From: anand@Cadence.COM (Anand Bemra)
Subject: Re: Bakunin on Marxism (was Re: Engels on Bakunin)
Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 22:08:49 GMT

miballar@leland.Stanford.EDU (Michael Ballard) writes:

>Note that what Bakunin is saying here is that he wants to abolish the state.
>Engels says above that he too wants to abolish the state.  The difference,
>as Engels points out, is that Bakunin mentions nothing about the necessity
>of ridding society of capital--the social relations based on wage labor
>which result in the basic class divisions in modern society--before one can
>abolish the state.  This, in Engels' opinion, is a mistake for both Marx
>and Engels thought that the modern state rested on the social relations
>built on wage labor.  So, they thought that as long as you had wage labor
>and capital and class divisions, it was nonsense to talk of abolishing the
>state.

From what I understand of Anarchism, like communism, it does not believe in 
private property either. [Anarchism - Daniel Guerin]

>Both Marx and Engels thought that if classes existed after the 
>ascent of the workers to a governing position in society, that form of 
>governance would be a state.  If the workers ascended to power and had the
>ability to socially own the productive apparatus of society, then the social
>relation of capital/wage labor would no longer exist and classes would
>be a thing of the past, along with the engine of class rule, the state.

If we look around, this bogus 'withering away of the State' notion obviously 
hasn't worked. Once the governance of the country is by a few people , no 
matter even if its members came from the working class, they would not
let go of power. 

>>Bakunin:
>>"One asks oneself how a man as intelligent as Marx could conceive of such
>>a heresy against common sense and historical experience as the notion that
>>a group of individuals, however intelligent and well-intentioned, could
>>become the soul and the unifying and directing will of a revolutionary
>>movement and of the economic organization of the proletariat of all
>>countries ..."
>If one could quote Marx somewhere as saying that he thought that, "a 
>group of individuals, however intelligent and well-intenioned, could
>become the soul etc.", I would be most interested in reading it.

That was not a Marx quote. Bakunin was explaining the centralizing tendency
of Marxist philosophy. 

>>Red Bureacracy:
>>
>>Bakunin summed it up as follows: "Take the most radical of revolutionaries
>>and place him on the throne of all the Russians or give him dictatorial
>>powers ... and before the year is out he will be worse than the Czar himself."
>What Bakunin has summer up here could be agreed to by almost anyone i.e.
>anyone given singular power in a state, even if they were really nice or
>really, really revolutionary like Marx or Bakunin, would be (maybe could
>be) worse than the Czar himself.  After all, look at Stalin.

Amen. That is why anarchists say no to centralized power.

anand@cadence.com
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