ANARCHIST VS. MARXIST MYTHOS (PART 1)

The time has come to strip the wire from the walls of the Marxist Mythos!

Hey Gang,

In a recent piece, I explained a revelation that I recently had, which was partly inspired by someone called Sketchy the Clown.

The revelation was this - The World-Story is Broken.

In that piece, I explain that there is no such thing as a culture without a mythology, and liken Mythos to the hidden operating system of any given culture.

That Mythos can be likened to a story, or a collection of stories, which I call the World-Story.

In that piece, I encourage people to think the three questions that any mythology must answer. Those three questions are:

• What are we?

• Where do we come from?

• Where are we going?

These three questions compose the World-Story of any given culture. The three questions are simple, but answering them is not, because the purpose of mythology is to produce the type of beliefs that will lead members of that culture to think and to behave in certain culturally-ordained ways.

Whatever answer human beings come up with will contain some kind of encoded instructions about what attitude towards the world people should have.

This is important. Buddhism, for instance, begins with the noble truth that life is suffering. That is a good starting point if your goal is to transcend suffering, but is it the best thing to teach children that life is suffering? It seems to me like a lot of children think life is a fun game.

The answers should also give the adherents to a given mythology an idea about what is expected of them. The World-Story is meant to teach individuals about what constitutes right relation between them and the World, therefore it must contain some hints about what constitutes right action.

It’s really quite interesting to look at different belief-systems and think about what answers they provide to the three questions. It’s a quick way to getting to the heart of their psychological appeal.

I plan to apply this lens to ideologies I feel I understand, including Buddhism, Taoism, and consumerism.

The natural place for me to start, though, is with anarchism, but unfortunately this task is complicated by something that I only realized recently.

When I started thinking about different belief-systems through the lens of the three questions, I realized that Marxism and anarchism have very similar World-Stories.

This makes sense. After all, both Marxism and anarchism share a common origin in the revolutionary socialist movement of the 19th century.

This is kind of a problem for anarchists, because historically Marxists tend to pretend to be our comrades until they seize power, then kill us.

Differentiating ourselves from Marxism is important for this reason, but it’s also important because Marxism is extremely unpopular these days. For practical reasons, we shouldn’t let ourselves be confused with Marxists, even if we might agree with certain parts of Marx’s analysis.

So, I decided it would be interesting to compare the Marxist World-Story with the anarchist World-Story.

Because this piece is long enough, I decided to split this post into two parts.

First, I will look at how Marxism answers the three questions.

In a subsequent piece, I will look at the anarchist world-story and compare it to the Marxist one.

You ready? Okay, here you go!

MARXISM & THE THREE QUESTIONS

There are both moral and political mythologies.

In the example of Christianity, the emphasis is on the individual. Ultimately, salvation is a personal matter.

There are also political myths, however, which aim to explain how things came to be the way they are in a more sociological sense.

I think that the way that Marx answered the three questions in a very strategic and intelligent way. I would even so far as to suggest that the enduring appeal of Marxism might have quite a lot to do with the attractiveness of the World-Story it offers.

Think about it. Marxism actually has quite good answers to the three questions.

What are we?

We are workers. We belong to a class of human beings called proletarians who have no option but to sell one’s labour to the capitalist class, who own the means of production and thus control the economy.

Where do we come from?

Once upon a time, we were free. Everyone was a communist, which meant that each person shared what they had and helped their neighbours out. Later, formerly free people were subjugated by imperial armies, who developed systems to enslave people, tax them, and deprive them of the true value of their labour.

Where are we going?

Due to the Immutable Laws of Historical Materialism, capitalism will eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Socialism will triumph over capitalism, the state will wither away, and everyone will live happily ever after in a utopia because everyone has everything they need.

Analysis

I’m an anti-Marxist, but I have to admit, I still find the Marxist World-Story pretty compelling.

It’s worth noting that the Marxist World-Story shares some points in common with the anarchist World-Story.

This makes sense, since anarchism and Marxism both has their origins in the revolutionary socialist movement of the 19th century.

I particularly appreciate the claim that we were once free, then lost our freedom, but that it is possible to regain it. This to me is of vital importance.

However, the Marxist World-Story is not particularly geared towards the individual. The individual seems to exist as an appendage, ultimately replaceable, of the Heroic Proletariat, who is ultimately the Protagonist in the tale. Arguably, Marxism is a recasting of Christian eschatology, in which the proletariat plays the role played by the Messiah in Christian mythology. Like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, Marxism starts with an assumption that time is linear, and that history has a destination. Although Marxism claims to be scientific and secular, it is fundamentally irrational. Marxists claim that the end justifies the means, but in reality there is no end. Change is constant, the web of relationships that comprise social reality is always shifting.

Simply put, Marxism de-emphasizes the individual, as well as the related concepts of spirit, soul, morality, personal development, free will, and personality.

I think this problematic because mobs are not capable of moral action. Morality has to do with decisions made by individuals. The Proletariat is not a being possessed of flesh and voice, able to speak and lay plans, but an abstract representation of a latent force of potential revolt present within a class society. But by the very nature of being a member of the Proletariat, by definition an exploited class, one is tricked into believing that there is something heroic about being a victim. It’s really quite a deft sleight of hand that Marxism performs.

I urge anyone who thinks that there is nothing to learn from Marxism to reconsider their opinion. Taken literally, Marxism is boring and aggravating, but it becomes fascinating when one studies it as a highly sophisticated exercise in mass deception.

Personally, I believe that Marx was controlled opposition from day one, and that Marxism came into existence to serve the purpose of subverting the socialist movement and leading it into a dead end, but I still think there’s a lot to be learned from Marxism. I’m a big believer in learning from one’s enemies.

In any case, political action according to Marxism has to do with acting in solidarity with large numbers of other people acting in accordance with historical forces. Conveniently for the bourgeois intellectuals who want to direct the proletariat, they are the only ones smart enough to understand the mysterious Force of History, being that the workers must adhere to the strategy agreed upon by the revolutionary intelligentsia. Otherwise, you know, the workers wouldn’t have the awesome force of history on the side, and they’d ultimately fuck everything up for themselves.

The importance of the individual is de-emphasized, and there is no suggestion that people should seek to develop their gifts and to become fully realized individuals, or to cultivate morality in their relationships, or to do virtuous acts.

Basically, Marxism is not a moral philosophy, and it is does not seek to instil morality in individuals. Perhaps that is simply not its purpose, but something tells me that the perfect World-Story would address the personal and political levels of reality simultaneously. After all, the purpose of a World-Story is to instruct people in what their society expects of them. I feel a mythology should give people of what their purpose in life is, and the Marxist World-Story seems to promote the idea that it doesn’t really matter what the individual does - in any case they are along for the ride, and workers will continue to exploited in any case, until the Immutable Force of History brings about Kingdom Come or the new Jersusalem or whatever.

It’s not all bad though. There is the “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, which I’m all for.

Communism also teaches values of solidarity, a commitment to serving the community, and sharing. These are all good things. But practically speaking the needs and wishes of individuals must be balanced with the needs of the communities of which they are a part. Yes, we all do have some responsibility to contribute to society in some way, but it is only individuals who are capable of moral action. A free society can only be composed of free individuals. Ultimately, I think that Marxism’s negation of the individual is its fatal flaw, and I believe that this should be the basis for our rejection of it.

Also, “dictatorship of the proletariat”? Are you fucking kidding me? Fuck off!

The Marxist World-Story serves to explain how things got to be the way they are politically, but it doesn’t really tell the communist worker how he should conduct himself in his personal life. It doesn’t really give much of an idea of what constitutes right action. In a sense, the individual does not matter, except insofar as he or she is on the right side of history. That’s kind of bleak and anti-human, if you ask me.

Personally, I believe we should celebrating human beings. We’re a pretty fucking awesome species, if you hadn’t noticed.

I also think that the historical interconnectivity between the Marxist world-story and the anarchist world-story are worth taking into consideration.

I personally believe that anarchists must divorce Marxism once and for all, and clearly differentiate how anarchism and Marxism are two very different, mutually exclusive ideologies, although they do share certain similarities.

The time has come to strip the wire from the walls of the Marxist Mythos!

Stay tuned for Part 2!