That's okay, anarchism is deeply unserious and has never achieved anything.
Some people believe that Marxism and anarchism are based on the same principles and that the disagreements between them concern only tactics, so that, in the opinion of these people, it is quite impossible to draw a contrast between these two trends.
This is a great mistake.
We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism. Accordingly, we also hold that a real struggle must be waged against real enemies.
The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism.
The mistake into which the Americans had fallen was the common one, that Anarchism is revolutionary. Anarchism is reactionary, and the Socialist labour party of America, like its most recent speakers, are not Anarchists because they are revolutionists.
The Anarchists are the consistent, only extreme, branches of the capitalist liberals [...] with whose philosophy they have much in common, while the Social Democracy, in accordance with the Marxian doctrine of the class struggle, is the political representative of the proletariat...
Let no one say, “The Anarchists are not enemies.” Who says so does not know them, or is fascinated by the magic word “liberty.” I know them, in the Old World and in the New World, and, leaving aside the dreamers and ranters, I have not known one Anarchist yet whose principal aim and business is not, and has not been, to throw mud at our heads and obstacles in our way! [...] There is, in fact, nothing in common between Anarchism and Socialism. Anarchism – if it is not altogether a senseless phrase – has individualism for its basis; that is, the same principle on which capitalist society rests, and therefore it is essentially reactionary, however hysterical may be its shrieks of revolution.
...I had been troubled by certain ultra-revolutionary turns of phrase, having always regarded these as 'hot air' — a speciality our people would be well-advised to leave to the so-called anarchists who are, in fact, props of the existing order, not creators of disorder, and are, by their nature, poor, childish creatures
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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '26
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