A review of various books by or about Victor Serge, the individualist-anarchist who turned Bolshevik. It discusses how he turned from an elitist individualist to an elitist Leninist and why his Memoirs, while an interesting book, is unreliable when it comes to his actual views between 1919 and 1929. While routinely presented by Leninists as amongst the “best of the Anarchists” (and so should be followed into Bolshevism), in reality he was amongst the worst. It was originally written for Anarchist Studies Vol. 22 No. 2 (Autumn 2014) and this, full, version appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 61 (Winter 2014)
(more…)Category: Marxism
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The Poverty of (Marx’s) Philosophy
A review of Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy which indicates various distortions of Proudhon’s work. It also discusses how Marx in 1867 applied the methodology he had attacked Proudhon for using twenty years earlier. It appeared in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review R No. 70 (Summer 2017)
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The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice
This is almost my chapter in the anthology Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrrevolution (Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2017). Some revisions were made during the editing process which are not included here. In addition, references to the 1913 French edition of Kropotkin’s Modern Science and Anarchy have been replaced with those from the 2018 English-language translation. However, the bulk of the text is the same, as is the message and its call to learn from history rather than repeat it. I would, of course, urge you to buy the book.
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The Bureaucracy in Exile: Trotsky’s limited Anti-Stalinism
An article exploring Trotsky’s (limited) opposition to Stalinism and showing that it reflected Bolshevik orthodoxy in terms of advocating the dictatorship of the party and one-man management. Needless to say, almost all Trotskyist accounts fail to mention this. It first appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 3 No. 3 (Autumn 2023)
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