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Do you know of good resources on Lenin's works in English? marxists.org and other have a few, but it's too few and nonrepresentative.

I'm a book/television guy; that's where I get all my information from, so I'm not sure I'd be of much help with that. But there might be stuff in akapress.com and crimethinc.com-I believe those sites have every article/book that you could ever imagine.

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What depends on it? What form of anarchism proved to be a real deal beyond a bunch of communes?

The United States and Rome are good examples

Plato labeled a Republic as an anarchist government, and he did so with a positive connotation as he saw a Republic as a just form of government. So it just depends on how you define an anarchist government to begin with, because the word can literally be used as ad infinitum.

As far as actual anarchist governments that have established themselves go-using the context of people like Proudhon and Bakunin-I can only think of Barcelona, Pancho Villa's Mexico, and some small areas of South America. But all of them became failed states within a relatively short period of time, especially Pancho Villa's Mexico; he lost towns and cities too many times to even bother counting.

Yeah, anarchism of that sort usually has a very short life expectancy.

I meant to say akpress.com

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Originally posted by Nihilis:
According to the book, a lot of what Engels wrote for Marx was usually out of necessity because of Marx's financial problems (usually debt). In other instances, it was just a common case of Marx being too busy to participate in writing some political dissertation for any commune or event, so Engels took the liberty of writing for Marx. And in instances where Engels couldn't do the same thing for himself, Marx would often do the same thing for him.

The book clearly mentions reciprocity between the two people, so it wasn't as if Engels wrote for Marx on a continuous basis. And in only rare cases did the book ever mention anything about Marx being upset by the way that Engels portrayed him through his writing.

I could look roam back through the page numbers and cite it? There's always the chance that the historians he got his information from were simply making inferences about the two political figure.

If does not come straight from the horse's (i.e. Marx's or Engels') mouth - don't bother. I read enough of interesting speculations about both to be very skeptical of which researcher said what. Marx and Engels did write together, and such works bear names of both.

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Originally posted by Nihilis:
I'm a book/television guy; that's where I get all my information from, so I'm not sure I'd be of much help with that. But there might be stuff in akpress.com and crimethinc.com-I believe those sites have every article/book that you could ever imagine.

I prefer books too, but marxism is not at the top of my lists of interests, so I am not into buying anything on it until it proved to be really good. I do consider this one: Karl Marx, by Allen W. Wood. Both sites were of no help though. Not that it's something vital, but it would be interesting to compare Russian and English texts

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Originally posted by Nihilis:

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What depends on it? What form of anarchism proved to be a real deal beyond a bunch of communes?

The United States and Rome are good examples

Plato labeled a Republic as an anarchist government, and he did so with a positive connotation as he saw a Republic as a just form of government. So it just depends on how you define an anarchist government to begin with, because the word can literally be used as ad infinitum.

As far as actual anarchist governments that have established themselves go-using the context of people like Proudhon and Bakunin-I can only think of Barcelona, Pancho Villa's Mexico, and some small areas of South America. But all of them became failed states within a relatively short period of time, especially Pancho Villa's Mexico; he lost towns and cities too many times to even bother counting.

Yeah, anarchism of that sort usually has a very short life expectancy.

Ok, the first question was gracefully avoided. As far as established anarchist anything, what you mentioned is the same thing I was talking about earlier - limited viability of anarchism. It is always a bunch of communes and a short period of time, pesky human nature and outside factors.

"Anarchism as a viable alternative to capitalism is an utopia, and I said so more than once, so what exactly are you arguing with?"

I was referring to this in response to your question, because not all forms of anarchism are polarized over the issue of utilizing capitalism as an economic system, though the large majority of anarchists are definitely against the idea of 'state capitalism.'

"Ok, the first question was gracefully avoided. As far as established anarchist anything, what you mentioned is the same thing I was talking about earlier - limited viability of anarchism. It is always a bunch of communes and a short period of time, pesky human nature and outside factors."

I didn't really think that I was circumventing the first question; I did say that the success of any anarchist society depends upon the context in which one identifies an anarchist system. That doesn't necessarily mean that I was suggesting that any of the anarchists from Proudhon's era are capable of being initiated, because that would be fallacious and untrue in my opinion. The tenets of those anarchists are just fundamentally too idealistic and too Rousseauian in nature to allow any system of government that they've drawn out to be anything but transient.

As far as government goes in general, I'd say Machiavelli put it succinctly when he said that "humans are a sorry lot," which explicates the idea that all systems of government fall eventually.

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Originally posted by Nihilis:
I did say that the success of any anarchist society depends upon the context in which one identifies an anarchist system.

The success of any idea lies in how it is defined. I could define justice as the death of any disagreement and I am sure that it would return much more effective results than justice defined as trial by jury. The results would be quite different of course.

Anarchy can either be defined in more loose and conservative manners essentially boiling down to a government elected by the people (thus it has roots in being governed by self and thus anarchy) or can be more liberally defined as being without controlling government, rule of law, or social contract. This is apples and oranges in terms of definition. One hand is a government and the other is a lack of government and both seem to be portrayed under the same word.

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Anarchy can either be defined in more loose and conservative manners essentially boiling down to a government elected by the people (thus it has roots in being governed by self and thus anarchy) or can be more liberally defined as being without controlling government, rule of law, or social contract. This is apples and oranges in terms of definition. One hand is a government and the other is a lack of government and both seem to be portrayed under the same word.

I'd have to disagree with you on the basis of there ever being a lack of government; it's empirically impossible. No matter what, there is always a hierarchy whether it be on a national, municipal, or arbitrary level.

Heroin rules.