[London,] November 23, 1871 “[…] The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle […], the Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system […] So long as the sects are (historically) justified,
the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. […] And the history of the International was a continual struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects […] At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, entered the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International called the “Alliance of Social Democracy”. Bakunin – a man devoid of theoretical knowledge – put forward the pretension that this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of the International, which was to be made the special function of this second International within the International. His program was a superficially scraped together hash of petty bourgeouis ideas from here and there: […] atheism as a dogma to be dictated to the members of the International, etc., and as the main dogma, (Proudhonist) abstention from the political movement. This children’s fable found favour (and still has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain […] and among a few vain, ambitious and empty doctrinaires in French Switzerland and Belgium […] Resolutions 1(2) and (3) and IX now give the New York committee legal weapons with which to put an end to all sectarian formations and amateur groups and if necessary to expel them […]”
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Marx, Letter to Friedrich Bolte, November 23, 1871 (1).
Since the defeat of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, reiteration is a frequent occurrence in the babelic context in which the life of the so-called “anarchist movement” painfully takes place.(2) As if it were Groundhog Day,(3) we are condemned to repeat the same experience indefinitely. Again and again, ideological displacements and external conceptualizations gain presence in our shops. Thus – once again -, the notions of “sect”, “sectarianism” and “sectarian” emerge in the debate. We do not have the slightest chance of escaping this vicious circle. Like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the famous comedy, every day we are hit with the same song (at six o’clock in the morning!), forced to repeat ourselves in an infinite cycle from which not even suicide can save us.
Continue reading In Defence of Associative Specificity – Concerning (Inherently) Anarchist “Sectarianism” Part I. →