H.2 What parts of anarchism do Marxists particularly misrepresent?

Many people involved in politics will soon discover that Marxist groups (particularly Leninist and Trotskyist ones) organise "debates" about anarchism. These meetings are usually entitled "Marxism and Anarchism" and are usually organised after anarchists have been active in the area or have made the headlines somewhere.

These meetings, contrary to common sense, are usually not a debate as (almost always) no anarchists are invited to argue the anarchist viewpoint and, therefore, they present a one-sided account of "Marxism and Anarchism" in a manner which benefits the organisers. Usually, the format is a speaker distorting anarchist ideas and history for a long period of time (both absolutely in terms of the length of the meeting and relatively in terms of the boredom inflicted on the unfortunate attendees). It will soon become obvious to those attending that any such meeting is little more than an unprincipled attack on anarchism with little or no relationship to what anarchism is actually about. Those anarchists who attend such meetings usually spend most of their allotted (usually short) speaking time refuting the nonsense that is undoubtedly presented. Rather than a real discussion between the differences between anarchism and "Marxism" (i.e. Leninism), the meeting simply becomes one where anarchists correct the distortions and misrepresentations of the speaker in order to create the basis of a real debate. If the reader does not believe this summary we would encourage them to attend such a meeting and see for themselves.

Needless to say, we cannot hope to reproduce the many distortions produced in such meetings. However, when anarchists do hit the headlines (such as in the 1990 poll tax riot in London and the in current anti-globalisation movement), various Marxist papers will produce articles on "Anarchism" as well. Like the meetings, the articles are full of so many elementary errors that it takes a lot of effort to think they are the product of ignorance rather than a conscious desire to lie (the appendix "Anarchism and Marxism" contains a few replies to such articles and other Marxist diatribes on anarchism). In addition, many of the founding fathers of Marxism (and Leninism) also decided to attack anarchism in similar ways, so this activity does have a long tradition in Marxist circles (particularly in Leninist and Trotskyist ones). Sadly, Max Nettlau's comments on Marx and Engels are applicable to many of their followers today. He argued that they "acted with that shocking lack of honesty which was characteristic of all their polemics. They worked with inadequate documentation, which, according to their custom, they supplemented with arbitrary declarations and conclusions -- accepted as truth by their followers although they were exposed as deplorable misrepresentations, errors and unscrupulous perversions of the truth." [A Short History of Anarchism, p. 132] As the reader will discover, this summary has not lost its relevance today. If they read Marxist "critiques" of anarchism they will soon discover the same repetition of "accepted" truths, the same inadequate documentation, the same arbitrary declarations and conclusions as well as an apparent total lack of familiarity with the source material they claim to be analysing.

This section of the FAQ lists and refutes many of the most common distortions Marxists make with regards to anarchism. As will become clear, many of the most common Marxist attacks on anarchism have little or no basis in fact but have simply been repeated so often by Marxists that they have entered the ideology (the idea that anarchists think the capitalist class will just disappear being, probably, the most famous one, closely followed by anarchism being in favour of "small-scale" production). We will not bother to refute the more silly Marxist assertions (such as anarchists are against organisation or are not "socialists"). Instead, we will concentrate on the more substantial and most commonly repeated ones. Of course, many of these distortions and misrepresentations coincide and flow into each other, but there are many which can be considered distinct issues and will be discussed in turn.

Moreover, Marxists make many major and minor distortions of anarchist theory in passing. For example, Engels asserted in his infamous diatribe "The Bakuninists at work" that Bakunin "[a]s early as September 1870 (in his Lettres a un francais [Letters to a Frenchman]) . . . had declared that the only way to drive the Prussians out of France by a revolutionary struggle was to do away with all forms of centralised leadership and leave each town, each village, each parish to wage war on its own." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 141] In fact, the truth is totally different.

Bakunin does, of course, reject "centralised leadership" as it would be "necessarily very circumscribed, very short-sighted, and its limited perception cannot, therefore, penetrate the depth and encompass the whole complex range of popular life." However, it is a falsehood to state that he denies the need for co-ordination of struggles and federal organisations from the bottom up. As he puts it, the revolution must "foster the self-organisation of the masses into autonomous bodies, federated from the bottom upwards." With regards to the peasants, he thinks they will "come to an understanding, and form some kind of organisation . . . to further their mutual interests . . . the necessity to defend their homes, their families, and their own lives against unforeseen attack . . . will undoubtedly soon compel them to contract new and mutually suitable arrangements." The peasants would be "freely organised from the bottom up." ["Letters to a Frenchman on the present crisis", Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 196, p. 206 and p. 207] In this he repeated his earlier arguments concerning social revolution -- arguments that Engels was well aware of. In other words, Engels deliberately misrepresented Bakunin's political ideas.

Similarly, we find Trotsky asserting in 1937 that anarchists are "willing to replace Bakunin's patriarchal 'federation of free communes' by the more modern federation of free soviets." [Stalinism and Bolshevism] It is hard to know where to start in this incredulous rewriting of history. Firstly, Bakunin's federation of free communes was, in fact, based on workers' councils ("soviets"). As he put it, "the federative Alliance of all working men's associations . . . will constitute the Commune" and "revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 170 and p. 172] The similarities with workers councils are clear. Little wonder historian Paul Avrich summarised as follows:

"As early as the 1860's and 1870's, the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as a weapon of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural basis of the future libertarian society." [The Russian Anarchists, p. 73]

As for the charge of supporting "patriarchal" communes, nothing could be further from the truth. In his discussion of the Russian peasant commune (the mir) Bakunin argued that "patriarchalism" was one of its "three dark features," indeed "the main historical evil . . . against which we are obliged to struggle with all our might." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 206 and pp. 209-10]

As can be seen Trotsky's summary of Bakunin's ideas is totally wrong. Not only did his ideas on the organisation of the free commune as a federation of workers' associations predate the soviets by decades (and so much more "modern" than Marxist conceptions), he also argued against patriarchal relationships and urged their destruction in the Russian peasant commune (and elsewhere). Indeed, if any one fits Trotsky's invention it is Marx, not Bakunin. After all, Marx came round (eventually) to Bakunin's position that the peasant commune could be the basis for Russia to jump straight to socialism (and so by-passing capitalism) but without Bakunin's critical analysis of that institution and its patriarchal and other "dark" features. Similarly, Marx never argued that the future socialist society would be based on workers' associations and their federation (i.e. workers' councils). His vision of revolution was formulated in typically bourgeois structures such as the Paris Commune's municipal council.

We could go on, but space precludes discussing every example. Suffice to say, it is not wise to take any Marxist assertion of anarchist thought or history at face value. A common technique is to quote anarchist writers out of context or before they become anarchists. For example, Marxist Paul Thomas argues that Bakunin favoured "blind destructiveness" and yet quotes more from Bakunin's pre-anarchist works (as well as Russian nihilists) than Bakunin's anarchist works to prove his claim. [Karl Marx and the Anarchists, pp. 288-90] Similarly, he claims that Bakunin "defended the federes of the Paris Commune of 1871 on the grounds that they were strong enough to dispense with theory altogether," yet his supporting quote does not, in fact say this. [Op. Cit., p. 285] What Bakunin was, in fact, arguing was simply that theory must progress from experience and that any attempt to impose a theory on society would be doomed to create a "Procrustean bed" as no government could "embrace the infinite multiplicity and diversity of the real aspirations, wishes and needs whose sum total constitutes the collective will of a people." He explicitly contrasted the Marxist system of "want[ing] to impose science upon the people" with the anarchist desire "to diffuse science and knowledge among the people, so that the various groups of human society, when convinced by propaganda, may organise and spontaneously combine into federations, in accordance with their natural tendencies and their real interests, but never according to a plan traced in advance and imposed upon the ignorant masses by a few 'superior' minds." [The Political Theory of Bakunin, p. 300] A clear misreading of Bakunin's argument but one which fits nicely into Marxist preconceptions of Bakunin and anarchism in general.

This tendency to quote out of context or from periods when anarchists were not anarchists probably explains why so many of these Marxist accounts of anarchism are completely lacking in references. Take, for example, the British SWP's Pat Stack who wrote one of the most inaccurate diatribes against anarchism the world has had the misfortunate to see (namely "Anarchy in the UK?" which was published in issue no. 246 of Socialist Review). There is not a single reference in the whole article, which is just as well, given the inaccuracies contained in it. Without references, the reader would not be able to discover for themselves the distortions and simple errors contained in it. For example, Stack asserts that Bakunin "claimed a purely 'instinctive socialism.'" However, the truth is different and this quote from Bakunin is one by him comparing himself and Marx in the 1840s!

In fact, the anarchist Bakunin argued that "instinct as a weapon is not sufficient to safeguard the proletariat against the reactionary machinations of the privileged classes," as instinct "left to itself, and inasmuch as it has not been transformed into consciously reflected, clearly determined thought, lends itself easily to falsification, distortion and deceit." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 215] Bakunin saw the process of class struggle as the means of transforming instinct into conscious thought. As he put it, the "goal, then, is to make the worker fully aware of what he [or she] wants, to unjam within him [or her] a steam of thought corresponding to his [or her] instinct." This is done by "a single path, that of emancipation through practical action," by "workers' solidarity in their struggle against the bosses," of "collective struggle of the workers against the bosses." This would be complemented by socialist organisations "propagandis[ing] its principles." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 102, p. 103 and p. 109] Clearly, Stack is totally distorting Bakunin's ideas on the subject.

This technique of quoting Bakunin when he spoke about (or when wrote in) his pre-anarchist days in the 1840s, i.e. nearly 20 years before he became an anarchist, or from Proudhon's posthumously published work on property (in which Proudhon saw small-scale property as a bulwark against state tyranny) to attack anarchism is commonplace. As such, it is always wise to check the source material and any references (assuming that they are provided). Only by doing this can it be discovered whether a quote reflects the opinions of individuals when they were anarchists or whether they are referring to periods when they were no longer, or had not yet become, anarchists.

Ultimately, though, these kinds of articles by Marxists simply show the ideological nature of their own politics and say far more about Marxism than anarchism. After all, if their politics were so strong they would not need to distort anarchist ideas! In addition, these essays are usually marked by a lot of (usually inaccurate) attacks on the ideas (or personal failings) of individual anarchists (usually Proudhon and Bakunin and sometimes Kropotkin). No modern anarchist theorist is usually mentioned, never mind discussed. Obviously, for most Marxists, anarchists must repeat parrot-like the ideas of these "great men." However, while Marxists may do this, anarchists have always rejected this approach. We deliberately call ourselves anarchists rather than Proudhonists, Bakuninists, Kropotkinists, or after any other person. As Malatesta argued in 1876 (the year of Bakunin's death) "[w]e follow ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man." [Life and Ideas, p. 198]

Therefore, anarchists, unlike many (most?) Marxists do not believe that some prophet wrote down the scriptures in past centuries and if only we could reach a correct understanding of these writings today we would see the way forward. Chomsky put it extremely well when he argued that:

"The whole concept of Marxist or Freudian or anything like that is very odd. These concepts belong to the history of organised religion. Any living person, no matter how gifted, will make some contributions intermingled with error and partial understanding. We try to understand and improve on their contributions and eliminate the errors. But how can you identify yourself as a Marxist, or a Freudian, or an X-ist, whoever X may be? That would be to treat the person as a God to be revered, not a human being whose contributions are to be assimilated and transcended. It's a crazy idea, a kind of idolatry." [The Chomsky Reader, pp. 29-30]

This means that anarchists recognise that any person, no matter how great or influential, are just human. They make mistakes, they fail to live up to all the ideals they express, they are shaped by the society they live in, and so on. Anarchists recognise this fact and extract the positive aspects of past anarchist thinkers, reject the rest and develop what we consider the living core of their ideas. We develop the ideas and analyses of these pioneers of the anarchist ideal, reject the rubbish and embrace the good, learn from history and constantly try to bring anarchist ideas up-to-date (after all, a lot has changed since the days of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin and this has to be taken into account). As Max Nettlau put it with regards to Proudhon, "we have to extract from his work useful teachings that would be of great service to our modern libertarians, who nevertheless have to find their own way from theory to practice and to the critique of our present-day conditions, as Proudhon did in his time. This does not call for a slavish imitation; it implies using his work to inspire us and enable us to profit by his experience." [A Short History of Anarchism, pp. 46-7] Similarly for other anarchists -- we see them as a source of inspiration upon which to build rather than a template which to copy. This means to attack anarchism by, say, attacking Bakunin's or Proudhon's personal failings is to totally miss the point. While anarchists may be inspired by the ideas of, say, Bakunin or Proudhon it does not mean we blindly follow all of their ideas. Far from it! We critically analysis their ideas and keep what is living and reject what is useless or dead. Sadly, such common sense is lacking in many who critique anarchism.

However, the typical Marxist approach does have its benefits from a political perspective. As Albert Meltzer pointed out, "[i]t is very difficult for Marxist-Leninists to make an objective criticism of Anarchism, as such, because by its nature it undermines all the suppositions basic to Marxism. If Marxism is held out to be indeed the basic working class philosophy, and the proletariat cannot owe its emancipation to anyone but itself, it is hard to go back on it and say that the working class is not yet ready to dispense with authority placed over it. Marxism therefore normally tries to refrain from criticising anarchism as such -- unless driven to doing so, when it exposes its own authoritarian . . . and concentrates its attacks not on anarchism, but on anarchists." [Anarchism: Arguments for and Against, p. 37] Needless to say, this technique is the one usually applied by Marxists (although, we must stress that often their account of the ideas of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin are so distorted that they fail even to do this!).

So anarchist theory has developed since Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. At each period in history anarchism advanced in its understanding of the world, the anarchism of Bakunin was a development of that of Proudhon, these ideas were again developed by the anarcho-communists of the 1880s and by the syndicalists of the 1890's, by the Italian Malatesta, the Russian Kropotkin, the Mexican Flores Magon and many other individuals and movements. Today we stand on their shoulders, not at their feet.

As such, to concentrate on the ideas of a few "leaders" misses the point totally. Ideas change and develop and anarchism has changed as well. While it contains many of the core insights of, say, Bakunin, it has also developed them and added to them. It has, concretely, taken into account, say, the lessons of the Russian and Spanish revolutions and so on. As such, even assuming that Marxist accounts of certain aspects of the ideas of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin were correct, they would have to be shown to be relevant to modern anarchism to be of any but historical interest. Sadly, Marxists generally fail to do this and, instead, we are subject to a (usually inaccurate) history lesson.

In order to understand, learn from and transcend previous theorists we must honestly present their ideas. Unfortunately many Marxists do not do this and so this section of the FAQ involves correcting the many mistakes, distortions, errors and lies that Marxists have subjected anarchism to. Hopefully, with this done, a real dialogue can develop between Marxists and anarchists. Indeed, this has happened between libertarian Marxists (such as council communists and Situationists) and anarchists and both tendencies have benefited from it. Perhaps this dialogue between libertarian Marxists and anarchists is to be expected, as the mainstream Marxists have often misrepresented the ideas of libertarian Marxists as well!

H.2.1 Do anarchists reject defending a revolution?

For revolutionary anarchists, it is a truism that a revolution will need to defend itself against counter-revolutionary threats. Bakunin, for example, while strenuously objecting to the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (see section H.1.1 for details) also thought a revolution would need to defend itself. In his words:

"Immediately after established governments have been overthrown, communes will have to reorganise themselves along revolutionary lines . . . In order to defend the revolution, their volunteers will at the same time form a communal militia. But no commune can defend itself in isolation. So it will be necessary to radiate revolution outward, to raise all of its neighbouring communes in revolt . . . and to federate with them for common defence." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 142]

And:

"the Alliance of all labour associations . . . will constitute the Commune . . . there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council . . . [made up of] delegates . . . invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times . . . all provinces, communes and associations . . . [will] delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all . . . invested with binding mandated and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . and to organise a revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction . . . it is through the very act of extrapolation and organisation of the Revolution with an eye to the mutual defences of insurgent areas that the universality of the Revolution . . . will emerge triumphant." [Op. Cit., vol. 1, pp. 155-6]

Malatesta agreed, arguing for the "creation of voluntary militia, without powers to interfere as militia in the life of the community, but only to deal with any armed attacks by the forces of reaction to re-establish themselves, or to resist outside intervention." The workers must "take possession of the factories" and "federate amongst themselves" and only "the people in arms, in possession of the land, the factories and all the natural wealth" could defend a revolution [Life and Ideas, p. 166, p. 165 and p. 170] Alexander Berkman concurred: "The armed workers and peasants are the only effective defence of the revolution. By means of their unions and syndicates they must always be on guard against counter-revolutionary attack." [ABC of Anarchism, p. 82] Emma Goldman clearly and unambiguously stated that she had "always insisted that an armed attack on the Revolution must be met with armed force" and that "an armed counter-revolutionary and fascist attack can be met in no way except by an armed defence." [Vision on Fire, p. 222 and p. 217]

Clearly, anarchism has always recognised the necessity of defending a revolution and proposed ideas to ensure it (ideas applied with great success by, for example, the Makhnovists in the Ukrainian Revolution and the C.N.T militias during the Spanish). As such, any assertion that anarchism rejects the necessity of defending a revolution are simply false.

Which, of course, brings us to the second assertion, namely that any attempt to defend a revolution means that a state has been created (regardless of what it may be called). For anarchists, such an argument simply shows that Marxists do not really understand what a state is. While the Trotskyist definition of a "state" is "an apparatus designed to enable one class to rule another," the anarchist definition is somewhat different. Anarchists, of course, do not deny that the modern state is (to use Malatesta's excellent expression) "the bourgeoisie's servant and gendarme." [Anarchy, p. 20] Every state that has ever existed has defended the power of a minority class and, unsurprisingly, has developed certain features to facilitate this. The key one is centralisation of power. This ensures that the working people are excluded from the decision making process and power remains a tool of the ruling class. As such, the centralisation of power (while it may take many forms) is the key means by which a class system is maintained and, therefore, a key aspect of a state. As Kropotkin put, the "state idea . . . includes the existence of a power situated above society . . . a territorial concentration as well as the concentration of many functions of the life of societies in the hands of a few." [Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, p. 213] This was the case with representative democracy:

"To attack the central power, to strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve authority, would have been to abandon to the people the control of its affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central government even more. . ." [Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 143]

This meant that the "representative system was organised by the bourgeoisie to ensure their domination, and it will disappear with them. For the new economic phase that is about to begin we must seek a new form of political organisation, based on a principle quite different from that of representation. The logic of events imposes it." [Op. Cit., p. 125] So while we agree with Marxists that the main function of the state is to defend class society, we also stress the structure of the state has evolved to execute that role. In the words of Rudolf Rocker:

"[S]ocial institutions . . . do not arise arbitrarily, but are called into being by special needs to serve definite purposes . . . The newly arisen possessing classes had need of a political instrument of power to maintain their economic and social privileges over the masses of their own people . . . Thus arose the appropriate social conditions for the evolution of the modern state, as the organ of political power of privileged castes and classes for the forcible subjugation and oppression of the non-possessing classes . . . Its external forms have altered in the course of its historical development, but its functions have always been the same . . . And just as the functions of the bodily organs of . . . animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass-exploitation and social privileges, and creator of privileged classes." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 20]

As such, a new form of society, one based on the participation of all in the affairs of society (and a classless society can be nothing else) means the end of the state. This is because it has been designed to exclude the participation a classless society needs in order to exist. In anarchist eyes, it is an abuse of the language to call the self-managed organisations by which the former working class manage (and defend) a free society a state. If it was simply a question of consolidating a revolution and its self-defence then there would be no argument:

"But perhaps the truth is simply this: . . . [some] take the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labour, and trying to build a society and organise a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers.

"Thus constructed, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everyone, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.

"But the real supporters of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one' party's leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and above all its armed forces, which are at present [1919] also deployed in the defence of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictator's will upon the workers, to apply a break on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses." [Malatesta, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 38-9]

The question is, therefore, one of who "seizes power" -- will it be the mass of the population or will it be a party claiming to represent the mass of the population. The difference is vital and it confuses the issue to use the same word "state" to describe two such fundamentally different structures as a "bottom-up" self-managed communal federation and a "top-down" hierarchical centralised organisation (such as has been every state that has existed). This explains why anarchists reject the idea of a "democratic workers' state" as the means by which a revolution defends itself. Rather than signify working class power or management of society, it signifies the opposite -- the seizure of power of a minority (in this case, the leaders of the vanguard party).

Anarchists argue that the state is designed to exclude the mass of the population from the decision making process. This, ironically for Trotskyism, was one of the reasons why leading Bolsheviks (including Lenin and Trotsky) argued for a workers state. The centralisation of power implied by the state was essential so that the vanguard party could ignore the "the will of the majority." This particular perspective was clearly a lesson they learned from their experiences during the Russian Revolution.

As noted in section H.1.2, Lenin was arguing in 1920 that "the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the essentials of transitions from capitalism to communism . . . for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21]

This argument, as can be seen, was considered of general validity and, moreover, was merely stating mainstream Bolshevik ideology. It was repeated in March 1923 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in a statement issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. This statement summarised the lessons gained from the Russian revolution. It stated that "the party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an unprecedented defeat for the proletariat." Vacillations, of course, are expressed by workers' democracy. Little wonder the statement rejects it: "The dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the dictatorship of the party." ["To the Workers of the USSR" in G. Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party, p. 213, p. 214] It should be noted that this Central Committee included Trotsky who, in the same year, was stating that "[i]f there is one question which basically not only does not require revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision, it is the question of the dictatorship of the Party." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158]

Needless to say, Workers' Power (like most Trotskyists) blame the degeneration of the Russian revolution on the Civil War and its isolation. However, as these statements make clear, the creation of a party dictatorship was not seen in these terms. Rather, it was considered a necessity to suppress democracy and replace it by party rule. Indeed, as noted in section H.1.2, Trotsky was still arguing in 1937 for the "objective necessity" for the "dictatorship of a party" due to the "heterogeneity" of the working class. [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4] Moreover, as we discuss in detail in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolshevik undermining of working class autonomy and democracy started well before the outbreak of civil war, thus confirming anarchist theory. These conclusions of leading Leninists simply justified the actions undertaken by the Bolsheviks from the start.

This is why anarchists reject the idea of a "democratic workers' state." Simply put, as far as it is a state, it cannot be democratic and in as far as it is democratic, it cannot be a state. The Leninist idea of a "workers' state" means, in fact, the seizure of power by the party. This, we must stress, naturally follows from the idea of the state. It is designed for minority rule and excludes, by its very nature, mass participation. As can be seen, this aspect of the state is one which the leading lights of Bolshevik agreed with. Little wonder, then, that in practice the Bolshevik regime suppressed of any form of democracy which hindered the power of the party (see the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"). Maurice Brinton sums up the issue well when he argued that "'workers' power' cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party -- as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks . . . What 'taking power' really implies is that the vast majority of the working class at last realises its ability to manage both production and society -- and organises to this end." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xiv]

In summary, therefore, anarchists reject the idea that the defence of a revolution can be conducted by a state. As Bakunin once put it, there is the "Republic-State" and there is "the system of the Republic-Commune, the Republic-Federation, i.e. the system of Anarchism. This is the politics of the Social Revolution, which aims at the abolition of the State and establishment of the economic, entirely free organisation of the people -- organisation from bottom to top by means of federation." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 314] Indeed, creating a new state will simply destroy the most important gain of any revolution -- working class autonomy -- and its replacement by another form of minority rule (by the party). Anarchists have always argued that the defence of a revolution must not be confused with the state and so argue for the abolition of the state and the defence of a revolution (also see section H.1.3 for more discussion). Only when working class people actually run themselves society will a revolution be successful. For anarchists, this means that "effective emancipation can be achieved only by the direct, widespread, and independent action . . . of the workers themselves, grouped . . . in their own class organisations . . . on the basis of concrete action and self-government, helped but not governed, by revolutionaries working in the very midst of, and not above the mass and the professional, technical, defence and other branches." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 197] This means that anarchists argue that the capitalist state cannot be transformed or adjusted, but has to be smashed by a social revolution and replaced with organisations and structures created by working class people during their own struggles (see section H.1.4 for details).

For a further discussion of anarchist ideas on defending a revolution, please consult sections I.5.14 and J.7.6.

H.2.2 Do anarchists reject "class conflict" as "the motor of change" and "collective struggle" as the "means"?

For example, Pat Stack of the British SWP argued that anarchists "dismiss . . . the importance of the collective nature of change" and so "downplays the centrality of the working class" in the revolutionary process. This, he argues, means that for anarchism the working class "is not the key to change." He stresses that for Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin "revolutions were not about . . . collective struggle or advance." Indeed, that anarchism "despises the collectivity." Amazingly he argues that for Kropotkin, "far from seeing class conflict as the dynamic for social change as Marx did, saw co-operation being at the root of the social process." Therefore, "[i]t follows that if class conflict is not the motor of change, the working class is not the agent and collective struggle not the means. Therefore everything from riot to bomb, and all that might become between the two, was legitimate when ranged against the state, each with equal merit." ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246] Needless to say, he makes the usual exception for anarcho-syndicalists, thereby showing his total ignorance of anarchism and syndicalism (see section H.2.8).

Indeed, these assertions are simply incredible. It is hard to believe that anyone who is a leading member of a Leninist party could write such nonsense which suggests that Stack is aware of the truth and simply decides to ignore it. All in all, it is very easy to refute these assertions. All we have to do is, unlike Stack, to quote from the works of Bakunin, Kropotkin and other anarchists. Even the briefest familiarity with the writings of revolutionary anarchism would soon convince the reader that Stack really does not know what he is talking about.

Take, for example, Bakunin. Rather than reject class conflict, collective struggle or the key role of the working class, Bakunin based his political ideas on all three. As he put it, there was, "between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, an irreconcilable antagonism which results inevitably from their respective stations in life." He stressed "war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is unavoidable" and would only end with the "abolition of the bourgeoisie as a distinct class." In order the worker to "become strong" they "must unite" with other workers in "the union of all local and national workers' associations into a world-wide association, the great International Working-Men's Association." It was only "through practice and collective experience . . . [and] the progressive expansion and development of the economic struggle [that] will bring [the worker] more to recognise his [or her] true enemies: the privileged classes, including the clergy, the bourgeoisie, and the nobility; and the State, which exists only to safeguard all the privileges of those classes." There was "but a single path, that of emancipation through practical action . . . [which] has only one meaning. It means workers' solidarity in their struggle against the bosses. It means trades-unions, organisation, and the federation of resistance funds." Then, "when the revolution -- brought about by the force of circumstances -- breaks out, the International will be a real force and know what it has to do . . . take the revolution into its own hands . . . [and become] an earnest international organisation of workers' associations from all countries [which will be] capable of replacing this departing political world of States and bourgeoisie." ["The Policy of the International", The Basic Bakunin, pp. 97-8, p. 103 and p. 110]

Hardly the words of a man who rejected class conflict, the working class and the collective nature of change! Nor is this an isolated argument from Bakunin, they recur continuously throughout Bakunin's works. For example, he argued that socialists must "[o]rganise the city proletariat in the name of revolutionary Socialism, and in doing this unite it into one preparatory organisation together with the peasantry." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 378] Similarly, he argued that "equality" was the "aim" of the International Workers' Association and "the organisation of the working class its strength, the unification of the proletariat the world over . . . its weapon, its only policy." He stressed that "to create a people's force capable of crushing the military and civil force of the State, it is necessary to organise the proletariat." [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, p. 95 and p. 254]

Strikes played a very important role in Bakunin's ideas (as they do in all revolutionary anarchist thought). He saw the strike as "the beginnings of the social war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie . . . Strikes are a valuable instrument from two points of view. Firstly, they electrify the masses . . . awaken in them the feeling of the deep antagonism which exists between their interests and those of the bourgeoisie . . . secondly they help immensely to provoke and establish between the workers of all trades, localities and countries the consciousness and very fact of solidarity: a twofold action, both negative and positive, which tends to constitute directly the new world of the proletariat, opposing it almost in an absolute way to the bourgeois world." [cited in Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism 1872-1886, pp. 216-217]

Indeed, for Bakunin, strikes train workers for social revolution as they "create, organise, and form a workers' army, an army which is bound to break down the power of the bourgeoisie and the State, and lay the ground for a new world." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 384-5] Moreover, when "strikes spread from one place to another, they come close to turning into a general strike. And with the ideas of emancipation that now hold sway over the proletariat, a general strike can result only in a great cataclysm which forces society to shed its old skin." The very process of strikes, as noted, would create the framework of a socialist society as "strikes indicate a certain collective strength already" and "because each strike becomes the point of departure for the formation of new groups." [The Basic Bakunin, pp. 149-50] Thus the revolution would be "an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organisation of the workers from below upward." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 179]

As we argue in sections H.1.4 and I.2.3, the very process of collective class struggle would, for Bakunin and other anarchists, create the basis of a free society. Thus, in Bakunin's eyes, the "future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." He saw the free society as being based on "the land, the instruments of work and all other capital [will] become the collective property of the whole of society and be utilised only by the workers, in other words by the agricultural and industrial associations." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 206 and p. 174] In other words, the basic structure created by the revolution would be based on the working classes own combat organisations, as created in their struggles within, but against, oppression and exploitation.

The link between present and future would be labour unions (workers' associations) created by working people in their struggle against exploitation and oppression. These played the key role in Bakunin's politics both as the means to abolish capitalism and the state and as the framework of a socialist society (this support for workers' councils predates Marxist support by five decades, incidentally). When he became an anarchist, Bakunin always stressed that it was essential to "[o]rganise always more and more the practical militant international solidarity of the toilers of all trades and of all countries, and remember . . . you will find an immense, an irresistible force in this universal collectivity." [quoted by Kenafick, Op. Cit., p. 291] Quite impressive for someone who was a founding father of a theory which, according to Stack, downplayed the "centrality of the working class," argued that the working class was "not the key to change," dismissed "the importance of the collective nature of change" as well as "collective struggle or advance" and "despises the collectivity"! Clearly, to argue that Bakunin held any of these views simply shows that the person making such statements does not have a clue what they are talking about.

The same, needless to say, applies to all revolutionary anarchists. Kropotkin built upon Bakunin's arguments and, like him, based his politics on collective working class struggle and organisation. He consistently stressed that "the Anarchists have always advised taking an active part in those workers' organisations which carry on the direct struggle of Labour against Capital and its protector -- the State." Such struggle, "better than any other indirect means, permits the worker to obtain some temporary improvements in the present conditions of work, while it opens his eyes to the evil done by Capitalism and the State that supports it, and wakes up his thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption, production, and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist and the State." [Evolution and Environment, pp. 82-3] In his article on "Anarchism" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he stressed that anarchists "have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 287]

Far from denying the importance of collective class struggle, he actually stressed it again and again. As he once wrote, "to make the revolution, the mass of workers will have to organise themselves. Resistance and the strike are excellent means of organisation for doing this." He argued that it was "a question of organising societies of resistance for all trades in each town, of creating resistance funds against the exploiters, of giving more solidarity to the workers' organisations of each town and of putting them in contact with those of other towns, of federating them . . . Workers' solidarity must no longer be an empty word by practised each day between all trades and all nations." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Op. Cit., pp. 255-6] Kropotkin could not have been clearer.

Clearly, Kropotkin was well aware of the importance of popular, mass, struggles. As he put it, anarchists "know very well that any popular movement is a step towards the social revolution. It awakens the spirit of revolt, it makes men [and women] accustomed to seeing the established order (or rather the established disorder) as eminently unstable." [Words of a Rebel, p. 203] As regards the social revolution, he argues that "a decisive blow will have to be administered to private property: from the beginning, the workers will have to proceed to take over all social wealth so as to put it into common ownership. This revolution can only be carried out by the workers themselves." In order to do this, the masses have to build their own organisation as the "great mass of workers will not only have to constitute itself outside the bourgeoisie . . . it will have to take action of its own during the period which will precede the revolution . . . and this sort of action can only be carried out when a strong workers' organisation exists." This meant, of course, it was "the mass of workers we have to seek to organise. We . . . have to submerge ourselves in the organisation of the people . . . When the mass of workers is organised and we are with it to strengthen its revolutionary idea, to make the spirit of revolt against capital germinate there . . . then it will be the social revolution." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Op. Cit., pp. 153-4]

He saw the class struggle in terms of "a multitude of acts of revolt in all countries, under all possible conditions: first, individual revolt against capital and State; then collective revolt -- strikes and working-class insurrections -- both preparing, in men's minds as in actions, a revolt of the masses, a revolution." Clearly, the mass, collective nature of social change was not lost on Kropotkin who pointed to a "multitude of risings of working masses and peasants" as a positive sign. Strikes, he argued, "were once 'a war of folded arms'" but now were "easily turning to revolt, and sometimes taking the proportions of vast insurrections." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 144]

And Pat Stack argues that Kropotkin did not see "class conflict as the dynamic for social change," nor "class conflict" as "the motor of change" and the working class "not the agent and collective struggle not the means"! Truly incredible and a total and utter distortion of Kropotkin's ideas on the subject.

As for other anarchists, we discover the same concern over class conflict, collective struggle and organisation and the awareness of a mass social revolution by the working class. Emma Goldman, for example, argued that anarchism "stands for direct action" and that "[t]rade unionism, the economic area of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action . . . In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russian, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labour unions), direct, revolutionary economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realise the tremendous importance of labour's power. The General Strike [is] the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers . . . Today every great strike, in order to win, must realise the importance of the solidaric general protest." [Anarchism and Other Essays, pp. 65-6] She places collective class struggle at the centre of her ideas and, crucially, she sees it as the way to create an anarchist society:

"It is this war of classes that we must concentrate upon, and in that connection the war against false values, against evil institutions, against all social atrocities. Those who appreciate the urgent need of co-operating in great struggles . . . must organise the preparedness of the masses for the overthrow of both capitalism and the state. Industrial and economic preparedness is what the workers need. That alone leads to revolution at the bottom . . . That alone will give the people the means to take their children out of the slums, out of the sweat shops and the cotton mills . . . That alone leads to economic and social freedom, and does away with all wars, all crimes, and all injustice." [Red Emma Speaks, pp. 309-10]

For Malatesta, "the most powerful force for social transformation is the working class movement . . . Through the organisations established for the defence of their interests, workers acquire an awareness of the oppression under which they live and of the antagonisms which divide them from their employers, and so begin to aspire to a better life, get used to collective struggle and to solidarity." This meant that anarchists "must recognise the usefulness and importance of the workers' movement, must favour its development, and make it one of the levers of their action, doing all they can so that it . . . will culminate in a social revolution." Anarchists must "deepen the chasm between capitalists and wage-slaves, between rulers and ruled; preach expropriation of private property and the destruction of State." The new society would be organised "by means of free association and federations of producers and consumers." [Life and Ideas, p. 113, pp. 250-1 and p. 184] Alexander Berkman, unsurprisingly, argued the same thing. As he put it, only "the worst victims of present institutions" could abolish capitalism as "it is to their own interest to abolish them. . . labour's emancipation means at the same time the redemption of the whole of society." He stressed that "only the right organisation of the workers can accomplish what we are striving for . . . Organisation from the bottom up, beginning with the shop and factory, on the foundation of the joint interests of the workers everywhere . . . alone can solve the labour question and serve the true emancipation of man[kind]." [The ABC of Anarchism, p. 44 and p. 60

As can be seen, the claim that Kropotkin or Bakunin, or anarchists in general, ignored the class struggle and collective working class struggle and organisation is either a lie or indicates ignorance. Clearly, anarchists have placed working class struggle, organisation and collective direct action and solidarity at the core of their politics (and as the means of creating a libertarian socialist society) from the start.

Also see section H.2.8 for a discussion of the relationship of anarchism to syndicalism.

H.2.3 Does anarchism "yearn for what has gone before"?

Like his other "key point" (namely the rejection of class struggle -- see last section), Stack is simply wrong. Even the quickest look at the works of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin would convince the reader that this is simply distortion. Rather than look backwards for their ideas of social life, anarchism has always been careful to base its ideas on the current state of society and what anarchist thinkers considered positive current trends within society.

The dual element of progress is important to remember. Capitalism is a class society, marked by exploitation, oppression and various social hierarchies. In such a society progress can hardly be neutral. It will reflect vested interests, the needs of those in power, the rationales of the economic system (e.g. the drive for profits) and those who benefit from it, the differences in power between nations and companies and so on. Equally, it will be shaped by the class struggle, the resistance of the working classes to exploitation and oppression, the objective needs of production, etc. As such, trends in society will reflect the various class conflicts, social hierarchies, power relationships and so on which exist within it.

This is particularly true of the economy. The development of the industrial structure of a capitalist economy will be based on the fundamental need to maximise the profits and power of the capitalists. As such, it will develop (either by market forces or by state intervention) in order to ensure this. This means that various tendencies apparent in capitalist society exist specifically to aid the development of capital. This means that it does not follow that because a society which places profits above people has found a specific way of organising production "efficient" it means that a socialist society will do. As such, anarchist opposition to specific tendencies within capitalism (such as the increased concentration and centralisation of companies) does not mean a "yearning" for the past. Rather, it shows an awareness that capitalist methods are precisely that and that they need not be suited for a society which replaces the profit system with human and ecological need as the criteria for decision making.

For anarchists, this means questioning the assumptions of capitalist progress. This means that the first task of a revolution after the expropriation of the capitalists and the destruction of the state will be to transform the industrial structure and how it operates, not keep it as it is. Anarchists have long argued that that capitalist methods cannot be used for socialist ends. In our battle to democratise and socialise the workplace, in our awareness of the importance of collective initiatives by the direct producers in transforming their work situation, we show that factories are not merely sites of production, but also of reproduction -- the reproduction of a certain structure of social relations based on the division between those who give orders and those who take them, between those who direct and those who execute. Equally, the structure of industry has developed to maximise profits. Why assume that this structure will be equally as efficient in producing useful products by meaningful work which does not harm the environment?

A further aspect of this is that many of the struggles today, from the Zapatistas in Chiapas to those against Genetically Modified (GM) food and nuclear power are precisely based on the understanding that capitalist 'progress' can not be uncritically accepted. To resist the expulsion of people from the land in the name of progress or the introduction of terminator seeds is not to look back to "what had gone", although this is also precisely what the proponents of capitalist globalisation often accuse us of. It is to put "people before profit."

As such, only a sophist would confuse a critical evaluation of trends within capitalism with a yearning for the past. It means to buy into the whole capitalist notion of "progress" which has always been part of justifying the inhumanities of the status quo. Simply put, just because a process is rewarded by the profit driven market it does not mean that it makes sense from a human or ecological perspective. For example, as we argue in section J.5.11, the capitalist market hinders the spread of co-operatives and workers' self-management in spite of their well documented higher efficiency and productivity. From the perspective of the needs of the capitalists, this makes perfect sense. In terms of the workers and efficient allocation of resources, it does not. Would Marxists argue that because co-operatives and workers' self-management of production are marginal aspects of the capitalist economy it means that they will play no part in a sane society or that if a socialist expresses interest in them it means that are "yearning" for a past mode of production? We hope not.

This common Marxist failure to understand anarchist investigations of the future is, ironically enough, joined with a total failure to understand the social conditions in which anarchists have put forward their ideas. Ironically, for all his claims that anarchists ignore "material conditions," it is Pat Stack (and others like him) who does so in his claims against Proudhon. Stack argues that Proudhon (like all anarchists) was "yearning for the past" when he advanced his mutualist ideas. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. This is because the society in which the French anarchist lived was predominately artisan and peasant in nature. This was admitted by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto ("[i]n countries like France" the peasants "constitute far more than half of the population." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 493]). As such, for Proudhon to incorporate the aspirations of the majority of the population is not to "yearn for what has gone before" but rather an extremely sensible position to take.

Therefore, it is hardly an example of Proudhon "yearning for the past" for Stack to mention that Marx dubbed Proudhon ("the founder of modern anarchism") as "the socialist of the small peasant or master craftsman." It is simply unsurprising, a simple statement of fact, as the French working classes were, at the time, predominately small peasants or master craftsmen (or artisans). As K. Steven Vincent points out Proudhon's "social theories may not be reduced to a socialism for only the peasant class, nor was it a socialism only for the petite bourgeois; it was a socialism of and for French workers. And in the mid-nineteenth century . . . most French workers were still artisans." Indeed, "[w]hile Marx was correct in predicting the eventual predominance of the industrial proletariat vis-a-vis skilled workers, such predominance was neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion in France during the nineteenth century. The absolute number of small industries even increased during most of the century." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 5 and p. 282] Proudhon himself noted in 1851 that of a population of 36 million, 24 million were peasants and 6 million were artisans. Of the remaining 6 million, these included wage-workers for whom "workmen's associations" would be essential as "a protest against the wage system," the "denial of the rule of capitalists" and for "the management of large instruments of labour." [The General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 97-8]

To summarise, if the society in which you live is predominately made-up of peasants and artisans then it is hardly an insult to be called "the socialist of the small peasant or master craftsman." Equally, it can hardly represent a desire for "what has gone before" to tailor your ideas to the actual conditions in the country in which you live! And Stack accuses anarchists of ignoring "material conditions"!

Neither can it be said that Proudhon ignored the development of industrialisation in France during his lifetime. Quite the reverse, in fact, as indicated above. Proudhon did not ignore the rise of large-scale industry. He argued that such industry should be managed by the workers' themselves via workers associations. As he put it, "certain industries" required "the combined employment of a large number of workers" and so the producer is "a collectivity." In such industries "we have no choice" and so "it is necessary to form an association among the workers" because "without that they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two industrial castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society." [Op. Cit., pp. 215-6]

All in all, Stack is simply showing his ignorance of both Proudhon's ideas and the society (the "material conditions") in which they were shaped and were aimed for. As can be seen, Proudhon incorporated the development of large-scale industry within his mutualist ideas and so the need to abolish wage labour by workers' associations and workers' control of production. Perhaps Stack can fault Proudhon for seeking the end of capitalism too soon and for not waiting patiently will it developed further (if he does, he will also have to attack Marx, Lenin and Trotsky as well for the same failing!), but this has little to do with "yearn[ing] for what has gone before."

After distorting Proudhon's ideas on industry, Stack does the same with Bakunin. He asserts the following:

"Similarly, the Russian anarchist leader Bakunin argued that it was the progress of capitalism that represented the fundamental problem. For him industrialisation was an evil. He believed it had created a decadent western Europe, and therefore had held up the more primitive, less industrialised Slav regions as the hope for change."

Now, it would be extremely interesting to find out where, exactly, Stack discovered that Bakunin made these claims. After all, they are at such odds with Bakunin's anarchist ideas that it is temping to conclude that Stack is simply making it up. This, we suggest, explains the total lack of references for such an outrageous claim. Looking at his main source, we discover Paul Avrich writing that "[i]n 1848" (i.e. nearly 20 years before Bakunin became an anarchist!) Bakunin "spoke of the decadence of Western Europe and saw hope in the primitive, less industrialised Slavs for the regeneration of the Continent." [Op. Cit., p. 8] The plagiarism, again, is obvious, as are the distortions. Given that Bakunin became an anarchist in the mid-1860s, how his pre-anarchist ideas are relevant to an evaluation of anarchism escapes logic. It makes as much sense as quoting Marx to refute fascism as Mussolini was originally the leader of the left-wing of the Italian Socialist Party!

It is, of course, simple to refute Stack's claims. We simply need to do that which he does not, namely quote Bakunin. For someone who thought "industrialisation was an evil," a key aspect of Bakunin's ideas on social revolution was the seizing of industry and its placing under social ownership. As he put it, "capital and all tools of labour belong to the city workers -- to the workers associations. The whole organisation of the future should be nothing but a free federation of workers -- agricultural workers as well as factory workers and associations of craftsmen." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 410] Bakunin argued that "to destroy . . . all the instruments of labour . . . would be to condemn all humanity -- wwhich is infinity too numerous today to exist. . . on the simple gifts of nature. . . -- to. . . death by starvation. Thus capital cannot and must not be destroyed. It must be preserved." Only when workers "obtain not individual but collective property in capital" and when capital is no longer "concentrated in the hands of a separate, exploiting class" will they be able "to smash the tyranny of capital." [The Basic Bakunin, pp. 90-1] He stressed that only "associated labour, this is labour organised upon the principles of reciprocity and co-operation, is adequate to the task of maintaining the existence of a large and somewhat civilised society." Moreover, the "whole secret of the boundless productivity of human labour consists first of all in applying . . . scientifically developed reason . . . and then in the division of that labour." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 341-2] Hardly the thoughts of someone opposed to industrialisation!

Rather than oppose industrialisation and urge the destruction of industry, Bakunin considered one of the first acts of the revolution would be workers' associations taking over the means of production and turning them into collective property managed by the workers themselves. Hence Daniel Guerin's comment:

"Proudhon and Bakunin were 'collectivists,' which is to say they declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of private property." ["From Proudhon to Bakunin", The Radical Papers, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), p.32]

Clearly, Stack does not have the faintest idea of what he is talking about! Nor is Kropotkin any safer than Proudhon or Bakunin from Stack's distortions. He claims that:

"Peter Kropotkin, another famous anarchist leader to emerge in Russia, also looked backwards for change. He believed the ideal society would be based on small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production. He had witnessed such communities among Siberian peasants and watchmakers in the Swiss mountains."

First, we must note the plagiarism. Stack is summarising Paul Avrich's summary of Kropotkin's ideas. [Anarchist Portraits, p. 62] Rather than go to the source material, Stack provides an interpretation of someone else's interpretation of someone else's ideas! Clearly, the number of links in the chain means that something is going to get lost in the process and, of course, it does. The something which "gets lost" is, unfortunately, Kropotkin's ideas.

Ultimately, Stack is simply showing his total ignorance of Kropotkin's ideas by making such a statement. At least Avrich expanded upon his summary to mention that Kropotkin's positive evaluation of using modern technology and the need to apply it on an appropriate level to make work and the working environment as pleasant as possible. As Avrich summarises, "[p]laced in small voluntary workshops, machinery would rescue human beings from the monotony and toil of large-scale capitalist enterprise, allow time for leisure and cultural pursuits, and remove forever the stamp of inferiority traditionally borne by manual labour." [Op. Cit., p. 63] Hardly "backward looking" to desire the application of science and technology to transform the industrial system into one based on the needs of people rather than profit!

Stack must be hoping that the reader has, like himself, not read Kropotkin's classic work Fields, Factories and Workshops for if they have then they would be aware of the distortion Stack subjects Kropotkin's ideas to. While Avrich does present, in general, a reasonable summary of Kropotkin's ideas, he does place it into a framework of his own making. Kropotkin while stressing the importance of decentralising industry within a free society did not look backward for his inspiration. Rather, he looked to trends within existing society, trends he thought pointed in an anti-capitalist direction. This can be seen from the fact he based his classic work Field, Factories and Workshops on detailed analysis of current developments in the economy and came to the conclusion that industry would spread across the global (which has happened) and that small industries will continue to exist side by side with large ones (which also has been confirmed). From these facts he argued that a socialist society would aim to decentralise production, combining agriculture with industry and both using modern technology to the fullest.

As we discuss the fallacy that Kropotkin (or anarchists in general) have argued for "small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production" in section I.3.8, we will not do so here. Suffice to say, Kropotkin's vision was one of federations of decentralised communities in which production would be based on the "scattering of industries over the country -- so as to bring the factory amidst the fields . . . agriculture . . . combined with industry . . . to produce a combination of industrial with agricultural work." He considered this as "surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is possible." Indeed, he though that this step "is imposed by the very necessity of producing for the producers themselves." Kropotkin attempted to show, based on a detailed analysis of modern economic statistics and trends, a vision of a decentralised, federated communal society where "the workers" were "the real managers of industries" and what this would imply once society was free of capitalism. Needless to say, he did not think that this "next step" would occur until "a reorganisation of our present conditions [was] possible." [Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, pp. 157-8] In other words, until after a social revolution which expropriated industry and the land and placed social wealth into the hands of the producers. Until then, the positive trends he saw in modern society would remain circumcised by the workings of the capitalist market.

He did not, as is often asserted, argue for "small-scale production" (he still saw the need for factories, for example) but rather for production geared to appropriate levels, based on the objective needs of production (without the distorting effects generated by the needs of capitalist profits and power) and, of necessity, the needs of those who work in and live alongside industry (and today we would add, the needs of the environment). In other words, the transformation of capitalism into a society human beings could live full and meaningful lives in. Part of this would involve creating an industry based on human needs. "Have the factory and the workshop at the gates of your fields and gardens and work in them," he argued. "Not those large establishments, of course, in which huge masses of metals have to be dealt with and which are better placed at certain spots indicated by Nature, but the countless variety of workshops and factories which are required to satisfy the infinite diversity of tastes among civilised men [and women]." The new factories and workplaces would be "airy and hygienic, and consequently economical, . . . in which human life is of more account than machinery and the making of extra profits." [Op. Cit., p. 197] Under capitalism, he argued, the whole discourse of economics (like industrial development itself) was based on the logic and rationale of the profit motive:

"Under the name of profits, rent and interest upon capital, surplus value, and the like, economists have eagerly discussed the benefits which the owners of land or capital, or some privileged nations, can derive, either from the under-paid work of the wage-labourer, or from the inferior position of one class of the community towards another class, or from the inferior economical development of one nation towards another nation. . .

"In the meantime the great question -- 'What have we to produce, and how?' necessarily remained in the background . . . The main subject of social economy -- that is, the economy of energy required for the satisfaction of human needs -- is consequently the last subject which one expects to find treated in a concrete form in economical treatises." [Op. Cit., p. 17]

Kropotkin's ideas were, therefore, an attempt to discuss how a post-capitalist society could develop, based on an extensive investigation of current trends within capitalism, and reflecting the needs which capitalism ignores. As noted above, current trends within capitalism have positive (socialistic) and negative (capitalistic) aspects as capitalist industry has not developed neutrally (it has been distorted by the twin requirements to maintain capitalist profits and power).

For this reason Kropotkin considered the concentration of capital (which most Marxists base their arguments for socialism on) did not, in fact, represent an advance for socialism as it was "often nothing but an amalgamation of capitalists for the purpose of dominating the market, not for cheapening the technical process." [Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, p. 154] Indeed, by basing themselves on the trends of capital towards big business, Leninism simply locks itself into the logic of capitalism and, by implication, sees a socialist society which will basically be the same as capitalism, using the technology, industrial structure and industry developed under class society without change. After all, did Lenin not argue that "Socialism is merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people"?

Rather than condemn Kropotkin, Stack's comments (and those like them) simply show the poverty of the Leninist critique of capitalism and its vision of the socialist future.

All in all, anyone who claims that anarchism is "backward looking" or "yearns for the past" simply has no idea what they are talking about.

H.2.4 Do anarchists think "the state is the main enemy" rather than just "one aspect" of class society?

H.2.5 Do anarchists think "full blown" socialism will be created overnight?

Lastly, and as an aside, it this anarchist awareness of the disruptive effects of a revolution on a country's economy which, in part, makes anarchists extremely sceptical of pro-Bolshevik rationales that blame the difficult economic conditions facing the Russian Revolution for Bolshevik authoritarianism (see the appendix on "What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution? " for a fuller discussion of this). If, as Kropotkin argued, a social revolution inevitably results in massive economic disruption then, clearly, Bolshevism should be avoided if it cannot handle such inevitable events. In such circumstances, centralisation would only aid the disruption, not reduce it. This awareness of the problems facing a social revolution also led anarchists to stress the importance of local action and mass participation. As Kropotkin put it, the "immense constructive work demanded by a social revolution cannot be accomplished by a central government . . . It has need of knowledge, of brains and of the voluntary collaboration of a host of local and specialised forces which alone can attack the diversity of economic problems in their local aspects." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, pp. 255-6] Without this local action, co-ordinated joint activity would remain a dead letter.

In summary, anarchists acknowledge that politically there is no transitional period (i.e. the state must be abolished and replaced by a free federation of self-managed working class organisations). Economically anarchists recognise that different areas will develop in different ways and so there will be various economical transitional forms. Rather than seeing "full blown communism" being the instant result of a socialist revolution, anarchist-communists actually argue the opposite -- "full blown communism" will develop only after a successful revolution and the inevitable period of social reconstruction which comes after it. A "full blown" communist economy will develop as society becomes ready for it. What we do argue is that any transitional economic form must be based on the principles of the type of society it desires. In other words, any transitional period must be as communistic as possible if communism is your final aim and, equally, it must be libertarian if your final goal is freedom.

Also see section I.2.2 for further discussion on this issue.

H.2.6 How do Marxists misrepresent Anarchist ideas on mutual aid?

As we have discussed how collective, working class direct action, organisation and solidarity in the class struggle was at the core of Kropotkin's politics in section H.2.2, we will not do so here. Rather, we will discuss how Stack lies about Kropotkin's ideas on mutual aid. As just noted, the examples Stack lists are not to be found in Kropotkin's classic work Mutual Aid. Now, if Kropotkin had considered them as examples of "mutual aid" then he would have listed them in that work. This does not mean, however, that Kropotkin did not mention these examples. He does, but in other works (notably his essay Anarchist Communism) and he does not use them as examples of mutual aid. Just as Stack's examples are not mentioned in Mutual Aid, so Kropotkin fails to use the words "mutual aid" in his essay Anarchist-Communism: Its Basis and Principles. Here is Kropotkin's own words as regards Stack's "examples":

"We maintain, moreover, not only that communism is a desirable state of society, but that the growing tendency of modern society is precisely towards communism -- free communism -- notwithstanding the seemingly contradictory growth of individualism. In the growth of individualism . . . we see merely the endeavours of the individual towards emancipating himself from the steadily growing powers of capital and the State. But side by side with this growth we see also . . . the latent struggle of the producers of wealth to maintain the partial communism of old, as well as to reintroduce communist principles in a new shape, as soon as favourable conditions permit it. . . the communist tendency is continually reasserting itself and trying to make its way into public life. The penny bridge disappears before the public bridge; and the turnpike road before the free road. The same spirit pervades thousands of other institutions. Museums, free libraries, and free public schools; parks and pleasure grounds; paved and lighted streets, free for everybody's use; water supplied to private dwellings, with a growing tendency towards disregarding the exact amount of it used by the individual; tramways and railways which have already begun to introduce the season ticket or the uniform tax, and will surely go much further in this line when they are no longer private property: all these are tokens showing in what direction further progress is to be expected.

"It is in the direction of putting the wants of the individual above the valuation of the service he has rendered, or might render, to society; in considering society as a whole, so intimately connected together that a service rendered to any individual is a service rendered to the whole society." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamplets, pp. 59-60]

As is clear, the examples Stack selects have nothing to do with mutual aid in Kropotkin's eyes. Rather, they are examples of communistic tendencies within capitalism, empirical evidence that can be used to not only show that communism can work but also that it is not a utopian social solution but an expression of tendencies within society. Simply put, he is using examples from existing society to show that communism is not impossible.

Similarly with Stack's other examples. Kropotkin argued that:

"we are struck with the infinitesimal part played by government in our life. . . [A] striking feature of our century tells in favour of the . . . no-government tendency. It is the steady enlargement of the field covered by private initiative, and the recent growth of large organisations resulting merely and simply from free agreement. The railway net of Europe -- a confederation of so many scores of separate societies -- and the direct transport of passengers and merchandise over so many lines which were built independently and federated together, without even so much as a Central Board of European Railways, is a most striking instance of what is already done by mere agreement. . . .

"But there also is no lack of free organisations for nobler pursuits. One of the noblest achievements of our century is undoubtedly the Lifeboat Association. . . . The Hospitals Association and hundreds of like organisations, operating on a large scale and covering each a wide field, may also be mentioned under this head. . . hundreds of societies are constituted every day for the satisfaction of some of the infinitely varied needs of civilised man. . . in short, there is not a single direction in which men exercise their faculties without combining together for the accomplishment of some common aim. Every day new societies are formed, while every year the old ones aggregate together into larger units, federate across the national frontiers, and co-operate in some common work. . . One of the most remarkable societies which has recently arisen is undoubtedly the Red Cross Society . . .

"These facts -- so numerous and so customary that we pass by without even noticing them -- are in our opinion one of the most prominent features of the second half of the nineteenth century. The just-mentioned organisms grew up so naturally, they so rapidly extended and so easily aggregated together, they are such unavoidable outgrowths of the multiplication of needs of the civilised man, and they so well replace State interference, that we must recognise in them a growing factor of our life. Modern progress is really towards the free aggregation of free individuals so as to supplant government in all those functions which formerly were entrusted to it, and which it mostly performed so badly." [Op. Cit., pp. 65-7]

As is clear, Kropotkin was using these examples not as expressions of "mutual aid" but rather as evidence that social life can be organised without government. Just as with communism, he gave concrete examples of libertarian tendencies within society to prove the possibility of an anarchist society. And just like his examples of communistic activities within capitalism, his examples of co-operation without the state are not listed as examples of "mutual aid."

All this would suggest that Stack has either not read Kropotkin's works or that he has and consciously decided to misrepresent his ideas. In fact, its a combination of the two. Stack (as proven by his talk at Marxism 2001) gathered his examples of "mutual aid" from Paul Avrich's essay "Kropotkin's Ethical Anarchism" contained in his Anarchist Portraits. As such, he has not read the source material. Moreover, he simply distorted what Avrich wrote. In other words, not only has he not read Kropotkin's works, he consciously decided to misrepresent the secondary source he used. This indicates the quality of almost all Marxist critiques of anarchism.

For example, Avrich correctly notes that Kropotkin did not "deny that the 'struggle for existence' played an important role in the evolution of species. In Mutual Aid he declares unequivocally that 'life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive.'" Kropotkin simply argued that co-operation played a key role in determining who was, in fact, the fittest. Similarly, Avrich lists many of the same examples Stack presents but not in his discussion of Kropotkin's ideas on mutual aid. Rather, he correctly lists them in his discussion of how Kropotkin saw examples of anarchist communism in modern society and was "manifesting itself 'in the thousands of developments of modern life.'" This did not mean that Kropotkin did not see the need for a social revolution, quite the reverse. As Avrich notes, Kropotkin "did not shrink from the necessity of revolution" as he "did not expect the propertied classes to give up their privileges and possession without a fight." This "was to be a social revolution, carried out by the masses themselves" achieved by means of "expropriation" of social wealth. [Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, p. 58, p. 62 and p. 66]

So much for Stack's claims. As can be seen, they are not only a total misrepresentation of Kropotkin's work, they are also a distortion of his source!

A few more points need to be raised on this subject.

Firstly, Kropotkin never claimed that mutual aid "was the natural order." Rather, he stressed that Mutual Aid was (to use the subtitle of his book on the subject) "a factor of evolution." Never denying the importance of struggle or competition as a means of survival, he argued that co-operation within a species was the best means for it to survive in a hostile environment. This applied to life under capitalism. In the hostile environment of class society, then the only way in which working class people could survive would be to practice mutual aid (in other words, solidarity). Little wonder, then, that Kropotkin listed strikes and unions as expressions of mutual aid in capitalist society. Moreover, if we take Stack's arguments at face value, then he clearly is arguing that solidarity is not an important factor in the class struggle and that mutual aid and co-operation cannot change the world! Hardly what you would expect a socialist to argue. In other words, his inaccurate diatribe against Kropotkin backfires on his own ideas.

Secondly, Stack's argument that Kropotkin argued that co-operation was the natural order is in contradiction with his other claims that anarchism "despises the collectivity" and "dismiss[es] the importance of the collective nature of change." How can you have co-operation without forming a collective? And, equally, surely support for co-operation clearly implies the recognition of the "collective nature of change"? Moreover, if Stack had bothered to read Kropotkin's classic he would have been aware that he listed both unions and strikes as expressions of "mutual aid" (a fact, of course, which would undermine Stack's argument that anarchists reject collective working class struggle and organisation).

Thirdly, Mutual Aid is primarily a work of popular science and not a work on revolutionary anarchist theory like, say, The Conquest of Bread or Words of a Rebel. As such, it does not present a full example of Kropotkin's revolutionary ideas and how mutual aid fits into them. However, it does present some insights on the question of social progress which indicate that he did not think that "co-operation" was "at the root of the social process," as Stack claims. For example, he notes that "[w]hen Mutual Aid institutions . . . began . . . to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to process, the revolt of individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a higher form of commonwealth." But at the same time, others "endeavoured to break down the protective institutions of mutual support, with no other intention but to increase their own wealth and their own powers." In this conflict "lies the real tragedy of history." He also noted that the mutual aid tendency "continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns." Indeed, "in so far as" as new "economical and social institutions" were "a creation of the masses" they "have all originated from the same source" of mutual aid. [Mutual Aid, pp. 18-9 and p. 180]

Kropotkin was well aware that mutual aid (or solidarity) could not be applied between classes in a class society. Indeed, his chapters on mutual aid under capitalism contain the strike and union. As he put it in an earlier work:

"What solidarity can exist between the capitalist and the worker he exploits? Between the head of an army and the soldier? Between the governing and the governed?" [Words of a Rebel, p. 30]

In summary, Stack's assertions about Kropotkin's theory of "Mutual Aid" are simply false. He simply distorts the source material and shows a total ignorance of Kropotkin's work (which he obviously has not bothered to read before criticising it). A truthful account of "Mutual Aid" would involve recognising that Kropotkin show it being expressed in both strikes and labour unions and that he saw solidarity between working people as the means of not only surviving within the hostile environment of capitalism but also as the basis of a mass revolution which would end it.

H.2.7 Who do anarchists see as their "agents of social change"?

H.2.8 What is the relationship of anarchism to syndicalism?

Given that Stack's claims that anarchists reject the "need for collective action," do not understand "the power of the working class" and the "centrality" of the workplace are simply inventions, it would suggest that Stack's "huge advantage" does not, in fact, exist and is pure nonsense. Bakunin, Kropotkin and all revolutionary anarchists, as proven in section H.2.2, already understood all this and based their politics on the need for collective working class struggle at the point of production. As such, by contrasting anarcho-syndicalism with anarchism (as expressed by the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin) Stack simply shows his utter and total ignorance of his subject matter.

Moreover, if he bothered to read the works of the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin he would discover that many of their ideas were identical to those of revolutionary syndicalism. For example, Bakunin argued that the "organisation of the trade sections, their federation in the International, and their representation by Chambers of Labour, . . . [allow] the workers . . . [to] combin[e] theory and practice . . . [and] bear in themselves the living germs of the social order, which is to replace the bourgeois world. They are creating not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself." [quoted by Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 45] Like the syndicalists, he argued "the natural organisation of the masses . . . is organisation based on the various ways that their various types of work define their day-to-day life; it is organisation by trade association" and once "every occupation . . . is represented within the International [Working-Men's Association], its organisation, the organisation of the masses of the people will be complete." Moreover, Bakunin stressed that the working class had "but a single path, that of emancipation through practical action which meant "workers' solidarity in their struggle against the bosses" by "trades-unions, organisation, and the federation of resistance funds" [The Basic Bakunin, p. 139 and p. 103]

Like the syndicalists, Bakunin stressed working class self-activity and control over the class struggle:

"Toilers count no longer on anyone but yourselves. Do not demoralise and paralyse your growing strength by being duped into alliances with bourgeois Radicalism . . . Abstain from all participation in bourgeois Radicalism and organise outside of it the forces of the proletariat. The bases of this organisation are already completely given: they are the workshops and the federation of workshops, the creation of fighting funds, instruments of struggle against the bourgeoisie, and their federation, not only national, but international.

"And when the hour of revolution sounds, you will proclaim the liquidation of the State and of bourgeois society, anarchy, that is to say the true, frank people's revolution . . . and the new organisation from below upwards and from the circumference to the centre." [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, pp. 120-1]

This new society would be organised "by free federation, from below upwards, of workers' associations, industrial as well as agricultural . . . in districts and municipalities at first; federation of these into regions, of the regions into nations, and the nations into a fraternal Internationalism." Moreover, "capital, factories, all the means of production and raw material" would be owned by "the workers' organisations" while the land would be given "to those who work it with their own hands." [quoted by Kenafick, Op. Cit., p. 241 and p. 240]

The similarities with revolutionary syndicalism could not be clearer. Little wonder that all serious historians see the obvious similarities between anarcho-syndicalism and Bakunin's anarchism. For example, George R. Esenwein's (in his study of early Spanish anarchism) comments that syndicalism "had deep roots in the Spanish libertarian tradition. It can be traced to Bakunin's revolutionary collectivism." He also notes that the class struggle was "central to Bakunin's theory." [Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898, p. 209 and p. 20]

Caroline Cahm, likewise, points to "the basic syndicalist ideas of Bakunin" and that he "argued that trade union organisation and activity in the International [Working Men's Association] were important in the building of working-class power in the struggle against capital . . . He also declared that trade union based organisation of the International would not only guide the revolution but also provide the basis for the organisation of the society of the future." Indeed, he "believed that trade unions had an essential part to play in the developing of revolutionary capacities of the workers as well as building up the organisation of the masses for revolution." [Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, p. 219, p. 215 and p. 216]

Paul Avrich, in his essay "The Legacy of Bakunin," agrees. "Bakunin," he argued, "perhaps even more than Proudhon, was a prophet of revolutionary syndicalism, who believed that a free federation of trade unions would be the 'living germs of a new social order which is to replace the bourgeois world.'" [Anarchist Protraits, pp. 14-15] Bertrand Russell (in his justly famous discussion of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism) noted that "[h]ardly any of these ideas [associated with syndicalism] are new: almost all are derived from the Bakunist [sic!] section of the old International" and that this was "often recognised by Syndicalists themselves." [Roads to Freedom, p. 52]

Needless to say, anarchists agree with this perspective. Arthur Lehning, for example, summarises the anarchist perspective when he commented that "Bakunin's collectivist anarchism . . . ultimately formed the ideological and theoretical basis of anarcho-syndicalism." ["Introduction", Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 29] Kropotkin argued that syndicalism "is nothing other than the rebirth of the International -- federalist, worker, Latin." [quoted by Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin, p. 176] Malatesta stated in 1907 that he had "never ceased to urge the comrades into that direction which the syndicalists, forgetting the past, call new, even though it was already glimpsed and followed, in the International, by the first of the anarchists." [The Anarchist Reader, p. 221] Little wonder that Rudolf Rocker stated the following in his classic introduction to anarcho-syndicalism:

"Modern Anarcho-syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International and which were best understood and most strongly held by the libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 49]

Murray Bookchin just states the obvious:

"Long before syndicalism became a popular term in the French labour movement of the late [eighteen]nineties, it already existed in the Spanish labour movement of the early seventies. The anarchist-influenced Spanish Federation of the old IWMA was . . . distinctly syndicalist." ["Looking Back at Spain," pp. 53-96, The Radical Papers, p. 67]

Perhaps, in the face of such evidence (and the writings of Bakunin himself), Marxists could claim that the sources we quote are either anarchists or "sympathetic" to anarchism. To counter this is very easy, we need only quote Marx and Engels. Marx attacked Bakunin for thinking that the "working class . . . must only organise themselves by trades- unions" and "not occupy itself with politics." Engels argued along the same lines, having a go at the anarchists because in the "Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started" and that they admitted "this required a well-formed organisation of the working class" (i.e. a trade union federation). Indeed, he summarised Bakunin's strategy as being to "organise, and when all the workers, hence the majority, are won over, dispose all the authorities, abolish the state and replace it with the organisation of the International." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 48, p. 132, p. 133 and p. 72] Ignoring the misrepresentations of Marx and Engels about the ideas of their enemies, we can state that they got the basic point of Bakunin's ideas -- the centrality of trade union organisation and struggle as well as the use of strikes and the general strike. Therefore, you do not have to read Bakunin to find out the similarities between his ideas and syndicalism, you can read Marx and Engels. Clearly, most Marxist critiques of anarchism haven't even done that!

Latter anarchists, needless to say, supported the syndicalist movement and, moreover, drew attention to its anarchist roots. Emma Goldman noted that in the First International "Bakunin and the Latin workers" forged ahead "along industrial and Syndicalist lines" and stated that syndicalism "is, in essence, the economic expression of Anarchism" and that "accounts for the presence of so many Anarchists in the Syndicalist movement. Like Anarchism, Syndicalism prepares the workers along direct economic lines, as conscious factors in the great struggles of to-day, as well as conscious factors in the task of reconstructing society." After seeing syndicalist ideas in action in France in 1900, she "immediately began to propagate Syndicalist ideas." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 66, p. 68 and p. 67]

Kropotkin argued anarchist communism "wins more and more ground among those working-men who try to get a clear conception as to the forthcoming revolutionary action. The syndicalist and trade union movements, which permit the workingmen to realise their solidarity and to feel the community of their interests better than any election, prepare the way for these conceptions." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 174] His support for anarchist participation in the labour movement was strong, considering it a key method of preparing for a revolution and spreading anarchist ideas amongst the working classes. As he put it:

"The syndicat is absolutely necessary. It is the sole force of the workers which continues the direct struggle against capital without turning to parliamentarism." [quoted by Miller, Op. Cit., p. 177]

"Revolutionary Anarchist Communist propaganda within the Labour Unions," he argued, "had always been a favourite mode of action in the Federalist or 'Bakuninist' section of the International Working Men's Association. In Spain and in Italy it had been especially successful. Now it was resorted to, with evident success, in France and Freedom [the British Anarchist paper] eagerly advocated this sort of propaganda." [Act For Yourselves, pp. 119-20] Caroline Cahm notes in her excellent account of Kropotkin's ideas between 1872 and 1886, he "was anxious to revive the International as an organisation for aggressive strike action to counteract the influence of parliamentary socialists on the labour movement." This resulted Kropotkin advocating a "remarkable fusion of anarchist communist ideas with both the bakuninist [sic!] internationalist views adopted by the Spanish Federation and the syndicalist ideas developed in the Jura Federation in the 1870s." This included seeing the importance of revolutionary labour unions, the value of the strikes as a mode of direct action and syndicalist action developing solidarity. [Cahm, Op. Cit., p. 257]

Clearly, any one claiming that there is a fundamental difference between anarchism and syndicalism is talking nonsense. Syndicalist ideas were being argued by the likes of Bakunin and Kropotkin before syndicalism emerged in the French CGT in the 1890s as a clearly labelled revolutionary theory. Rather than being in conflict, the ideas of syndicalism find their roots in the ideas of Bakunin and "classical" anarchism. This would be quickly seen if the actual writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin were consulted. There are, of course, differences between anarchism and syndicalism, but they are not those usually listed by Marxists. Section J.3.9 discusses these differences. As will quickly be discovered, they are not based on a rejection of working class organisation, direct action, solidarity and collective struggle!

Indeed, rather than acknowledge these similarities to Bakunin's ideas, Stack prefers to rewrite history by claiming (at his meeting on "Marxism and Anarchism" at the SWP's Marxism 2001 conference) that Georges Sorel was the father of syndicalism! Any one familiar with the history of syndicalism and the ideas of Sorel would, of course, know the syndicalist movement had been in existance for a number of years before Sorel wrote Refections on Violence. As such, he discussed from afar a movement which already existed. As the editor to a recent edition of Sorel's book notes, "the immediate backdrop" of Reflections on Violence was "the rise of the French syndicalist movement" which "Sorel had been following . . . since the late 1890s." It was only "after 1902, when the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) launched a series of spectacular strikes, that syndicalism came to the forefront of Sorel's attention." In summary, "Sorel did not create or even inspire the syndicalist movement." [Reflections on Violence, pp. viii-ix] Rather, syndicalism came about when anarchists (as Bakunin recommended thirty years previously) entered the trade unions. Indeed, Sorel acknowledges this in his work, arguing that historians "will one day see in this entry of the anarchists into the syndicats one of the greatest events that has been produced in our time." [Op. Cit., p. 35]

Ultimately, claims like Pat Stack's simply shows how unfamiliar the author is with the ideas they are pathetically attempting to critique. Anarchists from Bakunin onwards shared most of the same ideas as syndicalism (which is unsurprising as most of the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism have direct roots in the ideas of Bakunin). In other words, for Stack, the "huge advantage" anarcho-syndicalists have "over other anarchists" is that they, in fact, share the same "understanding of the power of the working class, the centrality of the point of production (the workplace) and the need for collective action"! This, in itself, shows the bankruptcy of Stack's claims and those like it.

H.2.9 Do anarchists have "liberal" politics?

H.2.10 Are anarchists against leadership?

This means, as we argue in section J.3.6, that anarchists seek to influence the class struggle as equals. Rather than aim for positions of power, anarchists want to influence people by the power of their ideas as expressed in the debates that occur in the organisations created in the social struggle itself. This is because anarchists recognise that there is an unevenness in the level of ideas within the working class. This fact is obvious. Some workers accept the logic of the current system, others are critical of certain aspects, others (usually a minority) are consciously seek a better society (and are anarchists, ecologists, Marxists, etc.) and so on. Only constant discussion, the clash of ideas, combined with collective struggle can develop and narrow the unevenness of ideas within the oppressed. As Malatesta argued, "[o]nly freedom or the struggle for freedom can be the school for freedom." [Life and Ideas, p. 59]

From this perspective, it follows that any attempt to create an institutionalised leadership structure means the end of the revolutionary process. Such "leadership" automatically means a hierarchical structure, one in which the leaders have power and make the decisions for the rest. This just reproduces the old class division of labour between those who think and those who act (i.e. between order givers and order takers). Rather than the revolutionary masses taking power in such a system, it is the "leaders" (i.e. a specific party hierarchy) who do so and the masses role becomes, yet again, simply that of selecting which boss tells them what to do.

As such, the anarchist federation does not reject the need of "leadership" in the sense of giving a led, of arguing its ideas and trying to win people to them. It does reject the idea that "leadership" should become separated from the mass of the people. Simply put, no party, no group of leaders have all the answers and so the active participation of all is required for a successful revolution. "To give full scope to socialism," argued Kropotkin, "entails rebuilding from top to bottom a society dominated by the narrow individualism of the shopkeeper . . . it is a question of completely reshaping all relationships . . . In every street, in every hamlet, in every group of men gathered around a factory or along a section of the railway line, the creative, constructive, and organisational spirit must be awakened in order to rebuild life -- in the factory, in the village, in the store, in production, and in distribution of supplies." Hence the need to "shatter the state" and "rebuild a new organisation, by beginning from the very foundations of society -- the liberated village commune, federalism, groupings from simple to compound, free workingmen's [and women's] associations." Such a task could not be "carried out within the framework of the state and the pyramidal organisation which is the essence of the state." [Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, pp. 261-2]

As such, anarchists reject the idea of turning the organs created in the class struggle and revolutionary process into hierarchical structures. By turning them from organs of self-management into organs for nominating "leaders," the constructive tasks and political development of the revolution will be aborted before they really begin. The active participation of all will become the picking of new masters and the revolution will falter. For this reason, anarchists "differ from the Bolshevik type of party in their belief that genuine revolutionaries must function within the framework of the forms created by the revolution, not within forms created by the party. . . Anarcho-communists seek to persuade the factory committees, assemblies or soviets to make themselves into genuine organs of popular self-management, not to dominate them, manipulate them, or hitch them to an all-knowing political party. Anarcho-communists do not seek to rear a state structure over these popular revolutionary organs." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 217]

This means that "an organisation is needed to propagate ideas systematically -- and not ideas alone, but ideas which promote the concept of self-management." In other words, there "is a need for a revolutionary organisation -- but its function must always be kept clearly in mind. Its first task is propaganda . . . In a revolutionary situation, the revolutionary organisation presents the most advanced demands: it is prepared at every turn of events to formulate -- in the most concrete fashion -- the immediate task that should be performed to advance the revolutionary process. It provides the boldest elements in action and in the decision-making organs of the revolution." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., pp. 216-7] But what it does not is supplant those organs or decision-making process by creating institutionalised, hierarchical leadership structures. As such, it is not a question of organisation versus non-organisation, or "leadership" versus non-"leadership" but rather what kind of organisation and the kind of leadership.

Clearly, then, anarchists do not reject or dismiss the importance of politically aware minorities organising and spreading their ideas within social struggles. As Caroline Cahm summarised in her excellent study of Kropotkin's thought between 1872 and 1886, "Kropotkin stressed the role of heroic minorities in the preparation for revolution." [Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-86, p. 276] However, as John Crump correctly argues, the "key words here are in the preparation for revolution. By their courage and daring in opposing capitalism and the state, anarchist minorities could teach by example and thereby draw increasing numbers into the struggle. But Kropotkin was not advocating substitutionism; the idea that a minority might carry out the revolution in place of the people was as alien to him as the notion that a minority would exercise rule after the revolution. In fact, Kropotkin recognised that the former would be a prescription for the latter." [Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan, p. 9] In Kropotkin's own words:

"The idea of anarchist communism, today represented by feeble minorities, but increasingly finding popular expression, will make its way among the mass of the people. Spreading everywhere, the anarchist groups . . . will take strength from the support they find among the people, and will raise the red flag of the revolution . . . On that day, what is now the minority will become the People, the great mass, and that mass rising against property and the State, will march forward towards anarchist communism." [Words of a Rebel, p. 75]

This influence would be gained simply by the correctness of our ideas and the validity of our suggestions. This means that anarchists seek influence "through advice and example, leaving the people . . . to adopt our methods and solutions if these are, or seem to be, better than those suggested and carried out by others." As such, any anarchist organisation would "strive acquire overwhelming influence in order to draw the [revolutionary] movement towards the realisation of our ideas. But such influence must be won by doing more and better than others, and will be useful if won in that way." This means rejecting "taking over command, that is by becoming a government and imposing one's own ideas and interests through police methods." [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 108-9]

Moreover, unlike leading Marxists like Lenin and Karl Kautsky, anarchists think that socialist ideas are developed within the class struggle rather than outside it by the radical intelligentsia. According to Lenin (who was only agreeing with Kautsky, the leading light of German and International Social Democracy at the start of the twentieth century) socialist (or "Social-Democratic") "consciousness could only be brought to them [the workers] from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness." Socialist ideas did not arise from the labour movement but from the "educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals." ["What is to Be Done?", Essential Works of Lenin, p. 74]

Anarchists reject this perspective. Kropotkin argued that "modern socialism has emerged out of the depths of the people's consciousness. If a few thinkers emerging from the bourgeoisie have given it the approval of science and the support of philosophy, the basis of the idea which they have given their own expression has nonetheless been the product of the collective spirit of the working people. The rational socialism of the International is still today our greatest strength, and it was elaborated in working class organisation, under the first influence of the masses. The few writers who offered their help in the work of elaborating socialist ideas have merely been giving form to the aspirations that first saw their light among the workers." [Words of a Rebel, p. 59] In other words, anarchists are a part of the working class (either by birth or by rejecting their previous class background and becoming part of it), the part which has generalised its own experiences, ideas and needs into a theory called "anarchism" and seeks to convince the rest of the validity of its ideas and tactics. This would be a dialogue, based on both learning and teaching.

As such, this means that the relationship between the specifically anarchist groups and oppressed peoples in struggle is a two way one. As well as trying to influence the social struggle, anarchists also try and learn from the class struggle and try to generalise from the experiences of their own struggles and the struggles of other working class people. Rather than seeing the anarchist group as some sort of teacher, anarchists see it as simply part of the social struggle and its ideas can and must develop from active participation within the class struggle. As anarchists agree with Bakunin and reject the idea that their organisations should take power on behalf of the masses, it is clear that such groups are not imposing alien ideas upon people but rather try to clarify the ideas generated by working class people in struggle. It is an objective fact that there is a great difference in the political awareness within the masses of oppressed people. This uneven development means that they do not accept, all at once or in their totality, revolutionary ideas. There are layers. Groups of people, by ones and twos and then in larger numbers, become interested, read literature, talk with others, and create new ideas. The first groups that explicitly call their ideas "anarchism" have the right and duty to try to persuade others to join them. This is not opposed to the self-organisation of the working class, rather it is how the working class self-organises.

Thirdly, as we discuss in section J.3, anarchists recognise the need to create specifically anarchist organisations to spread anarchist ideas and influence the class struggle. As we discuss the different kinds of anarchist organisations in that section, we will not do so here. Suffice to say, the idea that anarchists reject this need to organise politically in order to achieve a revolution is not to be found in the theory and practice of all the major anarchist thinkers.

Ultimately, if spontaneity was enough to create (and ensure the success of) a social revolution then we would be living in a libertarian socialist society. The fact that we are not suggests that spontaneity, however important, is not enough in itself. This simple fact of history is understood by anarchists and all the major anarchist thinkers.

See section J.3 for more details on what organisations anarchists create and their role in anarchist revolutionary theory. Section J.3.6 has a fuller discussion of the role of anarchist groups in the class struggle. For a discussion of the role of anarchists in a revolution, see section J.7.5. For a fuller discussion why anarchists reject the idea of a revolutionary socialist party see section H.5.1 ("Why are vanguard parties anti-socialist?").

H.2.11 Are anarchists "anti-democratic"?

Another obvious point is that anarchists do not see any authority as "despotic." As we indicated in section H.4, this common Marxist assertion is simply not true. Anarchists have always been very clear on the fact they reject specific kinds of authority and not "authority" as such. In fact, by the term "principal of authority," Bakunin meant hierarchical authority, and not "authority" as such. This explains why Kropotkin argued that "the origin of the anarchist inception of society . . . [lies in] the criticism . . . of the hierarchical organisations and the authoritarian conceptions of society" and stressed that anarchism "refuses all hierarchical organisation." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 158 and p. 137]

This means, just to state the obvious, that making and sticking by collective decisions are not acts of authority. Rather they simply expressions of individual autonomy. Clearly in most activities there is a need to co-operate with other people. Indeed, living involves the "absolute sovereignty of the individual ego" (as if anarchists like Bakunin used such terms!) being "restricted" by exercising that "sovereignty." Take, for example, playing football. This involves finding others who seek to play the game, organising into teams, agreeing on rules and so on. All terrible violations of the "absolute sovereignty of the individual ego," yet it was precisely the "sovereignty" of the "individual" which produced the desire to play the game in the first place. What sort of "sovereignty" is it that negates itself when it is exercised? Clearly, then, the Marxist "summary" of anarchist ideas on this matter, like of many others, is poverty stricken.

And, unsurprisingly enough, we find anarchist thinkers like Bakunin and Kropotkin attacking this idea of "the absolute sovereignty of the individual ego" in the most severe terms. Indeed, they thought was a bourgeois theory which simply existed to justify the continued domination and exploitation of working class people by the ruling class. Kropotkin quite clearly recognised its anti-individual and unfree nature by labelling it "the authoritarian individualism which stifles us" and stressing its "narrow-minded, and therefore foolish" nature. [Conquest of Bread, p. 130] Similarly, it would do the Marxist argument little good if they quoted Bakunin arguing that the "freedom of individuals is by no means an individual matter. It is a collective matter, a collective product. No individual can be free outside of human society or without its co-operation" or that he considered "individualism" as a "bourgeois principle." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 46 and p. 57] Perhaps, of course, these two famous anarchists were not, in fact, "consistent" anarchists, but that claim is doubtful.

Anarchism does, of course, derive from the Greek for "without authority" or "without rulers" and this, unsurprisingly, informs anarchist theory and visions of a better world. This means that anarchism is against the "domination of man by man" (and woman by woman, woman by man, and so on). However, "[a]s knowledge has penetrated the governed masses . . . the people have revolted against the form of authority then felt most intolerable. This spirit of revolt in the individual and the masses, is the natural and necessary fruit of the spirit of domination; the vindication of human dignity, and the saviour of social life." Thus "freedom is the necessary preliminary to any true and equal human association." [Charlotte Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 54 and p. 40] In other words, anarchist comes from the struggle of the oppressed against their rulers and is an expression of individual and social freedom. Anarchism was born from the class struggle.

Taking individual liberty as a good thing, the next question is how do free individuals co-operate together in such a way as to ensure their continued liberty. This, of course, means that any association must be one of equality between the associating individuals. This can only be done when everyone involved takes a meaningful role in the decision making process and because of this anarchists stress the need for self-government (usually called self-management) of both individuals and groups. Self-management within free associations and decision making from the bottom-up is the only way domination can be eliminated. This is because, by making our own decisions ourselves, we automatically end the division of society into governors and governed (i.e. end hierarchy). As Anarchism clearly means support for freedom and equality, it automatically implies opposition to all forms of hierarchical organisation and authoritarian social relationship. This means that anarchist support for individual liberty does not end, as many Marxists assert, in the denial of organisation or collective decision making but rather in support for self-managed collectives. Only this form of organisation can end the division of society into rulers and ruled, oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited and create an environment in which individuals can associate without denying their freedom and equality.

This is why anarchists stress such things as decision making by mass assemblies and the co-ordination of decisions by the free federation of mandated and recallable delegates. This would allow those affected by a decision to have a say in it, so allowing them to manage their own affairs directly and without hierarchy.

Therefore, the positive side of anarchism (which naturally flows from its opposition to authority) results in a political theory which argues that people must control their own struggles, organisations and affairs directly. This means we support mass assemblies and their federation via councils of mandated delegates subject to recall if they break their mandates (i.e. they act as they see fit, i.e. as politicians or bureaucrats, and not as the people who elected them desire). This way people directly govern themselves and control their own lives. Rather than imply an "individualism" which denies the importance of association and the freedom it can generate, anarchism implies an opposition to hierarchy in all its forms and the support free association of equals. In other words, anarchism can generally be taken to mean support for self-government or self-management, both by individuals and by groups.

In summary, anarchist support for individual liberty incurs a similar support for self-managed groups. In such groups, individuals co-operate as equals to maximise their liberty. This means, for anarchists, Marxists are just confusing co-operation with coercion, agreement with authority, association with subordination. Thus the Marxist "materialist" concept of authority distorts the anarchist position and, secondly, is a supra-historical in the extreme. Different forms of decision making are lumped together, independent of the various forms it may assume. To equate hierarchical and self-managed decision making, antagonistic and harmonious forms of organisation, alienated authority or authority retained in the hands of those directly affected by it, can only be a source of confusion. Rather than being a "materialistic" approach, the Marxist one is pure philosophical idealism -- the postulating of a-historic concepts independently of the individuals and societies that generate specific social relationships and ways of working together.

Similarly, it would be churlish to note that Marxists themselves have habitually rejected democratic authority when it suited them. Even that "higher type of democracy" of the soviets was ignored by the Bolshevik party once it was in power. In response to the "great Bolshevik losses in the soviet elections" during the spring and summer of 1918 which resulted in "big gains by the SRs and particularly by the Mensheviks," "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results of these provincial elections." In addition, "the government continually postponed the new general elections to the Petrograd Soviet, the term of which had ended in March 1918. Apparently, the government feared that the opposition parties would show gains." Moreover, the Bolsheviks "pack[ed] local soviets once they could not longer count on an electoral majority" by giving representation to organisations they dominated. [Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism, pp. 23-4, p. 22 and p. 33] This, needless to say, made these elections meaningless and made the regime "soviet" in name only. The Bolsheviks simply undermined soviet democracy to ensure their hold in power.

In the workplace, the Bolsheviks replaced workers' economic democracy with "one-man management" appointed from above, by the state. Lenin was at the forefront of this process, arguing that workers' must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of labour" in April 1918 along with granting "individual executives dictatorial power (or 'unlimited' powers)." He argued that "the appointment of individuals, dictators with unlimited powers" was, in fact, "in general compatible with the fundamental principles of Soviet government" simply because "the history of revolutionary movements" had "shown" that "the dictatorship of individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of revolutionary classes." He notes that "[u]ndoubtably, the dictatorship of individuals was compatible with bourgeois democracy." [The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, p. 34 and p. 32] This nonsense reached its heights (or, more correctly, depths) with Trotsky's ideas on the "militarisation of labour" he advanced in late 1919 and early 1920 as a means of reconstructing Russia in a socialist (!) manner after the (fast approaching) end of the Civil War. Need we also mention that Trotsky also abolished democratic forms of organisation in the military before the start of the Civil War -- as he put it, the "elective basis is politically pointless and technically inexpedient and has already been set aside by decree." [quoted by M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, pp. 37-8]

These are a few examples of Trotsky's argument that you cannot place "the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!" He continued by stating the "Party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78] He repeated this argument nearly two decades later, stating that the "very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves." [The Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59] Ultimately, for Leninists, the revolution is seen purely as a way for the "revolutionary" party to take power. Trotsky, for example, argued that "the proletariat can take power only through its vanguard" and that a "revolutionary party, even having seized power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society." Note, the party is "the sovereign ruler of society," not the working class. He stressed this by arguing that those "who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Stalinism and Bolshevism]

So, remember when Lenin or Trotsky argue for "the dictatorship of individuals," the over-riding of the democratic decisions of the masses by the party, the elimination of workers factory committees in favour of appointed managers armed with "dictatorial" power or when the Bolshevik disbanded soviets with non-Bolshevik majorities, it is anarchism which is fundamentally "anti-democratic"! All in all, that anyone can claim that anarchism is more "anti-democratic" than Leninism is a joke. However, all these anti-democratic acts do fit in nicely with Howl's "materialist" Marxist concept that "'authority' is necessary in any society where labour is collaborative." As such, since "authority" is essential and all forms of collective decision making are necessarily "authoritarian" and involve "subordination," then it clearly does not really matter how collectives are organised and how decisions are reached. Hence the lack of concern for the liberty of the working people subjected to the (peculiarly bourgeois-like) forms of authority preferred by Lenin and Trotsky. It was precisely for this reason, to differentiate between egalitarian (and so libertarian) forms of organisation and decision making and authoritarian ones, that anarchists called themselves "anti-authoritarians."

Even if we ignore all the anti-democratic acts of Bolshevism (or justify them in terms of the problems facing the Russian Revolution, as most Leninists do), the anti-democratic nature of Marxist ideas still come to the fore. The Leninist support for centralised state power brings their attack on anarchism as being "anti-democratic" into clear perspective. Ultimately, Marxism results in the affairs of millions being decided upon by a handful of people in the Central Committee of the vanguard party. As an example, we will discuss Trotsky's arguments against the Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine.

Trotsky argued that the Makhnovists were against "Soviet power." This, he argued, was simply "the authority of all the local soviets in the Ukraine" because they all "recognise the central power which they themselves have elected." Consequently, the Makhnovists reject not only central authority about also the local soviets as well. Trotsky also argued that there were no "appointed" persons in Russia as "there is no authority in Russia but that which is elected by the whole working class and working peasantry. It follows [!] that commanders appointed by the central Soviet Government are installed in their positions by the will of the working millions." He stressed that one can speak of "appointed" persons "only under the bourgeois order, when Tsarist officials or bourgeois ministers appointed at their own discretion commanders who kept the soldier masses subject to the bourgeois classes." [The Makhno Movement] When the Makhnovists tried to call the fourth regional conference of peasants, workers and partisans to discuss the progression of the Civil War in early 1919, Trotsky, unsurprisingly enough, banned it.

In other words, because the Bolshevik government had been elected one year previously under a regime which had manipulated and overturned soviet elections, he (as its representative) had the right to ban a conference which would have expressed the wishes of millions of workers, peasants and partisans fighting for the revolution! The fallacious nature of his arguments is easily seen. Rather than executing the will of millions of toilers, Trotsky was simply executing his own will. He did not consult those millions nor the local soviets who had, in Bolshevik ideology, surrendered their power to the handful of people in the central committee of the Bolshevik Party. By banning the conference he was very effectively undermining the practical, functional democracy of millions and replacing it with a purely formal "democracy" based on empowering a few leaders at the centre. Yes, indeed, truly democracy in action when one person can deny a revolutionary people its right to decide its own fate!

Unsurprisingly, the anarchist Nestor Makhno replied by arguing that he considered it "an inviolable right of the workers and peasants, a right won by the revolution, to call congresses on their own account, to discuss their affairs. That is why the prohibition by the central authorities on the calling of such congresses . . . represent a direct and insolent violation of the rights of the workers." [quoted by Peter Arshinov, The History of the Makhnovist Movement, p. 129] We will leave it to the readers to decide which of the two, Trotsky or Makhno, showed the fundamentally "anti-democratic" perspective.

Lastly, there are a few theoretical issues that need to be raised on this matter. Notice, for example, that no attempt is made to answer the simple question of why having 51% of a group automatically makes you right! It is taken for granted that the minority should subject themselves to the will of the majority before that will is even decided upon. Does that mean, for example, that Marxists refuse minorities the right of civil disobedience if the majority acts in a way which harms their liberties and equality? If, for example, the majority in community decides to implement race laws, does that mean that Marxists would oppose the discriminated minority taking direct action to change those laws? Or, to take an example closer to Marxism, in 1914 the leaders of the Social Democratic Party in the German Parliament voted for war credits. The anti-war minority of that group went along with the majority in the name of "democracy," "unity" and "discipline". Would Howl and Draper argue that they were right to do so? If they were not right to betray the ideas of Marxism and the international working class, then why not? They did, after all, subject themselves to the "most perfect socialist democracy" and so, presumably, made the correct decision. Simply put, the arguments that anarchists are "anti-democratic" are question-begging in the extreme.

As a general rule-of-thumb, anarchists have little problem with the minority accepting the decisions of the majority after a process of free debate and discussion. As we argue in section A.2.11, such collective decision making is compatible with anarchist principles -- indeed, is based on them. By governing ourselves directly, we exclude others governing us. However, we do not make a fetish of this, recognising that, in certain circumstances, the minority must and should ignore majority decisions. For example, if the majority of an organisation decide on a policy which the minority thinks is disastrous then why should they follow the majority? Equally, if the majority make a decision which harms the liberty and equality of a non-oppressive and non-exploitative minority, then that minority has the right to reject the "authority" of the majority. Hence Carole Pateman:

"The essence of liberal social contract theory is that individuals ought to promise to, or enter an agreement to, obey representatives, to whom they have alienated their right to make political decisions . . . Promising . . . is an expression of individual freedom and equality, yet commits individuals for the future. Promising also implies that individuals are capable of independent judgement and rational deliberation, and of evaluating and changing their own actions and relationships; promises may sometimes justifiably be broken. However, to promise to obey is to deny or limit, to a greater or lesser degree, individuals' freedom and equality and their ability to exercise these capacities. To promise to obey is to state that, in certain areas, the person making the promise is no longer free to exercise her capacities and decide upon her own actions, and is no longer equal, but subordinate." [The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 19]

Thus, for anarchists, a democracy which does not involve individual rights to dissent, to disagree and to practice civil disobedience would violate freedom and equality, the very values Marxists usually claim to be at the heart of their politics. The claim that anarchism is "anti-democratic" basically hides the argument that the minority must become the slave of the majority -- with no right of dissent when the majority is wrong (in practice, of course, it is usually meant the orders and laws of the minority who are elected to power). In effect, it wishes the minority to be subordinate, not equal, to the majority. Anarchists, in contrast, because we support self-management also recognise the importance of dissent and individuality -- in essence, because we are in favour of self-management ("democracy" does not do the concept justice) we also favour the individual freedom that is its rationale. We support the liberty of private individuals because we believe in self-management ("democracy") so passionately.

Indeed, Howl and Draper fail to understand the rationale for democratic decision making -- it is not based on the idea that the majority is always right but that individual freedom requires democracy to express and defend itself. By placing the collective above the individual, they undermine democratic values and replace them with little more than tyranny by the majority (or, more likely, those who claim to represent the majority).

Progress is determined by those who dissent and rebel against the status quo and the decisions of the majority. That is why anarchists support the right of dissent in self-managed groups -- in fact, as we argue in section A.2.11, dissent, refusal, revolt by individuals and minorities is a key aspect of self-management. Given that Leninists do not support self-management (rather they, at best, support the Lockean notion of electing a government as being "democracy") it is hardly surprising they, like Locke, views dissent as a danger and something to denounce. Anarchists, on the other hand, recognising that self-management's (i.e. direct democracy's) rationale and base is in individual freedom, recognise and support the rights of individuals to rebel against what they consider as unjust impositions. As history shows, the anarchist position is the correct one -- without rebellion, numerous minorities would never have improved their position and society would stagnant. Indeed, Howl's and Draper's comments are just a reflection of the standard capitalist diatribe against strikers and protestors -- they don't need to protest, for they live in a "democracy."

So, yes, anarchists do support individual freedom to resist even democratically made decisions simply because democracy has to be based on individual liberty. Without the right of dissent, democracy becomes a joke and little more than a numerical justification for tyranny. This does not mean we are "anti-democratic," indeed the reverse as we hold true to the fundamental rationale for democratic decision-making -- it allows individuals to combine as equals and not as subordinates and masters. Moreover, diversity is essential for any viable eco-system and it is essential in any viable society (and, of course, any society worth living in). This means that a healthy society is one which encourages diversity, individuality, dissent and, equally, self-managed associations to ensure the freedom of all.

As Malatesta argued, "[t]here are matters over which it is worth accepting the will of the majority because the damage caused by a split would be greater than that caused by error; there are circumstances in which discipline becomes a duty because to fail in it would be to fail in the solidarity between the oppressed and would mean betrayal in face of the enemy . . . What is essential is that individuals should develop a sense of organisation and solidarity, and the conviction that fraternal co-operation is necessary to fight oppression and to achieve a society in which everyone will be able to enjoy his [or her] own life." [Life and Ideas, pp. 132-3]

As such, anarchists are not against majority decision making as such. We simply recognise it has limitations. In practice, the need for majority and minority to come to an agreement is one most anarchists would recognise:

"But such an adaptation [of the minority to the decisions of the majority] on the one hand by one group must be reciprocal, voluntary and must stem from an awareness of need and of goodwill to prevent the running of social affairs from being paralysed by obstinacy. It cannot be imposed as a principle and statutory norm. . .

"So . . . anarchists deny the right of the majority to govern in human society in general . . . how is it possible . . . to declare that anarchists should submit to the decisions of the majority before they have even heard what those might be?" [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 100-1]

Therefore, while accepting majority decision making as a key aspect of a revolutionary movement and a free society, anarchists do not make a fetish of it. We recognise that we must use our own judgement in evaluating each decision reached simply because the majority is not always right. We must balance the need for solidarity in the common struggle and needs of common life with critical analysis and judgement. As Malatesta argues:

"In any case it is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so long as he [or she] does not violate the equal freedom of others. No one can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who is closer to the truth and which is the best road for the greatest good for each and everyone. Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not the freedom to be wrong.

"In our opinion, therefore, it is necessary that majority and minority should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of concessions which circumstances make necessary." [Life and Ideas, p. 72]

Needless to say, our arguments apply with even more force to the decisions of the representatives of the majority, who are in practice a very small minority. Leninists usually try and confuse these two distinct forms of decision making. When Leninists discuss majority decision making they almost always mean the decisions of those elected by the majority -- the central committee or the government -- rather than the majority of the masses or an organisation. Ultimately, the Leninist support for democracy (as the Russian Revolution showed) is conditional on whether the majority supports them or not. Anarchists are not as hypocritical or as elitist as this, arguing that everyone should have the same rights the Leninists usurp for their leaders.

Therefore the Marxist attack on anarchism as "anti-democratic" is not only false, it is ironic and hypocritical. Firstly, anarchists do not argue for "the absolute sovereignty of the individual ego." Rather, we argue for individual freedom. This, in turn, implies a commitment to self-managed forms of social organisation. This means that anarchists do not confuse agreement with (hierarchical) authority. Secondly, Marxists do not explain why the majority is always right or why their opinions are automatically the truth. Thirdly, the logical conclusions of their arguments would result in the absolute enserfment of the individual to the representatives of the majority. Fourthly, rather than being supporters of democracy, Marxists like Lenin and Trotsky explicitly argued for minority rule and the ignoring of majority decisions when they clashed with the decisions of the ruling party. Fifthly, their support for "democratic" centralised power means, in practice, the elimination of democracy in the grassroots. As can be seen from Trotsky's arguments against the Makhnovists, the democratic organisation and decisions of millions can be banned by a single individual.

All in all, Marxists claims that anarchists are "anti-democratic" just backfire on Marxism.

H.2.12 Does anarchism survive only in the absence of a strong workers' movement?

As we noted in section A.5.5, the role of the anarchists and syndicalists compared to the Marxists during the 1920 near revolution suggested that the real "proletarian" revolutionaries were, in fact, the former and not the latter. All in all, the history of the Italian labour movement clearly show that, for most Marxists, whether a group represents the "proletariat" is simply dependent on their ideological commitment, not their actual class.

As regards the Jura Federation, we discover that its support was wider than suggested by Marxists. As Marxist Paul Thomas noted, "Bakunin's initial support in Switzerland -- like Marx's in England -- came from resident aliens, political refugees . . . but he also gathered support among Gastarbeitier for whom Geneva was already a centre, where builders, carpenters and and workers in heavy industry tended to be French or Italian . . . Bakunin . . . also marshalled considerable support among French speaking domestic workers and watchmakers in the Jura." [Karl Marx and the Anarchists, p. 390] It would be interesting to hear a Marxist claim that "heavy industry" represented the past or "non-proletarian" elements! Similarly, E. H. Carr in his (hostile) biography of Bakunin, noted that the "sections of the International at Geneva fell into two groups." Skilled craftsmen formed the "Right wing" while "the builders, carpenters, and workers in the heavier trades, the majority of whim were immigrants from France and Italy, represented the Left." Unsurprisingly, these different groups of workers had different politics. The craftsmen "concentrated on . . . reform" while the latter "nourished hopes of a complete social upheaval." Bakunin, as would be expected, "fanned the spirit of revolt" among these, the proletarian, workers and soon had a "commanding position in the Geneva International." [Michael Bakunin, p. 361] It should be noted that Marx and the General Council of the International consistently supported the reformist wing of the International in Geneva which organised political alliances with the middle-class liberals during elections. Given these facts, it is little wonder that Howl concentrates on the support Bakunin received from domestic workers producing watches. To mention the support for Bakunin by organised, obviously proletarian, workers would undermine his case and so it is ignored.

Lastly, there is Spain. It seems funny that a Marxist would use Spain as an example against the class roots of anarchism. After all, that is one of the countries where anarchism dominated the working class movement. As one historian points out, "it was not until the 1860s -- when anarchism was introduced -- that a substantive working class movement began to emerge" and "throughout the history of Spanish anarchism, its survival depended in large measure on the anarchists' ability to maintain direct links with the workers." [George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898, p. 6 and p. 207] As well as organising "newly proletarianised peasants," the "Bakuninists" also organised industrial workers -- indeed, far more successfully than the Socialists. Indeed, the UGT only started to approach the size of the CNT once it had started to organise "newly proletarianised peasants" in the 1930s (i.e. anarchist unions organised more of the industrial working class than the Socialist ones). From such a fact, we wonder if Marxists would argue that socialism rested on "non-proletarian" elements?

Moreover, the logic of dismissing anarchism as "non-proletarian" because it organised "newly proletarianised peasants" is simply laughable. After all, capitalism needed landless labours in order to start. This meant that the first proletarians existing in rural areas and were made up of ex-peasants. When these ex-peasants arrived in the towns and cities, they were still "newly proletarianised peasants." To ignore these groups of workers would mean, of course, that they would lack basic socialist ideas once they reached urban areas, so potentially harming the labour movement there. And, of course, a large section of Bolshevik support in 1917 was to be found in "newly proletarianised peasants" whether in the army or working in the factories. Ironically enough, the Mensheviks argued that the Bolsheviks gained their influence from worker-peasant industrial "raw recruits" and not from the genuine working class. [Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy, p. 830] As such, to dismiss anarchism because it gained converts from similar social strata as the Bolsheviks seems, on the face of it, a joke.

As can be seen Howl's attempts to subject anarchism to a "class analysis" simply fails. He selects the evidence which fits his theory and ignores that which does not. However, looking at the very examples he bases his case on shows how nonsensical it is. Simply put, anarchist ideas appealed to many types of workers, including typically "proletarian" ones who worked in large-scale industries. What they seem to have in common is a desire for radical social change, organised by themselves in their own combative class organs (such as unions). Moreover, like the early British workers movement, they considered that these unions, as well as being organs of class struggle, could also be the framework of a free socialist society. Such a perspective is hardly backward (indeed, since 1917 most Marxists pay lip-service to this vision!).

Which brings us to the next major problem with Howl's argument, namely the fate of Marxism and the "strong" labour movement it allegedly is suited for. Looking at the only nation which did have a "modern" working class during the most of Marx's life, Britain, the "strong" labour movement it produced was (and has) not been anarchist, it is true, but neither was it (nor did it become) Marxist. Rather, it has been a mishmash of conflicting ideas, predominately reformist state socialist ones which owe little, if anything, to Marx. Indeed, the closest Britain came to developing a wide scale revolutionary working class movement was during the "syndicalist revolt" of the 1910s. Ironically, some Marxists joined this movement simply because the existing Marxist parties were so reformist or irrelevant to the "life of modern working people."

Looking at the rise of capitalism in other countries, we find the same process. The rise of social democracy (Marxism) in the international labour movement simply signified the rise of reformism. Instead of producing a revolutionary labour movement, Marxism helped produce the opposite (although, initially, hiding reformist activity behind revolutionary rhetoric). So when Howl asserts that anarchism "survives in the absence of a strong workers' movement," we have to wonder what planet he is on.

Thus, to state matters more correctly, anarchism flourishes during those periods when the labour movement and its members are radical, taking direct action and creating new forms of organisation which are still based on workers' self-management. This is to be expected as anarchism is both based upon and is the result of workers' self-liberation through struggle. In less militant times, the effects of bourgeois society and the role of unions within the capitalist economy can de-radicalise the labour movement and lead to the rise of bureaucracy within it. It is then, during periods when the class struggle is low, that reformist ideas spread. Sadly, Marxism aided that spread by its tactics -- the role of electioneering focused struggle away from direct action and into the ballot-box and so onto leaders rather than working class self-activity.

Moreover, if we look at the current state of the labour movement, then we would have to conclude that Marxism is "an ideology alien to the life of modern working people." Where are the large Marxist working class unions and parties? There are a few large reformist socialist and Stalinist parties in continental Europe, but these are not Marxist in any meaningful sense of the word. Most of the socialist ones used to be Marxist, although they relatively quickly stopped being revolutionary in any meaningful sense of the word a very long time ago (some, like the German Social Democrats, organised counter-revolutionary forces to crush working class revolt after the First World War). As for the Stalinist parties, it would be better to consider it a sign of shame that they get any support in the working class at all. Simply put, in terms of revolutionary Marxists, there are various Trotskyist sects arguing amongst themselves on who is the real vanguard of the proletariat, but no Marxist labour movement.

Which, of course, brings us to the next point, namely the ideological problems for Leninists themselves by such an assertion. After all, Lenin himself argued that "the life of modern working people" could only produce "trade-union consciousness." Indeed, according to him, socialist ideas were developed independently of working people by the socialist (middle-class) "intelligentsia." As he put it in What is to be done?, "the working class, exclusively by their own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness . . . the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia." This meant that "Social Democratic [i.e. socialist] consciousness . . . could only be brought to them [the workers] from without." [Essential Works of Lenin, pp. 74-5] Clearly, then, for Lenin, socialism was an ideology which was alien to the life of modern working class people.

Lastly, there is the question of whether Marx and Engels can seriously be thought of as being able to decree once and for all what is and is not "proletarian" politics. Given that neither of these men were working class (one was a capitalist!) it makes the claim that they would know "proletarian" politics suspect. Moreover, they formulated their ideas of what constitute "proletarian" politics before a modern working class actually developed in any country bar Britain. This means, that from the experience of one section of the proletarian in one country in the 1840s, Marx and Engels have decreed for all time what is and is not a "proletarian" set of politics! On the face of it, it is hardly a convincing argument, particularly as we have over 150 years of experience of these tactics with which to evaluate them!

Based on this perspective, Marx and Engels opposed all other socialist groups as "sects" if they did not subscribe to their ideas. Ironically, while arguing that all other socialists were fostering their sectarian politics onto the workers movement, they themselves fostered their own perspective onto it. Originally, because the various sections of the International worked under different circumstances and had attained different degrees of development, the theoretical ideals which reflected the real movement would also diverge. The International, therefore, was open to all socialist and working class tendencies its general policies would be, by necessity, based on conference decisions that reflected this divergence. These decisions would be determined by free discussion within and between sections of all economic, social and political ideas. Marx, however, replaced this policy with a common program of "political action" (i.e. electioneering) by mass political parties via the fixed Hague conference of 1872. Rather than having this position agreed by the normal exchange of ideas and theoretical discussion in the sections guided by the needs of the practical struggle, Marx imposed what he considered as the future of the workers movement onto the International -- and denounced those who disagreed with him as sectarians. The notion that what Marx considered as necessary might be another sectarian position imposed on the workers' movement did not enter his head nor those of his followers.

Thus the Marxist claim that true working class movements are based on mass political parties based on hierarchical, centralised, leadership and those who reject this model and political action (electioneering) are sects and sectarians is simply their option and little more. Once we look at the workers' movement without the blinkers created by Marxism, we see that Anarchism was a movement of working class people using what they considered valid tactics to meet their own social, economic and political goals -- tactics and goals which evolved to meet changing circumstances. Seeing the rise of anarchism and syndicalism as the political expression of the class struggle, guided by the needs of the practical struggle they faced naturally follows when we recognise the Marxist model for what it is -- just one possible interpretation of the future of the workers' movement rather than the future of that movement (and as the history of Social Democracy indicates, the predictions of Bakunin and the anarchists within the First International were proved correct).

This tendency to squeeze the revolutionary workers' movement into the forms decreed by two people in the mid-nineteenth century has proved to be disastrous for it. Even after the total failure of social democracy, the idea of "revolutionary" parliamentarianism was fostered onto the Third International by the Bolsheviks in spite of the fact that more and more revolutionary workers in advanced capitalist nations were rejecting it in favour of direct action and autonomous working class self-organisation. Anarchists and libertarian Marxists based themselves on this actual movement of working people, influenced by the failure of "political action," while the Bolsheviks based themselves on the works of Marx and Engels and their experiences in a backward, semi-feudal society whose workers had already created factory committees and soviets by direct action. It was for this reason that the anarcho-syndicalist Augustin Souchy said he referred "to the tendencies that exist in the modern workers' movement" when he argued at the Second Congress of the Communist International:

"It must be granted that among revolutionary workers the tendency toward parliamentarism is disappearing more and more. On the contrary, a strong anti-parliamentary tendency is becoming apparent in the ranks of the most advanced part of the proletariat. Look at the Shop Stewards' movement [in Britain] or Spanish syndicalism . . . The IWW is absolutely antiparliamentary . . . I want to point out that the idea of antiparliamentarism is asserting itself more strongly in Germany . . . as a result of the revolution itself . . . We must view the question in this light." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol 1, pp. 176-7]

Of course, this perspective of basing yourself on the ideas and tactics generated by the action class struggle was rejected in favour of a return to the principles of Marx and Engels and their vision of what constituted a genuine "proletarian" movement. If these tactics were the correct ones, then why did they not lead to a less dismal set of results? After all, the degeneration of social democracy into reformism would suggest their failure and sticking "revolutionary" before their tactics (as in "revolutionary parliamentarianism") changes little. Marxists, like anarchists, are meant to be materialists, not idealists. What was the actual outcome of the Leninist strategies? Did they result in successful proletarian revolutions. No, they did not. The revolutionary wave peaked and fell and the Leninist parties themselves very easily and quickly became Stalinised. Significantly, those areas with a large anarchist, syndicalist or quasi-syndicalist (e.g. the council communists) workers movements (Italy, Spain and certain parts of Germany) came closest to revolution and by the mid-1930s, only Spain with its strong anarchist movement had a revolutionary labour movement. Therefore, rather than representing "non-proletarian" or "sectarian" politics forced upon the working class, anarchism reflected the politics required to built a revolutionary workers' movement rather than a reformist mass party.

As such, perhaps we can finally lay to rest the idea that Marx predicted the whole future of the labour movement and the path it must take like some kind of socialist Nostradamus. Equally, we can dismiss Marxist claims of the "non-proletarian" nature of anarchism as uninformed and little more than an attempt to squeeze history into an ideological prison. As noted above, in order to present such an analysis, the actual class compositions of significant events and social movements have to be manipulated. This is the case of the Paris Commune, for example, which was predominantly a product of artisans (i.e. the "petit bourgeoisie"), not the industrial working class and yet claimed by Marxists as an example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Ironically, many of the elements of the Commune praised by Marx can be found in the works of Proudhon and Bakunin which pre-date the uprising. Similarly, the idea that workers' fighting organisations ("soviets") would be the means to abolish the state and the framework of a socialist society can be found in Bakunin's works, decades before Lenin paid lip-service to this idea in 1917. For a theory allegedly resting on "non-proletarian" elements it has successfully predicted many of the ideas Marxists claim to have learnt from proletarian class struggle!

So, in summary, the claims that anarchism is "alien" to working class life, that it is "non-proletarian" or "survives in the absence of a strong workers' movement" are simply false. Looking objectively at the facts of the matter quickly shows that this is the case.

H.2.13 Do anarchists reject "political" struggles and action?

A common Marxist claim is that anarchists and syndicalists ignore or dismiss the importance of "political" struggles or action. This is not true. Rather, as we discuss in section J.2.10, we think that "political" struggles should be conducted by the same means as social and economic struggles, namely by direct action, solidarity and working class self-organisation.

As this is a common assertion, it is useful to provide a quick summary of why anarchists do not, in fact, reject "political" struggles and action as such. Rather, to quote Bakunin, anarchism "does not reject politics generally. It will certainly be forced to involve itself insofar as it will be forced to struggle against the bourgeois class. It only rejects bourgeois politics . . . [as it] establishes the predatory domination of the bourgeoisie." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 313] For Kropotkin, it was a truism that it was "absolutely impossible . . . to confine the ideas of the working mass within the narrow circle of reductions in working hours and wage increases . . . The social question compels attention." This fact implied two responses: "the workers' organisation propels itself either into the sterile path of parliamentary politics as in Germany, or into the path of revolution." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886, p. 241]

So while Marxists often argue that anarchists exclusively interested in economic struggle and reject "politics" or "political action," the truth of the matter is different. We are well aware of the importance of political issues, although anarchists reject using bourgeois methods in favour of direct action. Moreover, we are aware that any social or economic struggle has its political aspects and that such struggles bring the role of the state as defender of capitalism and the need to struggle against it into focus:

"There is no serious strike that occurs today without the appearance of troops, the exchange of blows and some acts of revolt. Here they fight with the troops; there they march on the factories; . . . in Pittsburgh in the United States, the strikers found themselves masters of a territory as large as France, and the strike became the signal for a general revolt against the State; in Ireland the peasants on strike found themselves in open revolt against the State. Thanks to government intervention the rebel against the factory becomes the rebel against the State." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Op. Cit., p. 256]

As Malatesta argued, from "the economic struggle one must pass to the political struggle, that is to struggle against government; and instead of opposing the capitalist millions with the workers' few pennies scraped together with difficulty, one must oppose the rifles and guns which defend property with the more effective means that the people will be able to defeat force by force." [Life and Ideas, pp. 193-4] So anarchists are well aware of the need to fight for political issues and reforms, and so are "not in any way opposed to the political struggle, but in their opinion this struggle, too, must take the form of direct action, in which the instruments of economic [and social] power which the working class has at its command are the most effective. The most trivial wage-fight shows clearly that, whenever the employers find themselves in difficulties, the state stops in with the police, and even in some cases with the militia, to protect the threatened interests of the possessing classes. It would, therefore, be absurd for them to overlook the importance of the political struggle." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 65]

This means that the question of whether to conduct political struggles is not the one which divides anarchists from Marxists. Rather, it is a question of how this struggle is fought. For anarchists, this struggle is best fought using direct action (see section J.2) and fighting working class organisations based in our workplaces and communities. For Marxists, the political struggle is seen as being based on standing candidates in bourgeois elections. This can be seen from the resolution passed by the socialist ("Second") International in 1893. This resolution was designed to exclude anarchists and stated that only "those Socialist Parties and Organisations which recognise the organisation of workers and of political action." By "political action" it mean "that the working-class organisations seek, in as far as possible, to use or conquer political rights and the machinery of legislation for the furthering of the interests of the proletariat and the conquest of political power." [quoted by Susan Milner, The Dilemmas of Internationalism, p. 49] Significantly, while this International and its member parties (particular the German Social Democrats) were happy to expel anarchists, they never expelled the leading reformists from their ranks.

So, in general, anarchists use the word "political action" to refer exclusively to the taking part of revolutionaries in bourgeois elections (i.e. electioneering or parliamentarianism). It does not mean a rejection of fighting for political reforms or a lack of interest in political issues, quite the reverse in fact. The reason why anarchists reject this tactic is discussed in section J.2.6 ("What are the effects of radicals using electioneering?"), which means we will give a short summary here.

Simply put, for anarchists, the net effect of socialists using bourgeois elections would be to put them (and the movements they represent) into the quagmire of bourgeois politics and influences. In other words, the parties involved will be shaped by the environment they are working within and not vice versa. As Bakunin argued, the "inevitable result" of electing workers into bourgeois state would be to see them "become middle class in their outlook" due to them being "transferred to a purely bourgeois environment and into an atmosphere of purely bourgeois political ideas." This meant that as "long as universal suffrage is exercised in a society where the people, the mass of workers, are economically dominated by a minority holding exclusive possession the property and capital of the country . . . elections . . . . can only be illusory, anti-democratic in their results." [Op. Cit., p. 216 and p. 213] This meant that "the election to the German parliament of one or two workers . . . from the Social Democratic Party" was "not dangerous" and, in fact, was "highly useful to the German state as a lightning-rod, or a safety-valve." Unlike the "political and social theory" of the anarchists, which "leads them directly and inexorably to a complete break with all governments and all forms of bourgeois politics, leaving no alternative but social revolution," Marxism, he argued, "inexorably enmeshes and entangles its adherents, under the pretext of political tactics, in endless accommodation with governments and the various bourgeois political parties -- that is, it thrusts them directly into reaction." [Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, p. 193 and pp. 179-80] In the case of the German Social Democrats, this became obvious in 1914, when they supported their state in the First World war, and after 1918, when they crushed the German Revolution.

For Kropotkin, the idea that you could somehow "prepare" for a revolution by electioneering was simply a joke. "As if the bourgeoisie," he argued, "still holding on to its capital, could allow them [the socialists] to experiment with socialism even if they succeeded in gaining control of power! As if the conquest of the municipalities were possible without the conquest of the factories." He saw that "those who yesterday were considered socialists are today letting go of socialism, by renouncing its mother idea [" the need to replace the wage system and to abolish individual ownership of . . . social capital"] and passing over into the camp of the bourgeoisie, while retaining, so as to hide their turnabout, the label of socialism." [Words of a Rebel, p. 181 and p. 180]

Ultimately, the bourgeois tactics used ended up with bourgeois results. As Emma Goldman argued, socialism "was led astray by the evil spirit of politics" and "landed in the [political] trap and has now but one desire -- to adjust itself to the narrow confines of its cage, to become part of the authority, part of the very power that has slain the beautiful child Socialism and left begin a hideous monster." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 80] The net effect of "political action" was the corruption of the socialist movement into a reformist party which betrayed the promise of socialism in favour of making existing society better (so it can last longer). This process confirmed Bakunin's predictions as well as Kropotkin's comments:

"The middle class will not give up its power without a struggle. It will resist. And in proportion as Socialists will become part of the Government and share power with the middle class, their Socialism will grow paler and paler. This is, indeed, what Socialism is rapidly doing. Were this no so, the middle classes . . . would not share their power with the Socialists." [Evolution and Environment, p. 102]

In addition, as we argue in sections H.1.5 and J.2.5, direct action is either based on (or creates) forms of self-managed working class organisations. The process of collective struggle, in other words, necessitates collective forms of organisation and decision making. These combative organisations, as well as conducting the class struggle under capitalism, can also be the framework of a free society (see section H.1.4). However, standing in elections does not produce such alternative social structures and, indeed, hinders them as the focus for social changes becomes a few leaders working in existing (i.e. bourgeois) structures and bodies.

As can be seen, anarchists reject "political" struggle (i.e. electioneering) for good (and historically vindicated) reasons. This makes a mockery of Marxists assertions (beginning with Marx) that anarchists like Bakunin "opposed all political action by the working class since this would imply 'recognition' of the existing state." [Derek Howl, "The Legacy of Hal Draper," International Socialism, no. 52, p. 147] This, in fact, is a common Marxist claim, namely that anarchists reject "political struggle" on principle (i.e. for idealistic purposes). In the words of Engels, Bakunin was "opposed to all political action by the working class, since this would in fact involve recognition of the existing state." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 49] Sadly, like all Marxists, he failed to indicate where, in fact, Bakunin actually said that. As can be seen, this was not the case. Bakunin, like all revolutionary anarchists, reject "political action" (in the sense of electioneering) simply because they feared that such tactics would be counterproductive and undermine the revolutionary nature of the labour movement. As the experience of Marxist Social Democracy showed, he was proved correct.

In summary, while anarchists reject standing of socialists in elections ("political action," narrowly defined), we do not reject the need to fight for political reforms or specific political issues. However, we see such action as being based on collective working class direct action organised around combative organs of working class self-management and power rather than the individualistic act of placing a cross on a piece of power once every few years and letting leaders fight your struggles for you.

H.2.14 Are anarchist organisations either "ineffective," "elitist" or the "downright bizarre"?

There are, as is obvious, numerous problems with Stack's assertions. Firstly, he makes absolutely no attempt to discuss anarchist ideas on the question of revolutionary organisation. In section J.3, we discuss the various approaches anarchists have historically suggested in this area and Stack fails to mention any of them. Rather, he prefers to present a somewhat distorted account of the ideas of Bakunin on the structural aspects of his organisation, ideas which died with him in 1876! Secondly, as Stack fails to discuss how anarchists (including Bakunin) see their organisations operating, its hard to determine whether they are "ineffective" or "elitist." This is hardly surprising, as they are neither. Thirdly, even as regards his own example (Bakunin's Alliance) his claim that it was "ineffectual" seems inappropriate in the extreme. Whether it was "elitist" or "downright bizarre" is hard to determine, as Stack quotes an unnamed author and their quotes from its structure. Fourthly, and ironically for Stack, Lenin's "model" shared many of the same features as those of Bakunin's!

As noted, Stack fails to discuss any of the standard anarchist ideas on how revolutionaries should organise. As we discuss in section J.3, there are three main types: the "synthesis" federation, the "class struggle" federation and the "Platform." In the twenty-first century, these are the main types of anarchist organisation. As such, it would be extremely hard to argue that these are "elitist," "ineffective" or "downright bizarre." What these organisational ideas have in common is the vision of an anarchist organisation as a federation of autonomous self-managed groups which work with others as equals. How can directly democratic organisations, which influence others by the force of their ideas and by their example, be "elitist" or "downright bizarre"? Little wonder, then, that Stack used an example from 1868 to attack anarchism in the twenty-first century! If he actually presented an honest account of anarchist ideas then his claims would quickly be seen to be nonsense. And as for the claim of being "ineffective," well, given that Stack's article is an attempt to combat anarchist influence in the anti-globalisation movement it would suggest the opposite.

For a modern account of how anarchist groups operate, organise and try to influence the class struggle directly, by the "natural influence" (to use Bakunin's expression) of its members in working class organisations see section J.3.

Even looking at the example of Bakunin's Alliance, we can see evidence that Stack's summary is simply wrong. Firstly, it seems strange for Stack to claim that the Alliance was "ineffective." After all, Marx spent many years combating it (and Bakunin's influence) in the First International. Indeed, so effective was it that anarchist ideas dominated most sections of that organisation, forcing Marx to move the General Council to America to ensure that it did not fall into the hands of the anarchists (i.e. of the majority). Moreover, it was hardly "ineffective" when it came to building the International. As Marxist Paul Thomas notes, "the International was to prove capable of expanding its membership only at the behest of the Bakuninists [sic!]" and "[w]herever the International was spreading, it was doing so under the mantle of Bakuninism." [Karl Marx and the Anarchists, p. 315and p. 319] Yet Stack considers this as an example of an "ineffective" organisation!

As regards Stack's summary of Bakunin's organisation goes, we must note that Stack is quoting an unnamed source on Bakunin's views on this subject. We, therefore, have no way of evaluating whether this is a valid summary of Bakunin's ideas on this matter. As we indicate elsewhere (see section J.3.7) Leninist summaries of Bakunin's ideas on secret organising usually leave a lot to be desired (by usually leaving a lot out or quoting out of context certain phrases). As such, and given the total lack of relevance of this model for anarchists since the 1870s, we will not bother to discuss this summary. Simply put, it is a waste of time to discuss an organisational model which no modern anarchist supports.

However, as we discuss in section J.3.7, there is a key way in which Bakunin's ideas on this issue were far less "elitist" and more "democratic" than Lenin's model. Simply, Bakunin always stressed that his organisation "rules out any idea of dictatorship and custodial control." The revolution "everywhere must be created by the people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 172] In other words, Bakunin saw the social revolution in terms of popular participation and control, not the seizing of power by a "revolutionary" party or group.

The "main purpose and task of the organisation," argued Bakunin, would be to "help the people to achieve self-determination." It would "not threaten the liberty of the people because it is free from all official character" and "not placed above the people like state power." Its programme "consists of the fullest realisation of the liberty of the people" and its influence is "not contrary to the free development and self-determination of the people, or its organisation from below according to its own customs and instincts because it acts on the people only by the natural personal influence of its members who are not invested with any power." Thus the revolutionary group would be the "helper" of the masses, with an "organisation within the people itself." [quoted by Michael Confino, Daughter of a Revolutionary, p. 259, p. 261, p. 256 and p. 261] The revolution itself would see "an end to all masters and to domination of every kind, and the free construction of popular life in accordance with popular needs, not from above downward, as in the state, but from below upward, by the people themselves, dispensing with all governments and parliaments -- a voluntary alliance of agricultural and factory worker associations, communes, provinces, and nations; and, finally, . . . universal human brotherhood triumphing on the ruins of all the states." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 33]

Unlike Lenin, Bakunin did not confuse party power with people power. His organisation, for all it faults (and they were many), did not aim to take power in the name of the working class and exercise power through a centralised, top-down, state. Rather, its influence would be based on the "natural influence" of its members within mass organisations. The influence of anarchists would, therefore, be limited to the level by which their specific ideas were accepted by other members of the same organisations after discussion and debate. As regards the nature of the labour movement, we must point out that Bakunin provided the same "serious" answer as the anarcho-syndicalists -- namely, revolutionary labour unionism. As we discuss in section H.2.8, Bakunin's ideas on this matter are nearly identical to those of the syndicalists Stack praises.

As noted, however, no anarchist group has reproduced the internal structure of the Alliance, which means that Stack's point is simply historical in nature. Sadly this is not the case with his own politics as the ideas he attacks actually parallel Lenin's model in many ways (although, as indicated above, how Bakunin's organisation would function in the class struggle was fundamentally different, as Lenin's party sought power for itself). Given that Stack is proposing Lenin's model as a viable means of organising revolutionaries, it is useful to summarise it. We shall take as an example two statements issued by the Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 under the direction of Lenin. These are "Twenty-One Conditions of Communism" and "Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution." These two documents provide a vision of Leninist organisation which is fundamentally elitist.

Lenin's "model" is clear from these documents. The parties adhering to the Communist International had to have two overlapping forms, one legal (i.e. public) and another "illegal" (i.e. secret). It was the "duty" of these parties "to create everywhere a parallel illegal organisational apparatus." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 767]

Needless to say, this illegal organisation would be the real controlling body, as it would have to be made up of trusted communists and could only be even more tightly centralised than the open party as its members could only be appointed from above by the illegal organisation's central committee. To stress that the "illegal" (i.e. secret) organisation controlled the party, the Communist International agreed that while "the Communist Parties must learn to systematically combine legal and illegal activity," the legal work "must be under the actual control of the illegal party at all times." [Op. Cit., vol. 1, p. 199]

Even in its open, public mode, the Communist Party was to be a highly centralised organisation, with all decisions on the national level made by the Central Committee. The parties must be as centralised as possible, with a party centre which has strength and authority and is equipped with the most comprehensive powers. Also, the party press and other publications, and all party publishing houses, must be subordinated to the party presidium. This applied on an international level as well, with the decisions of its Communist International's Executive Committee were binding on all parties belonging to the Communist International. [Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 769]

Moreover, "Communist cells of all kinds must be subordinate to each other in a strictly hierarchical order of rank as precisely as possible." Democratic centralism itself was fundamentally hierarchical, with its "basic principles" being that "the higher bodies shall be elected by the lower, that all instructions of the higher bodies are categorically and necessarily binding on the lower." Indeed, "there shall be a strong party centre whose authority is universally and unquestionably recognised for all leading party comrades in the period between congresses." Any "advocacy of broad 'autonomy' for the local party organisations only weakens the ranks of the Communist Party" and "favours petty-bourgeois, anarchist and disruptive tendencies." [Op. Cit., vol. 1, p. 198]

It seems strange for Stack to argue that Bakunin's ideas (assuming he presents an honest account of them, of course) were "far more elitist and less democratic than Lenin's model" as it obviously was not. Indeed, the similarities between Stack's summary of Bakunin's ideas and Leninist theory are striking. The Leninist party has the same division between open and secret (legal and illegal) structures as in Bakunin's, the same centralism and top-down nature. Lenin argued that "[i]n all countries, even in those that are freest, most 'legal,' and most 'peaceful' . . . it is now absolutely indispensable for every Communist Party to systematically combine legal and illegal work, legal and illegal organisation." He stressed that "[o]nly the most reactionary philistine, no matter what cloak of fine 'democratic' and pacifist phrases he may don, will deny this fact or the conclusion that of necessity follows from it, viz., that all legal Communist parties must immediately form illegal organisations for the systematic conduct of illegal work." [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 195]

This was due to the threat of state repression, which also faced Bakunin's Alliance. As Murray Bookchin argues, "Bakunin's emphasis on conspiracy and secrecy can be understood only against the social background of Italy, Spain, and Russia the three countries in Europe where conspiracy and secrecy were matters of sheer survival." [The Spanish Anarchists, p. 24]

For anarchists, the similarity in structure between Bakunin and Lenin is no source of embarrassment. Rather, we argue that it is due to a similarity in political conditions in Russia and not similarities in political ideas. If we look at Bakunin's ideas on social revolution and the workers' movement we see a fully libertarian perspective -- of a movement from the bottom-up, based on the principles of direct action, self-management and federalism. Anarchists since his death have applied these ideas to the specific anarchist organisation as well, rejecting the non-libertarian elements of Bakunin's ideas which Stack correctly (if somewhat hypocritically and dishonestly) denounce. All in all, Stack has shown himself to be a hypocrite or, at best, a "most reactionary philistine" (to use Lenin's choice expression).

In addition, it would be useful to evaluate the effectiveness of Stack's Leninist alternative. Looking at the outcome of the Russian Revolution, we can only surmise that it is not very effective. This is because its goal is meant to be a socialist society based on soviet democracy. Did the Russian Revolution actually result in such a society? Far from it. The Kronstadt revolt was repressed in 1921 because it demanded soviet power (see "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"). Nor was this an isolated example. The Bolsheviks had been disbanding soviets with elected non-Bolshevik majorities since early 1918 (i.e. before the start of the Civil War) and by 1920 leading Bolsheviks were arguing that dictatorship of the proletariat could only be expressed by means of the dictatorship of the party (see section 6 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?" for details). Clearly, the Bolshevik method is hardly "effective" in the sense of achieving its stated goals. Nor was it particularly effective before the revolution either. During the 1905 revolution, the Bolsheviks opposed the councils of workers' deputies (soviets) which had been formed and gave them an ultimatum: either accept the programme of the Bolsheviks or else disband! The soviets ignored them. In February 1917 the Bolshevik party opposed the actions that produced the revolution which overthrew the Tsar. Simply put, the one event that validates the Bolshevik model is the October Revolution of 1917 and even that failed.

The weakness of Stack's diatribe can be seen from his use of the Alliance example. Moreover, it backfires on his own politics. The similarities between Bakunin's ideas and Lenin's on this subject are clear. The very issues which Stack raises as being "elitist" in Bakunin (secret and open organisation, centralisation, top-down decision making) are shared by Lenin. Given that no other anarchist organisation has ever followed the Alliance structure (and, indeed, it is doubtful the Alliance followed it!), it makes a mockery of the scientific method to base a generalisation on an exception rather than the norm (indeed, the only exception). For Stack to use Bakunin's ideas on this issue as some kind of evidence against anarchism staggers belief. Given that anarchists reject Bakunin's ideas on this subject while Leninists continue to subscribe to Lenin's, it is very clear that Stack is being extremely hypocritical in this matter.

All in all, anarchists would argue that it is Leninist ideas on the vanguard party which are "elitist," "ineffective" and "downright bizarre." As we discuss in section H.5, the only thing the Leninist "revolutionary" party is effective for is replacing one set of bosses with a new set (the leaders of the party).

H.2.15 Do anarchists reject discipline?

The idea that anarchists reject the need for discipline, or are against organisation, or base their ideas on the whim of the individual, are common place in Marxism. Simply put, the idea that anarchists reject "discipline" is derived from the erroneous Marxist assertion that anarchism is basically a form of "individualism" and based on the "absolute sovereignty of the individual ego" (see section H.2.11). From this (incorrect) position, it is logically deduced that anarchism must reject the need for "discipline" (i.e. the ability to make and stick to collective decisions). Needless to say, this is false. Anarchists are well aware of the need to organise together and, therefore, the need to stick by decisions reached. The importance of solidarity in anarchist theory is an expression of this awareness.

However, there is "discipline" and "discipline." There can be no denying that in a capitalist workplace or army there is "discipline" yet few, if any, sane persons would argue that this distinctly top-down and hierarchical "discipline" is something to aspire to, particularly if you seek a free society. This cannot be compared to a making and sticking by a collective decision reached by free discussion and debate within a self-governing associations. As Bakunin argued:

"Discipline, mutual trust as well as unity are all excellent qualities when properly understood and practised, but disastrous when abused . . . [one use of the word] discipline almost always signifies despotism on the one hand and blind automatic submission to authority on the other . . .

"Hostile as I am to [this,] the authoritarian conception of discipline, I nevertheless recognise that a certain kind of discipline, not automatic but voluntary and intelligently understood is, and will ever be, necessary whenever a greater number of individuals undertake any kind of collective work or action. Under these circumstances, discipline is simply the voluntary and considered co-ordination of all individual efforts for a common purpose. At the moment of revolution, in the midst of the struggle, there is a natural division of functions according to the aptitude of each, assessed and judged by the collective whole: Some direct and others carry out orders. But no function remains fixed and it will not remain permanently and irrevocably attached to any one person. Hierarchical order and promotion do not exist, so that the executive of yesterday can become the subordinate of tomorrow. No one rises above the others, and if he does rise, it is only to fall back again a moment later, like the waves of the sea forever returning to the salutary level of equality.

"In such a system, power, properly speaking, no longer exists. Power is diffused to the collectivity and becomes the true expression of the liberty of everyone, the faithful and sincere realisation of the will of all . . . this is the only true discipline, the discipline necessary for the organisation of freedom. This is not the kind of discipline preached by the State . . . which wants the old, routine-like, automatic blind discipline. Passive discipline is the foundation of every despotism." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 414-5]

Clearly, anarchists see the need for self-discipline rather than the hierarchical "discipline" associated with capitalism and other class systems. It simply means that "anyone who associates and co-operates with others for a common purpose must feel the need to co-ordinate his [or her] actions with those of his [or her] fellow members and do nothing that harms the work of others and, thus, the common cause; and respect the agreements that have been made -- except when wishing sincerely to leave the association when emerging differences of opinion or changed circumstances or conflict over preferred methods make co-operation impossible or inappropriate." [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 107-8] As such, we reject hierarchical "discipline," considering it as confusing agreement with authority, co-operation with coercion and helping with hierarchy.

Anarchists are not alone in this. A few Marxists have also seen this difference. For example, Rosa Luxemburg repeated (probably unknowingly) Bakunin's distinction between forms of "discipline" when she argued, against Lenin, that:

"Lenin . . . declares that 'it is no longer the proletarians but certain intellectuals in our party who need to be educated in the matters of organisation and discipline' . . . He glorifies the educative influence of the factory, which, he says, accustoms the proletariat to 'discipline and organisation' . . .

"Saying all this, Lenin seems to demonstrate . . . his conception of socialist organisation is quite mechanistic. The discipline Lenin has in mind being implanted in the working class not only by the factory but also by the military and the existing state bureaucracy -- by the entire mechanism of the centralised bourgeois state.

"We misuse words and we practice self-deception when we apply the same term -- discipline -- to such dissimilar notions as: (1) the absence of thought and will in a body with a thousand automatically moving hands and legs, and (2) the spontaneous co-ordination of the conscious, political acts of a body of men. What is there in common between the regulated docility of an oppressed class and the self-discipline and organisation of a class struggling for its emancipation?

"The self-discipline of the social democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of the bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the social democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility." [Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 119-20]

Like Luxemburg, anarchists stress the difference in forms of decision making and reject authoritarian organisations along with hierarchical "discipline" (see section H.4). This support for self-discipline within self-managed organisations flows directly from the anarchist awareness of the collective nature of social change: as "[t]oday, in revolutionary action as in labour itself, collectivism must replace individualism. Understand clearly that in organising yourselves you will be stronger than all the political leaders in the world." [Bakunin, quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, p. 244]

For anarchists, collective organisation and co-operation does not mean the end of individuality. As Bakunin argued:

"You will think, you will exist, you will act collectively, which nevertheless will not prevent in the least the full development of the intellectual and moral faculties of each individual. Each of you will bring to you his own talents, and in all joining together you will multiply your value a hundred fold. Such is the law of collective action . . . in giving your hands to each other for this action in common, you will promise to each other a mutual fraternity which will be . . . a sort of free contract . . . Then proceed collectively to action you will necessarily commence by practising this fraternity between yourselves . . . by means of regional and local organisations . . . you will find in yourselves strength that you had never imagined, if each of you acted individually, according to his own inclination and not as a consequence of a unanimous resolution, discussed and accepted beforehand." [quoted by Kenafick, Op. Cit., pp. 244-5]

Therefore, anarchists see the need for "discipline," assuming that it is created in appropriately libertarian ways. We reject it if it simply means blindly following the orders of those in power, which is usually does mean within modern society and, sadly, large parts of the labour and socialist movements. However, this does not mean that the majority is always right. As Malatesta argued, "[t]here are matters over which it is worth accepting the will of the majority because the damage caused by a split would be greater than that caused by error; there are circumstances in which discipline becomes a duty because to fail in it would be to fail in the solidarity between the oppressed and would mean betrayal in face of the enemy. But when is convinced that the organisation is pursuing a course which threatens the future and makes it difficult to remedy the harm done, then it is a duty to rebel and to resist even at the risk of providing a split." Therefore, "anarchists should extend our activities into all organisations to preach unity among all workers, decentralisation, freedom of initiative, within the common framework of solidarity . . . What is essential is that individuals should develop a sense of organisation and solidarity, and the conviction that fraternal co-operation is necessary to fight oppression and to achieve a society in which everyone will be able to enjoy his [or her] own life." [Life and Ideas, pp. 132-3]

In other words, anarchists reject the idea that obeying orders equals "discipline" and recognise that real discipline means evaluating the needs of solidarity and equality with your fellow workers and acting accordingly.

H.2.16 Does the Spanish Revolution show the failure of anarchism?

While we have addressed this issue in sections I.8.10 and I.8.11, it is useful to summarise a few key points on this issue. First, there is the actual objective situation in which the decision to collaborate was made in. Strangely, for all his talk of anarchists ignoring "material conditions," Stack fails to mention any when he discusses the decisions of Spanish Anarchism. As such, he critique is pure idealism, without any attempt to ground it in the objective circumstances facing the CNT and FAI. Second, the quote provided as the only evidence for Stack's analysis dates from a year after the decision was made. Rather than reflect the actual concerns of the CNT and FAI when they made their decision, they reflect the attempts of the leaders of an organisation which had significantly departed from its libertarian principles to justify their actions. While this obviously suits Stack's idealist analysis of events, its use can be flawed for this reason. Thirdly, clearly the decision of the CNT and FAI ignored anarchist theory. As such, it seems ironic to blame anarchism when anarchists ignores its recommendations, yet this is what Stack argues. Lastly, there is the counter-example of Aragon, which clearly refutes Stack's analysis.

To understand why the CNT and FAI made the decisions it did, it is necessary to do what Stack fails to do, namely to provide some context. The decision to ignore anarchist theory, ignore the state rather than smashing it and work with other anti-fascist organisations was made immediately after the army had been defeated on the streets of Barcelona on the 20th of July, 1936. It is this fact, the success of a popular insurrection in one region against a nation wide military coup, which helps place the CNT's decisions into context. Catalonia is but one region in Spain. While the CNT had great strength in many regions of that country, it was not uniform. Some areas, such as around Madrid and in Asturias, the socialist UGT was stronger (although the CNT had been making inroads in both areas). This meant any decision to introduce libertarian communism in Catalonia would have, in all likelihood, meant isolation within Republican Spain and the possibility that the CNT would have to fight both the Republican state as well as Franco.

As such, the real choice facing the CNT was not "between leaving the state intact . . . or building a workers' government in Catalonia which could act as a focal point for the defeat of Franco" but rather something drastically different. Either work with other anti-fascists against Franco so ensuring unity against the common enemy and implement anarchism after victory or immediately implement libertarian communism and possibly face a conflict on two fronts, against Franco and the Republic (and, possibly, imperialist intervention against the social revolution). This situation made the CNT-FAI decided to collaborate with other anti-fascist groups in the Catalan Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias. To downplay these objective factors and simply blame the decision on anarchist politics is a joke. As we argue in section I.8.10 in more detail, this dilemma was the one which was driving the decisions of the CNT leadership, not any failings in anarchist politics (see section I.8.11 for a discussion of why applying anarchist ideas would have been the correct decision, although hindsight is always twenty-twenty).

Similarly, the Garica Oliver quote provided by Stack dated from a year after the events of July 1936. As discussed in section I.8.11, these comments are justifications of CNT-FAI actions and were designed for political effect. As such, they simply cannot be taken at face value for two reasons.

Firstly, the decision to collaborate was obviously driven by fear of Franco and the concern not to divide the forces fighting him. As the 1937 report to the AIT put it, the CNT had a "difficult alternative: to completely destroy the state, to declare war against the Rebels, the government, foreign capitalists . . . or collaborating." [quoted by Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 2, p. 1156] That was the reality facing the CNT -- not Stack's pondering of Garcia Oliver quotes ripped from their historical context.

Secondly, Oliver's arguments are totally contradictory. After all, he is arguing that libertarian communism (a society based on directly democratic free associations organised and run from the bottom up) is an "anarchist dictatorship" and less democratic than the capitalist Republic Garica Oliver had been fighting against for most of his life! Moreover, libertarian communism was the revolution. As such, to choose it over capitalist democracy to stop "the strangulation of the revolution" makes no sense, as the revolution which was created by the rank-and-file of the anarchist movement after the defeat of Franco was based on libertarian communist ideas and ideals!

For these reasons, it is safe to take Garica Oliver's words with a large pinch of salt. To rely upon them for an analysis of the actions of the Spanish Anarchists or the failings of anarchism suggests an extremely superficial perspective. This is particularly the case when we look at both the history of the CNT and anarchist theory. According to anarchist ideas, the social revolution, to quote Bakunin, must "totally destroy the State," expropriate capital and the land "on behalf of workers' associations" and create "the federative Alliance of all working men's associations" which "will constitute the Commune." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 170] Therefore, it is "not true to say that we completely ignore politics. We do not ignore it, for we definitely want to destroy it." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 331] As can be seen, the CNT ignored these recommendations. Given that the CNT did not destroy the state, nor create a federation of workers' councils, then how can anarchist theory be blamed? It seems strange to point to the failure of anarchists to apply their politics as an example of the failure of those politics, yet this is what Stack is doing.

As we discuss in section I.8.11, the CNT leadership, going against anarchist theory, decided to postpone the revolution until after Franco was defeated. As the Catalan CNT leadership put it in August 1936:

"Reports have also been received from other regions. There has been some talk about the impatience of some comrades who wish to go futher than crushing fascism, but for the moment the situation in Spain as a whole is extremely delicate. In revolutionary terms, Catalonia is an oasis within Spain.

"Obviously no one can foresee the changes which may follow the civil war and the conquest of that part of Spain which is still under the control of mutinous reactionaries." [quoted by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 1, pp. 151-2]

As can be seen, concern that Catalonia would be isolated from the rest of the Republic is foremost in their minds. Equally, there is the acknowledgement that many CNT members were applying anarchist politics by fighting fascism via a revolutionary war. This can be seen by the rank and file of the CNT and FAI ignoring the decision "postpone" the revolution in favour of an anti-fascist war. All across Republican Spain, workers and peasants started to expropriate capital and the land, placing it under workers' self-management. They did so on their own initiative. They also applied anarchist ideas in full in Aragon, where the Council of Aragon was created in October 1936 at a meeting of delegates from CNT unions, village collectives and militia columns. In other words, the creation of a federation of workers' associations as argued by Bakunin. Little wonder Stack fails to mention what happened in Aragon, it would undermine his argument against anarchism to mention it.

To contrast Catalonia and Aragon shows the weakness of Stack's argument. The same organisation, with the same politics, yet different results. How can anarchist ideas be blamed for what happened in Catalonia when they had been applied in Aragon? Such a position could not be logically argued and, unsurprisingly, Aragon usually fails to get mentioned by Marxists when discussing Anarchism during the Spanish Civil War. The continuity of what happened in Aragon with the ideas of anarchism and the CNT's 1936 Zaragoza Resolution on Libertarian Communism is clear.

In summary, how could anarchism have "failed" during the Spanish Revolution when it was ignored in Catalonia (for fear of fascism) and applied in Aragon? How can it be argued that anarchist politics were to blame when those very same politics had formed the Council of Aragon? It cannot. Simply put, the Spanish Civil War showed the failure of certain anarchists to apply their ideas in a difficult situation rather than the failure of anarchism.

Needless to say, Stack also claims that the Friends of Durruti group developed towards Marxism. As he puts it:

"Interestingly the one Spanish anarchist group that developed the most sophisticated critique of all this was the Friends of Durutti. As Felix Morrow points out, 'They represented a conscious break with the anti-statism of traditional anarchism. They explicitly declared the need for democratic organs of power, juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of capitalism, and the necessary state measures of repression against the counter-revolution.' The failure of the Spanish anarchists to understand exactly that these were the stark choices‚ workers' power, or capitalist power followed by reaction."

The Friends of Durruti (FoD) were an anarchist grouping within the CNT and FAI which, like a large minority of others, strongly and consistently opposed the policy of anti-fascist unity. However, rather than signify a "conscious break" with anarchism, it signified a conscious return to it. This can be clearly seen when we compare their arguments to those of Bakunin. As noted by Stack, the FoD argued for "juntas" in the overthrow of capitalism and to defend against counter-revolution. This is exactly what revolutionary anarchists have argued for since Bakunin (see section H.2.1 for details)! The continuity of the ideas of FoD with the pre-Civil War politics of the CNT and the ideas of revolutionary anarchism are clear. As such, the FoD were simply arguing for a return to the traditional positions of anarchism and cannot be considered to have broken with it. If Stack or Morrow knew anything about anarchism, then they would have known this.

(See "Did the Friends of Durruti 'break with' anarchism?" in the "Marxists and Spanish Anarchism" appendix for a much fuller discussion of this topic.)

As such, the failure of the Spanish anarchists was not the "stark choice" between "workers' power" and "capitalist power" but rather the making of the wrong choice in the real dilemma of introducing anarchism (which would, by definition, be based on workers' power, organisation and self-management) or collaborating with other anti-fascist groups in the struggle against the greater enemy of Franco (i.e. fascist reaction). That Stack does not see this suggests that he simply has no appreciation of the dynamics of the Spanish Revolution and prefers abstract sloganeering to a serious analysis of the problems facing it.

Stack ends by summarising:

"The most important lesson . . . is that whatever ideals and gut instincts individual anarchists may have, anarchism, both in word and deed, fails to provide a roadworthy vehicle for human liberation. Only Marxism, which sees the centrality of the working class under the leadership of a political party, is capable of leading the working class to victory."

As a useful antidote to these claims, we need simply quote Trotsky on what the Spanish anarchists should have done. In his words: "Because the leaders of the CNT renounced dictatorship for themselves they left the place open for the Stalinist dictatorship." [our emphasis, Writings 1936-7, p. 514] Hardly an example of "workers' power"!

Or, as he put it in his essay "Stalinism and Bolshevism," a "revolutionary party, even having seized power (of which the anarchist leaders were incapable in spite of the heroism of the anarchist workers), is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society." [Stalinism and Bolshevism] Rather than seeing "democratic organs of power, juntas or soviets, in the overthrow of capitalism" as being the key issue, Trotsky considered the party as being the decisive factor. Indeed, the idea that such organs ("juntas" or "soviets," to use Stack's words) could replace the party dictatorship is dismissed:

"Those who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Op. Cit.]

Clearly, the leading Marxist at the time was not arguing for the "centrality of the working class under the leadership of a political party." He was arguing for the dictatorship of a "revolutionary" party over the working class. Rather than the working class being "central" to the running of a revolutionary regime, Trotsky saw the party being in the central position. What sort of "victory" is possible when the party has dictatorial power over the working class and the "sovereign ruler" of society? Simply the kind of "victory" that leads to Stalinism.

Anarchists reject this vision. They also reject the first step along this path, namely the identification of party power with workers' power. Simply put, if the "revolutionary" party is in power then the working class is not. Rather than seeing working class organisations as the means by which working people run society, Leninists see them purely in instrumental terms -- the means by which the party can seize power. As the Russian Revolution proved beyond doubt, in a conflict between workers' power and party power Leninists will suppress the former to ensure the latter (see the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"). As Trotsky argued in 1939 (18 years after he made similar arguments when he was in power) the "very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves." [The Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59]

To paraphrase Stack, the most important lesson from both the Russian and Spanish revolutions is that whatever ideals and gut instincts individual Leninists may have, Leninism, both in word and deed, fails to provide a roadworthy vehicle for human liberation. Only Anarchism, which sees the centrality of the working class management of the class struggle and revolution, is capable of ensuring the creation of a real, free, socialist society.

Therefore, rather than see the failure of anarchism, the Spanish Revolution showed the failure of anarchists to apply their politics due to exceptionally difficult objective circumstances, a mistake which almost all anarchists acknowledge and have learned from. This does not justify the decision, rather it helps to explain it. Moreover, the Spanish Revolution also has a clear example of anarchism being applied in the Council of Aragon. As such, it is hard to blame anarchism for the failure of the CNT when the same organisation applied its ideas successfully there. Simply put, Marxist claims that the Spanish Revolution shows the failure of anarchist ideas are not only wrong, they are extremely superficial and not rooted in the objective circumstances of the time.