We thank the Fourth International in Manchester blog, which drew our attention to this book review. https://fiimg.com/2023/08/31/anarchists-and-marxists/

Review Author : Ian Parker is a Manchester-based psychoanalyst and a member of Anti*Capitalist Resistance.

This book was first published in 2014 in French – the English language translated edition is recent. The content preceded the genocidal Russian invasion of all Ukraine in 2023, which is reshaping the radical left all over the world. In my opinion a notable feature of the pro-Ukraine solidarity left which is today emerging everywhere, is a political convergence between healthy revolutionary Marxist (Trotskyist) currents and anarchist inspired revolutionaries.

John Meehan August 31 2023

Confusions

There are a number of sticking points that are bound up with representations of anarchism in popular culture and the bitter history that Marxists keep repeating to account for failures of revolution. One is the appropriation of the term by liberal individualists – those who want to keep a distance from any particular political commitment because they don’t trust “politicians” (which is of itself often an understandable suspicion of authority) – and they tend to use the term as an excuse. How many times have you heard a friend or family member say that they won’t take a position or do anything to change the world because they are “a bit of an anarchist”? But there are plenty of bureaucratic and apolitical characters around the world who use the term “Marxist”, so that isn’t good reason to tar all the anarchists with the same “petit bourgeois” brush.