Anarchist origins - crap article by CPGB

Wow, you could spot mistakes in this one just by having read Marx's polemics against Bakunin let alone any actual anarchist literature. "According to [Bakunin], building workers’ organisations under capitalism is inevitably going to lead to their control by the bourgeoisie. They become instruments of capitalist rule. Hence the working class can only act politically against the bourgeoisie through an insurrectionary general strike, leading to the immediate abolition of the state." Oh dear. Then again, the article isn't really about anarchism at all. The anarchists and syndicalists in it are just there as a bogeyman to smear by association other leftist parties' lines on general strikes.

The orthodox Marxist conception of anarchism....

It isn't a bogeyman. I agree with their advocacy of having a Marxist Center today, taking into account modern conditions.

I'm not going to read that, but I guess I'll ask the question again. It seems like every time one of these sects writes something about anarchism, it's posted here and people get up in arms. Some people have even written long replies in comments or standalone articles.

Are these sects that relevant?

In the U.S., probably every socialist or 'communist' organization writes anti-anarchist articles, but the only one that anyone here has ever really replied to is the ISO. I'm assuming mostly because they are one of the biggest in the streets socialist groups and have a presence among the activist left in a way the CPUSA, Socialist Party USA and Democratic Socialists of America don't, even though they may have more on-paper members.

Is the UK like the Bay Area here, where every little sect denounces the other and then receives replies and counter-replies and this just continues?

yes ... only the weather is worse

Care to explain how it isn't a bogeyman? Given most Marxists (to my knowledge) only know Bakunin and Proudhon through the reading of footnotes in Marx's work and only ever refer to 'anarcho-syndaclism' as an abstract general notion while never actually references any anarcho-syndaclists?

What is a Marxist center? Like, as in, the centre of political discourse? Or a day care centre where Marxists can hang out?

Juan, the CPGB are not that relevant no. I personally don't care if they bad mouth anarchism in a really hackneyed way. It is the SWP you gotta look out for .

CPGB despite claiming to be 'leninist' are home to a whole lot of stalinists. I spoke to one the other day who defended Moscow's invasion of Hungary in '56, and refused to recognise that it was a workers uprising coordinated through worker's councils. And i lol'ed when he called the SWP 'ultra-left'.

Are you sure this is the CPGB ( Communist Party of Great Britain- tiny sect originally Bolshevik now moving towards "Kautskyism" rapidly) and not the CPB ( Communist Party of Britain- unreconstructed Stalinists who have big stake in the Morning Star)??

Or the CPGB-ML who are sort of Stalinist/Maoist and fans of North Korea.

I am not disputing Lenin led to Stalinism, but Stalinism in and of its self as particular connotations. I think it would be more correct to regard them as neo-leninists.

Re: the group
CPGB are in some respects more trotskyist than some of the trotskyists. The lot of them travel in similar sort of circles, especially because CPGB are just micro-vanguardists who bang on about refounding the communist party; hence leftist regroupment and front work are pretty much their bread and butter.
Their origin however is different from most leftist sects in that it was a critical faction within the official communist movement which saw deviation around some of Lenin's early polcies, and subsequently the emerged independently when the soviet bloc collapsed.

Thats the Sparts init?

You're right, I should have been referring to the CPB (he pushes the Morning Star). I thought the same party did the Morning Star and the Weekly Worker, but i had my authoritarians mixed up.

Nah, they are a different bunch of crazies. The sparts give 'critical support' to north korea (being trots), the cpgb-ml don't qualify their support. CPGB-ML members are also quite involved in this: http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/

They also supported Gaddafi ( as did , of course, the WRP) !!

apropos Morning Star: http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/11/22/morning-star-and-protocols

So, some bozo put the Protocols on the stall unwittingly. Big deal. I would rather concentrate on much more important reasons to critcise the CPB. Oh and if i'd seen it i would have bought it, as I''ve never actually read the text. I'm not an anti-Semite and reading it wouldn't turn me into one, just as reading Mein Kampf didn't.

So what, I saw a pro-IRA book at the Anarchist Bookfair... It means diddly squat.

Are you serious? Selling the Protocols is absolutely horrendous and appalling.

Battlescarred, look it up on the internet, you don't want a hard copy of that shit . but your right it isn't the worst thing about CPG.

wojtek, at least being pro/anti IRA is a political position. The Protocols are just racist conspiranoid shite

Everything I heard suggests it was some thick cunt who didn't know what it was, and that it was quickly removed. As Battlescarred said, the least of their crimes.

I have Stalin's "Problems of Leninism" but I'm neither a Stalinist nor a Leninist. I have it as a historical curiosity. Honest.

Still pales in the face of the protocols

Also, just noticed I wrote CPG. I obviously meant CPB

I found it so boring I soon gave up on it. To get through it must have been a triumph of the will.

Why don't all you Londoners go to (below) and put forward your case? What could go wrong?

Stalin Society

December
75th anniversary of the
founding of the International Brigades

Sunday 11 December 2011, 2-5pm

Kings Cross Neighbourhood Centre,
51 Argyle Street , London WC1H 8EF

[2 minute walk from Kings Cross Station, down Grays Inn Road,
take the 2nd turning on right, the block is a short way along on the right]

oh my flippin' days. So bad. Shall we go picket Stalinfest?

I'm not referring to Bakunin the insurrectionist. I'm referring to Bakunin as the original theorist of the General Strike Sweeps Workers Into Power strategy.

That's what Lenin referred to the politics of what is today known as "Orthodox Marxism."

Um, they are "Bolshevik" in the sense that, in its original form, it was Orthodox Marxism applied to Russian conditions. Yes, that's the group.

It's a constructive effort, plus they call for a Communist Party of the European Union. They don't do much in the way of front work (i.e., Communist Students and HOPI).

Has there really ever been an 'orthodox marxism'? I know we use it as short hand, but doesn't it just refer to whatever marx-influenced group has the most power amongst intellectuals at a given moment in time. If people like Kautsky and Luxemburg had massive disagreements with leading Bolsheviks, to what extent can we really talk of an 'orthodox' position, and that's even ignoring Bernstein on one hand and Panekoek on the other (names used to represent tendencies).

You might be confusing Classical Marxism with Orthodox Marxism. The former is strictly Marx and Engels. Yes, there has been the latter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Marxism

http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/books/classical.html (this article uses the wrong adjective, but skip down to Macnair's description of the five worker movement tendencies at that time)

Kautsky's disagreements with the Bolsheviks only arose from WWI and the Russian Revolution. Before the slip into renegacy, he wrote articles in favour of the Bolshevik prognosis for Russian revolution, against the Menshevik two-stageism, and against both Parvus and Trotsky.

Ok fair enough. I didn't read the capital O in orthodox properly (rather than confusing it with classical marxism). Still, the point kind of stands that Capital O Orthodox Marxists very much disagreed about how second international Marxism applied to Russia, so to say Bolshevik thought was Orthodox Marxism applied to Russian conditions seems to me factually incorrect. Why are the Mensheviks not Orthodox Marxists on this point, why is Kautsky not, etc.? To me this seems like equating success in gaining state power with a notion of orthodoxy.