Comrade Berkman:
Why does Kevin Carson claim to support the I.W.W. yet defend wage labor and absentee landlordism?
Um.
You’re new here, aren’t you?
Berkman considered mutualism/individualism seriously flawed
Of course he did. That’s why he wasn’t a mutualist or an individualist. But the point of mentioning his reception of mutualism was not to reopen the argument about whether mutualism is a good idea or not. It was to reply to your silly assertion that mutualists and individualists are not part of “actual historical anarchism,†but rather are newcomers “infiltrating†the movement. That’s certainly not how it seemed to actual historical anarchists like Berkman, in spite of very real and deep disagreements.
That said, even if the point of the discussion were to reopen the issue of mutualism and its critics, the arguments you raise here are astonishingly awful arguments. Berkman thought it seriously flawed. Well, so what? You’ve got an appeal to authority, but where’s the argument? (Maybe it’s hiding somewhere next to Kevin Carson’s esoteric tracts defending absentee landlordism.) “Most Anarchists following Bakunin†thought it flawed. Well, so what? I don’t know whether “following†is supposed to mean that you’re referring to Bakuninist Anarchists, or to Anarchists who came, historically, after Bakunin, but in either case, even if true, this at best a crude appeal to the majority. If I wanted to decide arguments based on authority, tradition, and majority opinion, I’d be a fucking Republican.