Criticism
Critics of anarchism cite the Catechism as the most notorious document in what they take to be the anarchist tradition, arguing that it reflects the innately violent and nihilistic nature of the philosophy. Scholar Michael Allen Gillespie has hailed the Catechism as "a pre-eminent expression of the doctrine of freedom and negation" that arose in the Fichtean notion of the "Absolute I" that had been concealed in Left Hegelianism. Prominent Black Panther of the 20th century Eldridge Cleaver adopted the Catechism as a "revolutionary bible", incorporating it into his daily life to the extent that he employed, in his words, "tactics of ruthlessness in my dealings with everyone with whom I came into contact". The ideas and sentiments in the work had been in part previously aired by Zaichnevsky and Nikolai Ishutin in Russia, and by Carbonari and Young Italy in the West.
The journal "Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique" published a letter from Bakinin to Nechaev, in which Bakinin particularly wrote:
| “ | Your remember how you were angry with me, when I called you abrek and called your Catechism the Catechism of abreks. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Catechism Of A Revolutionary
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige through being mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)