Marxism and anarchism

The myth of Baader-Meinhof

Review of the film: The Baader Meinhof Complex This film traces the history of the German “Red Army Fraction” (RAF) from its origins in the predominantly student protest movement of the late 1960s through to the prison suicides of its remaining leaders in 1977. In total, the RAF had 39 members, but never more than 20 at any one time. It was the most famous — or infamous — of a flurry of similarly-sized groups which emerged in Germany in the 1970s and which equated “anti-imperialist struggle” with armed struggle: bombings, kidnappings, hostage-taking, and killings, all financed by armed bank...

The state, social ownership and workers' control: the Commune group's trajectory towards anarchism

The Labour Representation Committee conference on 15 November passed a motion on “social ownership and workers’ self-management” from the “Group of International Communists”, the organisation run by ex-AWL members Chris Ford and David Broder and (slightly) better known as the Commune. The text suggests that Chris and David are on a trajectory towards anarchism. Most of the motion, which can be read here , was unobjectionable waffle. Several lines, however, revealed the anarchoid current of thinking that inspired it. “State ownership, no matter what pseudonym it goes under, is not social...

Only half an answer

Weighing up the pros and cons of “consensus decision-making”. The anti-capitalist movement is a rich and diverse place, encompassing a broad range of ideas and political philosophies. In reaction to what they see as a fractured, sectarian Trotskyist movement, the anti-capitalists focus on building consensus for action. People come to the anti-capitalist mobilisations united only by their willingness to take part in the organisational strategies of the movement and by their general opposition to capitalism. The failures of “Leninism” are seen as an overemphasis on political argument (as opposed...

Marxists and anarchists at Sheffield University debate - sort of

Recently, members of the Anarchist Federation in Sheffield formally withdrew from the Workers' Rights Coalition, an informal campaigning network of activists at the University of Sheffield set up by the local No Sweat group (which included some AWL members) to investigate and campaign around workers' rights issues effecting campus workers such as cleaners and catering staff. The AFed comrades cites the AWL's "vanguardism" and our advocacy of encouraging workers to join mainstream trade unions (such as Unite, Unison and the GMB) as reasons why they could not work within the campaign. Following...

Saor Éire and Peter Graham: the Life and Death of an Irish Trotskyist (1996)

On October 25th, 1971, Peter Graham died in Dublin at the hands of semi-gangster members of the "Republican" urban-guerrilla organisation, "Saor Eire", of which he was a member. (Its nearest equivalent today would be the INLA and IPLO). He had been beaten with a hammer, subjected to other indignities, and then shot in the neck and left to choke on his own blood. He was 25 years old. An electrician from the Coombe district of Dublin, Peter had joined the Stalinist "Connolly Youth Movement" at 20 and become a Trotskyist a year later. I knew Peter Graham well, and cared about him. He was marked...

Proudhon, "the father of anarchism", in his own words

From Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , ed. Stewart Edwards, Macmillan 1969. Property It is when all people are owners of property that fortunes are most equal and there is work for everyone... A peasant family of four or five will live comfortably on a patrimony of some five hectares... p.70 [1865] Property must be spread and consolidated, under pain of falling back into State control and thereby launching society once again on a career of revolution and catastrophe... Property... itself becomes a guarantee of liberty and keeps the State on an even keel. p.133 [1863-4] In my System...

REPORT TO A FRIEND WHO DIED FOR IRELAND.

REPORT TO A FRIEND WHO DIED FOR IRELAND. (Peter Graham, 1945-'71) Your bullet-holed young neck was not in view, Nor tortured flesh, nor rope-burned stiffened wrists: You looked unpained, a self-possessed young priest In the coffin; and your beard, I saw, still grew. Twenty years, Peter — twenty! Mid-life flew For me, was bullet-stopped for you: earth-kissed In a Dublin graveyard, rags now wrap your quest. I'm ageing, grey; you are no longer you. Twenty years! The North's dim war still halloes the gun; Against our Red, Orange and Green prevail; The South, thank God's at peace: you blazed no...

Is debating our ideas sectarian?

The broad church of anarchism incorporates many different tendencies. There are anarchists who carve out “liberated space” living in eco-villages, anarchists who go to demos to join in the ‘Black Bloc’ for a ruck with the police, and of course those many anarchists who read old books and dream of utopia but have no personal involvement in the struggle. But none of these individuals debate their politics with one another, and those who polemicise to even a limited extent (such as Murray Bookchin) are viewed with deep suspicion. They say that criticism is inherently an ‘authoritarian’ violation...

Destructive and constructive anarchism

Destructive and constructive anarchism, and how to smash the state Strands of anarchist thought throughout their history can be divided into two strands - destructive and constructive. Destructive anarchism (not necessarily meant in the pejorative sense) seeks to destroy the state (and therefore authority) by attacking the institutions of the state. For example, Bakunin believed that storming institutions and burning records (for example tax and debt records) was enough to destroy the state - anarchy, the "natural" state of human kind, would then prevail. Constructive anarchism seeks to carve...

Draft scheme for 19 and 26 January day schools

These schools work best, I think, divided into three workshop sessions. So I've tried to group the issues we identified in the discussion on the Sunday of the week school into three main themes. ==Reading== I'd suggest: General - PowerPoint presentations on [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/9781 anarchism from Proudhon to 1917] and [http://www.workersliberty.org/node/9785 anarchism today]. For Theme 1 - [http://www.workersliberty.org/system/files/marx-indiff.pdf Marx's article on Political Indifferentism] and [http://www.workersliberty.org/system/files/trotsky-rocker.pdf Trotsky on Communism...

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