The Anarchist Prophets

[PoliticalChic]

You're the one who changed the subject, though you apparently don't wish to discuss Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich.

However, you have no grasp of socialist political economy, or political economy in general. You're wildly flailing in the dark, which is why you committed the same basic and common fallacy that I described in the OP.

That's why you totalists will wind up in the dust bin of history: no sense of humor.

 

[Agnapostate]

That's why you totalists will wind up in the dust bin of history: no sense of humor.

Of course I have a sense of humor.

 

[mascale]

It is sometimes acknowledged that eventually, actually Proudhon abandoned the epithet, "anarchist," himself. He meant to minimize authority, and could not be said even to follow the Greek concept of an anarchy. He knew Greek far better than most, not one poster has noted. The federation of contractual-based communes was a scheme, and not a philosophy.

Again: There is absent in the Western Intellectual framework any concept of Widespread Wealth Worldwide. Everything reduces to a neighborhood. The Bolsheviks staged a palace Revolution in the neighborhood, in Moscow: And the War was on, somewhere.

"Crow: James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Mostly, the world remains unaffected by the West--which now relies heavily on the world--2/3 of which has no safe drinking water, or public sanitation systems)

 

[Epsilon Delta]

I'm going to ignore most of the idiotic dribble that has been going on in this thread and address what I think is the original question:

Why aren't anarchists like Proudhon, Kropotkin, or Bakunin (and etc.) at the forefront of the 'socialist movement':

I think the answer is simple (even though it's not). The fact is that these anarchist thinkers and so many others before, during, and after them were so far ahead of their time, and even now so, SO ridiculously far ahead of OUR time, that the socialist movement just can't rely on them and the entire anarchist model. What we have to understand is that oppression and the hierarchies that support it are so entrenched in modern life that it is simply unrealistic to even really have any hope for them at the moment. These relationships of power, over dominant and dominated, are so persistent and so many times reproduced over time (thousands upon thousands of years, really); that it s key to understand that it will take hundreds if not thousands of more years to finally dismantle them. Only then can Anarchism really be viable, once that this world so unequal, so unjust, so corrupt has, through small, even minute social change moved independently towards a more open, more free, more cooperative humanity. What I do firmly believe is that this IS happening. This IS occurring. One can no longer view international relations the same way today as they did in the 19th or 15th or 1st centuries. Things have changed. Sure that this change comes with its ups and downs, with its regional variations; but there is an undeniable trend world wide towards deeper connection; deeper integration, deeper transparency; deeper struggle for the rights of those at the bottom, from within the bottom and without. I would have to concede to ideological opponents that Anarchy today may lead to chaos and even more violence than the current system, but I will never put aside my firm belief that the system that has been transfromed over countless of years of struggle is more and more quickly becoming a reality. A hundred years ago even in the most developed of countries the most entrenched of hierarchies would not let women vote; today that is different. A hundred years ago most of the globe existed under the brutal and undeniable yoke of Imperialism; that is not so today. Of course that imperialist tendencies exist among the most most powerful, but as the now-cliched term implies, public opinion is a new superpower; a term unknown or irrelevant only decades ago. The "people", whatever one might take from such a broad term, are more informed, more free, and in many ways far more aware to the world around them than only one century ago. Only 20 to 30 years ago, Latin America was ruled almost entirely under the iron fist of dictatorship, as it had for over 100 years; today the structures of power MUST, for lack of alternatives, look to more subtles ways to perpetuate their power. This is only an example; and it isn't to say that the work is over but that the work, that is the struggle, has succeeded in many ways, and it is of high importance to keep it going, and it is important to realize that it is not done, not by a long shot. Freedom wasn't attained in America in 1776, or in Latin America in the 1820s, or in Germany in 1945 or in Russia in 1990; it is a continuous process that must and is being nurtured. This change, no matter how slow, is what I believe is the true spirit of Anarchism and real freedom, no matter how slow it comes and how many setbacks it has.

What I mean to say is that the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers have great value; they are a goal that must be kept in mind, but that this goal is almost impossibly far away from our current level of development. It can never be attained through arms; and it is so far ahead from all our current institutions that it nearly impossible to gain any representation (even if it IS faux-representation) due to its very nature, due to its overtly far-reaching, avant-guard nature. It is imperative for those who follow these ideals to nurture and guide these forces; it is no individual work by any prophets, but by free peopls who are unendingly struggling today and fore hundreds of years. I guess the bottom line of my post is that these do not spearhead the movement because we have to settle for the time being with just a tad less ambition, and accept the fact that this will come slowly, and in the meantime we must find other currents and other trends and other "prophets" that are leading in this direction rather than openly, recklessly demanding their immediate implementation.

 

[mascale]

Wrong Again.

Actually, it starts with the toilets. Anyone can notice that the insane Europeans had no such clue, even then!

"Crow, James Crow: Shaken, Not Stirred!"
(Odd that the Spirit of Davos is no longer invoked, wherein Her Majesty's Prime Minister was attempting to explain to the former. . . "aborigines". . . about the concept of repaying mortgages and credit! The Obama government, for example, is projecting about $10.0 tril. even more of it, for selected millionaires, in one nation's borders.)

 

[The_Halfmoon]

I was a proudhonish social-anarchist back in the way... then a anarcho-syndicalist... now I'm a capitalist with a desire for minimal government interferance

how people change

not really for or against this thread btw, but I guess I'm pointing out how each of these philosophies can be attractive in its own right