Human beings will be greedy if they are brought up in an unjust society, they will be caring if they are brought up in a society where justice and equality reign. This helps us to understand just why anarchists are so interested in education.
Anarchism and Marxism – what’s the difference?
A number of parallels exist between Collectivist Anarchism and Marxism…
- Both see capitalism as a system of class exploitation
- Human beings have the ultimate ability to order their own affairs without the controlling hand of state intervening.
But Collectivists and Marxists do come into conflict over a couple of things…
Firstly Anarchists criticise Marxism’s deterministic character, taking destiny out of the hands of the people, and making it an economic certainty.
Marxists view the proletariat as the only truly revolutionary class, whereas anarchists view everyone from peasants, to students, to the ethnic minorities, as victims of repression.
The ideologies also differ in the need for a ‘vanguard party’, with the specific purpose of leading the oppressed to utopia. Anarchists have always rejected traditional political means, and that only a spontaneous uprising of the masses can lead to true anarchism, and so avoid a…
…’Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, an idea crucial to defending the progression from capitalist to socialist, according to Marx, and one abhorred by anarchists, who view the state not as a symbol of class rule, but as an independent oppressive body. Anarchists believe that the state cannot be trusted to ‘whither away’, it must be crushed.
Anarchists as a consequence often use the Kronstadt Naval Mutiny as an example of Marxist failings. This new proletarian state, massacred the sailors responsible via the same means that the old, repressive, bourgeois state would have employed.
Radical Democracy
Whilst Liberals see democracy as a viable way of offering both an accountable (via elations), and a legitimate (by voting you give your consent to be ruled) government. Anarchists argue that this is just a clever ruse to get you to consent to your own oppression and subjugation.
Anarchists as a have as a consequence turned to a more direct form of democracy, as suggested by Rosseau. A much more decentralised system, where small communities manage their own affairs, on a voluntary basis.
