Mikhail Bakunin

A panel held at the Sixth Annual Platypus International Convention on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Dimitrios Roussopoulos (Transnational Institute of Social Ecology) Tarek Shalaby (Revolutionary Socialists (Egypt)) Joshua Stephens (Institute for Anarchist Studies) Description It seems that there are still only two radical ideologies: Anarchism and Marxism. They emerged out of the same crucible - the Industrial Revolution, the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848 and 1871, a weak liberalism, the centralization of state power, the rise of the workers movement, and the promise of socialism. [Read More]

A panel held at the Sixth Annual Platypus International Convention on Saturday, April 5, 2014 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Jon Bekken (Anarcho-Syndicalist Review) James Heartfield (audacity.org) William Pelz (Elgin Community College) Description The First International (1864 - 1876), or International Workingmen’s Association, was founded in the long shadow of 1848, amidst Polish and Italian national liberation movements and the upheaval of the American Civil War. [Read More]

HERB GAMBERG’S ARTICLE “Anarchism through Bakunin: A Marxist Assessment” opens by claiming that anarchist theory has had little to no historical development since the 19th century, and that, apparently, “anarchism possesses no really developed theory in the first place”.1 Indeed, Gamberg asserts that anarchism comes from somewhere or, rather, that “psychological predispositions like anarchism have social roots and definite socio-political consequences”. Thus, anarchists are in a state of permanent revolt against authority caused by a holdover from the bourgeois revolution. [Read More]

HERB GAMBERG’S ESSAY ”Anarchism Through Bakunin; A Marxist Assessment” (Platypus Review #64)1 is not meant to be a balanced discussion of Michael Bakunin’s strengths and weaknesses, nor is it a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of anarchism and Marxism. It is a direct, full-throated attack on anarchism, using Bakunin as his focus in the name of Marxism. In this, he makes a mistake. Important as Bakunin was in initiating the anarchist movement, it is easy to overstate his significance. [Read More]

IN THE HISTORY OF THE LEFT, anarchism has always played a strange and more or less underground part. Anarchism was there at the beginning, it has been a permanent (if small) force throughout the major events and crises of the modern period, and it continues today as a significant body of thought and action. Yet in spite of its historical continuity, anarchism appears to have little historical development. While taking on the coloration of local events, the theory of anarchism propounded in the 19th century remains almost the same in our own times. [Read More]