Marxism Anarchism: The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict Ann Robertson $2 A Workers Action Pamphlet Marxism Versus Anarchism: The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict Copyright 2009 Workers Action Permission is granted to reproduce sections with the following citation: Reprinted with permission from Workers Action www.workerscompass.org. For additional copies of this pamphlet or to contact the author, please email
[email protected] For more information about Workers Action, visit its website: www.workerscompass.org Labor donated Printed December 2009 First Published: What's Next?, December 2003 About the Author: Ann Robertson is a Lecturer at San Francisco State University and a member of the California Faculty Association. She may be contacted via
[email protected]. I would like to thank Bill Leumer, Paul Colvin and Fred Newhouser for their valuable suggestions in connection with this article. Ann Robertson Introduction Again, I’m not enough of a Marx scholar to pretend to an authoritative judgment. My im- pression, for what it is worth, is that the early Marx was very much a figure of the late Enlightenment, and the later Marx was a highly authoritarian activist, and a critical analyst of capitalism, who had little to say about socialist alternatives. But those are impressions. Noam Chomsky THE TEMPESTUOUS relation between Marx and Bakunin is a well known legacy of the history of west- ern socialism. As co-members of the International Working Men’s Association, they seem to have devoted as much energy battling one another as their common enemy, the capitalist system, culminating in Marx’s successful campaign to expel Bakunin from the organization.