[HoniSoit]

By Konulu

Click to enlarge.

Definitions:

Libertarian Socialism

Anarchism (socialist current):

Anarcho-Communism: Focuses on the idea that all shall receive according to their needs and give according to their means in a stateless society run by democratically self-managed communes.

Anarcho-Syndicalism: A school of Anarchism that has achieved the most real world success (Syndicalist unions controlled Barcelona for a period during the Spanish Civil War). Supports the notion that democratically self managed trade unions will help the working class to achieve power and control a stateless society.

Mutualism: A primarily economic ideology that focuses on the labour theory of value as well as the belief in private property and common ownership of all goods within a stateless society. Draws heavily from the writings of Pierre Joseph Proudhon.

Libertarian Marxism

Council Communism: The belief that the Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" should be run by workers councils with recallable leaders, until the eventual withering away of the state. They also support the idea of one large union for all workers as a a revolutionary force.

Situationism: Who the fuck knows what these guys are on about? Something about harnessing "situations" to lead to Revolutions.

Autonomism: Autonomists believe that the proletariat can establish a dictatorship of the proletariat on there own, without vanguards or excess organization. On the border between communism and anarchism.

[Siberian Fox]

Just on a technical note, that image is really too large. It should be thumbnailed and linked so as not to make the overall minimum screen width greater than 800 pixels.

[HoniSoit]

No problem - should I change it in the original article on the blog as well, or just this discussion thread?

[Kon]

For further reading on Anarcho Syndicalism look up Anarcho Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker on google; the full text should be avaliable from several sources. More on Anarcho communism can be found by researching Kropotkin and Bakunin.

[Subversive Rob]

When you talk about Situationism I really think it's necessary to separate their theoretical positions, from their political programme and their strategy/tactics (although the latter two obviously have their origin in theory). So, in terms of their political programme I think the SI are pretty much straightfoward council communist style people (insofar as they support concrete measures). In theoretical terms, well that perhaps is where 'who knows' comes in, this is especially true because the SI was composed of quite a few diverse people, with different ideas. The tendency, however, is to take Debord's idea of the society of the spectacle as being central. In terms of tactics and strategy, it's here that you get stuff like detournement (inverting the meaning of spectacular images), creating a situation etc.

[Siberian Fox]

No problem - should I change it in the original article on the blog as well, or just this discussion thread?

It is only a problem on the blog page, which has narrower columns.

[HoniSoit]

Fixed. Thanks, Fox.

[Le Rouge]

Perhaps a one-line remark, but why do you think that Leninist groups, historically, have had better relationships -- well, ignoring Kronstadt and the Makhnovites -- with anarchist communists (namely in the Spanish Civil War) than libertarian marxists (their is a notorious conflict between autonomists and Leninists) ?

[FallenRaptor]

I think the definition for council communism is too broad. By it, Lenin's April Theses and The State and Revolution would be the founding texts of council communism, and as far as I know all schools of Marxism claim to support a dictatorship of the proletariat based on some variant of workers' councils with recall elections. Council communism has it's origins in the aborted German Revolution of 1918 as a reaction toward the reactionary trade unions, and later came out against Leninist practices in revolutionary strategy and governance. They emphasize workers' councils for revolutionary action over other forms of organization like parties and trade unions.