This isn’t about anarchism as an abstract ideology. This is about Mikhail Bakunin and the anarchist faction developing within the IWMA.
If you’re an anarchist reading this as “Marx doesn’t like anarchism,” then consider these facts:
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Marx was a materialist. He wasn’t concerned with ideas, he was concerned with action.
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The church was still an immensely powerful social force. An anarchist who resisted the old order, would believe in negating the morality of the church. Marx however, wanted the negation of Capitalism. To Marx, the bourgeois and the workers are completely opposed, not the workers and morality. Marx really hated how people in his era talked about morality, he believed that morals were a social relation, not a code handed down by a higher power. He thought morals were a response to particular set of historic conditions, and overthrowing religion meant reversing the material social relations that made religion a necessity among the masses.
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Morals could be thought of as guardrails on the bourgeois. They want to always be seen as moral by the nobles, peasants and workers, especially in that era, since the bourgeois weren’t really the ruling class of the time. They were like a rapidly ascendant middle class. The bourgeois were still under the influence of feudal ties, which had been bound up in church morality for thousands of years. And the conflict between the bourgeois and the proles hadn’t been decided yet, not in most parts of the world.
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So attacking “morality” as an oppressive force, when the actual oppressive force was economic/bourgeois just gives the bourgeois freer reign to do whatever they want. Its like setting a bomb in a church or factory. You’re just giving the bourgeois justification to violently oppress the working class, who it is always in the interest of the bourgeois oppress.
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Marx is going after “amorphism” more than he is going after anarchism. Marx believed in taking action based on verifiable material fact, not on abstractions, moralizing, false equivocating, etc., the truth of the brutal exploiting nature of the bourgeois against the workers was a verifiable material fact, and the job of the revolutionary was to help people see, consider, and act upon (praxis) the truth of their conditions, not tell them what they need to hear to make them plant bombs.
Marx opposed Bakunin’s faction, the AOSD, part of the IWMA, on the basis of what they were doing, and why they were doing it. He isn’t attacking an abstract “idea” of Anarchism.
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“These chaos dragons, who want to reduce everything to amorphism in order to create anarchy in morality…”I don’t think any anarchists were under the notion that they were liked by Marx
We’re not here to be liked. We’re here to destroy hierarchy and its inherent oppression of life.
Marx is talking about Bakunin, not you
The question anarchists never seem to ask themselves is why hierarchies form in the first place, and what problem they solve. There’s a reason why in over a century of anarchist theory, no large scale or long lived applications of these ideas exist in the real world.
Hierarchies play a structural purpose facilitating scaling of organization. These are cognitive and organizational tools that enable large groups to coordinate effectively. It’s a form of abstraction, providing mental shortcuts that enable us to engage with complex systems at a meaningful level of detail, without being overwhelmed by their inner workings. Our ability to abstract is what allows us to manage the near infinite complexity of the world.
We don’t perceive people as trillions of individual molecules. Instead, we view them as individuals with intentions, ideas, and actions. Doing so allows us to focus our attention on relevant interactions rather than microscopic details. In fact, focusing on a manageable level of detail also governs our self-perception as well. Our minds don’t concern themselves with the granular operation of our organs, digestion, blood flow, or muscle contractions within our bodies. The decision to pick up a cup is processed at the level of intent, not the orchestration of muscular movements required to accomplish the task.
Similarly, using a phone app for internet browsing involves operating at an abstract level, interacting with website addresses and content, rather than the complexities of phone hardware, software execution, or network protocols. This abstraction allows us to utilize sophisticated tools effectively by focusing on the relevant layer of interaction.
The same principle applies to groups of people trying to accomplish a shared task. A team working on a shared goal can be viewed as a single unit. Outsiders don’t need to know every internal decision or workflow. They only need to understand the group’s inputs and outputs in order to engage with it effectively. This abstraction is enabled through delegation where groups nominate representatives to interface with other groups, and these representatives can then form higher-level teams of their own. These nested layers allow organizations to scale without requiring everyone to grasp every detail of every project.
Hierarchies naturally arise in systems that necessitate both specialized labor and complex coordination. We can see an example of this when we examine the multifaceted operations within a manufacturing plant. Instead of each worker individually constructing an entire product, the workflow is partitioned into distinct sets of responsibilities.
The production of any product involves a series of key roles. Design engineers initiate the process by conceptualizing and blueprinting the product, detailing specifications for each component. Material handlers then take over, procuring and transporting the necessary raw materials to various workstations. On the assembly line, teams of workers are responsible for producing individual parts and their assembly into the final product. Simultaneously, specialized technicians maintain the machinery for continuous operation. Quality control inspectors ensure standards are met by examining finished goods at various stages. Supervisors play a crucial role in overseeing specific sections of the production line, ensuring adherence to schedules and acting as communication nodes for their teams, addressing immediate issues. Ultimately, production managers coordinate the entire flow of work across departments, optimizing resource allocation and ensuring that all production stages align with overall targets.
A hierarchical structure, with its clear division of labor and defined lines of authority, maximizes efficiency by allowing individuals to develop deep expertise in their specific roles while establishing clear channels for communication and accountability across the entire production process. The partitioning of work arises out of strategic necessity for managing the complexity inherent in large-scale manufacturing. As a direct consequence of this inherent demand for both focused expertise and effective collaboration, a selection pressure emerges that favors the hierarchical organizational model. The example of the advantages observed in structured production environments are not unique to manufacturing. Hierarchies are a common feature across diverse industries, political structures, and pretty much every type of endeavor where large numbers of people with different types of skills need to collaborate to achieve common goals.
Conversely, the limitations of horizontal structures become apparent when considering communication overhead. In a flat organization, every decision requires consensus among all members. Meetings grow unproductive as more people join, and time is inevitably wasted on debates irrelevant to most participants. Specialists spend hours explaining context to non-experts, making any meaningful progress impossible. Countless studies show that large groups of people struggle to function horizontally. Complex tasks, like coordinating a national healthcare system or a general strike, demand roles and delegation. Hierarchies streamline communication by compartmentalizing responsibilities where engineers can focus on technical problems, organizers on logistics, and representatives on inter-group coordination.
The same need for managing complexity through structured roles extends to the realm of political organization. A party acts as a hierarchical abstraction layer. It synthesizes grassroots input into actionable policies, balancing decision making with accountability through feedback from below. Centralizing expertise allows for efficient use of resources necessary for effective action. The division of labor afforded by hierarchies allows movements to manage complexity, specialize labor, and act decisively. Meanwhile, flat structures limit organizing potential to small, disconnected groups that cannot meaningfully challenge existing power structures which are themselves hierarchical.
Anarchists tend to argue that hierarchy necessarily leads to oppression, but this conflates hierarchy as a structural tool with the way this tool is applied under capitalism. The actual problem lies with lack of accountability of those at the top of the hierarchy to those at the bottom within power structures that serve private profit rather than collective needs.
I’m replying to this comment because it seems as good a place as any to join the conversation.
I’ll concede I’m not very well read on theory, but as someone who has been curious with anarchist works, it seems to me that this problem is at least partly semantics. It makes sense to me that epistemic authority/hierarchy is an entirely different concept from power structures, and it’s unfortunate that we use the words authority or hierarchy for both. I don’t think any anarchist rejects the notion that some delegation needs to be done in some circumstances where it isn’t reasonable to take every decision by committee, such as with the classical bus driver example.
From what I gather, the oppresive aspect that anarchists refer to when talking about hierarchy is when people are forced to delegate to someone else against their will, the important part here being that consent is required in order for said delegation to be appropiate. In the bus driver example, you are not arguing every tiny traffic decision with the driver because it’s unfeasible, but you are allowing the bus driver to take you somewhere you want to go. The anarchism I understand would only have a problem with that if the bus driver were to unilaterally decide where it is best for you to go and you had no way to get off the bus.
It is interesting that organic hierarchies have been brought up in another comment, because I am not entirely sold on the idea that they are unavoidable or even desirable. Sure, a child needs to submit to a parent so the parent can take care of the child, but also our current model of family allows a parent a lot of unchecked leeway to act against their child’s assumed best interests, and it’s not uncommon to come across people who have suffered parental abuse because of this. Surely there must be a better way? It’s not reasonable to expect a child to be able to make autonomous decisions and their bests interests can only be assumed, but it is a situation that is ripe for an exploitative power structure that is certainly a reality now, and should be understood as such. To an extent, same with the teacher-student relationship.
A doctor “forcing” vaccines on patients also comes to mind. I don’t really have a solution for this, but I’d argue that it should be required anyway that the patient consents to it. If a patient doesn’t want to take the COVID vaccine, it is a problem, but my understanding is that it should be solved at the “convincing the patients they need it” level, not the “strapping the patient and administer the vaccine anyway” level. Now vaccines already work like the first option, but it turns out that especially as the system deems you insane, other medical operations quickly devolve into the second option, and the fact that it is possible for a power structure like this to form means there is something to be examined at the very least.
I am just sharing my thoughts without intending to reach any conclussion. I’m not an anarchist myself but I’m sympathetic towards anarchism.
But that’s not different from how Marxist organization works. Nobody is forced to accept authority. Leaders are voted on, and they can be recalled. What people do have to agree to is that once a decision was made democratically, then that’s the path that has to be followed, and people who wanted to do something different have to accept that they lost the argument, and help pull in the same direction as everyone else.
It’s also worth recognizing that power structures will form implicitly even under flat organization. The key difference is that when they form in this fashion it happens unintentionally and without the checks and balances you’d have if you planned them. You end up with narcissistic and charismatic people naturally gravitate into positions of power, and this often turns into abuse. This is a great read on real life experience of somebody who ended up in precisely this sort of situation https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
The organic hierarchy I was talking about is even more basic, the one you find in your own body. You have cells that organize into organs, organs organize into organ groups, you have a central nervous system, and a brain. And every complex organism finds a similar solution. There is a physical reason for this because thermodynamics select for efficient use of energy, and hierarchical organization beats every alternative. Billions of years of evolution and natural selection found a workable blueprint.
And yes, negative examples can be found within any organizational structure. As the example above shows, anarchist methods of organizing do little to prevent abuse from happening, and in many ways actually invite it.
To me, the key aspects of a workable system are that representatives are elected through a democratic process, and that they can be recalled. The checks and balances in the system are how you deal with abuse.
You guys gotta a get rid of the butthole logo
Butthole is not negotiable.
hierarchy and its inherent oppression
Yes the terrible oppression of the child by their parent, the nurse by the doctor, the nuclear power janitorial staff by the safety staff
You can smug post all you like doesn’t make this
hierarchy and its inherent oppression
any less silly and detached from reality.
Not really, all of you love to be disingenuous and apply what I said to random shit and not human constructs to make it appear silly so you feel superior instead of directly engaging with what I said.
They are all directly engaging with your claim and disproving via instances of human hierarchy that exist.
I did engage I provided examples off the top of my head of non oppressive (and some would say necessary/positive) hierarchy. You’re the one refusing to engage, smug posting instead of engaging with the fact that if non oppressive (or necessary/positive) hierarchy exists then the idea that hierarchy is inherently oppressive is silly. I also engaged by further expanding my thoughts in the reply to zeezee on top of engaging with the idea of “epistemic-authority” and how in my view that is merely a semantic retreat substitutimg changing the name for changing the thing.
Yes the terrible oppression of the child by their parent, the nurse by the doctor, the nuclear power janitorial staff by the safety staff
This was not engaging it was mocking, you can fuck around all you want I see what you are doing.
Definitely not the most polite tone you’re right maybe I was being a bit mean but it was still engaging with your point more than your smug posting reply was engaging with anything at least.
Oh my God, you precious little baby
epistemic authority ≠ oppressive hierarchy - stop with the strawmans and go read some theory…
I’ve read anarchist theory, from Bakunin to Kropotkin to Stirner and beyond. My disagreement is not because I have failed to encounter “theory”; it is because I find anarchist theory weak, abstract, and far less applicable to actual social transformation than the Marxist tradition of scientific socialism.
And no, it was not a straw man. The claim made was not “some hierarchies are oppressive” or “illegitimate authority should be abolished.” The claim was that hierarchy is inherently oppressive. That is a much stronger and much worse claim.
If hierarchy as such is inherently oppressive, then the relation of parent and child, doctor and nurse, teacher and student, engineer and apprentice, safety inspector and worker, commander and soldier, party and masses, all become oppressive by definition. That is obviously false. These are not all the same social relation. Their content depends on material conditions, class character, function, ownership, accountability, and historical role.
What you are doing by saying “epistemic authority ≠ oppressive hierarchy” is the same semantic retreat anarchists have hid behind for generations. The moment useful, necessary, or socially productive hierarchy appears, you rename it “epistemic authority,” “coordination,” “expertise,” “delegation,” or some other softer term, then pretend it is no longer hierarchy. But changing the label does not change the social relation. As Engels put it: “These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves.”
A useful analysis does not ask whether “hierarchy” exists in the abstract. It asks: what kind of authority, serving which class, under what mode of production, with what relation to property, discipline, expertise, coercion, and social necessity?
A capitalist boss commanding workers for private profit is not the same thing as a surgeon directing an operating room, a revolutionary army maintaining discipline, or a workers’ state organizing production and defense. Treating all hierarchy as inherently oppressive collapses real material distinctions into moralistic abstraction.
That is in my view the core weakness of anarchism: it mistakes the abolition of domination for the abolition of hierarchy (and thus authority) as such. The aim should be to abolish class rule, exploitation, and the material basis of oppression. Not to pretend complex society can function without organization, discipline, expertise, or authority. The question thus is not whether authority and as such hierarchy exists. It is which class controls it, for what purpose, and under what social relations.
I won’t retread what QinShiHuangsSchlong already said very well, I want to expand by saying I don’t find it compelling at all when someone uses the “read theory” argument. Essentially, it says “I can’t argue with you well, so I recommend you look into those who can.” Demeaning someone and then giving them homework is a horrible way to get them to do so!
One of the best ways to comprehend theory is to try to simplify it for others, and be capable of clearly expressing your points without relying on “quote-mining” or “phrasemongering.”
This isn’t an argument against theory, but in favor of more effective discussion, as I was once extremely guilty of dumping recommendations for Marxist theory without properly explaining it, causing the argument to slide off like water on a windowpane. It also assumes a lack of competence on the other party’s part, which can quickly backfire if it indeed turns out that they know what they are talking about (such as QinShiHuangsSchlong here).
Frankly, I feel like I’m alone in this take, but I think people shouldn’t spend so much attention basing their politics primarily on references to philosophers who died more than a century prior.
These are important figures for historical study, but we don’t base our modern understanding about genetics on the work of Darwin and Mendel: we base these on the work of Watson, and Crick, and Franklin, and Margulis, and Sanger, and hundreds (or thousands) of people who carried the work forward since.
We still teach starting with the early folks to give context. But they aren’t the basis for our beliefs.
This goes for Marxists AND anarchists (and everyone else): sell your ideas in the modern age.
Basing their politics primarily on references to philosophers who died more than a century prior.
Domenico Losurdo, Michael Parenti, Assata Shakur, J. Sakai, Frantz Fanon, Antonio Gramsci, Roland Boer, Jones Manoel, Mao ZeDong, Xi Jinping, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Cheng Enfu, Li Shenming, Wang Weiguang, Hou Huiqin, Zhang Weiwei, Samir Amin, Walter Rodney, Vijay Prashad, Gabriel Rockhill, Zak Cope, John Bellamy Foster etc.
Foundational theory also clearly still applies unlike much of early genetics work:
Marx’s theory of surplus value, the value produced by labor still exceeds the wages paid to workers, resulting in profit for capitalists.
Marx’s theory of class struggle society is still shaped by antagonistic class interests.
Marx and Engels’ theory of the state, the state still remains in place protecting class rule and property relations.
Lenin’s theory of imperialism, monopoly capital, finance capital, export of capital, sanctions, debt, unequal exchange, and spheres of influence are still central to the world system.
Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis, capitalism still produces recurring crises, unemployment, overproduction, austerity, and financial instability.
Engels’ argument in On Authority, revolution, large-scale production, war, and state power cannot be handled through pure spontaneity or anti-organizational moralism.
Marx and Engels’ theory of ideology, ruling-class ideas still dominate media, education, culture, academia, and “common sense.”
Lenin’s theory of organization, capitalism is organized, armed, global, and disciplined, so serious opposition to it also requires organization, strategy, and discipline.
And so on…
Marxism is not mainly a list of old opinions; it is a method for studying society, class power, exploitation, imperialism, ideology, and historical change. In that sense it is less like treating Darwin or Mendel as the final word on genetics, and more like still learning Newtonian mechanics in physics. Newton was not the final word, but you do not understand physics by skipping the foundations.
Also, most people do not actually have a meaningful grasp of the foundational works in the first place. They have half-remembered summaries, liberal caricatures, or internet slogans. And Marxism has not been “superseded” as capitalism’s core relations remain intact across much of the world: wage labour, surplus value extraction, class rule, imperialism, and crisis. Much of the foundation is still clearly very relevant.
I want to clarify my point. I’m definitely not dismissing the importance of these figures or the value of reading them.
What I’m saying is that I think people put too much emphasis on what their opinions were rather than just learning from their ideas and synthesizing them with the ideas of their contemporaries and intellectual progenitors.
To go back to my example, there’s a meme among creationists that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. It’s baseless, but more importantly it’s irrelevant. The value of his ideas are not dependent on what he believed. He’s notable because he contributed to a framework on which we hang a larger understanding.
Similarly, I think Marx et. al. contributed ideas that are still very useful to our collective discourse. But their opinions are not prophesy, and I think people should focus more on the collective wisdom of the fields that they birthed rather than the specific opinions they personally held.
QinShiHuangsSchlong beat me to the punch, there are countless modern Marxists and Marxists since Lenin that have continued to apply the Marxist method to new eras and new conditions. Marxism-Leninism is referred to as an immortal science because it’s based on an ever-adapting framework for understanding the world, dialectical materialism, which in all this time have proven adaptable and fundamentally correct. We may teach Marxism in a new way with new conditions as we discover new eras, but the baseline is still applicable and necessary.
Perhaps I didn’t communicate this well, but that was kind of central to my point: the work they did has grown enough beyond their initial writings that we don’t really need to fixate so much on the original texts.
For instance, I really liked China Mieville’s “A Specter, Haunting”. He kind of summarized The Communist Manifesto, and I thought it was more readable than the original. It was easier for me to engage with, and he placed it in modern context.
To put my point another way, I think we should focus more on the ideas rather than the thinkers.
I hear you, there’s definitely merit in simplifying or trying to refresh older works if done well, the problem is how demonized Marxism is in the west and the fact that a lot of older works are still valid today. I like Red Sails because it combines the new with the old in an approachable way. Many older works are still valid, and being primary works means it’s less likely to be misinterpreted.
There’s also the importance of studying history, and the process of how ideas came to be. This part is especially critical, Marx, Lenin, etc. aren’t brilliant because they were born that way and had great ideas beamed into their heads from nothing. They existed within definite circumstances, and this shaped the development of Marxism-Leninism. Returning to the classics, and drawing a steady line of development to today, is the only way to get a great idea of what’s going on.
For example, if you see a snapshot of something, it’s very hard to tell what will happen next without also knowing what led up to it. Take any screenshot from a random movie, and it’s unlikely you can predict the next scene. Now watch the movie from the beginning, and you can usually predict the next few seconds, maybe even major plot points. You’ll also likely be wrong on some theories, or need to adjust them. That’s a microcosm of the Marxist method!
fair enough. most communists want to achieve a stateless society.
(as long as you are not the ancap/anarcholib type, all love retracted from those)
Fuck ancaps, its wild that they even exist.
two paths to the same outcome, two distinct levels of organisation that complement each other where the other falls shortThis post specifically posits the opposite viewpoint tho. That anarchism exists to spin chaos for the proletariat so that the bourgeois class can deepen their depravity and inequality. Just more leftist purity tests from jank.
Marx was also writing based on observing specific conditions in specific places 150 years ago. The point of Marxism is that it’s a way to coherently frame the things you’re currently observing as intersectionally as possible and test them against prior studies while checking your own personal biases. Most of my organising as a Marxist is in anarchist or democratic socialist orgs because they’re easier to start in the surveillance state that developed after Marx said this. They just don’t scale up as easily as an ML org like PSL, which maintains the same message with discipline in cities across the US. That higher level of organisation is equally important to anarchism’s ease with local organisation, more secure and more able to centralise and use resources.
Thats cool that was the point of Marx. What is the point of Jank posting this right here, right now? Does it help? Does it enlighten leftists? Or unify us in any way? Or is this just derisive because it sounds like what Marx is referring to as anarchist is what we call anarchic capitalists today.
- I’m not them. I’m just a Marxist calling it out as self-defeating Orthodox Marxism.
In the absence of ideology with well-defined boundaries, purpose and organisation, hedonistic nihilism grows?
He is talking about Mikail Bakunin
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There’s no reason to be rude, and no one brought up furries but you.
furry anarchist
Is there any contradiction between the hierarchy inherent in the animal kingdom vs furry anarchist politics? Like, does a cell of cats have to give up their blood lust for the cell of mice, birds, baby rabbits, etc. or is the hierarchy already abolished, for example they’re all vegans to avoid inter-class cannibalism?
I would love to read on the subject , preferably by someone who’s soul identifies with a Dog because I’m a cat person and I know what kind of vindictive fucks cats are. Is that offensive in furry anarchist cells? I’m new to this
