Hey ancap here. Not looking for a debate about socialism I just was curious what you all thought of Bakunin. I hope this is the right sub for this.
I'd really like to learn some older critiques of the state and these seem to be the biggest figures of left wing anarchism. What are some of their critiques of the state or some elements that can be shared with private property anarchism ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDI0WP-f70g&t=1272s
I still haven't read deeply into other Left wing literature. I'm an 18 wheeler driver and listen to audiobooks here and there. Most people aren't going to sit down and read 10 hours worth of Peter Kropotkin and The Conquest of Bread, or Das Kapitol. I listen to a lot of these books in small parts, before I get bored and listen to something else. Also am listening to The Wealth of Nations.
Mikhail Bakunin's The Capitalist System is only 30 minutes long, and I find Americans of all stripes, who labor for a living, have found it highly relatable, albeit they're not expose to it and its ideals.
I first heard of Mikhail Bakunin through a 1971 era Noam Chomsky lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr_Qp5k5zDY&t=122s
(IIRC Chomsky's ideal Libertarian Socialist society looks more like the unfortunately short lived Paris Commune of 1871).
Anyways, Mikhail Bakunin really lays out what's wrong in the capitalist system against masses of laborers, in a rather brief, 30 minute pamphlet. But one can get away with listening to as little as 5 minutes of what he has to say, to immediately find what he's saying as highly relatable for an ordinary worker.
This has been the most effective left wing literature/political and economic philosophy I've shared with friends to date and after hearing it they've told me they wish to learn more. A lot of ordinary people have been trying to understand why our society has gone so awry and things are so desperate for them in this quote unquote "Land of the Free". It also didn't use much iirc in the way of big scary words they've been propagandized against like socialism/communism and other stuff.
I do not want giant texts full of abstract theory, I wish to know directly how exactly how would life be like under a society proposed by Bakunin (Anarcho-Collectivism as some people say), in practice.
Lets consider Joe just wake up on a Bakunin's commune.
1- How would Joe find a job? Where would he go? How would he find out about different hiring opportunities? On a free-market people tend to send their curriculum to different companies or using internet or even journals. But how exactly would this process play out on a anarcho-collectivist country?
2- How would Joe be considered fit for his desired job? On a Free-Market you can make courses, technical schools, college, etc. Would those systems still be used on an anarcho-collectivist society or there are other options to profissionalize someone?
And what if he is not ''skillfull'' enough for his job? Will he be tasked in working on an area he is not interested in?
3- What if Joe wishes to work on a position that already has a lot of people also wanting to work on it? To the point where there are no more job oportunities avaliable in that area anymore? Would he be requiered to work on another area he is not interested in?
4- How would Joe's performance be measured? What if he is not being an efficient worker, or having difficulties doing his work? On a Free-Market he would straight out be fired, but since libertarian socialists value solidarity and mutual aid - how would he be treated?
5- I've heard that Bakunin idealized the concept of "Labour-Vouchers" which are like money but can't be transfered between people nor generate interests. In this case, how would Joe get paid? Would there be specific "banks" for that? And which entity/agency would specify how much Labour-Vounchers he would get?
6- How would a Communal Market actually work? How would Joe be able to spend his Labour Vouchers on it? How are prices determined?
7- What if someone creates product no one wants and ''sells'' on the Communal Market? Will he still get paid his Labour-Vouchers?
Thanks in advance for the answers.
> Let us suppose that the workers, made wiser by experience, instead of electing the bourgeois to constituent or legislative assemblies will send simple workers from their own ranks. Do you know what will happen? The new worker deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, living and soaking up all the bourgeois ideas and acquiring their habits, will cease being workers and statesmen and become converted into bourgeois, even more bourgeois-like than the bourgeois themselves. Because men do not make positions; positions, contrariwise, make men.
Mikhail Bakunin, On the Policy of the International Workingmenβs Association (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/policy-iwma.htm)
> I entered the National Assembly with the timidity of a child, with the ardour of a neophyte. Assiduous, from nine oβclock in the morning, at the meetings of bureaux and committees, I did not quit the Assembly until the evening, and then I was exhausted with fatigue and disgust. As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses; because I was absorbed by my legislative work, I entirely lost sight of the current of events. I knew nothing, either of the situation of the national workshops, or the policy of the government, or of the intrigues that were growing up in the heart of the Assembly. One must have lived in that isolator which is called a National Assembly to realize how the men who are most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always those who represent it β¦ Most of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of mind, the same ignorance of daily facts. One spoke of the national workshops only with a kind of terror, for fear of the people is the sickness of all those who belong to authority; the people, for those in power, are the enemy.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Les Confessions dβun Revolutionnaire (https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Confessions_d%E2%80%99un_r%C3%A9volutionnaire/X), tr. George Woodcock, in The Anarchist Reader (https://libcom.org/library/anarchist-reader-george-woodcock)
I understand that lumpens are the proletariat that doesn't have a class consciousness (not sure if that's how you say it in English) and they are basically much more excluded from society (i.e. criminals, homeless people) and that the communist lecture sees it as a social group that can harm the revolution. Now, I understood that Bakunin's stance on this is different from Marx, but I need didn't fully understand it.
βI have wandered from my subject, because anger gets hold of me whenever I think of the base and criminal means which they employ to keep the nations in perpetual slavery, undoubtedly that they may be better able to fleece them.β
Hello! I'm trying to get my friend into Infinity and she is mainly interested in Bakunin jurisdictional command. Could some Bakunin veteran tell me which would be the best buying order for her? Also, any tips?
Thank you!
I'm literally Mikhail Bakunin, ask me anything
> Let us suppose that the workers, made wiser by experience, instead of electing the bourgeois to constituent or legislative assemblies will send simple workers from their own ranks. Do you know what will happen? The new worker deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, living and soaking up all the bourgeois ideas and acquiring their habits, will cease being workers and statesmen and become converted into bourgeois, even more bourgeois-like than the bourgeois themselves. Because men do not make positions; positions, contrariwise, make men.
Mikhail Bakunin, On the Policy of the International Workingmenβs Association (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/policy-iwma.htm)
> I entered the National Assembly with the timidity of a child, with the ardour of a neophyte. Assiduous, from nine oβclock in the morning, at the meetings of bureaux and committees, I did not quit the Assembly until the evening, and then I was exhausted with fatigue and disgust. As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses; because I was absorbed by my legislative work, I entirely lost sight of the current of events. I knew nothing, either of the situation of the national workshops, or the policy of the government, or of the intrigues that were growing up in the heart of the Assembly. One must have lived in that isolator which is called a National Assembly to realize how the men who are most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always those who represent it β¦ Most of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of mind, the same ignorance of daily facts. One spoke of the national workshops only with a kind of terror, for fear of the people is the sickness of all those who belong to authority; the people, for those in power, are the enemy.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Les Confessions dβun Revolutionnaire (https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Confessions_d%E2%80%99un_r%C3%A9volutionnaire/X), tr. George Woodcock, in The Anarchist Reader (https://libcom.org/library/anarchist-reader-george-woodcock)
> I entered the National Assembly with the timidity of a child, with the ardour of a neophyte. Assiduous, from nine oβclock in the morning, at the meetings of bureaux and committees, I did not quit the Assembly until the evening, and then I was exhausted with fatigue and disgust. As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses; because I was absorbed by my legislative work, I entirely lost sight of the current of events. I knew nothing, either of the situation of the national workshops, or the policy of the government, or of the intrigues that were growing up in the heart of the Assembly. One must have lived in that isolator which is called a National Assembly to realize how the men who are most completely ignorant of the state of the country are almost always those who represent it β¦ Most of my colleagues of the left and the extreme left were in the same perplexity of mind, the same ignorance of daily facts. One spoke of the national workshops only with a kind of terror, for fear of the people is the sickness of all those who belong to authority; the people, for those in power, are the enemy.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Les Confessions dβun Revolutionnaire (https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Confessions_d%E2%80%99un_r%C3%A9volutionnaire/X), tr. George Woodcock, in The Anarchist Reader (https://libcom.org/library/anarchist-reader-george-woodcock)
> Let us suppose that the workers, made wiser by experience, instead of electing the bourgeois to constituent or legislative assemblies will send simple workers from their own ranks. Do you know what will happen? The new worker deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, living and soaking up all the bourgeois ideas and acquiring their habits, will cease being workers and statesmen and become converted into bourgeois, even more bourgeois-like than the bourgeois themselves. Because men do not make positions; positions, contrariwise, make men.
Mikhail Bakunin, On the Policy of the International Workingmenβs Association (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1869/policy-iwma.htm)
