What's with marxist writers/thinkers and their misrepresentation of anarchism? I'm reading through David Harvey's Seventeen Contradictions (only on chapter 3) but am being put off by what seems to be the usual marxian misrepresentation of anarchism. (It's the same with Wolff who's reinventing the wheel when he discusses workplace democracy as something 'new' to replace 'traditional socialism' but uses his own terminology like 'worker self-directed enterprises.')
For example,
All but the most rabid of libertarians and the most extreme of anarchist will agree, however, that some semblance of state power has to exist in order to sustain the individualised property rights and structures of law that according to theoreticians like Friedrich Hayek guarantee the maximum of non-coercive individual liberty.
I think all anarchists/libertarians would, to the contrary, agree that capitalism presupposes the state; it's only the right-wing libertarians (predominantly in North America) who mistakenly believe the two can be separated. Capitalism has nothing to do with the anarchist tradition, going all the way back to Proudhon who said property was theft and advocated a form of market socialism. Libertarianism has always been against capitalism and the state, so it peeves me that Harvey lumps these right-wingers in with us. I understand there are political differences between anarchists and marxists, which could be traced to the First International split between the Bakunin and Marx factions. Why can't they represent anarchist political ideas correctly, though?
Oh and this great,
There is, I repeat, no such thing as a non-contradictory response to a contradiction. An examination of the range of contemporary political responses to universal alienation on the ground produces a profoundly disturbing picture. The rise of fascist parties in Europe (particularly virulent and prominent in Greece, Hungary and France) and the organisation of the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party with its singular aim to defund and shut down government in the United States are manifestations of deeply alienated factions of the population seeking political solutions. They do not shrink from violence and are convinced that the only way to preserve their threatened freedom is to pursue a politics of total domination.
...
The politics of the Tea Party as well as those of the autonomistas and the anarchists in the United States converge in seeking to limit or even to destroy the state, though in the name of pure individualism on the right and some sort of individualistically anchored associationism on the left.
Again (and I hope I'm not just misreading Harvey), I don't think any real anarchists are against social programs that help the poor and most vulnerable, or are against the state interfering on behalf the working class and mass of people. I don't think any libertarian socialists seek to destroy those beneficial aspects of the state without having anything to put in their place. What anarchists do oppose, and what Harvey doesn't seem to understand, is the concentration of decision-making in political parties/states and the creation of a new ruling class from that, as happened under Lenin after he wiped out all the socialist institutions that had arisen out of revolutionary Russia.
I have often wondered the same thing. It is rare to find a Marxist did a decent account of anarchism -- off the top of my head, Cleaver's article on Kropotkin is the only one I can think of.
Sad to say, it started with Marx and his terrible -- and terribly dishonest -- book on Proudhon, The Poverty of Philosophy. As I indicate in my recent review, Marx invents quotes, tampers with quotes, asserts incorrect points for Proudhon (not least that he advocated "labour-notes") and a host of other activities which if done against a Marxist would produce howls of anger and disgust.
Harvey is mild in comparison.
Indeed -- that the state exists to defend inequality, property, and both need to be fought and got rid of at the same time has been a principle of anarchism since Proudhon. It is with the rise of propertarianism that anything else has been suggested -- and genuine libertarians have always been there noting that the two cannot be separated.
It helps him -- guilt by association, puts people off looking into anarchism. And, of course, he would disapprove if we linked him with, say, Stalin...
because if they did then they would have to explain why they are not anarchists, which would be hard given their stated principles. They would have to say that, well, we need a state because the masses are too backward to rule themselves and they need us in charge to educate them... As Trotsky and Lenin both explicitly argued.