File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9912, message 380


Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 05:29:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Jamal Hannah <jah-AT-iww.org>
Subject: Re: Anarchism; more popular than marxism? (fwd)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 12:54:08 -0000
From: Graham <graham-AT-unacode.demon.co.uk>
Reply-To: marxism-AT-lists.panix.com
To: marxism-AT-lists.panix.com, marxism-digest-AT-lists1.panix.com
Subject: Re: Anarchism; more popular than marxism?

When all's said and done, the bottom line with anarchism as a 'mass
movement' in the USA, Australasia and parts of Western Europe is its
connexions with early 1980s punk subculture.  Many of the bands,
particularly those connected with Crass records, had a comparatively
coherent outlook - vegetarian diets, not voting, hating EMI and other
multinational targets.  The pacifist aspect has been whittled away since the
early 80s, and the 'movement' has overlapped with other groups, depending
where and when they sprang.  (For a good description of the British
variation of this process, see George McKay's _Senseless Acts of Beauty_
(Verso, 1996): McKay is overwhelmingly positive about a destructive,
antipolitical trend.

In short, the new 'anarchist' movement is more popular than Marxism - i.e it
has a more active base of support within certain imperialist powers -  but
only by virtue of it being 'last man standing'.  It's come out of the 80s
and 90s in better shape than rival political traditions (needless to say it
has little to do with Bakunin et al at present).  As Phil Ferguson and
others have suggested, what looks like a popular movement is closer to a
youth subculture, made up of drop-outs who need to grow up.

Graham Barnfield


   

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