bloc was nearly nonexistant), each have fundamental differences that make them incompatable. Namely, opposition to the state, and to party control (which degenerates into state-Capitalism, debate the term all you like, but the same workplace relations exist) on the part of anarchists. I could just as well blame anarcho-capitalism (being a right wing ideology) for actions of nefarious rightist dictators if you were to blame all “collectivists” for the actions of a few, let alone those whom we oppose!
Also, thousands of lives of my own comrades have been lost to the Reds, so lumping anarchists with Leninists is ridiculous.
‘I could just as well blame anarcho-capitalism (being a right wing ideology) for actions of nefarious rightist dictators if you were to blame all “collectivists” for the actions of a few, let alone those whom we oppose!’
Actually Anarcho-Capitalism is a leftist ideology, Socialism being the middle and reactionary conservativism on the right.
Such a severe penalty is less likely to be enforced, and serves as more of a warning than anything. Plus, prisons were abolished, many prisoners joined the Iron Column.
Nobody save confused liberals and social democrats calls themself a Leftist, and supports Capitalism (especially not unregulated Capitalism). However, this is all distracting from the history topic, I specified that I wanted to avoid these arguements.
“Collectivist” is a useless term if you’re not describing Leftists (even then it’s usually used as a pejorative term). Calling everything you disagree with “collectivist” is the equivalent of me calling everything I disagree with “reactionary”.
Anyways, this is distracting from the thread, if this is so much of an issue to you and you feel it nessacary to badger me, do so in another thread so we can stay on topic here.