Bakunin for 21st Century Activists

From Anarchist Writers blog - by Anarcho

Mark Leier is a Canadian historian of working class history and the director of the Centre for Labour Studies at Simon Fraser University. An anarchist, he has written on extensively on British Columbia's rich history of labour radicalism. His fourth book, Bakunin: The Creative Passion (Thomas Dunne Books, 2006), is an excellent biography of one of the founders of anarchism. We thought it would good to ask him why Bakunin would be of interest to 21st century activists.

Q. So, first, why write a biography of Bakunin?

I first started thinking about a biography of Bakunin in the aftermath of some of the anti-globalization and anti-WTO protests, such as the "Battle in Seattle" and the terrible police brutality in Genoa that resulted in the death of Carlo Giuliani. The anarchist presence at these protests had the media and "terrorism experts" scrambling to explain what was going on. Of course they were trying to explain away anarchism, not to understand, and they relied on parodies of anarchism. When they tried to do historical analysis, they always took it back to Bakunin, painting him as the father of propaganda by the deed, which they always interpreted as blind violence and terror. That worsened after the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Towers. My first reaction was to blame the journalists and pundits, but when I went back to the English language works on Bakunin, such as Carr's book and Mendel's and Berlin's articles, it was obvious that there was no comprehensive book, aimed at a more general audience, that treated Bakunin seriously as an activists and a thinker. So I decided to try to do that. I didn't set out to write the biography of Bakunin or the most comprehensive biography; I tried to write a biography that used some primary research and that built on the splendid academic work on Bakunin that was not easily accessible to a non-academic audience.

Q. What would you say Bakunin has to offer today’s radicals?

First, he offers some hope, hope in the importance of struggle. This was an activist who fought on the losing side all of his life, yet did not lose his passionate hope, his understanding, that the struggle itself was meaningful, for without it, the world would certainly get worse. While some seem him as a quixotic figure, I see him as one who realistically assessed the opportunities for success and failure and decided to fight for an ideal even when he thought there was no immediate chance of victory.

Second, he offers a clear appraisal of what the radicals' targets should be. After all, capitalism and the state have not changed much since his time; Bakunin would recognize much in the 21st century. He wrote powerful critiques of capital and the state that still serve as useful starting points for understanding the world, and he did so in accessible, evocative language.

Third, while there is a tendency to draw a dividing line between "classical anarchism" and contemporary anarchism and post-anarchism, a careful reading of Bakunin suggests that the "classical anarchists" wrestled with many of the same problems of goals, strategy, and tactics that anarchists face today. In fact, I believe that Bakunin offers a useful critique of today's post-anarchism, for the ideas of postmodernism that inform post-anarchism are not as new as its advocates suggest. That is, Bakunin rejected the idealist thought of his day to become a materialist and a realist, and I believe materialism and realism offer a stronger foundation for criticism than idealism and some variants of post-modernism.

Q. What where Bakunin’s strengths and weaknesses as a thinker? As an activist?

Like most of us, his strengths and weaknesses often stemmed from the same source. As an activist, one of his strengths was his optimism, optimism not so much about the possibility of success so much as optimism about the necessity for radical analysis and action. At the same time, it is often the case that refusing to appreciate incremental change can be immoral. Let me give you an example. Many anarchists refuse to vote, for many very good reasons. At the same time, voting for a slightly more progressive party may mean real benefits for people. Even if that benefit is only, say, $50 a month more for someone on welfare, that $50 is crucial for some people. And so it may be that some practical politics should also inform anarchist ideas about what to do now. Of course I am simplifying the question and I would not presume to tell anarchists what should be done, but I offer this as an example where a straightforward argument on refusing to vote may not be as principled as it first seems. As a thinker, one of his great strengths was his ability to write passionate, inspiring prose. At the same time, he could be a little imprecise in his analysis. Political movements need all sorts of people: orators, analysts, rebels, educators, street-fighters, people who are angry, people who are compassionate, and nobody can be all these things all the time. So I have tried to appreciate Bakunin's strengths rather than harp on the weaknesses.

Q. Given that Bakunin was right about Marxism (predicting that social democracy would become reformist and that the dictatorship of the proletariat would become the dictatorship over the proletariat), why do you think his ideas are not more accepted in radical circles?

I think his ideas are not more accepted precisely because he was right. If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, pragmatism is the first refuge of the scoundrel. Bakunin always shines a critical light on the compromisers and those who insist that we have to settle for less. Now, as I suggested above, sometimes compromise is all you can do, and a little may be better than nothing, but Bakunin's insistence that we must always strive for more, even when we compromise, is a stinging rebuke to those who say, "this far, but no further."

Q. There are lots of distortions and misrepresentations attached to Bakunin. What do you think are the worse? 

As you suggest, this would be a long list. Among the worst – the belief that he believed in terror for the sake of terror. His arguments about violence were much more sophisticated and complicated than that, but they have been reduced to absurd notions by his critics and sometimes by his supporters. His arguments about bandits as a revolutionary force have often been misinterpreted – the social bandits of Russia that he talked about were very different from, say, motorcycle gangs or criminal gangs. Not every outlaw is an anarchist – some more closely resemble fascists, whatever understanding we have for the fact that social forces created them. Bakunin's anti-Semitism has been greatly misunderstood. At virtually every talk I've given on Bakunin, I'm asked about it. Where it exists, it is repellent, but it takes up about 5 pages of the thousands of pages he wrote, was written in the heat of his battles with Marx, where Bakunin was slandered viciously, and needs to be understood in the context of the 19th century.

Q. Bakunin is well known for his love of secret societies? How central were they in his thought? Do we have any reliable information on how they worked internally?

In my opinion, the secret societies have been greatly exaggerated. In some cases, they didn't exist beyond Bakunin and a few friends, and so functioned like affinity groups, not revolutionary cells; in other cases, they had good reason for being secret, for open groups were an invitation for arrest and imprisonment. The important point is that as an anarchist, Bakunin did not believe in secret, conspiratorial coups but in open action and propaganda. The idea that he believed the social revolution would be accomplished by small sects is simply wrong.

Q. What is known of the process behind creating the early documents for these groups? Documents like “The Program of the Alliance” are usually published as authored by Bakunin, but where they collective statements that he then finalised?

It varies some pretty clearly seem to be his own work, while others are clearly more collective statements. He wrote incessantly, and re-wrote incessantly, not to say obsessively, working and re-working the material over time, and he clearly incorporated the ideas of others as he went. He didn't live in a closet or an ivory tower, and his ideas evolved as he worked with other people.

Q. Can ideas which reflect the economic and political structures of the nineteenth century be drawn upon to find new solutions to new problems?

I think that if Bakunin were dropped into our society today, he would be impressed with the technological progress but dismayed by the lack of social and political progress. Many of the same problems that existed in his day are still here today, and in many ways, we have declined, not progressed. The tsar's prisons, for example, were regarded as the worst in Europe, but in many ways, the treatment of prisoners such as Bakunin was better than that found in US prisons today.

Q. What is the relationship of Bakunin to Proudhon’s anarchism?

Bakunin was undoubtedly influenced by Proudhon's sense of justice and liberty,  and by his personality, but intellectually, the influence was rather limited. Bakunin believed that Proudhon had not made the intellectual breakthrough to a materialist understanding of the world. For Bakunin, that understanding that ideas do not exist in some pure form but come out of real, lived experience, opportunity, and constraints was crucial. For good or ill, Bakunin was a sophisticated intellectual, aware of contemporary trends and thought. Proudhon was not, and so was less of an intellectual influence on Bakunin. But anarchism is not just an intellectual position; it is also an ethical one and a moral one. In that sense, Proudhon's anarchism, what Bakunin thought of as his "instinctual" understanding of anarchism, was important.

Q. How instrumental was Bakunin in creating modern anarchism, given that many French mutualists (like Eugene Varlin) had independently come to similar conclusions?

At one level, of course, we are all anarchists at heart, and so it is not surprising that people move in similar directions. And similar social conditions impel people to act and think in similar ways. Anarchism in particular would seem to be a movement in which it would be a mistake to attribute the creation or founding of a movement to a single person. But I think anarchism is not just living without authority; it is also a political theory, a set or sets, sometimes in conflict! of ideas. In tracing the evolution of ideas, historians are often limited to those who left records, either their own written work, works written about them, records of organizations, and the like. That is unfair, but it is the way the past works. So Bakunin's influence, his "credit" for creating modern anarchism, is in large part due to his prominence as a writer and activist. He was very effective as a writer and famous infamous, perhaps, as an activist, and a powerful and inspirational thinker. It is unfair to say he created modern anarchism, but he did much to make it intelligible and accessible, and in that sense, deserves some credit.

Q. Is the high esteem of Bakunin in anarchist circles an example of radicals subscribing (unknowingly) to a “great men” perspective on history?

It depends on what you mean by "great man history." Few of us would deny that some people are inspirational, or have articulated our thoughts more carefully than we have, or have taken on roles that we admire. In that sense, I have no quarrel with "great person history." But the more usual meaning is to insist that history is only made by "great men and women of power," of kings and queens and magnates. That is a reactionary notion of history that serves power, not people. No one would cast Bakunin as that sort of "great man." Many people know Bakunin's aphorism about authority how he would absolutely acknowledge the authority of the bookmaker on questions involving boots. But even then, Bakunin insisted he would not bow down to that authority and would not do whatever the bookmaker recommended. So too with Bakunin: we can choose to listen to him and acknowledge his work as an anarchist thinker and activist without conceding for a moment that we must bow to him as the authority on anarchism. Having said, I do think that there is much of interest and utility in his work, though others may disagree. And few anarchists have ever treated Bakunin as an authority the way some Marxists have consulted Marx for everything from understanding history to fixing their faucets.

Q. I remember reading an article which argued, with some evidence, that Bakunin was gay and his tolerance of Sergey Nechayev was down to lust. Any comments?

It is always fun to speculate on why people do what they do, but without facts, the speculation is meaningless. One of the points I wanted to make in the book is that the psycho-history approach to Bakunin is deeply flawed because the theories of psycho-history are very weak and the evidence for the claims about Bakunin is simply non-existent. People are complex, their motivations and reasons often unclear to themselves and impossible for historians to understand completely. I have heard the argument that Bakunin was gay, but have not seen any evidence. Without evidence, any speculation is possible, but it's also meaningless. I would be happy to change my opinion if evidence were found, but to date, I haven't seen any. There is no question that Bakunin tolerated some nasty behaviour and ideas from Nechayev longer than he might have; but more important, I think, is that he did repudiate Nechayev's conception of the revolutionary as an amoral agent and terrorist.

Q. Do you think that a merger of Bakunin and Marx is possible? What would each give to such a synthesis? What would it be called?

In some ways, that synthesis has always been there. Alvin Gouldner called Bakunin the first "post-Marxist," meaning someone who built on Marx's insights and focused on questions that Marx had not thought much about or was mistaken about, such as the nature of the state, the problems of vanguardism, and the ambiguous role of the "revolutionary intellectuals" and their relationship to radical and working class movements. Of course much of Marx's insight was his own ability to synthesize ideas from different fields, from philosophy, socialist theory, and political economy, and Bakunin was in substantial agreement with Marx on many issues. On some issues where they disagreed, they misunderstood each other and in fact were more similar than they allowed; on other issues, their personalities and dislike for each other clouded the controversies. But I think it is fair to say that Marxism becomes more palatable and inspiring  the more it approaches anarchism, while anarchism becomes more powerful as a way to view to world critically the closer it approaches the best Marxist traditions. 

Q. You have also written extensively on the IWW. Do you think revolutionary unionism can grow in influence again?

If we change the question a little, to ask, will revolutionary workers' movements grow in influence again, I think the answer is, if they do not, we are in grave danger. I doubt they will take the very same form they did in the past, but workers' movements have always risen, declined, and risen again in new forms to meet new conditions. Clearly the world can not continue as it has; the old choice, socialism or barbarism, still faces us. Here I am using socialism in the old sense, not as state socialism, Bolshevism, and the like. And no group can build socialism anarchism other than the working class. Whether it will or not is the question.

Q. Many anarchists at the time pointed to the obvious links between revolutionary unionism with Bakunin’s anarchism, would you agree? Has Bakunin anything to give for today’s union activists?

Yes, Bakunin, or the ideas that he represented, were hugely influential in building revolutionary unionism. In some ways, the IWW represented that synthesis between Bakunin and Marx we talked about earlier. As for today's union activists, that radical vision and tradition can be hugely inspiring; the attempt to grapple with big ideas is essential; the insistence on organizing from the periphery to the centre, not from the centre out, is fundamental.

Q. Your second book, “Red Flags and Red Tape: The Making of a Labour Bureaucracy”, deals with the institutionalization of a non-revolutionary labour movement. Do you think that this would affect even a revolutionary union? Can it be avoided? If so, how?

I suspect any group of two or more people starts running into problems of power and authority and decision-making! But you're right, the question is the institutionalization of power. One of the things I argue in Red Flags and Red Tape is that people with some power and the power of these early labour bureaucrats was limited often make the wrong decision for the right reasons. That is, they were trying to build working class militancy, trying to move workers to resistance, trying to create a labor newspaper, trying to form new organizations all worthy aims. But precisely because they were not immediately accountable, they made their decisions in a vacuum, without input and consensus from union members. That separated them from the members and created a bureaucracy: rule by office holders. The other thing I argue is that a union can be militant and revolutionary without being democratic; alternatively, though rare, a union could be conservative and democratic. So the dangers of bureaucracy are always there. The way to avoid is to ensure that institutions that let officials make important decisions by themselves are not created in the first place.

Q. What areas of working class and anarchist history need investigating? Is there anything you think budding anarcho-historians should be looking into?

I have three answers here. The first is that there has been an explosion of work in working class and anarchist history in recent years. A lot of it has been published by university and academic presses, and that is great, but we also need people to make that work more accessible and to synthesize it. Second, there are huge areas of working class and anarchist history that need investigating. The "ethnic" press of these movements has not been adequately explored, at least not in North America; the ways in which anarchism has sometimes retreated to academia, but remained influential nonetheless is important to unearth; the writers and activists who have pushed that synthesis of Marx and Bakunin need to be explored. Here I'm thinking of people such as Paul Mattick, who never called himself an anarchist but was as anti-authoritarian and anti-vanguard as Bakunin, and Erich Fromme as just a few examples. And I am sure there are many, many other areas that need exploration. But the third answer, and really, these are observations and suggestions, not answers, is for anarchists to write about every aspect of history from an anarchist perspective. That is, there is no reason why anarchist history should only study anarchism. It could study governments and capitalism and war and every other historical topic from an anarchist perspective. That would be exciting work.

Q. Richard Dawkins has provoked a lot of responses with his “The God Delusion, would Bakunin have approved? And is it not a strange omission by Dawkins that Bakunin’s “God and the State” is missing from it?  

Bakunin would likely have approved of Dawkins's atheism, but I suspect he would think Dawkins's particular critique was a little naive. While Bakunin was a ferocious atheist, he understood the appeal of religion to the oppressed. If you want to "cure" religion, he insisted, you had to remove poverty and oppression. If religion were not a social institution, a social power, but a matter of individual belief, then it wouldn't much matter what people believed, for it would not intrude on their lives. At the same time, they would soon realize that if they wanted things to change, they could make those changes without appeal to a non-existent power. If they wanted to understand the world, knowledge would be available to them and while they could continue to believe in anything they wanted, when they wanted to work in the world, they would understand that science – real knowledge of whatever field – differs from religion in that it has to deliver or it gets discarded. Take away its social power, and religion is no longer an issue. Blaming people for seeking some small solace isn't helpful.

Q. Finally, Bakunin had a pretty eventful life. Fighting on the barricades in 1848, solitary confinement, escaping from Siberia, fighting Marx in the International, taking part in insurrections in the 1870s. When you were writing your biography did you think it would make a good film? And who would play Bakunin? Marx?

I often thought it would be a great film, or, at least, one I'd like to see. But Spielberg and Scorsese haven't returned my calls. Robbie Coltrane would be my choice to play Bakunin, and he already has the beard from the Harry Potter series. Marx is a little trickier; but someone with the intensity of Robert De Niro could pull it off, though that particular casting does boggle the mind. Personally, I'd love to see Jack Nicholson pull one of his famous hissy fits with a faceful of yak hair glued on as he kicked and shouted about Bakunin's ideas on the commune.....

Published in: Black Flag no. 229 (BM Hurricane, London, WC1N 3XX, UK)

Personally, I'd love to see

Personally, I'd love to see Jack Nicholson pull one of his famous hissy fits with a faceful of yak hair glued on as he kicked and shouted about Bakunin's ideas on the commune.....

Heh...Nicholson as Marx. He made an effect Eugene Oneal in Reds...I think he could pull it off.

I'm puzzled that any

I'm puzzled that any anarchists see some possible synthesis of Marxism and anarchy. Marx hated and fought with all the anarchists...Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin. And when he was told about some authoritarian socialists switching to anarcho-syndicalism in France he famously said, ' then I am not a Marxist!'
As the petty bourgeois Marx and his capitalist boss Engels both consistently rejected anarcho-syndicalism I don't know how any 'council communists' like Paul Mattick, call themselves Marxists.
And how any anarchists think these bizzaro-world Marxists who were 50 years late and 50$ short have the slightest thing to add. I think anarchists need to grow up a little and shuck off these leftist Klingon 'communists'. A good movie or two could help this even if the movie form in general appears to be in terminal decay. Yrs etc. Professor rat

"Marx hated and fought with

"Marx hated and fought with all the anarchists...Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin."

You're actually going to invoke a long dead rivalry between a few individuals in order to rationalize the rejection of an entire theoretical tendency which has - granted, along with it's unacceptable and stupid embrace of certain bourgeois ideals at times - produced probably the most thorough ground work for a critical analysis of capitalism? Rejecting the contributions of Marx and his successors on the basis that he had a grudge towards some anarchists or that he had temper tantrums over syndicalist methodology pretty much sums up the ad hominem fallacy.

ideological masturbation is

ideological masturbation is fun isn't it eyedea? you and i are on the same page here. marxists generally do have a lot of useful things to say about capitalism but they have a stupid determinist morality (not in the case of every last individual marxist of course but as a trend). what is an anarchist to do? anyone can see this: take what is useful from the cannons of marxism and throw out all the determinist bullshit. in other words we can save the baby and discard the dirty bath water. i don't know why something like this isn't obvious on it's face to everyone....but critic that i am i am game, worthy objections from any puritans out there?

i might also say that as

i might also say that as awesome as bakunin was in certain respects (ie: walking his talk) he wasn't flawless, no one is. being an anarchist doesn't = WWBD (what would bakunin do?). for that matter it doesn't equal giving a shit about who bakunin, or any other figure, did or didn't get along with (aren't we no better than the worse of the vanguard marxist crowd if we do that?). if we all acted like bakunin than every last one of us would be big fans of industrialism and meritocracy, we would also all pretty fetish science as beyond fallibility (which isn't even part of the scienctific method, for what it is worth!).

"the cannons of

"the cannons of marxism"...

Once again poor spelling ability makes for an unintentionally funny point. The cannons of Marxism would be those used against the anarchist centers in Petrograd and Moscow in April 1918, those used against the Makhnovists, and those used against the Kronstadt communards, those used against the anarchist collectives in Aragon and against the anarchists in Barcelona in 1937. And that's just a few examples of Marxist cannons being used against anarchists; they have been used against all kinds of other non-Marxist radicals in various places around the globe as well.

A canon, on the other hand, is something quite different, but in most cases, ideological canons eventually lead to physical cannons...
=Mister Grumpy

What does the author mean by

What does the author mean by "post-anarchism" and in what way is "postmodernism" - whatever that means - idealistic?

Post-anarchist - ya know,

Post-anarchist -
ya know, when ya reject anti-authoritarian anti-capitalist struggle and tend to opt out for an upwardly-mobile lifestyle or kids, marriage and family.

I have kids and I'm still an

I have kids and I'm still an anarchist, thank you very much. Don't be an asshole.

It's clear that the

It's clear that the characterization was meant to be inclusive of all those aspects, not merely reduced to one of them.
=Mister Grumpy

Post-anarchism is the

Post-anarchism is the integration of anarchist theory and post-structural critique.

why more books about dead

why more books about dead white dudes?

where's the 50th fucking book about some non-white, not male, revolutionaries???

come on, these old dead white dudes may have put theoretical frameworks around shit, but poor people around the world have lived and died with anarchist principles for so long, i want to see books about them. you know, people like me!

yeah the only way to

yeah the only way to appreciate someone's idea is if they are exactly like me
let's discount this person's ideas because they are from a background that is not mine, that's smart. fuck Gandhi, he's a skinny brown dude and i'm a fat lesbian feminist from san francisco, down with patriarchy!

its pretty obvious they

its pretty obvious they weren't saying people who are not like them should have their ideas rejected but rather that they would like to see the stories and ideas of anarchists who are neglected in favor of numerous publications about white men.

Wow, you're an asshole,

Wow, you're an asshole, aren't you?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be books about Bakunin, but why is there SO FUCKING MANY of them and so few about historical anarchist people of color and women, etc...

I actually know the answer, it's that the university is disproportionately populated by white dudes, and white dudes have an easier time getting by in our society and thus can devote more time to writing books about shit, so they write about other white dudes. It's sad but true.

They should check that shit though and write about someone else beside Bakunin, who already has like 20 books about him! Seriously!

Mainstream history already ignores the stories and lives of women and poor people and people of color enough, anarchists shouldn't do that, too.

So all you white male anarchist writers:
WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT A WOMAN OR PERSON OF COLOR WHO WAS AN ANARCHIST NEXT TIME, FOR ONCE!!!

Maybe then there'd be more people of color and women who are anarchists!

"I'm not saying there

"I'm not saying there shouldn't be books about Bakunin, but why is there SO FUCKING MANY of them and so few about historical anarchist people of color and women, etc..."

Because he was one of founders of Anarchist theories. All of the anarchist people of colour and female anarchists trace their ideas back to him in some way. Emma Goldman also has many books written about her because she was a major influence on the vast majority of anarchists who came after her. Zapata has many books, although mostly in Spanish, on him. You get books written about you when you a) Have made significant contributions to your milieu and b) Are famous overall.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin was

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin was probably one of the first anarchist authors I came across. Granted, I haven't had much interest in his writings since then and I really can't recall enough of my memory to elaborate on what I learned from his texts (probably due to the very large shift in my understanding of anarchism, which has altered my literary interests and points of reference), but it still stands that, by no means, is literature written by colored/female/queer anarchists hard to find.

Are anarchists prone to Euro-centricity? Yes, I believe so. The great majority of anarchists (and I'm including colored/female/queer anarchists here), I'd reckon, sway between the Continental tradition of philosophy (which is basically the collective philosophical knowledge of Europe after and during the bourgeoisie's rise), Marxian inspired analysis, syndicalist/councilist methodology, Judeo-Christian values, and other dominantly European (in the cultural-political sense) tendencies. Does this mean the vast majority of anarchists are white supremacists or privileged lackeys for the White Man? No. It just means there's an acute lack of curiosity among most anarchists -- a lack of willingness to challenge their own tradition.

The reason why there's so many books about Bakunin is because Bakunin is familiar. And frankly, I remember enough about Ervin's writings to say that his core ideas were pretty much orthodox. Simply calling for more biographies about colored, queer, or female anarchists isn't good enough. It doesn't matter if the physical appearance or sexual desires of the anarchist are non-traditional in the terms of the dominant ideology. If that's all you care about then all you're really calling for is some petty equal representation. What matters is what lengths that anarchist is willing to go to challenge traditional, Euro-centric anarchist tendencies. That anarchist could be a heterosexual, white, "cisgendered" male and still ruthlessly attack the orthodoxy of European inspired anarchism.

why so many books about

why so many books about Bakunin? because his ideas, theories and actions - but especially his critiques of contemporary radicals like Marx and his philosophical antecedents like Hegel and Feuerbach - were seriously important for the development of anarchism. so much so that he is the one who is considered the main theoretician of anarchism (unlike Proudhon, whose economic ideas were pretty silly), and is the one single anarchist who most modern anarchists look back on as a pivotal influence (Kropotkin would be the other one).

if anyone can find an anarchist "person of color" besides Otsuge Sakae or Shifu or Flores Magon or even Lucy Parsons whose ideas were substantially different from Bakunin to warrant an in depth re-appraisal from academic and amateur historians, then i'm all for funding those studies. the institute for anarchist studies has a grant program for writers. the fact is that the ideas and theories and practices of those four were derivative of Bakunin (and Kropotkin to a lesser extent), so why not go back to the original?

studies of Emma Goldman have only been increased by the stash of letters that found their way to the Emma Goldman Papers Project. otherwise, her stuff would be relegated to the ephemera of a minority of anarcha-feminists. that would be tragic, if only because of the very liberating (still!) ideas she had on "free love." also Voltairine DeCleyre's writings are cool, but her wish to integrate american liberalism with continental anarchism was doomed from the start, which is why only someone as enthusiastic (and tenured) as Paul Avrich would have ever dared to write her biography.

this analysis of the university being overpopulated by white dudes, and this being the reason that they mostly write about other white dudes is completely flawed. academics write about anything and everything. many of their most interesting stuff is ensconced within academic journals - not books - which is why most of us never read them. most of the material about Rose Pesotta is in those history/labor journals rather than in full-length biographies. only one book has ever been published in english about Mujeres Libres, and that only because of the dedication of Martha Ackelsberg (like Avrich's for Voltairine). that doesn't mean that there's nothing else, just nothing book length. check out the Kate Sharpley Library, which specializes in "unknown" anarchist history.

you might be the one to break open the supposed imposed silence about anarchist women and "people of color" but where would you start? whining that someone else isn't doing it properly is just whining. it's severely unappealing. "for once"? you need to get out more.

Uhh, because he was one of

Uhh, because he was one of the founders of anarchism as a modern political theory, basically?

I agree with the fat lesbian, this was a silly question.

"WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT A

"WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT A WOMAN OR PERSON OF COLOR WHO WAS AN ANARCHIST NEXT TIME, FOR ONCE!!!

Maybe then there'd be more people of color and women who are anarchists!"

like there aren't a million books about Emma Goldman? but anyway.

thanks for proving my point. you basically copped to the idea that people can't appreciate ideas coming from people who aren't from their background. good one.

yes, it's easier to identify

yes, it's easier to identify with ideas when they are being said by people like oneself.

only a cracker, who lives in a white supremacist world where the default assumption is always whiteness, would think otherwise.

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN "PEOPLE LIKE ONESELF"?

you fucking essentialist, sure i want ideas from people 'like me' - people with good ideas, people who hate government and authority, people with a fucking fire tongue and an understanding of the present situation. people who inspire because they're intelligent, folks who write about their experiences in revolt and give them a critical lens.

just because someone has skin like me doesn't make them like me; most people with my skin or gender or sexuality who get read by the liberal identity-politics segment of anarchy are crap liberals or statist fucks, and the dumbasses who read them can't put together a critical understanding of them. i guess that's what is meant by people like oneself -- people too mentally weak to engage with intelligent material.

yea, bakunin is kinda dated and boring, but that doesn't mean i have to read some watered down hippie liberal shit to protect your weak ego.

I think you misunderstood. I

I think you misunderstood.

I want writing that is all the things you stated above, AND comes from a black man who knows what the fuck living in racist Amerikkka is like.

It's not either/or, I want both. And that is under-represented in anarchist publishing.

Quit trying to paint me with some identity politics brush. I'm an anarchist not a liberal. But I also know that people who grew up poor and black like me who are anarchists are going to be writing some good stuff that I will actually want to read, if they are given the chance. Or are we all supposed to only express ourselves through rap music and leave the books to dead white men, who may be able to write about anarchism, but none of my friends from high school will ever read because IT DOESN'T RELATE?

Q: How many white men does

Q: How many white men does it take to ignore the POSSIBILITY that non-white, non-male anarchists might have a different perspective on anarchism that could speak to audiences that don't include THEM?

A: Everyone posting above, apparently.

-------

This is why there is continual interest in the BLA, the Black Panthers, The Latin Kings, etc... Because those groups spoke to people of color because they WERE people of color, perhaps in a way that doesn't make sense to white people. Or perhaps in the way that Bakunin speaks to these white people posting on here.

"Q: How many white men does

"Q: How many white men does it take to ignore the POSSIBILITY that non-white, non-male anarchists might have a different perspective on anarchism that could speak to audiences that don't include THEM?

A: Everyone posting above, apparently."

You realize that asking "how many" and answering with "everyone" doesn't really make any sense, right? Also, why are you assuming we're all white men? Why the fuck is there a tendency to assume that just because you don't agree with every anarchist point you're the White Male Boogeyman? It's absurd, and honestly, racist to assume that.

"This is why there is continual interest in the BLA, the Black Panthers, The Latin Kings, etc... Because those groups spoke to people of color because they WERE people of color, perhaps in a way that doesn't make sense to white people."

Yeah, please compare the Latin Kings to Bakunin. Maybe there was revolutionary fervor going on in their early days, but I didn't know that selling drugs, raping women and doing drive-bys in Washington Heights constituted revolutionary theory! Tell me, how is that "speaking" to the people of color who live in their neighborhoods? Can you do a lot of speaking with a Mac-10?

"committed illegal acts known as “burns,” including murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery, intimidation, and assault against individuals who posed a threat to the gang or jeopardized its operations, including rival gang members and witnesses to illegal activities. Latin Kings members and associates were required to participate in such “burns,” received standing orders to shoot rival gang members, and were instructed to retaliate for gang-related attacks upon fellow members and associates"

I guess you could chalk up this behavior to COINTELPRO or whatever, but this is either the biggest coverup in history or the Latin Kings are just another violent street gang. Pick whatever you want.

"Or perhaps in the way that Bakunin speaks to these white people posting on here."

I'm not fucking white, but hey, it's much easier to tar someone with "white" in this community than actually get anything done, but whatever.

There are many anarchists of

There are many anarchists of racial diversity in obscure regions doing their anarchistic autonomous thing,,often parochial and illiterate(wow,we wont have to de-school their communities),but still having an anti-state perception of existence.

That doesn't necessarily

That doesn't necessarily make them anarchists. Anarchism is a conscious resistence to all rulers. One can be in resistance to the state and still have some sort of traditional ruler, as often happens, and that isn't anarchist. Not all anti-state struggles constitute an anarchist movement.

non-state, communal

non-state, communal existences do though.

that's what the poster above was referring to, i think.

you know, some tribes, intentional communities, etc...

Yes I was thankyou.

Yes I was thankyou.

Depends on the

Depends on the tribe/intentional community. Even the smallest community can have an ideology that permits rulers.

hence the word "some" god,

hence the word "some"

god, this is ridiculous.

Show me some anarchist

Show me some anarchist people of colour with ideas substantially different from white anarchists.

The Black Panthers were Maoists who spoke the langauge of black liberation, but they were still Maoists. Mao may have been a person of colour, the ideas unique to his ideology could not have existed without Lenin and Marx - white dudes. Many more contemporary radical non-white theorists like Said and Spivak owe their theories to Gramsci and Derrida, more european dudes.

Throughout the world there may be thousands of radical ideas being passed around Africa and Asia, but these ideas are manifested out of local struggles and have no connection to the tradition of anarchism.

Lol -- I'm sure if the BPP

Lol -- I'm sure if the BPP came through on their goals, deposed the American liberal state and formed a Maoist government (with a Chairmen, a people's army, and all the other goodies that come with Leninist military coups) then all the anarchist wankers who romanticize about them wouldn't have such a sparkle in their eye. As a matter of fact, we'd probably all be fucking dead or in some shiny new People's Prison.

The Latin Kings? Like many other contemporary street gangs, they may have started off as a self-defense group for colored people, but now it's just a lame ass murder circle too busy getting rich off the gangland markets and wasting each other in broad daylight. Why you would even waste your time invoking the name of those losers is beyond me. All you can do now is look back at the good old days. The Latin Kings are a threat to working class colored people (or really, everyone and anyone - especially themselves, since they don't seem to have as much problems with killing each other off as other gangs).

The BLA was a black nationalist sect that had it's hands too full with robbing banks so they could buy more guns (to rob more banks) and marching on with their other fantastical urban guerrilla stunts to ever do anything even slightly useful - just like practically all of the naive radical student groups back then (which were mostly made up of white people). So what if they busted a few people out of prison? Those people probably just went on to get more guns, ended up dead, or went back to prison (ah! the life of an urban guerrilla soldier -- don't you wish you could experience such bliss!?). The BLA was a nationalist piece of shit. Nationalism is inexcusable bourgeois ideology (the bourgeoisie obviously being of European origins, and therefore nationalism as well...). I don't even care if Kuwasi Balagoon or Ashanti Alston had their roots in the BLA. I'm glad the BLA are gone (along with all the other reactionary militantist organizations from the Cold War era).

So... yeah, I think we've done a fair job of clearing up all this confusion.

Pro-tip: don't put your skin color before critical analysis.

LOL right back. I never said

LOL right back.

I never said ANYTHING about thinking the Latin Kings or the BPP or BLA were cool, I just said that people of color look up to them still, and it is partially because there is a lack of books about anarchists of color.

Compare the number of books about white male anarchists and I'd bet it tops the amount about women, queer, and POC anarchists combined.

That's what the problem is. Everyone just wants to shit talk to avoid the god dam point I am making. Why the fuck are you people so defensive? Do you WANT their to be 50 books about Bakunin and few on POC anarchists? I really don't get it.

I think that the anarchists

I think that the anarchists who have been most influential and groundbreaking and the anarchists with the most interesting lives should get the most books. Bakunin exemplifies both.

so the more influential one

so the more influential one was, the more books one should get. it would seem that you support the hundreds of books written on George Washington then?

That's a crap argument and you know it. By that logic, all the books written about Bush were justified, etc...

Books should be written about precisely those people who have NOT have such a large influence. Those with great influence have had their ideas heard by plenty of people already. Not to say that every wingnut deserves a book, but that there are many anarchists who deserve books, and I'd like to read about them, especially POC anarchists, and those books will never be written about them.

yep those books will never

yep those books will never be written until somebody like you, with both the drive and the ability to write decently STOPS WHINING, GETS OFF YOUR FUCKING LAZY ASS AND WRITES IT!!!!

Of course Washington and

Of course Washington and Bush deserve a lot of books so people can understand why they were so influential, the context of the influentiality. Thus people can question their motivations and so on.

There is nothing preventing POC anarchists from writing books, many have and several of those have been published by organizations like AK Press. There are many books about POC anarchists many of them simply haven't been translated, which is a problem with global literature in general.

I just don't find stuff written by POC anarchists to be all that original or useful. Not in the way that Fanon was, or Said was or Spivak, to some degree, is. Most POC anarchists tend to take a lot from said theorists or fall back into racial essentialism.

That's the tradition or

That's the tradition or formalism of an ideological system within a context that assumes a cultural characteristic.I wish for a Lacanian trajectory.

blah blah blah, what's

blah blah blah, what's stopping you from writing these books?

Also, name one anarchist of color, or arguably, one anarchist, that contributed more to the development of anarchism than Bakunin.

What's that? I can't hear nuthin.

Dear Eeyda I am quite happy

Dear Eeyda

I am quite happy to jump in the dumpster and rifle through it for any decent Marxist ideas...as I've already done for post-modernism. However I will only consider this safe when all these present Marxist slave states are dead and buried. China, the DPRK, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.

The urge to deconstruct is also the creative urge. Professor rat.

You might not be able to

You might not be able to hear "nuthin" because you are at a computer screen, but if you can READ you'd have seen this from a comment above:

"I actually know the answer, it's that the university is disproportionately populated by white dudes, and white dudes have an easier time getting by in our society and thus can devote more time to writing books about shit, so they write about other white dudes. It's sad but true."

What? Most POC and women have less time to sit around and pontificate and write books and study old dead people than white men do in our patriarchal, white supremecist, capitalist society? What?

Fucking idiot.

That's an excuse, not an

That's an excuse, not an explanation. Even if you are right, the point that you can't name any thinker as significant as Bakunin from the backgrounds you desire still stands. Which is why people study him. QED.

Solomon within his

Solomon within his historical context,just like Bakunin within his context!!:)

the fact that i can't,

the fact that i can't, proves my point: that there is a dearth of writing about APOC, queer, and women anarchists compared to the pile written about white men, and that this is why i have heard of bakunin a million times but not many APOC people.

duh.

plus, don't you think its possible that there was some other person with better formed ideas than his but whose ideas didn't make it into the easily accessible part of the historical record because they weren't a white man back in the 1800s? did racism exist then? anti-semitism? chauvinism? hmmm... couldn't it be possible that there were awesome anarchists from back then that we know little about now because they didn;t have access to the power structure in the way that Bakunin did?

Bakunin, the archenemy of

Bakunin, the archenemy of all states, the scourge and boogeyman of paranoid cops, judges, academics, Marxists -- basically all of bourgeois Europe -- had "access to the power structure"? WTF? Arrested, jailed, beaten, exiled, broken in body, in heavy debt... these are all the signs of "access to the power structure"? Just because he was "white" (and let's not forget that as a Slav, he was NOT considered to be part of the European colonial-industrial elite that created the notion of whiteness we recognize [?] today)? This is the kind of (counter)essentialist nonsense that gets "subaltern" discourse and its champions into serious trouble.

Let's pretend for a moment "that there was some other person with better formed ideas than his but whose ideas didn't make it into the easily accessible part of the historical record because they weren't a white man back in the 1800s." If you can conceive of this 1880s person (or many people), then why is there no evidence of it? No access to book and pamphlet printing? No access to newspapers? No access to public meetings? No access to radical discussion circles? No access to ... what exactly? Given Bakunin's numerous problems as a philosopher and theoretician, I for one would love to be able to point to another early (European or not) anarchist (besides Proudhon and Kropotkin) whose ideas and theories were more inclusively attractive. The historical record (not just created and maintained by old white dudes) doesn't provide us with any such person, which is unfortunate. It's not because people haven't tried to discover the arcane and obscure people of anarchist history, even up to the point where some try to enlist all kinds of dubious folks into the anarchist pantheon.

But I forgot, all history is white right?
=Mister Grumpy

well, he was born into an

well, he was born into an aristocratic russian noble family, he had access to education, and even spent time in the russian imperial guard as an officer, so he kind of did have access to the power structure, in more ways than one...

and an 1880s person who is not a white man, and is often overlooked for their contribution to radical thought...Lucy Parsons comes to mind.

boo yah!!!

boo yah!!!

Sure Bakunin was born into

Sure Bakunin was born into the minor nobility, but so what? So was Kropotkin. Does being born into a particular class give that person some automatic ability to have access to the structures of power? In Bakunin's case, because of the political choices he made throughout his adult life, the answer is a resounding No.

Sure Bakunin has access to education, unlike the serfs of Russia in those days. So what? Being educated at a university level doesn't automatically give a person the requisite leverage to gain access to structures of power either -- just ask some of the student activists who've been involved in occupations over the past few weeks. Does having access to education automatically give a person the proper credentials to be written about by historians? The answer of course is No.

Yes, Bakunin was part of the military of his day (there was a draft), and as a minor noble who was literate, he was a minor officer. So what? He left military service under less than honorable (for the army that is) circumstances. Shouldn't that give him more cred for anarchists?

In short, Bakunin, by rejecting (or being rejected) the trappings of his background and throwing in his lot with the workers and peasants, cut himself off from the structures of power. At that point, there would have been no way that he would have any more access to them than one of the serfs his father freed. But really all you're trying to do is cement the equation of a class background with the same bullshit essentialist nonsense that infuses the POC discourse. Skin color and gender do not confer automatic status as oppressor or victim any more than class. Biology is not destiny, and neither is the relative wealth of your ancestors.

Okay, I'll accept the Lucy Parsons challenge (almost put her in my last post...). She was a decent orator by all contemporary accounts, she made the lecture circuit for a while after her more famous husband was executed by the state, she was present for the creation of the IWW (but dropped her interest in it almost immediately). But she was also an opponent of free love, she had far too many cozy relations with Stalinists, and she had her son committed in a mental asylum where he died.

What are the innovations that she brought to the table of radical politics in general and anarchism in particular? There are a couple of thorough (and hagiographic) biographies of her; please give us a brief overview of her political analysis. The tidbits don't even have to be more important for the legacy/tradition of anarchism than anything Bakunin wrote, they just have to be original or more incisive. I am happy to reserve judgment until some evidence is presented, but I suspect that, sadly, none will be forthcoming. The elevation of Lucy Parsons into an exemplar of anarchism smacks of tokenism.
=Mister Grumpy

One can learn many things

One can learn many things from Lucy Parsons, like not fetishizing race. She had a very eclectic racial background and married a white, ex-Confederate soldier.

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