Question

Are your anarchist (and anti capitalist) beliefs influenced by Marx and Engels?

Comments

no, not particularly.

everything i read or experience '"influences" me to some degree, and i haven't read or thought about either of those guys very much.

and i don't think of my anarchic (and anti-capitalist) desires as "beliefs".

---

in my case: yes, quite strongly but in a fraught way. the more-common attitude towards marx on this site is that his ideas are entirely bad, whereas I think they're just mostly bad. i'd be open to discussing this more if the person asking the question were to narrow the question and specify what they feel is at stake in it, a little more.

by looking through the tags you can easily find other questions on this topic, which might or might not be helpful. additionally i'd suggest the SEP article on Marx. these might help you figure out what it is you want to ask - feel free to come back if so...

(by the way, the name of his collaborator is Friedrich Engels)

---

in 1976 or so, a friend gave me the book "marx for beginners". it was written (and drawn) in a rather entertaining way, and i found myself quite interested in his critique of capitalism. i considered myself anti-capitalist ever since - though interestingly, i never considered myself a marxist (or communist). i guess that was my first experience with being consciously and whole-heartedly against something, without complementing that with something i was "for". in retrospect, i guess the reason i didn't latch onto marxism at the time was its purely economic perspective. i have always hated economics.

i did not really get in touch with my affinity for anarchy until much later (i was almost 40).