Ask most people what socialism means and they will point to the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba and a host of other authoritarian, centralised and oppressive party dictatorships. These regimes have in common two things. Firstly, the claim that their rulers are Marxists or socialists. Secondly, that they have successfully alienated millions of working class people from the very idea of socialism. Indeed, the supporters of capitalism simply had to describe the "socialist paradises" as they really were in order to put people off socialism. Moreover, the Stalinist regimes (and their various apologists and even "opponents", like the Trotskyists, who defended them as "degenerated workers' states") let the bourgeoisie have an easy time in dismissing all working-class demands and struggles as so many attempts to set up similar party dictatorships.
The association of "socialism" or "communism" with these dictatorships has often made anarchists wary of calling themselves socialists or communists in case our ideas are associated with them. As Errico Malatesta argued in 1924:
"I foresee the possibility that the communist anarchists will gradually abandon the term 'communist': it is growing in ambivalence and falling into disrepute as a result of Russian 'communist' despotism. If the term is eventually abandoned this will be a repetition of what happened with the word 'socialist.' We who, in Italy at least, were the first champions of socialism and maintained and still maintain that we are the true socialists in the broad and human sense of the word, ended by abandoning the term to avoid confusion with the many and various authoritarian and bourgeois deviations of socialism. Thus too we may have to abandon the term 'communist' for fear that our ideal of free human solidarity will be confused with the avaricious despotism which has for some time triumphed in Russia and which one party, inspired by the Russian example, seeks to impose worldwide." [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 20]
That, to a large degree happened, with anarchists simply calling themselves by that name, without adjectives, to avoid confusion. This, sadly, resulted in two problems. Firstly, it gave Marxists even more potential to portray anarchism as being primarily against the state and not as equally opposed to capitalism, hierarchy and inequality (as we argue in section H.2.4, anarchists have opposed the state as just one aspect of class society). Secondly, extreme right-wingers tried to appropriate the names "libertarian" and "anarchist" to describe their vision of extreme capitalism as "anarchism," they claimed, was simply "anti-government" (see section F for discussion on why "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist). To counter these distortions of anarchist ideas, many anarchists have recently re-appropriated the use of the words "socialist" and "communist," although always in combination with the words "anarchist" and "libertarian."
Such combination of words is essential as the problem Malatesta predicted still remains. If one thing can be claimed for the 20th century, it is that it has seen the word "socialism" become narrowed and restricted into what anarchists call "state socialism" -- socialism created and run from above, by the state (i.e. by the state bureaucracy). This restriction of "socialism" has been supported by both Stalinist and Capitalist ruling elites, for their own reasons (the former to secure their own power and gain support by associating themselves with socialist ideals, the latter by discrediting those ideas by associating them with the horror of Stalinism).
This means that anarchists and other libertarian socialists have a major task on their hands -- to reclaim the promise of socialism from the distortions inflicted upon it by both its enemies (Stalinists and capitalists) and its erstwhile and self-proclaimed supporters (Social Democracy and its various offspring like the Bolsheviks and its progeny like the Trotskyists). A key aspect of this process is a critique of both the practice and ideology of Marxism and its various offshoots. Only by doing this can anarchists prove, to quote Rocker, that "Socialism will be free, or it will not be at all." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 20]
Such a critique raises the problem of which forms of "Marxism" to discuss. There is an extremely diverse range of Marxist viewpoints and groups in existence. Indeed, the different groups spend a lot of time indicating why all the others are not "real" Marxists (or Marxist-Leninists, or Trotskyists, and so on) and are just "sects" without "real" Marxist theory or ideas. This "diversity" is, of course, a major problem (and somewhat ironic, given that some Marxists like to insult anarchists by stating there are as many forms of anarchism as anarchists!). Equally, many Marxists go further than dismissing specific groups. Some even totally reject other branches of their movement as being non-Marxist (for example, some Marxists dismiss Leninism as having little, or nothing, to do with what they consider the "real" Marxist tradition to be). This means that discussing Marxism can be difficult as Marxists can argue that our FAQ does not address the arguments of this or that Marxist thinker, group or tendency.
With this in mind, this section of the FAQ will concentrate on the works of Marx and Engels (and so the movement they generated, namely Social Democracy) as well as the Bolshevik tradition started by Lenin and continued (by and large) by Trotsky. These are the core ideas (and the recognised authorities) of most Marxists and so latter derivations of these tendencies can be ignored (for example Maoism, Castroism and so on). It should also be noted that even this grouping will produce dissent as some Marxists argue that the Bolshevik tradition is not part of Marxism. This perspective can be seen in the "impossiblist" tradition of Marxism (e.g. the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its sister parties) as well as in the left/council communist tradition (e.g. in the work of such Marxists as Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick). The arguments for their positions are strong and well worth reading (indeed, any honest analysis of Marxism and Leninism cannot help but show important differences between the two). However, as the vast majority of Marxists today are also Leninists, we have to reflect this in our FAQ (and, in general, we do so by referring to "mainstream Marxists" as opposed to the small minority of libertarian Marxists).
Another problem arises when we consider the differences not only between Marxist tendencies, but also within a specific tendency before and after its representatives seize power. For example, "there are . . . very different strains of Leninism . . . there's the Lenin of 1917, the Lenin of the 'April Theses' and State and Revolution. That's one Lenin. And then there's the Lenin who took power and acted in ways that are unrecognisable . . . compared with, say, the doctrines of 'State and Revolution.' . . . this [is] not very hard to explain. There's a big difference between the libertarian doctrines of a person who is trying to associate himself with a mass popular movement to acquire power and the authoritarian power of somebody who's taken power and is trying to consolidate it. . . that is true of Marx also. There are competing strains in Marx." [Noam Chomsky, Language and Politics, p. 177]
As such, this section of our FAQ will try and draw out the contradictions within Marxism and indicate what aspects of the doctrine aided the development of the "second" Lenin. The seeds from which authoritarianism grew post-October 1917 existed from the start. Anarchists agree with Noam Chomsky when he stated that he considered it "characteristic and unfortunate that the lesson that was drawn from Marx and Lenin for the later period was the authoritarian lesson. That is, it's the authoritarian power of the vanguard party and destruction of all popular forums in the interests of the masses. That's the Lenin who became know to later generations. Again, not very surprisingly, because that's what Leninism really was in practice." [Ibid.]
Ironically, given Marx's own comments on the subject, a key hindrance to such an evaluation is the whole idea and history of Marxism itself. While, as Murray Bookchin noted "to his lasting credit," Marx tried (to some degree) "to create a movement that looks to the future instead of to the past," his followers have not done so. "Once again," Bookchin argues, "the dead are walking in our midst -- ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century. So the revolution of our own day can do nothing better than parody, in turn, the October Revolution of 1918 and the civil war of 1918-1920 . . . The complete, all-sided revolution of our own day . . . follows the partial, the incomplete, the one-sided revolutions of the past, which merely changed the form of the 'social question,' replacing one system of domination and hierarchy by another." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 174 and p. 175] In Marx's words, the "tradition of all the dead generations weighs down like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Marx's own work, and the movements it inspired, now add to this dead-weight. In order to ensure, as Marx put it, the social revolution draws is poetry from the future rather than the past, Marxism itself must be transcended.
Which, of course, means evaluating both the theory and practice of Marxism. For anarchists, it seems strange that for a body of work whose followers stress is revolutionary and liberating, its results have been so bad. If Marxism is so obviously revolutionary and democratic, then why have so few of the people who read it drawn those conclusions? How could it be transmuted so easily into Stalinism? Why are there so few libertarian Marxists, if it was Lenin (or Social Democracy) which "misinterpreted" Marx and Engels? So when Marxists argue that the problem is in the interpretation of the message not in the message itself, anarchists reply that the reason these numerous, allegedly false, interpretations exist at all simply suggests that there are limitations within Marxism as such rather than the readings it has been subjected to. When something repeatedly fails (and produces such terrible results), then there has to be a fundamental flaw somewhere.
Thus Cornelius Castoriadis:
"Marx was, in fact, the first to stress that the significance of a theory cannot be grasped independently of the historical and social practice it inspires and initiates, to which it gives rise, in which it prolongs itself and under cover of which a given practice seeks to justify itself."Who, today, would dare proclaim that the only significance of Christianity for history is to be found in reading unaltered versions of the Gospels or that the historical practice of various Churches over a period of some 2,000 years can teach us nothing fundamental about the significance of this religious movement? A 'faithfulness to Marx' which would see the historical fate of Marxism as something unimportant would be just as laughable. It would in fact be quite ridiculous. Whereas for the Christian the revelations of the Gospels have a transcendental kernel and an intemporal validity, no theory could ever have such qualities in the eyes of a Marxist. To seek to discover the meaning of Marxism only in what Marx wrote (while keeping quiet about what the doctrine has become in history) is to pretend -- in flagrant contradiction with the central ideas of that doctrine -- that real history doesn't count and that the truth of a theory is always and exclusively to be found 'further on.' It finally comes to replacing revolution by revelation and the understanding of events by the exegesis of texts." ["The Fate of Marxism," pp. 75-84 The Anarchist Papers, Dimitrios Roussopoulos (ed.), p. 77]
This does not mean forsaking the work of Marx and Engels. It means rejecting once and for all the idea that two people, writing over a period of decades over a hundred years ago have all the answers. As should be obvious! Ultimately, anarchists think we have to build upon the legacy of the past, not squeeze current events into it. We should stand on the shoulders of giants, not at their feet.
Thus this section of our FAQ will attempt to explain the various myths of Marxism and provide an anarchist critique of Marxism and its offshoots. Of course, the ultimate myth of Marxism is what Alexander Berkman called "The Bolshevik Myth," namely the idea that the Russian Revolution was a success. However, as we discuss this revolution in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?" we will not do so here except when it provides useful empirical evidence for our critique. Our discussion here will concentrate for the most part on Marxist theory, showing its inadequacies, its problems, where it appropriated anarchist ideas and how anarchism and Marxism differ. This is a big task and this section of the FAQ can only be a small contribution to it.
As noted above, there are minority trends in Marxism which are libertarian in nature (i.e. close to anarchism). As such, it would be simplistic to say that anarchists are "anti-Marxist" and we generally do differentiate between the (minority) libertarian element and the authoritarian mainstream of Marxism (i.e. Social-Democracy and Leninism in its many forms). Without doubt, Marx contributed immensely to the enrichment of socialist ideas and analysis (as acknowledged by Bakunin, for example). His influence, as to be expected, was both positive and negative. For this reason he must be read and discussed critically. This FAQ is a contribution to this task of transcending the work of Marx. As with anarchist thinkers, we must take what is useful from Marx and reject the rubbish. But never forget that anarchists are anarchists precisely because we think that anarchist thinkers have got more right than wrong and we reject the idea of tying our politics to the name of a long dead thinker.
Ultimately, the greatest myth of Marxism is the idea that
anarchists and most Marxists want the same thing. Indeed,
it could be argued that it is anarchist criticism of Marxism
which has made them stress the similarity of long term goals
with anarchism. "Our polemics against them [the Marxists],"
Bakunin argued, "have forced them to recognise that freedom,
or anarchy -- that is, the voluntary organisation of the
workers from below upward -- is the ultimate goal of social
development." He continued by stressing that the means to
this apparently similar end were different. The Marxists, he
argues, "say that [a] state yoke, [a] dictatorship, is a
necessary transitional device for achieving the total
liberation of the people: anarchy, or freedom, is the goal,
and the state, or dictatorship, is the means . . . We reply
that no dictatorship can have any other objective than to
perpetuate itself, and that it can engender and nurture
only slavery in the people who endure it. Liberty can be
created only by liberty, by an insurrection of all the
people and the voluntary organisation of the workers from
below upwards." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 179]
As such, it is commonly taken for granted that the ends of
both Marxists and Anarchists are the same, we just disagree
over the means. However, within this general agreement over
the ultimate end (a classless and stateless society), the
details of such a society are somewhat different. This,
perhaps, is to be expected given the differences in means.
As is obvious from Bakunin's argument, anarchists stress
the unity of means and goals, that the means which are
used affect the goal reached. This unity between means
and ends is expressed well by Martin Buber's observation
that "[o]ne cannot in the nature of things expect a little
tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves."
[Paths in Utopia, p. 127] In summary, we cannot expect
to reach our end destination if we take a path going
in the opposite direction. As such, the agreement on ends
may not be as close as often imagined.
So when it is stated that anarchists and state socialists
want the same thing, the following should be borne in mind.
Firstly, there are key differences on the question of current
tactics. Secondly, there is the question of the immediate
aims of a revolution. Thirdly, there is the long term goals
of such a revolution. These three aspects form a coherent
whole, with each one logically following on from the last.
As we will show, the anarchist and Marxist vision of each
aspect are distinctly different, so suggesting that the short,
medium and long term goals of each theory are, in fact,
different. We will discuss each aspect in turn.
Firstly, the question of the nature of the revolutionary
movement. Here anarchists and most Marxists have distinctly
opposing ideas. The former argue that both the revolutionary
organisation (i.e. an anarchist federation) and the wider
labour movement should be organised in line with the vision
of society which inspires us. This means that it should be
a federation of self-managed groups based on the direct
participation of its membership in the decision making
process. Power, therefore, is decentralised and there is
no division between those who make the decisions and those
who execute them. We reject the idea of others acting on
our behalf or on behalf of the people and so urge the use
of direct action and solidarity, based upon working class
self-organisation, self-management and autonomy. Thus,
anarchists apply their ideas in the struggle against the
current system, arguing what is "efficient" from a
hierarchical or class position is deeply inefficient from
a revolutionary perspective.
Marxists disagree. Most Marxists are also Leninists. They
argue that we must form "vanguard" parties based on the
principles of "democratic centralism" complete with
institutionalised leaderships. They argue that how we
organise today is independent of the kind of society we
seek and that the party should aim to become the
recognised leadership of the working class. Every thing
they do is subordinated to this end, meaning that no
struggle is seen as an end in itself but rather as a
means to gaining membership and influence for the party
until such time as it gather enough support to seize power.
As this is a key point of contention between anarchists
and Leninists, we discuss this in some detail in
section H.5
and its related sections and so not do so here.
Obviously, in the short term anarchists and Leninists
cannot be said to want the same thing. While we seek
a revolutionary movement based on libertarian (i.e.
revolutionary) principles, the Leninists seek a party
based on distinctly bourgeois principles of centralisation,
delegation of power and representative over direct democracy.
Both, of course, argue that only their system of organisation
is effective and efficient (see
section H.5.8
on a discussion
why anarchists argue that the Leninist model is not effective
from a revolutionary perspective). The anarchist perspective
is to see the revolutionary organisation as part of the
working class, encouraging and helping those in struggle to
clarify the ideas they draw from their own experiences and
its role is to provide a lead rather than a new set of leaders
to be followed (see
section J.3.6 for more on this). The
Leninist perspective is to see the revolutionary party as
the leadership of the working class, introducing socialist
consciousness into a class which cannot generate itself
(see section H.5.1).
Given the Leninist preference for centralisation and a leadership
role by hierarchical organisation, it will come as no surprise
that their ideas on the nature of post-revolutionary society are
distinctly different from anarchists. While there is a tendency
for Leninists to deny that anarchists have a clear idea of what
will immediately be created by a revolution (see
section H.1.4),
we do have concrete ideas on the kind of society a revolution
will immediately create. This vision is in almost every way
different from that proposed by most Marxists.
Firstly, there is the question of the state. Anarchists,
unsurprisingly enough, seek to destroy it. Simply put, while
anarchists want a stateless and classless society and advocate
the means appropriate to those ends, most Marxists argue that
in order to reach a stateless society we need a new "workers'"
state, a state, moreover, in which their party will be in
charge. Trotsky, writing in 1906, made this clear when he
argued that "[e]very political party deserving of the name
aims at seizing governmental power and thus putting the state
at the service of the class whose interests it represents."
[quoted by Israel Getzler, "Marxist Revolutionaries and the
Dilemma of Power", pp. 88-112, Revolution and Politics in
Russia, Alexander and Janet Rabinowitch and Ladis K.D.
Kristof (eds,), p. 105] This fits in with Marx's 1852
comments that "Universal Suffrage is the equivalent of
political power for the working class of England, where
the proletariat forms the large majority of the population
. . . Its inevitable result, here, is the political
supremacy of the working class." [Collected Works,
vol. 11, pp. 335-6] In other words, "political power" simply means
the ability to nominate a government. Thus Engels:
While Marxists like to portray this new government as "the
dictatorship of the proletariat," anarchist argue that,
in fact, it will be the dictatorship over the proletariat.
This is because if the working class is the ruling class
(as Marxists claim) then, anarchists argue, how can they
delegate their power to a government and remain so? Either
the working class directly manages its own affairs (and so
society) or the government does. We discuss this issue in
section H.3.7 any state
is simply rule by a few and so
is incompatible with socialism. The obvious implication of
this is that Marxism seeks party rule, not working class
direct management of society (as we discuss in
section H.3.8,
the Leninist tradition is extremely clear on this
matter).
Then there is the question of the building blocks of
socialism. Yet again, there is a clear difference between
anarchism and Marxism. Anarchists have always argued that
the basis of socialism is working class organisations,
created in the struggle against capitalism and the state
(see section H.1.4
for details). This applies to both
the social and economic structure of a post-revolutionary
society. For most forms of Marxism, a radically different
picture has been the dominant one. As we discuss in
section H.3.10,
Marxists only reached a similar vision for the
political structure of socialism in 1917 when Lenin
supported the soviets as he framework of his workers' state.
However, as we prove in
section H.3.11,
he did so for
instrumental purposes only, namely as the best means of
assuring Bolshevik power. If the soviets clashed with the
party, it was the latter which took precedence. Unsurprisingly,
the Bolshevik mainstream moved from "All Power to the Soviets"
to "dictatorship of the party" rather quickly. Thus, unlike
anarchism, most forms of Marxism aim for party power, a
"revolutionary" government above the organs of working class
self-management.
Economically, there are also clear differences. Anarchists have
consistently argued that the workers "ought to be the real
managers of industries." [Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories
and Workshops Tomorrow, p. 157] To achieve this, we have
pointed to various organisations over time, such as factory
committees and labour unions as the "medium which Socialist
forms of life could find . . . realisation." Thus they would
"not only [be] an instrument for the improvement of the
conditions of labour, but also of [were capable of] becoming
an organisation which might . . . take into its hands the
management of production." [Kropotkin, The Conquest of
Bread, pp. 22-3]
As we discuss in more detail in
section H.3.12, Lenin, in
contrast, saw socialism as being constructed on the basis
of structures and techniques (including management ones)
developed under capitalism. Rather than see socialism as
being built around new, working class organisations, Lenin
saw it being constructed on the basis of developments in
capitalist organisation. "The Leninist road to socialism,"
notes one expert on Lenin, "emphatically ran through the
terrain of monopoly capitalism. It would, according to Lenin,
abolish neither its advanced technological base nor its
institutionalised means for allocating resources or
structuring industry. . . The institutionalised framework
of advanced capitalism could, to put it shortly, be utilised
for realisation of specifically socialist goals. They were
to become, indeed, the principal (almost exclusive)
instruments of socialist transformation." [Neil Harding,
Leninism, p.145] As Lenin explained, socialism is
"nothing but the next step forward from state capitalist
monopoly. In other words, Socialism is nothing but state
capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people; by
this token it ceases to be capitalist monopoly." [The
Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it, p. 37]
The role of workers' in this vision was basically unchanged.
Rather than demand, like anarchists, workers' self-management
of production in 1917, Lenin raised the demand for "universal,
all-embracing workers' control over the capitalists." [Will
the Bolsheviks Maintain Power, p. 52] Once the Bolsheviks
were in power, the workers' own organs (the factory committees)
were integrated into a system of state control, losing whatever
power they once held at the point of production. Lenin then
modified this vision by raising "one-man management" over the
workers (see section H.3.14).
In other words, a form of state
capitalism in which workers would still be wage slaves under
bosses appointed by the state. Unsurprisingly, the "control"
workers exercised over their bosses (i.e. those with real
power in production) proved to be as elusive in production
as it was in the state. In this, Lenin undoubtedly followed
the lead of the Communist Manifesto which stressed state
ownership of the means of production without a word about
workers' self-management of production. As we discuss in
section H.3.13, state "socialism" cannot help being "state
capitalism" by its very nature.
Needless to say, as far as means go, few anarchists and
syndicalists are complete pacifists. As syndicalist Emile
Pouget argued, "[h]istory teaches that the privileged have
never surrendered their privileges without having been compelled
so to do and forced into it by their rebellious victims. It
is unlikely that the bourgeoisie is blessed with an exceptional
greatness of soul and will abdicate voluntarily." This meant
that "[r]ecourse to force . . . will be required." [The Party
Of Labour] This does not mean that libertarians glorify
violence or argue that all forms of violence are acceptable
(quite the reverse!), it simply means that for self-defence
against violent opponents violence is, unfortunately, sometimes
required.
The way an anarchist revolution would defend itself also shows
a key difference between anarchism and Marxism. As we discussed
in section H.2.1,
anarchists (regardless of Marxist claims) have
always argued that a revolution needs to defend itself. This
would be organised in a federal, bottom-up way as the social
structure of a free society. It would be based on voluntary
working class militias. As Bakunin put it, "the peasants, like
the industrial city workers, should unite by federating the
fighting battalions, district by district, this assuring a
common co-ordinated defence against internal and external
enemies." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 190] This model of working
class self-defence was applied successfully in both the Spanish
and Ukrainian revolutions (by the CNT-FAI and the Makhnovists,
respectively). In contrast, the Bolshevik method of defending a
revolution was the top-down, hierarchical and centralised "Red
Army" (see section 14 of the
appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?" for
details). As the example of the
Makhnovists (see the appendix on "Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
Bolshevism?") showed, the "Red Army" was not
the only way the Russian Revolution could have been defended
although it was the only way Bolshevik power could be.
So while Anarchists have consistently argued that socialism
must be based on working class self-management of production
and society based on working class organisations, the Leninist
tradition has not supported this vision (although it has
appropriated some of its imagery to gain popular support).
Clearly, in terms of the immediate aftermath of a revolution,
anarchists and Leninists do not seek the same thing. The former
want a free society organised and run from below-upwards by the
working class based on workers self-management of production
while the latter seek party power in a new state structure
which would preside over an essentially state capitalist
economy.
Lastly, there is the question of the long term goal. Even
in this vision of a classless and stateless society there
is very little in common between anarchist communism and
Marxist communism, beyond the similar terminology used to
describe it. This is blurred by the differences in terminology
used by both theories. Marx and Engels had raised in the 1840s
the (long term) goal of "an association, in which the free
development of each is the condition for the free development
of all" replacing "the old bourgeois society, with its classes
and class antagonisms," in the Communist Manifesto. Before
this "vast association of the whole nation" was possible, the
proletariat would be "raise[d] . . . to the position of ruling
class" and "all capital" would be "centralise[d] . . . in the
hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the
ruling class." As economic classes would no longer exist,
"the public power would lose its political character" as
political power "is merely the organised power of one class
for oppressing another." [Manifesto of the Communist Party,
p. 53]
It was this, the means to the end, which was the focus of much
debate (see section H.1.1
for details). However, it cannot be
assumed that the ends desired by Marxists and anarchists are
identical. The argument that the "public power" could stop being
"political" (i.e. a state) is a tautology, and a particularly
unconvincing one at that. After all, if "political power" is
defined as being an instrument of class rule it automatically
follows that a classless society would have a non-political
"public power" and so be without a state! This does not imply
that a "public power" would no longer exist as a structure
within (or, more correctly, over) society, it just implies
that its role would no longer be "political" (i.e. an
instrument of class rule). Given that, according to the
Manifesto, the state would centralise the means of production,
credit and transportation and then organise it "in accordance
with a common plan" using "industrial armies, especially for
agriculture" this would suggest that the state structure
would remain even after its "political" aspects had, to use
Engels term, "withered away." [Marx and Engels, Op. Cit.,
pp. 52-3]
From this perspective, the difference between anarchist
communism and Marxist-communism is clear. "While both,"
notes John Clark, "foresee the disappearance of the state,
the achievement of social management of the economy, the
end of class rule, and the attainment of human equality,
to mention a few common goals, significant differences
in ends still remain. Marxist thought has inherited a
vision which looks to high development of technology
with a corresponding degree of centralisation of social
institutions which will continue even after the coming
of the social revolution. . . . The anarchist vision sees
the human scale as essential, both in the techniques which
are used for production, and for the institutions which
arise from the new modes of association . . . In addition,
the anarchist ideal has a strong hedonistic element which
has seen Germanic socialism as ascetic and Puritanical."
[The Anarchist Moment, p. 68]
Moreover, it is unlikely that such a centralised system
could become stateless and classless in actuality. As
Bakunin argued, in the Marxist state "there will be no
privileged class. Everybody will be equal, not only from
the judicial and political but also from the economic
standpoint. This is the promise at any rate . . . So there
will be no more class, but a government, and, please note,
an extremely complicated government which, not content
with governing and administering the masses politically
. . . will also administer them economically, by taking
over the production and fair sharing of wealth,
agriculture, the establishment and development of factories,
the organisation and control of trade, and lastly the
injection of capital into production by a single banker,
the State." Such a system would be, in fact, "the reign
of the scientific mind, the most aristocratic, despotic,
arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes" base on "a new
class, a new hierarchy of real or bogus learning, and
the world will be divided into a dominant, science-based
minority and a vast, ignorant majority." [Michael Bakunin:
Selected Writings, p. 266]
George Barrett's words also seem appropriate:
As Brain Morris notes, "Bakunin's fears that under Marx's
kind of socialism the workers would continue to labour
under a regimented, mechanised, hierarchical system of
production, without direct control over their labour, has
been more than confirmed by the realities of the Bolshevik
system. Thus, Bakunin's critique of Marxism has taken on an
increasing relevance in the age of bureaucratic State
capitalism." [Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 132]
Therefore, anarchists are not convinced that a highly
centralised structure (as a state is) managing the
economic life of society can be part of a truly classless
society. While economic class as defined in terms of
property may not exist, social classes (defined in
terms of inequality of power and wealth) will continue
simply because the state is designed to create and
protect minority rule (see
section H.3.7). As Bolshevik
and Stalinist Russia showed, nationalising the means of
production does not end class society. As Malatesta argued:
"This is the question; either things are administered on the
basis of free agreement of the interested parties, and this
is anarchy; or they are administered according to laws made
by administrators and this is government, it is the State,
and inevitably it turns out to be tyrannical.
"It is not a question of the good intentions or the good will
of this or that man, but of the inevitability of the situation,
and of the tendencies which man generally develops in given
circumstances." [Life and Ideas, p. 145]
The anarchist vision of the future society, therefore, does not
exactly match the state communist vision, as much as the latter
would like to suggest it does. The difference between the two is
authority, which cannot be anything but the largest difference
possible. Anarchist economic and organisational theories are
built around an anti-authoritarian core and this informs both
our means and aims. For anarchists, the Leninist vision of
socialism is unattractive. Lenin continually stressed that his
conception of socialism and "state capitalism" were basically
identical. Even in State and Revolution, allegedly Lenin's
most libertarian work, we discover this particularly unvisionary
and uninspiring vision of "socialism":
To which, anarchists point to Engels and his comments on the
tyrannical and authoritarian character of the modern factory
(as we discuss in
section H.4.4).
Engels, let us not forget,
had argued against the anarchists that large-scale industry
(or, indeed, any form of organisation) meant that "authority"
was required (organisation meant that "the will of a single
individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means
that questions are settled in an authoritarian way."). He (like
the factory owner he was) stated that factories should have
"Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate" ("Leave, ye that
enter in, all autonomy behind") written above their doors.
This obedience, Engels argued, was necessary even under
socialism, as applying the "forces of nature" meant "a
veritable despotism independent of all social organisation."
This meant that "[w]anting to abolish authority in large-scale
industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself."
[Marx-Engels Reader, p. 731] Clearly, Lenin's idea of turning
the world into one big factory takes on an extremely frightening
nature given Engels lovely vision of the lack of freedom in
industry.
For these reasons anarchists reject the simplistic Marxist
analysis of inequality being rooted simply in economic class.
Such an analysis, as the comments of Lenin and Engels prove,
show that social inequality can be smuggled in by the backdoor
of a proposed classless and stateless society. Thus Bookchin:
Ultimately, anarchists see that "there is a realm of domination
that is broader than the realm of material exploitation. The
tragedy of the socialist movement is that, steeped in the past,
it uses the methods of domination to try to 'liberate' us from
material exploitation." Needless to say, this is doomed to
failure. Socialism "will simply mire us in a world we are
trying to overcome. A non-hierarchical society, self-managed
and free of domination in all its forms, stands on the agenda
today, not a hierarchical system draped in a red flag." [Murray
Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 272 and pp. 273-4]
In summary, it cannot be said that anarchists and most Marxists
want the same thing. While they often use the same terms, these
terms often hide radically different concepts. Just because, say,
anarchists and mainstream Marxists talk about "social revolution,"
"socialism," "all power to the soviets" and so on, it does not
mean that we mean the same thing by them. For example, the phrase
"all power to the soviets" for anarchists means exactly that (i.e.
that the revolution must be directly managed by working class
organs). Leninists mean "all power to a central government
elected by a national soviet congress." Similarly with other
similar phrases (which shows the importance of looking at the
details of any political theory and its history).
We have shown that discussion over ends is as important
as discussion over means as they are related. As Kropotkin
once pointed out, those who downplay the importance of
discussing the "order of things which . . . should emerge
from the coming revolution" in favour of concentrating on
"practical things" are being less than honest as "far from
making light of such theories, they propagate them, and all
that they do now is a logical extension of their ideas. In
the end those words 'Let us not discuss theoretical questions'
really mean: 'Do not subject our theory to discussion, but
help us to put it into execution.'" [Words of a Rebel,
p. 200]
Hence the need to critically evaluate both ends and means.
This shows the weakness of the common argument that anarchists
and Leftists share some common visions and so we should work
with them to achieve those common things. Who knows what
happens after that? As can be seen, this is not the case.
Many aspects of anarchism and Marxism are in opposition and
cannot be considered similar (for example, what a Leninist
considers as socialism is extremely different to what an
anarchist thinks it is). If you consider "socialism" as
being a "workers' state" presided over by a "revolutionary"
government, then how can this be reconciled with the
anarchist vision of a federation of self-managed communes
and workers' associations? As the Russian Revolution shows,
only by the armed might of the "revolutionary" government
crushing the anarchist vision.
The only thing we truly share with these groups is a mutual
opposition to existing capitalism. Having a common enemy does
not make someone friends. Hence anarchists, while willing
to work on certain mutual struggles, are well aware there is
substantial differences in both terms of means and goals. The
lessons of revolution in the 20th Century is that once in power,
Leninists will repress anarchists, their current allies against
the capitalist system. This is does not occur by accident, it
flows from the differences in vision between the two movements,
both in terms of means and goals.
Some Marxists, such as the International Socialist Tendency,
like to portray their tradition as being "socialism from
below." Under "socialism from below," they place the ideas
of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, arguing that they and
they alone have continued this, the true, ideal of socialism
(Hal Draper's essay "The Two Souls of Socialism" seems to have
been the first to argue along these lines). They contrast this
idea of "democratic" socialism "from below" with "socialism
from above," in which they place reformist socialism (social
democracy, Labourism, etc.), elitist socialism (Lassalle and
others who wanted educated and liberal members of the middle
classes to liberate the working class) and Stalinism
(bureaucratic dictatorship over the working class).
For those who uphold this idea, "Socialism from below" is simply
the self-emancipation of the working class by its own efforts.
To anarchist ears, the claim that Marxism (and in particular
Leninism) is socialism "from below" sounds paradoxical, indeed
laughable. This is because anarchists from Proudhon onwards
have used the imagery of socialism being created and run from
below upwards. They have been doing so for far longer than
Marxists have. As such, "socialism from below" simply sums
up the anarchist ideal!
Thus we find Proudhon in 1848 talking about being a
"revolutionary from below" and that every "serious and
lasting Revolution" was "made from below, by the people."
A "Revolution from above" was "pure governmentalism,"
"the negation of collective activity, of popular
spontaneity" and is "the oppression of the wills of
those below." [quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, p. 143] For Proudhon, the means of this revolution
"from below" would be working class associations for both
credit (mutual banks) and production (workers' associations
or co-operatives). The workers, "organised among themselves,
without the assistance of the capitalist" would march by
"Work to the conquest of the world" by the "force of
principle." Thus capitalism would be reformed away by
the actions of the workers themselves. The "problem of
association," Proudhon argues, "consists in organising
. . . the producers, and by this subjecting capital
subordinating power. Such is the war of liberty against
authority, a war of the producer against the non-producer;
a war of equality against privilege . . . An agricultural
and industrial combination must be found by means of
which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its
slave." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 148 and
p. 157]
Similarly, Bakunin saw an anarchist revolution as coming
"from below." As he put it, "liberty can be created only by
liberty, by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary
organisation of the workers from below upward." [Statism
and Anarchy, p. 179] Elsewhere he writes that "popular
revolution" would "create its own organisation from the
bottom upwards and from the circumference inwards, in
accordance with the principle of liberty, and not from
the top downwards and from the centre outwards, as in the
way of authority." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
p. 170] His vision of revolution and revolutionary
self-organisation and construction from below was a
core aspect of his anarchist ideas, arguing repeatedly
for "the free organisation of the people's lives in
accordance with their needs -- not from the top down,
as we have it in the State, but from the bottom up,
an organisation formed by the people themselves . . . a
free union of associations of agricultural and factory
workers, of communes, regions, and nations." He stressed
that "the politics of the Social Revolution" was "the
abolition of the State" and "the economic, altogether free
organisation of the people, an organisation from below
upward, by means of federation." [The Political Philosophy
of Bakunin, pp. 297-8]
While Proudhon wanted to revolutionise society, he rejected
revolutionary means to do so (i.e. collective struggle,
strikes, insurrection, etc.). Bakunin, however, was a
revolutionary in this, the popular, sense of the word. Yet
he shared with Proudhon the idea of socialism being created
by the working class itself. As he put it, in "a social
revolution, which in everything is diametrically opposed
to a political revolution, the actions of individuals
hardly count at all, whereas the spontaneous action of
the masses is everything. All that individuals can do is
clarify, propagate and work out the ideas corresponding
to the popular instinct, and, what is more, to contribute
their incessant efforts to revolutionary organisation of
the natural power of the masses -- but nothing else beyond
that; the rest can and should be done by the people themselves
. . . revolution can be waged and brought to its full
development only through the spontaneous and continued
mass action of groups and associations of the people."
[Op. Cit., pp. 298-9]
Therefore, the idea of "socialism from below" is a distinctly
anarchist notion, one found in the works of Proudhon and
Bakunin and repeated by anarchists ever since. As such, to
hear Marxists appropriate this obviously anarchist terminology
and imagery appears to many anarchists as opportunistic and
attempt to cover the authoritarian reality of mainstream Marxism
with anarchist rhetoric. However, there are "libertarian"
strains of Marxism which are close to anarchism. Does this mean
that there are no elements of a "socialism from below" to be
found in Marx and Engels?
If we look at Marx, we get contradictory impressions. On the one
hand, he argued that freedom "consists in converting the state
from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely
subordinate to it." Combine this with his comments on the Paris
Commune (see his "The Civil War in France"), we can say that
there are clearly elements of "socialism from below" in Marx's
work. On the other hand, he often stresses the need for strict
centralisation of power. In 1850, for example, he argued that
the workers must "not only strive for a single and indivisible
German republic, but also within this republic for the most
determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state
authority." This was because "the path of revolutionary
activity" can "proceed only from the centre." This meant that
the workers must be opposed to the "federative republic"
planned by the democrats and "must not allow themselves to be
misguided by the democratic talk of freedom for the
communities, of self-government, etc." This centralisation
of power was essential to overcome local autonomy, which
would allow "every village, every town and every province"
to put "a new obstacle in the path" the revolution due to
"local and provincial obstinacy." Decades later, Marx
dismisses Bakunin's vision of "the free organisation of the
worker masses from bottom to top" as "nonsense." [Marx-Engels
Reader, p. 537, p. 509 and p. 547]
Thus we have a contradiction. While arguing that the state
must become subordinate to society, we have a central power
imposing its will on "local and provincial obstinacy." This
implies a vision of revolution in which the centre (indeed,
"the state authority") forces its will on the population,
which (by necessity) means that the centre power is
"superimposed upon society" rather than "subordinate"
to it. Given his dismissal of the idea of organisation from
bottom to top, we cannot argue that by this he meant simply
the co-ordination of local initiatives. Rather, we are struck
by the "top-down" picture of revolution Marx presents. Indeed,
his argument from 1850 suggests that Marx favoured centralism
not only in order to prevent the masses from creating obstacles
to the revolutionary activity of the "centre," but also to
prevent them from interfering with their own liberation.
Looking at Engels, we discover him writing that "[a]s soon
as our Party is in possession of political power it has
simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors just like the
manufacturers in industry . . . thus restored to the community
[they] are to be turned over by us to the rural workers who
are already cultivating them and are to be organised into
co-operatives." He even states that this expropriation may
"be compensated," depending on "the circumstances which we
obtain power, and particularly by the attitude adopted by
these gentry." [Marx-Engels Selected Writings, pp. 638-9]
Thus we have the party taking power, then expropriating the
means of life for the workers and, lastly, "turning over"
these to them. While this fits into the general scheme of
the Communist Manifesto, it cannot be said to be "socialism
from below" which can only signify the direct expropriation
of the means of production by the workers themselves,
organising themselves into free producer associations
to do so.
This vision of revolution as the party coming to power can
be seen from Engels' warning that the "worse thing that can
befall the leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to
assume power at a time when the movement is not yet ripe
for the domination of the class he represents and for the
measures this domination implies." [Collected Works,
vol. 10, p. 469] Needless to say, such a vision is hard to
equate with "socialism from below" which implies the active
participation of the working class in the direct management
of society from the bottom-up. If the leaders "assume power"
then they have the real power, not the class they claim
to "represent." Equally, it seems strange that socialism can
be equated with a vision which equates "domination" of a
class being achieved by the fact a leader "represents" it.
Can the working class really be said to be the ruling class
if its role in society is to select those who exercise power
on its behalf (i.e. to select representatives)? Bakunin quite
rightly answered in the negative. While representative
democracy may be acceptable to ensure bourgeois rule, it
cannot be assumed that it be utilised to create a socialist
society. It was designed to defend class society and its
centralised and top-down nature reflects this role.
Moreover, Marx and Engels had argued in The Holy Family
that the "question is not what this or that proletarian,
or even the whole of the proletariat at the moment considers
as its aim. The question is what the proletariat is, and
what, consequent on that being, it will be compelled to do."
[quoted by Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 280]
As Murray Bookchin argues:
Thus the ideological underpinning of a "socialism from
above" is expounded, one which dismisses what the members
of the working class actually want or desire at a given
point (a position which Trotsky, for one, explicitly
argued). A few years later, they argued in The Communist
Manifesto that "a portion of the bourgeois goes over to
the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the
bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to
the level of comprehending theoretically the historical
movement as a whole." They also noted that the Communists
are "the most advanced and resolute section of the
working-class parties . . . [and] they have over the
great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly
understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the
general results of the proletarian movement." [Selected
Works, p. 44 and p. 46] This gives a privileged place to
the party (particularly the "bourgeois ideologists" who
join it), a privileged place which their followers had no
problem abusing in favour of party power and hierarchical
leadership from above. As we discuss in
section H.5,
Lenin was just expressing orthodox Social-Democratic (i.e.
Marxist) policy when he argued that socialist consciousness
was created by bourgeois intellectuals and introduced into
the working class from outside. Against this, we have to
note that the Manifesto states that the proletarian movement
was "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense
majority, in the interests of the immense majority"
(although, as discussed in
section H.1.1, when they wrote
this the proletariat was a minority in all countries bar
Britain). [Op. Cit., p. 45]
Looking at the tactics advocated by Marx and Engels, we
see a strong support for "political action" in the sense
of participating in elections. This support undoubtedly
flows from Engel's comments that universal suffrage "in
an England two-thirds of whose inhabitants are industrial
proletarians means the exclusive political rule of the
working class with all the revolutionary changes in social
conditions which are inseparable from it." [Collected
Works, vol. 10, p. 298 Marx argued along identical lines.
[Op. Cit., vol. 11, pp. 335-6] However, how could an entire
class, the proletariat organised as a "movement" exercise
its power under such a system? While the atomised voting
to nominate representatives (who, in reality, held the
real power in society) may be more than adequate to
ensure bourgeois, i.e. minority, power, could it be used
for proletarian, i.e. majority, power?
This is because such institutions are designed to place
policy-making in the hands of representatives and do not
(indeed, cannot) constitute a "proletariat organised as a
ruling class." If public policy, as distinguished from
administrative activities, is not made by the people
themselves, in federations of self-managed assemblies,
then a movement of the vast majority in the precise sense
of the term cannot exist. For people to acquire real power
over their lives and society, they must establish
institutions organised and run, as Bakunin constantly
stressed, from below. This would necessitate that they
themselves directly manage their own affairs, communities
and workplaces and, for co-ordination, mandate federal
assemblies of revocable and strictly controllable delegates,
who will execute their decisions. Only in this sense can a
majority class, especially one committed to the abolition
of all classes, organise as a class to manage society.
As such, Marx and Engels tactics are at odds with any idea of
"socialism from below." While, correctly, supporting strikes
and other forms of working class direct action (although,
significantly, Engels dismissed the general strike) they
placed that support within a general political strategy which
emphasised electioneering and representative forms. This,
however, is a form of struggle which can only really be
carried out by means of leaders. The role of the masses
is minor, that of voters. The focus of the struggle is at
the top, in parliament, where the duly elected leaders are.
As Luigi Galleani argued, this form of action involved the
"ceding of power by all to someone, the delegate, the
representative, individual or group." This meant that
rather than the anarchist tactic of "direct pressure
put against the ruling classes by the masses," the Socialist
Party "substituted representation and the rigid discipline
of the parliamentary socialists," the inevitably resulted
in it "adopt[ing] class collaboration in the legislative
arena, without which all reforms would remain a vain hope."
It also resulted in the socialists needing "authoritarian
organisations", i.e. ones which are centralised and disciplined
from above down. [The End of Anarchism?, p. 14, p. 12 and
p. 14] The end result was the encouragement of a viewpoint
that reforms (indeed, the revolution) would be the work of
leaders acting on behalf of the masses whose role would be
that of voters and followers, not active participants in the
struggle (see section J.2 for a
ddiscussion on direct action and why anarchists reject electioneering).
By the 1890s, the top-down and essentially reformist nature
of these tactics had made their mark in both Engels politics
and the practical activities of the Social-Democratic parties.
Engels "introduction" to Marx's The Class Struggles in France
indicated how far Marxism had progressed. Engels, undoubtedly
influenced by the rise of Social-Democracy as an electoral
power, stressed the use of the ballot box as the ideal way,
if not the only way, for the party to take power. He notes
that "[w]e, the 'revolutionists', the 'overthrowers'" were
"thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods
and overthrow" and the bourgeoisie "cry despairingly . . .
legality is the death of us" and were "much more afraid of
the legal than of the illegal action of the workers' party,
of the results of elections than of those of rebellion." He
argued that it was essential "not to fitter away this daily
increasing shock force [of party voters] in vanguard skirmishes,
but to keep it intact until the decisive day." [Selected
Writings, p. 656, p. 650 and p. 655]
The net effect of this would simply be keeping the class
struggle within the bounds decided upon by the party leaders,
so placing the emphasis on the activities and decisions of
those at the top rather than the struggle and decisions of
the mass of working class people themselves. As we noted in
section H.1.1,
when the party was racked by the "revisionism"
controversy after Engels death, it was fundamentally a
conflict between those who wanted the party's rhetoric to
reflect its reformist tactics and those who sought the
illusion of radical words to cover the reformist practice.
The decision of the Party to support their state in the
First World War simply proved that radical words cannot
defeat reformist tactics.
Needless to say, from this contradictory inheritance, Marxists
had two ways of proceeding. Either they become explicitly
anti-state (and so approach anarchism) or become explicitly
in favour of party and state power and so, by necessity,
"revolution from above." The council communists and other
libertarian Marxists followed the first path, the Bolsheviks
and their followers the second. As we discuss in the
next section, Lenin explicitly dismissed the idea that Marxism
proceeded "only from below," stating that this was an
anarchist principle. Nor was he shy in equating party power
with working class power. Indeed, this vision of socialism
as involving party power was not alien to the mainstream
social-democracy Leninism split from. The leading left-wing
Menshevik Martov argued as follows:
All this is to be expected, given the weakness of the Marxist
theory of the state. As we discuss in
section H.3.7, Marxists
have always had an a-historic perspective on the state,
considering it as purely an instrument of class rule rather
than what it is, an instrument of minority class rule. For
anarchists, the "State is the minority government, from the
top downward, of a vast quantity of men." This automatically
means that a socialism, like Marx's, which aims for a socialist
government and a workers' state automatically becomes, against
the wishes of its best activists, "socialism from above."
As Bakunin argued, Marxists are "worshippers of State power,
and necessarily also prophets of political and social discipline
and champions of order established from the top downwards,
always in the name of universal suffrage and the sovereignty
of the masses, for whom they save the honour and privilege of
obeying leaders, elected masters." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
Writings, p. 265 and pp. 237-8]
For this reason anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued for
a bottom-up federation of workers' councils as the basis of
revolution and the means of managing society after capitalism
and the state have been abolished. If these organs of workers'
self-management are co-opted into a state structure (as happened
in Russia) then their power will be handed over to the real power
in any state -- the government and its bureaucracy. The state
is the delegation of power -- as such, it means that the idea
of a "workers' state" expressing "workers' power" is a logical
impossibility. If workers are running society then power rests
in their hands. If a state exists then power rests in the hands
of the handful of people at the top, not in the hands of all.
The state was designed for minority rule. No state can be an
organ of working class (i.e. majority) self-management due to
its basic nature, structure and design.
So, while there are elements of "socialism from below" in the
works of Marx and Engels they are placed within a distinctly
centralised and authoritarian context which undermines them.
As John Clark summarises, "in the context of Marx's consistent
advocacy of centralist programmes, and the part these programmes
play in his theory of social development, the attempt to construct
a libertarian Marxism by citing Marx's own proposals for social
change would seem to present insuperable difficulties." [Op. Cit.,
p. 93]
As discussed in the last section,
Marx and Engels left their
followers with an ambiguous legacy. On the one hand, there
are elements of "socialism from below" in their politics
(most explicitly in Marx's comments on the libertarian
influenced Paris Commune). On the other, there are distinctly
centralist and statist themes in their work.
From this legacy, Leninism took the statist themes. Which
explains why anarchists think the idea of Leninism being
"socialism from below" is incredible. Simply put, the actual
comments and actions of Lenin and his followers show that
they had no commitment to a "socialism from below." As we
will indicate, Lenin disassociated himself repeatedly from
the idea of politics "from below," considering it (quite
rightly) an anarchist idea. In contrast, he stressed the
importance of a politics which somehow combined action
"from above" and "from below." For those Leninists who
maintain that their tradition is "socialism from below"
(indeed, the only "real" socialism "from below"), this is
a major problem and, unsurprisingly, they generally fail
to mention it.
So what was Lenin's position on "from below"? In 1904, during
the debate over the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks,
Lenin stated that the argument "[b]ureaucracy versus democracy
is in fact centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational
principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the
organisational principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The
latter strives to proceed from the bottom upward, and, therefore,
wherever possible . . . upholds autonomism and 'democracy,'
carried (by the overzealous) to the point of anarchism. The
former strives to proceed from the top downward. . ." [Collected
Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Thus it is the non-Bolshevik
("opportunist") wing of Marxism which bases itself on the
"organisational principle" of "from the bottom upward," not
the Bolshevik tradition (as we note in
section H.5.5, Lenin
also rejected the "primitive democracy" of mass assemblies as
the basis of the labour and revolutionary movements). Moreover,
this vision of a party run from the top down was enshrined in
the Bolshevik ideal of "democratic centralism" (see
section H.5.5).
How you can have "socialism from below" when your "organisational
principle" is "from the top downward" is not explained by Leninist
exponents of "socialism from below."
Lenin repeated this argument in his discussion on the right
tactics to apply during the near revolution of 1905. He
mocked the Mensheviks for only wanting "pressure from below"
which was "pressure by the citizens on the revolutionary
government." Instead, he argued for "pressure . . . from above
as well as from below," where "pressure from above" was
"pressure by the revolutionary government on the citizens."
He notes that Engels "appreciated the importance of action
from above" and that he saw the need for "the utilisation of
the revolutionary governmental power." Lenin summarised his
position (which he considered as being in line with that of
orthodox Marxism) by stating that "[l]imitation, in principle,
of revolutionary action to pressure from below and renunciation
of pressure also from above is anarchism." [Marx, Engels and
Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 189-90, p. 193,
p. 195 and p. 196] This seems to have been a common Bolshevik
position at the time, with Stalin stressing in the same year
that "action only from 'below'" was "an anarchist principle,
which does, indeed, fundamentally contradict Social-Democratic
tactics." [Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 149]
It is in this context of "above and below" in which we must
place Lenin's comments in 1917 that socialism was "democracy
from below, without a police, without a standing army,
voluntary social duty by a militia formed from a universally
armed people." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 170] Given
that Lenin had rejected the idea of "only from below" as
an anarchist principle (which it is), we need to bear in
mind that this "democracy from below" was always placed
in the context of a Bolshevik government. Lenin always
stressed that the Bolsheviks would "take over full state
power," that they "can and must take state power into their
own hands." His "democracy from below" always meant representative
government, not popular power or self-management. The role of
the working class was that of voters and so the Bolsheviks' first
task was "to convince the majority of the people that its programme
and tactics are correct." The second task "that confronted our
Party was to capture political power." The third task was for
"the Bolshevik Party" to "administer Russia." [Selected Works,
vol. 2, p. 352, p. 328 and p. 589] Thus Bolshevik power was
equated with working class power.
Towards the end of 1917, he stressed this vision of a Bolshevik
run "democracy from below" by arguing that "[a]fter the 1905
revolution Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners . . . yet
they tell us that Russia will not be able to be governed by
the 240,000 members of the Bolshevik party." He even equated
rule by the party with rule by the class -- "the power of the
Bolsheviks -- that is, the power of the proletariat," while
admitting that the proletariat could not actually govern itself.
As he put it, "[w]e know that just any labourer or any cook
would be incapable of taking over immediately the administration
of the State . . . We demand that the teaching of the business
of government be conducted by the class-conscious workers and
soldiers." The "conscious workers must be in control, but they
can attract to the actual work of management the real labouring
and oppressed masses." Ironically, he calls this system "real
popular self-administration" and "teaching the people to manage
their own affairs." He also indicated that once in power, the
Bolsheviks "shall be fully and unreservedly for a strong
government and centralism." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain
Power, pp. 61-2, p. 66, p. 69 and p. 75]
Clearly, Lenin's position had not changed. The goal of the
revolution was simply a Bolshevik government, which, if it
was to be effective, had to have the real power in society.
Thus, socialism would be implemented from above, by the
"strong" government of the "conscious workers" who
would be "in control." While, eventually, the "labouring"
masses would take part in the administration of state
decisions, the initial role of the workers could be the
same as under capitalism. And, we must note, there is a
difference between making policy and taking part in
administration (i.e. between the "work of management"
and management itself), a difference Lenin obscures.
All of which, perhaps, explains the famous leaflet
addressed to the workers of Petrograd immediately after
the October Revolution, informing that "the revolution
has won." The workers were called upon to "show . . .
the greatest firmness and endurance, in order to
facilitate the execution of all the aims of the new
People's Government." They were asked to "cease
immediately all economic and political strikes, to
take up your work, and do it in perfect order . . . All
to your places." It stated that the "best way to support
the new Government of Soviets in these days" was "by
doing your job." [cited by John Read, Ten Days that
Shook the World, pp. 341-2] Which smacks far more of
"socialism from above" than "socialism from below"!
The implications of Lenin's position became clearer after the
Bolsheviks had taken power in 1917. In that situation, it
was not a case of "dealing with the general question of
principle, whether in the epoch of the democratic revolution
it is admissible to pass from pressure from below to
pressure from above." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 24,
p. 190] Rather, it was the concrete situation of a
"revolutionary" government exercising power "from above"
onto the very class it claimed to represent. Thus we have a
power over the working class which was quite happy to exercise
coercion to ensure its position. As Lenin explained to his
political police, the Cheka, in 1920:
It could be argued that this position was forced on Lenin
by the problems facing the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, but
such an argument is flawed. This is for two reasons. Firstly,
according to Lenin himself civil war was inevitable and so,
unsurprisingly, Lenin considered his comments as universally
applicable. Secondly, this position fits in well with the idea
of pressure "from above" exercised by the "revolutionary"
government against the masses (and nothing to do with any
sort of "socialism from below"). Indeed, "wavering" and
"unstable" elements is just another way of saying "pressure
from below," the attempts by those subject to the "revolutionary"
government to influence its policies. As we noted in
section H.1.2,
it was in this period (1919 and 1920) that the Bolsheviks
openly argued that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was, in
fact, the "dictatorship of the party" (see
section H.3.8 on how
the Bolsheviks modified the Marxist theory of the state in line
with this). Rather than the result of the problems facing Russia
at the time, Lenin's comments simply reflect the unfolding of
certain aspects of his ideology when his party held power (as
we make clear in the appendix on "How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?",
the ideology of the ruling party
and the ideas held by the masses are also factors in history).
To show that Lenin's comments were not caused by circumstantial
factors, we can turn to his infamous work Left-Wing Communism.
In this 1920 tract, written for the Second Congress of the
Communist International, Lenin lambasted those Marxists who
argued for direct working class power against the idea of
party rule (i.e. the various council communists around
Europe). We have already noted in
section H.1.2 that Lenin
had argued in that work that it was "ridiculously absurd and
stupid" to "a contrast in general between the dictatorship of
the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders." [p. 25]
Here we provide his description of the "top-down" nature of
Bolshevik rule:
"In its work the Party relies directly on the trade unions
. . . In reality, all the controlling bodies of the overwhelming
majority of the unions . . . consists of Communists, who
secure the carrying out of all the instructions of the Party.
Thus . . . we have a . . . very powerful proletarian apparatus,
by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the
class and with the masses, and by means of which, under
the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship of the
class is realised." [Left-Wing Communism, pp. 31-2]
Combined with "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences"
and Soviet Congresses, this was "the general mechanism of
the proletarian state power viewed 'from above,' from the
standpoint of the practical realisation of the dictatorship"
and so "all talk about 'from above' or 'from below,' about
'the dictatorship of leaders' or 'the dictatorship of the
masses,' cannot but appear to be ridiculous, childish
nonsense." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Perhaps this explains why he
did not bother to view "proletarian" state power "from below,"
from the viewpoint of the proletariat? If he did, perhaps
he would have recounted the numerous strikes and protests
broken by the Cheka under martial law, the gerrymandering and
disbanding of soviets, the imposition of "one-man management"
onto the workers in production, the turning of the unions
into agents of the state/party and the elimination of working
class freedom by party power? After all, if the congresses
of soviets were "more democratic" than anything in the "best
democratic republics of the bourgeois world," the Bolsheviks
would have no need for non-Party conferences "to be able to
watch the mood of the masses, to come closer to them, to
respond to their demands." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and p. 32] How
the Bolsheviks "responded" to these conferences and their
demands is extremely significant. They disbanded them. This
was because "[d]uring the disturbances" of late 1920, "they
provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik
policies." Their frequency was decreased and they "were
discontinued soon afterward." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet
Communists in Power, p. 203]
At the Comintern congress itself, Zinoviev announced that
"the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time
the dictatorship of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and
Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 152]
Trotsky, for his part, also universalised Lenin's argument
when he pondered the important decisions of the revolution
and who would make them in his reply to the anarchist delegate
from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT:
As is obvious, Trotsky was drawing general lessons for the
international revolutionary movement. Needless to say, he
still argued that the "working class, represented and led
by the Communist Party, [was] in power here" in spite of it
being "an amorphous, chaotic mass" which did not make any
decisions on important questions affecting the revolution!
Incidentally, his and Lenin's comments of 1920 disprove
Trotsky's later assertion that it was "[o]nly after the
conquest of power, the end of the civil war, and the
establishment of a stable regime" when "the Central
Committee little by little begin to concentrate the
leadership of Soviet activity in its hands. Then would
come Stalin's turn." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 328] While it
was definitely the "conquest of power" by the Bolsheviks
which lead to the marginalisation of the soviets, this
event cannot be shunted to after the civil war as Trotsky
would like (particularly as Trotsky admitted that "[a]fter
eight months of inertia and of democratic chaos, came the
dictatorship of the Bolsheviks." [Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 242]).
We must note (see sections
H.1.2 or
H.3.8) Trotsky argued
for the "objective necessity" of the "revolutionary
dictatorship of a proletarian party" until his death.
Clearly, the claim that Leninism (and its various off-shoots
like Trotskyism) is "socialism from below" is hard to take
seriously. As proven above, the Leninist tradition is explicitly
against the idea of "only from below," with Lenin explicitly
stating that it was an "anarchist stand" to be for "'action
only from below', not 'from below and from above'" which was
the position of Marxism. [Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 77]
Once in power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks implemented this vision
of "from below and from above," with the highly unsurprising
result that "from above" quickly repressed "from below" (which
was dismissed as "wavering" by the masses). This was to be
expected, for a government to enforce its laws, it has to have
power over its citizens and so socialism "from above" is a
necessary side-effect of Leninist theory.
Ironically, Lenin's argument in State and Revolution comes
back to haunt him. In that work he had argued that the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" meant "democracy for the
people" which "imposes a series of restrictions on the
freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists."
These must be crushed "in order to free humanity from
wage-slavery; their resistance must be broken by force;
it is clear that where there is suppression there is also
violence, there is no freedom, no democracy." [Essential
Works of Lenin, pp. 337-8] If the working class itself
is being subject to "suppression" then, clearly, there
is "no freedom, no democracy" for that class -- and the
people "will feel no better if the stick with which they
are being beaten is labelled 'the people's stick'."
[Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 338]
Thus, when Leninists argue that they stand for the "principles
of socialism from below" and state that this means the direct
and democratic control of society by the working class then,
clearly, they are being less than honest. Looking at the
tradition they place themselves, the obvious conclusion which
must be reached is that Leninism is not based on "socialism
from below" in the sense of working class self-management of
society (i.e. the only condition when the majority can "rule"
and decisions truly flow from below upwards). At best, they
subscribe to the distinctly bourgeois vision of "democracy"
as being simply the majority designating (and trying to
control) its rulers. At worse, they defend politics which
have eliminated even this form of democracy in favour of
party dictatorship and "one-man management" armed with
"dictatorial" powers in industry (most members of such parties
do not know how the Bolsheviks gerrymandered and disbanded
soviets to maintain power, raised the dictatorship of the
party to an ideological truism and wholeheartedly advocated
"one-man management" rather than workers' self-management of
production). As we discuss in
section H.5, this latter
position flows easily from the underlying assumptions of
vanguardism which Leninism is based on.
So, Lenin, Trotsky and so on simply cannot be considered as
exponents of "socialism from below." Any one who makes such a
claim is either ignorant of the actual ideas and practice of
Bolshevism or they seek to deceive. For anarchists, "socialism
from below" can only be another name, like libertarian socialism,
for anarchism (as Lenin, ironically enough, acknowledged). This
does not mean that "socialism from below," like "libertarian
socialism," is identical to anarchism, it simply means that
libertarian Marxists and other socialists are far closer to
anarchism than mainstream Marxism.
No, far from it. While it is impossible to quote everything
a person or an ideology says, it is possible to summarise
those aspects of a theory which influenced the way it
developed in practice. As such, any account is "selective"
in some sense, the question is whether this results in a
critiqued rooted in the ideology and its practice or whether
it presents a picture at odds with both. As Maurice Brinton
puts it in the introduction to his classic account of workers'
control in the Russian Revolution:
Hence the need to discuss all aspects of Marxism rather than
take what its adherents like to claim for it as granted. In
this, we agree with Marx himself who argued that we cannot
judge people by what they say about themselves but rather what
they do. Unfortunately while many self-proclaimed Marxists
(like Trotsky) may quote these comments, fewer apply them
to their own ideology or actions (again, like Trotsky).
This can be seen from the almost ritualistic way many Marxists
response to anarchist (or other) criticisms of their ideas.
When they complain that anarchists "selectively" quote from
the leading proponents of Marxism, they are usually at pains
to point people to some document which they have selected
as being more "representative" of their tradition. Leninists
usually point to Lenin's State and Revolution, for example,
for a vision of what Lenin "really" wanted. To this anarchists
reply by, as we discussed in section H.1.7
(Haven't you read
Lenin's "State and Revolution"?), pointing out that much of
that passes for 'Marxism' in State and Revolution is anarchist
and, equally important, it was not applied in practice. This
explains an apparent contradiction. Leninists point to the
Russian Revolution as evidence for the democratic nature of
their politics. Anarchists point to it as evidence of Leninism's
authoritarian nature. Both can do this because there is a
substantial difference between Bolshevism before it took power
and afterwards. While the Leninists ask you to judge them by
their manifesto, anarchists say judge them by their record!
Simply put, Marxists quote selectively from their own
tradition, ignoring those aspects of it which would be
unappealing to potential recruits. While the leaders may
know their tradition has skeletons in its closet, they
try their best to ensure no one else gets to know. Which,
of course, explains their hostility to anarchists doing so!
That there is a deep divide between aspects of Marxist
rhetoric and its practice and that even its rhetoric is
not consistent we will now prove. By so doing, we can show
that anarchists do not, in fact, quote Marxist's "selectively."
As an example, we can point to the leading Bolshevik Grigorii
Zinoviev. In 1920, as head of the Communist International he
wrote a letter to the Industrial Workers of the World, a
revolutionary labour union, which stated that the "Russian
Soviet Republic. . . is the most highly centralised government
that exists. It is also the most democratic government in
history. For all the organs of government are in constant
touch with the working masses, and constantly sensitive to
their will." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress
1920, vol. 2, p. 928] The same year, he explained in a
Communist journal that "soviet rule in Russia could not
have been maintained for three years -- not even three weeks
-- without the iron dictatorship of the Communist Party. Any
class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship
of the working class can by achieved only by the dictatorship
of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All
questions . . ., on which the fate of the proletarian
revolution depends absolutely, are decided . . . in the
framework of the party organisations." [quoted by Oskar
Anweiler, The Soviets, pp. 239-40] It seems redundant to
note that the second quote is the accurate one, the one
which matches the reality of Bolshevik Russia. Therefore
it is hardly "selective" to quote the latter and not the
former, rather it expresses what was actually happening.
This duality and the divergence between practice and rhetoric
comes to the fore when Trotskyists discuss Stalinism and try
to counter pose the Leninist tradition to it. For example,
we find the British SWP's Chris Harman arguing that the "whole
experience of the workers' movement internationally teaches
that only by regular elections, combined with the right of
recall by shop-floor meetings can rank-and-file delegates be
made really responsible to those who elect them." [Bureaucracy
and Revolution in Eastern Europe, pp. 238-9] Significantly,
Harman does not mention that both Lenin and Trotsky rejected
this experience (see
section H.3.8 for a full discussion on
how Leninism argues for state power explicitly to eliminate
such control from below). How can Trotsky's comment that the
"revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is . . .
an objective necessity" be reconciled with it? And what of
the claim that the "revolutionary party (vanguard) which
renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the
counter-revolution"? [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4] Or his
similar argument sixteen years earlier that the Party was
"entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship
clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy"?
[quoted by Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78]
The ironies do not stop there, of course. Harman correctly notes
that under Stalinism, the "bureaucracy is characterised, like the
private capitalist class in the West, by its control over the
means of production." [Op. Cit., p. 147] However, he fails to
note that it was Lenin, in early 1918, who had raised and then
implemented such "control" in the form of "one-man management."
As he put it: "Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that,
during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of
the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions,
vested with dictatorial powers." [Six Theses on the Immediate
Tasks of the Soviet Government, p. 44] To fail to note this
link between Lenin and the Stalinist bureaucracy on this issue
is quoting "selectively."
The contradictions pile up. He argues that "people who seriously
believe that workers at the height of revolution need a police
guard to stop them handing their factories over to capitalists
certainly have no real faith in the possibilities of a socialist
future." [Op. Cit., p. 144] Yet this does not stop him praising
the regime of Lenin and Trotsky and contrasting it with Stalinism,
in spite of the fact that this was precisely what the Bolsheviks
did from 1918 onwards! Indeed this tyrannical practice played a
role in provoking the strikes in Petrograd which preceded the
Kronstadt revolt in 1921, when "the workers wanted the special
squads of armed Bolsheviks, who carried out a purely police
function, withdrawn from the factories." Paul Avrich, Kronstadt
1921, p. 42] It seems equally strange that Harman denounces
the Stalinist suppression of the Hungarian revolution for
workers' democracy and socialism while he defends the Bolshevik
suppression of the Kronstadt revolt for the same goals (and
as we discuss in "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?",
the rationales both regimes used
to justify their actions were akin).
Similarly, when Harman argues that if by "political party" it
is "meant a party of the usual sort, in which a few leaders
give orders and the masses merely obey . . . then certainly
such organisations added nothing to the Hungarian revolution."
However, as we discuss in
section H.5, such a party
was precisely what Leninism argued for and applied in
practice. Simply put, the Bolsheviks were never a party "that
stood for the councils taking power." [Op. Cit., p. 186
and p. 187] As Lenin repeatedly stressed, its aim was for
the Bolshevik party to take power through the councils
(see section H.3.11).
This confusion between what was promised and what was done
is a common feature of Leninism. Felix Morrow, for example,
wrote what is usually considered the definitive Trotskyist
work on the Spanish Revolution (in spite of it being, as we
discuss in the appendix "Marxists and Spanish Anarchism,"
deeply flawed). In that work he states that the "essential
points of a revolutionary program [are] all power to the
working class, and democratic organs of the workers,
peasants and combatants, as the expression of the workers'
power." [Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, p. 133]
How this can be reconciled with Trotsky's comment, written
in the same year, that "a revolutionary party, even after
seizing power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler
of society."? Or the opinion that it was "only thanks to
the party dictatorship [that] were the Soviets able to lift
themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the
state form of the proletariat"? [Stalinism and Bolshevism]
Or Lenin's
opinion that "an organisation taking in the whole proletariat
cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship" and that
it "can be exercised only by a vanguard"? [Collected Works,
vol. 32, p. 21] How can the working class "have all power"
if power is held by a vanguard party? Particularly when this
party has power specifically to enable it "overcom[e] the
vacillation of the masses themselves." [Trotsky, The
Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59]
Given all this, who is quoting who "selectively"? The Marxists
who ignore what the Bolsheviks did when in power and repeatedly
point to Lenin's State and Revolution or the anarchists who
link what they did with what they said outside of that holy text?
Considering this absolutely contradictory inheritance, anarchists
feel entitled to ask the question "Will the real Leninist please
stand up?" What is it to be, popular democracy or party rule? If
we look at Bolshevik practice, the answer is the latter. As we
discuss in
section H.3.8,
the likes of Lenin and Trotsky concur,
incorporating the necessity of party power into their ideology
as a lesson of the revolution. As such, anarchists do not feel
they are quoting Leninism "selectively" when they argue that it
is based on party power, not working class self-management. That
Leninists often publicly deny this aspect of their own ideology
or, at best, try to rationalise and justify it, suggests that
when push comes to shove (as it does in every revolution) they
will make the same decisions and act in the same way!
In addition there is the question of what could be called the
"social context." Marxists often accuse anarchists of failing
to place the quotations and actions of, say, the Bolsheviks
into the circumstances which generated them. By this they mean
that Bolshevik authoritarianism can be explained purely in
terms of the massive problems facing them (i.e. the rigours
of the Civil War, the economic collapse and chaos in Russia
and so on). As we discuss this question in
"What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?", we
will simply summarise the anarchist reply by noting that this
argument has three major problems with it. Firstly, there is
the problem that Bolshevik authoritarianism started before
the start of the Civil War (as we discuss in
the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?") and,
moreover, continued after its ends. As such, the Civil War
cannot be blamed. The second problem is simply that Lenin
continually stressed that civil war and economic chaos was
inevitable during a revolution. If Leninist politics cannot
handle the inevitable then they are to be avoided. Equally,
if Leninists blame what they should know is inevitable for
the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution it would suggest
their understanding of what revolution entails is deeply
flawed. The last problem is simply that the Bolsheviks did
not care. As Samuel Farber notes, "there is no evidence
indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik
leaders lamented the loss of workers' control or of
democracy in the soviets, or at least referred to these
losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with the replacement
of War Communism by NEP in 1921." [Before Stalinism, p. 44]
Hence the continuation (indeed, intensification) of Bolshevik
authoritarianism after their victory in the civil war. Given
this, it is significant that many of the quotes from Trotsky
given above date from the late 1930s. To argue, therefore,
that "social context" explains the politics and actions of
the Bolsheviks seems incredulous.
Lastly, it seems ironic that Marxists accuse anarchists of
quoting "selectively." After all, as proven in
section H.2,
this is exactly what Marxists do to anarchism! Indeed,
anarchists often make good propaganda out of such activity
by showing how selective their accounts are and how at odds
they are with want anarchism actually stands for and what
anarchists actually do (see the appendix of our FAQ on
"Anarchism and Marxism").
In summary, rather than quote "selectively" from the works
and practice of Marxism, anarchists summarise those tendencies
of both which, we argue, contribute to its continual failure in
practice as a revolutionary theory. Moreover, Marxists themselves
are equally as "selective" as anarchists in this respect. Firstly,
as regards anarchist theory and practice and, secondly, as regards
their own.
As is obvious in any account of the history of socialism,
Marxists (of various schools) have appropriated key anarchist
ideas and (often) present them as if Marxists thought of them
first.
For example, as we discuss in
section H.3.10, it was anarchists
who first raised the idea of smashing the bourgeois state and
replacing it with the fighting organisations of the working
class (such as unions, workers' councils, etc.). It was only
in 1917, decades after anarchists had first raised the idea,
that Marxists started to argue these ideas but, of course,
with a twist. While anarchists meant that working class
organisations would be the basis of a free society, Lenin
saw these organs as the best means of achieving Bolshevik
party power.
Similarly with the libertarian idea of the "militant
minority." By this, anarchists and syndicalists meant
groups of workers who gave an example by their direct
action which their fellow workers could imitate (for
example by leading wildcat strikes which would use
flying pickets to get other workers to join in). This
"militant minority" would be at the forefront of social
struggle and would show, by example, practice and
discussion, that their ideas and tactics were the
correct ones. After the Russian Revolution of 1917,
Bolsheviks argued that this idea was similar to their
idea of a vanguard party. This ignored two key differences.
Firstly that the libertarian "militant minority" did not
aim to take power on behalf of the working class but
rather to encourage it, by example, to manage its own
struggles and affairs (and, ultimately, society).
Secondly, that "vanguard parties" are organised in
hierarchical ways alien to the spirit of anarchism. While
both the "militant minority" and "vanguard party" approaches
are based on an appreciation of the uneven development of
ideas within the working class, vanguardism transforms this
into a justification for party rule over the working class
by a so-called "advanced" minority (see
section H.5 for a
full discussion). Other concepts, such as "workers' control,"
direct action, and so on have suffered a similar fate.
As such, while Marxists have appropriated certain anarchist
concepts, it does not mean that they mean exactly the same
thing by them. Rather, as history shows, radically different
concepts can be hidden behind similar sounding rhetoric. As
Murray Bookchin argued, many Marxist tendencies "attach
basically alien ideas to the withering conceptual framework
of Marxism -- not to say anything new but to preserve
something old with ideological formaldehyde -- to the
detriment of any intellectual growth that the distinctions
are designed to foster. This is mystification at its worst,
for it not only corrupts ideas but the very capacity of the
mind to deal with them. If Marx's work can be rescued for
our time, it will be by dealing with it as an invaluable
part of the development of ideas, not as pastiche that is
legitimated as a 'method' or continually 'updated' by
concepts that come from an alien zone of ideas." [Toward
an Ecological Society, p. 242f]
This is not some academic point. The ramifications of Marxists
appropriating such "alien ideas" (or, more correctly, the
rhetoric associated with those ideas) has had negative impacts
on actual revolutionary movements. For example, Lenin's
definition of "workers' control" was radically different than
that current in the factory committee movement during the
Russian Revolution (which had more in common with anarchist
and syndicalist use of the term). The similarities in rhetoric,
allowed the factory committee movement to put its weight behind
the Bolsheviks. Once in power, Lenin's position was implemented
while that of the factory committees was ignored. Ultimately,
Lenin's position was a key factor in creating state capitalism
rather than socialism in Russia (see
section H.3.14 for more
details).
This, of course, does not stop modern day Leninists appropriating
the term workers' control "without bating an eyelid. Seeking to
capitalise on the confusion of now rampant in the movement, these
people talk of 'workers' control' as if a) they meant by those
words what the politically unsophisticated mean (i.e. that working
people should themselves decide about the fundamental matters
relating to production) and b) as if they -- and the Leninist
doctrine to which they claim to adhere -- had always supported
demands of this kind, or as if Leninism had always seen in workers'
control the universally valid foundation of a new social order,
rather than just a slogan to be used for manipulatory purposes
in specific and very limited historical contexts." [Maurice
Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. iv]
Section H.3.14 discusses this further.
Thus the fact that Leninists have appropriated libertarian (and
working class) ideas and demands does not, in fact, mean that we
aim for the same thing (as we discuss in
section H.3.1, this is
far from the case). The use of anarchist/popular rhetoric and
slogans means little and we need to look at the content of the
ideas proposed. Given the legacy of the appropriation of
libertarian terminology to popularise authoritarian parties and
its subsequent jettison in favour of authoritarian policies once
the party is in power, anarchists have strong grounds to take
Leninist claims with a large pinch of salt!
Equally with examples of actual revolutions. As Martin Buber
notes, while "Lenin praises Marx for having 'not yet, in
1852, put the concrete question as to what should be set up
in place of the State machinery after it had been abolished,'"
Lenin argued that "it was only the Paris Commune that taught
Marx this." However, as Buber correctly points out, the Paris
Commune "was the realisation of the thoughts of people who had
put this question very concretely indeed . . . the historical
experience of the Commune became possible only because in the
hearts of passionate revolutionaries there lived the picture of
a decentralised, very much 'de-Stated' society, which picture
they undertook to translate into reality. The spiritual fathers
of the Commune had such that ideal aiming at decentralisation
which Marx and Engels did not have, and the leaders of the
Revolution of 1871 tried, albeit with inadequate powers, to
begin the realisation of that idea in the midst of revolution."
[Paths in Utopia, pp. 103-4] Thus, while the Paris Commune
and other working class revolts are praised, their obvious
anarchistic elements (as predicted by anarchist thinkers)
are not mentioned. This results in some strange dichotomies.
For example, Bakunin's vision of revolution is based on
a federation of workers' councils, predating Marxist support
for such bodies by decades, yet Marxists argue that Bakunin's
ideas have nothing to teach us. Or, the Paris Commune being
praised by Marxists as the first "dictatorship of the
proletariat" when it implements federalism, delegates being
subjected to mandates and recall and raises the vision of a
socialism of associations while anarchism is labelled
"petit-bourgeois" in spite of the fact that these ideas can
be found in works of Proudhon and Bakunin which predate the
1871 revolt!
From this, we can draw two facts. Firstly, anarchism has
successfully predicted certain aspects of working class
revolution. Anarchist K.J. Kenafick stated the obvious when
he argues that any "comparison will show that the programme
set out [by the Paris Commune] is . . . the system of Federalism,
which Bakunin had been advocating for years, and which had first
been enunciated by Proudhon. The Proudhonists . . . exercised
considerable influence in the Commune. This 'political form'
was therefore not 'at last' discovered; it had been discovered
years ago; and now it was proven to be correct by the very fact
that in the crisis the Paris workers adopted it almost
automatically, under the pressure of circumstance, rather
than as the result of theory, as being the form most suitable
to express working class aspirations." [Michael Bakunin and
Karl Marx, pp. 212-3] Thus, rather than being somehow alien
to the working class and its struggle for freedom, anarchism
in fact bases itself on the class struggle. This means that
it should come as no surprise when the ideas of anarchism are
developed and applied by those in struggle, for those ideas
are just generalisations derived from past working class
struggles! If anarchism ideas are applied spontaneously by
those in struggle, it is because those involved are themselves
drawing similar conclusions from their own experiences.
The other fact is that while mainstream Marxism often appropriated
certain aspects of libertarian theory and practice, it does
so selectively and places them into an authoritarian context
which undermines their libertarian nature. Hence anarchist
support for workers councils becomes transformed into a means
to ensure party power (i.e. state authority) rather than working
class power or self-management (i.e. no authority). Similarly,
anarchist support for leading by example becomes transformed
into support for party rule (and often dictatorship). Ultimately,
the practice of mainstream Marxism shows that libertarian ideas
cannot be transplanted selectively into an authoritarian ideology
and be expected to blossom. Significantly, those Marxists who do
apply anarchist ideas honestly are usually labelled by their
orthodox comrades as "anarchists."
As an example of Marxists appropriating libertarian ideas
honestly, we can point to the council communist and currents
within autonomist Marxism. The council communists broke with
the Bolsheviks over the question of whether the party would
exercise power or whether the workers' councils would. Needless
to say, Lenin labelled them an "anarchist deviation." Currents
within Autonomist Marxism have built upon the council communist
tradition, stressing the importance of focusing analysis on
working class struggle as the key dynamic in capitalist society.
In this they go against the mainstream Marxist orthodoxy and
embrace a libertarian perspective. As libertarian socialist
Cornelius Castoriadis argued, "the economic theory expounded
[by Marx] in Capital is based on the postulate that capitalism
has managed completely and effectively to transform the worker --
who only appears there only as labour power -- into a commodity;
therefore the use value of labour power -- the use the capitalist
makes of it -- is, as for any commodity, completely determined
by the use, since its exchange value -- wages -- is determined
solely by the laws of the market . . . This postulate is
necessary for there to be a 'science of economics' along the
physico-mathematical model Marx followed . . . But he contradicts
the most essential fact of capitalism, namely, that the use value
and exchange value of labour power are objectively indeterminate;
they are determined rather by the struggle between labour and
capital both in production and in society. Here is the ultimate
root of the 'objective' contradictions of capitalism . . . The
paradox is that Marx, the 'inventor' of class struggle, wrote a
monumental work on phenomena determined by this struggle in which
the struggle itself was entirely absent." [Political and Social
Writings, vol. 2, p. 203] Castoriadis explained the limitations
of Marx's vision most famously in his "Modern Capitalism and
Revolution." [Op. Cit., pp. 226-343]
By rejecting this heritage which mainstream Marxism bases itself
on and stressing the role of class struggle, Autonomist Marxism
breaks decisively with the Marxist mainstream and embraces a
position previously associated with anarchists and other libertarian
socialists. The key role of class struggle in invalidating all
deterministic economic "laws" was expressed by French syndicalists
at the start of the twentieth century. This insight predated the
work of Castoriadis and the development of Autonomist Marxism by
over 50 years and is worth quoting at length:
"By way of evidence of the relentless operation of this law
of wages, comparisons were made between the worker and a
commodity: if there is a glut of potatoes on the market,
they are cheap; if they are scarce, the price rises . . . It
is the same with the working man, it was said: his wages
fluctuate in accordance with the plentiful supply or dearth
of labour!
"No voice was raised against the relentless arguments of this
absurd reasoning: so the law of wages may be taken as right
. . . for as long as the working man [or woman] is content to
be a commodity! For as long as, like a sack of potatoes, she
remains passive and inert and endures the fluctuations of the
market . . . For as long as he bends his back and puts up with
all of the bosses' snubs, . . . the law of wages obtains.
"But things take a different turn the moment that a glimmer of
consciousness stirs this worker-potato into life. When, instead
off dooming himself to inertia, spinelessness, resignation and
passivity, the worker wakes up to his worth as a human being
and the spirit of revolt washes over him: when he bestirs himself,
energetic, wilful and active . . . [and] once the labour bloc
comes to life and bestirs itself . . . then, the laughable
equilibrium of the law of wages is undone." [Emile Pouget,
Direct Action]
And Marx, indeed, had compared the worker to a commodity,
stating that labour power "is a commodity, neither more
nor less than sugar. The former is measured by the clock,
the latter by the scale." [Marx-Engels Selected Works,
p. 72] However, as Castoridas argued, unlike sugar the
extraction of the use value of labour power "is not a
technical operation; it is a process of bitter struggle
in which half the time, so to speak, the capitalists
turn out to be losers." [Op. Cit., p. 248] A fact which
Pouget stressed in his critique of the mainstream
socialist position:
"Thus, worker cohesion conjures up against capitalist might a
might capable of standing up to it. The inequality between the
two adversaries -- which cannot be denied when the exploiter is
confronted only by the working man on his own -- is redressed in
proportion with the degree of cohesion achieved by the labour
bloc. From then on, proletarian resistance, be it latent or
acute, is an everyday phenomenon: disputes between labour and
capital quicken and become more acute. Labour does not always
emerge victorious from these partial struggles: however, even
when defeated, the struggle workers still reap some benefit:
resistance from them has obstructed pressure from the employers
and often forced the employer to grant some of the demands put."
[Op. Cit.]
The best currents of autonomist Marxism share this anarchist
stress on the power of working people to transform society
and to impact on how capitalism operates. Unsurprisingly,
most autonomist Marxists reject the idea of the vanguard
party and instead, like the council communists, stress the
need for autonomist working class self-organisation and
self-activity (hence the name!). They agree with Pouget
when he argued that "Direct action spells liberation for the
masses of humanity . . . [It] puts paid to the age of miracles
-- miracles from Heaven, miracles from the State -- and, in
contraposition to hopes vested in 'providence' (no matter
what they may be) it announces that it will act upon the
maxim: salvation lies within ourselves!" [Op. Cit.] As such,
they draw upon anarchistic ideas and rhetoric (for many,
undoubtedly unknowingly) and draw anarchistic conclusions.
This can be seen from the works of the leading US Autonomist
Marxist Harry Cleaver. His excellent essay "Kropotkin,
Self-Valorisation and the Crisis of Marxism" is by far the
best Marxist account of Kropotkin's ideas and shows the
similarities between communist-anarchism and autonomist
Marxism. [Anarchist Studies, vol.2 , no. 2, pp. 119-36]
Both, he points out, share a "common perception and sympathy
for the power of workers to act autonomously" regardless of
the "substantial differences" on other issues. [Reading
Capital Politically, p. 15]
As such, the links between the best Marxists and anarchism
can be substantial. This means that some Marxists have taken
on board many anarchist ideas and have forged a version of
Marxism which is basically libertarian in nature. Unfortunately,
such forms of Marxism have always been a minority current
within it. Most cases have seen the appropriation of anarchist
ideas by Marxists simply as part of an attempt to make mainstream,
authoritarian Marxism more appealing and such borrowings have
been quickly forgotten once power has been seized.
Therefore appropriation of rhetoric and labels should not be
confused with similarity of goals and ideas. The list of groupings
which have used inappropriate labels to associate their ideas
with other, more appealing, ones is lengthy. Content is what
counts. If libertarian sounding ideas are being raised, the
question becomes one of whether they are being used simply
to gain influence or whether they signify a change of heart.
As Bookchin argues:
Unless we know exactly what we aim for, how to get there and
who our real allies are we will get a nasty surprise once
our self-proclaimed "allies" take power. As such, any attempt
to appropriate anarchist rhetoric into an authoritarian ideology
will simply fail and become little more than a mask obscuring
the real aims of the party in question. As history shows.
Some Marxists will dismiss our arguments, and anarchism, out
of hand. This is because anarchism has not lead a "successful"
revolution while Marxism has. The fact, they assert, that
there has never been a serious anarchist revolutionary
movement, let alone an anarchist revolution, in the whole
of history proves that Marxism works. For some Marxists,
practice determines validity. Whether something is true
or not is not decided intellectually in wordy publications
and debates, but in reality.
For Anarchists, such arguments simply show the ideological
nature of most forms of Marxism. The fact is, of course,
that there has been many anarchistic revolutions which,
while ultimately defeated, show the validity of anarchist
theory (the ones in Spain and in the Ukraine being the
most significant). Moreover, there have been serious
revolutionary anarchist movements across the world, the
majority of them crushed by state repression (usually
fascist or communist based). However, this is not the most
important issue, which is the fate of these "successful"
Marxist movements and revolution. The fact that there has
never been a "Marxist" revolution which has not become a
party dictatorship proves the need to critique Marxism.
So, given that Marxists argue that Marxism is the
revolutionary working class political theory, its actual
track record has been appalling. After all, while many
Marxist parties have taken part in revolutions and even
seized power, the net effect of their "success" have been
societies bearing little or no relationship to socialism.
Rather, the net effect of these revolutions has been to
discredit socialism by associating it with one-party
states presiding over state capitalist economies.
Equally, the role of Marxism in the labour movement has
also been less than successful. Looking at the first
Marxist movement, social democracy, it ended by becoming
reformist, betraying socialist ideas by (almost always)
supporting their own state during the First World War
and going so far as crushing the German revolution and
betraying the Italian factory occupations in 1920. Indeed,
Trotsky stated that the Bolshevik party was "the only
revolutionary" section of the Second International,
which is a damning indictment of Marxism. [Stalin,
vol. 1, p. 248] Just as damning is the fact that neither
Lenin or Trotsky noticed it! Indeed, Lenin praised the
"fundamentals of parliamentary tactics" of German and
International Social Democracy, expressing the opinion
that they were "at the same time implacable on questions
of principle and always directed to the accomplishment of
the final aim" in his obituary of August Bebel in 1913!
[Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 248] For those that way inclined, some amusement can be
gathered comparing Engels glowing predictions for these
parties and their actual performance (in the case of Spain
and Italy, his comments seem particularly ironic).
As regards Bolshevism itself, the one "revolutionary" party
in the world, it avoided the fate of its sister parties
simply because there no question of applying social
democratic tactics within bourgeois institutions as
these did not exist. Moreover, the net result of its
seizure of power was, first, a party dictatorship and
state capitalism under Lenin, then the creation of
Stalinism and a host of Trotskyist sects who spend a
considerable amount of time justifying and rationalising
the ideology and actions of the Bolsheviks which helped
create the Stalinism (see the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"
for a discussion).
Clearly, a key myth of Marxism is the idea that it has been
a successful movement. In reality, its failures have been
consistent and devastating so suggesting its time to
re-evaluate the whole ideology and embrace a revolutionary
theory like anarchism. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration
to argue that every "success" of Marxism has, in fact, proved
that the anarchist critique of Marxism was correct. Thus, as
Bakunin predicted, the Social-Democratic parties became
reformist and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" became
the "dictatorship over the proletariat." With "victories"
like these, Marxism does not need failures! Thus Murray
Bookchin:
Hence the overwhelming need to critically evaluate Marxist
ideas and history (such as the Russian Revolution -- see
the appendix on "The Russian Revolution"). Unless we honestly discuss and
evaluate all aspects of revolutionary ideas, we will never
be able to build a positive and constructive revolutionary
movement. By seeking the roots of Marxism's problems, we
can enrich anarchism by avoiding possible pitfalls and
recognising and building upon its strengths (i.e. where
anarchists have identified, however incompletely, problems
in Marxism which bear on revolutionary ideas, practice and
transformation).
If this is done, anarchists are sure that Marxist claims
that Marxism is the revolutionary theory will be exposed
for the baseless rhetoric they are.
For anarchists, the idea that a state (any state) can be
used for socialist ends is simply ridiculous. This is
because of the nature of the state as an instrument of
minority class rule. As such, it precludes the mass
participation required for socialism and would create
a new form of class society.
As we discussed in section B.2, the state is defined
by certain characteristics (most importantly, the
centralisation of power into the hands of a few).
Thus, for anarchists, "the word 'State' . . .
should be reserved for those societies with the
hierarchical system and centralisation." [Peter
Kropotkin, Ethics, p. 317f] This defining feature
of the state has not come about by chance. As Kropotkin
argued in his classic history of the state, "a social
institution cannot lend itself to all the desired
goals, since, as with every organ, [the state] developed
according to the function it performed, in a definite
direction and not in all possible directions." This
means, by "seeing the State as it has been in history,
and as it is in essence today" the conclusion anarchists
"arrive at is for the abolition of the State." Thus the
state has "developed in the history of human societies
to prevent the direct association among men [and women]
to shackle the development of local and individual
initiative, to crush existing liberties, to prevent their
new blossoming -- all this in order to subject the masses
to the will of minorities." [The State: Its Historic Role,
p. 56]
So if the state, as Kropotkin stresses, is defined by "the
existence of a power situated above society, but also of a
territorial concentration as well as the concentration
in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of
societies" then such a structure has not evolved by chance.
Therefore "the pyramidal organisation which is the essence
of the State" simply "cannot lend itself to a function
opposed to the one for which it was developed in the
course of history," such as the popular participation from
below required by social revolution and socialism. [Op. Cit.,
p. 10, p. 59 and p. 56] Based on this evolutionary analysis
of the state, Kropotkin, like all anarchists, drew the
conclusion "that the State organisation, having been the
force to which the minorities resorted for establishing
and organising their power over the masses, cannot be the
force which will serve to destroy these privileges."
[Evolution and Environment, p. 82]
This does not mean that anarchists dismiss differences
between types of state, think the state has not changed
over time or refuse to see that different states exist
to defend different ruling minorities. Far from it.
Anarchists argue that "[e]very economic phase has a
political phase corresponding to it, and it would be
impossible to touch private property unless a new mode
of political life be found at the same time." "A society
founded on serfdom," Kropotkin explained, "is in keeping
with absolute monarchy; a society based on the wage system,
and the exploitation of the masses by the capitalists
finds it political expression in parliamentarianism."
As such, the state form changes and evolves, but its
basic function (defender of minority rule) and structure
(delegated power into the hands of a few) remains.
Which means that "a free society regaining possession
of the common inheritance must seek, in free groups
and free federations of groups, a new organisation, in
harmony with the new economic phase of history."
[The Conquest of Bread, p. 54]
So, as with any social structure, the state has evolved to
ensure that it carries out its function. In other words, the
state is centralised because it is an instrument of minority
domination and oppression. Insofar as a social system is
based on decentralisation of power, popular self-management
and participation and free federation from below upwards,
it is not a state. If a social system is, however, marked
by delegated power and centralisation it is a state and
cannot be, therefore, a instrument of social liberation.
Rather it will become, slowly but surely, "whatever title
it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may
be" what the state has always been, a instrument for
"oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the
oppressors and the exploiters." [Anarchy, p. 20] Which,
for obvious reasons, is why anarchists argue for the
destruction of the state by a free federation of
self-managed communes and workers' councils (see
sections I.5 and
H.1.4 for further discussion).
This explains why anarchists reject the Marxist definition
and theory of the state. For Marxists, "the state is nothing
but a machine for the oppression of one class by another."
While it has been true that, historically, it is "the state
of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which,
through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically
dominant class, and this acquires the means of holding down
and exploiting the oppressed class," this need not always be
the case. The state is "at best an evil inherited by the
proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy,"
although it "cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much
as possible" of it "until such time as a generation reared
in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire
lumber of the state on the scrap heap." This new state,
often called the "dictatorship of the proletariat," would
slowly "wither away" (or "dies out") as classes disappear
and the state "at last . . . becomes the real representative
of the whole of society" and so "renders itself unnecessary."
Engels is at pains to differentiate this position from that
of the anarchists, who demand "the abolition of the state
out of hand." [Engels, Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 258,
pp. 577-8, p. 528 and p. 424]
For anarchists, this argument has deep flaws. Simply put,
unlike the anarchist one, this is not an empirically based
theory of the state. Rather, we find such a theory mixed up
with a metaphysical, non-empirical, a-historic definition
which is based not on what the state is but rather what is
could be. Thus the argument that the state "is nothing but
a machine for the oppression of one class by another" is
trying to draw out an abstract "essence" of the state rather
than ground what the state is on empirical evidence and
analysis. This perspective, anarchists argue, simply confuses
two very different things, namely the state and popular social
organisation, with potentially disastrous results. By calling
the popular self-organisation required by a social revolution
the same name as a hierarchical and centralised body constructed
for, and evolved to ensure, minority rule, the door is wide
open to confuse popular power with party power, to confuse
rule by the representatives of the working class with
working class self-management of the revolution and society.
As we discussed in
section H.2.1, anarchist opposition to
the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" should not
be confused with idea that anarchists do not think that a
social revolution needs to be defended. Rather, our opposition
to the concept rests on the confusion which inevitably occurs
when you mix up scientific analysis with metaphysical concepts.
By drawing out an a-historic definition of the state, Engels
helped ensure that the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
became the "dictatorship over the proletariat" by implying
that centralisation and delegated power into the hands of
the few can be considered as an expression of popular power.
To explain why, we need only to study the works of Engels
himself. Engels, in his famous account of the Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State, defined
the state as follows:
The state has two distinguishing features, firstly (and least
importantly) it "divides its subjects according to territory."
The second "is the establishment of a public power which
no longer directly coincides with the population organising
itself as an armed force. This special public power is necessary
because a self-acting armed organisation of the population
has become impossible since the split into classes . . . This
public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of
armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions
of coercion of all kinds." Thus "an essential feature of the
state is a public power distinct from the mass of the people."
[Op. Cit., pp. 576-7 and pp. 535-6]
In this, as can be seen, the Marxist position concurs with the
anarchist. He discusses the development of numerous ancient
societies to prove his point. Talking of Greek society, he
argues that it was based on a popular assembly which was
"sovereign" plus a council. This social system was not a
state because "when every adult male member of the tribe
was a warrior, there was as yet no public authority separated
from the people that could have been set up against it.
Primitive democracy was still in full bloom, and this must
remain the point of departure in judging power and the status
of the council." [Op. Cit., pp. 525-6]
Discussing the descent of this society into classes, he argues
that this required "an institution that would perpetuate, not
only the newly-rising class division of society, but the right
of the possessing class to exploit the non-possessing class and
the rule of the former over the latter." Unsurprisingly, "this
institution arrived. The state was invented." The original
communal organs of society were "superseded by real governmental
authorities" and the defence of society ("the actual 'people in
arms'") was "taken by an armed 'public power' at the service of
these authorities and, therefore, also available against the
people." With the rise of the state, the communal council was
"transformed into a senate." [Op. Cit., p. 528 and p. 525] Thus
the state arises specifically to exclude popular self-government,
replacing it with minority rule conducted via a centralised,
hierarchical top-down structure ("government . . . is the
natural protector of capitalism and other exploiters of popular
labour." [Bakunin, Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 239]).
This account of the rise of the state is at direct odds with
Engels argument that the state is simply an instrument of
class rule. For the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to
be a state, it would have to constitute a power above society,
be different from the people armed, and so be "a public power
distinct from the mass of the people." However, Marx and
Engels are at pains to stress that the "dictatorship of
the proletariat" will not be such a regime. However, how
can you have something (namely "a public power distinct
from the mass of the people") you consider as "an essential
feature" of a state missing in an institution you call the
same name? It is a bit like calling a mammal a "new kind
of reptile" in spite of the former not being cold-blooded,
something you consider as "an essential feature" of the
latter!
This contradiction helps explains Engels comments that
"[w]e would therefore propose to replace state everywhere
by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very
well convey the meaning of the French word 'commune'"
He even states that the Paris Commune "was no longer a
state in the proper sense of the word." However, this
comment does not mean that Engels sought to remove any
possible confusion on the matter, for he still talked
of "the state" as "only a transitional institution
which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to
hold down's one's adversaries by force . . . so long
as the proletariat still uses the state, it does
not use it the interests of freedom but in order to
hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes
possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases
to exist." [Op. Cit., p. 335] Thus the state would
still exist and, furthermore, is not identified with
the working class as a whole ("a self-acting armed
organisation of the population"), rather it is an
institution standing apart from the "people armed"
which is used, by the proletariat, to crush its enemies.
(As an aside, we must stress that to state that it only
becomes possible to "speak of freedom" after the state
and classes cease to exist is a serious theoretical
error. Firstly, it means to talk about "freedom" in the
abstract, ignoring the reality of class and hierarchical
society. To state the obvious, in class society working
class people have their freedom restricted by the state,
wage labour and other forms of social hierarchy. The
aim of social revolution is the conquest of liberty by the
working class by overthrowing hierarchical rule. Freedom
for the working class, by definition, means stopping
any attempts to restrict that freedom by its adversaries.
To state the obvious, it is not a "restriction" of the
freedom of would-be bosses to resist their attempts to
impose their rule! As such, Engels, yet again, fails to
consider revolution from a working class perspective --
see section H.4.7
for another example of this flaw.
Moreover his comments have been used to justify
restrictions on working class freedom, power and
political rights by Marxist parties once they have
seized power. "Whatever power the State gains," correctly
argues Bookchin, "it always does so at the expense of
popular power. Conversely, whatever power the people
gain, they always acquire at the expense of the State.
To legitimate State power, in effect, is to delegitimate
popular power." [Remaking Society, p. 160])
Elsewhere, we have Engels arguing that "the characteristic
attribute of the former state" is that while society
"had created its own organs to look after its own
special interests" in the course of time "these organs,
at whose head was the state power, transformed themselves
from the servants of society into the masters of society."
[Op. Cit., p. 257] Ignoring the obvious contradiction with
his earlier claims that the state and communal organs were
different, with the former destroying the latter, we are
struck yet again by the idea of the state as being defined
as an institution above society. Thus, if the post
revolutionary society is marked by "the state" being
dissolved into society, placed under its control, then it
is not a state. To call it a "new and truly democratic"
form of "state power" makes as little sense as calling a
motorcar a "new" form of bicycle. As such, when Engels
argues that the Paris Commune "was no longer a state in
the proper sense of the word" or that when the proletariat
seizes political power it "abolishes the state as state" we
may be entitled to ask what it is, a state or not a state.
[Op. Cit., p. 335 and p. 424] It cannot be both, it cannot
be a "public power distinct from the mass of the people"
and "a self-acting armed organisation of the population."
If it is the latter, then it does not have what Engels
considered as "an essential feature of the state" and
cannot be considered one. If it is the former, then any
claim that such a regime is the rule of the working class
is automatically invalidated. That Engels mocked the
anarchists for seeking a revolution "without a provisional
government and in the total absence of any state or
state-like institution, which are to be destroyed" we can
safely say that it is the former. [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 156] Given that
"primitive democracy," as Engels noted, defended itself
against its adversaries without such an institution shows
that to equate the defence of working class freedom with
the state is not only unnecessary, it simply leads to
confusion. For this reason anarchists do not confuse the
necessary task of defending and organising a social
revolution with creating a state.
Thus, the problem for Marxism is that the empirical definition
of the state collides with the metaphysical, the actual state
with its Marxist essence. As Italian Anarchist Camillo Berneri
argued, "'The Proletariat' which seizes the state, bestowing
on it the complete ownership of the means of production and
destroying itself as proletariat and the state 'as the state'
is a metaphysical fantasy, a political hypotasis of social
abstractions." ["The Abolition and Extinction of the State,"
Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 50]
This is no academic point, as we explain in the
next section
this confusion has been exploited to justify party power
over the proletariat. Thus, as Berneri argues, Marxists
"do not propose the armed conquest of the commune by the
whole proletariat, but they propose the conquest of the
State by the party which imagines it represents the
proletariat. The Anarchists allow the use of direct power
by the proletariat, but they understand by the organ of
this power to be formed by the entire corpus of systems
of communist administration -- corporate organisations
[i.e. industrial unions], communal institutions, both
regional and national -- freely constituted outside and
in opposition to all political monopoly by parties and
endeavouring to a minimum administrational centralisation."
Thus "the Anarchists desire the destruction of the classes
by means of a social revolution which eliminates, with the
classes, the State." ["Dictatorship of the Proletariat and
State Socialism", Op. Cit., p. 52] Anarchists are opposed
to the state because it is not neutral, it cannot be made
to serve our interests. The structures of the state are
only necessary when a minority seeks to rule over the
majority. We argue that the working class can create our
own structures, organised and run from below upwards, to
ensure the efficient running of everyday life.
By confusing two radically different things, Marxism
ensures that popular power is consumed and destroyed by
the state, by a new ruling elite. In the words Murray
Bookchin:
If power belongs to the state, then the state is a
public body distinct from the population and, therefore,
not an instrument of working class power. Rather, as an
institution designed to ensure minority rule, it would
ensure its position within society and become either the
ruling class itself or create a new class which instrument
it would be. As we discuss in section H.3.9 (
"Is the state
simply an agent of economic power?") the state cannot be
considered as a neutral instrument of class rule, it has
specific interests in itself which can and does mean it
can play an oppressive and exploitative role in society
independently of a ruling class.
Which brings us to the crux of the issue whether this
"new" state will, in fact, be unlike any other state
that has ever existed. Insofar as this "new" state is
based on popular self-management and self-organisation,
anarchists argue that such an organisation cannot be
called a state as it is not based on delegated power.
"As long as," as Bookchin stresses, "the institutions of
power consisted of armed workers and peasants as
distinguished from a professional bureaucracy, police
force, army, and cabal of politicians and judges, they
were no[t] a State . . . These institutions, in fact
comprised a revolutionary people in arms . . . not a
professional apparatus that could be regarded as a State
in any meaningful sense of the term." ["Looking Back at
Spain," pp. 53-96, The Radical Papers, p. 86]
This was why Bakunin was at pains to emphasis that a
"federal organisation, from below upward, of workers'
associations, groups, communes, districts, and
ultimately, regions and nations" could not be considered
as the same as "centralised states" and "contrary to
their essence." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 13] So
when Lenin argues in State and Revolution that
in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" the "organ
of suppression is now the majority of the population,
and not the minority" and that "since the majority of
the people itself suppresses its oppressors, a
'special force' for the suppression [of the bourgeoisie]
is no longer necessary" he is confusing two
fundamentally different things. As Engels made clear,
such a social system of "primitive democracy" is not a
state. However, when Lenin argues that "the more the
functions of state power devolve upon the people
generally, the less need is there for the existence
of this power," he is implicitly arguing that there
would be, in fact, a "public power distinct from mass
of the people" and so a state in the normal sense of
the word based on delegated power, "special forces"
separate from the armed people and so on. [Essential
Works of Lenin, p. 301]
That such a regime would not "wither away" has been proven
by history. The state machine does not (indeed, cannot)
represent the interests of the working classes due to its
centralised, hierarchical and elitist nature -- all it can
do is represent the interests of the party in power, its
own bureaucratic needs and privileges and slowly, but
surely, remove itself from popular control. This, as
anarchists have constantly stressed, is why the state
is based on the delegation of power, on hierarchy and
centralisation. The state is organised in this way to
facilitate minority rule by excluding the mass of people
from taking part in the decision making processes within
society. If the masses actually did manage society directly,
it would be impossible for a minority class to dominate it.
Hence the need for a state. Which shows the central fallacy
of the Marxist theory of the state, namely it argues that
the rule of the proletariat will be conducted by a structure,
the state, which is designed to exclude the popular
participation such a concept demands!
Considered another way, "political power" (the state) is
simply the power of minorities to enforce their wills. This
means that a social revolution which aims to create socialism
cannot use it to further its aims. After all, if the state
(i.e. "political power") has been created to further minority
class rule (as Marxists and anarchists agree) then, surely,
this function has determined how the organ which exercises
it has developed. Therefore, we would expect organ and
function to be related and impossible to separate.
So when Marx argued that the "conquest of political power
becomes the great duty of the proletariat" because "the lords
of the land and of capital always make use of their political
privileges to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies
and enslave labour," he drew the wrong conclusion. [Marx,
Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 85]
Building on a historically based (and so evolutionary)
understanding of the state, anarchists concluded that it
was necessary not to seize political power (which could
only be exercised by a minority within any state) but
rather to destroy it, to dissipate power into the hands of
the working class, the majority. By ending the regime of
the powerful by destroying their instrument of rule, the
power which was concentrated into their hands automatically
falls back into the hands of society. Thus, working class
power can only be concrete once "political power" is
shattered and replaced by the social power of the working
class based on its own class organisations (such as factory
committees, workers' councils, unions, neighbourhood
assemblies and so on). As Murray Bookchin put it:
In practice, this means that any valid social revolution needs
to break the new state and not replace it with another one.
This is because, in order to be a state, any state structure
must be based on delegated power, hierarchy and centralisation
("every State, even the most Republican and the most democratic
. . . . are in essence only machine governing the masses from
above" and "[i]f there is a State, there must necessarily be
domination, and therefore slavery; a State without slavery,
overt or concealed, is unthinkable -- and that is why we are
enemies of the State." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of
Bakunin, p. 211 and p. 287]). This means that if power is
devolved to the working class then the state no longer exists
as its "essential feature" (of delegated power) is absent.
What you have is a new form of the "primitive democracy"
which existed before the rise of the state. While this new,
modern, form of self-management will have to defend itself
against those seeking to recreate minority power, this does
not mean that it becomes a state. After all, "primitive
democracy" had to defend itself against its adversaries and
so that, in itself, does not (as Engels acknowledges) means
it is a state. Thus defence of a revolution, as anarchists
have constantly stressed, does not equate to a state as it
fails to address the key issue, namely who has power in
the system -- the masses or their leaders.
This issue is fudged by Marx. In his comments on Bakunin's
question in "Statism and Anarchy" about "Will the entire
proletariat head the government?", Marx argues in response:
As Alan Carter argues, "this might have seemed to Marx
[over] a century ago to be satisfactory rejoinder, but
it can hardly do today. In the infancy of the trade unions,
which is all Marx knew, the possibility of the executives
of a trade union becoming divorced from the ordinary members
may not have seemed to him to be a likely outcome, We,
however, have behind us a long history of union leaders
'selling out' and being out of touch with their members.
Time has ably demonstrated that to reject Bakunin's fears
on the basis of the practice of trade union officials
constitutes a woeful complacency with regard to power
and privilege -- a complacency that was born ample fruit
in the form of present Marxist parties and 'communist'
societies . . . [His] dispute with Bakunin shows quite
clearly that Marx did not stress the continued control
of the revolution by the mass of the people as a
prerequisite for the transcendence of all significant
social antagonisms." [Marx: A Radical Critique,
pp. 217-8]
As we discussed in
section H.3.1, Marx's "Address
to the Communist League," with its stress on "the most
determined centralisation of power in the hands of
the state authority" and that "the path of revolutionary
activity . . . can only proceed with full force from
the centre," suggests that Bakunin's fears were valid
and Marx's answer simply inadequate. [Marx-Engels
Reader, p. 509] Simply put, if, as Engels argues,
the "an essential feature of the state is a public
power distinct from the mass of the people," then,
clearly Marx's argument of 1850 (and others like it)
signifies a state in the usual sense of the word,
one which has to be "distinct" from the mass of the
population in order to ensure that the masses are
prevented from interfering with their own revolution.
Ultimately, the question, of course, is one of power. Does
the "executive committee" have the fundamental decision
making power in society, or does that power lie in
the mass assemblies upon which a federal socialist
society is built? If the former, we have rule by a
few party leaders and the inevitable bureaucratisation
of the society and a state in the accepted sense of the
word. If the latter, we have a basic structure of a free
and equal society and a new organisation of popular
self-management which eliminates, by self-management,
the existence of a public power above society. This is
not playing with words. It signifies the key issue of
social transformation, an issue which Marxism tends to
ignore or confuse matters about when discussing. Bookchin
clarifies what is at stake:
By confusing co-ordination with the state (i.e. with
delegation of power), Marxism opens the door wide open
to the "dictatorship of the proletariat" being a state
"in the proper sense." Not only does Marxism open that
door, it even invites the state "in the proper sense" of
the word in! This can be seen from Engels comment that
just as "each political party sets out to establish its
rule in the state, so the German Social-Democratic
Workers' Party is striving to establish its rule,
the rule of the working class." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, p. 94] By confusing
rule by the party "in the state" with "rule of the working
class," Engels is confusing party power and popular power.
For the party to "establish its rule," the state in
the normal sense (i.e. a structure based on the delegation
of power) has to be maintained. As such, the "dictatorship
of the proletariat" signifies the delegation of power by
the proletariat into the hands of the party and that
implies a "public power distinct from the mass of the
people" and so minority rule. This aspect of Marxism,
as we argue in the
next section, was developed under the
Bolsheviks and became "the dictatorship of the party" (i.e.
the dictatorship over the proletariat).
It is for this reason why anarchists are extremely critical
of Marxist ideas of social revolution. As Alan Carter argues:
In summary, the Marxist theory of the state is simply
a-historic and postulates some kind of state "essence"
which exists independently of actual states and their
role in society. To confuse the organ required by a
minority class to execute and maintain its rule and that
required by a majority class to manage society is to
make a theoretical error of great magnitude. It opens
the door to the idea of party power and even party
dictatorship. As such, the Marxism of Marx and Engels
is confused on the issue of the state. Their comments
fluctuate between the anarchist definition of the state
(based, as it is, on generalisations from historical
examples) and the a-historic definition (based not on
historical example but rather derived from a
supra-historical analysis). Trying to combine the
metaphysical with the scientific, the authoritarian
with the libertarian, can only leave their followers
with a confused legacy and that is what we find.
Since the death of the founding fathers of Marxism, their
followers have diverged into two camps. The majority have
embraced the metaphysical and authoritarian concept of the
state and proclaimed their support for a "workers' state."
This is represented by social-democracy and it radical
offshoot, Leninism. As we discuss in the
next section, this
school has used the Marxist conception of the state to allow
for rule over the working class by the "revolutionary" party.
The minority has become increasingly and explicitly anti-state,
recognising that the Marxist legacy is contradictory and that
for the proletarian to directly manage society then there can
be no power above them. To this camp belongs the libertarian
Marxists of the council communist, Situationist and other
schools of thought which are close to anarchism.
As discussed in the
last section, there is a contradiction at
the heart of the Marxist theory of the state. On the one hand,
it acknowledges that the state, historically, has always been
an instrument of minority rule and is structured to ensure
this. On the other, it argues that you can have a state (the
"dictatorship of the proletariat") which transcends this
historical reality to express an abstract essence of the
state as an "instrument of class rule." This means that Marxism
usually confuses two very different concepts, namely the state
(a structure based on centralisation and delegated power) and
the popular self-management and self-organisation required
to create and defend a socialist society.
This confusion between two fundamentally different concepts
proved to be disastrous when the Russian Revolution broke out.
Confusing party power with working class power, the Bolsheviks
aimed to create a "workers' state" in which their party would
be in power (see
section 5 of the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"). As the state was an instrument
of class rule, it did not matter if the new "workers' state"
was centralised, hierarchical and top-down like the old state
as the structure of the state was considered irrelevant in
evaluating its role in society. Thus, while Lenin seemed to
promise a radical democracy in which the working class would
directly manage its own affairs in his State and Revolution,
in practice implemented a "dictatorship of the proletariat"
which was, in fact, "the organisation of the vanguard of the
oppressed as the ruling class." [Essential Works of Lenin,
p. 337] In other words, the vanguard party in the position
of head of the state, governing on behalf of the working
class which, as we argued in the
last section, meant that
the new "workers' state" was fundamentally a state in the
usual sense of the word. This quickly lead to a dictatorship
over, not of, the proletariat (as Bakunin had predicted).
This development did not come as a surprise to anarchists,
who long argued that a state is an instrument of minority
rule and cannot change its nature. To use the state to affect
socialist change is impossible, simply because it is not
designed for such a task. As we argued in
section B.2,
the state is based on centralisation of power explicitly to
ensure minority rule and for this reason has to be abolished
during a social revolution.
Ironically, the theoretical lessons Leninists gained from
the experience of the Russian Revolution confirm the
anarchist analysis that the state structure exists to
facilitate minority rule and marginalise and disempower
the majority to achieve that rule. This can be seen from
the significant revision of the Marxist position which
occurred once the Bolshevik party become the ruling party.
Simply put, after 1917 leading representatives of Leninism
stressed that the idea that state power was not required
to repress resistance by the ex-ruling class as such, but,
in fact, was necessitated by the divisions within the
working class. In other words, state power was required
because the working class was not able to govern itself
and so required a grouping (the party) above it to ensure
the success of the revolution and overcome any "wavering"
within the masses themselves.
While we have discussed this position in
section H.1.2 and
so will be repeating ourselves to some degree, it is worth
summarising again the arguments put forward to justify this
revision. This is because they confirm what anarchists have
always argued, namely that the state is an instrument of
minority rule and not one by which working class people
can manage their own affairs directly. As the quotations
from leading Leninists make clear, it is precisely this
feature of the state which recommends it for party (i.e.
minority) power. In other words, the contradiction at the
heart of the Marxist theory of the state we pointed out in
the
last section
has been resolved in Leninism. It supports
the state precisely because it is "a public power distinct
from the mass of the people," rather than an instrument of
working class self-management of society.
Needless to say, latter day followers of Leninism point to
Lenin's apparently democratic, even libertarian sounding,
1917 work, The State and Revolution when asked about the
Leninist theory of the state. As our discussion of the Russian
revolution in the appendix "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"
proves, the ideas expounded in his
pamphlet were rarely, if at all, applied in practice by the
Bolsheviks. Moreover, it was written before the seizure of
power. In order to see the validity of his argument we must
compare it to his and his fellow Bolshevik leaders opinions
once the revolution had "succeeded." What lessons did they
generalise from their experiences and how did these lessons
relate to State and Revolution?
This change can be seen from Trotsky, who argued quite
explicitly that "the proletariat can take power only through
its vanguard" and that "the necessity for state power arises
from an insufficient cultural level of the masses and their
heterogeneity." Only with "support of the vanguard by the
class" can there be the "conquest of power" and it was in
"this sense the proletarian revolution and dictatorship are
the work of the whole class, but only under the leadership of
the vanguard." Thus, rather than the working class as a whole
seizing power, it is the "vanguard" which takes power -- "a
revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still
by no means the sovereign ruler of society." [Stalinism and
Bolshevism]
Thus state power is required to govern the masses, who
cannot exercise power themselves. As Trotsky put it,
"[t]hose 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." [Trotsky, Op. Cit.] Clearly, the state is envisioned as an instrument
existing above society, above the working class, and its
"necessity" is not driven by the need to defend the
revolution, but rather in the "insufficient cultural
level of the masses." Indeed, "party dictatorship" is
required to create "the state form of the proletariat."
This idea that state power was required due to the limitations
within the working class is reiterated a few years later in
1939:
Needless to say, by definition everyone is "backward"
when compared to the "vanguard of the proletariat." Moreover,
as it is this "vanguard" which is "armed with the resources
of the state" and not the proletariat as a whole we are
left with one obvious conclusion, namely party dictatorship
rather than working class democracy. How Trotsky's position
is compatible with the idea of the working class as the
"ruling class" is not explained. However, it fits in well
with the anarchist analysis of the state as an instrument
designed to ensure minority rule. Other, equally elitist
arguments were expressed by Trotsky twenty years earlier
when he held the reins of power.
In 1920, he argued that while the Bolsheviks have "more than
once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorship
of the Soviets the dictatorship of the party," in fact "it
can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of
the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship
of the party." This, just to state the obvious, was his
argument seventeen years later. "In this 'substitution' of
the power of the party for the power of the working class,"
Trotsky added, "there is nothing accidental, and in reality
there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the
fundamental interests of the working class." [Terrorism and
Communism, p. 109] In early 1921, he argued again for Party
dictatorship at the Tenth Party Congress. His comments made
there against the Workers' Opposition within the Communist
Party make his position clear:
The similarities with his arguments of 1939 are obvious.
Unsurprisingly, he maintained this position in the intervening
years. He stated in 1922 that "we maintain the dictatorship of our
party!" [The First Five Years of the Communist International,
vol. 2, p. 255] The next year saw him arguing 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." He stressed that "[o]ur party is the ruling
party" and that "[t]o allow any changes whatever in this
field" meant "bring[ing] into question all the achievements
of the revolution and its future." He indicated the fate of
those who did question the party's "leading role": "Whoever
makes an attempt on the party's leading role will, I hope,
be unanimously dumped by all of us on the other side of
the barricade." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158 and p. 160]
By 1927, when Trotsky was in the process of being "dumped"
on the "other side of the barricade" by the ruling bureaucracy,
he still argued for Party dictatorship. The Platform
of the Opposition includes "the Leninist principle, inviolable
for every Bolshevik, that the dictatorship of the proletariat
is and can be realised only through the dictatorship of the
party." The document stresses the "dictatorship of the
proletariat [sic!] demands as its very core a single
proletarian party," that "the dictatorship of the proletariat
demands a single and united proletarian party as the leader
of the working masses and the poor peasantry."
Ten years later, he explicitly argued that the "revolutionary
dictatorship of a proletarian party" was "an objective
necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the
class struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary
class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to
assure the victory." This "dictatorship of a party" was
essential and "we can not jump over this chapter" of human
history. He stressed that the "revolutionary party (vanguard)
which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses
to the counter-revolution" and argued that "the party
dictatorship" could not be replaced by "the 'dictatorship'
of the whole toiling people without any party." This was
because the "level of political development among the
masses" was not "high" enough as "capitalism does not permit
the material and the moral development of the masses."
[Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4]
Thus, for Trotsky over a twenty year period, the "dictatorship
of the proletariat" was fundamentally a "dictatorship of the
party." While the working class may be allowed some level of
democracy, the rule of the party was repeatedly given precedence.
While the party may be placed into power by a mass revolution,
once there the party would maintain its position of power and
dismiss attempts by the working class to replace it as "wavering"
or "vacillation" due to the "insufficient cultural level of the
masses and their heterogeneity." In other words, the party
dictatorship was required to protect working class people
from themselves, their tendency to change their minds based
on debates between difference political ideas and positions,
make their own decisions, reject what is in their best interests
(as determined by the party), and so on. Thus the underlying
rationale for democracy (namely that it reflects the changing
will of the voters, their "passing moods" so to speak) is
used to justify party dictatorship!
As noted in
section H.1.2,
Trotsky on this matter was simply
following Lenin's led, who had admitted at the end of 1920
that while "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was
"inevitable" in the "transition of socialism," it is "not
exercised by an organisation which takes in all industrial
workers." The reason, he states, "is given in the theses of
the Second Congress of the Communist International on the
role of political parties" (more on which later). This means
that "the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the
proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship
of the proletariat." This was required because "in all
capitalist countries . . . the proletariat is still so divided,
so degraded, and so corrupted in parts." Therefore, it "can be
exercised only by a vanguard." [Collected Works, vol. 32,
p. 20 and p. 21] As we pointed out in
section H.3.3, Lenin
argued that "revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed
towards the wavering and unstable elements among the masses
themselves." [Op. Cit., vol. 42, p. 170] Needless to say,
Lenin failed to mention this aspect of his system in The
State and Revolution (a failure usually repeated by his
followers). It is, however, a striking confirmation of
Bakunin's comments "the State cannot be sure of its own
self-preservation without an armed force to defend it
against its own internal enemies, against the discontent
of its own people." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
p. 265]
Looking at the lessons leading leaders of Leninism gained from
the experience of the Russian Revolution, we have to admit that
the Leninist "workers' state" will not be, in fact, a "new" kind
of state, a "semi-state," or, to quote Lenin, a "new state" which
"is no longer a state in the proper sense of the word." If, as
Lenin argued in early 1917, the state "in the proper sense of
the term is domination over the people by contingents of armed
men divorced from the people," then Bolshevism in power quickly
saw the need for a state "in the proper sense." [Selected Works,
vol. 2, p. 60] While this state "in the proper sense" had existed
from the start of Bolshevik rule (see
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"), it was only
from 1919 onwards (at the latest) that the leaders of Bolshevism
had openly brought what they said into line with what they did.
It was only by being a "state in the proper sense" could the
Bolshevik party rule and exercise "the dictatorship of the party"
over the "wavering" working class.
So when Lenin states that "Marxism differs from anarchism in
that it recognises the need for a state for the purpose of
the transition to socialism," anarchists agree. Insofar as
"Marxism" aims for, to quote Lenin, the party to "take state
power into [its] own hands," to become "the governing party"
and considers one of its key tasks for "our Party to capture
political power" and to "administer" a country, then we can
safely say that the state needed is a state "in the proper
sense," based on the centralisation and delegation of power
into the hands of a few. [Op. Cit., p. 60, p. 589, p. 328
and p. 589]
This recreation of the state "in the proper sense" did not
come about by chance or simply because of the "will to power"
of the leaders of Bolshevism. Rather, there are strong
institutional pressures at work within any state structure
(even a "semi-state") to turn it back into a "proper" state.
We discuss this in more detail in
section H.3.9. However,
we should not ignore that many of the roots of Bolshevik
tyranny can be found in the contradictions of the Marxist
theory of the state. As noted in the
last section, for
Engels, the seizure of power by the party meant that the
working class was in power. The Leninist tradition builds
on this confusion between party and class power. It is clear
that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is, in fact, rule
by the party. In Lenin's words:
The role of the working class in this state was also indicated,
as "only a revolutionary dictatorship supported by the vast
majority of the people can be at all durable." [Op. Cit.,
p. 291] In other words the "revolutionary government" has the
power, not the working class in whose name it governs. In
1921 he made this explicit: "To govern you need an army of
steeled revolutionary Communists. We have it, and it is
called the Party." The "Party is the leader, the vanguard
of the proletariat, which rules directly." For Lenin, as
"long as we, the Party's Central Committee and the whole
Party, continue to run things, that is govern we shall
never -- we cannot -- dispense with . . . removals, transfers,
appointments, dismissals, etc." [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 62,
p. 98 and p. 99] So much for "workers' power," "socialism
from below" and other such rhetoric.
This vision of "socialism" being rooted in party power over
the working class was the basis of the Communist International's
resolution of the role of the party. This resolution is, therefore,
important and worth discussing.
It argues that the Communist Party "is part of the working
class," namely its "most advanced, most class-conscious, and
therefore most revolutionary part." It is "distinguished from
the working class as a whole in that it grasps the whole
historic path of the working class in its entirety and at
every bend in that road endeavours to defend not the interests
of individual groups or occupations but the interests of the
working class as a whole." [Proceedings and Documents of the
Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 191] However, in response it
can be argued that this simply means the "interests of the
party" as only it can understand what "the interests of the
working class as a whole" actually are. Thus we have the
possibility of the party substituting its will for that of
the working class simply because of what Leninists term the
"uneven development" of the working class. As Alan Carter
argues, these "conceptions of revolutionary organisation
maintain political and ideological domination by retaining
supervisory roles and notions of privileged access to
knowledge . . . the term 'class consciousness' is
employed to facilitate such domination over the workers.
It is not what the workers think, but what the party
leaders think they ought to think that constitutes the
revolutionary consciousness imputed to the workers."
The ideological basis for a new class structure is
created as the "Leninist revolutionary praxis . . . is
carried forward to post-revolutionary institutions,"
[Marx: A Radical Critique, p. 175]
The resolution stresses that before the revolution, the
party "will encompass . . . only a minority of the workers."
Even after the "seizure of power," it will still "not be
able to unite them all into its ranks organisationally."
It is only after the "final defeat of the bourgeois order"
will "all or almost all workers begin to join" it. Thus
the party is a minority of the working class. The
resolution then goes on to state that "[e]very class
struggle is a political struggle. This struggle, which
inevitably becomes transformed into civil war, has as
its goal the conquest of political power. Political power
cannot be seized, organised, and directed other than by
some kind of political party." [Op. Cit., p. 192, p. 193]
And as the party is a "part" of the working class which
cannot "unite" all workers "into its ranks," this means
that political power can only be "seized, organised, and
directed" by a minority.
Thus we have minority rule, with the party (or more
correctly its leaders) exercising political power. The
idea that the party "must dissolve into the councils,
that the councils can replace the Communist Party" is
"fundamentally wrong and reactionary." This is because,
to "enable the soviets to fulfil their historic tasks,
there must . . . be a strong Communist Party, one that
does not simply 'adapt' to the soviets but is able to
make them renounce 'adaptation' to the bourgeoisie."
[Op. Cit., p. 196] Thus rather than the workers' councils
exercising power, their role is simply that of allowing
the Communist Party to seize political party.
The underlying assumptions behind this resolution and its
implications were clear by Zinoviev during his introductory
speech to the congress meeting on the role of the party
which finally agreed the resolution:
Little wonder that Bertrand Russell, on his return from
Lenin's Russia in 1920, wrote that "[f]riends of Russia
here [in Britain] think of the dictatorship of the
proletariat as merely a new form of representative
government, in which only working men and women have
votes, and the constituencies are partly occupational,
not geographical. They think that 'proletariat' means
'proletariat,' but 'dictatorship' does not quote mean
'dictatorship.' This is the opposite of the truth. When
a Russian Communist speak of a dictatorship, he means
the word literally, but when he speaks of the proletariat,
he means the word in a Pickwickian sense. He means the
'class-conscious' part of the proletariat, i.e. the
Communist Party. He includes people by no means
proletarian (such as Lenin and Tchicherin) who have
the right opinions, and he excludes such wage-earners
as have not the right opinions, whim he classifies as
lackeys of the bourgeoisie." Significantly, Russell
pointed, like Lenin, to the Comintern resolution on the
role of the Communist Party. In addition, Russell notes
the reason why this party dictatorship was required:
"No conceivable system of free elections would give
majorities to the Communists, either in the town or
country." [The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism,
pp. 26-27 and pp. 40-1]
Nor are followers of Bolshevism shy in repeating its elitist
conclusions. Tony Cliff, for example, showed his lack of
commitment to working class democracy when he opined that
the "actual level of democracy, as well as centralism,
[during a revolution] depends on three basic factors:
1. the strength of the proletariat; 2. the material and
cultural legacy left to it by the old regime; and 3. the
strength of capitalist resistance. The level of democracy
feasible must be indirect proportion to the first two
factors, and in inverse proportion to the third. The
captain of an ocean liner can allow football to be played
on his vessel; on a tiny raft in a stormy sea the level of
tolerance is far lower." [Lenin, vol. 3, p. 179] That
Cliff compares working class democracy to "football" says
it all. Rather than seeing it as the core gain of a
revolution, he relegates it to the level of a game,
which may or may not be "tolerated"!
And need we speculate who the paternalistic "captain" in charge
of the ship of the state would be would be? Replacing Cliff's
revealing analogies we get the following: "The party in charge
of a workers' state can allow democracy when the capitalist class
is not resisting; when it is resisting strongly, the level
of tolerance is far lower." So, democracy will be "tolerated"
in the extremely unlikely situation that the capitalist class
will not resist a revolution! That the party has no right to
"tolerate" democracy or not is not even entertained by Cliff,
its right to negate the basic rights of the working class
is taken as a given. Clearly the key factor is that the party
is in power. It may "tolerate" democracy, but ultimately
his analogy shows that Bolshevism considers it as an added
extra whose (lack of) existence in no way determines the
nature of the "workers' state." Perhaps, therefore, we may
add another "basic factor" to Cliff's three; namely "4. the
strength of working class support for the party." The level
of democracy feasible must be in direct proportion to this
factor, as the Bolsheviks made clear. As long as the workers
vote the party, then democracy is wonderful. If they do not,
then their "wavering" and "passing moods" cannot be
"tolerated" and democracy is replaced by the dictatorship
of the party. Which is no democracy at all.
Obviously, then, if, as Engels argued, "an essential feature
of the state is a public power distinct from the mass of
the people" then the regime advocated by Bolshevism is
not a "semi-state" but, in fact, a normal state. Trotsky
and Lenin are equally clear that said state exists to ensure
that the "mass of the people" do not participate in public
power, which is exercised by a minority, the party (or,
more correctly, the rulers of the party). One of the key aims
of this new state is to repress the "backward" or "wavering"
sections of the working class (although, by definition,
all sections of the working class are "backward" in relation
to the "vanguard"). Hence the need for a "public power
distinct from the people" (as the suppression of the strike
wave and Kronstadt in 1921 shows, elite troops are always
needed to stop the army siding with their fellow workers).
And as proven by Trotsky's comments after he was squeezed
out of power, this perspective was not considered as a
product of "exceptional circumstances." Rather it was
considered a basic lesson of the revolution, a position
which was applicable to all future revolutions. In this,
Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks concurred.
The irony (and tragedy) of all this should not be lost. In
his 1905 diatribe against anarchism, Stalin had denied that
Marxists aimed for party dictatorship. He stressed that there
was "a dictatorship of the minority, the dictatorship of a
small group . . . which is directed against the people . . .
Marxists are the enemies of such a dictatorship, and they
fight such a dictatorship far more stubbornly and
self-sacrificingly than do our noisy Anarchists." The
practice of Bolshevism and the ideological revisions it
generated easily refutes Stalin's claims. The practice of
Bolshevism shows that his claims that "[a]t the head" of
the "dictatorship of the proletarian majority . . . stand
the masses" stand in sharp contradiction with Bolshevik
support for "revolutionary" governments. Either you have
(to use Stalin's expression) "the dictatorship of the
streets, of the masses, a dictatorship directed against
all oppressors" or you have party power in the name of
the street, of the masses. The fundamental flaw in Leninism
is that it confuses the two and so lays the group for the
very result anarchists predicted and Stalin denied.
[Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 371-2]
While anarchists are well aware of the need to defend a
revolution (see
section H.2.1), we do not make the mistake
of equating this with a state. Ultimately, the state
cannot be used as an instrument of liberation -- it is
not designed for it. Which, incidentally, is why we have
not discussed the impact of the Russian Civil War on the
development of Bolshevik ideology. Simply put, the "workers'
state" is proposed, by Leninists, as the means to defend
a revolution. As such, you cannot blame what it is meant to
be designed to withstand (counter-revolution and civil war)
for its "degeneration." If the "workers' state" cannot handle
what its advocates claim it exists for, then its time to
look for an alternative and dump the concept in the dustbin
of history. We discuss this in the appendix on
"The Russian Revolution".
In summary, Bolshevism is based on a substantial revision of
the Marxist theory of the state. While Marx and Engels were
at pains to stress the accountability of their new state to
the population under it, Leninism has made a virtue of the
fact that the state has evolved to exclude that mass
participation in order to ensure minority rule. Leninism has
done so explicitly to allow the party to overcome the
"wavering" of the working class, the very class it claims
is the "ruling class" under socialism! In doing this, the
Leninist tradition exploited the confused nature of the
state theory of traditional Marxism (see
last section).
The Leninist theory of the state is flawed simply because
it is based on creating a "state in the proper sense
of the word," with a public power distinct from the mass of
the people. This was the major lesson gained by the leading
Bolsheviks (including Lenin and Trotsky) and has its roots in
the common Marxist error of confusing party power with working
class power. So when Leninists point to Lenin's State and
Revolution as the definitive Leninist theory of the state,
anarchists simply point to the lessons Lenin himself gained
from actually conducting a revolution. Once we do, the
slippery slope to the Leninist solution to the contradictions
inherit in the Marxist theory of the state can be seen,
understood and combated.
As we discussed in
section H.3.7, the Marxist theory of
the state confuses an empirical analysis of the state with
a metaphysical one. While Engels is aware that the state
developed to ensure minority class rule and, as befits its
task, evolved specific characteristics to execute that
role, he also raised the idea that the state ("as a rule")
is "the state of the most powerful, economically dominant
class" and "through the medium of the state, becomes also
the politically dominant class." Thus the state can be
considered, in essence, as "nothing but a machine for the
oppression of one class by another." [Marx-Engels Selected
Works, pp. 577-8 and p. 258]
The clear implication is that the state is simply an
instrument, without special interests of its own. If this
is the case, the use of a state by the proletariat is,
therefore, unproblematic (and so the confusion between
working class self-organisation and the state we have
discussed in various sections above is irrelevant). This
argument can lead to simplistic conclusions, such as
once a "revolutionary" government is in power in a "workers
state" we need not worry about abuses of power or even
civil liberties (this position was commonplace in Bolshevik
ranks during the Russian Civil War, for example). It also
is at the heart of Trotsky's contortions with regards to
Stalinism, refusing to see the state bureaucracy as a new
ruling class simply because the state, by definition, could
not play such a role.
For anarchists, this position is a fundamental weakness
of Marxism, a sign that the mainstream Marxist position
significantly misunderstands the nature of society and
the needs of social revolution. However, we must stress
that anarchists would agree that state generally does
serve the interests of the economically dominant classes.
Bakunin, for example, argued that the State "is authority,
domination, and forced, organised by the property-owning
and so-called enlightened classes against the masses." He
saw the social revolution as destroying capitalism and the
state at the same time, that is "to overturn the State's
domination, and that of the privileged classes whom it
solely represents." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 140]
However, anarchists do not reduce our analysis and
understanding of the state to this simplistic Marxist
level. While being well aware that the state is the
means of ensuring the domination of an economic elite,
anarchists recognise that the state machine also has
interests of its own. The state, for anarchists, is the
delegation of power into the hands of a few. This creates,
by its very nature, a privileged position for those at
the top of the hierarchy:
Thus, while Malatesta was under no doubts that under capitalism
the state was essentially "the bourgeoisie's servant and
gendarme," it did not mean that it did not have interests
of its own. As he put it, "the government, though springing
from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends,
as with every servant and protector, to achieve its own
emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects." [Op. Cit.,
p. 20 and p. 22]
Why this would happen is not hard to discover. Given that
the state is a highly centralised, top-down structure it is
unsurprising that it develops around itself a privileged
class, a bureaucracy, around it. The inequality in power
implied by the state is a source of privilege and
oppression independent of property and economic class.
Those in charge of the state's institutions would aim
to protect (and expand) their area of operation, ensuring
that they select individuals who share their perspectives
and who they can pass on their positions. By controlling the
flow of information, of personnel and resources, the members
of the state's higher circles can ensure its, and their own,
survival and prosperity. As such, politicians who are elected
are at a disadvantage. The state is the permanent collection
of institutions that have entrenched power structures and
interests. The politicians come and go while the power in
the state lies in its institutions due to their permanence.
It is to be expected that such institutions would have their
own interests and would pursue them whenever they can.
This would not fundamentally change in a new "workers'
state" if it is, like all states, based on the delegation
and centralisation of power into a few hands. Any
"workers' government" would need a new apparatus to
enforce its laws and decrees. It would need effective
means of gathering and collating information. It would
thus create "an entirely new ladder of administration
to extend it rule and make itself obeyed." While a
social revolution needs mass participation, the state
limits initiative to the few who are in power and
"it will be impossible for one or even a number of
individuals to elaborate the social forms" required,
which "can only be the collective work of the masses
. . . Any kind of external authority will merely be
an obstacle, a hindrance to the organic work that
has to be accomplished; it will be no better than a
source of discord and of hatreds." [Kropotkin, Words
of a Rebel, p. 169 and pp. 176-7]
Rather than "withering away," any "workers' state" would
tend to grow in terms of administration and so the
government creates around itself a class of bureaucrats
whose position is different from the rest of society.
This would apply to production as well. Being unable to
manage everything, the state would have to re-introduce
hierarchical management in order to ensure its orders are
met and that a suitable surplus is extracted from the
workers to feed the needs of the state machine. By
creating an economically powerful class which it can rely
on to discipline the workforce, it would simply recreate
capitalism anew in the form of "state capitalism" (this is
precisely what happened during the Russian Revolution). To
enforce its will onto the people it claims to represent,
specialised bodies of armed people (police, army) would be
required and soon created. All of which is to be expected,
as state socialism "entrusts to a few the management of
social life and [so] leads to the exploitation and oppression
of the masses by the few." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 46]
This process does not happen instantly, it takes time.
However, the tendency for government to escape from popular
control and to generate privileged and powerful institutions
around it can be seen in all revolutions, including the Paris
Commune and the Russian Revolution. In the former, the
Communal Council was "largely ignored . . . after it was
installed. The insurrection, the actual management of the
city's affairs and finally the fighting against the
Versaillese, were undertaken mainly by popular clubs, the
neighbourhood vigilance committees, and the battalions of
the National Guard. Had the Paris Commune (the Municipal
Council) survived, it is extremely doubtful that it could
have avoided conflict with these loosely formed street and
militia formations. Indeed, by the end of April, some
six weeks after the insurrection, the Commune constituted
an 'all-powerful' Committee of Public Safety, a body
redolent with memories of the Jacobin dictatorship
and the Terror , which suppressed not only the right
in the Great [French] Revolution of a century earlier,
but also the left." [Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity
Anarchism, pp. 148-9] A minority of council members
(essentially those active in the International) stated
that "the Paris Commune has surrendered its authority
to a dictatorship" and it was "hiding behind a dictatorship
that the electorate have not authorised us to accept
or to recognise." [The Paris Commune of 1871: The View
from the Left, Eugene Schulkind (ed.), p. 187] The
Commune was crushed before this process could fully
unfold, but the omens were there (although it would
have undoubtedly been hindered by small-scale of the
institutions involved). As we discuss in the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?", a
similar process of a "revolutionary" government escaping
from popular control occurred right from the start of the
Russian Revolution. The fact the Bolshevik regime lasted
longer and was more centralised (and covered a larger area)
ensured that this process developed fully, with the
"revolutionary" government creating around itself the
institutions (the bureaucracy) which finally subjected the
politicians and party leaders to its influence and then
domination.
Simply put, the vision of the state as merely an instrument
of class rule blinds its supporters to the dangers of
political inequality in terms of power, the dangers
inherent in giving a small group of people power over
everyone else. The state has certain properties because
it is a state and one of these is that it creates a
bureaucratic class around it due to its centralised,
hierarchical nature. Within capitalism, the state bureaucracy
is (generally) under the control of the capitalist class.
However, to generalise from this specific case is wrong
as the state bureaucracy is a class in itself -- and so
trying to abolish classes without abolishing the state is
doomed to failure:
Thus the state cannot simply be considered as an instrument
of rule by economic classes. It can be quite an effective
parasitical force in its own right, as both anthropological
and historical evidence suggest. The former raises the
possibility that the state arose before the classes and
that its roots are in inequalities in power (i.e. hierarchy)
within society, not inequalities of wealth. The latter
points to examples of societies in which the state was
not, in fact, an instrument of (economic) class rule but
rather pursued an interest of its own.
As regards anthropology, Michael Taylor summarises that the
"evidence does not give [the Marxist] proposition [that the
rise in classes caused the creation of the state] a great
deal of support. Much of the evidence which has been offered
in support of it shows only that the primary states, not long
after their emergence, were economically stratified. But this
is of course consistent also with the simultaneous rise . . .
of political and economic stratification, or with the prior
development of the state -- i.e. of political stratification
-- and the creation of economic stratification by the ruling
class." [Community, Anarchy and Liberty, p. 132] He quotes
Elman Service on this:
Talyor argues that it the "weakening of community and the
development of gross inequalities are the concomitants
and consequences of state formation." He points to the
"germ of state formation" being in the informal social
hierarchies which exist in tribal societies. [Op. Cit.,
p. 133 and p. 134] Thus the state is not, initially, a
product of economic classes but rather an independent
development based on inequalities of social power. Harold
Barclay, an anarchist who has studied anthropological
evidence on this matter, concurs:
If, as Bookchin summarises, "hierarchies precede classes" then
trying to use a hierarchical structure like the state to abolish
them is simply wishful thinking.
As regards more recent human history, there have been numerous
examples of the state existing without being an instrument of
class rule. Rather, the state was the "ruling class." While
the most obvious example is the Stalinist regimes where the
state bureaucracy ruled over a state capitalist regime, there
have been plenty of others, as Murray Bookchin points out:
"Near-Eastern State, like the Egyptian, Babylonian, and
Persian, were virtually extended households of individual
monarchs . . . Pharaohs, kings, and emperors nominally
held the land (often co-jointly with the priesthood)
in the trust of the deities, who were either embodied in
the monarch or were represented by him. The empires of
Asian and North African kings were 'households' and the
population was seen as 'servants of the palace' . . .
"These 'states,' in effect, were not simply engines of
exploitation or control in the interests of a privileged
'class.' . . . The Egyptian State was very real but it
'represented' nothing other than itself." [Remaking
Society, pp. 67-8]
Bakunin pointed to Turkish Serbia, where economically
dominant classes "do not even exist -- there is only a
bureaucratic class. Thus, the Serbian state will crush
the Serbian people for the sole purpose of enabling
Serbian bureaucrats to live a fatter life." [Statism
and Anarchy, p. 54] Leninist Tony Cliff, in his attempt
to prove that Stalinist Russia was state capitalist and
its bureaucracy a ruling class, pointed to various
societies in which "had deep class differentiation,
based not on private property but on state property.
Such systems existed in Pharaonic Egypt, Moslem Egypt,
Iraq, Persia and India." He discusses the example of Arab
feudalism in more detail, where "the feudal lord had no
permanent domain of his own, but a member of a class
which collectively controlled the land and had the right
to appropriate rent." This was "ownership of the land by
the state" rather than by individuals. [State Capitalism
in Russia, pp. 316-8] As such, the idea that the state
is simply an instrument of class rule seems unsupportable.
As Gaston Leval argued, "the State, by its nature, tends
to have a life of its own." [quoted by Sam Dolgoff, A
Critique of Marxism, p. 10]
Alan Carter summarises the obvious conclusion:
Given this blindness of orthodox Marxism to this issue, it
seems ironic that one of the people responsible for it also
provides anarchists with evidence to back up our argument
that the state is not simply an instrument of class role but
rather has interests of its own. Thus we find Engels arguing
that proletariat, "in order not to lose again its only just
conquered supremacy," would have "to safeguard itself against
its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without
exception, subject to recall at any moment." [Marx-Engels
Selected Works, p. 257] Yet, if the state was simply an
instrument of class rule such precautions would not be
necessary. As such, this shows an awareness that the state
can have interests of its own, that it is not simply an
machine of class rule.
Aware of the obvious contradiction, he argues that the state
"is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically
dominant class which, through the medium of the state, becomes
the politically dominant class . . . By way of exception,
however, periods occur in which the warring classes balance
each other, so nearly that the state power, as ostensible
mediator, acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of
independence of both." And points to "the Bonapartism of
the First, and still more of the Second French Empire."
[Op. Cit., pp. 577-8] But if the state can become
"independent" of economic classes, then that implies
that it is no mere machine, no mere "instrument" of
class rule. It implies the anarchist argument that the
state has interests of its own, generated by its essential
features and so, therefore, cannot be used by a majority
class as part of its struggle for liberation is correct.
Simply put, Anarchists have long "realised -- feared -- that
any State structure, whether or not socialist or based on
universal suffrage, has a certain independence from
society, and so may serve the interests of those within
State institutions rather than the people as a whole or
the proletariat." [Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy
of Freedom, p. 134]
Ironically, arguments and warnings about the "independence"
of the state by Marxists imply that the state has interests
of its own and cannot be considered simply as an instrument
of class rule. Rather, it suggests that the anarchist
analysis of the state is correct, namely that any structure
based on delegated power, centralisation and hierarchy must,
inevitably, have a privileged class in charge of it, a class
whose position enables it to not only exploit and oppress
the rest of society but also to effectively escape from
popular control and accountability. This is no accident.
The state is structured to enforce minority rule and
exclude the majority.
One of the most widespread myths associated with Marxism is the
idea that Marxism has consistently aimed to smash the current
(bourgeois) state and replace it by a "workers' state" based
on working class organisations created during a revolution.
This myth is sometimes expressed by those who should know
better (i.e. Marxists). According to John Rees (of the
British Socialist Workers Party) it has been a "cornerstone
of revolutionary theory" that "the soviet is a superior form
of democracy because it unifies political and economic power."
This "cornerstone" has, apparently, existed "since Marx's
writings on the Paris Commune." ["In Defence of October,"
International Socialism, no. 52, p. 25] In fact, nothing
could be further from the truth, as Marx's writings on the
Paris Commune prove beyond doubt.
The Paris Commune, as Marx himself noted, was "formed
of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage
in the various wards of the town." ["The Civil War in
France", Selected Works, p. 287] As Marx made clear,
it was definitely not based on delegates from workplaces
and so could not unify political and economic power.
Indeed, to state that the Paris Commune was a soviet is
simply a joke, as is the claim that Marxists supported
soviets as revolutionary organs to smash and replace
the state from 1871. In fact Marxists did not subscribe
to this "cornerstone of revolutionary theory" until 1917
when Lenin argued that the Soviets would be the best means
of ensuring a Bolshevik government. Which explains why
Lenin's use of the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" and
call for the destruction of the bourgeois state came as
such a shock to his fellow Marxists. Unsurprisingly, given
the long legacy of anarchist calls to smash the state and
their vision of a socialist society built from below by
workers councils, many Marxists called Lenin an anarchist!
Therefore, the idea that Marxists have always supported
workers councils' is untrue and any attempt to push this
support back to 1871 simply a farcical.
Before 1917, when Lenin claimed to have discovered what
had eluded all the previous followers of Marx and Engels
(including himself!), it was only anarchists (or those
close to them such as the Russian SR-Maximalists) who
argued that the future socialist society would be
structurally based around the organs working class
people themselves created in the process of the class
struggle and revolution (see sections
H.1.4 and
I.2.3).
To re-quote Bakunin:
So, ironically, the idea of the superiority of workers' councils
has existed from around the time of the Paris Commune, but in
only in Bakunin's writings and others in the libertarian wing
of the First International!
Not all Marxists are as ignorant of their political tradition
as Rees. As his fellow party member Chris Harman recognised,
"[e]ven the 1905 [Russian] revolution gave only the most
embryonic expression of how a workers' state would in fact
be organised. The fundamental forms of workers' power -- the
soviets (workers' councils) -- were not recognised." It was
"[n]ot until the February revolution [of 1917 that] soviets
became central in Lenin's writings and thought." [Party and
Class, p. 18 and p. 19]
Before continuing it should be noted that Harman's summary
is correct only if we are talking about the Marxist movement.
Looking at the wider revolutionary movement, two groups
definitely "recognised" the importance of the soviets as
a form of working class power. These were the anarchists
and the Social-Revolutionary Maximalists, both of whom
"espoused views that corresponded almost word for word
with Lenin's April 1917 program of 'All power to the
soviets.'" The "aims of the revolutionary far left in
1905 . . . Lenin combined in his call for soviet power
[in 1917], when he apparently assimilated the anarchist
program to secure the support of the masses for the
Bolsheviks." [Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 94 and
p. 96] Unsurprisingly, both the anarchists and Maximalists
were extremely influential in that paradigm of soviet
power and democracy, the Kronstadt commune (see
"What was the Kronstadt Uprising" for more details).
Thus, in anarchist circles, the soviets were must definitely
"recognised" as the practical confirmation of anarchist
ideas of working class self-organisation as being the
framework of a socialist society. For example, the
syndicalists "regarded the soviets . . . as admirable
versions of the bourses du travail, but with a revolutionary
function added to suit Russian conditions. Open to all
leftist workers regardless of specific political affiliation,
the soviets were to act as nonpartisan labour councils
improvised 'from below' . . . with the aim of bringing
down the old regime." The anarchists of Khleb i Volia
"also likened the 1905 Petersburg Soviet -- as a nonparty
mass organisation -- to the central committee of the
Paris Commune of 1871." [Paul Avrich, The Russian
Anarchists, pp. 80-1] Kropotkin argued that anarchists
should take part in the soviets as long as they "are
organs of the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the
state, and not organs of authority." [quoted by Graham
Purchase, Evolution and Revolution, p. 30]
So, if Marxists did not support workers' councils until
1917, what did Marxists argue should be the framework
of a socialist society before this date? To discover this,
we must look to Marx and Engels. Once we do, we discover
that their works suggest that their vision of socialist
transformation was fundamentally based on the bourgeois
state, suitably modified and democratised to achieve this
task. As such, rather than present the true account of the
Marxist theory of the state Lenin interpreted various
inexact and ambiguous statements by Marx and Engels
(particularly from Marx's defence of the Paris Commune) to
justify his own actions in 1917. Whether his 1917 revision
of Marxism in favour of workers' councils as the framework
of socialism is in keeping with the spirit of Marx is
another matter of course. Given that libertarian Marxists
(like the council communists) embraced the idea of workers'
councils and broke with the Bolsheviks over the issue of
whether the councils or the party had power, we can say that
perhaps it is not. In this, they express the best in Marx.
When faced with the Paris Commune and its libertarian
influences he embraced it, distancing himself (for a while
at least) with many of his previous ideas.
So what was the original (orthodox) Marxist position?
It can be seen from Lenin who, as late December 1916
argued that "Socialists are in favour of utilising the
present state and its institutions in the struggle for
the emancipation of the working class, maintaining also
that the state should be used for a specific form of
transition from capitalism to socialism." Lenin attacked
Bukharin for "erroneously ascribing this [the anarchist]
view to the socialist" when he had stated socialists
wanted to "abolish" the state or "blow it up." He called
this "transitional form" the dictatorship of the
proletariat, "which is also a state." [Collected
Works, vol. 23, p. 165] In other words, the socialist
party would aim to seize power within the existing state
and, after making suitable modifications to it, use it
to create socialism. This conquest of state power would
be achieved either by insurrection or by the ballot box,
the latter being used for political education and struggle
under capitalism.
That this position was the orthodox one is hardly surprising,
given the actual comments of both Marx and Engels. For example,
Engels argued in 1886 while he and Marx saw "the gradual
dissolution and ultimate disappearance of that political
organisation called the State" as "one of the final
results of the future revolution," they "at the same time
. . . have always held that . . . the proletarian class will
first have to possess itself of the organised political
force of the State and with its aid stamp out the resistance
of the Capitalist class and re-organise society." The idea
that the proletariat needs to "possess" the existing state
is made clear when he argues while the anarchists "reverse
the matter" by arguing that the revolution "has to begin
by abolishing the political organisation of the State,"
for Marxists "the only organisation the victorious working
class finds ready-made for use, is that of the State. It
may require adaptation to the new functions. But to destroy
that at such a moment, would be to destroy the only organism
by means of which the working class can exert its newly
conquered power." [Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 10]
Obviously the only institution which the working class "finds
ready-made for use" is the bourgeois state, although, as Engels
stresses, it "may require adaptation." This schema is repeated
five years later, in Engels introduction to Marx's "The
Civil War in France." Arguing that the state "is nothing but
a machine for the oppression of one class by another" he
notes that it is "at best an evil inherited by the proletariat
after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose
worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune,
cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible."
[Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 258] Simply put, if the
proletariat creates a new state system to replace the
bourgeois one, then how can it be "an evil inherited" by it?
If, as Lenin argued, Marx and Engels thought that the
working class had to smash the bourgeois state and replace
it with a new one, why would it have "to lop off at once as
much as possible" from the state it had just "inherited"?
In the same year, Engels repeats this argument in his critique
of the draft of the Erfurt program of the German Social Democrats:
Clearly Engels does not speak of a "commune-republic" or anything
close to a soviet republic, as expressed in Bakunin's work or the
libertarian wing of the First International with their ideas of a
"trade-union republic" or a free federation of workers'
associations. Clearly and explicitly he speaks of the democratic
republic, the current state ("an evil inherited by the proletariat")
which is to be seized and transformed as in the Paris Commune.
Unsurprisingly, when Lenin comes to quote this passage in State
and Revolution he immediately tries to obscure its meaning.
"Engels," he says, "repeats here in a particularly striking manner
the fundamental idea which runs like a red thread through all of
Marx's work, namely, that the democratic republic is the nearest
approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat." [Essential
Works of Lenin, p. 324] However, clearly Engels does not speak
of the political form which "is the nearest approach" to the
dictatorship, rather he speaks only of "the specific form" of
the dictatorship, the "only" form in which "our Party" can come
to power.
This explains Engels 1887 comments that in the USA the workers
"next step towards their deliverance" was "the formation of a
political workingmen's party, with a platform of its own, and
the conquest of the Capitol and the White House for its goal."
This new party "like all political parties everywhere . . . aspires
to the conquest of political power." Engels then discusses the
"electoral battle" going on in America. [Marx & Engels, Basic
Writings on Politics and Philosophy, pp. 527-8 and p. 529] Six
years previously he had argued along the same lines as regards
England, "where the industrial and agricultural working class forms
the immense majority of the people, democracy means the dominion
of the working class, neither more nor less. Let, then, that
working class prepare itself for the task in store for it --
the ruling of this great Empire . . . And the best way to do
this is to use the power already in their hands, the actual
majority they possess . . . to send to Parliament men of their
own order." In case this was not clear enough, he lamented that
"[e]verywhere the labourer struggles for political power, for
direct representation of his class in the legislature --
everywhere but in Great Britain." [Collected Works, vol. 24,
p. 405]
All of which, of course, fits into Marx's account of the Paris
Commune. In that work he stresses that the Commune was formed by
elections, by universal suffrage in a democratic republic. Once
voted into office, the Commune then smashes the state machine
inherited by it from the old state, recognising that "the working
class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and
wield it for its own purposes." The "first decree of the Commune
. . . was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution
for it of the armed people." Thus the Commune lops off one of the
"ubiquitous organs" associated with the "centralised State power"
once it had inherited the state via elections. [Marx-Engels
Selected Works, p. 285, p. 287 and p. 285]
It is, of course true, that Marx expresses in his defence of the
Commune the opinion that new "Communal Constitution" was to become
a "reality by the destruction of the State power" yet he immediately
argues that "the merely repressive organs of the old government power
were to be amputated" and "its legitimate functions were to be
wrestles from" it and "restored to the responsible agents of society."
[Op. Cit., pp. 288-9] This corresponds to Engels arguments about
removing aspects from the state inherited by the proletariat and
signifies the "destruction" of the state machinery (its
bureaucratic-military aspects) rather than the state itself.
The source of Lenin's restatement of the Marxist theory of the
state which came as such a shock to so many Marxists can be
found in the nature of the Paris Commune. After all, the major
influence in terms of "political vision" of the Commune was
anarchism. The "rough sketch of national organisation which
the Commune had no time to develop" which Marx praises but
does not quote was written by a follower of Proudhon. [Marx,
Op. Cit., p. 288] It expounded a clearly federalist and
"bottom-up" organisational structure. It clearly implied "the
destruction of the State power" rather than seeking to "inherit"
it. Based on this libertarian revolt, it is unsurprising that
Marx's defence of it took on a libertarian twist. As noted by
Bakunin, who argues that its "general effect was so striking
that the Marxists themselves, who saw their ideas upset by the
uprising, found themselves compelled to take their hats off to
it. They went further, and proclaimed that its programme and
purpose where their own, in face of the simplest logic . . .
This was a truly farcical change of costume, but they were
bound to make it, for fear of being overtaken and left behind
in the wave of feeling which the rising produced throughout
the world." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 261]
This opinion was shared by almost all Marxists before 1917
(including Lenin). As Franz Mehring (considered by many as
the best student and commentator of Marx in pre-world war
social democracy and a extreme left-winger) argued, the
"opinions of The Communist Manifesto could not be
reconciled with the praise lavished . . . on the Paris
Commune for the vigorous fashion in which it had begun to
exterminate the parasitic State." He notes that "both Marx
and Engels were well aware of the contradiction" and in
the June 1872 preface to their work "they revised their
opinions . . . declaring that the workers could not
simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and
wield it for their own purposes. At a later date, and
after the death of Marx, Engels was compelled to engage
in a struggle against the anarchist tendencies in the
working-class movement, and he let this proviso drop
and once again took his stand on the basis of the
Manifesto." [Karl Marx, p. 453]
The fact that Marx did not mention anything about abolishing
the existing state and replacing it with a new one in his
contribution to the "Program of the French Workers Party" in
1880 is significant. It said that the that "collective
appropriation" of the means of production "can only proceed
from a revolutionary action of the class of producers -- the
proletariat -- organised in an independent political party."
This would be "pursued by all the means the proletariat has
at its disposal including universal suffrage which will thus
be transformed from the instrument of deception that it
has been until now into an instrument of emancipation."
[Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 340] There is nothing about
overthrowing the existing state and replacing it with a
new state, rather the obvious conclusion which is to be
drawn is that universal suffrage was the tool by which the
workers would achieve socialism. It does fit in, however,
with Marx's comments in 1852 that "Universal Suffrage is the
equivalent of political power for the working class of England,
where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population
. . . Its inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy
of the working class." [Op. Cit., vol. 11, pp. 335-6]
Or, indeed, Engels similar comments from 1881 quoted above.
It is for this reason that orthodox Marxism up until 1917
held the position that the socialist revolution would be
commenced by seizing the existing state (usually by the
ballot box, or by insurrection if that was impossible).
Martov, the leading left-Menshevik, in his discussion of
Lenin's "discovery" of the "real" Marxist theory on the
state (in State and Revolution) stresses that the idea
that the state should be smashed by the workers who would
then "transplant into the structure of society the forms
of their own combat organisations" was a libertarian idea,
alien to Marx and Engels. While acknowledging that "in our
time, working people take to 'the idea of the soviets' after
knowing them as combat organisations formed in the process
of the class struggle at a sharp revolutionary stage," he
distances Marx and Engels quite successfully from such a
position. As such, he makes a valid contribution to
Marxism and presents a necessary counter-argument to Lenin's
claims in State and Revolution (at which point, we are
sure, nine out of ten Leninists will dismiss our argument!).
[The State and Socialist Revolution, p. 42]
All this may seem a bit academic to many. Does it matter?
After all, most Marxists today subscribe to some variation
of Lenin's position and so, in some aspects, what Marx and
Engels really thought is irrelevant. Indeed, it is likely
that Marx, faced with workers' councils as he was with the
Commune, would have embraced them (perhaps not, as he was
dismissive of similar ideas expressed in the libertarian
wing of the First International). What is important is that
the idea that Marxists have always subscribed to the idea
that a social revolution would be based on the workers' own
combat organisations (be they unions, soviets or whatever)
is a relatively new one to the ideology. While Bakunin and
other anarchists argued for such a revolution, Marx and
Engels did not. Given this, the shock which met Lenin's
arguments in 1917 can be easily understood.
Rather than being rooted in the Marxist vision of revolution,
as it has been in anarchism since the 1860s, workers councils
have played, rhetoric aside, the role of fig-leaf for party
power (libertarian Marxism being a notable exception). They
have been embraced by its Leninist wing purely as a means of
ensuring party power. Rather than being seen as the most
important gain of a revolution as they allow mass participation,
workers' councils have been seen, and used, simply as a means
by which the party can seize power. Once this is achieved,
the soviets can be marginalised and ignored without affecting
the "proletarian" nature of the revolution in the eyes of the
party:
This perspective can be traced back to the lack of interest
Marx and Engels expressed in the forms which a proletarian
revolution would take, as exemplified by Engels comments on
having to "lop off" aspects of the state "inherited" by the
working class. The idea that the organisations people create
in their struggle for freedom may help determine the outcome
of the revolution is missing. Rather, the idea that any
structure can be appropriated and (after suitable modification)
used to rebuild society is clear. This perspective cannot help
take emphasis away from the mass working class organisations
required to rebuild society in a socialist manner and place it
on the group who will "inherit" the state and "lop off" its
negative aspects, namely the party and the leaders in charge
of both it and the new "workers' state."
This focus towards the party became, under Lenin (and the
Bolsheviks in general) a purely instrumental perspective
on workers' councils and other organisations. They were of
use purely in so far as they allowed the Bolshevik party to
take power (indeed Lenin constantly identified workers' power
and soviet power with Bolshevik power and as Martin Buber
noted, for Lenin "All power to the Soviets!" meant, at bottom,
"All power to the Party through the Soviets!"). It can, therefore,
be argued that his book State and Revolution was a means
to use Marx and Engels to support his new found idea of the
soviets as being the basis of creating a Bolshevik government
rather than a principled defence of workers' councils as the
framework of a socialist revolution. We discuss this issue in
the next section.
The short answer depends on which branch of Marxism you mean.
If you are talking about libertarian Marxists such as council
communists, Situationists and so on, then the answer is a
resounding "yes." Like anarchists, these Marxists see a social
revolution as being based on working class self-management
and, indeed, criticised (and broke with) Bolshevism precisely
on this question (as can be seen from Lenin's comments in
Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder on the question
of class or party dictatorship). However, if we look at the
mainstream Marxist tradition (namely Bolshevism), the answer
has to be an empathic "no."
As we noted in
section H.1.4,
anarchists have long argued that
the organisations created by the working class in struggle
would be the initial framework of a free society. These organs,
created to resist capitalism and the state, would be the means
to overthrow both as well as extending and defending the
revolution (such bodies have included the "soviets" and "factory
committees" of the Russian Revolution, the collectives in the
Spanish revolution, popular assemblies as in the current
Argentine revolt and the French Revolution, revolutionary
unions and so on). Thus working class self-management is at the
core of the anarchist vision and so we stress the importance
(and autonomy) of working class organisations in the revolutionary
movement and the revolution itself. Anarchists work within such
bodies at the base, in the mass assemblies, and do not seek to
replace their power with that of their own organisation (see
section J.3.6).
Leninists, in contrast, have a different perspective on such
bodies. Rather than placing them at the heart of the revolution,
Leninism views them purely in instrumental terms -- namely, as
a means of achieving party power. Writing in 1907, Lenin argued
that "Social-Democratic Party organisations may, in case of
necessity, participate in inter-party Soviets of Workers'
Delegates . . . and in congresses . . . of these organisations,
and may organise such institutions, provided this is done on
strict Party lines for the purpose of developing and strengthening
the Social-Democratic Labour Party." The party would "utilise"
such organs "for the purpose of developing the Social-Democratic
movement." Significantly, given the fate of the soviets
post-1917, Lenin notes that the party "must bear in mind that if
Social-Democratic activities among the proletarian masses are
properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions
may actually become superfluous." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 210] Thus the means
by which working class can manage their own affairs would become
"superfluous" once the party was in power. How the working
class could be considered the "ruling class" in such a society
is hard to understand.
As Oscar Anweiler summarises in his account of the soviets
during the two Russian Revolutions:
Thirteen years later, Lenin repeated this same vision of party
power as the goal of revolution. In his infamous diatribe
against "Left-wing" Communism (i.e. those Marxists close
to anarchism), Lenin argued that "the correct understanding
of a Communist of his tasks" lies in "correctly gauging
the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the
proletariat can successfully seize power, when it will be
able during and after this seizure of power to obtain support
from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of
the non-proletarian toiling masses, and when, thereafter, it
will be able to maintain, consolidate, and extend its rule,
educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of
the toilers." He stressed that "to go so far . . . as to
draw a contrast in general between the dictatorship of the
masses and the dictatorship of the leaders, is ridiculously
absurd and stupid." [Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile
Disorder, p. 35 and p. 27] As we noted in
section H.1.2,
the Bolsheviks had this stage explicitly argued for party
dictatorship and considered it a truism that (to re-quote
Lenin) "an organisation taking in the whole proletariat
cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be
exercised only by a vanguard . . . the dictatorship of the
proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian
organisation." [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21]
Therefore, rather than seeing revolution being based upon
the empowerment of working class organisation and the
socialist society being based on this, Leninists see workers
oorganisations in purely instrumental terms as the means of
achieving a Leninist government:
Simply out, Leninism confuses the party power and workers'
power. An example of this "confusion" can be found in most
Leninist works. For example, John Rees argues that "the
essence of the Bolsheviks' strategy . . . was to take power
from the Provisional government and put it in the hands of
popular organs of working class power -- a point later made
explicit by Trotsky in his Lessons of October." ["In
Defence of October," International Socialism, no. 52,
p. 73] However, in reality, as noted in
section H.3.3,
Lenin had always been clear that the essence of the
Bolsheviks' strategy was the taking of power by the
Bolshevik party itself. He explicitly argued for
Bolshevik power during 1917, considering the soviets
as the best means of achieving this. He constantly
equated Bolshevik rule with working class rule. Once in
power, this identification did not change. As such, rather
than argue for power to be placed into "the hands of popular
organs of working class power" Lenin argued this only
insofar as he was sure that these organs would then
immediately pass that power into the hands of a Bolshevik
government.
This explains his turn against the soviets after July 1917
when he considered it impossible for the Bolsheviks to gain
a majority in them. It can be seen when the Bolshevik party's
Central Committee opposed the idea of a coalition government
immediately after the overthrow of the Provisional Government
in October 1917. As it explained, "a purely Bolshevik
government" was "impossible to refuse" since "a majority at
the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets . . . handed power
over to this government." [quoted by Robert V. Daniels, A
Documentary History of Communism, pp. 127-8] A mere ten days
after the October Revolution the Left Social Revolutionaries
charged that the Bolshevik government was ignoring the Central
Executive Committee of the Soviets, established by the second
Congress of Soviets as the supreme organ in society. Lenin
dismissed their charges, stating that "the new power could
not take into account, in its activity, all the rigmarole
which would set it on the road of the meticulous observation
of all the formalities." [quoted by Frederick I. Kaplan,
Bolshevik Ideology and the Ethics of Soviet Labour, p. 124]
Clearly, the soviets did not have "All Power," they promptly
handed it over to a Bolshevik government (and Lenin implies
that he was not bound in any way to the supreme organ of the
soviets in whose name he ruled). All of which places Rees'
assertions into the proper context and shows that the slogan
"All Power to the Soviets" is used by Leninists in a radically
different way than most people would understand by it! It also
explains why soviets were disbanded if the opposition won
majorities in them in early 1918:
Thus the Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks in the context of
political loses before the Civil War. The Civil War gave the
Bolsheviks an excuse and they "drove them underground, just on
the eve of the elections to the Fifth Congress of Soviets in
which the Mensheviks were expected to make significant gains"
and while the Bolsheviks "offered some formidable fictions to
justify the expulsions" there was "of course no substance
in the charge that the Mensheviks had been mixed in
counter-revolutionary activities on the Don, in the Urals,
in Siberia, with the Czechoslovaks, or that they had joined
the worst Black Hundreds." [Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 181]
While we will discuss this in more detail in
section 6 of the appendix
on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?",
we can state here that the facts are that the Bolsheviks only
supported "Soviet power" when the soviets were Bolshevik. As
recognised by Martov, who argued that the Bolsheviks loved
Soviets only when they were "in the hands of the Bolshevik
party." [quoted by Getzler, Op. Cit., p. 174] Which, perhaps,
explains Lenin's comment that "[o]nly the development of this war
[Kornilov's counter-revolutionary rebellion in August 1917] can bring us to power but we must
speak of this as little as possible in our agitation
(remembering very well that even tomorrow events may put us
in power and then we will not let it go)." [quoted by Neil
Harding, Leninism, p. 253]
All this can be confirmed, unsurprisingly enough, by looking at
the essay Rees references. When studying Trotsky's Lessons of
October we find the same instrumentalist approach to the
question of the "popular organs of working class power." This
is stated quite clearly by Trotsky in his essay when he argued
that the "essential aspect" of Bolshevism was the "training,
tempering, and organisation of the proletarian vanguard as
enables the latter to seize power, arms in hand." As such,
the vanguard seizes power, not "popular organs of working
class power." Indeed, the idea that the working class can
seize power itself is raised and dismissed:
Hence "popular organs of working class power" are not considered
as the "essence" of Bolshevism, rather the "fundamental instrument
of proletarian revolution is the party." Popular organs are
seen purely in instrumental terms, always discussing such organs
of "workers' power" in terms of the strategy and program of the
party, not in terms of the value that such organs have as forms
of working class self-management of society.
This can be clearly seen from Trotsky's discussion of the
"October Revolution" of 1917 in Lessons of October.
Commenting on the Bolshevik Party conference of April 1917,
he states that the "whole of . . . [the] Conference was devoted
to the following fundamental question: Are we heading toward
the conquest of power in the name of the socialist revolution
or are we helping (anybody and everybody) to complete the
democratic revolution? . . . Lenin's position was this: . . .
the capture of the soviet majority; the overthrow of the
Provisional Government; the seizure of power through the
soviets." Note, through the soviets not by the soviets,
thus indicating the fact the Party would hold the real power,
not the soviets of workers' delegates. This is confirmed when
Trotsky states that "to prepare the insurrection and to carry
it out under cover of preparing for the Second Soviet Congress
and under the slogan of defending it, was of inestimable
advantage to us" and that it was "one thing to prepare an
armed insurrection under the naked slogan of the seizure of
power by the party, and quite another thing to prepare and
then carry out an insurrection under the slogan of defending
the rights of the Congress of Soviets." The Soviet Congress
just provided "the legal cover" for the Bolshevik plans
rather than a desire to see the Soviets actually start
managing society. [The Lessons of October]
Thus we have the "seizure of power through the soviets"
with "an armed insurrection under the naked slogan of
the seizure of power by the party" being hidden by
"the slogan" ("the legal cover") of defending the Soviets!
Hardly a case of placing power in the hands of working
class organisations. Trotsky does note that in 1917
the "soviets had to either disappear entirely or take
real power into their hands." However, he immediately
adds that "they could take power . . . only as the
dictatorship of the proletariat directed by a single party."
Clearly, the "single party" has the real power, not
the soviets. Unsurprisingly, in practice, the rule of
"a single party" also amounted to the soviets effectively
disappearing as they quickly became mere ciphers for party
rule. Soon the "direction" by "a single party" became
the dictatorship of that party over the soviets, which
(it should be noted) Trotsky defended wholeheartedly until
his death (see section H.3.8).
This cannot be considered as a one-off. Trotsky repeated this
analysis in his History of the Russian Revolution, when he
stated that the "question, what mass organisations were to
serve the party for leadership in the insurrection, did not
permit an a priori, much less a categorical, answer." Thus
the "mass organisations" serve the party, not vice versa. This
instrumentalist perspective can be seen when Trotsky notes that
when "the Bolsheviks got a majority in the Petrograd Soviet,
and afterward a number of others," the "phrase 'Power to the
Soviets' was not, therefore, again removed from the order of
the day, but received a new meaning: All power to the Bolshevik
soviets." This meant that the "party was launched on the road
of armed insurrection through the soviets and in the name of
the soviets." As he put it in his discussion of the July days
in 1917, the army "was far from ready to raise an insurrection
in order to give power to the Bolshevik Party." Ultimately,
"the state of popular consciousness . . . made impossible the
seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in July." [vol. 2, p. 303,
p. 307, p. 78 and p. 81] So much for "all power to the Soviets"!
He even quotes Lenin: "The Bolsheviks have no right to await
the Congress of Soviets. They ought to seize the power right
now." Ultimately, the "Central Committee adopted the motion
of Lenin as the only thinkable one: to form a government of
the Bolsheviks only." [vol. 3, pp. 131-2 and p. 299]
In case anyone is in doubt what Trotsky meant, he clarified
it in the book he was writing when he was assassinated: "After
eight months of inertia and of democratic chaos, came the
dictatorship of the Bolsheviks." [Stalin, vol. 2, p. 242]
This is confirmed by other sources:
So where does this leave Rees' assertion that the Bolsheviks
aimed to put power into the hands of working class organisations?
Clearly, Rees' summary of both Trotsky's essay and the "essence"
of Bolshevism leave a lot to be desired. As can be seen, the
"essence" of Trotsky's essay and of Bolshevism is the importance
of party power, not workers' power (as recognised by other
members of the SWP: "The masses needed to be profoundly
convinced that there was no alternative to Bolshevik power."
[Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 265]). Trotsky even provides
us with an analogy which effectively and simply refutes Rees'
claims. "Just as the blacksmith cannot seize the red hot
iron in his naked hand," Trotsky asserts, "so the proletariat
cannot directly seize power; it has to have an organisation
accommodated to this task." While paying lip service to
the soviets as the organisation "by means of which the
proletariat can both overthrow the old power and replace
it," he adds that "the soviets by themselves do not settle
the question" as they may "serve different goals according
to the programme and leadership. The soviets receive their
programme from the party . . . the revolutionary party
represents the brain of the class. The problem of
conquering the power can be solved only by a definite
combination of party with soviets." [The History of the
Russian Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 160-1 and p. 163]
Thus the key organisation was the party, not the mass
organisations of the working class. Indeed, as we discussed
in section H.3.8,
Trotsky was quite explicit that such
organisations could only become the state form of the
proletariat under the party dictatorship. Significantly,
Trotsky fails to indicate what would happen when these two
powers clash. Certainly Trotsky's role in the Russian
revolution tells us that the power of the party was more
important to him than democratic control by workers through
mass bodies (see the appendices on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?" and
"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"). Indeed, as we have shown in
section H.3.8, Trotsky
explicitly argued that a state was required to overcome the
"wavering" in the working class which could be expressed by
democratic decision making.
Given this legacy of viewing workers' organisations in
purely instrumental terms, the opinion of Martov (the
leading left-Menshevik during the Russian Revolution)
seems appropriate. He argued that "[a]t the moment when
the revolutionary masses expressed their emancipation from
the centuries old yoke of the old State by forming
'autonomous republics of Kronstadt' and trying Anarchist
experiments such as 'workers' control,' etc. -- at that
moment, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat and the poorest
peasantry' (said to be incarnated in the real dictatorship of
the opposed 'true' interpreters of the proletariat and the
poorest peasantry: the chosen of Bolshevist Communism) could
only consolidate itself by first dressing itself in such
Anarchist and anti-State ideology." [The State and Socialist
Revolution, p. 47] As can be seen, Martov has a point. As the
text used as evidence that the Bolsheviks aimed to give power
to workers organisations shows, this was not an aim of the
Bolshevik party. Rather, such workers organs were seen purely
as a means to the end of party power.
It is for this reason that anarchists argue for direct
working class self-management of society. When we argue
that working class organisations must be the framework of
a free society they mean it. We do not equate party
power with working class power or think that "All power
to the Soviets" is possible if they immediately delegate
that power to the leaders of the party. This is for
obvious reasons:
Thus the slogan "All power to the Soviets" for anarchists
means exactly that -- organs for the working class to run
society directly, based on mandated, recallable delegates.
As such, this slogan fitted perfectly with our ideas, as
anarchists had been arguing since the 1860's that such
workers' councils were both a weapon of class struggle
against capitalism and the framework of the future
libertarian society. For the Bolshevik tradition, that
slogan simply means that a Bolshevik government will be
formed over and above the soviets. The difference is important,
"for the Anarchists declared, if 'power' really should belong
to the soviets, it could not belong to the Bolshevik party,
and if it should belong to that Party, as the Bolsheviks
envisaged, it could not belong to the soviets." [Voline,
The Unknown Revolution, p. 213] Reducing the soviets to
simply executing the decrees of the central (Bolshevik)
government and having their All-Russian Congress be able
to recall the government (i.e. those with real power)
does not equal "all power," quite the reverse -- the
soviets will simply be a fig-leaf for party power.
In summary, rather than aim to place power into the hands of
workers' organisations, most Marxists do not. Their aim is to
place power into the hands of the party. Workers' organisations
are simply means to this end and, as the Bolshevik regime showed,
if they clash with that goal, they will be simply be disbanded.
However, we must stress that not all Marxist tendencies subscribe
to this. The council communists, for example, broke with the
Bolsheviks precisely over this issue, the difference between
party and class power.
A key idea in most forms of Marxism is that the evolution
of capitalism itself will create the preconditions for
socialism. This is because capitalism tends to result in
big business and, correspondingly, increased numbers of
workers subject to the "socialised" production process
within the workplace. The conflict between the socialised
means of production and their private ownership is at the
heart of the Marxist case for socialism. Engels writes:
"This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of
production its capitalistic character, contains the
germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today."
[Marx-Engels Reader, p. 704]
It is the economic crises of capitalism which show this
contradiction between socialised production and capitalist
appropriation the best. Indeed, the "fact that the
socialised organisation of production within the factory
has developed so far that it has become incompatible
with the anarchy of production in society, which exists
side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to
the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration
of capital that occurs during crises." The pressures of
socialised production results in capitalists merging
their properties "in a particular branch of industry
in a particular country" into "a trust, a union for
the purpose of regulating production." In this way,
"the production of capitalistic society capitulates
to the production upon a definite plan of the invading
socialistic society." This "transformation" can take
the form of "joint-stock companies and trusts, or
into state ownership." Even state ownership does not
change the "capitalist relation" although this does
have "concealed within it" the "technical conditions
that form the elements of that solution." This "shows
itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The
proletariat seizes political power and turns the means
of production into state property." [Op. Cit., p. 709,
p. 710, p. 711, p. 712 and p. 713]
Thus the centralisation and concentration of production
into bigger and bigger units, into big business, is seen
as the evidence of the need for socialism. It provides
the objective grounding for socialism, and, in fact, this
analysis is what makes Marxism "scientific socialism."
This process explains how human society develops through
time:
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that
socialism will come about due to tendencies inherent
within the development of capitalism. The "socialisation"
of labour implied by collective labour within a firm
grows steadily as capitalist companies grow larger and
larger. The objective need for socialism is therefore
created and so, for most Marxists, "big is beautiful."
Indeed, some Leninists have invented terminology to
describe these aspects of the "invading socialistic
society" associated with the rise of big business. They
contrast the "law of planning" associated with the
conscious planning of economic activity on a wider and
wider scale by large companies to the "law of value"
which operates in the market. In other words, that the
increased size of capital means that more and more of
the economy is subject to the despotism of the owners
and managers of capital and so the "anarchy" of the
market is slowly replaced with the conscious planning
of resources. Marxists sometimes call this the "objective
socialisation of labour" (to use Mandel's term).
Therefore, there is a tendency for Marxists to see the
increased size and power of big business as providing
objective evidence for socialism, which will bring these
socialistic tendencies within capitalism to full light
and full development. Needless to say, most will argue
that socialism, while developing planning fully, will
replace the autocratic and hierarchical planning of big
business with democratic, society-wide planning.
This position, for anarchists, has certain problems
associated with it. One key drawback, as we discuss in
the
next section,
is it focuses attention away from the
internal organisation within the workplace and industry
onto ownership and links between economic units. It ends
up confusing capitalism with the market relations between
firms rather than identifying it with its essence, the
labour market and the wage slavery this generates. This
meant that many Marxists considered that the basis of a
socialist economy was guaranteed once property was
nationalised. The anarchist critique that this simply
replaced a multitude of bosses with one, the state,
was (and is) ignored.
The other key problem is that such a perspective tends to
dismiss as irrelevant the way production is managed. Rather
than seeing socialism as being dependent on workers'
management of production, this position ends up seeing
socialism as being dependent on organisational links
between workplaces, as exemplified by big business under
capitalism. Thus the "relations of production" which
matter are not those associated with wage labour but
rather those associated with the market. This can be seen
from the famous comment in The Manifesto of the Communist
Party. The bourgeoisie, it argues "cannot exist without
constantly revolutionising the instruments of production,
and thereby the relations of production, and with them
the whole relations of society." [Marx-Engels Reader,
p. 476] But the one relation of production it cannot
revolutionise is the one generated by the wage labour
at the heart of capitalism, the hierarchical relations
at the point of production. As such, it is clear that
by "relations of production" Marx and Engels meant
something else than wage slavery, the internal
organisation of what they term "socialised production."
Capitalism is, in general, as dynamic as Marx and Engels
stressed. It transforms the means of production, the
structure of industry and the links between workplaces
constantly. Yet it only modifies the form of the
organisation of labour, not its content. No matter how
it transforms machinery and the internal structure of
companies, the workers are still wage slaves. At best,
it simply transforms much of the hierarchy which governs
the workforce into hired managers. This does not transform
the fundamental social relationship of capitalism, however.
Thus the "relations of production" which prefigure socialism
is, precisely, those associated with the "socialisation of
the labour process" which occurs within capitalism and
are no way antagonistic to it.
This is confirmed when Marx, in his polemic against
Proudhon, argues that social relations "are closely
bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new
productive forces men change their mode of production;
and in changing their mode of production, in changing
the way of earning their living, they change their
social relations. The hand-mill gives you society
with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the
industrial capitalist." [Collected Works, vol. 6,
p. 166] On the face of it, this had better not be
true. After all, the aim of socialism is to expropriate
the property of the industrial capitalist. If the social
relationships are dependent on the productive forces
then, clearly, socialism is impossible as it will have
to be based, initially, on the legacy of capitalism.
Fortunately, the way a workplace is managed is not
predetermined by the technological base of society. As
is obvious, a steam-mill can be operated by a co-operative,
so making the industrial capitalist redundant. The claim
that a given technological-level implies a specific social
structure is, therefore, wrong. However, it does suggest
that our comments that, for Marx and Engels, the new "social
relationships" which develop under capitalism which imply
socialism are relations between workplaces, not those
between individuals and classes are correct. The
implications of this position because clear during the
Russian revolution.
Later Marxists built upon this "scientific" groundwork. Lenin,
for example, argued that "the difference between a socialist
revolution and a bourgeois revolution is that in the latter
case there are ready made forms of capitalist relationships;
Soviet power [in Russia] does not inherit such ready made
relationships, if we leave out of account the most developed
forms of capitalism, which, strictly speaking, extended to a
small top layer of industry and hardly touched agriculture."
[Collected Works, vol. 27, p. 90] Thus, for Lenin, "socialist"
relationships are generated within big business, relationships
"socialism" would "inherit" and universalise. As such, his
comments fit in with the analysis of Marx and Engels we have
presented above. However, his comments also reveal that Lenin
had no idea that socialism meant the transformation of the
relations of production, i.e. workers managing their own
activity. This, undoubtedly, explains the systematic
undermining of the factory committee movement by the
Bolsheviks in favour of state control we discuss in
section 10 of the
appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?".
The idea that socialism involved simply taking over the state
and nationalising the "objectively socialised" means of
production can be seen in both mainstream social-democracy
and its Leninist child. Hilferding, for example, wrote
Finance Capital which argued that capitalism was evolving
into a highly centralised economy, run by big banks and big
firms. All what was required to turn this into socialism
would be its nationalisation:
Lenin basically disagreed with this only in-so-far as the party
of the proletariat would take power via revolution rather than
by election ("the state conquered by the working class" equals
the election of a socialist party). Lenin took it for granted
that the difference between Marxists and anarchists is that
"the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist
production, while the latter stand for disconnected small
production." The obvious implication of this is that anarchist
views "express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is
striving with irresistible force towards the socialisation of
labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the
domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated
small producer." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and
Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 261 and p. 205]
As we discuss in more detail in
section 8 of the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?", Lenin applied
this perspective during the Russian Revolution. For example,
he argued in 1917 that his immediate aim was for a "state
capitalist" economy, this being a necessary stage to
socialism. As he put it, "socialism is merely the next step
forward from state-capitalist monopoly . . . socialism is
merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the
interests of the whole people and has to that extent
ceased to be capitalist monopoly." [Selected Works,
vol. 2, p. 211]
The Bolshevik road to "socialism" ran through the terrain
of state capitalism and, in fact, simply built upon its
institutionalised means of allocating recourses and
structuring industry. As Lenin put it, "the modern state
possesses an apparatus which has extremely close connections
with the banks and syndicates, an apparatus which performs an
enormous amount of accounting and registration work . . . This
apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed. It must be
wrestled from the control of the capitalists," it "must be
subordinated to the proletarian Soviets" and "it must be
expanded, made more comprehensive, and nation-wide." This
meant that the Bolsheviks would "not invent the organisational
form of work, but take it ready-made from capitalism" and
"borrow the best models furnished by the advanced countries."
[Op. Cit., p. 365 and p. 369]
The institutional framework of capitalism would be utilised
as the principal (almost exclusive) instruments of "socialist"
transformation. "Without big banks Socialism would be
impossible," argued Lenin, as they "are the 'state apparatus'
which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take
ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to
lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent
apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic,
even more comprehensive. A single State Bank, the biggest
of the big . . . will constitute as much as nine-tenths of
the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide
book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production
and distribution of goods." While this is "not fully a
state apparatus under capitalism," it "will be so with us,
under socialism." For Lenin, building socialism was easy.
This "nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" would be
created "at one stroke, by a single decree." [Op. Cit.,
p. 365]
Once in power, the Bolsheviks implemented this vision of
socialism being built upon the institutions created by
monopoly capitalism. Moreover, Lenin quickly started to
advocate and implement the most sophisticated capitalist
methods of organising labour, including "one-man management"
of production, piece-rates and Taylorism ("scientific
management"). This was not done accidentally or because
no alternative existed (as we discuss in
section 12 of the appendix
on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?").
As Gustav Landuer commented, when mainstream Marxists
"call the capitalist factory system a social production
. . . we know the real implications of their socialist
forms of labour." [For Socialism, p. 70] As can be
seen, this glorification of large-scale, state-capitalist
structures can be traced back to Marx and Engels, while
Lenin's support for capitalist production techniques can
be explained by mainstream Marxism's lack of focus on the
social relationships at the point of production.
For anarchists, the idea that socialism can be built on the
framework provided to us by capitalism is simply ridiculous.
Capitalism has developed industry and technology to further the
ends of those with power, namely capitalists and managers. Why
should they use that power to develop technology and industrial
structures which leads to workers' self-management and power
rather than technologies and structures which enhance their own
position vis-à-vis their workers and society as a whole? As
such, technological and industrial development is not "neutral"
or just the "application of science." They are shaped by class
struggle and class interest and cannot be used for different
ends. Simply put, socialism will need to develop new forms
of economic organisation based on socialist principles. As
such, the concept that monopoly capitalism paves the way
for socialist society is rooted in the false assumption that
the forms of social organisation accompanying capital
concentration are identical with the socialisation of
production, that the structures associated with collective
labour under capitalism are the same as those required under
socialism is achieve genuine socialisation. This false
assumption, as can be seen, goes back to Engels and was
shared by both Social-Democracy and Leninism despite their
other differences.
While anarchists are inspired by a vision of a non-capitalist,
decentralised, diverse society based on appropriate technology
and appropriate scale, mainstream Marxism is not. Rather, it
sees the problem with capitalism is that its institutions are
not centralised and big enough. As Alexander Berkman correctly
argues:
That mainstream Marxism is soaked in capitalist ideology
can be seen from Lenin's comments that when "the separate
establishments are amalgamated into a single syndicate,
this economy [of production] can attain tremendous
proportions, as economic science teaches us." [Op. Cit.,
p. 200] Yes, capitalist economic science, based on
capitalist definitions of efficiency and economy and
on capitalist criteria! That Bolshevism bases itself
on centralised, large scale industry because it is more
"efficient" and "economic" suggests nothing less than
that its "socialism" will be based on the same priorities
of capitalism. This can be seen from Lenin's idea that
Russia had to learn from the advanced capitalist countries,
that there was only one way to develop production and that
was by adopting capitalist methods of "rationalisation"
and management. In the words of Luigi Fabbri:
"Whenever [they] talk about 'necessity of production' they
make no distinction between those necessities upon which
hinge the procurement of a greater quantity and higher
quality of products -- this being all that matters from
the social and communist point of view -- and the necessities
inherent in the bourgeois regime, the capitalists' necessity
to make more profit even should it mean producing less to
do so. If capitalism tends to centralise its operations,
it does so not for the sake of production, but only for
the sake of making and accumulating more money." ["Anarchy
and 'Scientific' Communism", in The Poverty of Statism,
pp. 13-49, Albert Meltzer (ed.), pp. 21-22]
Efficiency, in other words, does not exist independently of
a given society or economy. What is considered "efficient"
under capitalism may be the worse form of inefficiency in a
free society. The idea that socialism may have different
priorities, need different methods of organising production,
have different visions of how an economy was structured than
capitalism, is absent in mainstream Marxism. Lenin thought that
the institutions of bourgeois economic power, industrial
structure and capitalist technology and techniques could be
"captured" and used for other ends. Ultimately, though,
capitalist means and organisations can only generate capitalist
ends. It is significant that the "one-man management,"
piece-work, Taylorism, etc. advocated and implemented under
Lenin are usually listed by his followers as evils of Stalinism
and as proof of its anti-socialist nature.
Equally, it can be argued that part of the reason why large
capitalist firms can "plan" production on a large scale is
because they reduce the decision making criteria to a few
variables, the most significant being profit and loss. That
such simplification of input data may result in decisions
which harm people and the environment goes without a saying.
"The lack of context and particularity," James C. Scott
correctly notes, "is not an oversight; it is the necessary
first premise of any large-scale planning exercise. To the
degree that the subjects can be treated as standardised
units, the power of resolution in the planning exercise is
enhanced. Questions posed within these strict confines can
have definitive, quantitative answers. The same logic applies
to the transformation of the natural world. Questions about
the volume of commercial wood or the yield of wheat in
bushels permit more precise calculations than questions
about, say, the quality of the soil, the versatility and
taste of the grain, or the well-being of the community. The
discipline of economics achieves its formidable resolving
power by transforming what might otherwise be considered
qualitative matters into quantitative issues with a single
metric and, as it were, a bottom line: profit or loss."
[Seeing like a State, p. 346] Whether a socialist society
could factor in all the important inputs which capitalism
ignores within an even more centralised planning structure
is an important question. This does not mean that anarchists
argue for "small-scale" production as many Marxists, like
Lenin, assert (as we prove in
section I.3.8, anarchists
have always argued for appropriate levels of production
and scale). It is simply to raise the possibility of what
works under capitalism make be undesirable from a perspective
which values people and planet instead of power and profit.
As should be obvious, anarchism is based on critical evaluation
of technology and industrial structure, rejecting the whole
capitalist notion of "progress" which has always been part of
justifying the inhumanities of the status quo. Just because
something is rewarded by capitalism it does not mean that it makes
sense from a human or ecological perspective. This informs our
vision of a free society and the current struggle. We 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.
It goes without saying that anarchists recognise that a social
revolution will have to start with the industry and technology
which is left to it by capitalism and that this will have to be
expropriated by the working class (this expropriation will, of
course, involve transforming it and, in all likelihood, rejecting
of numerous technologies, techniques and practices considered
as "efficient" under capitalism). This is not the issue. The
issue is who expropriates it and what happens to it next. For
anarchists, the means of life are expropriated directly by
society, for most Marxists they are expropriated by the state.
For anarchists, such expropriation is based workers'
self-management and so the fundamental capitalist "relation
of production" (wage labour) is abolished. For most Marxists,
state ownership of production is considered sufficient to ensure
the end of capitalism (with, if we are lucky, some form of
"workers' control" over those state officials who do management
production -- see section H.3.14).
In contrast to the mainstream Marxist vision of socialism
being based around the institutions inherited from capitalism,
anarchists have raised the idea that the "free commune" would
be the "medium in which the ideas of modern Socialism may
come to realisation." These "communes would federate" into
wider groupings. Labour unions (or other working class organs
created in the class struggle such as factory committees)
were "not only an instrument for the improvement of the
conditions of labour, but also of becoming an organisation
which might . . . take into its hands the management of
production." Large labour associations would "come into
existence for the inter-communal service[s]." Such communes
and workers' organisations as the basis of "Socialist forms
of life could find a much easier realisation" than the
"seizure of all industrial property by the State, and
the State organisation of agriculture and industry." Thus
railway network "could be much better handled by a Federated
Union of railway employees, than by a State organisation."
Combined with co-operation "both for production and for
distribution, both in industry and agriculture," workers'
self-management of production would create "samples of
the bricks" of the future society ("even samples of some
of its rooms"). [Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread,
pp. 21-23]
This means that anarchists also root our arguments for
socialism in a scientific analysis of tendencies within
capitalism. However, in opposition to the analysis of
mainstream Marxism which focuses on the objective tendencies
within capitalist development, anarchists emphasis the
oppositional nature of socialism to capitalism. Both
the "law of value" and the "law of planning" are tendencies
within capitalism, that is aspects of capitalism. Anarchists
encourage class struggle, the direct conflict of working class
people against the workings of all capitalism's "laws". This
struggle produces mutual aid and the awareness that we can
care best for our own welfare if we unite with others -- what
we can loosely term the "law of co-operation". This law, in
contrast to the Marxian "law of planning" is based on working
class subjectively and develops within society only in
opposition to capitalism. As such, it provides the necessary
understanding of where socialism will come from, from below,
in the spontaneous self-activity of the oppressed fighting
for their freedom.
This means that the basic structures of socialism will be
the organs created by working class people in their struggles
against exploitation and oppress (see sections
H.1.4
and I.2.3
for more details). Gustav Landauer's basic insight is correct
(if his means were not totally so) when he wrote that "Socialism
will not grow out of capitalism but away from it" [Op. Cit.,
p. 140] In other words, tendencies opposed to capitalism
rather than ones which are part and parcel of it.
Anarchism's recognition of the importance of these tendencies
towards mutual aid within capitalism is a key to understanding
what anarchists do in the here and now, as will be discussed
in
section J.
In addition, it also laid the foundation of
understanding the nature of an anarchist society and what
creates the framework of such a society in the here and now.
Anarchists do not abstractly place a better society (anarchy)
against the current, oppressive one. Instead, we analysis what
tendencies exist within current society and encourage those
which empower and liberate people. Based on these tendencies,
anarchists propose a society which develops them to their
logical conclusion. Therefore an anarchist society is created
not through the developments within capitalism, but in social
activity against it. Section I
indicates what such a society
would be like and where its framework comes from.
For anarchists, the idea that socialism can be achieved
via state ownership is simply ridiculous. For reasons
which will become abundantly clear, anarchists argue
that any such "socialist" system would simply be a
form of "state capitalism." Such a regime would not
fundamentally change the position of the working class,
whose members would simply be wage slaves to the state
bureaucracy rather than to the capitalist class.
However, before beginning our discussion of why anarchists
think this we need to clarify our terminology. This is
because the expression "state capitalism" has three distinct,
if related, meanings in socialist (particularly Marxist)
thought. Firstly, "state capitalism" was/is used to describe
the current system of big business subject to extensive state
control (particularly if, as in war, the capitalist state
accrues extensive powers over industry). Secondly, it was
used by Lenin to describe his immediate aims after the October
Revolution, namely a regime in which the capitalists would
remain but would be subject to a system of state control
inherited by the new "proletarian" state from the old
capitalist one (see
section 10 of the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?"for details). The third
use of the term is to signify a regime in which the state
replaces the capitalist class totally via nationalisation
of the means of production. In such a regime, the state would
own, manage and accumulate capital rather than individual
capitalists.
Anarchists are opposed to all three systems described by
the term "state capitalism." Here we concentrate on the
third definition, arguing that state socialism would be
better described as "state capitalism" as state ownership
of the means of life does not get to the heart of capitalism,
namely wage labour. Rather it simply replaces private bosses
with the state and changes the form of property (from private
to state property) rather than getting rid of it.
The idea that socialism simply equals state ownership
(nationalisation) is easy to find in the works
of Marxism. The Communist Manifesto, for example,
states that the "proletariat will use its political
supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production
into the hands of the State." This meant the
"[c]entralisation of credit in the hands of the State,
by means of a national bank with State capital and an
exclusive monopoly," plus the "[c]entralisation of the
means of communication and transport in the hands of
the State," "[e]xtension of factories and instruments
of production owned by the State" and the "[e]stablishment
of industrial armies, especially for agriculture."
[Marx-Engels Selected Works, pp. 52-3]
Engels repeats this formula thirty-two years later in
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by asserting that
capitalism itself "forces on more and more the
transformation of the vast means of production, already
socialised, into state property. The proletariat seizes
political power and turns the means of production into
state property." Socialism is not equated with state
ownership of productive forces by a capitalist state,
"but concealed within it are the technical conditions
that form the elements of that solution" to the social
problem. It simply "shows itself the way to accomplishing
this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power
and turns the means of production into state property."
Thus state ownership after the proletariat seizes power
is the basis of socialism, when by this "first act" of
the revolution the state "really constitutes itself as the
representative of the whole of society." [Marx-Engels
Reader, p. 713, p. 712 and p. 713]
What is significant from these programmatic statements on
the first steps of socialism is the total non-discussion
of what is happening at the point of production, the
non-discussion of the social relations in the workplace.
Rather we are subjected to discussion of "the contradiction
between socialised production and capitalist appropriation"
and claims that while there is "socialised organisation
of production within the factory," this has become
"incompatible with the anarchy of production in society."
The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that "socialism"
will inherit, without change, the "socialised" workplace
of capitalism and that the fundamental change is that
of ownership: "The proletariat seized the public power,
and by means of this transforms the socialised means of
production . . . into public property. By this act, the
proletariat frees the means of production from the
character of capital they have thus far borne."
[Op. Cit., p. 709 and p. 717]
That the Marxist movement came to see state ownership
rather than workers' management of production as the
key issue is hardly surprising. Thus we find leading
Social-Democrats arguing that socialism basically meant
the state, under Social-Democratic control of course,
acquiring the means of production and nationalising them.
Hilferding presented what was Marxist orthodoxy at the
time when he argued that in "a communist society"
production "is consciously determined by the social
central organ," which would decide "what is to be
produced and how much, where and by whom." While this
information is determined by the market forces under
capitalism, in socialism it "is given to the members
of the socialist society by their authorities . . . we
must derive the undisturbed progress of the socialist
economy from the laws, ordinances and regulations of
socialist authorities." [quoted by Nikolai Bukharin,
Economy Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 157]
As we discuss in the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolsheviks inherited
this concept of "socialism" and implemented it.
This vision of society in which the lives of the
population are controlled by "authorities" in a
"social central organ" which tell the workers what
to do, while in line with the Communist Manifesto,
seems less that appealing. It also shows why state
socialism is not socialism at all. Thus George Barrett:
The key to seeing why state socialism is simply state
capitalism can be found in the lack of change in the
social relationships at the point of production. The
workers are still wage slaves, employed by the state
and subject to its orders. As Lenin stressed in State
and Revolution, under Marxist Socialism "[a]ll citizens
are transformed into hired employees of the state . . .
All citizens become employees and workers of a single
country-wide state 'syndicate' . . . The whole of society
will have become a single office and a single factory,
with equality of labour and pay." [Lenin, Selected Works,
vol. 2, p. 312] Given that Engels had argued, against
anarchism, that a factory required subordination, authority,
lack of freedom and "a veritable despotism independent of
all social organisation," Lenin's idea of turning the world
into one big factory takes on an extremely frightening
nature. [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 731] A reality which one
anarchist described in 1923 as being the case in Lenin's
Russia:
All of which makes Bakunin's comments seem justified (as
well as stunningly accurate):
Such a system, based on those countries "where modern
capitalist development has reached its highest point of
development" would see "the gradual or violent expropriation
of the present landlords and capitalists, or of the
appropriation of all land and capital by the State. In
order to be able to carry out its great economic and
social mission, this State will have to be very far-reaching,
very powerful and highly centralised. It will administer
and supervise agriculture by means of its appointed
mangers, who will command armies of rural workers
organised and disciplined for that purpose. At the
same time, it will set up a single bank on the ruins
of all existing banks." Such a system, Bakunin correctly
predicted, would be "a barracks regime for the proletariat,
in which a standardised mass of men and women workers would
wake, sleep, work and live by rote; a regime of privilege
for the able and the clever." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
Writings, p. 258 and p. 259]
Proudhon, likewise was well aware that state ownership did
not mean the end of private property, rather it meant a
change in who ordered the working class about. "We do
not want," he stated, "to see the State confiscate the
mines, canals and railways; that would be to add to
monarchy, and more wage slavery. We want the mines,
canals, railways handed over to democratically organised
workers' associations" which would be the start of a
"vast federation of companies and societies woven into
the common cloth of the democratic social Republic."
He contrasted workers' associations run by and for
their members to those "subsidised, commanded and
directed by the State," which would crush "all liberty
and all wealth, precisely as the great limited companies
are doing." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62 and
p. 105]
Simply put, if workers did not directly manage their own
work then it matters little who formally owns the workplaces
in which they toil. As Maurice Brinton argues, libertarian
socialists "hold that the 'relations of production' -- the
relations which individuals or groups enter into with one
another in the process of producing wealth -- are the
essential foundations of any society. A certain pattern
of relations of production is the common denominator of
all class societies. This pattern is one in which the
producer does not dominate the means of production but
on the contrary both is 'separated from them' and from
the products of his [or her] own labour. In all class
societies the producer is in a position of subordination
to those who manage the productive process. Workers'
management of production -- implying as it does the total
domination of the producer over the productive process -
is not for us a marginal matter. It is the core of our
politics. It is the only means whereby authoritarian
(order-giving, order-taking) relations in production can
be transcended and a free, communist or anarchist, society
introduced." He goes on to note that "the means of
production may change hands (passing for instance from
private hands into those of a bureaucracy, collectively
owning them) with out this revolutionising the relations
of production. Under such circumstances -- and whatever
the formal status of property -- the society is still a
class society for production is still managed by an agency
other than the producers themselves. Property relations,
in other words, do not necessarily reflect the relations
of production. They may serve to mask them -- and in fact
they often have." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control,
pp. vii-vii]
As such, for anarchists (and libertarian Marxists) the
idea that state ownership of the means of life (the land,
workplaces, factories, etc.) is the basis of socialism is
simply wrong. Therefore, "Anarchism cannot look upon the
coming revolution as a mere substitution . . . of the
State as the universal capitalist for the present
capitalists." [Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment,
p. 106] Given that the "State organisation having always
been . . . the instrument for establishing monopolies
in favour of the ruling minorities, [it] cannot be made
to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The
anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to
the State all the main sources of economic life -- the
land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and
so on -- as also the management of all the main branches
of industry . . . would mean to create a new instrument
of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the
powers of bureaucracy and capitalism." [Kropotkin's
Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 286] Needless to say, a
society which was not democratic in the workplace would
not remain democratic politically either. Either
democracy would become as formal as it is within any
capitalist republic or it would be replaced by dictatorship.
So, without a firm base in the direct management of
production, any "socialist" society would see working
class social power ("political power") and liberty wither
and die, just like a flower ripped out of the soil.
Unsurprisingly, given all this, we discover throughout
history the co-existence of private and state property.
Indeed, the nationalisation of key services and
industries has been implemented under all kinds of
capitalist governments and within all kinds of
capitalist states (which proves the non-socialist
nature of state ownership). Moreover, anarchists can
point to specific events where the capitalist class
has used nationalisation to undermine revolutionary
gains by the working class. The best example by far
is in the Spanish Revolution, when the Catalan
government used nationalisation against the wave of
spontaneous, anarchist inspired, collectivisation which
had placed most of industry into the hand direct hands
of the workers (see
section I.8). The government, under
the guise of legalising the gains of the workers, placed
them under state ownership to stop their development,
ensure hierarchical control and so class society.
A similar process occurred during the Russian Revolution
under the Bolsheviks. Significantly, "many managers, at
least those who remained, appear to have preferred
nationalisation (state control) to workers' control and
co-operated with Bolshevik commissars to introduce it.
Their motives are not too difficult to understand . . .
The issue of who runs the plants -- who makes decisions --
is, and probably always will be, the crucial question for
managers in any industrial relations system." [Jay B.
Sorenson, The Life and Death of Soviet Trade Unionism,
pp. 67-8] As we discuss in the
next section, the managers
and capitalists were not the only ones who disliked "workers'
control," the Bolsheviks did so as well, who ensured that it
was marginalised within a centralised system of state control
based on nationalisation.
As such, anarchists think that a utterly false dichotomy has
been built up in discussions of socialism, one which has served
the interests of both capitalists and state bureaucrats. This
dichotomy is simply that the economic choices available to
humanity are "private" ownership of productive means
(capitalism), or state ownership of productive means (usually
defined as "socialism"). In this manner, capitalist nations
used the Soviet Union, and continue to use autocracies like
North Korea, China, and Cuba as examples of the evils of
"public" ownership of productive assets.
Anarchists see little distinction between "private" ownership of
the means of life and "state" ownership. This is because the
state is a highly centralised structure specifically designed to
exclude mass participation and so, therefore, necessarily composed
of a ruling administrative body. As such, the "public" cannot
actually "own" the property the state claims to hold in its name.
The ownership and thus control of the productive means is then
in the hands of a ruling elite, the state administration (i.e.
bureaucracy). Thus, the means of production and land of a state
"socialist" regime are not publicly owned -- rather, they are
owned by a bureaucratic elite, in the name of the people, a
subtle but important distinction.
In this fashion, decisions about the allocation and use of the
productive assets is not made by the people themselves, but by
the administration, by economic planners. Similarly, in "private"
capitalist economies, economic decisions are made by a coterie
of managers. In both cases the managers make decisions which
reflect their own interests and the interests of the owners
(be it shareholders or the state bureaucracy) and not the
workers involved or society as a whole. In both cases, economic
decision-making is top-down in nature, made by an elite of
administrators -- bureaucrats in the state socialist economy,
capitalists or managers in the "private" capitalist economy.
The much-lauded distinction of capitalism is that unlike the
monolithic, centralised state socialist bureaucracy it has
a choice of bosses (and choosing a master is not freedom).
And given the similarities in the relations of production
between capitalism and state "socialism," the obvious
inequalities in wealth in so-called "socialist" states
are easily explained. The relations of production and the
relations of distribution are inter-linked and so inequality
in terms of power in production means inequality in control
of the social product, which will be reflected in inequality
in terms of wealth.
In other words, private property exists if some individuals
(or groups) control/own things which are used by other people.
This means, unsurprising, that state ownership is just a form
of property rather than the negation of it. If you have a
highly centralised structure (as the state is) which plans
and decides about all things within production, then this
central administrative would be the real owner because it
has the exclusive right to decide how things are used, not
those using them. The existence of this central administrative
strata excludes the abolition of property, replacing socialism
or communism with state owned "property," i.e. state
capitalism. As such, state ownership does not end wage
labour and, therefore, social inequalities in terms of wealth
and access to resources. Workers are still order-takers under
state ownership (whose bureaucrats control the product of
their labour and determine who gets what). The only difference
between workers under private property and state property is
the person telling them what to do. Simply put, the capitalist
or company appointed manager is replaced by a state appointed
one.
As anarcho-syndicalist Tom Brown stresses, when "the many
control the means whereby they live, they will do so by
abolishing private ownership and establishing common
ownership of the means of production, with workers' control
of industry." However, this is "not to be confused with
nationalisation and state control" as "ownership is, in
theory, said to be vested in the people" but, in fact
"control is in the hands of a small class of bureaucrats."
Then "common ownership does not exist, but the labour market
and wage labour go on, the worker remaining a wage slave to
State capitalism." Simply put, common ownership "demands
common control. This is possible only in a condition of
industrial democracy by workers' control." [Syndicalism,
p. 94] In summary:
However, many Marxists (in particular Leninists) state they
are in favour of both state ownership and "workers' control."
As we discuss in more depth in
next section, while they mean
the same thing as anarchists do by the first term, they have
a radically different meaning for the second (it is for this
reason modern-day anarchists generally use the term "workers'
self-management"). To anarchist ears, the combination of
nationalisation (state ownership) and "workers' control"
(and even more so, self-management) simply expresses
political confusion, a mishmash of contradictory ideas which
simply hides the reality that state ownership, by its very
nature, precludes workers' control. As such, anarchists reject
such contradictory rhetoric in favour of "socialisation" and
"workers' self-management of production." History shows that
nationalisation will always undermine workers' control at the
point of production and such rhetoric always paves the way for
state capitalism.
Therefore, anarchists are against both nationalisation
and privatisation, recognising both as forms of
capitalism, of wage slavery. We believe in genuine public
ownership of productive assets, rather than corporate/private
or state/bureaucratic control. Only in this manner can the
public address their own economic needs. Thus, we see a
third way that is distinct from the popular "either/or"
options forwarded by capitalists and state socialists, a
way that is entirely more democratic. This is workers'
self-management of production, based on social ownership
of the means of life by federations of self-managed
syndicates and communes.
For further discussion, see Kropotkin's discussion of
"The collectivist Wages System" in The Conquest of
Bread and selections from the British Anarchist Journal
Freedom about the wide-scale nationalisation which
took place after the end of the Second World War entitled
Neither Nationalisation Nor Privatisation: An Anarchist
Approach.
As we discussed in the
last section, anarchists consider
the usual association of state ownership with socialism to
be false. We argue that it is just another form of the wages
system, of capitalism, albeit with the state replacing the
capitalist. As such, state ownership, for anarchists, is
simply state capitalism. Instead we urge socialisation
based on workers' self-management of production. Libertarian
Marxists concur.
Some mainstream Marxists, however, say they seek to combine
state ownership with "workers' control." This can be seen
from Trotsky, for example, who argued in 1938 for "workers'
control . . . the penetration of the workers' eye into all
open and concealed springs of capitalist economy . . .
workers' control becomes a school for planned economy. On
the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will
prepare itself for direct management of nationalised industry
when the hour for that eventuality strikes." Modern day
Leninists are often heard voicing support for what anarchists
consider an oxymoron, namely "nationalisation under worker'
control." This, it will be argued, proves that nationalisation
(state control) is not "state capitalism" as we argued in the
last section,
rather "control is the first step along the road
to the socialist guidance of economy." [The Death Agony
of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International,
p. 73 and p. 74]
Anarchists are not convinced. This is because of two reasons.
Firstly, because by "workers' control" anarchists and Leninists
mean two radically different things. Secondly, when in power
Trotsky advocated radically different ideas. Based on these
reasons, anarchists view Leninist calls for "workers' control"
simply as a means of gaining popular support, calls which will
be ignored once the real aim, party power, has been achieved:
it is an example of Trotsky's comment that "[s]logans as well
as organisational forms should be subordinated to the indices
of the movement." [Op. Cit., p. 72] In other words, rather than
express a commitment to the ideas of worker's control of
production, mainstream Marxist use of the term "workers' control"
is simply an opportunistic technique aiming at securing support
for the party's seizure of power and once this is achieved it
will be cast aside in favour of the first part of the demands,
namely state ownership and so control. In making this claim
anarchists feel they have more than enough evidence, evidence
which many members of Leninist parties simply know nothing about.
We will look first at the question of terminology. Anarchists
traditionally used the term "workers' control" to mean workers'
full and direct control over their workplaces, and their work.
However, after the Russian Revolution a certain ambiguity arose
in using that term. This is because specific demands which were
raised during that revolution were translated into English as
"workers' control" when, in fact, the Russian meaning of the
word (kontrolia) was far closer to "supervision" or "steering."
Thus the term "workers' control" is used to describe two
radically different concepts.
This can be seen from Trotsky when he argued that the workers
should "demand resumption, as public utilities, of work in
private businesses closed as a result of the crisis. Workers'
control in such case would be replaced by direct workers'
management." [Op. Cit., p. 73] Why workers' employed in
open capitalist firms were not considered suitable for
"direct workers' management" is not explained, but the fact
remains Trotsky clearly differentiated between management and
control. For him, "workers' control" meant "workers supervision"
over the capitalist who retained power. In other words, a
system of "dual power" at the point of production (and, like
all forms of dual power, essentially and inevitably unstable).
This vision of "workers' control" as simply supervision of
the capitalist managers can be found in Lenin. Rather than
seeing "workers' control" as workers managing production
directly, he always saw it in terms of workers' "controlling"
those who did. It simply meant "the country-wide, all-embracing,
omnipresent, most precise and most conscientious accounting
of the production and distribution of goods." He clarified
what he meant, arguing for "country-wide, all-embracing
workers' control over the capitalists" who would still
manage production. Significantly, he considered that "as
much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" required
for this "country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting
of the production and distribution of goods" would be achieved
by nationalising the "big banks," which "are the 'state
apparatus' which we need to bring about socialism" (indeed,
this was considered "something in the nature of the skeleton
of socialist society"). Over time, this system would move
towards full socialism. [Selected Works, vol. 2, pp. 364-5,
p. 366 and p. 365]
Thus, what Leninists mean by "workers' control" is radically
different than what anarchists traditionally meant by that term
(indeed, it was radically different from the workers' definition,
as can be seen from a resolution of the Bolshevik dominated
First Trade Union Congress which complained that "the workers
misunderstand and falsely interpret workers' control." [quoted
by M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 32]).
It is for this reason that from the 1960s English speaking
anarchists and other libertarian socialists have been explicit
and have used the term "workers' self-management" rather than
"workers' control" to describe their aims. Mainstream Marxists,
however have continued to use the latter slogan, undoubtedly,
as we note in section H.3.5,
to gain members from the confusion
in meanings.
Secondly, there is the example of the Russian Revolution itself.
Indeed, Trotsky is simply repeating the slogans used by the
Bolsheviks in 1917. As historian S.A. Smith correctly summarises,
the "factory committees launched the slogan of workers' control
of production quite independently of the Bolshevik party. It
was not until May that the party began to take it up." However,
Lenin used "the term ['workers' control'] in a very different
sense from that of the factory committees." In fact Lenin's
"proposals . . . [were] thoroughly statist and centralist in
character, whereas the practice of the factory committees was
essentially local and autonomous." [Red Petrograd, p. 154]
This is not all, this "workers' control" was always placed in
a statist context and it would be exercised not by workers'
organisations but rather by state capitalist institutions. In
May 1917, Lenin was arguing for the "establishment of state
control over all banks, and their amalgamation into a single
central bank; also control over the insurance agencies and big
capitalist syndicates." He reiterated this framework later that
year, arguing that "the new means of control have been created
not by us, but by capitalism in its military-imperialist stage"
and so "the proletariat takes its weapons from capitalism and
does not 'invent' or 'create them out of nothing.'" [Op. Cit.,
p. 112, p. 367 and p. 599] The factory committees were added
to this "state capitalist" system but they played only a very
minor role in it. Indeed, this system of state control was
designed to limit the power of the factory committees:
Once in power, the Bolsheviks soon turned away from even
this limited vision of workers' control and in favour of
"one-man management." Lenin raised this idea in late April
1918 and it involved granting state appointed "individual
executives dictatorial powers (or 'unlimited' powers)."
Large-scale industry required "thousands subordinating
their will to the will of one," and so the revolution
"demands" that "the people unquestioningly obey the single
will of the leaders of labour." Lenin's "superior forms of
labour discipline" were simply hyper-developed capitalist
forms. The role of workers in production was the same, but
with a novel twist, namely "unquestioning obedience to the
orders of individual representatives of the Soviet government
during the work." This support for wage slavery was combined
with support for capitalist management techniques. "We must
raise the question of piece-work and apply and test it in
practice," argued Lenin, "we must raise the question of
applying much of what is scientific and progressive in the
Taylor system; we must make wages correspond to the total
amount of goods turned out." [Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 610,
p. 611, p. 612 and pp. 602-3]
This vision had already been applied in practice, with the
"first decree on the management of nationalised enterprises in
March 1918" which had "established two directors at the head of
each enterprise . . . Both directors were appointed by the
central administrators." An "economic and administrative
council" was also created in the workplace, but this "did not
reflect a syndicalist concept of management." Rather it
included represents of the employees, employers, engineers,
trade unions, the local soviets, co-operatives, the local
economic councils and peasants. This composition "weakened
the impact of the factory workers on decision-making . . .
The workers' control organs [the factory committees] remained
in a subordinate position with respect to the council." Once
the Civil War broke out in May 1918, this process was
accelerated. By 1920, most workplaces were under one-man
management and the Communist Party at its Ninth Congress had
"promoted one-man management as the most suitable form of
management." [Silvana Malle, Op. Cit., p. 111, p. 112,
p. 141 and p. 128] In other words, the manner in which
Lenin organised industry had handed it over entirely into
the hands of the bureaucracy.
Trotsky, as to be expected, did not disagree with all this.
In fact, quite the reverse. He wholeheartedly defended the
imposing of "one-man management" in his justly infamous book
Terrorism and Communism. As he put it, "our Party Congress
. . . expressed itself in favour of the principle of one-man
management in the administration of industry . . . It would
be the greatest possible mistake, however, to consider this
decision as a blow to the independence of the working class.
The independence of the workers is determined and measured
not by whether three workers or one are placed at the head
of a factory." As such, it "would consequently be a most
crying error to confuse the question as to the supremacy of
the proletariat with the question of boards of workers at the
head of factories. The dictatorship of the proletariat is
expressed in the abolition of private property in the means
of production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet mechanism
of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in the
form in which individual economic enterprises are administered."
[Terrorism and Communism, p. 162] The term "collective will
of the workers" is simply a euphemism for the Party which
Trotsky had admitted had "substituted" its dictatorship for
that of the Soviets (indeed, "there is nothing accidental"
in this "'substitution' of the power of the party for the
power of the working class" and "in reality there is no
substitution at all." The "dictatorship of the Soviets became
possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party."
[Op. Cit., p. 109]). The unions "should discipline the
workers and teach them to place the interests of production
above their own needs and demands." He even argued that "the
only solution to economic difficulties from the point of
view of both principle and of practice is to treat the
population of the whole country as the reservoir of the
necessary labour power . . . and to introduce strict order
into the work of its registration, mobilisation and
utilisation." [Op. Cit., p. 143 and p. 135]
Trotsky did not consider this a result of the Civil War.
Again, the opposite was the case: "I consider if the civil
war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was
strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative,
we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man
management in the sphere of economic administration much
sooner and much less painfully." [Op. Cit., pp. 162-3]
Significantly, discussing developments in Russia since
the N.E.P, Trotsky argued that it was "necessary for each
state-owned factory, with its technical director and
with its commercial director, to be subjected not only
to control from the top -- by the state organs -- but
also from below, by the market which will remain the
regulator of the state economy for a long time to come."
Workers' control, as can be seen, was not even mentioned,
nor considered as an essential aspect of control "from
below." As Trotsky also stated that "[u]nder socialism
economic life will be directed in a centralised manner,"
our discussion of the state capitalist nature of mainstream
Marxism we presented in the
last section is confirmed.
[The First Five Years of the Communist International,
vol. 2, p. 237 and p. 229]
The contrast between what Trotsky did when he was in
power and what he argued for after he had been expelled
is obvious. Indeed, the arguments of 1938 and 1920 are
in direct contradiction to each other. Needless to say,
Leninists and Trotskyists today are fonder of quoting
Trotsky and Lenin when they did not have state power
rather than when they did. Rather than compare what they
said to what they did, they simply repeat ambiguous slogans
which meant radically different things to Lenin and Trotsky
than to the workers' who thrust them into power. For obvious
reasons, we feel. Given the opportunity for latter day
Leninists to exercise power, we wonder if a similar process
would occur again? Who would be willing to take that chance?
As such, the claim that Marxists stand for "workers' control"
can be refuted on two counts. Firstly, by that term they simply
mean workers' supervision of those who do have real power in
production (either the capitalists or state appointed managers).
It does not mean workers' self-management of production.
Secondly, when they had the chance they did not implement it.
In fact, they imposed capitalist style hierarchical management
and did not consider this as anything to be worried about. And
as this policy was advocated before the start of the Civil
War, it cannot be said to have been forced upon them by necessity.
As such, any claim that mainstream Marxism considers "workers'
control" as an essential feature of its politics is simply
nonsense.
For a comprehensive discussion of "workers' control" during the
Russian Revolution Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers'
Control cannot be bettered.
The roots of this confusion can be found in Marx and Engels.
In the struggle between authentic socialism (i.e. workers'
self-management) and state capitalism (i.e. state ownership)
there are elements of the correct solution to be found in
their ideas. This is their support for co-operatives. For
example, Marx praised the efforts made within the Paris
Commune to create co-operatives, so "transforming the means
of production, land and capital . . . into mere instruments
of free and associated labour." He argued that "[i]f
co-operative production is not to remain a shame and a snare;
if it is to supersede the Capitalist system; if united
co-operative societies are to regulate national production
upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control,
and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical
convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production
-- what else . . . would it be but Communism, 'possible'
Communism?" [Op. Cit., pp. 290-1] Engels, continuing this
theme, argued for "the transfer -- initially on lease --
of large estates to autonomous co-operatives under state
management and effected in such a way that the State retains
ownership of the land." He stated that neither he nor Marx
"ever doubted that, in the course of transition to a wholly
communist economy, widespread use would have to be made of
co-operative management as an intermediate stage. Only it
will mean so organising things that society, i.e. initially
the State, retains ownership of the means of production and
thus prevents the particular interests of the co-operatives
from taking precedence over those of society as a whole."
[Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 389]
However, Engels comments simply bring home the impossibilities
of trying to reconcile state ownership and workers'
self-management. While the advocacy of co-operatives is a
positive step forward from the statist arguments of the
Communist Manifesto, Engels squeezes these libertarian forms
of organising production into typically statist structures.
How "autonomous co-operatives" can co-exist with (and under!)
"state management" and "ownership" is not explained, plus
the fatal confusion of socialisation with nationalisation.
In addition, the differences between the comments of Marx and
Engels are obvious. While Marx talks of "united co-operative
societies," Engels talks of "the State." The former implies
a free federation of co-operatives, the latter a centralised
structure which the co-operatives are squeezed into and
under. The former is socialism, the latter is state capitalist.
From Engels argument, it is obvious that the stress is on
state ownership and management rather than self-management.
This confusion became a source of tragedy during the
Russian Revolution when the workers, like their comrades
during the Commune, started to form a federation of
factory committees while the Bolsheviks squeezed these
bodies into a system of state control which was designed
to marginalise them (see the appendix on
"What happened during the Russian Revolution?" for full details).
Moreover, the aims of the Paris workers were at odds with
the vision of the Communist Manifesto and in line with
anarchism. Proudhon, for example, had argued in 1848
against state ownership and for "democratically organised
workers' associations" which would be "models for agriculture,
industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast
federation of companies and societies" which would make
up "the democratic social Republic." [No Gods, No Masters,
vol. 1, p. 62] In his Principle of Federation he called
this idea an "agro-industrial federation." Thus the idea
of co-operative production is a clear expression of what
Proudhon explicitly called "industrial democracy," a
"reorganisation of industry, under the jurisdiction of
all those who compose it." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican
Socialism, p. 225] Bakunin and later anarchists simply
developed these ideas to their logical conclusion (see
section I.3 for example).
Marx, to his credit, supported these libertarian visions
when applied in practice by the Paris workers during the
Commune and promptly revised his ideas. This fact has been
obscured somewhat by Engels historical revisionism in this
matter. He argued, for example, that the "economic measures"
of the Commune were driven not by "principles" but by "simple,
practical needs." This meant that "the confiscation of
shut-down factories and workshops and handing them over
to workers' associations" were "not at all in accordance
with the spirit of Proudhonism but certainly in accordance
with the spirit of German scientific socialism." [Marx,
Engels, Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 92]
This distortion of Proudhon's ideas is also present in
Engels' 1891 introduction to Marx's "The Civil War in
France." He painted a picture of Proudhon being opposed
to association (except for large-scale industry). He
stresses that "to combine all these associations in one
great union" was "the direct opposite of the Proudhon
doctrine" and so "the Commune was the grave of the
Proudhon doctrine." [Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 256]
However, as noted, this is nonsense. The forming of workers'
associations was a key aspect of Proudhon's ideas and so
the Communards were obviously acting in his spirit. Given
that the Communist Manifesto stressed state ownership
and failed to mention co-operatives at all, the claim that
the Commune acted in its spirit seems a tad optimistic.
Particularly since Marx had commented in 1866 that in France
the workers ("particularly those of Paris"!) "are strongly
attached, without knowing it [!], to the old rubbish" and
that the "Parisian gentlemen had their heads full of the
emptiest Proudhonist phrases." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
Op. Cit., p. 46 and p. 45]
What did this "old rubbish" consist of? Well, in 1869 the
delegate of the Parisian Construction Workers' Trade Union
argued that "[a]ssociation of the different corporations
[labour unions/associations] on the basis of town or country
. . . leads to the commune of the future . . . Government is
replaced by the assembled councils of the trade bodies, and
by a committee of their respective delegates." In addition,
"a local grouping which allows the workers in the same area
to liase on a day to day basis" and "a linking up of the
various localities, fields, regions, etc." (i.e. international
trade or industrial union federations) would ensure that
"labour organises for present and future by doing away with
wage slavery." This "mode of organisation leads to the labour
representation of the future." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1,
p. 184]
To state the obvious, this had clear links with both Proudhon's
ideas and what the Commune did in practice. Rather than being
the "grave" of Proudhon's ideas on workers' associations, the
Commune saw their birth, i.e. their application. Rather than
the Parisian workers becoming Marxists "without knowing it,"
Marx had become a follower of Proudhon! Thus the idea of
socialism being based on a federation of workers' associations
was not buried with the Paris Commune. It was integrated into
all forms of social anarchism (including communist-anarchism
and anarcho-syndicalism) and recreated every time there is a
social revolution.
In ending when must note that anarchists are well aware that
individual workplaces could pursue aims at odds with the
rest of society (to use Engels expression, their "particular
interests"). This is often termed "localism." Anarchists,
however, argue that the mainstream Marxist solution is worse
than the problem. By placing self-managed workplaces under
state control (or ownership) they become subject to even
worse "particular interests," namely those of the state
bureaucracy who will use their power to further their own
interests. In contrast, anarchists advocate federations of
self-managed workplaces to solve this problem (see
section I.3 for more).
In summary, the problem of "localism" and any other problems
faced by a social revolution will be solved in the interests
of the working class only if working class people solve them
themselves. For this to happen it requires working class
people to manage their own affairs directly and that implies
self-managed organising from the bottom up (i.e. anarchism)
rather than delegating power to a minority at the top, to a
"revolutionary" party or state. This applies economically,
socially and politically. As Bakunin argued, the "revolution
should not only be made for the people's sake; it should also
be made by the people." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 141]
The greatest myth of Marxism must surely be the idea that the Russian
Revolution failed solely due to the impact objective factors. For Leninist,
the failure of the revolution was the product of such things as civil war,
foreign intervention, economic collapse and the isolation and backwardness
of Russia and not Bolshevik ideology. Anarchists are not impressed by
this argument.
Leninist John Rees recounts the standard argument, namely that the
objective conditions in Russia meant that the "subjective factor"
of Bolshevik ideology "was reduced to a choice between capitulation
to the Whites or defending the revolution with whatever means were
at hands. Within these limits Bolshevik policy was decisive. But it
could not wish away the limits and start with a clean sheet." From
this perspective, the key factor was the "vice-like pressure of the
civil war" which "transformed the state" as well as the "Bolshevik
Party itself." For the Bolsheviks had "survived three years of civil
war and wars of intervention, but only at the cost of reducing the
working class to an atomised, individualised mass, a fraction of
its former size, and unable to exercise the collective power it
had done in 1917." Industry was "reduced . . . to rubble" and the
"bureaucracy of the workers' state was left suspended in mid-air,
its class based eroded and demoralised." ["In Defence
of October," pp. 3-82, International Socialism, no. 52, p. 30,
p. 70, p. 66 and p. 65] Due to these factors, argue Leninists, the
Bolsheviks became dictators over the working class and not due
to their political ideas.
Anarchists are not convinced by this analysis, arguing that is
factually and logically flawed. Needless to say, it would be near
impossible to discuss these issues in any real depth in just one
section. As such, we need to summarise the major facts, issues and
points. For those interested in a fuller discussion as well as the
necessary documentation, we would recommend reading the appendix
on "The Russian Revolution." With that caveat, we now turn to
summarising the problems with the Leninist approach. These fall
into four main categories.
The first problem is factual. Bolshevik authoritarianism started
before the start of the civil war and major economic collapse.
Whether it is soviet democracy, workers' economic self-management,
democracy in the armed forces or working class power and freedom
generally, the fact is the Bolsheviks had systematically attacked
and undermined it from the start. They also repressed working class
protests and strikes along with opposition groups and parties. As
such, it is difficult to blame something which had not started yet
for causing Bolshevik policies.
Although the Bolsheviks had seized power under the slogan "All Power to
the Soviets," as we noted in section H.3.11
the facts are the Bolsheviks
aimed for party power and only supported soviets when they controlled
them. To maintain party power, they had to undermine the soviets and
they did. This onslaught on the soviets started quickly, a mere four
days after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks when their Council of
People's Commissars unilaterally took for itself legislative power simply
by issuing a decree to this effect. "This was, effectively, a Bolshevik
coup d'etat that made clear the government's (and party's) pre-eminence
over the soviets and their executive organ." [Neil Harding, Leninism,
p. 253] The highest organ of soviet power, the Central Executive Committee
(VTsIK) was turned into little more than a rubber stamp, with its Bolshevik
dominated presidium using its power to control the body and maintain
Bolshevik power by, for example, awarding representations to groups and
factions which supported the Bolsheviks and circumventing general meetings.
At the grassroots, a similar process was at work with power moving
increasingly to the Bolshevik dominated soviet executives who used
it to maintain a Bolshevik majority by any means possible. One such
technique used to postpone new soviet elections, another was to
gerrymander the soviets to ensure their majority. For example, when
workplace soviet elections were finally held in Petrograd, their
results were irrelevant because more than half of the projected
700-plus deputies in the new soviet were selected by Bolshevik
dominated organisations. The Bolsheviks had secured themselves a
solid majority even before factory voting began. When postponing and
gerrymandering failed, the Bolsheviks turned to state repression
to remain in power. For all the provincial soviet elections in the
spring and summer of 1918 for which data is available, Bolshevik
armed force not only overthrew the election results, it also
suppressed the working class protest against such actions.
[Vladimir Brovkin, "The Mensheviks' Political Comeback: The
Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918", The
Russian Review, vol. 42, pp. 1-50]
When the opposition parties raised such issues at the VTsIK, it had
no impact. In April 1918, one deputy "protested that non-Bolshevik
controlled soviets were being dispersed by armed force, and wanted
to discuss the issue." The chairman "refus[ed] to include it in
the agenda because of lack of supporting material" and such information
be submitted to the presidium of the soviet. The majority (i.e. the
Bolsheviks) "supported their chairman" and the facts were "submitted . . .
to the presidium, where they apparently remained." [Charles Duval,
"Yakov M. Sverdlov and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee
of Soviets (VTsIK)", pp. 3-22, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXI, no. 1,
pp. 13-14] Given that the VTsIK was meant to be the highest soviet
body between congresses, the lack of concern for state repression
against soviets and opposition groups clearly shows the Bolshevik
contempt for soviet democracy.
Unsurprisingly, the same contempt was expressed at the fifth
All-Russian Soviet Congress in July 1918 when the Bolshevik
gerrymandered it to maintain their majority. With the Mensheviks
and Right-SRs banned from the soviets, popular disenchantment
with Bolshevik rule was expressed by voting Left-SR. The Bolsheviks
ensured their majority in the congress and, therefore, a Bolshevik
government, when the Bolshevik credentials committee allowed the
Committees of Poor Peasants, which were only supported by the
Bolsheviks, to be represented. "This blatant gerrymandering ensured
a Bolshevik majority . . Deprived of their democratic majority the
Left SRs resorted to terror and assassinated the German ambassador
Mirbach." [Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War,
p. 176] The Bolsheviks falsely labelled this an uprising against the
soviets and the Left-SRs joined the Mensheviks and Right-SRs in being
made illegal. It should also be mentioned that the Bolsheviks had
attacked the anarchist movement in April, 1918. So before the start
of the civil war all opposition groups had suffered some form of
state repression by the hands of the Bolshevik regime (within six
weeks of it starting, every opposition group had been effectively
excluded from the soviets).
A similar authoritarian agenda was aimed at the armed forces and
industry. Trotsky simply abolished the soldier's committees and
elected officers, stating that "the principle of election is
politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has
been, in practice, abolished by decree." [Work, Order, Discipline]
The death penalty for disobedience was restored, along with, more
gradually, saluting, special forms of address, separate living
quarters and other privileges for officers. In industry, Lenin, as
we discussed in section H.3.14, started to champion one-man management
armed with "dictatorial" powers in April, 1918. This simply replaced
private capitalism with state capitalism, taking control of the economy
out of the hands of the workers and placing it into the hands of the
state bureaucracy.
As well as repressing working class self-management, the Bolsheviks
also used state repression against rebel workers. "By the early summer
of 1918," records one historian, "there were widespread anti-Bolshevik
protests. Armed clashes occurred in the factory districts of Petrograd
and other industrial centres." [William Rosenberg, Russian labour and
Bolshevik Power, p. 107] Thus the early months of Bolshevik rule were
marked by "worker protests, which then precipitated violent repressions
against hostile workers. Such treatment further intensified the
disenchantment of significant segments of Petrograd labour with
Bolshevik-dominated Soviet rule." [Alexander Rabinowitch, Early
Disenchantment with Bolshevik Rule, p. 37]
Clearly, whether it is in regards to soviet, workplace or army
democracy or the right of workers to strike or organise, the
facts are the Bolsheviks had systematically eliminated them
before the start of the civil war. So when Trotsky asserted
that "[i]n the beginning, the party had wished and hoped to
preserve freedom of political struggle within the framework of
the Soviets" but that it was civil war which "introduced stern
amendments into this calculation," he was wrong. Rather than being
"regarded not as a principle, but as an episodic act of self-defence"
the opposite is the case. As we note in section H.3.8 from roughly
October 1918 onwards, the Bolsheviks did raise party dictatorship
to a "principle" and did not care that this was "obviously in
conflict with the spirit of Soviet democracy." [The Revolution
Betrayed] As Samuel Farber notes, "there is no evidence indicating
that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik leaders lamented the
loss of workers' control or of democracy in the soviets, or at least
referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with the
replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921." [Before Stalinism, p. 44]
For more details see the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?" as well as section 3 of the appendix on
"What caused the
degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"
Secondly, it cannot be maintained that the Russian working class
was incapable of collective action. Throughout the civil war period,
as well as before and after, the Russian workers proved themselves
quite capable of taking collective action -- against the Bolshevik state.
Simply put, an "atomised, individualised mass" does not need extensive
state repression to control it. So while the working class was "a
fraction of its former size" it was able "to exercise the collective
power it had done in 1917." Significantly, rather than decrease over
the civil war period, the mass protests grew in size and militancy.
By 1921 these protests and strikes were threatening the very existence
of the Bolshevik dictatorship, forcing it to abandon key aspects of its
economic policies.
This indicates a key flaw in the standard Leninist account, as Russian
workers were more than capable of collective action throughout the Civil
War period and after. In the Moscow area, following the lull after the
defeat of the workers' conference movement in mid-1918 "each wave of
unrest was more powerful than the last, culminating in the mass movement
from late 1920." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 94]
This collective struggle was not limited to Moscow. "Strike action
remained endemic in the first nine months of 1920." In Petrograd province, soviet figures indicate that strikes involving more than half the
workforce took place in both 1919 and 1920. In early 1921 "industrial
unrest broke out in a nation-wide wave of discontent" which included
general strikes. [J. Aves, Op. Cit., p. 69, p. 109, and p. 120] As
Russian anarchist Ida Mett succinctly put it:
An "atomised" and powerless working class does not need martial law,
lockouts, mass arrests and the purging of the workforce to control it.
So, clearly, the Leninist argument can be faulted. Nor is it particularly
original, as it dates back to Lenin and was first formulated "to justify
a political clamp-down." Indeed, this argument was developed in response
to rising working class protest rather than its lack: "As discontent
amongst workers became more and more difficult to ignore, Lenin . . .
began to argue that the consciousness of the working class had deteriorated
. . . workers had become 'declassed.'" However, there "is little evidence
to suggest that the demands that workers made at the end of 1920 . . .
represented a fundamental change in aspirations since 1917." [J. Aves,
Op. Cit., p. 18, p. 90 and p. 91.] So while the "working class had
decreased in size and changed in composition,. . . the protest movement
from late 1920 made clear that it was not a negligible force and that
in an inchoate way it retained a vision of socialism which was not
identified entirely with Bolshevik power . . . Lenin's arguments on the
declassing of the proletariat was more a way of avoiding this unpleasant
truth than a real reflection of what remained, in Moscow at least, a
substantial physical and ideological force." [Sakwa, Op. Cit., p. 261]
Then there is the logical problem. Leninists say that they are
revolutionaries. As we noted in section H.2.1,
they inaccurately
mock anarchists for not believing that a revolution needs to defend
itself. Yet, ironically, their whole defence of Bolshevism rests
on the "exceptional circumstances" produced by the civil war they
claim is inevitable. If Leninism cannot handle the problems
associated with actually conducting a revolution then, surely, it
should be avoided at all costs. This is particularly the case as
leading Bolsheviks all argued that the specific problems their
latter day followers blame for their authoritarianism were natural
results of any revolution and, consequently, unavoidable. Lenin,
for example, stressed in 1917 that any revolution would face
exceptionally complicated circumstances as well as civil war.
Once in power, he continually reiterated this point as well as
noting that revolution in an advanced capitalist nations far more
devastating and ruinous than in Russia.
Moreover, anarchists had long argued that a revolution would be
associated with economic disruption, isolation and civil war and,
consequently, had developed their ideas to take these into account.
It should also be noted that every revolution has confirmed the
anarchist analysis. For example, the German Revolution of 1918
faced an economic collapse which was, relatively, just as bad as
that facing Russia the year before. However, no Leninist argues
that the German Revolution was impossible or doomed to failure.
Similarly, no Leninist denies that a socialist revolution was
possible during the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Consequently, it is not hard to conclude that for Leninists
difficult objective circumstances place socialism off the agenda
only when they are holding power. So even if we ignore the extensive
evidence that Bolshevik authoritarianism started before the civil war,
the logic of the Leninist argument is hardly convincing.
We discuss these issues in more detail in the appendix on "What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?"
Finally, there is a counter-example which, anarchists argue, show the
impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of the revolution. This is the
anarchist influenced Makhnovist movement. Defending the revolution in
the Ukraine against all groups aiming to impose their will on the masses,
the Makhnovists were operating in the same objective conditions facing
the Bolsheviks -- civil war, economic disruption, isolation and so forth.
However, the policies the Makhnovists implemented were radically different
than those of the Bolsheviks. While the Makhnovists called soviet
congresses, the Bolsheviks disbanded them. The former encouraged free
speech and organisation, the latter crushed both. While the Bolsheviks
raised party dictatorship and one-man management to ideological truisms,
the Makhnovists they stood for and implemented workplace, army, village
and soviet self-management. This shows the failure of Bolshevism cannot
be put down to purely objective factors like the civil war, the politics
of Marxism played their part.
For more information on the Makhnovists, see the appendix "Why does the
Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to Bolshevism?"
Therefore, anarchists have good reason to argue that one of the greatest
myths of state socialism is the idea that Bolshevik ideology played no
role in the fate of the Russian Revolution. Obviously, if the "objective"
factors do not explain Bolshevik authoritarianism we are left with the
question of which aspects of Bolshevik ideology impacted negatively on
the revolution. We turn to this in the next section.
As we discussed in the last section, anarchists have good reason to reject
the Leninist argument that the failure of Bolshevism in the Russian
Revolution can be blamed purely on the difficult objective circumstances
they faces. As Noam Chomsky summarises:
"Now, people who want to justify it say, 'The Bolsheviks had to do it' --
that's the standard justification: Lenin and Trotsky had to do it, because
of the contingencies of the civil war, for survival, there wouldn't have
been food otherwise, this and that. Well, obviously the question is, was
that true. To answer that, you've got to look at the historical facts:
I don't think it was true. In fact, I think the incipient socialist
structures in Russia were dismantles before the really dire conditions
arose . . . But reading their own writings, my feeling is that Lenin and
Trotsky knew what they were doing, it was conscious and understandable."
[Understanding Power, p. 226]
Chomsky is right on both counts. The attack on the basic building blocks
of genuine socialism started before the civil war. Moreover, it did not
happen by accident. The attacks were rooted in the Bolshevik vision of
socialism. As Maurice Brinton notes:
A key issue is the Bolsheviks support for centralisation. Long before
the revolution, Lenin had argued that within the party it was a case of
"the transformation of the power of ideas into the power of authority, the
subordination of lower Party bodies to higher ones." [Collected Works,
vol. 7, p. 367] Such visions of centralised organisation were the model
for the revolutionary state and, once in power, they did not disappoint.
However, by its very nature centralism places power into a few hands
and effectively eliminates the popular participation required for any
successful revolution to develop. The power placed into the hands of
the nineteen members of the Bolshevik party's central committee was
automatically no longer in the hands of the working class. As such,
when Leninists argue that "objective" circumstances forced the Bolsheviks
to substitute their power for that of the masses, anarchists reply that
this substitution had occurred the movement the Bolsheviks centralised
power and placed it into their own hands. As a result, popular
participation and institutions became to wither and die. Moreover,
once in power, the Bolsheviks were shaped by their new position and
the social relationships it created and, consequently, implemented
policies influenced and constrained by the hierarchical and centralised
structures they had created.
This was not the only negative impact of Bolshevik centralism. It also
spawned a bureaucracy. The rise of a state bureaucracy started immediately
with the seizure of power. Instead of the state starting to wither away
"a new bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary
rapidity . . . As the functions of the state expanded so did the
bureaucracy." [Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918,"
pp. 429-449, Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8] This was
a striking confirmation of the anarchist analysis which argued that a
new bureaucratic class develops around the centralised bodies created
by the governing party. This body would soon become riddled with personal
influences and favours, so ensuring that members could be sheltered from
popular control while, at the same time, exploiting its power to feather
its own nest.
Another problem was the Bolshevik vision of (centralised) democracy
looked like. Trotsky is typical. In April 1918 he argued that the key
factor in democracy was that the central power was elected by the masses,
meaning that functional democracy from below could be replaced by
appointments from above. Once elected the government was to be given
total power to make decisions and appoint people as required as it is
"better able to judge in the matter than" the masses. The sovereign
people were expected to simply obey their public servants until such
time as they "dismiss that government and appoint another." Trotsky
raised the question of whether it was possible for the government
to act "against the interests of the labouring and peasant masses?"
And answered no! Yet it is obvious that Trotsky's claim that "there
can be no antagonism between the government and the mass of the
workers, just as there is no antagonism between the administration
of the union and the general assembly of its members" is just
nonsense. [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 113] The history of trade
unionism is full of examples of committees betraying their membership.
Needless to say, the subsequent history Lenin's government shows that
there can be "antagonism" between rulers and ruled and that appointments
are always a key way to further elite interests.
This vision of top-down "democracy" can, of course, be traced back to
Marx's arguments of 1850 and Lenin's comments that the "organisational
principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the
top downward." (see sections H.3.2 and H.3.3). By equating centralised,
top-down decision making by an elected government with "democracy," the
Bolsheviks had the ideological justification to eliminate the functional democracy associated with the soviets, factory committees and soldiers
committees. The Bolshevik vision of democracy became the means by which
real democracy was eliminated in area after area of Russian working
class life. Needless to say, a state which eliminates functional
democracy in the grassroots will not stay democratic in any meaningful
sense for long.
Nor does it come as too great a surprise to discover that a government
which considers itself as "better able to judge" things than the people
finally decides to annul any election results it dislikes. As we discuss
in section H.5, this perspective is at the heart of vanguardism, for in
Bolshevik ideology the party, not the class, is in the final analysis
the repository of class consciousness. This means that once in power
it has a built-in tendency to override the decisions of the masses it
claimed to represent and justify this in terms of the advanced position
of the party. Combine this with a vision of "democracy" which is highly
centralised and which undermines local participation then we have the
necessary foundations for the turning of party power into party
dictatorship.
Which brings us to the next issue, namely the Bolshevik idea that the
party should seize power, not the working class as a whole (see
section H.3.11). Lenin in 1917 continually repeating the basic idea that the
Bolsheviks "can and must take state power into their own hands."
[Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 329] He equated party power with popular
power and argued that Russia would be governed by the Bolshevik party.
The question instantly arises of what happens if the masses turn against
the party? The destruction of soviet democracy in the spring and summer
of 1918 answers that question (see last section). It is not a great step
to party dictatorship over the proletariat from the premises of
Bolshevism. In a clash between soviet democracy and party power, the
Bolsheviks consistently favoured the latter -- as would be expected
given their ideology.
Then there is the Bolshevik vision of socialism. As we discussed in
section H.3.12, the Bolsheviks saw the socialist economy as being built
upon the centralised organisations created by capitalism. They confused
state capitalism with socialism. "State capitalism," Lenin wrote in
May 1917, "is a complete material preparation for socialism, the
threshold of socialism" and so socialism "is nothing but the next step
forward from state capitalist monopoly." It is "merely state capitalist
monopoly made to benefit the whole people; by this token it ceases
to be capitalist monopoly." [The Threatening Catastrophe and how to
avoid it, p. 38 and p. 37] A few months later, he was talking about how
the institutions of state capitalism could be taken over and used to
create socialism. Unsurprisingly, when defending
the need for state capitalism in the spring of 1918 against the "Left
Communists," Lenin stressed that he gave his "'high' appreciation of
state capitalism" "before the Bolsheviks seized power." [Selected
Works, vol. 2, p. 636] And, as Lenin noted, his praise for state
capitalism can be found in his State and Revolution.
Given this perspective, it is unsurprising that workers' control
was not given a high priority once the Bolsheviks seized power.
While in order to gain support the Bolsheviks had paid lip-service
to the idea of workers' control, as we noted in
section H.3.14 the
party had always given that slogan a radically different interpretation
than the factory committees had. While the factory committees had
seen workers' control as being exercised directly by the workers and
their class organisations, the Bolshevik leadership saw it in terms
of state control in which the factory committees would play, at best,
a minor role. It is unsurprising to discover which vision of socialism
was actually introduced:
Faced with the chaos that their own politics, in part, had created,
the Bolsheviks turned to one-management in April, 1918. This was
applied first on the railway workers. Like all bosses, the Bolsheviks
blamed the workers for the failings of their own policies. The
abolishing the workers' committees resulted in "a terrifying proliferation
of competitive and contradictory Bolshevik authorities, each with a
claim of life or death importance . . . Railroad journals argued
plaintively about the correlation between failing labour productivity
and the proliferation of competing Bolshevik authorities." Rather
than improving things, Lenin's one-man management did the opposite,
"leading in many places . . . to a greater degree of confusion and
indecision" and "this problem of contradictory authorities clearly
intensified, rather than lessened." Indeed, the "result of replacing
workers' committees with one man rule . . . on the railways . . . was
not directiveness, but distance, and increasing inability to make
decisions appropriate to local conditions. Despite coercion, orders
on the railroads were often ignored as unworkable." It got so bad that
"a number of local Bolshevik officials . . . began in the fall of 1918
to call for the restoration of workers' control, not for ideological
reasons, but because workers themselves knew best how to run the line
efficiently, and might obey their own central committee's directives
if they were not being constantly countermanded." [William G. Rosenberg,
Workers' Control on the Railroads, p. D1208, p. D1207, p. D1213 and
pp. D1208-9]
That it was Bolshevik policies and not workers' control which was
to blame for the state of the railways can be seen from what happened
after Lenin's one-man management was imposed. The centralised
Bolshevik economic system quickly demonstrated how to really
mismanage an economy. The Bolshevik onslaught against workers'
control in favour of a centralised, top-down economic regime ensured
that the economy was handicapped by an unresponsive system which
wasted the local knowledge in the grassroots in favour of orders
from above which were issued in ignorance of local conditions. This
lead to unused stock coexisting with acute scarcity and the centre
unable to determine the correct proportions required at the base.
Unfinished products were transferred to other regions while local
factories were shut down, wasted both time and resources (and given
the state of the transport network, this was a doubly inefficient).
The inefficiency of central financing seriously jeopardised local
activity and the centre had displayed a great deal of conservatism
and routine thinking. In spite of the complaints from below, the
Communist leadership continued on its policy of centralisation (in
fact, the ideology of centralisation was reinforced). [Silvana Malle,
The Economic Organisation of War Communism 1918-1921, p. 232-3 and
pp. 269-75]
A clearer example of the impact of Bolshevik ideology on the fate of the revolution would be hard to find. Simply put, while the situation was
pretty chaotic in early 1918, this does not prove that the factory
committee's socialism was not the most efficient way of running things
under the (difficult) circumstances. After all, rates of "output and
productivity began to climb steadily after" January 1918 and "[i]n
some factories, production doubled or tripled in the early months of
1918 . . . Many of the reports explicitly credited the factory committees
for these increases." [Carmen Sirianni, Workers' Control and Socialist
Democracy, p. 109] Unless of course, like the Bolsheviks, you have a
dogmatic belief that centralism is always more efficient. Needless to
say, Lenin never wavered in his support for one-man management nor in
his belief in the efficiency of centralism to solve all problems,
particularly the problems it itself created in abundance. Nor did his
explicit call to reproduce capitalist social relations in production
cause him any concern for, in Lenin's eyes, if the primary issue was
property and not who manages the means of production, then factory
committees are irrelevant in determining the socialist nature of the
economy.
Post-October Bolshevik policy is a striking confirmation of the anarchist
argument that a centralised structure would stifle the initiative of the
masses and their own organs of self-management. Not only was it disastrous
from a revolutionary perspective, it was hopelessly inefficient. The
constructive self-activity of the people was replaced by the bureaucratic
machinery of the state. The Bolshevik onslaught on workers' control, like
their attacks on soviet democracy and workers' protest, undoubtedly
engendered apathy and cynicism in the workforce, alienating even more
the positive participation required for building socialism which the
Bolshevik mania for centralism had already marginalised.
The pre-revolution Bolshevik vision of a socialist system was fundamentally
centralised and, consequently, top-down. This was what was implemented
post-October, with disastrous results. At each turning point, the Bolsheviks
tended to implement policies which reflected their prejudices in favour of
centralism, nationalisation and party power. Unsurprisingly, this also
undermined the genuine socialist tendencies which existed at the time.
Simply put, the Bolshevik vision of socialism and democracy played a key
role in the failure of the revolution. Therefore, the Leninist idea that
politics of the Bolsheviks had no influence on the outcome of the revolution,
that their policies during the revolution were a product purely of objective
forces, is unconvincing.
For further discussion of these and other issues, see the appendices on
"How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?" and "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"
H.3.1 Do Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing?
"In every struggle of class against class, the next end
fought for is political power; the ruling class defends
its political supremacy, that is to say its safe majority
in the Legislature; the inferior class fights for, first
a share, then the whole of that power, in order to become
enabled to change existing laws in conformity with their
own interests and requirements. Thus the working class of
Great Britain for years fought ardently and even violently
for the People's Charter [which demanded universal suffrage
and yearly general elections], which was to give it that
political power." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 386]
"The modern Socialist . . . have steadily worked for
centralisation, and complete and perfect organisation
and control by those in authority above the people. The
anarchist, on the other hand, believes in the abolition
of that central power, and expects the free society to
grow into existence from below, starting with those
organisations and free agreements among the people
themselves. It is difficult to see how, by making a
central power control everything, we can be making a
step towards the abolition of that power." [Objections
to Anarchism]
"When F. Engels, perhaps to counter anarchist criticisms,
said that once classes disappear the State as such has no
raison d'etre and transforms itself from a government of
men into an administration of thing, he was merely playing
with words. Whoever has power over things has power over men;
whoever governs production also governs the producers; who
determines consumption is master over the consumer.
"All citizens are transformed into the salaried employees of
the state . . . All citizens become employees and workers of
a single national state 'syndicate' . . . The whole of
society will have become a single office and a single factory
with equality of work and equality of pay." [Essential Works
of Lenin, p. 348]
"Basic to anti-authoritarian Socialism ---specifically,
to Anarchist Communism -- is the notion that hierarchy and
domination cannot be subsumed by class rule and economic
exploitation, indeed, that they are more fundamental to
an understanding of the modern revolutionary project.
Before 'man' began to exploit 'man,' he began to dominate
woman . . . Power of human over human long antedates the
very formation of classes and economic modes of social
oppression. . . . This much is clear: it will no longer
do to insist that a classless society, freed from material
exploitation, will necessarily be a liberated society.
There is nothing in the social future to suggest that
bureaucracy is incompatible with a classless society,
the domination of women, the young, ethnic groups or
even professional strata." [Toward an Ecological
Society, pp. 208-9]
H.3.2 Is Marxism "socialism from below"?
"These lines and others like them in Marx's writings were
to provide the rationale for asserting the authority of
Marxist parties and their armed detachments over and
even against the proletariat. Claiming a deeper and
more informed comprehension of the situation then
'even the whole of the proletariat at the given moment,'
Marxist parties went on to dissolve such revolutionary
forms of proletarian organisation as factory committees
and ultimately to totally regiment the proletariat
according to lines established by the party leadership."
[Op. Cit., p. 289]
"In a class struggle which has entered the phase of civil war,
there are bound to be times when the advance guard of the
revolutionary class, representing the interests of the broad
masses but ahead of them in political consciousness, is
obliged to exercise state power by means of a dictatorship
of the revolutionary minority. Only a short-sighted and
doctrinaire viewpoint would reject this prospect as such.
The real question at stake is whether this dictatorship, which
is unavoidable at a certain stage of any revolution, is
exercised in such a way as to consolidate itself and create
a system of institutions enabling it to become a permanent
feature, or whether, on the contrary, it is replaced as soon
as possible by the organised initiative and autonomy of the
revolutionary class or classes as a whole. The second of
these methods is that of the revolutionary Marxists who,
for this reason, style themselves Social Democrats; the
first is that of the Communists." [The Mensheviks in the
Russian Revolution, Abraham Ascher (Ed.), p. 119]
H.3.3 Is Leninism "socialism from below"?
"Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed
enemies of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to
break down the resistance of these exploiters. On the other
hand, revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards
the wavering and unstable elements among the masses
themselves." [Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 170]
"The interrelations between leaders-Party-class-masses . . .
now present themselves concretely in Russia in the following
form. The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat
which is organised in the Soviets and is led by the
Communist Party . . . The Party, which holds annual
congresses . . . is directed by a Central Committee of
nineteen elected at the congress, while the current work
in Moscow [the capital] had to be carried on by [two] still
smaller bodies . . . which are elected at the plenary sessions
of the Central Committee, five members of the Central
Committee in each bureau. This, then, looks like a real
'oligarchy.' Not a single important political or organisational
question is decided by any State institution in our republic
[sic!] without the guiding instructions of the Central
Committee of the Party.
"Who decides this question [and others like it]? We have
the Council of People's Commissars but it has to be subject
to some supervision. Whose supervision? That of the working
class as an amorphous, chaotic mass? No. The Central
Committee of the party is convened to discuss . . . and to
decide . . . Who will solve these questions in Spain? The
Communist Party of Spain." [Op. Cit., p. 174]
H.3.4 Don't anarchists just quote Marxists selectively?
"Other charges will also be made. The quotations from Lenin
and Trotsky will not be denied but it will be stated that
they are 'selective' and that 'other things, too' were said.
Again, we plead guilty. But we would stress that there are
hagiographers enough in the trade whose 'objectivity' . . .
is but a cloak for sophisticated apologetics . . . It
therefore seems more relevant to quote those statements of
the Bolsheviks leaders of 1917 which helped determine Russia's
evolution [towards Stalinism] rather those other statements
which, like the May Day speeches of Labour leaders, were for
ever to remain of rhetoric." [The Bolsheviks and Workers'
Control, p. xv]
H.3.5 Has Marxist appropriation of anarchist ideas changed it?
"the keystone of socialism [. . .] proclaimed that 'as a
general rule, the average wage would be no more than what
the worker strictly required for survival'. And it was said:
'That figure is governed by capitalist pressure alone and this
can even push it below the minimum necessary for the working
man's subsistence . . . The only rule with regard to wage
levels is the plentiful or scarce supply of man-power . . .'
"A novel factor has appeared on the labour market: the will
of the worker! And this factor, not pertinent when it comes
to setting the price of a bushel of potatoes, has a bearing
upon the setting of wages; its impact may be large or small,
according to the degree of tension of the labour force which
is a product of the accord of individual wills beating in
unison -- but, whether it be strong or weak, there is no
denying it.
"Ultimately, a line will have to be drawn that, by definition,
excludes any project that can tip decentralisation to the
side of centralisation, direct democracy to the side of
delegated power, libertarian institutions to the side of
bureaucracy, and spontaneity to the side of authority. Such
a line, like a physical barrier, must irrevocably separate
a libertarian zone of theory and practice from the
hybridised socialisms that tend to denature it. This zone
must build its anti-authoritarian, utopian, and revolutionary
commitments into the very recognition it has of itself, in
short, into the very way it defines itself. . . . to admit
of domination is to cross the line that separates the
libertarian zone from the [state] socialist." [Op. Cit.,
pp. 223-4]
H.3.6 Is Marxism the only revolutionary politics which have worked?
"A theory which is so readily 'vulgarised,' 'betrayed,' or,
more sinisterly, institutionalised into bureaucratic power
by nearly all its adherents may well be one that lends
itself to such 'vulgarisations,' 'betrayals,' and bureaucratic
forms as a normal condition of its existence. What may
seem to be 'vulgarisations, 'betrayals,' and bureaucratic
manifestations of its tenets in the heated light of doctrinal
disputes may prove to be the fulfilment of its tenets in the
cold light of historical development." [Toward an Ecological
Society, p. 196]
H.3.7 What is wrong with the Marxist theory of the state?
"The state is . . . by no means a power forced on society from
without . . . Rather, it is a product of society at a certain
stage of development; it is an admission . . . that it has
split into irreconcilable antagonisms . . . in order that
these antagonisms and classes with conflicting economic
interests might not consume themselves and society in
fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have power
seemingly standing above society that would alleviate the
conflict . . . this power, arisen out of society but placing
itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it,
is the state." [Marx-Engels: Selected Writings, p. 576]
"Marx, in his analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871, has
done radical social theory a considerable disservice. The
Commune's combination of delegated policy-making with the
execution of policy by its own administrators, a feature
of the Commune which Marx celebrated, is a major failing
of that body. Rousseau quite rightly emphasised that popular
power cannot be delegated without being destroyed. One either
has a fully empowered popular assembly or power belongs to
the State." ["Theses on Libertarian Municipalism", pp. 9-22,
The Anarchist Papers, Dimitrios Roussopoulos (ed.), p. 14]
"the slogan 'Power to the people' can only be put into
practice when the power exercised by social elites is
dissolved into the people. Each individual can then take
control of his [or her] daily life. If 'Power to the people'
means nothing more than power to the 'leaders' of the people,
then the people remain an undifferentiated, manipulated mass,
as powerless after the revolution as they were before."
[Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 20f]
"Does in a trade union, for instance, the whole union
constitute the executive committee? Will all division of
labour in a factory disappear and also the various functions
arising from it? And will everybody be at the top in Bakunin's
construction built from the bottom upwards? There will in
fact be no below then. Will all members of the commune also
administer the common affairs of the region? In that case
there will be no difference between commune and region.
'The Germans [says Bakunin] number nearly 40 million. Will,
for example, all 40 million be members of the government?'
Certainly, for the thing begins with the self-government
of the commune." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and
Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 150-1]
"To some neo-Marxists who see centralisation and
decentralisation merely as difference of degree, the
word 'centralisation' may merely be an awkward way of
denoting means for co-ordinating the decisions made
by decentralised bodies. Marx, it is worth noting,
greatly confused this distinction when he praised the
Paris Commune as a 'working, not a parliamentary body,
executive and legislative at the same time.' In point
of fact, the consolidation of 'executive and legislative'
functions in a single body was regressive. It simply
identified the process of policy-making, a function that
rightly should belong to the people in assembly, with the
technical execution of these policies, a function that
should be left to strictly administrative bodies subject
to rotation, recall, limitations of tenure . . .
Accordingly, the melding of policy formation with
administration placed the institutional emphasis of
classical [Marxist] socialism on centralised bodies,
indeed, by an ironical twist of historical events,
bestowing the privilege of formulating policy on the
'higher bodies' of socialist hierarchies and their
execution precisely on the more popular 'revolutionary
committees' below." [Toward an Ecological Society,
pp. 215-6]
"It is to argue not against revolution, but against
'revolutionary' praxis employing central authority.
It is to argue that any revolution must remain in the
hands of the mass of people and that they must be aware
of the dangers of allowing power to fall into the hands
of a minority in the course of the revolution. Latent
within Marxist theory . . . is the tacit condoning of
political inequality in the course and aftermath of
revolutionary praxis. Only when such inequality is openly
and widely rejected can there be any hope of a libertarian
communist revolution. The lesson to learn is that we must
oppose not revolutionary practice, but authoritarian
'revolutionary' practice. Such authoritarian practice
will continue to prevail in revolutionary circles as
long as the Marxist theory of the state and the
corresponding theory of power remain above criticism
within them." [Marx: A Radical Critique, p. 231]
H.3.8 What is wrong with the Leninist theory of the state?
"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 . . . if the dictatorship of the proletariat
means anything at all, then it means that the vanguard of
the proletariat is armed with the resources of the state
in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from
the backward layers of the proletariat itself." [The
Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59]
"The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans,
making a fetish of democratic principles! They 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 temporarily clashed with the passing
moods of the workers' democracy. It is necessary to create
amongst us the awareness of the revolutionary birthright of
the party, which is obliged to maintain its dictatorship,
regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes.
This awareness is for us the indispensable element. The
dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the
formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Samuel
Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 209]
"Engels speaks of a government that is required for the
domination of a class . . . Applied to the proletariat,
it consequently means a government that is required for
the domination of the proletariat, i.e. the dictatorship
of the proletariat for the effectuation of the socialist
revolution." [Collected Works, vol. 8, p. 279]
"Today, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia
you do not have the dictatorship of the working class but the
dictatorship of the party. They think this is a reproach against
us. Not in the least! We have a dictatorship of the working
class and that is precisely why we also have a dictatorship of
the Communist Party. The dictatorship of the Communist Party
is only a function, an attribute, an expression of the
dictatorship of the working class . . . [T]he dictatorship
of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of
the Communist Party." [Op. Cit., pp. 151-2]
H.3.9 Is the state simply an agent of economic power?
"A government [or state], that is a group of people entrusted
with making the laws and empowered to use the collective
force to oblige each individual to obey them, is already
a privileged class and cut off from the people. As any
constituted body would do, it will instinctively seek to
extend its powers, to be beyond public control, to impose
its own policies and to give priority to its special
interests. Having been put in a privileged position,
the government is already at odds with the people whose
strength it disposes of." [Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 34]
"The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged
class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bourgeoisie
-- and finally, when all the other classes have exhausted
themselves, the class of the bureaucracy enters upon the
stage and then the State falls, or rises, if you please to
the position of a machine." [Bakunin, The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 208]
"In all of the archaic civilisations and historically known
chiefdoms and primitive states the 'stratification' was . . .
mainly of two classes, the governors and the governed --
political strata, not strata of ownership groups." [quoted
by Taylor, Op. Cit., p. 133]
"In Marxist theory power derives primarily, if not exclusively,
from control of the means of production and distribution of
wealth, that is, from economic factors. Yet, it is evident that
power derived from knowledge -- and usually 'religious' style
knowledge -- is often highly significant, at least in the social
dynamics of small societies. . . Economic factors are hardly the
only source of power. Indeed, we see this in modern society as
well, where the capitalist owner does not wield total power.
Rather technicians and other specialists command it as well,
not because of their economic wealth, but because of their
knowledge." [quoted by Alan Carter, Marx: A Radical Critique,
p. 191]
"Each State is not necessarily an institutionalised system
of violence in the interests of a specific ruling class,
as Marxism would have us believe. There are many examples
of States that were the 'ruling class' and whose own
interests existed quite apart from -- even in antagonism
to -- privileged, presumably 'ruling' classes in a given
society. The ancient world bears witness to distinctly
capitalistic classes, often highly privileged and
exploitative, that were bilked by the State, circumscribed
by it, and ultimately devoured by it -- which is in part
why a capitalist society never emerged out of the ancient
world. Nor did the State 'represent' other class interests,
such as landed nobles, merchants, craftsmen, and the like.
The Ptolemaic State in Hellenistic Egypt was an interest
in its own right and 'represented' no other interest than
its own. The same is true of the Aztec and the Inca States
until they were replaced by Spanish invaders. Under the
Emperor Domitian, the Roman State became the principal
'interest' in the empire, superseding the interests of
even the landed aristocracy which held such primacy in
Mediterranean society. . .
"By focusing too much attention on the economic structure of
society and insufficient attention on the problems of political
power, Marx has left a legacy we would done better not to
inherit. The perceived need for authoritarian and centralised
revolutionary organisation is sanctioned by Marx's theory
because his theoretical subordination of political power to
economic classes apparently renders post-revolutionary
political power unproblematic." [Marx: A Radical Critique,
p. 231]
H.3.10 Has Marxism always supported the idea of workers' councils?
"The future social organisation must be made solely from
the bottom up, 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." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
Writings, pp. 170-2]
"If one thing is certain it is that our Party and the working
class can only come to power under the form of a democratic
republic. This is even the specific form for the dictatorship
of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already
shown." [quoted by David W. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin, p. 81]
"while it is true that Lenin recognised the different functions
and democratic raison d'etre for both the soviets and his party,
in the last analysis it was the party that was more important
than the soviets. In other words, the party was the final
repository of working-class sovereignty. Thus, Lenin did not
seem to have been reflected on or have been particularly
perturbed by the decline of the soviets after 1918." [Samuel
Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 212]
H.3.11 Does Marxism aim to place power into the hands of workers organisations?
"The drawback of the new 'soviet democracy' hailed by
Lenin in 1906 is that he could envisage the soviets only
as controlled organisations; for him they were instruments
by which the party controlled the working masses, rather
than true forms of a workers democracy. The basic
contradiction of the Bolshevik soviet system -- which
purports to be a democracy of all working people but in
reality recognises only the rule of one party -- is already
contained in Lenin's interpretation of the soviets during
the first Russian revolution." [The Soviets, p. 85]
"With all the idealised glorification of the soviets as
a new, higher, and more democratic type of state, Lenin's
principal aim was revolutionary-strategic rather than
social-structural . . . The slogan of the soviets was
primarily tactical in nature; the soviets were in theory
organs of mass democracy, but in practice tools for the
Bolshevik Party. In 1917 Lenin outlined his transitional
utopia without naming the definitive factor: the party.
To understand the soviets' true place in Bolshevism, it
is not enough, therefore, to accept the idealised picture
in Lenin's state theory. Only an examination of the actual
give-and-take between Bolsheviks and soviets during the
revolution allows a correct understanding of their
relationship." [Oscar Anweiler, Op. Cit., pp. 160-1]
"Menshevik newspapers and activists in the trade unions, the
Soviets, and the factories had made a considerable impact on
a working class which was becoming increasingly disillusioned
with the Bolshevik regime, so much so that in many places the
Bolsheviks felt constrained to dissolve Soviets or prevent
re-elections where Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries
had gained majorities." [Israel Getzler, Martov, p. 179]
"But the events have proved that without a party capable of
directing the proletarian revolution, the revolution itself
is rendered impossible. The proletariat cannot seize power by
a spontaneous uprising . . . there is nothing else that can
serve the proletariat as a substitute for its own party."
"Within six weeks of the October revolution, Gorky's newspaper
Novaya Zhizn lamented the rapidity with which life had run
out of the Soviet movement: 'The slogan "All power to the
Soviets,"' it concluded, 'had actually been transformed into
the slogan "All power to the few Bolsheviks" . . . The Soviets
decay, become enervated, and from day to day lose more of
their prestige in the ranks of democracy.' The initial heroic
stage -- the stage of mass involvement and unsullied dreams
-- was already over." [Neil Harding, Leninism, p. 253]
"If the revolutionary means are out of their hands,
if they are in the hands of a techno-bureaucratic elite,
then such an elite will be in a position to direct to
their own benefit not only the course of the revolution,
but the future society as well. If the proletariat are
to ensure that an elite will not control the future
society, they must prevent them from controlling the
course of the revolution." [Alan Carter, Marx: A
Radical Critique, p. 165]
H.3.12 Is big business the precondition for socialism?
"Then came the concentration of the means of production
and of the producers in large workshops and manufacturies,
their transformation into actual socialised means of
production and socialised producers. But the socialised
producers and means of production and their products
were still treated, after this change, just as they
had been before . . . the owner of the instruments of
labour . . . appropriated to himself . . . exclusively
the product of the labour of others. Thus, the product
now produced socially were not appropriated by those who
actually set in motion the means of production and
actually produced the commodities, but by the
capitalists. . . . The mode of production is subjected
to this [individual or private] form of appropriation,
although it abolishes the conditions upon which the
latter rests.
"In the social production of their life, men enter into
definite relations that are indispensable and independent
of their will, relations of production which correspond
to a definite stage of development of their material
productive forces. The sum total of these relations of
production constitutes the economic structure of society,
the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. . . At a certain stage of their
development, the material productive forces come in
conflict with the existing relations of production or
-- what is but a legal expression for the same thing
-- with the property relations within which they have
been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the
productive forces these relations turn into their
fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.
With the change of the economic foundation the entire
immense superstructure is more or less rapidly
transformed." [Marx, Op. Cit., pp. 4-5]
"Once finance capital has brought the most important branches of
production under its control, it is enough for society, through
its conscious executive organ -- the state conquered by the working
class -- to seize finance capital in order to gain immediate control
of these branches of production. . . taking possession of six large
Berlin banks would . . . greatly facilitate the initial phases of
socialist policy during the transition period, when capitalist
accounting might still prove useful." [pp. 367-8]
"The role of industrial decentralisation in the revolution
is unfortunately too little appreciated. . . Most people
are still in the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that
centralisation is 'more efficient and economical.' They
close their eyes to the fact that the alleged 'economy' is
achieved at the cost of the workers' limb and life, that
the 'efficiency' degrades him to a mere industrial cog,
deadens his soul, kills his body. Furthermore, in a system
of centralisation the administration of industry becomes
constantly merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful
bureaucracy of industrial overlords. It would indeed be
the sheerest irony if the revolution were to aim at such
a result. It would mean the creation of a new master class."
[The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 80-1]
"Marxist communists, especially Russian ones, are beguiled by
the distant mirage of big industry in the West or America and
mistake for a system of production what is only a typically
capitalist means of speculation, a means of exercising
oppression all the more securely; and they do not appreciate
that that sort of centralisation, far from fulfilling the
real needs of production, is, on the contrary, precisely
what restricts it, obstructs it and applies a brake to it
in the interests of capital.
H.3.13 Why is state socialism just state capitalism?
"If instead of the present capitalist class there were
a set of officials appointed by the Government and set
in a position to control our factories, it would bring
about no revolutionary change. The officials would have
to be paid, and we may depend that, in their privileged
positions, they would expect good remuneration. The
politicians would have to be paid, and we already know
their tastes. You would, in fact, have a non-productive
class dictating to the producers the conditions upon
which they were allowed to use the means of production.
As this is exactly what is wrong with the present system
of society, we can see that State control would be no
remedy, while it would bring with it a host of new
troubles . . . under a governmental system of society,
whether it is the capitalism of today or a more a
perfected Government control of the Socialist State,
the essential relationship between the governed and
the governing, the worker and the controller, will be
the same; and this relationship so long as it lasts can
be maintained only by the bloody brutality of the
policeman's bludgeon and the soldier's rifle." [The
Anarchist Revolution, pp. 8-9]
"The nationalisation of industry, removing the workers
from the hands of individual capitalists, delivered them
to the yet more rapacious hands of a single, ever-present
capitalist boss, the State. The relations between the
workers and this new boss are the same as earlier
relations between labour and capital, with the sole
difference that the Communist boss, the State, not only
exploits the workers, but also punishes them himself . . .
Wage labour has remained what it was before, except that
it has taken on the character of an obligation to the
State . . . It is clear that in all this we are dealing
with a simple substitution of State capitalism for private
capitalism." [Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist
Movement, p. 71]
"Labour financed by the State -- such is the fundamental
principle of authoritarian Communism, of State Socialism.
The State, having become the sole proprietor . . . will
have become sole capitalist, banker, money-lender, organiser,
director of all national work, and the distributor of its
profits." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 293]
"Nationalisation is not Socialisation, but State Capitalism
. . . Socialisation . . . is not State ownership, but the
common, social ownership of the means of production, and
social ownership implies control by the producers, not by
new bosses. It implies Workers' Control of Industry --
and that is Syndicalism." [Op. Cit., p. 111]
H.3.14 Don't Marxists believe in workers' control?
"One of the first decrees issues by the Bolshevik Government
was the Decree on Workers' Control of 27 November 1917. By
this decree workers' control was institutionalised . . .
Workers' control implied the persistence of private ownership
of the means of production, though with a 'diminished' right
of disposal. The organs of workers' control, the factory
committees, were not supposed to evolve into workers'
management organs after the nationalisation of the factories.
The hierarchical structure of factory work was not questioned
by Lenin . . . To the Bolshevik leadership the transfer of
power to the working class meant power to its leadership,
i.e. to the party. Central control was the main goal of the
Bolshevik leadership. The hasty creation of the VSNKh (the
Supreme Council of the National Economy) on 1 December 1917,
with precise tasks in the economic field, was a significant
indication of fact that decentralised management was not among
the projects of the party, and that the Bolsheviks intended to
counterpose central direction of the economy to the possible
evolution of workers' control toward self-management."
[Silvana Malle, The Economic Organisation of War Communism,
1918-1921, p. 47]
H.3.15 Can objective factors explain the failure of the Russian Revolution?
"And if the proletariat was that exhausted how come it was still capable
of waging virtually total general strikes in the largest and most heavily industrialised cities?" [The Kronstadt Rebellion, p. 81]
H.3.16 Did Bolshevik ideology influence the outcome of the Russian Revolution?
"In the stages leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, there
were incipient socialist institutions developing in Russia -- workers'
councils, collectives, things like that. And they survived to an extent
once the Bolsheviks took over -- but not for very long; Lenin and Trotsky
pretty much eliminated them as they consolidated their power. I mean,
you can argue about the justification for eliminating them, but the
fact is that the socialist initiatives were pretty quickly eliminated.
"there is a clear-cut and incontrovertible link between what happened
under Lenin and Trotsky and the later practices of Stalinism . . . The
more one unearths about this period the more difficult it becomes to
define -- or even to see -- the 'gulf' allegedly separating what
happened in Lenin's time from what happened later. Real knowledge of
the facts also makes it impossible to accept . . . that the whole
course of events was 'historically inevitable' and 'objectively
determined'. Bolshevik ideology and practice were themselves important
and sometimes decisive factors in the equation, at every critical stage
of this critical period." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. 84]
"On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the [factory]
committee leaders sought to bring their model into being. At each point
the party leadership overruled them. The result was to vest both
managerial and control powers in organs of the state which were
subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them." [Thomas
F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. 38]
Given his vision of socialism, Lenin's rejection of the factory
committee's model comes as no surprise. The Bolsheviks, as Lenin had
promised, built from the top-down their system of unified administration
based on the Tsarist system of central bodies which governed and regulated
certain industries during the war (and, moreover, systematically stopped
the factory committee organising together). [Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 36 and
pp. 18-9] This was very centralised and very inefficient:
"it seems apparent that many workers themselves . . . had now come to
believe . . . that confusion and anarchy [sic!] at the top were the
major causes of their difficulties, and with some justification. The
fact was that Bolshevik administration was chaotic . . . Scores of
competitive and conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities issued
contradictory orders, often brought to factories by armed Chekists.
The Supreme Economic Council. . . issu[ed] dozens of orders and pass[ed]
countless directives with virtually no real knowledge of affairs."
[William G. Rosenberg, Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power, p. 116]