Do anarchists even have any kind of unified theory comparable to Marxism?

yeah op, tbf marxism has a lot of versions as well its hardly 'unified'.

Idk, I've always felt a lot of sectarianism between Marxists is highly semantical and pedantic. What's the real difference between Trots and MLs besides Permanent Revolution vs. SiOC. What's the difference between MLs and MLMs besides the fact that MLMs think PPW is a universally applicable strategy. Aside from that the rest is just disagreements over historical questions that don't really have any baring on actual theory or praxis in the present, i.e. "was the USSR State Capitalist?", "was the Cultural Revolution an Idealist petite bourge revolution?" "was the USSR Social Imperialist?", etc. Arguably Leftcoms diverge the most from Marxists influenced by Lenin and Mao, in their rejection of activism and the party politics, and some reject Stage Theory, but I don't think that's anywhere near the kind of variation you get when you compare Mutualists to Anarcho-Primitivists, or Insurrectionary Anarchists to Syndicalists, or Communalists to Egoists.

this. Anarchists who completely disregard Marx are just edgy, idpol lifestylists.

See: our local anarcho-nihilist

So you're basically saying that we should take Marxist economics and replace the rest?

Sorry, but that's retarded, and I disagree with such a reductionist view of Marxism. The economic analysis of Marx and Engels may be their most impressive achievement, but Marxism is a philosophical methodology as well. It arised out of a common western intellectual tradition, its predecessors including Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Feuerbach.

For instance, lots of anarchists will disregard materialism and promote classical liberal themes, such as "free will". Free will is no less of an ideological term than free market. Marx and Engels understood very well that human brains are also material, and don't include some abstract mode of being that is unrelated to social conditions. Again, this is a line of thought tracing back to Spinoza.

Anarchism and Scientific Socialism are not simply differing strategies to achieve the same result, they have fundamental philosophical disagreements and trace their influences to different thinkers. Specifically, anarchists are closer to classical liberal thought with its basic ideas of autonomy and individual freedom independent of the state.

The one thing anarchists got right though was anti-hierarchy and direct democracy as a meaningful goal where possible. But i feel modern marxists can agree to that

How is that supposed to be a bad thing? The strength of Marxism lies in its adaptability and emphasis on working with what you have instead of building textbook utopias. That's why I wish retards would stop shilling this book by a guy who calls himself Marxist but doesn't even believe higher stage communism to be achievable.

Worthless without a substantial critique of ideology, something that is conspicuously absent in all anarchist theories.

All decent anarchists see democracy as just another form of governance.

There is nothing stopping you from reading early Marxists, leftcoms, ansyns, communalists, and ancoms and coming out as an anarchist. While having a good foundation in all of leftist theory.

Lenin is where streams part for ever though.

What is this?

Not necessarily. There are even anarchist Maoists (Mao-Spontex).

Protracted People's War

Protracted People's War. And MLMs do believe it's universal. So any time or place, PPW makes sense. To them at least.

The overlap between Maoist ideas from the 60's and 70's with Leftcom and Anarchist ideas is actually really surprising. It might seem ridiculous today because most Maoists now are just tankies, but back in the 60's most Marxists became Maoists specifically because they saw the USSR as a totalitarian, bureaucratic State Capitalist shithole. It was even common for Maoists in the 60's to shit on Stalin. Basically they saw the Cultural Revolution as a sort of proletarian revolution from below that was going to overthrow the State. It's kind of fascinating that this kind of Maoism seems to be practically lost to the ages, Alain Badiou and some of the surviving Panthers are the only living artifacts of that brief period of left-maoism.

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well whats the alternative, if we're going to have collective dynamics/things we do as a group in society? one dude decides?

Really interesting.

Alain Badiou was never part of the anti-hierarchical Maoist currents. He was a member of the UCFml (Union des communistes de France [u]marxiste-léniniste[/u]) and much more in line with classical "tankie" Maoists.

Communism

UCFml was authoritarian in the 60's and specifically took a strong line against Proletarian Left back in the day, but Badiou's politics now are far more anti-authoritarian, he's against the party form as an organizational tool and seems to renounce the Stalinism of the 20th Century. Maybe I shouldn't have lumped him in with Mao-Spontex, and he's hardly a Leftcom, but it's an idiosyncratic politics that simultaneously positions itself as being against totalitarianism, but through totalitarian measures. To be honest Badiou's politics are probably more indebted to Plato then Marx, or even Mao for that matter.

Read This.

Its an Anarchist text that is extremely detailed covering the concept of debt and currency and more generally exchange and distribution over 5000 Years

No, anarchists don't have various tendencies that accuse the others of being revisionists. Aside from ancap, but an examination of that shows it coming from a completely different place than anarchism with Rothbard specificly stating they were not anarchists.

There are anarchist tendencies that aren't far from being ancap tbh

When you consider that the Anarchist factions were the most numerous within the first international I don't think you can discard their contribution so easily. History has also tended to favour their theories in terms of actually classless organisation. While I agree, Marx is the definitive economic voice is it not possible that his diagnosis is correct while his proposed cure is incorrect?

Also people like Kropotkin and Proudhon pretty much agree with Marx in terms of how they think capitalism functions, it is only their solutions which differ. With Kropotkin really only very slightly in the final analysis. Even then, when you look at it, mutualist relations would not be totally out of place in the stages Marx envisages for the development of society to communism.

What Kropotkin did that Marx did not, is actually describing the post revolutionary society and what it should look like.

Bakunin correctly assessed the problems that would arise with the USSR. Etc Etc

Also, sort of relevant, anarchism was really popular in China before Mao and friends, perhaps even more popular than Marxism.

Oh yeah, I have a great pdf on that!

Mao never read Marx funny enought (Just like how Kroptokin never read capital), dont have the proof on this computer but its one of the letters from the soviet goverment to the new chinese one. Maybe somebody around here has it.

Literally utopianism. It's just pointless wankery. Barely anything of what the old anarchists envisioned a revolutionary society to be would be useful today

According to Short's biography he read Marx while on the Long March. Of course, this was after was already leader of the CP.

I don't see how anti-authoritarianism would have a place for delusions of grandeur.

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DotP as used by Marxists always implies a state, not some vague concept.

Materialism is not uniquely Marxist, nor is Idealism uniquely Anarchist. When people mention Marxism they're almost always talking about it either in an economic or political sense. Political Marxism is what should be discarded, as it's built on an inherently weak foundation of "we have to use the state to protect the revolution, it'll just wither away when it's not needed anymore for some reason".
What are you saying? That anarchists are liberals because they actually want freedom?

You cannot work with what you have unless you're working towards something. Marxism is defined by the ends justify the means, and every single time it's failed, while calling those actually trying to create a new society "utopians".

Utopianism is a meaningless buzzword to discard people and ideologies actually trying to create a better world. How the fuck can a Leftist call anyone else utopian when that's one of the most common insults thrown at us? If you do not have a blueprint for what you're trying to create, literally all you're doing is playing a game of ideologies and wanting to win for the sake of it. What does it say when Catalonia actually created the society it wanted while Communists were saying the revolution had to be won first, yet the revolution was won in Russia, yet the new society never came.

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People like Proudhon and Stirner were btfo pretty hard by Marx, Bakunin was discredited during the first international. Kropotkin has some interesting points.

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No theory, has been tried, is shit

Rich theory, has been tried, is shit

Rich theory, has literally never been tried

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It was "tried" before humanity was advanced enough to form actual civilization. Other than that, anarchism was short-lived because it can not withstand the pressure of organised society.
However the anarchistic communes existed for an extremely short periods of times in modern era, and so did libertarian utopias.

Nope.
READ MARX. READ LENIN.

lmao that's hilarious knowing Mao loved Stalin.

Utopian is a term for socialists who spend too much time creating imaginary societies in their heads instead of making an actual systemic analysis. I can describe to you in perfect detail how my ideal society would look like, but it would be a pointless exercise because everything works when it's confined to only your head. It's just intellectual masturbation and it contributes exactly nothing to the struggle. This is why even anarchists quote Marx, because he actually created a concrete and flexible analysis of capitalism and class struggle that is still applicable today. To expect him to chart out his vision of a future society is to completely misunderstand the purpose of his writings

You don't think this is a bit outdated? sure, no one can see the future and its utopian to do so, but I think that modern socialists can speak with a bit more authority on what socialism would look like because of the soviet union. We can't just pretend the 20th century never happened. Being vague and saying it will evolve or w/e isn't a very good point from a propaganda point of view, because people will point out actually existing socialism in the 20th century and say whats to say it won't turn out like that. Plz divorce hegelianism and realize we actually can talk (in rough terms) about what socialism looks like because we've already had socialism, or at least, something which claimed to be socialist. And by your own historicist/anti-utopian logic, you must concede that the USSR and related societies were socialist because they're what actually happened in history, regardless of whether they had workers control of the MOP

Also the russian revolution itself came about amidst an explosion of utopian thought not just among the intellectuals but also from the masses. Hundreds of thousands of people established small scale utopias with the groups they experienced the revolution together with.

You can not like Marx but still be influenced by him. He said good and bad things and his personality is a separate matter. Discarding or adopting an idea because of who said it is about as stupid a thing as you can do. Anarchists who actually have something of value to say as opposed to just adding warm bodies to your side mostly agree with Marx's analysis of the state of things, but disagree on the point of what to do.

Uuh no fam, I don't have to concede that. What kind of logic is that? Just because one socialist revolution turned out one way doesn't mean that it is inevitable that every revolution turns out that way nor that that is the logical conclusion of Marxism. This is precisely because Marx did not write a step-by-step guide on how to revolution, but rather an analysis which can be applied in a wide variety of different circumstances and different ways.

You mean the Paris commune? That thing that only failed because porkers literally disintegrated it by military force?

It sucks that every modern anarchist society ends up being crushed by a bigger military because we can't analyze them like we can with the ussr or china.

Why not? The 1917 revolution was proletarian in character and the leadership that emerged certainly had knowledge of Marxist theory, and that gave birth to the USSR. Why would a revolution that occured today, where most self-described marxists are in agreement with Lenin's theory and where global powers would respond in the same way to a USSRlike state turn out differently than the ML state we saw? For all the critiscm of utopians it seems the detractors have a fatalistic belief that one day a revolution will go right that is somewhat similar to a religious idea of salvation.

Would have been better if he wrote a step by step guide on how to socialism which could be applied to different circumstances. Soviet union might have turned out way better

Implying that isn't exactly the problem of anarchism, not having a state to defend itself. You guys always act like it's somehow 'unfair' that porky came in and crushed the rev with tanks. You had to know it was going to happen! you need a group of armed dudes to fight back. Which is exactly what a state is.

You cannot work with what you have unless you're working towards something. Marxism is defined by the ends justify the means, and every single time it's failed, while calling those actually trying to create a new society "utopians".

I'd argue that most serious anarchists are arguing within a Marxist framework whether they acknowledge it or not.

A rejection of the state does not necessarily mean you reject his analysis of Capitalism or Scientific Socialism

t. State Syndicalist

The USSR was ruined by Lenin and Stalin's vanguardism bullshit.

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The problem was that it was a small group of people. Nothing to do with anarchism in itself

This. Defensive wars can be better fought without a central authority structure, depending on the circumstance. If there's no head honcho to capture and make people surrender, then any conqueror has to capture all of the territory held by the anarchists instead of just organizational/strategic keystones.

After reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and his constant complaining of severe shortages of everything from food to cigarettes I have become disenchanted with anarchism and am now NAZBOL

If a small number of people in key positions whose material interests are not aligned with the contiuing success of socialism could ruin the USSR, that means it failed. We've gotta build a system less vulnerable to elite betrayal next time around.

read

It's primarily historical circumstance that Marxism had anything resembling a "unified theory" to begin with. Marx happened to be fortunate enough to have been politically active around the time of the First International and similar predecessor organizations were trying to bring about a unified leftist movement. With his successful bid to more-or-less seize control of the organization, the subsequent Internationals (including Comintern and its successors) began to take on the role of crafting a "unified" position for all of its members. Thus it came to be that Marx's works became Marxism as an ideology we know today; people and groups who might otherwise have taken inspiration from Marx were incentivized to adopt Marxism (whatever form that might have been for the time) as foundational rather than supplementary (like most anarchists did).

In contrast, with anarchism having been effectively barred from the International and anarchists failing to produce an international organization to rival the scale of the International, anarchist theory lacked the means to enforce/entice the adoption of a coherent "foundational theorist." Proudhon may have been the first to call himself an anarchist in modern times and Bakunin may be among the most well-known (though probably not the most valuable) anarchist theorists, but one does not need to necessarily know anything about Proudhon's or Bakunin's work to be an anarchist; the same cannot be said for Marx and Marxism. At least among the classic anarchist theorists, while they were all writing with knowledge and reservations about each other's work, the reader of their works today can delve into almost any of them in isolation and still understand message (or at least the most important parts): each of the writers in question (at least to some extent) justified their assertions. On the one hand, this makes the work highly accessible, but this often comes at the price of the complexity in said justifications.

Once you get out of the classics though, you begin to see more theory among anarchists that is dependent on understanding earlier texts. These works are of the variety that might fly under the radar unless you are seriously interested in pursuing anarchist theory, but are often key to understanding anarchism's place in moving into the 21st century. Much of it though consists of picking apart the orthodoxies of prior writers, often coming to the consequence where the rejection of the rejection of an earlier orthodoxy leads to a writer in question "re-discovering" the initial idea.

That's not necessarily a problem of just anarchists anymore though. Starting in the mid-late 20th century, the "unification" of Marxist theory was already rapidly breaking down with the degradation of previous authoritative organizations/bodies that kept everyone "on the same page." Most prominent figures in Marxism over the past few decades have rapidly begun to mirror anarchists in that they rarely if ever adopt the position of another theorists wholesale (or nearly wholesale) and instead indulge in increasingly deviant discussion/views in relation to past material.

Let me get you some Bakunin to dispel that
Where are you even getting this?
Proudhon invented both the term "scientific socialism" and "anarchism". You illiterate moron.

The International was started by mutualist anarchists. It was intended to be a practical realization of Proudhon's later ideas (which resembled and prefigured the extremely-similar labor voucher schemes of both Marx and Bakunin).
You do, even if it's via Kropotkin. Don't ever excuse radical liberals LARPing as anarchists and say that they are. They aren't. The basis of their ideas is in PoMo, although this isn't necessarily incompatible with anarchism (see: The Coming Insurrection, anything by Guattari, etc).

Kropotkin read Capital. Bakunin never read it because he found it "boring".

And this is part of how we know Lenin's "critiques" of anarchism in "State And Revolution" are bullshit. He would know that this definitely wasn't one of Engels's brighter moments if Lenin himself had read even the first chapter of "Statism And Anarchy".

Oh god, that pic! What did I introduce Holla Forums to Cockshott for if only to drag his name through the dirt like this?
That's exactly what "Towards A New Socialism" proposes, although we have every reason in the world to argue against currency in any form in this day and age.
Was this with the free market annil a long time ago? IIRC, he died of cancer not long after I made the Soviet Cybernetics thread coincidence? and long before any Cockshott memes were made.

It sounds like you haven't read anything (or at least any of the classics).
anarchism.pageabode.com/pjproudhon/appendix-proudhon-and-marx.html
t. Marx

That's a very Anarchist quote by Bruce Lee, imma be saving that one thx

It's a new an-nil unfortunately, but he's just as awful. Actually, he might be the old one, we don't know for sure.