cultural-kropotkinist:

seems like a lot of anarchists on here don’t realize that you don’t have to be a marxist to be a socialist/anarchist

like a lot of the time we do borrow from marx/marxism but there’s no requirement that we follow marxist theory. in the 19th century there were multiple philosophers/theorists kind of competing for the Socialist Spotlight and marx simply won out. but he doesn’t have a monopoly on socialism, not that you could tell anymore.

I want to read sooooo much more on that whole period of socialism. A lot of the history 101 most of us get sort of positions Marx as this “solitary genius who was visionary enough to see socialism and all other socialists came after, because Marx made them possible” and in fact that other people simultaneously had very similar, yet in some ways different, ideas about socialism on their own. Which when I learned that for the first time was like, Mind. Blown.