Marxism and anarchism

The Paris Commune, the First International, and the origins of anarchism

Notes for a workshop at the London AWL "Paris Commune" event on 30 April 2011 The Paris Commune of March-May 1871 was the high point of the surge of the workers' movement also expressed in the First International, founded in 1864. But the backlash following the defeat of the Paris Commune also broke up the International in 1872, splitting it into two factions, "Marxist" and "anarchist", neither of which survived long. The Paris Commune is thus also the background to the origins of the anarchist movement. Click here: the First International . The leading figures on the two sides of the split...

Ends and means

After the March 26 TUC demonstration, we began a discussion around tactics, politics and organisation with an “open letter to a direct-action activist”. In future issues of Solidarity we will feature further comment, from members of Workers’ Liberty and others, on the issues involved. The piece below is from an activist who blogs at The Great Unrest (www.thegreatunrest.net). The relationship between our political goals and the means we use to achieve them is fraught with difficulty. There’s good evidence of this in the recent debates about “direct action” and the “black bloc” (which has...

Direct action and class struggle: continuing the debate on tactics

Understand the relationship between ends and means By Anne Archist (Anne Archist is an activist who contributes to the Great Unrest blog.) The relationship between our political goals and the means we use to achieve them is fraught with difficulty, and there’s good evidence of this in the recent debates about “direct action” and the “black bloc” (which has largely been conflated with the act of rioting itself). On the one hand, we can fixate on one particular way of doing things to the exclusion of better possibilities; on the other hand, we can valorise “diversity of tactics” as if it were an...

Can we build a revolutionary workers' movement?

In Solidarity 3/199, we printed an “open letter to a direct-action activist” as a contribution to the debate about actions which took place around the TUC-organised 26 March “March for the Alternative”, and the relationship of those actions and the activists involved to the mass labour movement. Ira Berkovic continues that debate by examining arguments which come up in discussion among anti-capitalist activists about the mass labour movement and involvement in it. Argument: trade unions are a spent force. They’re half the size they were in the 1970s; most workers know little about trade unions...

Open letter to a direct-action militant

Comrade, We are sympathetic to the direct action taken against banks, Fortnum & Mason, the Ritz Hotel and other locations throughout central London on Saturday 26 March. We will not join in with moralistic condemnations of your “violence”, nor will we go along with attempts to “disown” you or pretend you are not part of our movement. Indeed, some Workers’ Liberty members were involved in the direct actions which took place on Saturday. We will not join in with attempts in the media and elsewhere to create a division between respectable, non-violent direct-action activists and “bad”...

Anarchism, Marxism, and polemic

Martin Thomas’s article in Solidarity 3-195, “Working-class struggle and anarchism”, has prompted a long debate on our website. We print excerpts from two contributions and a reply to the debate by Martin Thomas. The original article and entire debate can be found here . The polemicists have invoked the Anarchist Federation as proof that my criticisms of anarchism in Solidarity 3/195 were unjust. Let’s see what the Anarchist Federation says. Its website recommends an interview with an AF member which says: “Too often the anarchist scene is incredibly elitist. There are loads of friendship...

Working-class struggle and anarchism

Anarchism opposes the capitalist state. Some anarchists — primarily the anarcho-syndicalists, who on this issue have the same idea as Marxists do — identify with the working class as the force to defeat the capitalist state and create a new society; but most do not. Click here for longer first-draft version of this article, and discussion ; and click here for pdf of this article . Click here for follow-up on debate . Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the “father of anarchism”, was opposed to unions, strikes, and class struggle. “We...wage war”, he wrote, “not upon the rich but upon principles... We are...

Working-class struggle and anarchism

Anarchism opposes the capitalist state. But by no means all anarchists identify with the working class as the force to defeat the capitalist state and create a new society. For the revised and abridged version of the article in Solidarity 3/195, click here ; and and to download a pdf of that revised and abridged version, click here . Click here to download this text as pdf. Click here for follow-up on debate in Solidarity 3/196 . Some anarchists do. Those are the anarcho-syndicalists, who on this issue have the same idea as Marxists do, and whose ideas this article will come back to later. But...

Fees rise means a lifetime of debt

A briefing on the BBC website gives stark figures on the new university fees policy which, if introduced, is set to take effect from September 2012. They calculate that “a middle-earning graduate would need to earn, for example, an average of £48,850 a year for 26 years to pay off their debt.” Read that figure again. Ask yourself how many university graduates you know who earn anything like that amount. In a climate in which jobs and wages are also under attack, how many graduates are likely to earn an average of nearly £50,000 a year for nearly 30 years? The government’s plans will literally...

Marxists, Stalinists, Anarchists, Fascists and Workers in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-37

Introduction: Revolution and Betrayal in Spain Spain by WH Auden The Spanish Revolution and Those Who Killed It: a Chronology Trotsky: A "Diary" of The Spanish Revolution and the Civil War 19936-39 Workers' Control in the Spanish Revolution 1936-7 How the Stalinists Killed Workers' Control in the Spanish Revolution Issues in the 1936-7 Spanish Revolution Spain 1936-7: A Study in Workers Power Marxism and Anarchism Hobsbawm's Miserable Apology for Stalinism The Spanish Revolution George Orwell: Eyewithness in Barcelona: 1936-37: With the International Brigade The Scottish Volunteers in the...

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