Comments Elsewhere

Tex: “The labor theory of value and and the class theory of conflict still live on.”

You do know that the labor theory of value and class theory both predate Marx—and, for that matter, predate socialism entirely, don’t you? The former can be found in, inter alia, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and others; the latter is a bedrock component of republican political theory dating back to classical Greece and Rome. (Not surprisingly, class theory as such isn’t wedded to any particular theory about the respective roles of State and Capital, since it originated before either the modern State or modern capitalism.)

I mean, look, if you want to complain that both are wrong-headed, you can do so, but taking either one as a mark of Marxism or even Marxian influence is, frankly, historically illiterate.

I also have to wonder how many contemporary anarchists you have read when it comes to their relationship to Marxism. The historical rivalry between anarchists and state socialists (and Marxists in particular) is hardly a matter of little knowledge. On the contrary, a lot of contemporary anarchists are concerned to the point of obsession with Marxist betrayals in, e.g., Russia between the Revolution and the end of the Civil War, or in revolutionary Spain.

If you’re looking for embarassing quotations from Bakunin—an anti-Semite, among other things—or Proudhon or any number of other 19th and early 20th century anarchists, they aren’t very hard to find. On the other hand, since contemporary anarchists are both aware of and explicitly critical of these strands of their thought, I have to wonder what of value you think this sort of drive-by ad hominem abusive is going to accomplish.