is chomsky wrong?

[alanjjohnstone]

SN: So, you are talking about workers controlling their own work and controlling the enterprises that work in expanding out to the community?

 

NC: It’s one of crucial aspect of it. In fact, anarcho-syndicalism kind of shades off into left anti-Bolshevik Marxism. People like Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick, Karl Korsch and others have sympathetic relationships and ideas and the great anarchist achievement like the 1936 Spanish Revolution before it was crushed, did have the strong and sympathetic support of left Marxists who felt a community of interests and commitments.

 

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/noam-chomsky-tea-party-mostly-white-petty-bourgeois?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

 

In regards to Paul Mattick and the Spanish Revolution, Mattick was very critical of the CNT in Spain

 

http://www.left-dis.nl/uk/mattisp.htm

 

But what about Pannekoek and Korsch? Can anyone enlighten me?

[ALB]

I don't think Mattick is arguing against the so-called 'Spanish Revolution' (the takeover of some factories and farms by anarchists and others) is he? What he is criticising is the position taken up by the CNT of supporting the Republican government against the Franco rebels. Maybe if a socialist revolution had been on the cards in Spain this criticism might be justified, but this was not the case.The choice was not between capitalism or socialism, but political democracy or political dictatorship. In this case the CNT position was not entirely unreasonable. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Republicans were backed by those Mattick rightly calls the "Moscow Fascists" and between them and Franco there was no essential difference (only over who would impose the dictatorship and do the oppressing). But saying there is no difference between Franco Fascism and Moscow Fascism is one thing. Saying, as Mattick comes close to here and as the 'Left Communists' still do, that there is no difference as far as the working class is concerned between Fascism and Political Democracy is another. Clearly there is, even if recognising this presents the problem of what attitude socialists should take in such a situation (as it did for us in the 1930s with regard to the Spanish Civil War).In any event, I think the 'Spanish Revolution' has been exaggerated as pointed out in 1996 in this article from the now defunct magazine Subversion:http://libcom.org/history/spain-1936-end-anarchist-syndicalsim-subversion

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