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"An Anarchist FAQ" in pdf format
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Appendices
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D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?
D.8 What causes militarism and what are its effects?
There are three main causes of capitalist militarism.
Firstly, there is the need to contain the domestic enemy - the oppressed
and exploited sections of the population. As Emma Goldman argued, the
military machine "is not directed only against the external enemy; it
aims much more at the internal enemy. It concerns that element of
labour which has learned not to hope for anything from our institutions,
that awakened part of the working people which has realised that the war
of classes underlies all wars among nations, and that if war is justified
at all it is the war against economic dependence and political slavery,
the two dominant issues involved in the struggle of the classes." In
other words, the nation "which is to be protected by a huge military
force is not" that "of the people, but that of the privileged class; the
class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from
the cradle to the grave." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 352 and p. 348]
The second, as noted in the section on imperialism, is that a strong
military is necessary in order for a ruling class to pursue an aggressive
and expansionist foreign policy in order to defend its interests globally.
For most developed capitalist nations, this kind of foreign policy
becomes more and more important because of economic forces, i.e. in order
to provide outlets for its goods and capital to prevent the system from
collapsing by expanding the market continually outward. This outward
expansion of, and so competition between, capital needs military force
to protect its interests (particularly those invested in other countries)
and give it added clout in the economic jungle of the world market. This
need has resulted in, for example, "hundreds of US bases [being] placed
all over the world to ensure global domination." [Chomsky, Failed
States, p. 11]
The third major reason for militarism is to bolster a state's economy.
Capitalist militarism promotes the development of a specially favoured
group of companies which includes "all those engaged in the manufacture
and sale of munitions and in military equipment for personal gain and
profit." [Goldman, Op. Cit., p. 354] These armaments companies ("defence"
contractors) have a direct interest in the maximum expansion of military
production. Since this group is particularly wealthy, it exerts great
pressure on government to pursue the type of state intervention and,
often, the aggressive foreign policies it wants. As Chomsky noted
with respect to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq:
"Empires are costly. Running Iraq is not cheap. Somebody's paying.
Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the
corporations that are rebuilding it. in both cases, they're getting
paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.S.
Corporations . . . The same tax-payers fund the military-corporate
system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed
Iraq . . . It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to
narrow sectors of the population." [Imperial Ambitions, pp. 56-7]
This "special relationship" between state and Big Business also has
the advantage that it allows the ordinary citizen to pay for industrial
Research and Development. As Noam Chomsky points out in many of his
works, the "Pentagon System," in which the public is forced to subsidise
research and development of high tech industry through subsidies to
defence contractors, is a covert substitute in the US for the overt
industrial planning policies of other "advanced" capitalist nations,
like Germany and Japan. Government subsidies provide an important way
for companies to fund their research and development at taxpayer expense,
which often yields "spin-offs" with great commercial potential as consumer
products (e.g. computers). Needless to say, all the profits go to the
defence contractors and to the commercial companies who buy licences to
patented technologies from them, rather than being shared with the public
which funded the R&D that made the profits possible. Thus militarism is
a key means of securing technological advances within capitalism.
It is necessary to provide some details to indicate the size and impact of
military spending on the US economy:
"Since 1945. . . there have been new industries sparking investment and
employment . . In most of them, basic research and technological progress
were closely linked to the expanding military sector. The major innovation
in the 1950s was electronics . . . [which] increased its output 15 percent
per year. It was of critical importance in workplace automation, with the
federal government providing the bulk of the research and development
(R&D) dollars for military-orientated purposes. Infrared instrumentation,
pressure and temperature measuring equipment, medical electronics, and
thermoelectric energy conversion all benefited from military R&D. By
the 1960s indirect and direct military demand accounted for as much as
70 percent of the total output of the electronics industry. Feedbacks also
developed between electronics and aircraft, the second growth industry of
the 1950s. By 1960 . . . [i]ts annual investment outlays were 5.3 times
larger than their 1947-49 level, and over 90 percent of its output went
to the military. Synthetics (plastics and fibres) was another growth industry
owning much of its development to military-related projects. Throughout the
1950s and 1960s, military-related R&D, including space, accounted for 40
to 50 percent of total public and private R&D spending and at least 85%
of federal government share." [Richard B. Du Boff, Accumulation and Power,
pp. 103-4]
As another economist notes, it is "important to recognise that the
role of the US federal government in industrial development has been
substantial even in the post-war period, thanks to the large amount
of defence-related procurements and R&D spending, which have had
enormous spillover effects. The share of the US federal government
in total R&D speanding, which was only 16 per cent in 1930, remained
between one-half and two-thirds during the postwar years. Industries
such as computers, aerospace and the internet, where the USA still
maintains an international edge despite the decline in its overall
technological leadership, would not have existed without
defence-related R&D funding by the country's federal government."
Moreover, the state also plays a "crucial role" in supporting
R&D in the pharmaceutical industry. [Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away
the Ladder, p. 31]
Not only this, government spending on road building (initially justified
using defence concerns) also gave a massive boost to private capital
(and, in the process, totally transformed America into a land fit for
car and oil corporations). The cumulative impact of the 1944, 1956 and
1968 Federal Highway Acts "allowed $70 billion to be spent on the
interstates without [the money] passing through the congressional
appropriations board." The 1956 Act "[i]n effect wrote into law the
1932 National Highway Users Conference strategy of G[eneral] M[otors]
chairman Alfred P. Sloan to channel gasoline and other motor
vehicle-related excise taxes into highway construction." GM also
bought-up and effectively destroyed public transit companies across
America, so reducing competition against private car ownership. The
net effect of this state intervention was that by 1963-66 "one in every
six business enterprise was directly dependent on the manufacture,
distribution, servicing, and the use of motor vehicles." The impact
of this process is still evident today -- both in terms of ecological
destruction and in the fact that automobile and oil companies are still
dominate the top twenty of the Fortune 500. [Op. Cit., p. 102]
This system, which can be called military Keynesianism, has three advantages
over socially-based state intervention. Firstly, unlike social programmes,
military intervention does not improve the situation (and thus, hopes)
of the majority, who can continue to be marginalised by the system,
suffer the discipline of the labour market and feel the threat of
unemployment. Secondly, it acts likes welfare for the rich, ensuring
that while the many are subject to market forces, the few can escape
that fate - while singing the praises of the "free market". And, thirdly,
it does not compete with private capital -- in fact, it supplements it.
Because of the connection between militarism and imperialism, it was
natural after World War II that America should become the world's leading
military state at the same time that it was becoming the world's leading
economic power, and that strong ties developed between government,
business, and the armed forces. American "military capitalism" is
described in detail below, but the remarks also apply to a number of
other "advanced" capitalist states.
In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the danger posed to
individual liberties and democratic processes by the "military-industrial
complex," which might, he cautioned, seek to keep the economy in a state
of continual war-readiness simply because it is good business. This echoed
the warning which had been made earlier by sociologist C. Wright Mills (in
The Power Elite), who pointed out that since the end of World War
II the military had become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the
entire American economy, and that US capitalism had in fact become a
military capitalism. This situation has not substantially changed since
Mills wrote, for it is still the case that all US military officers have
grown up in the atmosphere of the post-war military-industrial alliance
and have been explicitly educated and trained to carry it on. Moreover,
many powerful corporations have a vested interest in maintaining this
system and will be funding and lobbying politicians and their parties
to ensure its continuance.
That this interrelationship between corporate power and the state expressed
by militarism is a key aspect of capitalism can be seen from the way it
survived the end of the Cold War, the expressed rationale for this system:
"With the Cold war no longer available, it was necessary to reframe
pretexts not only for [foreign] intervention but also for militarised
state capitalism at home. The Pentagon budget presented to Congress a
few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall remained largely unchanged,
but was packaged in a new rhetorical framework, presented in the National
Security Strategy of March 1990. Once priority was to support advanced
industry in traditional ways, in sharp violation of the free market
doctrines proclaimed and imposed on others. The National Security
Strategy called for strengthening 'the defence industrial base'
(essentially, high-tech industry) with incentives 'to invest in new
facilities and equipment as well as in research and development.' As
in the past, the costs and risks of the coming phases of the industrial
economy were to be socialised, with eventual profits privatised, a
form of state socialism for the rich on which much of the advanced
US economy relies, particularly since World War II." [Failed States,
p. 126]
This means that US defence businesses, which are among the biggest
lobbyists, cannot afford to lose this "corporate welfare."
Unsurprisingly, they did not. So while many politicians asserted
a "peace dividend" was at hand when the Soviet Bloc collapsed,
this has not came to pass. Although it is true that some fat was
trimmed from the defence budget in the early 1990s, both economic
and political pressures have tended to keep the basic
military-industrial complex intact, insuring a state of global
war-readiness and continuing production of ever more advanced weapons
systems into the foreseeable future. Various excuses were used to
justify continued militarism, none of them particularly convincing
due to the nature of the threat.
The first Gulf War was useful, but the quick defeat of Saddam showed
how little a threat he actually was. The Iraq invasion of 2003 proved
that his regime, while temporarily helpful to the Pentagon, was not
enough of a menace to warrant the robust defence budgets of yore now
given that his military machine had been smashed. This did not, of
course, stop the Bush Administration spinning the threat and lying
to the world about (non-existent) Iraqi "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
(this is unsurprising, though, given how the Soviet military machine
had also been hyped and its threat exaggerated to justify military
spending). Other "threats" to the world's sole super-power such as
Cuba, Iran, Libya and North Korea are equally unconvincing to any
one with a firm grasp of reality. Luckily for the US state, a new
enemy appeared in the shape of Islamic Terrorism.
The terrorist atrocity of 9/11 was quickly used to justify expanding
US militarism (and expanding the power of the state and reducing
civil liberties). In its wake, various government bureaucracies
and corporations could present their wish-lists to the politicians
and expect them to be passed without real comment all under the
guise of "the war on terror." As this threat is so vague and so
widespread, it is ideal to justify continuing militarism as well
as imperial adventures across the global (any state can be attacked
simply be declaring it is harbouring terrorists). It can also be used
to justify attacks on existing enemies, such as Iraq and the other
countries in the so-called "axis of evil" and related states. As
such, it was not surprising to hear about the possible Iranian
nuclear threat and about the dangers of Iranian influence even
while the US military was bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq.
While the Bush Administration's doctrine of "pre-emptive war"
(i.e. aggression) may have, as Chomsky noted, "broken little
new ground" and have been standard (but unspoken) US policy
from its birth, its does show how militarism will be justified
for some time to come. [Op. Cit., p. 85] It (and the threat of
terrorism which is used to justify it) provides the Pentagon with
more arguments for continued high levels of defence spending and
military intervention. In a nutshell, then, the trend toward
increasing militarism is not likely to be checked as the Pentagon
has found a sufficiently dangerous and demonic enemy to justify
continued military spending in the style to which it's accustomed.
Thus the demands of US military capitalism still take priority over the
needs of the people. For example, Holly Sklar points out that Washington,
Detroit, and Philadelphia have higher infant death rates than Jamaica or
Costa Rica and that Black America as a whole has a higher infant mortality
rate than Nigeria; yet the US still spends less public funds on education
than on the military, and more on military bands than on the National
Endowment for the Arts. ["Brave New World Order," Cynthia Peters (ed.),
Collateral Damage, pp. 3-46] But of course, politicians continue to
maintain that education and social services must be cut back even further
because there is "no money" to fund them. As Chomsky so rightly says:
"It is sometimes argued that concealing development of high-tech
industry under the cover of 'defence' has been a valuable contribution
to society. Those who do not share that contempt for democracy might
ask what decisions the population would have made if they had been
informed of the real options and allowed to choose among them. Perhaps
they might have preferred more social spending for health, education,
decent housing, a sustainable environment for future generations, and
support for the United Nations, international law, and diplomacy, as
polls regularly show. We can only guess, since fear of democracy
barred the option of allowing the public into the political arena,
or even informing them about what was being done in their name."
[Op. Cit., p. 127]
Finally, as well as skewing resource allocation and wealth away from
the general public, militarism also harms freedom and increases the
threat of war. The later is obvious, as militarism cannot help but
feed an arms race as countries hurry to increase their military might
in response to the developments of others. While this may be good for
profits for the few, the general population have to hope that the
outcome of such rivalries do not lead to war. As Goldman noted about
the First World War, can be, in part, "traced to the cut-throat
competition for military equipment . . . Armies equipped to the
teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder
backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions."
[Op. Cit., p. 353]
As to freedom, as an institution the military is based on the
"unquestioning obedience and loyalty to the government." (to quote,
as Goldman did, one US General). The ideal soldier, as Goldman puts
it, is "a cold-blooded, mechanical, obedient tool of his military
superiors" and this position cannot be harmonised with individual
liberty. Indeed, "[c]an there be anything more destructive of the true
genius of liberty than . . . the spirit of unquestioning obedience?"
[Op. Cit., pp. 52-4] As militarism becomes bigger, this spirit of
obedience widens and becomes more dominant in the community. It
comes to the fore during periods of war or in the run up to war,
when protest and dissent are equated to treason by those in power
and their supporters. The war hysteria and corresponding repression
and authoritarianism which repeatedly sweeps so-called "free" nations
shows that militarism has a wider impact than just economic
development and wasted resources. As Bakunin noted, "where military
force prevails, there freedom has to take its leave -- especially
the freedom and well-being of the working people." [The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 221-2]
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An Anarchist FAQ Webpage Contacts
An Anarchist FAQ Webpage Contacts
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is a classic example of the power of freedom, equality and mutual aid.
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This means that any e-mail sent may take a while to be replied to. We
apologise for any delay, but we are not a corporate funded think-tank
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If you want to contact some of those responsible, then send email to
anarchistfaq@yahoo.co.uk
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I.2 Is this a blueprint for an anarchist society?
I.2 Is this a blueprint for an anarchist society?
No, far from it. There can be no such thing as a "blueprint"
for a free society. "Anarchism", as Rocker correctly stressed,
"is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of
a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on
principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not
believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human
development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements
and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher
forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no
definite terminus nor set any fixed goal." [Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 15]
All we can do here is indicate those general features that we
believe a free society must have in order to qualify
as truly libertarian. For example, a society based on
hierarchical management in the workplace (like capitalism) would
not be libertarian and would soon see private or public states
developing to protect the power of those at the top hierarchical
positions. Beyond such general considerations, however, the
specifics of how to structure a non-hierarchical society must
remain open for discussion and experimentation:
"Anarchism, meaning Liberty, is compatible with the most diverse
economic [and social] conditions, on the premise that these cannot
imply, as under capitalist monopoly, the negation of liberty."
[D. A. de Santillan, After the Revolution, p. 95]
So, our comments should not be regarded as a detailed plan but
rather a series of suggestions based on what anarchists have
traditionally advocated as an alternative to capitalism combined
with what has been tried in various social revolutions. Anarchists
have always been reticent about spelling out their vision of the
future in too much detail for it would be contrary to anarchist
principles to be dogmatic about the precise forms the new society
must take. Free people will create their own alternative
institutions in response to conditions specific to their area as
well as their needs, desires and hopes and it would be presumptuous
of us to attempt to set forth universal policies in advance. As
Kropotkin argued, once expropriation of social wealth by the masses
has been achieved "then, after a period of groping, there
will necessarily arise a new system of organising production and
exchange . . . and that system will be a lot more attuned to
popular aspirations and the requirements of co-existence and
mutual relations than any theory, however splendid, devised
by the thinking and imagination of reformers". This, however,
did not stop him "predicting right now that" in some areas
influenced by anarchists "the foundations of the new organisation
will be the free federation of producers' groups and the free
federation of Communes and groups in independent Communes."
[No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 232]
This is because what we think now will influence the future just
as real experience will influence and change how we think. Given
the libertarian critique of the state and capitalism, certain
kinds of social organisation are implied. Thus, our recognition
that wage-labour creates authoritarian social relationships and
exploitation suggests a workplace in a free society can only be
based on associated and co-operative labour (i.e., self-management).
Similarly, given that the state is a centralised body which delegates
power upwards it is not hard to imagine that a free society would
have communal institutions which were federal and organised from
the bottom-up.
Moreover, given the ways in which our own unfree society has
shaped our ways of thinking, it is probably impossible for us
to imagine what new forms will arise once humanity's ingenuity and
creativity is unleashed by the removal of its present authoritarian
fetters. Thus any attempts to paint a detailed picture of the future
will be doomed to failure. Ultimately, anarchists think that "the
new society should be organised with the direct participation
of all concerned, from the periphery to the centre, freely and
spontaneously, at the prompting of the sentiment of solidarity
and under pressure of the natural needs of society." [E. Malatesta
and A. Hamon, Op. Cit., vol. 2, p. 20]
Nevertheless, anarchists have been willing to specify some broad
principles indicating the general framework within which they expect
the institutions of the new society to grow. It is important to
emphasise that these principles are not the arbitrary creations of
intellectuals in ivory towers. Rather, they are based on the actual
political, social and economic structures that have arisen spontaneously
whenever working class people have attempted to throw off their chains
during eras of heightened revolutionary activity, such as the Paris
Commune, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Revolution, and the
Hungarian uprising of 1956, France in 1968, the Argentinean revolt
against neo-liberalism in 2001, to name just a few. It is clear,
from these examples, that federations of self-managed workers'
councils and community assemblies appear repeatedly in such popular
revolts as people attempt to manage their own destinies directly, both
economically and socially. While their names and specific organisational
structures differ, these can be considered basic libertarian socialist
forms, since they have appeared during all revolutionary periods.
Ultimately, such organisations are the only alternatives to political,
social and economic authority -- unless we make our own decisions
ourselves, someone else will.
So, when reading these sections, please remember that this is just an
attempt to sketch the outline of a possible future. It is in no way an
attempt to determine exactly what a free society would be like, for
such a free society will be the result of the actions of all of society,
not just anarchists. As Malatesta argued:
"it is a question of freedom for everybody, freedom for each
individual so long as he [or she] respects the equal freedom of
others."
"None can judge with certainty who is right and who is wrong, who
is nearest to the truth, or which is the best way to achieve the
greatest good for each and everyone. Freedom, coupled by experience,
is the only way of discovering the truth and what is best; and there
is no freedom if there is a denial of the freedom to err."
[Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 49]
And, of course, real life has a habit of over-turning even the
most realistic sounding theories, ideas and ideologies. Marxism,
Leninism, Monetarism, laissez-faire capitalism (among others) have
proven time and time again that ideology applied to real life has
effects not predicted by the theory before hand (although in all
four cases, their negative effects where predicted by others; in
the case of Marxism and Leninism by anarchists). Anarchists are
aware of this, which is why we reject ideology in favour of theory
and why we are hesitant to create blue-prints for the future.
History has repeatedly proven Proudhon right when he stated that
"every society declines the moment it falls into the hands of the
ideologists." [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 115]
Only life, as Bakunin stressed, can create and so life must
inform theory -- and so if the theory is producing adverse
results it is better to revise the theory than deny reality
or justify the evil effects it creates on real people. Thus
this section of the FAQ is not a blue print, rather it is a
series of suggestions (suggestions drawn, we stress, from
actual experiences of working class revolt and organisation).
These suggestions may be right or wrong and informed by
Malatesta's comments that:
"We do not boast that we possess absolute truth, on the
contrary, we believe that social truth is not a fixed
quantity, good for all times, universally applicable or
determinable in advance, but that instead, once freedom
has been secured, mankind will go forward discovering and
acting gradually with the least number of upheavals and
with a minimum of friction. Thus our solutions always leave
the door open to different and, one hopes, better solutions."
[Op. Cit., p.21]
It is for this reason that anarchists, to quote Bakunin,
think that 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] Social problems
will be solved in the interests of the working class only
if working class people solve them themselves. This applies
to a social revolution -- it will only liberate the working
class if working class people make it themselves, using
their own organisations and power. Indeed, it is the course
of struggling for social change, to correct social problems,
by, say, strikes, occupations, demonstrations and other
forms of direct action, that people can transform their
assumptions about what is possible, necessary and desirable.
The necessity of organising their struggles and their
actions ensures the development of assemblies and other
organs of popular power in order to manage their activity.
These create, potentially, an alternative means by which
society can be organised. As Kropotkin argued, "[a]ny strike
trains the participants for a common management of affairs."
[quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of
Revolutionary Anarchism, p. 233] The ability of people to
manage their own lives, and so society, becomes increasingly
apparent and the existence of hierarchical authority,
the state, the boss or a ruling class, becomes clearly
undesirable and unnecessary. Thus the framework of the
free society will be created by the very process of class
struggle, as working class people create the organisations
required to fight for improvements and change within capitalism
(see section I.2.3).
Thus, the actual framework of an anarchist society and how it
develops and shapes itself is dependent on the needs and desires
of those who live in such a society or are trying to create one.
This is why anarchists stress the need for mass assemblies in
both the community and workplace and their federation from the
bottom up to manage common affairs. Anarchy can only be created
by the active participation of the mass of people. In the words
of Malatesta, an anarchist society would be based on "decisions
taken at popular assemblies and carried out by groups and
individuals who have volunteered or are duly delegated." The
"success of the revolution" depends on "a large number of
individuals with initiative and the ability to tackle practical
tasks: by accustoming the masses not to leave the common cause
in the hands of a few, and to delegate, when delegation is
necessary, only for specific missions and for limited duration."
[Op. Cit., p. 129] This self-management would be the
basis on which an anarchist society would change and develop,
with the new society created by those who live within it.
Thus Bakunin:
"revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and
supreme control must always belong to people organised into
a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations
. . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary
delegation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 172]
And, we must not forget that while we may be able to roughly
guess the way an anarchist society could start initially,
we cannot pretend to predict how it will develop in the long
term. A social revolution is just the beginning of a process
of social transformation. Unfortunately, we have to start where
we are now, not where we hope to end up! Therefore our discussion
will, by necessity, reflect the current society as this is the
society we will be transforming. While, for some, this outlook
may not be of a sufficient qualitative break with the world we
now inhabit, it is essential. We need to offer and discuss
suggestions for action in the here and now, not for some
future pie in the sky world which can only possibly exist
years, even decades, after a successful revolution.
For example, the ultimate goal of anarchism, we stress, is not
the self-management of existing workplaces or industries within the
same industrial structure produced by capitalism. However, a revolution
will undoubtedly see the occupation and placing under self-management
much of existing industry and we start our discussion assuming a similar
set-up as exists today. This does not mean that an anarchist society
will continue to be like this, we simply present the initial stages
using examples we are all familiar with. It is simply the first stage of
transforming industry into something more ecologically safe, socially
integrated and individually and collectively empowering for people.
Some people seriously seem to think that after a social revolution
working people will continue using the same technology, in the same old
workplaces, in the same old ways and not change a single thing (except,
perhaps, electing their managers). They simply transfer their own lack
of imagination onto the rest of humanity. For anarchists, it is
"certain, however, that, when they [the workers] find themselves their
own masters, they will modify the old system to suit their convenience in
a variety of ways . . . as common sense is likely to suggest to free men
[and women]." [Charlotte M. Wilson, Anarchist Essays, p. 23] So
we have little doubt that working people will quickly transform their work,
workplaces and society into one suitable for human beings, rejecting
the legacy of capitalism and create a society we simply cannot predict.
The occupying of workplaces is, we stress, simply the first stage of
the process of transforming them and the rest of society. These words
of the strikers just before the 1919 Seattle General Strike expresses
this perspective well:
"Labour will not only SHUT DOWN the industries, but Labour
will REOPEN, under the management of the appropriate trades,
such activities as are needed to preserve public health and
public peace. If the strike continues, Labour may feel led
to avoid public suffering by reopening more and more activities,
"UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT.
"And that is why we say that we are starting on a road that
leads -- NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" [quoted by Jeremy Brecher,
Strike!, p. 110]
People's lives in a post-revolutionary society will not centre around
fixed jobs and workplaces as they do now. Productive activity will
go on, but not in the alienated way it does today. Similarly, in
their communities people will apply their imaginations, skills and
hopes to transform them into better places to live (the beautification
of the commune, as the CNT put it). The first stage, of course, will
be to take over their existing communities and place them under
community control. Therefore, it is essential to remember that
our discussion can only provide an indication on how an anarchist
society will operate in the months and years after a successful
revolution, an anarchist society still marked by the legacy of
capitalism. However, it would be a great mistake to think that
anarchists do not seek to transform all aspects of society to
eliminate that legacy and create a society fit for unique
individuals to live in. As an anarchist society develops it
will, we stress, transform society in ways we cannot guess at
now, based on the talents, hopes, dreams and imaginations of
those living in it.
Lastly, it could be argued that we spend too much time discussing
the "form" (i.e. the types of organisation and how they make
decisions) rather than the "content" of an anarchist society
(the nature of the decisions reached). Moreover, the implication
of this distinction also extends to the organisations created in
the class struggle that would, in all likelihood, become the
framework of a free society. However, form is as, perhaps more,
important than content. This is because "form" and "content" are
inter-related -- a libertarian, participatory "form" of organisation
allows the "content" of a decision, society or struggle to change.
Self-management has an educational effect on those involved, as they
are made aware of different ideas, think about them and decide between
them (and, of course, formulate and present their own ones). Thus the
nature of these decisions can and will evolve. Thus form has a decisive
impact on "content" and so we make no apologies for discussing the
form of a free society. As Murray Bookchin argued:
"To assume that the forms of freedom can be treated merely as forms
would be as absurd as to assume that legal concepts can be treated
merely as questions of jurisprudence. The form and content of
freedom, like law and society, are mutually determined. By the
same token, there are forms of organisation that promote and
forms that vitiate the goal of freedom . . . To one degree or
another, these forms either alter the individual who uses them
or inhibit his [or her] further development." [Post-Scarcity
Anarchism, p. 89]
And the content of decisions are determined by the individuals
involved. Thus participatory, decentralised, self-managed organisations
are essential for the development of the content of decisions because
they develop the individuals who make them.
I.2.1 Why discuss what an anarchist society would be like at all?
Partly, in order to indicate why people should become anarchists. Most
people do not like making jumps in the dark, so an indication of what
anarchists think a desirable society could look like may help those
people who are attracted to anarchism, inspiring them to become committed
to its practical realisation. Partly, it's a case of learning from past
mistakes. There have been numerous anarchistic social experiments on
varying scales, and its useful to understand what happened, what worked
and what did not. In that way, hopefully, we will not make the same
mistakes twice.
However, the most important reason for discussing what an anarchist
society would look like is to ensure that the creation of such a
society is the action of as many people as possible. As Errico Malatesta
indicated in the middle of the Italian revolutionary "Two Red Years"
(see section A.5.5),
"either we all apply our minds to thinking about
social reorganisation, and right away, at the very same moment that
the old structures are being swept away, and we shall have a more
humane and more just society, open to future advances, or we shall
leave such matters to the 'leaders' and we shall have a new government."
[The Anarchist Revolution, p. 69]
Hence the importance of discussing what the future will be like in the
here and now. The more people who have a fairly clear idea of what a free
society would look like the easier it will be to create that society and
ensure that no important matters are left to others to decide for
us. The example of the Spanish Revolution comes to mind. For many years
before 1936, the C.N.T. and F.A.I. put out publications discussing what an
anarchist society would look like (for example, After the Revolution
by Diego Abel de Santillan and Libertarian Communism by Isaac Puente),
the end product of libertarians organising and educating in Spain for almost
seventy years before the revolution. When it finally occurred, the millions
of people who participated already shared a similar vision and started to
build a society based on it, thus learning firsthand where their books were
wrong and which areas of life they did not adequately cover.
So, this discussion of what an anarchist society might look like is
not a drawing up of blueprints, nor is it an attempt to force the future
into the shapes created in past revolts. It is purely and simply an
attempt to start people discussing what a free society would be like
and to learn from previous experiments. However, as anarchists recognise
the importance of building the new world in the shell of the old, our
ideas of what a free society would be like can feed into how we organise
and struggle today. And vice versa; for how we organise and struggle today
will have an impact on the future.
As Malatesta pointed out, such discussions are necessary and essential,
for it is "absurd to believe that, once government has been destroyed
and the capitalists expropriated, 'things will look after themselves'
without the intervention of those who already have an idea on what has
to be done and who immediately set about doing it" for "social
life, as the life of individuals, does not permit of interruption."
He stressed that to "neglect all the problems of reconstruction or
to pre-arrange complete and uniform plans are both errors, excesses
which, by different routes, would led to our defeat as anarchists and
to the victory of new or old authoritarian regime. The truth lies in
the middle." [Op. Cit., p. 121]
Moreover, the importance of discussing the future can help indicate
whether our activities are actually creating a better world. After all,
if Karl Marx had been more willing to discuss his vision of a socialist
society then the Stalinists would have found it much harder to claim
that their hellish system was, in fact, socialism. Given that anarchists
like Proudhon and Bakunin gave a board outline of their vision of a free
society it would have been impossible for anarchism to be twisted as
Marxism was. Most anarchists would agree with Chomsky's evaluation of
the issue:
"A movement of the left should distinguish with clarity between
its long-range revolutionary aims and certain more immediate effects
it can hope to achieve . . .
"But in the long run, a movement of the left has no chance of success,
and deserves none, unless it develops an understanding of contemporary
society and a vision of a future social order that is persuasive to a
large majority of the population. Its goals and organisational forms
must take shape through their active participation in political struggle
[in its widest sense] and social reconstruction. A genuine radical
culture can be created only through the spiritual transformation of
great masses of people the essential feature of any social revolution
that is to extend the possibilities for human creativity and freedom
. . . The cultural and intellectual level of any serious radical
movement will have to be far higher than in the past . . . It will
not be able to satisfy itself with a litany of forms of oppression
and injustice. It will need to provide compelling answers to the
question of how these evils can be overcome by revolution or
large-scale reform. To accomplish this aim, the left will have to
achieve and maintain a position of honesty and commitment to libertarian
values." [Radical Priorities, pp. 189-90]
We hope that this section of the FAQ, in its own small way, will encourage
as many people as possible to discuss what a libertarian society would be
like and use that discussion to bring it closer.
I.2.2 Will it be possible to go straight to an anarchist society from capitalism?
Possibly, it depends what is meant by an anarchist society.
If it is meant a fully classless society (what some people,
inaccurately, would call a "utopia") then the answer is a clear
"no, that would be impossible." Anarchists are well aware that
"class difference do not vanish at the stroke of a pen whether
that pen belongs to the theoreticians or to the pen-pushers who
set out laws or decrees. Only action, that is to say direct action
(not through government) expropriation by the proletarians,
directed against the privileged class, can wipe out class
difference." [Luigi Fabbri, "Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism",
pp. 13-49, The Poverty of Statism, pp. 13-49, Albert Meltzer (ed.),
p. 30]
As we discussed in section H.2.5,
few anarchists consider it likely that a perfectly functioning
libertarian communist society would be the immediate effect of
a social revolution. For anarchists a social revolution is a
process and not an event (although, of course, a process
marked by such events as general strikes, uprisings, insurrections
and so on). As Kropotkin argued:
"It is a whole insurrectionary period of three, four, perhaps
five years that we must traverse to accomplish our revolution
in the property system and in social organisation."
[Words of a Rebel, p. 72]
His famous work The Conquest of Bread aimed, to use his words, at
"prov[ing] that communism -- at least partial -- has more chance of
being established than collectivism, especially in communes taking the
lead" and tried "to indicate how, during a revolutionary period,
a large city -- if its inhabitants have accepted the idea -- could
organise itself on the lines of free communism." [Anarchism,
p. 298] The revolution, in other words, would progress towards communism
after the initial revolt:
"we know that an uprising can overthrow and change a government
in one day, while a revolution needs three or four years of
revolutionary convulsion to arrive at tangible results . . . if we should
expect the revolution, from its earliest insurrections, to have a
communist character, we would have to relinquish the possibility of a
revolution, since in that case there would be need of a strong majority
to agree on carrying through a change in the direction of communism."
[Kropotkin, quoted by Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism,
pp. 282-3]
In addition, different areas will develop in different speeds and
in different ways, depending on the influences dominant in the
area. "Side by side with the revolutionised communes," argued
Kropotkin, other areas "would remain in an expectant attitude,
and would go on living on the Individualist system . . . revolution
would break out everywhere, but revolution under different aspects;
in one country State Socialism, in another Federation; everywhere
more or less Socialism, not conforming to any particular rule."
Thus "the Revolution will take a different character in each of
the different European nations; the point attained in the
socialisation of wealth will not be everywhere the same."
[The Conquest of Bread, pp. 81-2 and p. 81]
Kropotkin was also aware that a revolution would face many problems,
including the disruption of economic activity, civil war and isolation.
He argued that it was "certain that the coming Revolution . . . will
burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial crisis . . . There
are millions of unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It will
be worse when Revolution has burst upon us . . . The number of the
out-of-works will be doubled as soon as barricades are erected in Europe
and the United States . . . we know that in time of Revolution exchange
and industry suffer most from the general upheaval . . . A Revolution in
Europe means, then, the unavoidable stoppage of at least half the
factories and workshops." He stressed that there would be "the
complete disorganisation" of the capitalist economy and that during
a revolution "[i]nternational commerce will come to a standstill"
and "the circulation of commodities and of provisions will be
paralysed." This would, of course, have an impact on the development
of a revolution and so the "circumstances will dictate the measures."
[Op. Cit., pp. 69-70, p. 191 and p. 79]
Thus we have anarcho-communism being introduced "during a revolutionary
period" rather than instantly and the possibility that it will be
"partial" in many, if not all areas, depending on the
"circumstances" encountered. Therefore the (Marxist inspired)
claim that anarchists think a fully communist society is possible overnight
is simply false -- we recognise that a social revolution takes time to
develop after it starts. As Malatesta put it, "after the revolution,
that is after the defeat of the existing powers and the overwhelming
victory of the forces of insurrection" then "gradualism really
comes into operation. We shall have to study all the practical problems
of life: production, exchange, the means of communication, relations
between anarchist groupings and those living under some kind of authority,
between communist collectives and those living in an individualistic
way; relations between town and country . . . and so on."
[Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 173] In other words,
"each community will decide for itself during the transition
period the method they deem best for the distribution of the
products of associated labour." [James Guillaume, "On
Building the New Social Order", pp. 356-79, Bakunin on
Anarchism, p. 362]
However, if by "anarchist society" it is meant a society that has
abolished the state and started the process of transforming society from
below then anarchists argue that such a society is not only possible
after a successful revolution, it is essential. Thus the anarchist social
revolution would be political (abolition of the state), economic (abolition
of capitalism) and social (abolition of hierarchical social relationships).
Or, more positively, the introduction of self-management into every aspect
of life. In other words, "political transformation" and "economic
transformation" must be "accomplished together and simultaneously."
[Bakunin, The Basic Bakunin, p. 106] This transformation would be
based upon the organisations created by working class people in their
struggle against capitalism and the state (see
next section).
Thus the framework of a free society would be created by the struggle for
freedom itself, by the class struggle within but against
hierarchical society. This revolution would come "from below"
and would expropriate capital as well as smash the state
(see section H.2.4). Such a society,
as Bakunin argued, will not be "perfect" by any means:
"I do not say that the peasants [and workers], freely organised
from the bottom up, will miraculously create an ideal organisation,
confirming in all respects to our dreams. But I am convinced that
what they construct will be living and vibrant, a thousands times
better and more just than any existing organisation. Moreover, this
. . . organisation, being on the one hand open to revolutionary
propaganda . . . , and on the other, not petrified by the intervention
of the State . . . will develop and perfect itself through free
experimentation as fully as one can reasonably expect in our times.
"With the abolition of the State, the spontaneous self-organisation
of popular life . . . will revert to the communes. The development
of each commune will take its point of departure the actual
condition of its civilisation." [Bakunin on Anarchism,
p. 207]
How far such a new social organisation will meet the all the ideals
and hopes of communist-anarchists will vary according to objective
circumstances and the influence of libertarian theory. As people
start to liberate themselves they will under go an ethical and
psychological transformation as they act to the end specific
hierarchical social structures and relationships. It does not imply
that people need to be "perfect" nor that a perfect anarchist society
will come about "overnight. Rather, it means that while an anarchist
society (i.e., one without a state or private property) would be
created by revolution, it will be one initially marked by the society
it came from and would require a period of self-activity by which
individuals reshape and change themselves as they are reshaping and
changing the world about them. Thus Malatesta:
"And even after a successful insurrection, could we overnight
realise all desires and pass from a governmental and capitalist
hell to a libertarian-communist heaven which is the complete
freedom of man within the wished-for community of interests
with all men?
"These are illusions which can take root among authoritarians
who look upon the masses as the raw material which those who have
power can, by decrees, supported by bullets and handcuffs, mould
to their will. But these illusions have not taken among anarchists.
We need the people's consensus, and therefore we must persuade by
means of propaganda and example . . . to win over to our ideas an
ever greater number of people." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]
So, clearly, the idea of a "one-day revolution" is one rejected as a
harmful fallacy by anarchists. We are aware that revolutions are a
process and not an event (or series of events). However, one thing
that anarchists do agree on is that it is essential for both the state
and capitalism to be undermined as quickly as possible. It is true
that, in the course of social revolution, we anarchists may not be
able to stop a new state being created or the old one from surviving.
It all depends on the balance of support for anarchist ideas in the
population and how willing people are to introduce them. There is no
doubt, though, that for a social revolt to be fully anarchist, the
state and capitalism must be destroyed and new forms of oppression
and exploitation not put in their place. How quickly after such a
destruction we move to a fully communist-anarchist society is a moot
point, dependent on the conditions the revolution is facing and the
ideas and wants of the people making it.
So the degree which a society which has abolished the state can
progress towards free communism depends on objective conditions
and what a free people want. Bakunin and other collectivists
doubted the possibility of introducing a communistic system
instantly after a revolution. For Kropotkin and many other
anarcho-communists, communistic anarchy can, and must, be
introduced as far as possible and as soon as possible in order
to ensure a successful revolution. We should mention here that
some anarchists, like the individualists and mutualists, do not
support the idea of revolution and instead see anarchist alternatives
growing within capitalism and slowly replacing it.
In other words anarchists agree that an anarchist society cannot be
created overnight, for to assume so would be to imagine that anarchists
could enforce their ideas on a pliable population. Libertarian socialism
can only be created from below, by people who want it and understand it,
organising and liberating themselves. "Communist organisations,"
argued Kropotkin, "must be the work of all, a natural growth, a
product of the constructive genius of the great mass. Communism cannot
be imposed from above; it could not live even for a few months if the
constant and daily co-operation of all did not uphold it. It must be
free." [Anarchism, p. 140] The results of the Russian
Revolution should have cleared away long ago any contrary illusions
about how to create "socialist" societies. The lesson from every
revolution is that the mistakes made by people in liberating
themselves and transforming society are always minor compared to the
results of creating authorities, who eliminate such "ideological errors"
by destroying the freedom to make mistakes (and so freedom as such).
Freedom is the only real basis on which socialism can be built
("Experience through freedom is the only means to arrive at the
truth and the best solutions; and there is no freedom if there is not
the freedom to be wrong." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 72]).
Therefore, most anarchists would agree with Malatesta:
"To organise a [libertarian] communist society on a large scale it would
be necessary to transform all economic life radically, such as methods of
production, of exchange and consumption; and all this could not be
achieved other than gradually, as the objective circumstances permitted
and to the extent that the masses understood what advantages could be
gained and were able to act for themselves." [Op. Cit., p. 36]
This means that while the conditions necessary of a free society would
be created in a broad way by a social revolution, it would be utopian
to imagine everything will be perfect immediately. Few anarchists
have argued that such a jump would be possible -- rather they have
argued that revolutions create the conditions for the evolution towards
an anarchist society by abolishing state and capitalism. "Besides,"
argued Alexander Berkman, "you must not confuse the social revolution
with anarchy. Revolution, in some of its stages, is a violent upheaval;
anarchy is a social condition of freedom and peace. The revolution is
the means of bringing anarchy about but it is not anarchy itself.
It is to pave the road to anarchy, to establish conditions which will
make a life of liberty possible." However, "to achieve its
purpose the revolution must be imbued with and directed by the
anarchist spirit and ideas. The end shapes the means . . . the social
revolution must be anarchist in method as in aim." [What is
Anarchism?, p. 231]
This means that while acknowledging the possibility of a transitional
society, anarchists reject the notion of a transitional state
as confused in the extreme (and, as can be seen from the experience of
Marxism, dangerous as well). An anarchist society can only be achieved
by anarchist means. Hence French Syndicalist Fernand Pelloutier's
comments:
"Nobody believes or expects that the coming revolution . . . will
realise unadulterated anarchist-communism. . . it will erupt, no
doubt, before the work of anarchist education has been completed . . .
[and as] a result . . . , while we do preach perfect communism,
it is not in the certainty or expectation of [libertarian] communism's
being the social form of the future: it is in order to further men's
[and women's] education . . . so that, by the time of the day of
conflagration comes, they will have attained maximum emancipation.
But must the transitional state to be endured necessarily or
inevitability be the collectivist [i.e. state socialist/capitalist]
jail? Might it not consist of libertarian organisation confined
to the needs of production and consumption alone, with all political
institutions having been done away with?" [No Gods, No Masters,
vol. 2, p. 55]
One thing is certain: an anarchist social revolution or mass movement
will need to defend itself against attempts by statists and capitalists
to defeat it. Every popular movement, revolt, or revolution has had to
face a backlash from the supporters of the status quo. An anarchist
revolution or mass movement will face (and indeed has faced) such
counter-revolutionary movements. However, this does not mean that the
destruction of the state and capitalism need be put off until after the
forces of reaction are defeated. For anarchists, a social revolution and
free society can only be defended by anti-statist means (for more
discussion of this important subject see
section J.7.6).
So, given an anarchist revolution which destroys the state, the type
and nature of the economic system created by it will depend on local
circumstances and the level of awareness in society. The individualists
are correct in the sense that what we do now will determine how the
future develops. Obviously, any "transition period" starts in the
here and now, as this helps determine the future. Thus, while
social anarchists usually reject the idea that capitalism can be
reformed away, we agree with the individualist and mutualist
anarchists that it is essential for anarchists to be active today in
constructing the ideas, ideals and new liberatory institutions of the
future society within the current one. The notion of waiting for the
"glorious day" of total revolution is not one held by anarchists --
just like the notion that we expect a perfect communist-anarchist society
to emerge the day after a successful revolution. Neither position
reflects anarchist ideas on social change.
I.2.3 How is the framework of an anarchist society created?
Anarchists do not abstractly compare a free society with the
current one. Rather, we see an organic connection between
what is and what could be. In other words, anarchists see the
initial framework of an anarchist society as being created
under statism and capitalism when working class people
organise themselves to resist hierarchy. As Kropotkin argued:
"To make a revolution it is not . . . enough that there should
be . . . [popular] risings . . . It is necessary that after the
risings there should be something new in the institutions [that
make up society], which would permit new forms of life to be
elaborated and established." [The Great French Revolution,
vol. 1, p. 200]
Anarchists have seen these new institutions as being linked with
the need of working class people to resist the evils of hierarchy,
capitalism and statism, as being the product of the class struggle
and attempts by working class people to resist authority, oppression
and exploitation. Thus the struggle of working class people to
protect and enhance their liberty under hierarchical society
will be the basis for a society without hierarchy. This
basic insight allowed anarchists like Bakunin and Proudhon to predict
future developments in the class struggle such as workers' councils
(such as those which developed during the 1905 and 1917 Russian
Revolutions). As Oskar Anweiler notes in his definitive work on the
Russian Soviets (Workers' Councils):
"Proudhon's views are often directly associated with the
Russian councils . . . Bakunin . . ., much more than
Proudhon, linked anarchist principles directly to
revolutionary action, thus arriving at remarkable
insights into the revolutionary process that contribute
to an understanding of later events in Russia . . .
"In 1863 Proudhon declared . . . 'All my economic ideas
as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in
the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my
political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political
federation or decentralisation.' . . . Proudhon's conception
of a self-governing state [sic!] founded on producers'
corporations [i.e. federations of co-operatives], is
certainly related to the idea of 'a democracy of
producers' which emerged in the factory soviets. To
this extent Proudhon can be regarded as an ideological
precursor of the councils . . .
"Bakunin . . . suggested the formation of revolutionary
committees with representatives from the barricades, the
streets, and the city districts, who would be given binding
mandates, held accountable to the masses, and subject to
recall. These revolutionary deputies were to form the
'federation of the barricades,' organising a revolutionary
commune to immediately unite with other centres of
rebellion . . .
"Bakunin proposed the formation of revolutionary committees
to elect communal councils, and a pyramidal organisation
of society 'through free federation from the bottom upward,
the association of workers in industry and agriculture --
first in the communities, then through federation of
communities into districts, districts into nations, and
nations into international brotherhood.' These proposals
are indeed strikingly similar to the structure of the
subsequent Russian system of councils . . .
"Bakunin's ideas about spontaneous development of the
revolution and the masses' capacity for elementary
organisation undoubtedly were echoed in part by the
subsequent soviet movement. . . Because Bakunin . . .
was always very close to the reality of social struggle,
he was able to foresee concrete aspects of the revolution.
The council movement during the Russian Revolution,
though not a result of Bakunin's theories, often
corresponded in form and progress to his revolutionary
concepts and predictions." [The Soviets, pp. 8-11]
"As early as the 1860's and 1870's," Paul Avrich also noted,
"the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International
were proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as
a weapon of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural
basis of the future libertarian society." [The Russian
Anarchists, p. 73]
In this sense, anarchy is not some distant goal but rather an aspect of
the current struggles against domination, oppression and exploitation
(i.e. the class struggle, to use an all-embracing term, although we must
stress that anarchists use this term to cover all struggles against
domination). "Anarchism," argued Kropotkin, "is not a mere
insight into a remote future. Already now, whatever the sphere of action
of the individual, he [or she] can act, either in accordance with anarchist
principles or on an opposite line." It was "born among the people
-- in the struggles of real life" and "owes its origin to the
constructive, creative activity of the people." [Anarchism,
p. 75, p. 150 and p. 149] Thus, "Anarchism is not . . . a theory
of the future to be realised by divine inspiration. It is a living force
in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions." It
"stands for the spirit of revolt" and so "[d]irect action
against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority
of the law, of direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority
of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism."
[Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 63 and p. 66]
Anarchism draws upon the autonomous self-activity and spontaneity
of working class people in struggle to inform both its political
theory and its vision of a free society. The struggle against
hierarchy teaches us not only how to be anarchists but also gives
us a glimpse of what an anarchist society would be like, what its
initial framework could be and the experience of managing our own
activities which is required for such a society to function successfully.
Therefore, as is clear, anarchists have long had a clear
vision of what an anarchist society would look like and,
equally as important, where such a society would spring
from (as we proved in
section H.1.4 Lenin's assertion
that anarchists "have absolutely no clear idea of what
the proletariat will put in its [the states] place" is simply
false). It would, therefore, be useful to give a quick summary
of anarchist views on this subject.
Proudhon, for example, looked to the self-activity of French workers,
artisans and peasants and used that as the basis of his ideas on
anarchism. While seeing such activity as essentially reformist in
nature, like subsequent revolutionary anarchists he saw the germs
of anarchy "generating from the bowels of the people, from the
depths of labour, a greater authority, a more potent fact, which
shall envelop capital and the State and subjugate them" as
"it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce
some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial
combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler
of society, shall become its slave." [System of Economical
Contradictions, p. 399 and p. 398] Workers should follow the
example of those already creating co-operatives:
"Do not the workmen's unions at this moment serve as the
cradle for the social revolution . . . ? Are they not always
the open school, both theoretical and practical, where the
workman learns the science of the production and distribution
of wealth, where he studies, without masters and without books,
by his own experience solely, the laws of . . . industrial
organisation . . . ?" [General Idea of the Revolution,
p. 78]
Attempts to form workers associations, therefore, "should be
judged, not by the more or less successful results which they
obtain, but only according to their silent tendency to assert
and establish the social republic." The "importance of
their work lies, not in their petty union interests, but in their
denial of the rule of capitalists, money lenders and governments."
They "should take over the great departments of industry, which
are their natural inheritance." [Op. Cit., p. 98-9]
This linking of the present and the future through the
self-activity and self-organisation of working class people
is also found in Bakunin. Unlike Proudhon, Bakunin stressed
revolutionary activity and so he saw the militant labour
movement, and the revolution itself, as providing the basic
structure of a free society. As he put it, "the organisation
of the trade sections and their representation in the Chambers
of Labour . . . bear in themselves the living seeds of the new
society which is to replace the old one. They are creating not
only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself."
[Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 255]
The needs of the class struggle would create the framework of
a new society, a federation of workers councils, as "strikes
indicate a certain collective strength already, a certain
understanding among the workers . . . each strike becomes
the point of departure for the formation of new groups."
[The Basic Bakunin, pp. 149-50] This pre-revolutionary
development would be accelerated by the revolution itself:
"the revolution must set out from the first to radically
and totally destroy the State . . . The natural and necessary
consequence of this destruction will be . . . [among others,
the] dissolution of army, magistracy, bureaucracy, police
and priesthood. . . confiscation of all productive capital
and means of production on behalf of workers' associations,
who are to put them to use . . . the federative Alliance
of all working men's associations . . . [will] constitute
the Commune . . . [the] Communal Council [will be] composed
of . . . delegates . . . vested with plenary but accountable
and removable mandates. . . all provinces, communes and
associations . . . by first reorganising on revolutionary lines
. . . [will] constitute the federation of insurgent associations,
communes and provinces . . . [and] organise a revolutionary force
capable defeating reaction . . . [and for] self-defence . . .
[The] revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and
supreme control must always belong to the people organised into a
free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . .
organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary
delegation." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
pp. 170-2]
Like Bakunin, Kropotkin stressed that revolution transformed
those taking part in it. As he noted in his classic account
of the French Revolution, "by degrees, the revolutionary
education of the people was being accomplished by the revolution
itself." Part of this process involved creating new organisations
which allowed the mass of people to take part in the decision
making of the revolution. He pointed to "the popular Commune,"
arguing that "the Revolution began by creating the Commune . . .
and through this institution it gained . . . immense power."
He stressed that it was "by means of the 'districts' [of the
Communes] that . . . the masses, accustoming themselves to
act without receiving orders from the national representatives,
were practising what was to be described later as Direct
Self-Government." Such a system did not imply isolation,
for while "the districts strove to maintain their own
independence" they also "sought for unity of action,
not in subjection to a Central Committee, but in a federative
union." The Commune "was thus made from below
upward, by the federation of the district organisations;
it spring up in a revolutionary way, from popular initiative."
Thus the process of class struggle, of the needs of the
fighting against the existing system, generated the framework
of an anarchist society for "the districts of Paris laid the
foundations of a new, free, social organisation." Little wonder
he argued that "the principles of anarchism . . . already dated
from 1789, and that they had their origin, not in theoretical
speculations, but in the deeds of the Great French Revolution"
and that "the libertarians would no doubt do the same to-day."
[The Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 261, p. 200, p. 203,
p. 206, p. 204 and p. 206]
Similarly, as we noted in section H.2.6
we discover him arguing in Mutual Aid that strikes and labour
unions were an expression of mutual aid in capitalist society. Elsewhere,
Kropotkin argued that "labour combinations" like the "Sections"
of French revolution were one of the "main popular anarchist currents"
in history, expressing the "same popular resistance to the growing power
of the few." [Anarchism, p. 159] For Kropotkin, like Bakunin,
libertarian labour unions were "natural organs for the direct struggle
with capitalism and for the composition of the future social order."
[quoted by Paul Avrich, The Russian Anarchists, p. 81]
As can be seen, the major anarchist thinkers pointed to
forms of organisation autonomously created and managed by
the working class as the framework of an anarchist society.
Both Bakunin and Kropotkin pointed to militant, direct
action based labour unions while Proudhon pointed towards
workers' experiments in co-operative production and mutual
credit. Later anarchists followed them. The anarcho-syndicalists,
like Bakunin and Kropotkin, pointed to the developing labour
movement as the framework of an anarchist society, as providing
the basis for the free federation of workers' associations
which would constitute the commune. Others, such as the Russians
Maximov, Arshinov, Voline and Makhno, saw the spontaneously
created workers' councils (soviets) of 1905 and 1917 as the
basis of a free society, as another example of Bakunin's
federation of workers' associations.
Thus, for all anarchists, the structural framework of an
anarchist society was created by the class struggle, by
the needs of working class people to resist oppression,
exploitation and hierarchy. As Kropotkin stressed,
"[d]uring a revolution new forms of life will always
germinate on the ruins of the old forms . . . It is
impossible to legislate for the future. All we can
do is vaguely guess its essential tendencies and clear
the road for it." [Evolution and Environment,
pp. 101-2] These essential tendencies were discovered, in
practice, by the needs of the class struggle. The necessity
of practising mutual aid and solidarity to survive under
capitalism (as in any other hostile environment) makes
working people and other oppressed groups organise together to
fight their oppressors and exploiters. Thus the co-operation
necessary for a libertarian socialist society, like its
organisational framework, would be generated by the need to
resist oppression and exploitation under capitalism. The
process of resistance produces organisation on a wider and
wider scale which, in turn, can become the framework of a free
society as the needs of the struggle promote libertarian forms
of organisation such as decision making from the bottom
up, autonomy, federalism, mandated delegates subject to instant
recall and so on.
For example, a strikers' assembly would be the basic
decision-making forum in a struggle for improved wages
and working conditions. It would create a strike committee
to implement its decisions and send delegates to spread the
strike. These delegates inspire other strikes, requiring
a new organisation to co-ordinate the struggle. This
results in delegates from all the strikes meeting and
forming a federation (a workers' council). The
strikers decide to occupy the workplace and the strike
assemblies take over the means of production. The strike
committees become the basis for factory committees which
could administer the workplaces, based on workers'
self-management via workplace assemblies (the former
strikers' assemblies). The federation of strikers' delegates
becomes the local communal council, replacing the existing
state with a self-managed federation of workers' associations.
In this way, the class struggle creates the framework of
a free society.
This, obviously, means that any suggestions of how an anarchist
society would look like are based on the fact that the actual
framework of a free society will be the product of actual
struggles. This means that the form of the free society will
be shaped by the process of social change and the organs
it creates. This is an important point and worth repeating.
So, as well as changing themselves while they change the world,
a people in struggle also create the means by which they
can manage society. By having to organise and manage their
struggles, they become accustomed to self-management and
self-activity and create the possibility of a free society
and the organisations which will exist within it. Anarchy is
not a jump into the dark but rather a natural progression
of the struggle for freedom in an unfree society. The
contours of a free society will be shaped by the process
of creating it and, therefore, will not be an artificial
construction imposed on society. Rather, it will be created
from below up by society itself as working class people
start to break free of hierarchy. The class struggle thus
transforms those involved as well as society and creates
the organisational structure and people required for a
libertarian society.
This clearly suggests that the means anarchists support
are important as they are have a direct impact on the ends
they create. In other words, means influence ends and so
our means must reflect the ends we seek and empower those
who use them. As the present state of affairs is based on the
oppression, exploitation and alienation of the working class,
any tactics used in the pursuit of a free society must be based
on resisting and destroying those evils. This is why anarchists
stress tactics and organisations which increase the power,
confidence, autonomy, initiative, participation and self-activity
of oppressed people. As we indicate in section J
("What Do Anarchists Do?") this
means supporting direct action, solidarity and self-managed
organisations built and run from the bottom-up. Only by
fighting our own battles, relying on ourselves and our own
abilities and power, in organisations we create and run
ourselves, can we gain the power and confidence and experience
needed to change society for the better and, hopefully, create
a new society in place of the current one.
Needless to say, a revolutionary movement will never, at
its start, be purely anarchist:
"All of the workers' and peasants' movements which have
taken place . . . have been movements within the limits
of the capitalist regime, and have been more of less
tinged with anarchism. This is perfectly natural and
understandable. The working class do not act within a
world of wishes, but in the real world where they are
daily subjected to the physical and psychological blows
of hostile forces . . . the workers continually feel
the influence of all the real conditions of the
capitalist regime and of intermediate groups . . .
Consequently it is natural that the struggle which
they undertake inevitably carries the stamp of various
conditions and characteristics of contemporary society.
The struggle can never be born in the finished and
perfected anarchist form which would correspond to
all the requirements of the ideas . . . When the
popular masses engage in a struggle of large dimensions,
they inevitably start by committing errors, they
allow contradictions and deviations, and only through
the process of this struggle do they direct their
efforts in the direction of the ideal for which they
are struggling." [Peter Arshinov, The History of
the Makhnovist Movement, pp. 239-40]
The role of anarchists is "to help the masses to take
the right road in the struggle and in the construction
of the new society" and "support their first constructive
efforts, assist them intellectually." However, the
working class "once it has mastered the struggle and
begins its social construction, will no longer surrender
to anyone the initiative in creative work. The working
class will then direct itself by its own thought; it
will create its society according to its own plans."
[Arshinov, Op. Cit., pp. 240-1] All anarchists can do
is help this process by being part of it, arguing our
case and winning people over to anarchist ideas (see
section J.3 for more details). Thus
the process of struggle and debate will, hopefully, turn a
struggle against capitalism and statism into one for
anarchism. In other words, anarchists seek to preserve and
extend the anarchistic elements that exist in every struggle
and to help them become consciously libertarian by discussion
and debate as members of those struggles.
Lastly, we must stress that it is only the initial framework
of a free society which is created in the class struggle. As
an anarchist society develops, it will start to change and
develop in ways we cannot predict. The forms in which people
express their freedom and their control over their own lives
will, by necessity, change as these requirements and needs
change. As Bakunin argued:
"Even the most rational and profound science cannot divine
the form social life will take in the future. It can only
determine the negative conditions, which follow logically
from a rigorous critique of existing society. Thus, by means
of such a critique, social and economic science rejected
hereditary individual property and, consequently, took the
abstract and, so to speak, negative position of collective
property as a necessary condition of the future social
order. In the same way, it rejected the very idea of the
state or statism, meaning government of society from above
downward . . . Therefore, it took the opposite, or
negative, position: anarchy, meaning the free and
independent organisation of all the units and parts of
the community and their voluntary federation from below
upward, not by the orders of any authority, even an
elected one, and not by the dictates of any scientific
theory, but as the natural development of all the
varied demands put forth by life itself.
"Therefore no scholar can teach the people or even define
for himself how they will and must live on the morrow of
the social revolution. That will be determined first by
the situation of each people, and secondly by the desires
that manifest themselves and operate most strongly within
them." [Statism and Anarchy, pp. 198-9]
So while it will be reasonable to conclude that, for
example, the federation of strike/factory assemblies and their
councils/committees will be the framework by which production
will initially be organised, this framework will mutate to
take into account changing production and social needs. The
actual structures created will, by necessity, be transformed
as industry is transformed from below upwards to meet the real
needs of society and producers as both the structure and nature
of work and industry developed under capitalism bears the
marks of its economic class, hierarchies and power ("a radical
social ecology not only raises traditional issues such as the
reunion of agriculture with industry, but also questions the
very structure of industry itself." [Murray Bookchin,
The Ecology of Freedom, p. 408]). Therefore, under workers'
self-management industry, work and the whole structure and
organisation of production will be transformed in ways we can
only guess at today. We can point the general direction (i.e.
self-managed, ecologically balanced, decentralised, federal,
empowering, creative and so on) but that is all. Similarly,
as cities and towns are transformed into ecologically integrated
communes, the initial community assemblies and their federations
will transform along with the transformation of our surroundings.
What they will evolve into we cannot predict, but their fundamentals
of instant recall, delegation over representation, decision making
from the bottom up, and so on will remain.
So, while anarchists see "the future in the present" as the initial
framework of a free society, we recognise that such a society will
evolve and change. However, the fundamental principles of a free
society will not change and so it is useful to present a summary
of how such a society could work, based on these principles.
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G.2 Why do individualist anarchists reject social anarchism?
G.2 Why do individualist anarchists reject social anarchism?
As noted in the last section, the individualist
anarchists considered themselves as anti-capitalists and many called
themselves mutualists and socialists. It may be objected that they opposed
the more obviously socialist types of anarchism like communist-anarchism
and, as a consequence, should be considered as supporters of capitalism.
This is not the case as can be seen from why they rejected
communist-anarchism. The key thing to remember is that capitalism does
not equal the market. So while the individualist anarchists advocated a
market economy, it "is evident from their writings that they rejected both
capitalism and communism -- as did Proudhon." [Brian Morris, "Global
Anti-Capitalism", pp. 170-6, Anarchist Studies, vol. 14, no. 2,
p. 175]
It should noted that while Tucker came to excommunicate non-individualist forms
of anarchism from the movement, his initial comments on the likes of Bakunin and
Kropotkin were very favourable. He reprinted articles by Kropotkin from his paper
La Revolte, for example, and discussed "the Anarchistic philosophy, as
developed by the great Proudhon and actively propagated by the heroic Bakunin and
his successors on both sides of the Atlantic." [Liberty, no. 26, p. 3]
After the rise of the IWPA in the early 1880s and the Haymarket police riot of
1886, Tucker changed his position. Now it was a case that the "Anarchistic
social ideal" was "utterly inconsistent with that of those Communists
who falsely call themselves Anarchists while at the same time advocating a
regime of Archism fully as despotic as that of the State Socialists
themselves." For Tucker, real anarchists did not advocate, like communist
anarchists, "forcible expropriation" nor "force as a revolutionary
agent and authority as a safeguard of the new social order." [The
Individualist Anarchists, pp. 88-9] As will become clear, Tucker's
summation of communist-anarchism leaves a lot to be desired. However, even
after the break between individualist and communist anarchism in America,
Tucker saw that both had things in common as both were socialists:
"To be sure, there is a certain and very sincere comradeship that must exist
between all honest antagonists of the exploitation of labour, but the word
comrade cannot gloss over the vital difference between so-called
Communist-Anarchism and Anarchism proper." [Liberty, no. 172, p. 1]
Social anarchists would agree with Tucker in part, namely the need not to
gloss over vital differences between anarchist schools but most reject
Tucker's attempts to exclude other tendencies from "Anarchism proper."
Instead, they would agree with Kropotkin and, while disagreeing with certain
aspects of the theory, refuse to excommunicate him from the anarchist movement.
As we discuss in section G.2.5, few anarchists
agreed with Tucker's sectarianism at the time and communist-anarchism was, and
remains, the dominant tendency within anarchism.
It is these disagreements to which we now turn. It should be stressed, though,
that the individualist anarchists, while tending to excommunicate social
anarchism, also had many inclusive moments and so it makes these objections
often seem petty and silly. Yes, there was certainly pettiness involved and it
worked both ways and there was a certain amount of tit-for-tat, just as there
is now (although to a much lesser degree these days). Anarchist-communist
opposition to what some of them sadly called "bourgeois anarchism" was
a fact, as was individualist anarchist opposition to communist-anarchism. Yet
this should not blind us to what both schools had in common. However, if it were
not for some opponents of anarchism (particularly those seeking to confuse
libertarian ideas with propertarian ones) dragging these (mostly resolved)
disagreements back into the light of day this section would be a lot shorter.
As it is, covering these disagreements and showing how they could be resolved
is a useful task -- if only to show how individualist and communist anarchism
are not as alien as some make out.
There were four main objections made to communist-anarchism by the individualists.
Firstly, that communist-anarchism was compulsory and any compulsory system could
not be anarchist. Secondly, that a revolution would be imposing anarchism and so
contradicted its principles. Thirdly, that distribution by need was based on
altruism and, consequently, unlikely to succeed. Fourthly, that the
communist-anarchists are determining how a free society would be organised
which is authoritarian. Needless to say, communist-anarchists rejected these
claims as being false and while we have already sketched these arguments,
objections and replies in section A.3.1 it is
worthwhile to repeat (and expand on) them here as these disagreements are
sometimes highlighted by those who fail to stress what both schools have in
common and, consequently, distort the debates and issues involved.
We will discuss these objections in the following sections.
Some individualist anarchists argued that communist-anarchists wanted to force
everyone to be communists and, as such, this proved they were not anarchists.
This objection is, ironically, both the most serious and the easiest
to refute. As Tucker noted, "to eliminate the compulsory element from Communism
is to remove, in the view of every man who values liberty above aught else, the
chief objection to it." [Liberty, no. 122, p. 5] For Henry
Appleton, there was "a class of ranting enthusiasts who falsely call themselves
Anarchists" who advocated both violence and "levelling". "All
Communism," he asserted, "under whatever guise, is the natural enemy of
Anarchism and a Communist sailing under the flag of Anarchism is as false a figure
as could be invented." Yet, ironically, A. H. Simpson disproved that particular
claim for while attacking communism he ended by stating his "argument applies only
to aggressive Communists" and that "[v]oluntary Communism can exist and, if
successful, flourish under Anarchy." So, apparently, some kinds of
communism are compatible with anarchism after all! Victor Yarrows, likewise,
pointed to "two different schools" of communists, those who support
"voluntary Communism, which they intend to reach by the Anarchistic method"
and those who "plot the forcible suppression of the entire system" of private
property. Only the former was "voluntary or Anarchistic Communism."
[The Individualist Anarchists, pp. 89-90, p. 94, p. 95 and p. 96]
This, it should be noted, is more than enough to disprove any claims that genuine
anarchists cannot be communists.
So, the question is whether communist-anarchists are in favour of forcing people
to be communists. If their communism is based on voluntary association then,
according to the Individualist Anarchists themselves, it is a form of anarchism.
Unsurprisingly, we discover that communist-anarchists have long argued that their
communism was voluntary in nature and that working people who did not desire to
be communists would be free not to be.
This position can be found in Kropotkin, from his earliest writings to his last.
Thus we discover him arguing that an anarchist revolution "would take care not
to touch the holding of the peasant who cultivates it himself . . . without wage
labour. But we would expropriate all land that was not cultivated by the hands
of those who at present possess the land." This was compatible with communism
because libertarian communists aimed at "the complete expropriation of all those
who have the means of exploiting human beings; the return to the community of the
nation of everything that in the hands of anyone can be used to exploit others."
Following Proudhon's analysis, private property was different from individual
possession and as long as "social wealth remains in the hands of the few who
possess it today" there would be exploitation. Instead, the aim was to see
such social wealth currently monopolised by the capitalist class "being placed,
on the day of the revolution, at the free disposition of all the workers." This
would "create the situation where each person may live by working freely,
without being forced to sell his work and his liberty to others." [Words
of a Rebel, p. 214, pp. 207-8, p. 207 and p. 208] If someone desired to
work outside of the commune, then that was perfectly compatible with this aim.
This position was followed in later works. The "scope of Expropriation,"
Kropotkin argued was clear and would only "apply to everything that enables
any man -- be he financier, mill-owner, or landlord -- to appropriate the product
of others' toil." Thus only those forms of property based on wage labour
would be expropriated. In terms of housing, the same general rule applies ("the
expropriation of dwellings contains the whole social revolution"). Kropotkin
explicitly discusses the man who "by dint of privation has contrived to buy a
house just large enough to hold his family. And we are going to deprive him of his
hard-earned happiness, to turn him into the street! Certainly not . . . Let him
work in his little garden, too." Anarchist-communism "will make the lodger
understand that he need not pay his former landlord any more rent. Stay where you
are, but rent free." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 61, p. 95, pp. 95-6 and
p. 96]
Which, incidentally, was exactly the same position as Tucker (see
section G.1.2) and so Kropotkin's analysis
of the land monopoly was identical:
"when we see a peasant who is in possession of just the amount of land he can
cultivate, we do not think it reasonable to turn him off his little farm. He
exploits nobody, and nobody would have the right to interfere with his
work. But if he possesses under the capitalist law more than he can cultivate
himself, we consider that we must not give him the right of keeping that soil
for himself, leaving it uncultivated when it might be cultivated by others, or
of making others cultivate it for his benefit." [Act for Yourselves,
p. 104]
For Kropotkin, communism "must be the work of all, a natural growth, a product
of the constructive genius of the great mass. Communism cannot be imposed from above;
it could not live even for a few months if the constant and daily co-operation of all
did not uphold it. It must be free." [Anarchism, p. 140]
Malatesta agreed. Anarchism, he stressed, "cannot be imposed, both on moral
grounds in regard to freedom, as well as because it is impossible to apply 'willy
nilly' a regime of justice for all. It cannot be imposed on a minority by a
majority. Neither can it be imposed by a majority on one or more minorities."
Thus "anarchists who call themselves communists" do so "not because
they wish to impose their particular way of seeing things on others" but
because "they are convinced, until proved wrong, that the more human beings
are joined in brotherhood, and the more closely they co-operate in their efforts
for the benefit of all concerned, the greater is the well-being and freedom which
each can enjoy." Imposed communism," he stressed, "would be the most
detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive. And free and voluntary
communism is ironical if one has not the right and the possibility to live in a
different regime, collectivist, mutualist, individualist -- as one wishes, always
on condition that there is no oppression or exploitation of others." He agreed
with Tucker that "State communism, which is authoritarian and imposed, is the
most hateful tyranny that has ever afflicted, tormented and handicapped mankind."
[Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 21, p. 34, p. 103 and p. 34]
Therefore, arguing that the land and machinery should be common property does not
preclude individuals possessing it independently of communes as both are rooted
in individual possession (or "occupancy and use") rather than private property.
The key anarchist difference between property and possession explains any
perceived contradiction in the communist position. Thus we find Kropotkin arguing
that a communist-anarchist society is one "without having the soil, the machinery,
the capital in short, in the hands of private owners. We all believe that free
organisations of workers would be able to carry on production on the farm and on
the factory, as well, and probably much better, than it is conducted now under
the individual ownership of the capitalist." The commune "shall take
into possession of all the soil, the dwelling-houses, the manufactures, the mines
and the means of communication." [Act for Yourselves, p. 103 and p. 104]
This in no way contradicts his argument that the individuals will not be forced
to join a commune. This is because the aim of anarchist-communism is, to quote
another of Kropotkin's works, to place "the product reaped or manufactured
at the disposal of all, leaving to each the liberty to consume them as he pleases
in his own home." [The Place of Anarchism in the Evolution of Socialist
Thought, p. 7] Thus individual ownership meant individual ownership of
resources used by others rather than individual possession of resources which
individuals used. This can be seen from his comment that "some poor fellow"
who "has contrived to buy a house just large enough to hold his family"
would not be expropriated by the commune ("by all means let him stay there")
while also asserting "[w]ho, then, can appropriate for himself the tiniest
plot of ground in such a city, without committing a flagrant injustice?"
[Conquest of Bread, p. 90]
Kropotkin's opposition to private appropriation of land can only be understood in
context, namely from his discussion on the "abolition of rent" and the need
for "free dwellings", i.e. the end of landlordism. Kropotkin accepted that
land could and would be occupied for personal use -- after all, people need a
place to live! In this he followed Proudhon, who also argued that "Land cannot
be appropriated" (Chapter 3, part 1 of What is Property?). For the
French anarchist, the land "is limited in amount" and so "it ought not to
be appropriated" ("let any living man dare change his right of territorial
possession into the right of property, and I will declare war upon him, and wage it
to the death!"). This meant that "the land is indispensable to our existence,
-- consequently a common thing, consequently insusceptible of appropriation."
Overall, "labour has no inherent power to appropriate natural wealth."
[What is Property?, p. 106, p. 107 and p. 116] Proudhon, it is well known,
supported the use of land (and other resources) for personal use. How, then, can
he argue that the "land cannot be appropriated"? Is Proudhon subject to
the same contradiction as Kropotkin? Of course not, once we take into account the
fundamental difference between private property and possession, appropriation and
use which underlies both individualist and communist anarchism. As
Malatesta argued:
"Communism is a free agreement: who doesn't accept it or maintain it remains
outside of it . . . Everyone has the right to land, to the instruments of
production and all the advantages that human beings can enjoy in the state of
civilisation that humanity has reached. If someone does not want to accept a
communist life and the obligations that it supposes, it is their business. They
and those of a like mind will come to an agreement . . . [They] will have the
same rights as the communists over the natural wealth and accumulated products
of previous generations . . . I have always spoken of free agreement, of free
communism. How can there be liberty without a possible alternative?"
[our emphasis, At the café, pp. 69-70]
Compare this to individualist anarchist Stephen Byington's comment that
"[t]hose who wish to unite in the communistic enjoyment of their labour
will be free to do so; those who wish to hold the products of their labour
as private property will be equally free to do so." [quoted by Wm. Gary
Kline, The Individualist Anarchists: A Critique of Liberalism, p. 93]
The similarities are as obvious as between Proudhon's and Kropotkin's arguments.
The same, it must be stressed, can be said of the "Chicago Anarchists"
whom Tucker labelled as authoritarians. Thus we find Albert Parsons, for example,
denouncing that kind of private property which allows exploitation to happen. The
key problem was that "the necessary means for the existence of all has been
appropriated and monopolised by a few. The land, the implements of production and
communication, the resources of life, are now held as private property, and its
owners exact tribute from the propertyless" ("Wealth is power"). The
aim of communist-anarchism was to ensure the "[f]ree access to the means of
production [which] is the natural right of every man able and willing to work."
This implied that "[a]ll organisation will be voluntary with the sacred right
forever reserved for each individual 'to think and to rebel.'" This meant that
as far as the "final outcome" of social change was involved "many disciples
of anarchism believe [it] will be communism -- the common possession of the resources
of life and the productions of united labour. No anarchist is compromised by this
statement, who does not reason out the future outlook in this way." [Anarchism:
Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 97, p. 99, p. 96 ,p. 174 and pp. 174-5]
This did not exclude mutualism or individualist anarchism:
"Many expedients will be tried by which a just return may be awarded the worker for
his exertions. The time check or labour certificate, which will be honoured at the
store-houses hour for hour, will no doubt have its day. But the elaborate and
complicated system of book-keeping this would necessitate, the impossibility of
balancing one man's hour against another's with accuracy, and the difficulty in
determining how much more one man owed natural resources, condition, and the studies
and achievements of past generations, than did another, would, we believe, prevent
this system from obtaining a thorough and permanent establishment. The mutual banking
system . . . may be in operation in the future free society. Another system, more
simple . . . appears the most acceptable and likely to prevail. Members of the groups
. . . if honest producers . . . will be honoured in any other group they may visit,
and given whatever is necessary for their welfare and comfort." [Op. Cit.,
p. 175]
As we discuss in section G.4, this was the same conclusion
that Voltairine de Cleyre reached three decades later. This was rooted in a similar
analysis of property as Proudhon and Tucker, namely "possession" or "occupancy
and use": "The workshops will drop into the hands of the workers, the mines
will fall to the miners, and the land and all other things will be controlled by those
who posses and use them. There will be, there can then be no title to anything aside
from its possession and use." The likes of Parsons supported communism was not
because of an opposition between "communism" and "occupancy and use" but rather, like
Kropotkin, because of "the utter impossibility of awarding to each an exact return
for the amount of labour performed will render absolute communism a necessity sooner
or later." [Op. Cit., p. 105 and p. 176] So while capitalism "expropriates
the masses for the benefit of the privileged class . . . socialism teaches how all may
possess property . . . [and] establish a universal system of co-operation, and to render
accessible to each and every member of the human family the achievements and benefits of
civilisation which, under capitalism, are being monopolised by a privileged class."
[August Spies, contained in Parsons, Op. Cit., pp. 63-4]
All of which indicates that Tucker did not really understand communist-anarchism
when he argued that communism is "the force which compels the labourer to pool
his product with the products of all and forbids him to sell his labour or his
products." [Instead of a Book, p. 400] Rather, communist-anarchists
argue that communism must be free and voluntary. In other words, a communist-anarchist
society would not "forbid" anything as those who are part of it must be in favour of
communism for it to work. The option of remaining outside the communist-anarchist
society is there, as (to requote Kropotkin) expropriation would "apply to
everything that enables any man [or woman] . . . to appropriate the product of
others' toil." [The Conquest of Bread, p. 61] Thus communist-anarchism
would "forbid" exactly what Individualist Anarchism would "forbid" -- property,
not possession (i.e. any form of "ownership" not based on "occupancy and use").
Tucker, at times, admits that this is the case. For example, he once noted that
"Kropotkin says, it is true, that he would allow the individual access to the
land; but he proposes to strip him of capital entirely, and as he declares a few
pages further on that without capital agriculture is impossible, it follows that
such access is an empty privilege not at all equivalent to the liberty of individual
production." [quoted by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Anarchist
Prince, p. 279] However, as two biographers of Kropotkin note, Tucker "partly
misinterprets his opponent, as when he suggests that the latter's idea of communist
anarchism would prevent the individual from working on his own if he wished
(a fact which Kropotkin always explicitly denied, since the basis of his theory was
the voluntary principle)." [Woodcock and Avakumovic, Op. Cit., p. 280]
To quote Kropotkin himself:
"when we see a Sheffield cutler, or a Leeds clothier working with their own tools
or handloom, we see no use in taking the tools or the handloom to give to another
worker. The clothier or cutler exploit nobody. But when we see a factory whose
owners claim to keep to themselves the instruments of labour used by 1,400 girls,
and consequently exact from the labour of these girls . . . profit . . . we consider
that the people . . . are fully entitled to take possession of that factory and to
let the girls produce . . . for themselves and the rest of the community . . . and
take what they need of house room, food and clothing in return." [Act for
Yourselves, p. 105]
So Kropotkin argued that a communist-anarchist revolution would not
expropriate the tools of self-employed workers who exploited no-one. Malatesta
also argued that in an anarchist society "the peasant [is free] to cultivate
his piece of land, alone if he wishes; free is the shoe maker to remain at his
last or the blacksmith in his small forge." Thus these two very famous
communist-anarchists also supported "property" but they are recognised as
obviously socialists. This apparent contradiction is resolved when it is
understood that for communist-anarchists (like all anarchists) the abolition
of property does not mean the end of possession and so "would not harm the
independent worker whose real title is possession and the work done" unlike
capitalist property. [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 103] Compare this with
Yarros' comment that "[s]mall owners would not suffer from the application
of the 'personal use' principle, while large owners, who have come into
possession of the landed property, or the capital with which they purchased
the landed property, by means that equal liberty could not sanction, would
have no principle to base any protest on." [Liberty, no. 197, p. 2]
In other words, all anarchists (as we argue in
section B.3) oppose private property but support
possession (we return to this issue in section I.6.2
as it is an all too common fallacy).
Having shown that communist-anarchist is a valid form of anarchism even in terms of
individualist anarchism in the last section, it is
now necessary to discuss the issue of methods, i.e., the question of revolution and
violence. This is related to the first objection, with Tucker arguing that "their
Communism is another State, while my voluntary cooperation is not a State at all.
It is a very easy matter to tell who is an Anarchist and who is not. Do you believe
in any form of imposition upon the human will by force?" [Liberty,
no. 94, p. 4] However, Tucker was well aware that the state imposed its will
on others by force and so the question was whether revolution was the right
means of ending its oppression.
To a large degree, discussion on the question of revolution was clouded by the
fact it took place during the height of the "propaganda by the deed"
period in anarchist history (see section A.2.18).
As George Woodcock noted, a "cult of violence . . . marked and marred"
the IWPA and alienated the individualist anarchists. [Anarchism, p. 393]
Johann Most was the focus for much of this rhetoric (see Paul Avrich's The
Haymarket Tragedy, particularly the chapter entitled "Cult of Dynamite").
However, the reason why talk of dynamite found an audience had nothing to do
with anarchism but rather because of the violence regularly directed against
striking workers and unions. As we discuss more fully in
section G.3.1, strikes were habitually repressed by
violence (by the state or by the employer's private police). The massive 1877
strike wave, for example, saw the Chicago Times urge the use of hand
grenades against strikers while employers organised "private guards and bands of
uniformed vigilantes" which "roamed the streets, attacking and dispersing
groups of workers. Business leaders concluded that "the chief lesson
of the strike as the need for a stronger apparatus of repression" and
presented the city of Chicago with two Gatling guns to aid that task. "The
erection of government armouries in the centres of American cities dates from
this period." This repression and the vitriolic ruling class rhetoric
used "set a pattern for the future and fuelled the hatreds and passions
without which the Haymarket tragedy would not have occurred." [Paul Avrich,
The Haymarket Tragedy, p. 33 and p. 35]
Given this general infatuation with dynamite and violence which this state and
employer violence provoked, the possibility for misunderstanding was more than
likely (as well as giving the enemies of anarchism ample evidence to demonise
it while allowing the violence of the system they support to be downplayed). Rather
than seeing communist-anarchists as thinking a revolution was the product of mass
struggle, it was easy to assume that by revolution they meant acts of violence
or terrorism conducted by a few anarchists on behalf of everyone else (this false
perspective is one which Marxists to this day tend to repeat when dismissing
anarchism). In such a situation, it is easy to see why so many individualist
anarchists thought that a small group of anarchists sought to impose communism
by means of violence. However, this was not the case. According to Albert Parsons,
the communist-anarchists argued that the working class "will be driven to use
[force] in self-defence, in self-preservation against those who are degrading,
enslaving and destroying them." [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs,
p. 46] As August Spies put it, "[t]o charge us with an attempt to overthrow
the present system on or about May 4th, and then establish anarchy, is too absurd
a statement, I think, even for a political office-holder to make . . . Only mad
men could have planned such a brilliant scheme." Rather, "we have predicted
from the lessons history teaches, that the ruling classes of to-day would no more
listen to the voice of reason than their predecessors; that they would attempt by
brute force to stay the wheel of progress." [contained in Parsons, Anarchism:
Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 55] Subsequent events have proven that
Spies and Parsons had a point!
Thus arguments about violence should not result in the assumption that the individualist
anarchists were pacifists as the subject usually is not violence as such but rather
assassinations and attempts of minorities to use violence to create "anarchy" by
destroying the state on behalf of the general population. "To brand the policy
of terrorism and assassination as immoral is ridiculously weak," argued Tucker.
"Liberty does not assume to set any limit on the right of an invaded
individual to choose his own methods of defence. The invader, whether an individual
or a government forfeits all claim to consideration from the invaded. This truth
is independent of the character of the invasion." This meant that the "right
to resist oppression by violence is beyond doubt. But its exercise would be unwise
unless the suppression of free thought, free speech, and a free press were enforced
so stringently that all other means of throwing it off had become hopeless."
Ultimately, though, the "days of armed revolution have gone by. It is too easily
put down." [Instead of a Book, p. 430, p. 439 and p. 440]
Except for a small group of hard-core insurrectionists, few social anarchists think
that violence should be the first recourse in social struggle. The ultra-revolutionary
rhetoric associated with the 1883-6 period is not feature of the anarchist movement
in general and so lessons have been learned. As far as strategy goes, the tactics
advocated by social anarchists involve the same ones that individualist anarchists
support, namely refusal of obedience to all forms of authority. This would include
workplace, rent and tax strikes, occupations, protests and such like. Violence has
always been seen as the last option, to be used only in self-defence (or, sometimes,
in revenge for greater acts of violence by oppressors). The problem is that any
effective protest will result in the protesters coming into conflict with either
the state or property owners. For example, a rent strike will see the agents of
the property owner trying to evict tenants, as would a workers strike which occupied
the workplace. Similarly, in the Seattle protests in 1999 the police used force
against the non-violent protesters blocking the roads long before the Black Bloc
started breaking windows (which is, in itself, non-violent as it was directed
against corporate property, not people -- unlike the police action). Unless
the rebels simply did what they were told, then any non-violent protest could
become violent -- but only because private property ultimately rests on state
violence, a fact which becomes obvious when people refuse to acknowledge it
and its privileges ("There is only one law for the poor, to wit: Obey the
rich." [Parsons, Op. Cit., p. 97]). Thus Adolph Fischer, one of the
Haymarket Martyrs:
"Would a peaceful solution of the social question be possible, the anarchists
would be the first ones to rejoice over it.
"But is it not a fact that on occasion of almost every strike the minions of
the institutions of private property -- militia, police, deputy sheriffs; yes,
even federal troops -- are being called to the scenes of conflict between
capital and labour, in order to protect the interests of capital? . . . What
peaceful means should the toilers employ? There is, for example, the strike?
If the ruling classes want to enforce the 'law' they can have every striker
arrested and punished for 'intimidation' and conspiracy. A strike can only be
successful if the striking workingmen prevent their places being occupied by
others. But this prevention is a crime in the eyes of the law. Boycott? In
several states the 'courts of justice' have decided that the boycott is a
violation of the law, and in consequence thereof, a number of boycotts have
had the pleasure of examining the inner construction of penitentiaries 'for
'conspiracy' against the interests of capital." [The Autobiographies
of the Haymarket Martyrs, pp. 85-6]
Some individualist anarchists did agree with this position. Dyer Lum, for example,
"supported revolutionary violence on practical and historical grounds.
Practically speaking, Lum did not believe that 'wage slavery' could be ended
by non-violence because capitalists would surely use force to resist."
[Frank H. Brooks, "Ideology, Strategy, and Organization: Dyer Lum and the
American Anarchist Movement", pp. 57-83, Labor History, vol. 34,
No. 1, p. 71] Spooner's rhetoric could be as violent sounding as Johann Most
at his worse and he called upon the subjects of the British Empire to rise
in revolt (see his pamphlet Revolution). Equally, many social
anarchists are pacifists or believe that anarchism can come about by
means of reform and not revolution. Thus the reform/revolution divide does not
quite equal the individualist/social anarchist divide, although it is fair to
say that most individualist anarchists were and are reformists.
So, it must be stressed that most individualist anarchists did not oppose
revolution as such. Rather they considered it as both unlikely to succeed
and unnecessary. They rejected revolutionary expropriation "not because we
deem such expropriation unjust, invasive, criminal, but solely because we are
we are convinced that there is a better, safer, and wiser way for labour
to pursue with a view to emancipation." With mutual banks, they argued,
it became possible "for labour to gradually lift itself into the position
to command its full share of wealth, and absorb in the shape of wages all that
is now alienated from it in the forms of profit, interest proper, and monopoly
rent." [Yarrows, Liberty, no. 171, p. 5] As such, their aims were the
same as communist-anarchism (namely to end exploitation of labour and the abolition
of the state) but their means were different. Both, however, were well aware that
the capitalism could not be ended by political action (i.e., voting). "That
the privileged class", argued William Bailie "will submit to expropriation,
even if demanded at the ballot-box, is a delusion possible only to him who knows
not the actual situation confronting the people of this country." ["The
Rule of the Monopolists", Liberty, no. 368, p. 4]
However, there was one area of life that was excluded from their opposition to
expropriation: the land. As Yarros put it, "the Anarchists' position on the
land question, which involves the dispossession of present landlords and the
entire abolition of the existing system of land tenure . . . They wish to
expropriate the landlords, and allow the landless to settle on land which does
not now belong to them." This "[o]ne exception . . . we are compelled to
make" involved "believ[ing] that the landless will, individually
and for the purpose of occupying ownership, take possession of the land not
personally occupied and used by landlord, and will protect each other
in the possession of such lands against any power hostile to them."
[Op. Cit., no. 171, p. 4 and p. 5]
Yet as subsequent history has shown, landlords are just as likely to
organise and support violent counter-revolutionary movements in the face of
land reform as are industrial capitalists. Both sections of the capitalist
class supported fascists like Mussolini, Franco and Pinochet in the face of
even moderate attempts at expropriation by either reformist governments or
the peasants themselves. So as the history of land reform shows, landlords
are more than willing to turn to death squads and fascism to resist it. To
suggest that squatting land would provoke less capitalist violence than, say,
expropriating workplaces simply cannot be supported in the light of 20th century
history. The choice, then, is simply to allow the landlords and capitalists to
keep their property and try to but it back from them or use political or
revolutionary means to expropriate them. Communist-anarchists thought that
the mutual banks would not work and so supported expropriation by means of
a mass revolt, a social revolution.
As such, communist-anarchists are not revolutionaries by choice but rather because
they do not think capitalism can be reformed away nor that the ruling class will
freely see their power, property and privileges taken from them. They reject the
mutualist and individualist anarchist suggestion that mutual banks could provide
enough credit to compete capitalism away and, even if it could, the state would
simply outlaw it. This perspective does not imply, as many enemies of
anarchist suggest, that social anarchists always seek to use violence but rather
that we are aware that the state and capitalists will use violence against any
effective protest. So, the methods social anarchists urge -- strikes, occupations,
protests, and so forth -- are all inherently non-violent but resistance by the
state and capitalist class to these acts of rebellion often results in violence
(which is dutifully reported as violence by the rebels, not the powerful, in the
media). That the capitalist class will use violence and force to maintain its position
"is demonstrated in every strike which threatens their power; by every lock-out, by
every discharge; by every black-list." [Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and
Scientific Basis, p. 105] Ultimately, the workings of capitalism itself provokes
resistance to it. Even if no anarchist participated in, or help organise, strikes
and protests they would occur anyway and the state would inevitably intervene to
defend "law and order" and "private property" -- as the history of every class
system proves. So communist-anarchism does not produce the class war, the class
war produces communist-anarchism.
In addition, Tucker thought that a violent revolution would not succeed for
without an awareness of anarchist ideals in the general public, the old system
would soon return. "If government should be abruptly and entirely abolished
tomorrow," he argued, "there would probably ensue a series of physical
conflicts about land and many other things, ending in reaction and a revival
of the old tyranny." [Instead of a Book, p. 329] Almost all
revolutionary anarchists would agree with his analysis (see
section A.2.16). Such anarchists have always
seen revolution as the end of a long process of self-liberation and self-education
through struggle. All anarchists reject the idea that all that was required was
to eliminate the government, by whatever means, and the world would be made right.
Rather, we have seen anarchism as a social movement which, like anarchy itself,
requires the participation of the vast majority to be viable. Hence anarchist
support for unions and strikes, for example, as a means of creating more awareness
of anarchism and its solutions to the social question (see
section J.1). This means that communist-anarchists do
not see revolution as imposing anarchism, but rather as an act of self-liberation
by a people sick of being ruled by others and act to free themselves of tyranny.
So, in summary, in terms of tactics there is significant overlap between the
strategies advocated by both social and individualist anarchists. The key
difference is that the former do not think that the latter's mutual banks make
expropriation unnecessary while the individualist anarchists think that
expropriation of capital would provoke the state into attacking and it
would be unlikely that the rebels would win. Both, however, can agree that
violence should only be used in self-defence and that for most of the time
it is not required as other forms of resistance are far more effective.
Then there is the desirability of communism as such. A. H. Simpson argued that
"Anarchism is egoism; Communism is altruism" and altruism in any
form will involve "the duty of the individual to sacrifice himself to
God, the State, the community, the 'cause' of anything, superstition that
always makes for tyranny. This idea, whether under Theocracy or Communism,
will result in the same thing -- always authority." He did, though,
argue that in a free society people who "desire to have their individuality
submerged in the crowd" would be free to set up their own communes.
[The Individualist Anarchists, p. 92 and p. 94] This flows from
Joshua Warren's experiences on Robert Owen's co-operative community New
Harmony and the conclusions he drew from its collapse. Warren essentially
began the individualist anarchist tradition by concluding that any sort of
collective emphasis was bound to fail because it prevented people from
sufficiently addressing individual concerns, since supposed collective concerns
would inevitably take their place. The failure of these communities was rooted
in a failure to understand the need for individual self-government. Thus, for
Warren, it "seemed that the differences of opinion, tastes, and purposes
increased just in proportion to the demand for conformity" and so
it "appeared that it was nature's own inherent law of diversity that had
conquered us . . . Our 'united interests' were directly at war with the
individualities of persons and circumstances." [quoted by George Woodcock,
Anarchism, p. 390] Thus, property within the limits of occupancy and use,
and within an economy dominated by the cost principle or some close equivalent,
had to be a necessary protection for the individual from both the potential
tyranny of the group (communism) and from inequalities in wealth (capitalism).
In return, communist-anarchists would agree. "Phalansteries, argued
Kropotkin, "are repugnant to millions of human beings." While most
people feel "the necessity of meeting his [or her] fellows for the
pursue of common work . . . it is not so for the hours of leisure"
and such communities "do not take this into account." Thus a
commune system does not imply communal living (although such arrangements
"can please some"). Rather it was a case of "isolated apartments
. . . Isolation, alternating with time spent in society, is the normal
desire of human nature." [The Conquest of Bread, pp. 123-4]
Kropotkin in his discussion on why intentional communities like that
of Owen's failed repeated many of Warren's points and stressed that
they were based on the authoritarian spirit and violated the need for
individual liberty, isolation and diversity (see his Small Communal
Experiments and Why They Fail). The aim of communist-anarchism is to
create a communist society based on individual liberty and freely joined
functional groups. It does not aim to burden individuals with communal
issues beyond those required by said groupings. Thus self-managed communities
involve managing only those affairs which truly rest in joint needs,
with the interests of individuals and other groups only being discussed
if they are harming others and other means of resolving disputes have
failed. Whether this can actually happen, of course, will be discovered in
a free society. If it did not, the communist-anarchists would be the first
to seek alternative economic and social arrangements which guaranteed liberty.
It should also go without saying that no communist-anarchist sought a system
by which individuals would have their personality destroyed. As Kropotkin
stressed:
"Anarchist Communism maintains that most valuable of all conquests -- individual
liberty -- and moreover extends it and gives it a solid basis -- economic
liberty -- without which political liberty is delusive; it does not ask
the individual who has rejected god, god the king, and god the parliament,
to give himself unto himself a god more terrible than any of the preceding
-- god the Community, or to abdicate upon its alter his independence, his
will, his tastes, and to renew the vow of asceticism which he formally made
before the crucified god. It says to him, on the contrary, 'No society is
free so long as the individual is not so! Do not seek to modify society by
imposing upon it an authority which shall make everything right; if you
do you will fail . . . abolish the conditions which allow some to monopolise
the fruit of labour of others.'" [The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic
Evolution, pp. 14-5]
Of course, denying that communist-anarchists seek such a regime is not the
same as saying that such a regime would not be created by accident. Unsurprisingly,
communist-anarchists have spent some time arguing that their system would not be
subject to such a degeneration as its members would be aware of the danger and
act to stop it (see, for example, section I.5.6).
The key to understanding communist-anarchism is to recognise that it is based
on free access. It does not deny an individual (or even a group of individuals)
the ability to work their own land or workplace, it simply denies them the
ability to exclude others from it unless they agree to be their servant first.
The sharing of the products of labour is considered as the means to reduce
even more any authority in society as people can swap workplaces and communities
with ease, without worrying about whether they can put food on their table or
not.
Of course, there is slight irony to Simpson's diatribe against communism in
that it implicitly assumes that private property is not a god and that
individuals should respect it regardless of how it impacts on them and their
liberty. Would it not be altruism of the worse kind if working class people
did not simply take the land and capital they need to survive rather than
sell their labour and liberty to its owners? So why exclude private property
(even in a modified form) from individualist anarchist scorn? As we argue in
section G.6 this was Max Stirner's position and,
fundamentally, the communist-anarchist one too. Communist-anarchists oppose
private property as it generates relationships of authority and these harm
those subject to them and, as a consequence, they argue that it is in the
self-interest of the individuals so oppressed to expropriate private
property and share the whole world.
The issue of sharing and what it implied also caused some individualist anarchists
to oppose it. Henry Appleton argued that "all communism rests upon an
artificial attempt to level things, as against a social development resting upon
untrammelled individual sovereignty." The "true Anarchist . . . is opposed
to all manner of artificial levelling machines. How pitiful the ignorance which
accuses him of wanting to level everything, when the very integral thought of
Anarchism is opposed to levelling!" [The Individualist Anarchists,
p. 89] However, as we have indicated in section A.2.5,
all genuine anarchists, including communist-anarchists, are opposed to
making or treating people as if they were identical. In fact, the goal of
communist-anarchism has always been to ensure and protect the natural diversity
of individuals by creating social conditions in which individuality can flourish.
The fundamental principle of communism is the maxim "from each according
to their abilities, to each according to their needs." There is nothing
there about "levelling" or (which amounts to the same thing), "equality
of outcome." To make an obvious point: "If one person need medical treatment
and another is more fortunate, they are not to be granted an equal amount of medical
care, and the same is true of other human needs. Hence Chomsky talks of the
"authentic left" who recognise that individuals "will differ in their
aspirations, their abilities, and their personal goals" and seek a society
which allows that diversity to fully flourish. [The Chomsky Reader, p. 191
and p. 192] In the words of Rudolf Rocker:
"a far greater degree of economic equality . . . would . . . be no guarantee
against political and social oppression. Economic equality alone is not social
liberation. It is just this which Marxism and all the other schools of
authoritarian Socialism have never understood. Even in prison, in the cloister,
or in the barracks one finds a fairly high degree of economic equality, as all
the inmates are provided with the same dwelling, the same food, the same
uniform, and the same tasks . . . [this was] the vilest despotism . . . the
human being was merely the automation of a higher will, on whose decisions he
had not the slightest influence. It was not without reason that Proudhon saw in
a 'Socialism' without freedom the worst form of slavery. The urge for social
justice can only develop properly and be effective, when it grows out of man's
sense of personal freedom and is based on that. In other words Socialism will
be free, or it will not be at all. In its recognition of this lies the
genuine and profound justification for the existence of Anarchism."
[Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 14]
Therefore, anarchists "demand the abolition of all economic monopolies and
the common ownership of the soil and all other means of production, the use of
which must be available to all without distinction; for personal and social
freedom is conceivable only on the basis of equal economic advantages for
everybody. [Op. Cit., p. 11] As Kropotkin stressed, anarchists
recognise that there are two types of communism, libertarian and authoritarian
and "our communism, is not that of the authoritarian school: it is anarchist
communism, communism without government, free communism. It is a synthesis of
the two chief aims pursued by humanity since the dawn of its history --
economic freedom and political freedom." It is based on "everybody,
contributing for the common well-being to the full extent of his [or her]
capacities . . . enjoy[ing] also from the common stock of society to the fullest
possible extent of his [or her] needs." Thus it is rooted in individual
tastes and diversity, on "putting the wants of the individual above
the valuation of the services he [or she] has rendered, or might render, to
society." Thus communism was "the best basis for individual development
and freedom" and so "the full expansion of man's faculties, the superior
development of what is original in him, the greatest fruitfulness of intelligences,
feeling and will." It would ensure the "most powerful development of
individuality, of individual originality." The "most powerful development
of individuality, of individual originality . . . can only be produced when the
first needs of food and shelter are satisfied" and this was why "communism and
anarchism" are "a necessary complement to one another." [Anarchism,
p. 61, p. 59, p. 60 and p. 141]
So, communist-anarchists would actually agree with individualist anarchists like
Simpson and oppose any notion of "levelling" (artificial or otherwise). The
aim of libertarian communism is to increase diversity and individuality, not
to end it by imposing an abstract equality of outcome or of consumption that
would utter ignore individual tastes or preferences. Given that communist-anarchists
like Kropotkin and Malatesta continually stressed this aspect of their ideas,
Simpson was simply confusing libertarian and authoritarian forms of communism for
polemical effect rather than presenting a true account of the issues at hand.
A firmer critique of communist-anarchism can be found when Tucker argued that
"Kropotkinian anarchism means the liberty to eat, but not to cook; to drink,
but not to brew; to wear, but not to spin; to dwell, but not to build; to give,
but not to sell or buy; to think, but not to print; to speak, but not to hire a
hall; to dance, but not to pay the fiddler." [quoted by George Woodcock and
Ivan Avakumovic, Op. Cit., p. 279] Yet even this contains a distortion,
as it is clear that communist-anarchism is based on the assumption that members
of a communist society would have to contribute (if physically able, of
course) to the common resources in order to gain access to them. The notion that
Kropotkin thought that a communist society would only take into account "to
each according to their needs" while ignoring "from each according to
their abilities" seems hard to square with his published arguments. While
it is true that individual contributions would not be exactly determined, it is
false to suggest that communist-anarchism ignores the obvious truism that in
order to consume you first need to produce. Simply put, if someone seeks to
live off the work of others in a free society those within it would be asked to
leave and provide for themselves. By their actions, they have shown that they
do not want to live in a communist commune and those who do wish to live as
communists would feel no particular need to provide for those who do not (see
section I.4.14).
This can be seen when Tucker quoted Freedom saying that "in the transitional
revolutionary period communities and individuals may be obliged in self-defence
to make it their rule that 'He who will not work neither shall he eat.' It is
not always possible for us to act up to our principles and . . . expediency may
force us to confine our Communism to those who are willing to be our brothers
and equals." Somewhat incredibly, Tucker stated "I am not quite clear as
to the meaning of this, and would ask to be enlightened on the question whether
those objectionable individuals are to be let alone to live in their own way, or
whether the State Socialistic plan would be pursued in dealing with them."
[Liberty, no. 149, p. 1] Clearly, his anti-communism got in the way of any
attempt to build bridges or acknowledge that communist-anarchists had no desire
(as noted above) to force people to be communists nor to have the "communism" of
those unwilling (rather than unable) to contribute imposed on them!
The other differences are not as major. Some individualist anarchists took umbrage
because the communist-anarchists predicted that an anarchist society would take a
communal form, so prescribing the future development of a free society in potentially
authoritarian ways. As James Martin summarised, it was Tucker's "belief that 'in
all subsequent social co-operation no manner of organisation or combination
whatsoever shall be binding upon any individual without his consent,' and to
decide in advance upon a communal structure violated this maxim from the
start." [Men Against the State, p. 222] Others took umbrage because
the communist-anarchists refused to spell out in sufficient detail exactly how
their vision would work.
Communist-anarchists reply in four main ways. Firstly, the individualist
anarchists themselves predicted roughly how they thought a free society would
look and function, namely one on individual ownership of production based
around mutual banks. Secondly, communist-anarchists presented any vision as
one which was consistent with libertarian principles, i.e., their suggestions
for a free society was based on thinking about the implication of anarchist
principles in real life. There seemed little point in advocating anarchism if
any future society would be marked by authority. To not discuss how a free
society could work would result in authoritarian solutions being imposed
(see section I.2.1). Thirdly, they were at
pains to link the institutions of a free society to those already being
generated within capitalism but in opposition to its hierarchical nature
(see section I.2.3). Fourthly, presenting more
than a sketch would be authoritarian as it is up to a free people to create
their own society and solve their problems themselves (see
section I.2).
Clearly, A. H. Simpson was wrong when he asserted that communist-anarchists
argued thusly: "Abolish private property by instituting compulsory Communism,
and the State will go." No communist-anarchist has ever argued for compulsory
communism. Somewhat ironically, Simpson went on to argue that "difference
between Communism and Anarchy is plainly observable in their methods. Abolish the
State . . . that bulwark of the robber system . . . says the Anarchist. Abolish
private property, the source of all evil and injustice, parent of the State,
says the Communist." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 92] Yet
communist-anarchists do not subscribe to the position of abolishing
private property first, then the state. As we note when refuting the
opposite assertion by Marxists in section H.2.4,
anarchists like Kropotkin and Malatesta followed Bakunin in arguing that both
needed to be abolished at the same time. Kropotkin, for example, did not divide
economic and political issues, for him it was a case of "the political and
economic principles of Anarchism." [Anarchism, p. 159]
This unity of economic and political aspects of anarchism exists within
Individualist Anarchism too, but it is hidden by the unfortunately tendency
of its supporters of discussing certain forms of private property as state
enforced monopolies. So to a large degree many of the disagreements between
the two schools of anarchism were rooted in semantics. Thus we find William
Bailie arguing that the anarchist-communist "assumption that rent and
interest are due to private property is not proven" as "both rent and
interest are the result of monopoly, of restricted individual liberty."
[Liberty, no. 261, p. 1] In other words, rent is caused because
the state enforces property rights which the individualist anarchists
disagree with. Thus when individualist anarchists argue they seek to get rid
of the state, they also mean the end of capitalist property rights
(particularly in land). That this can lead to confusion is obvious as, in
the usual sense of the word, rent is caused by private property. The
communists-anarchists, in contrast, generally used the term "private property"
and "property" in the same way that Proudhon used it in 1840, namely property
which allows its owner to exploit the labour of another. As such, they had
no problem with those who laboured by themselves on their own property.
The lack of a market in communist-anarchism led some individualist anarchists
like William Bailie to argue that it "ignores the necessity for any machinery
to adjust economic activities to their ends." Either its supporters "exalt
a chaotic and unbalanced condition" or they will produce an "insufferable
hierarchy." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 116] Thus, to use modern
terms, either communist-anarchists embrace central planning or their system simply
cannot produce goods to meet demand with over-production of unwanted goods and
under-production of desired ones. Needless to say, communist-anarchists argue that
it is possible to bring the demand and production of goods into line without
requiring centralised planning (which would be inefficient and a dire threat to
individual freedom -- Kropotkin's arguments against state capitalism were proved
right in Soviet Russia). It would require a system of horizontal links between
self-managed workplaces and the transmission of appropriate information to make
informed decisions (see section I for a discussion of
some possibilities).
Another objection to communist-anarchism was raised by Proudhon during his
debates with the state communists of his time who also raised the slogan
"from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."
For Proudhon, wages in the sense of payment for labour would still exist in a
anarchist society. This was because of two main reasons. Firstly, rewarding
labour for its actual work done would be a great incentive in ensuring that it
was efficiently done and meet the consumers requirements. Secondly, he considered
communism as being potentially authoritarian in that society would determine
what an individual should contribute and consume. As he put it:
"Who then shall determine the capacity? who shall be the judge of the needs?
"You say that my capacity is 100: I maintain that it is only 90. You add that my
needs are 90: I affirm that they are 100. There is a difference between us of
twenty upon needs and capacity. It is, in other words, the well-known debate
between demand and supply. Who shall judge between the society
and me?
"If the society persists, despite my protests, I resign from it, and that is
all there is to it. The society comes to an end from lack of associates.
"If, having recourse to force, the society undertakes to compel me; if it demands
from me sacrifice and devotion, I say to it: Hypocrite! you promised to deliver
me from being plundered by capital and power; and now, in the name of equality
and fraternity, in your turn, you plunder me. Formerly, in order to rob me, they
exaggerated my capacity and minimised my needs. They said that products cost
me so little, that I needed so little to live! You are doing the same thing. What
difference is there then between fraternity and the wage system?" [The
General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 96-7]
Yet even here Proudhon shows the libertarian communist solution to this
possible problem, namely free association. If there were a conflict between
individuals within a free commune in terms of their contributions and
consumption then the individual is free to leave (and, conversely, the
commune is free to expel an individual). Said individuals can seek another
communist commune and join it or, conversely, work for themselves in their
present location. Ultimately, free association means the freedom not
to associate and libertarian communism is rooted in that truism. Thus,
communist-anarchists would agree with the French anarchism when he "conclude[d]
that a single association can never include all the workmen in one industry, nor
all industrial corporations, nor, a fortiori, a nation of 36 millions of men;
therefore that the principle of association does not offer the required solution."
[Op. Cit., p. 85] Like Proudhon, communist-anarchists base their anarchism on
federations of associations and communes, with these federations and associations
formed as and when they were required for joint activity. Thus the federation
of communist communes and workplaces would play a similar role as Proudhon's
"agro-industrial federation," namely to end "wage labour or economic
servitude" and "to protect" against "capitalist and financial
feudalism, both within them and from the outside" as well as ensuring
"increasing equality" and the "application of application on the
largest possible scale of the principles of mutualism" and "economic
solidarity." [The Principle of Federation, p. 70 and p. 71]
The key difference, of course, between Proudhon's mutualism and Kropotkin's
communism was (as latter stressed) that the former supported payment for
labour in terms of money or labour-cheques while the latter argued that this
would be a modification of the wages system rather than its total abolition.
Yet by divorcing payment for labour from its consumption, Proudhon argued that
communism, like monopoly, made it difficult to determine exactly the costs
involved in producing goods. The French anarchist argued that there was no
way of knowing the real cost of anything produced outside the market. This
could be seen from monopolies within capitalism:
"How much does the tobacco sold by the administration cost? How much
is it worth? You can answer the first of these questions: you need
only call at the first tobacco shop you see. But you can tell me
nothing about the second, because you have no standard of comparison
and are forbidden to verify by experiment the items of cost of
administration…. Therefore the tobacco business, made into a monopoly,
necessarily costs society more than it brings in; it is an industry
which, instead of subsisting by its own product, lives by subsidies."
[System of Economical Contradictions, pp. 232-3]
Communist-anarchists reply by noting that the price of something is not
independent of the degree of monopoly of an industry and so natural
barriers to competition can skew prices. Equally, competition can be
a race to the bottom and that competitors can undermine their own
working conditions and enjoyment of life in order to gain an advantage
(or, more often, simply survive) on the market. As we argue in
section I.1.3, markets have a tendency
to undermine equality and solidarity and, over time, erode the basis of
a free society.
As an aside, Proudhon's argument has obvious similarities with von Mises'
much later attack on communism which is usually called the "socialist calculation
argument" (see section I.1.1). As discussed in
section I.1.2, von Mises' argument was question
begging in the extreme and our critique of that applies equally to Proudhon's
claims. As such, communist-anarchists argue that market prices usually do not
reflect the real costs (in terms of their effects on individuals, society and the
planet's ecology) -- even those prices generated by non-capitalist markets. Moreover,
due to Proudhon's opposition to rent and interest, his own argument could be turned
against mutualism and individualist anarchism as followers of von Mises have done.
Without rent and interest, they argue, there is no way of identifying how much land
or credit is worth and so resource use will be inefficient. Of course, this assumes
that capitalist definitions of efficiency and "cost" are the only valid ones which
is not the case. So, arguing that markets are required to correctly value goods
and services is a two-edged sword, argue communist-anarchists.
One of the joys of Proudhon is that he provides material to critique both
Kropotkin's communist-anarchism and Tucker's individualist anarchism
for while opposed to communism he was equally opposed to wage labour, as
we indicate in section G.4.2 (as such, those
who quote Proudhon's attacks on communism but fail to note his attacks on
wage slavery are extremely dishonest). Under mutualism, there would not be
wage labour. Rather than employers paying wages to workers, workers would
form co-operatives and pay themselves a share of the income they collectively
produced. As Robert Graham put it, "[t]hat both Tucker and Bakunin could claim
Proudhon as their own illustrates the inherent ambiguity and elusiveness of his
thought . . . With his death, that synthesis broke down into its conflicting
parts." ["Introduction", Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The General idea
of the Revolution, p. xxxi] Social anarchism emphasised the self-management,
associational and federalist aspects of Proudhon's ideas along with his critique
of private property while individualist anarchism tended to stress his support
for possession, "wages" (i.e., labour income), competition and markets.
No, far from it. Most anarchists in the late nineteenth century recognised
communist-anarchism as a genuine form of anarchism and it quickly replaced
collectivist anarchism as the dominant tendency.
So few anarchists found the individualist solution to the social question or
the attempts of some of them to excommunicate social anarchism from the movement
convincing. Across the world, including in America itself, communist anarchism
became the bulk of the movement (social anarchism is the "mainstream of
anarchist theory" and in the "historical anarchist movement"
where anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism have been "predominating."
[John Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 143]). That is still the situation
to this day, with individualist anarchism being a small part of the movement
(again, it mostly exists in America and, to an even lesser degree, Britain).
Moreover, with the notable exception of Johann Most, most leading
communist-anarchists refused to respond in kind and recognised individualist
anarchism as a form of anarchism (usually one suited to conditions in
pre-industrial America). Kropotkin, for example, included Individualist
Anarchism in his 1911 account of Anarchism for the Encyclopaedia Britannica
as well as his pamphlet Modern Science and Anarchism.
It should also be stressed that not all individualist anarchists followed
Tucker's lead in refusing to call communist anarchism a form of anarchism.
Joseph Labadie, Dyer Lum and Voltairine de Cleyre (when she was an individualist),
for example, recognised the likes of Albert and Lucy Parsons, Kropotkin,
Goldman and Berkman as fellow anarchists even if they disagreed with some of
their methods and aspects of their preferred solution to the social problem.
For Labadie, "[o]ne may want liberty to advance the interests of Communism,
another to further the cause of individualism" and so nothing can "stand
in the way of uniting with other Anarchists who believe in Communism to get
more liberty" [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 260 and p. 262]
Today, few (if any) individualist anarchists try to excommunicate other
anarchists from the movement, thankfully leaving the diatribes and sectarianism
of a few individuals in the nineteenth century where they belong.
Suffice to say, an account of anarchism which excluded social anarchism would be
a very short work indeed and, unsurprisingly, all serious accounts of anarchism
concentrate on social anarchism, its thinkers and its organisations. Which,
unfortunately, ensures that the diversity and richness of individualist anarchism
is somewhat lost, as are its social roots and context (which, in turn, allows some
academics to confuse individualist anarchism with "anarcho"-capitalism based on a
superficial analysis of words like "property" and "markets"). This predominance
of social anarchism is reflected in the movements journals.
While some of its admirers stress that Liberty was the longest lasting
American anarchist paper, in fact a social anarchist paper has that claim to
fame. Fraye Arbeter Shtime (The Free Voice of Labour) was a Yiddish
language anarchist periodical which was first published in 1890 and lasted until
1977. This was followed by the Italian anarchist paper L'Adunata dei Refrattari
which was published between 1922 and 1971. So when James Martin stated that Liberty
was "the longest-lived of any radical periodical of economic or political nature
in the nation's history" in 1953 he was wrong. [Men Against the State,
p. 208] In terms of the English language, the London based communist-anarchist journal
Freedom has existed (in various forms) from 1886 and so beats any claim made
for Liberty as being the longest lasting English language anarchist journal
by several decades. The anarcho-syndicalist Black Flag, another British based
journal, began publication in 1971 and was still being published over 30 years later.
As far as the longest running US-based anarchist journal, that title now goes to the
social anarchist magazine Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed which was
founded in 1980 and is still going strong. This is, we stress, not to diminish
Liberty and its achievement but simply to put it into the context of the
wider movement and the fact that, outside of America, social anarchism is
the anarchist movement (and even within America, social anarchism was and is the
bulk of it).
In summary, then, while individualist anarchism opposed communist-anarchism much
of this opposition was rooted in misunderstandings and, at times, outright distortion.
Once these are corrected, it becomes clear that both schools of anarchism share
significant ideas in common. This is unsurprisingly, given the impact of Proudhon on
both of them as well as their common concerns on the social question and participation
in the labour and other popular movements. As both are (libertarian) socialists inspired
by many of the same intellectual and social influences, this should come as no surprise.
That a few individualist and communist anarchists tried to deny those common influences
should not blind us to them or the fact that both schools of anarchism are compatible.
Ultimately, though, anarchism should be wide enough and generous enough to
include both communist and individualist anarchism. Attempts to excommunicate
one or the other seem petty given how much each has in common and, moreover,
given that both are compatible with each other as both are rooted in similar
perspectives on possession, capitalist property rights and voluntary association.
Once the differences in terminology are understood, the differences are not
impossible to reconcile.
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H.5 What is vanguardism and why do anarchists reject it?
H.5 What is vanguardism and why do anarchists reject it?
Many socialists follow the ideas of Lenin and, in particular,
his ideas on vanguard parties. These ideas were expounded by
Lenin in his (in)famous work What is to be Done? which
is considered as one of the important books in the development
of Bolshevism.
The core of these ideas is the concept of "vanguardism," or
the "vanguard party." According to this perspective, socialists
need to organise together in a party, based on the principles
of "democratic centralism," which aims to gain a decisive
influence in the class struggle. The ultimate aim of such a
party is revolution and its seizure of power. Its short term
aim is to gather into it all "class conscious" workers into
a "efficient" and "effective" party, alongside members of
other classes who consider themselves as revolutionary Marxists.
The party would be strictly centralised, with all members
expected to submit to party decisions, speak in one voice and
act in one way. Without this "vanguard," injecting its politics
into the working class (who, it is asserted, can only reach
trade union consciousness by its own efforts), a revolution
is impossible.
Lenin laid the foundation of this kind of party in his book
What is to be Done? and the vision of the "vanguard" party
was explicitly formalised in the Communist International. As
Lenin put it, "Bolshevism has created the ideological and
tactical foundations of a Third International . . . Bolshevism
can serve as a model of tactics for all." [Collected Works,
vol. 28, pp. 292-3] Using the Russian Communist Party as its
model, Bolshevik ideas on party organisation were raised as
a model for revolutionaries across the world. Since then, the
various followers of Leninism and its offshoots like Trotskyism
have organised themselves in this manner (with varying success).
The wisdom of applying an organisational model that had been
developed in the semi-feudal conditions of Tsarist Russia to
every country, regardless of its level of development, has
been questioned by anarchists from the start. After all, could
it not be wiser to build upon the revolutionary tendencies
which had developed in specific countries rather than import
a new model which had been created for, and shaped by, radically
different social, political and economic conditions? The
wisdom of applying the vanguard model is not questioned
on these (essentially materialist) points by those who
subscribe to it. While revolutionary workers in the advanced
capitalist nations subscribed to anarchist and syndicalist ideas,
this tradition is rejected in favour of one developed by, in
the main, bourgeois intellectuals in a nation which was still
primarily feudal and absolutist. The lessons learned from years
of struggle in actual capitalist societies were simply rejected
in favour of those from a party operating under Tsarism. While
most supporters of vanguardism will admit that conditions
now are different than in Tsarist Russia, they still subscribe
to organisational method developed in that context and justify
it, ironically enough, because of its "success" in the totally
different conditions that prevailed in Russia in the early
20th Century! And Leninists claim to be materialists!
Perhaps the reason why Bolshevism rejected the materialist approach
was because most of the revolutionary movements in advanced
capitalist countries were explicitly anti-parliamentarian, direct
actionist, decentralist, federalist and influenced by libertarian
ideas? This materialist analysis was a key aspect of the council
communist critique of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, for
example (see Herman Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade Lenin
for one excellent reply to Bolshevik arguments, tactics and
assumptions). This attempt to squeeze every working class movement
into one "officially approved" model dates back to Marx and
Engels. Faced with any working class movement which did not
subscribe to their vision of what they should be doing (namely
organising in political parties to take part in "political action,"
i.e. standing in bourgeois elections) they simply labelled it as
the product of non-proletarian "sects." They went so far as
to gerrymander the 1872 conference of the First International
to make acceptance of "political action" mandatory on all
sections in an attempt to destroy anarchist influence in it.
So this section of our FAQ will explain why anarchists reject
this model. In our view, the whole concept of a "vanguard
party" is fundamentally anti-socialist. Rather than present an
effective and efficient means of achieving revolution, the
Leninist model is elitist, hierarchical and highly inefficient
in achieving a socialist society. At best, these parties play
a harmful role in the class struggle by alienating activists
and militants with their organisational principles and manipulative
tactics within popular structures and groups. At worse, these
parties can seize power and create a new form of class society
(a state capitalist one) in which the working class is oppressed
by new bosses (namely, the party hierarchy and its appointees).
However, before discussing why anarchists reject "vanguardism"
we need to stress a few points. Firstly, anarchists recognise
the obvious fact that the working class is divided in terms
of political consciousness. Secondly, from this fact most
anarchists recognise the need to organise together to
spread our ideas as well as taking part in, influencing
and learning from the class struggle. As such, anarchists
have long been aware of the need for revolutionaries
to organise as revolutionaries. Thirdly, anarchists are
well aware of the importance of revolutionary minorities
playing an inspiring and "leading" role in the class struggle.
We do not reject the need for revolutionaries to "give a
lead" in struggles, we reject the idea of institutionalised
leadership and the creation of a leader/led hierarchy
implicit (and sometimes no so implicit) in vanguardism.
As such, we do not oppose "vanguardism" for these reasons.
So when Leninists like Tony Cliff argue that it is
"unevenness in the class [which] makes the party necessary,"
anarchists reply that "unevenness in the class" makes it
essential that revolutionaries organise together to influence
the class but that organisation does not and need not take
the form of a vanguard party. [Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2,
p. 149] This is because we reject the concept and practice
for three reasons.
Firstly, and most importantly, anarchists reject the underlying
assumption of vanguardism. It is based on the argument that
"socialist consciousness" has to be introduced into the
working class from outside. We argue that not only is this position
empirically false, it is fundamentally anti-socialist in nature.
This is because it logically denies that the emancipation of the
working class is the task of the working class itself. Moreover,
it serves to justify elite rule. Some Leninists, embarrassed by
the obvious anti-socialist nature of this concept, try and argue
that Lenin (and so Leninism) does not hold this position. We show
that such claims are false.
Secondly, there is the question of organisational structure. Vanguard
parties are based on the principle of "democratic centralism".
Anarchists argue that such parties, while centralised, are not, in fact,
democratic nor can they be. As such, the "revolutionary" or
"socialist" party is no such thing as it reflects the structure
of the capitalist system it claims to oppose.
Lastly, anarchists argue that such parties are, despite the
claims of their supporters, not actually very efficient or
effective in the revolutionary sense of the word. At best,
they hinder the class struggle by being slow to respond to
rapidly changing situations. At worse, they are "efficient" in
shaping both the revolution and the post-revolutionary society
in a hierarchical fashion, so re-creating class rule.
So these are key aspects of the anarchist critique of vanguardism,
which we discuss in more depth in the following sections. It is a
bit artificial to divide these issues into different sections
because they are all related. The role of the party implies a
specific form of organisation (as Lenin himself stressed), the
form of the party influences its effectiveness. It is for ease of
presentation we divide up our discussion so.
H.5.1 Why are vanguard parties anti-socialist?
The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply
because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought
was vital. Simply put, without the party, no revolution would
be possible. As Lenin put it in 1900, "[i]solated from
Social-Democracy, the working class movement becomes petty
and inevitably becomes bourgeois." [Collected Works, vol.
4, p. 368] In What is to be Done?, he expands on this position:
"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers
only from without, that is, only outside of the economic
struggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and
employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain
this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the
various classes and strata and the state and the government -
the sphere of the interrelations between all the various
classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]
Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into
a class incapable of developing them itself.
Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims
and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl
Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered
the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely
untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and
direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather,
"socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not
one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can
arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . .
The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the
bourgeois intelligentsia: it was in the minds of some members
of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was
they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed
proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the
proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist
consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian
class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit.,
pp. 81-2]
So Lenin, it must be stressed, was not inventing anything new here. He
was simply repeating the orthodox Marxist position and, as is obvious,
wholeheartedly agreed with Kautsky's pronouncements (any attempt to
claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense, as we prove
in section H.5.4). Lenin, with his
usual modesty, claimed to speak on behalf of the workers when
he wrote that "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us more
about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our
factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us
political knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 108] Thus we have Lenin
painting a picture of a working class incapable of developing
"political knowledge" or "socialist consciousness" by its
own efforts and so is reliant on members of the party,
themselves either radical elements of the bourgeoisie and
petty-bourgeoisie or educated by them, to provide it with such
knowledge.
The obvious implication of this argument is that the working class
cannot liberate itself by its own efforts. Without the radical
bourgeois to provide the working class with "socialist" ideas, a
socialist movement, let alone society, is impossible. If the working
class cannot develop its own political theory by its own efforts
then it cannot conceive of transforming society and, at best, can
see only the need to work within capitalism for reforms to improve
its position in society. A class whose members cannot develop
political knowledge by its own actions cannot emancipate itself.
It is, by necessity, dependent on others to shape and form its
movements. To quote Trotsky's telling analogy on the respective
roles of party and class, leaders and led:
"Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses
would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston. But
nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the
box, but the steam." [History of the Russian Revolution,
vol. 1, p. 17]
While Trotsky's mechanistic analogy may be considered as
somewhat crude, it does expose the underlying assumptions
of Bolshevism. After all, did not Lenin argue that the
working class could not develop "socialist consciousness"
by themselves and that it had to be introduced from without?
How can you expect steam to create a piston? You cannot.
Thus we have a blind, elemental force incapable of conscious
thought being guided by a creation of science, the piston
(which, of course, is a product of the work of the "vehicles
of science," namely the bourgeois intelligentsia). In the
Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives
of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the
steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train
driver. The idea of a future society being constructed
democratically from below by the workers themselves rather
than through periodically elected leaders seems to have
passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that
the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving
steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless
an outside force gave them direction (instructions).
Libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis provides a good
critique of the implications of the Leninist position:
"No positive content, nothing new capable of providing
the foundation for the reconstruction of society could
arise out of a mere awareness of poverty. From the
experience of life under capitalism the proletariat
could derive no new principles either for organising
this new society or for orientating it in another
direction. Under such conditions, the proletarian
revolution becomes . . . a simple reflex revolt against
hunger. It is impossible to see how socialist society
could ever be the result of such a reflex . . . Their
situation forces them to suffer the consequences of
capitalism's contradictions, but in no way does it
lead them to discover its causes. An acquaintance with
these causes comes not from experiencing the production
process but from theoretical knowledge . . . This
knowledge may be accessible to individual workers, but
not to the proletariat qua proletariat. Driven by
its revolt against poverty, but incapable of self-direction
since its experiences does not give it a privileged
viewpoint on reality, the proletariat according to this
outlook, can only be an infantry in the service of a
general staff of specialists. These specialists know
(from considerations that the proletariat as such does
not have access to) what is going wrong with present-day
society and how it must be modified. The traditional view
of the economy and its revolutionary perspective can only
found, and actually throughout history has only founded,
a bureaucratic politics . . . [W]hat we have outlined
are the consequences that follow objectively from this
theory. And they have been affirmed in an ever clearer
fashion within the actual historical movement of Marxism,
culminating in Stalinism." [Social and Political Writings,
vol. 2, pp. 257-8]
Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a
perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship
over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the
working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its
own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union
consciousness" independently of the party, the clear
implication is that the party could in no way be bound
by the predominant views of the working class. As the
party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises
outside the working class and its struggles) then
opposition of the working class to the party signifies
a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As
Lenin put it:
"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being
developed by the masses of the workers in the process of
their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or
socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence,
to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate
from it in the slightest degree means strengthening
bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity,
but the spontaneous development of the labour movement
leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology
. . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to
combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from
its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the
wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of
revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]
The implications of this argument became clear once the
Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party
dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any
better. If the working class revolts against the
ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development
which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology.
As the party represents socialist consciousness, any
deviation in working class support for it simply meant
that the working class was being "subordinated" to the
bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle"
the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant
to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers
spontaneously went on strike or protested against the
party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings
in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses
of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology,"
the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of
bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the
"the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers"!) has
to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."
As we saw in
section H.1.2, none of the leading Bolsheviks
were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and
faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed,
they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the
proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of
the party" and, as we discussed in
section H.3.8 integrated
this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology
implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the
workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of
the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing
the proletariat is to be expected.
This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it and it
alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the resolution of the
Communist International on the role of the party. It stated that
"the working class without an independent political party is
a body without a head." [Proceedings and Documents of the
Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological
analogies says more about Bolshevism that its authors intended.
After all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable.
Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course not. Yet
again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute force.
As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argued, the "Leninist belief that
the workers cannot spontaneously go beyond the level of trade union
consciousness is tantamount to beheading the proletariat, and then
insinuating the Party as the head . . . Lenin was wrong, and in
fact, in Russia the Party was forced to decapitate the workers'
movement with the help of the political police and the Red Army
under the brilliant leadership of Trotsky and Lenin."
[Obsolute Communism, pp. 194-5]
As well as explaining the subsequent embrace of party
dictatorship over the working class, vanguardism also
explains the notorious inefficiency of Leninist parties
faced with revolutionary situations we discuss in
section H.5.8. Basing themselves
on the perspective that all spontaneous movements are inherently
bourgeois they could not help but be opposed to autonomous
class struggle and the organisations and tactics it
generates. James C. Scott, in his excellent discussion
of the roots and flaws in Lenin's ideas on the party,
makes the obvious point that since, for Lenin, "authentic,
revolutionary class consciousness could never develop
autonomously within the working class, it followed that
that the actual political outlook of workers was always
a threat to the vanguard party." [Seeing like a State,
p. 155] As Maurice Brinton argued, the "Bolshevik cadres saw
their role as the leadership of the revolution. Any movement not
initiated by them or independent of their control could only
evoke their suspicion." These developments, of course, did
not occur by chance or accidentally for "a given ideological
premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led necessarily
to certain conclusions in practice." [The Bolsheviks and
Workers' Control, p. xi and p. xii]
Bakunin expressed the implications of the vanguardist
perspective extremely well. It is worthwhile quoting
him at length:
"Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists,
those who uphold the priority of science over life, the
doctrinaire revolutionists - all of them champion with
equal zeal although differing in their argumentation,
the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them,
quite logically from their point of view, the only
salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having
taken as their basis the tenet - a fallacious tenet in
our opinion - that thought is prior to life, and
abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that
therefore sociological science must become the starting
point for social upheavals and social reconstruction -
they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since
thought, theory, and science are, for the present at
least, the property of only a very few people, those
few should direct social life; and that on the morrow
of the Revolution the new social organisation should
be set up not by the free integration of workers'
associations, villages, communes, and regions from
below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts
of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of
this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general
will of the people." [The Political Philosophy of
Bakunin, pp. 283-4]
The idea that "socialist consciousness" can exist independently
of the working class and its struggle suggests exactly the
perspective Bakunin was critiquing. For vanguardism, the abstract
theory of socialism exists prior to the class struggle and
exists waiting to be brought to the masses by the educated few.
The net effect is, as we have argued, to lay the ground for party
dictatorship. The concept is fundamentally anti-socialist,
a justification for elite rule and the continuation of class
society in new, party approved, ways.
H.5.2 Have vanguardist assumptions been validated?
Lenin claimed that workers can only reach a "trade union consciousness"
by their own efforts. Anarchists argue that such an assertion is empirically
false. The history of the labour movement is marked by revolts and struggles
which went far further than just seeking reforms as well as revolutionary
theories derived from such experiences.
The category of "economic struggle" corresponds to no known social
reality. Every "economic" struggle is "political" in some
sense and those involved can, and do, learn political lessons from them.
As Kropotkin noted in the 1880s, there "is almost no serious strike
which occurs together with the appearance of troops, the exchange of
blows and some acts of revolt. Here they fight with the troops; there
they march on the factories . . . Thanks to government intervention the
rebel against the factory becomes the rebel against the State."
[quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary
Anarchism, p. 256] If history shows anything, it shows that workers
are more than capable of going beyond "trade union consciousness."
The Paris Commune, the 1848 revolts and, ironically enough, the 1905 and
1917 Russian Revolutions show that the masses are capable of revolutionary
struggles in which the self-proclaimed "vanguard" of socialists
spend most of their time trying to catch up with them!
The history of Bolshevism also helps discredit Lenin's argument that
the workers cannot develop socialist consciousness alone due to the
power of bourgeois ideology. Simply put, if the working class is
subjected to bourgeois influences, then so are the "professional"
revolutionaries within the party. Indeed, the strength of such
influences on the "professionals" of revolution must be higher
as they are not part of proletarian life. If social being influences
consciousness then if a revolutionary is no longer part of the working
class then they no longer are rooted in the social conditions which
generate socialist theory and action. No longer connected with
collective labour and working class life, the "professional"
revolutionary is more likely to be influenced by the social milieu he
or she now is part of (i.e. a bourgeois, or at best petit-bourgeois,
environment).
This tendency for the "professional" revolutionary to be subject
to bourgeois influences can continually be seen from the history of the
Bolshevik party. As Trotsky himself noted:
"It should not be forgotten that the political machine of
the Bolshevik Party was predominantly made up of the
intelligentsia, which was petty bourgeois in its origin
and conditions of life and Marxist in its ideas and in
its relations with the proletariat. Workers who turned
professional revolutionists joined this set with great
eagerness and lost their identity in it. The peculiar
social structure of the Party machine and its authority
over the proletariat (neither of which is accidental
but dictated by strict historical necessity) were more
than once the cause of the Party's vacillation and
finally became the source of its degeneration . . . In
most cases they lacked independent daily contact with
the labouring masses as well as a comprehensive
understanding of the historical process. They thus left
themselves exposed to the influence of alien classes."
[Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 297-8]
He pointed to the example of the First World War, when,
"even the Bolshevik party did not at once find its way
in the labyrinth of war. As a general rule, the confusion
was most pervasive and lasted longest amongst the Party's
higher-ups, who came in direct contact with bourgeois
public opinion." Thus the professional revolutionaries
"were largely affected by compromisist tendencies, which
emanated from bourgeois circles, while the rank and file
Bolshevik workingmen displayed far greater stability resisting
the patriotic hysteria that had swept the country."
[Op. Cit., p. 248 and p. 298] It should be noted that
he was repeating earlier comments on the "immense
intellectual backsliding of the upper stratum of the
Bolsheviks during the war" was caused by "isolation
from the masses and isolation from those abroad - that is
primarily from Lenin." [History of the Russian
Revolution, vol. 3, p. 134] As we discuss in
section H.5.12, even Trotsky
had to admit that during 1917 the working class was far more
revolutionary than the party and the party more revolutionary
than the "party machine" of "professional revolutionaries."
Ironically enough, Lenin himself recognised this aspect of
intellectuals after he had praised their role in bringing
"revolutionary" consciousness to the working class. In his
1904 work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he argued
that it was now the presence of "large numbers of radical
intellectuals in the ranks" which has ensured that "the
opportunism which their mentality produces had been, and is, bound
to exist." [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 403-4] According
to Lenin's new philosophy, the working class simply needs to have been
through the "schooling of the factory" in order to give the
intelligentsia lessons in political discipline, the very
same intelligentsia which up until then had played the leading
role in the Party and had given political consciousness to
the working class. In his words:
"For the factory, which seems only a bogey to some, represents
that highest form of capitalist co-operation which has united
and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to organise . . .
And it is Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by
capitalism, has been and is teaching . . . unstable intellectuals
to distinguish between the factory as a means of exploitation
(discipline based on fear of starvation) and the factory as a
means of organisation (discipline based on collective work . . .).
The discipline and organisation which come so hard to the bourgeois
intellectual are very easily acquired by the proletariat just because
of this factory 'schooling.'" [Op. Cit., pp. 392-3]
Lenin's analogy is, of course, flawed. The factory is a "means
of exploitation" because its "means of organisation" is top-down
and hierarchical. The "collective work" which the workers are
subjected to is organised by the boss and the "discipline" is
that of the barracks, not that of free individuals. In fact,
the "schooling" for revolutionaries is not the factory,
but the class struggle - healthy and positive self-discipline
is generated by the struggle against the way the workplace is
organised under capitalism. Factory discipline, in other words,
is completely different from the discipline required for social
struggle or revolution. Workers become revolutionary in so far as
they reject the hierarchical discipline of the workplace and develop
the self-discipline required to fight it.
A key task of anarchism is to encourage working class revolt
against this type of discipline, particularly in the
capitalist workplace. The "discipline" Lenin praises
simply replaces human thought and association with the
following of orders and hierarchy. Thus anarchism aims to
undermine capitalist (imposed and brutalising) discipline
in favour of solidarity, the "discipline" of free association
and agreement based on the community of struggle and the
political consciousness and revolutionary enthusiasm that
struggle creates. Thus, for anarchists, the model of the
factory can never be the model for a revolutionary organisation
any more than Lenin's vision of society as "one big workplace"
could be our vision of socialism (see
section H.3.1). Ultimately, the
factory exists to reproduce hierarchical social relationships
and class society just as much as it exists to produce goods.
It should be noted that Lenin's argument does not contradict
his earlier ones. The proletarian and intellectual have
complementary jobs in the party. The proletariat is to give
lessons in political discipline to the intellectuals as they
have been through the process of factory (i.e. hierarchical)
discipline. The role of the intellectuals as providers of
"political consciousness" is the same and so they give
political lessons to the workers. Moreover, his vision of
the vanguard party is basically the same as in What is
to Be Done?. This can be seen from his comments that
the leading Menshevik Martov "lumps together in
the party organised and unorganised elements, those who lend
themselves to direction and those who do not, the advanced and
the incorrigibly backward." He stressed that the "division
of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him [the
intellectual] a tragicomical outcry against transforming people
into 'cogs and wheels.'" [Op. Cit., p. 258 and p. 392]
Thus there is the same division of labour as in the capitalist
factory, with the boss (the "centre") having the power
to direct the workers (who submit to "direction"). Thus
we have a "revolutionary" party organised in a capitalist
manner, with the same "division of labour" between order
givers and order takers.
H.5.3 Why does vanguardism imply party power?
As we discussed in
section H.5.1, anarchists argue
that the assumptions of vanguardism lead to party rule over the
working class. Needless to say, followers of Lenin disagree.
For example, Chris Harman of the British Socialist Workers
Party argues the opposite case in his essay "Party and Class."
However, his own argument suggests the elitist conclusions
libertarians have draw from Lenin's.
Harman argues that there are two ways to look at the
revolutionary party, the Leninist way and the traditional
social-democratic way (as represented by the likes of
Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in 1903-5). "The latter,"
he argues, "was thought of as a party of the whole [working]
class . . . All the tendencies within the class had to be
represented within it. Any split within it was to be
conceived of as a split within the class. Centralisation,
although recognised as necessary, was feared as a centralisation
over and against the spontaneous activity of the class. Yet
it was precisely in this kind of party that the 'autocratic'
tendencies warned against by Luxemburg were to develop most.
For within it the confusion of member and sympathiser, the
massive apparatus needed to hold together a mass of only
half-politicised members in a series of social activities,
led to a toning down of political debate, a lack of political
seriousness, which in turn reduced the ability of the members
to make independent political evaluations and increased the
need for apparatus-induced involvement." [Party and Class,
p. 32]
Thus, the lumping together into one organisation all those
who consider themselves as "socialist" and agree with the
party's aims creates in a mass which results in "autocratic"
tendencies within the party organisation. As such, it is
important to remember that "the Party, as the vanguard
of the working class, must not be confused with the entire
class." [Op. Cit., p. 22] For this reason, the
party must be organised in a specific manner which reflect
his Leninist assumptions:
"The alternative [to the vanguard party] is the 'marsh' -
where elements motivated by scientific precision are so mixed
up with those who are irremediably confused as to prevent any
decisive action, effectively allowing the most backward to
lead." [Op. Cit., p. 30]
The problem for Harman is to explain how the proletariat
can become the ruling class if this were true. He argues that
"the party is not the embryo of the workers' state - the
workers' council is. The working class as a whole will be
involved in the organisations that constitute the state,
the most backward as well as the most progressive elements."
The "function of the party is not to be the state."
[Op. Cit., p. 33] The implication is that the working
class will take an active part in the decision making process
during the revolution (although the level of this "involvement"
is unspecified, probably for good reasons as we explain).
If this is the case, then the problem of the mass party
reappears, but in a new form (we must also note that this
problem must have also appearing in 1917, when the Bolshevik
party opened its doors to become a mass party).
As the "organisations that constitute the state" are made
up of the working class "as a whole," then, obviously,
they cannot be expected to wield power (i.e. directly
manage the revolution from below). If they did, then the
party would be "mixed up" with the "irremediably confused"
and so could not lead (as we discuss in
section H.5.5,
Lenin linked "opportunism" to "primitive" democracy, i.e.
self-management, within the party). Hence the need for
party power. Which, of course, explains Lenin's 1920
comments that an organisation embracing the whole working
class cannot exercise the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
and that a "vanguard" is required to do so (see
section
H.1.2 for details). Of course, Harman does not explain how
the "irremediably confused" are able to judge that the party
is the best representative of its interests. Surely if
someone is competent enough to pick their ruler, they must
also be competent enough to manage their own affairs
directly? Equally, if the "irremediably confused" vote
against the party once it is in power, what happens? Will
the party submit to the "leadership" of what it considers
"the most backward"? If the Bolsheviks are anything to go
by, the answer has to be no.
Ironically, Harman argues that it "is worth noting that in Russia
a real victory of the apparatus over the party required precisely the
bringing into the party hundreds of thousands of 'sympathisers,' a
dilution of the 'party' by the 'class.' . . . The Leninist party does
not suffer from this tendency to bureaucratic control precisely because
it restricts its membership to those willing to be serious and disciplined
enough to take political and theoretical issues as their
starting point, and to subordinate all their activities to those."
[Op. Cit., p. 33] It would be churlish to note that, firstly, the
party had already imposed its dictatorship on the working class by that
time and, secondly, his own party is regularly attacked by its own dissidents
for being bureaucratic (see section H.5.11).
Significantly, this substitution of the rule of the party for working
class self-government and the party apparatus for the party membership
does not happen by accident. In order to have a socialist revolution, the
working class as a whole must participate in the process so the decision
making organisations will be based on the party being "mixed up"
with the "irremediably confused" as if they were part of a
non-Leninist party. So from Harman's own assumptions, this by necessity
results in an "autocratic" regime within the new "workers' state."
This was implicitly recognised by the Bolsheviks when they stressed that
the function of the party was to become the government, the head
of the state, to "assume power", (see
section H.3.3). Thus, while
the working class "as a whole" will be "involved in the
organisations that constitute the state," the party (in practice,
its leadership) will hold power. And for Trotsky, this substitution
of the party for the class was inevitable:
"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for
the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party.
Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship
of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship
of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical
vision and its strong revolutionary organisation that the party
has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed
from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the
supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the power of the
party for the power of the working class there is nothing
accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all.
The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working
class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which history
brings up those interests . . . the Communists have become the
recognised representatives of the working class as a whole."
[Terrorism and Communism, p. 109]
He noted that within the state, "the last word belongs to the
Central Committee of the party." [Op. Cit., p. 107] As
we discuss in section H.3.8, he
held this position into the 1930s.
This means that given Harman's own assumptions, autocratic rule
by the party is inevitable. Ironically, he argues that "to be a
'vanguard' is not the same as to substitute one's own desires,
or policies or interests, for those of the class." He stresses
that an "organisation that is concerned with participating in
the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class
cannot conceive of substituting itself for the organs of the
direct rule of that class." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and p. 34] However,
the logic of his argument suggests otherwise. Simply put, his
arguments against a broad party organisation are also applicable
to self-management during the class struggle and revolution.
The rank and file party members are "mixed up" in the class.
This leads to party members becoming subject to bourgeois
influences. This necessitates the power of the higher bodies
over the lower (see
section H.5.5). The highest party organ,
the central committee, must rule over the party machine, which
in turn rules over the party members, who, in turn, rule over
the workers. This logical chain was, ironically enough,
recognised by Trotsky in 1904 in his polemic against Lenin:
"The organisation of the party substitutes itself for the
party as a whole; then the central committee substitutes
itself for the organisation; and finally the 'dictator'
substitutes himself for the central committee." [quoted
by Harman, Op. Cit., p. 22]
Obviously once in power this substitution was less of a concern
for him! Which, however, does not deny the insight Trotsky had
previously showed about the dangers inherent in the Bolshevik
assumptions on working class spontaneity and how revolutionary
ideas develop. Dangers which he, ironically, helped provide
empirical evidence for.
This false picture of the party (and its role) explains the
progression of the Bolshevik party after 1917. As the soviets
organised all workers, we have the problem that the party
(with its "scientific" knowledge) is swamped by the class.
The task of the party is to "persuade, not coerce these
[workers] into accepting its lead" and, as Lenin made clear,
for it to take political power. [Harman, Op. Cit., p. 34]
Once in power, the decisions of the party are in constant
danger of being overthrown by the working class, which
necessitates a state run with "iron discipline" (and the
necessary means of coercion) by the party. With the
disempowering of the mass organisations by the party,
the party itself becomes a substitute for popular
democracy as being a party member is the only way to
influence policy. As the party grows, the influx of new
members "dilutes" the organisation, necessitating a similar
growth of centralised power at the top of the organisation.
This eliminated the substitute for proletarian democracy
which had developed within the party (which explains the
banning of factions within the Bolshevik party in 1921).
Slowly but surely, power concentrates into fewer and fewer
hands, which, ironically enough, necessitates a bureaucracy
to feed the party leaders information and execute its will.
Isolated from all, the party inevitably degenerates and
Stalinism results.
We are sure that many Trotskyists will object to our
analysis, arguing that we ignore the problems facing the
Russian Revolution in our discussion. Harman argues that
it was "not the form of the party that produces party as
opposed to soviet rule, but the decimation of the working
class" that occurred during the Russian Revolution. [Op. Cit.,
p. 37] This is false. As noted, Lenin was always explicit
about the fact that the Bolshevik's sought party rule ("full
state power") and that their rule was working class rule.
As such, we have the first, most basic, substitution of party
power for workers power. Secondly, as we discuss in
section H.6.1,
the Bolshevik party had been gerrymandering and disbanding
soviets before the start of the Civil War, so proving that the
war cannot be held accountable for this process of substitution.
Thirdly, Leninists are meant to know that civil war is
inevitable during a revolution. To blame the inevitable for
the degeneration of the revolution is hardly convincing
(particularly as the degeneration started before the civil
war broke out).
Unsurprisingly, anarchists reject the underlying basis of
this progression, the idea that the working class, by its
own efforts, is incapable of developing beyond a "trade
union consciousness." The actions of the working class
itself condemned these attitudes as outdated and simply
wrong long before Lenin's infamous comments were put on
paper. In every struggle, the working class has created
its own organisations to co-ordinate its struggle. In
the process of struggle, the working class changes
its perspectives. This process is uneven in both quantity
and quality, but it does happen. However, anarchists do
not think that all working class people will, at
the same time, spontaneously become anarchists.
If they did, we would be in an anarchist society today! As
we argue in section J.3, anarchists
acknowledge that political development within the working
class is uneven. The difference between anarchism and Leninism
is how we see socialist ideas developing and how revolutionaries
influence that process.
In every class struggle there is a radical minority which takes
the lead and many of this minority develop revolutionary conclusions
from their experiences. As such, members of the working class develop
their own revolutionary theory and it does not need bourgeois
intellectuals to inject it into them. Anarchists go on to argue that
this minority (along with any members of other classes who have broken
with their background and become libertarians) should organise and
work together. The role of this revolutionary organisation is to
spread, discuss and revise its ideas and help others draw the
same conclusions as they have from their own, and others,
experiences. The aim of such a group is, by word and deed,
to assist the working class in its struggles and to draw out
and clarify the libertarian aspects of this struggle. It seeks to
abolish the rigid division between leaders and led which is the
hallmark of class society by drawing the vast majority of the
working class into social struggle and revolutionary politics by
encouraging their direct management of the struggle. Only this
participation and the political discussion it generates will allow
revolutionary ideas to become widespread.
In other words, anarchists argue that precisely because of
political differences ("unevenness") we need the fullest possible
democracy and freedom to discuss issues and reach agreements. Only
by discussion and self-activity can the political perspectives of
those in struggle develop and change. In other words, the fact
Bolshevism uses to justify its support for party power is
the strongest argument against it.
Our differences with vanguardism could not be more clear.
H.5.4 Did Lenin abandon vanguardism?
Vanguardism rests on the premise that the working class cannot emancipate
itself. As such, the ideas of Lenin as expounded in What is to be
Done? (WITBD) contradicts the key idea of Marx that the emancipation
of the working class is the task of the working class itself. Thus the
paradox of Leninism. On the one hand, it subscribes to an ideology
allegedly based on working class self-liberation. On the other, the
founder of that school wrote an obviously influential work whose
premise not only logically implies that they cannot, it also provides
the perfect rationale for party dictatorship over the working class
(and as the history of Leninism in power shows, this underlying premise
was much stronger than any democratic-sounding rhetoric).
It is for this reason that many Leninists are somewhat embarrassed
by Lenin's argument in that key text. Hence we see Chris Harman writing
that "the real theoretical basis for [Lenin's] argument on the
party is not that the working class is incapable on its own of coming
to theoretical socialist consciousness . . . The real basis for his
argument is that the level of consciousness in the working class is
never uniform." [Party and Class, pp. 25-6] In other words,
Harman changes the focus of the question away from the point explicitly
and repeatedly stated by Lenin that the working class was incapable
on its own of coming to socialist consciousness and that he was simply
repeating Marxist orthodoxy when he did.
Harman bases his revision on Lenin's later comments regarding
his book, namely that he sought to "straighten matters out"
by "pull[ing] in the other direction" to the "extreme"
which the "economists" had went to. [Collected Works,
vol. 6, p. 491] He repeated this in 1907, as we will discuss
shortly. While Lenin may have been right to attack the
"economists", his argument that socialist consciousness
comes to the working class only "from without" is not a
case of going too far in the other direction; it is wrong.
Simply put, you do not attack ideas you disagree with by arguing
an equally false set of ideas. This suggests that Harman's
attempt to downplay Lenin's elitist position is flawed. Simply
put, the "real theoretical basis" of the argument was precisely
the issue Lenin himself raised, namely the incapacity of the
working class to achieve socialist consciousness by itself.
It is probably the elitist conclusions of this argument which
drives Harman to try and change the focus to another issue,
namely the political unevenness within the working class.
Some go to even more extreme lengths, denying that Lenin
even held such a position. For example, Hal Draper argued at
length that Lenin did not, in fact, hold the opinions he
actually expressed in his book! While Draper covers many
aspects of what he called the "Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of
The Party'" in his essay of the same name, we will
concentrate on the key idea, namely that socialist ideas
are developed outside the class struggle by the radical
intelligentsia and introduced into the working class from
without. Here, as argued in
section H.5.1, is the root of
the anti-socialist basis of Leninism.
So what did Draper say? On the one hand, he denied that Lenin
held this theory (he states that it is a "virtually non-existent
theory" and "non-existent after WITBD"). He argued that
those who hold the position that Lenin actually meant what he said
in his book "never quote anything other than WITBD," and
stated that this is a "curious fact" (a fact we will disprove
shortly). Draper argued as follows: "Did Lenin put this theory
forward even in WITBD? Not exactly." He then noted that Lenin
"had just read this theory in the most prestigious theoretical
organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement"
and it had been "put forward in an important article by the
leading Marxist authority," Karl Kautsky and so "Lenin first
paraphrased Kautsky" before "quot[ing] a long passage from
Kautsky's article."
This much, of course, is well known by anyone who has read Lenin's
book. By paraphrasing and quoting Kautsky as he does, Lenin is
showing his agreement with Kautsky's argument. Indeed, Lenin
states before quoting Kautsky that his comments are "profoundly
true and important". [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 79]
By explicitly agreeing with Kautsky, it can be said that it also
becomes Lenin's theory as well! Over time, particularly after
Kautsky had been labelled a "renegade" by Lenin, Kautsky's
star waned and Lenin's rose. Little wonder the argument became
associated with Lenin rather than the discredited Kautsky. Draper
then speculated that "it is curious . . . that no one has sought
to prove that by launching this theory . . . Kautsky was laying the
basis for the demon of totalitarianism." A simply reason exists
for this, namely the fact that Kautsky, unlike Lenin, was never
the head of a one-party dictatorship and justified this system
politically. Indeed, Kautsky attacked the Bolsheviks for this,
which caused Lenin to label him a "renegade." Kautsky, in this
sense, can be considered as being inconsistent with his political
assumptions, unlike Lenin who took these assumptions to their
logical conclusions.
How, after showing the obvious fact that "the crucial 'Leninist'
theory was really Kautsky's," he then wondered: "Did Lenin,
in WITBD, adopt Kautsky's theory?" He answered his own question
with an astounding "Again, not exactly"! Clearly, quoting
approvingly of a theory and stating it is "profoundly true"
does not, in fact, make you a supporter of it! What evidence
does Draper present for his amazing answer? Well, Draper argued
that Lenin "tried to get maximum mileage out of it against the
right wing; this was the point of his quoting it. If it did
something for Kautsky's polemic, he no doubt figured that it
would do something for his." Or, to present a more simple and
obvious explanation, Lenin agreed with Kautsky's "profoundly
true" argument!
Aware of this possibility, Draper tried to combat it. "Certainly,"
he argued, "this young man Lenin was not (yet) so brash as to
attack his 'pope' or correct him overtly. But there was obviously
a feeling of discomfort. While showing some modesty and attempting
to avoid the appearance of a head-on criticism, the fact is that
Lenin inserted two longish footnotes rejecting (or if you wish,
amending) precisely what was worst about the Kautsky theory on
the role of the proletariat." So, here we have Lenin quoting
Kautsky to prove his own argument (and noting that Kautsky's
words were "profoundly true and important"!) but "feeling
discomfort" over what he has just approvingly quoted! Incredible!
So how does Lenin "amend" Kautsky's "profoundly true and
important" argument? In two ways, according to Draper.
Firstly, in a footnote which "was appended right after
the Kautsky passage" Lenin quoted. Draper argued that
it "was specifically formulated to undermine and weaken
the theoretical content of Kautsky's position. It began:
'This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no
part in creating such an ideology.' But this was exactly
what Kautsky did mean and say. In the guise of offering
a caution, Lenin was proposing a modified view. 'They
[the workers] take part, however,' Lenin's footnote
continued, 'not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians,
as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part
only when they are able . . .' In short, Lenin was
reminding the reader that Kautsky's sweeping statements
were not even 100% true historically; he pointed to
exceptions." Yes, Lenin did point to exceptions in
order to refute objections to Kautsky's argument before
they were raised! It is clear that Lenin was not
refuting Kautsky. Thus Proudhon adds to socialist ideology
in so far as he is a "socialist theoretician" and not a
worker! How clear can you be? This can be seen from the rest
of the sentence Draper truncates. Lenin continued by noting
that people like Proudhon "take part only to the extent that
they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their
age and advance that knowledge." {
Op. Cit., p. 82f]
In other words, insofar as they learn from the "vehicles
of science." Neither Kautsky or Lenin denied that it was
possible for workers to acquire such knowledge and pass it on
(sometimes even develop it). However this does not mean
that they thought workers, as part of their daily life and
struggle as workers, could develop "socialist theory."
Thus Lenin's footnote reiterated Kautsky's argument rather
than, as Draper hoped, refute it.
Draper turns to another footnote, which he noted "was not directly
tied to the Kautsky article, but discussed the 'spontaneity' of the
socialist idea. 'It is often said,' Lenin began, 'that the working
class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is
perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the
causes of the misery of the working class . . . and for that
reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily,' but he
reminded that this process itself was not subordinated to mere
spontaneity. 'The working class spontaneously gravitates towards
socialism; nevertheless, . . . bourgeois ideology spontaneously
imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree.'"
Draper argued that this "was obviously written to modify and
recast the Kautsky theory, without coming out and saying that
the Master was wrong." So, here we have Lenin approvingly quoting
Kautsky in the main text while, at the same time, providing a
footnote to show that, in fact, he did not agree with what he
has just quoted! Truly amazing - and easily refuted.
Lenin's footnote stressed, in a part Draper did not consider it wise
to quote, that workers appreciate socialist theory "provided,
however, that this theory does not step aside for spontaneity and
provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself."
[Op. Cit., p. 84f] In other words, workers "assimilate"
socialist theory only when socialist theory does not adjust itself
to the "spontaneous" forces at work in the class struggle.
The workers adjust to socialist theory, they do not create it. Thus,
rather than refuting Kautsky by the backdoor, Lenin in this footnote
still agreed with him. Socialism does not develop, as Kautsky stressed,
from the class struggle but rather has to be injected into it. This means,
by necessity, the party "subordinates spontaneity to itself."
Draper argued that this "modification" simply meant that there
"are several things that happen 'spontaneously,' and what will
win out is not decided only by spontaneity" but as can be seen,
this is not the case. Only when "spontaneity" is subordinated to
the theory (i.e. the party) can socialism be won, a totally
different position. As such, when Draper asserted that "[a]ll
that was clear at this point was that Lenin was justifiably
dissatisfied with the formulation of Kautsky's theory," he was
simply expressing wishful thinking. This footnote, like the first
one, continued the argument developed by Lenin in the main text
and in no way is in contradiction to it. As is obvious.
Draper as final evidence of his case asserted that it "is a curious
fact that no one has ever found this alleged theory anywhere else
in Lenin's voluminous writings, not before and not after [WITBD].
It never appeared in Lenin again. No Leninologist has ever quoted
such a theory from any other place in Lenin." However, as this
theory was the orthodox Marxist position, Lenin had no real need to
reiterate this argument continuously. After all, he had quoted the
acknowledged leader of Marxism on the subject explicitly to show the
orthodoxy of his argument and the non-Marxist base of those
he argued against. Once the debate had been won and orthodox Marxism
triumphant, why repeat the argument again? This, as we will see, was
exactly the position Lenin did take in 1907 when he wrote an
introduction to a book which contained What is to Be Done?.
In contradiction to Draper's claim, Lenin did return to this
matter. In October 1905 he wrote an a short article in praise of an
article by Stalin on this very subject. Stalin had sought to explain
Lenin's ideas to the Georgian Social-Democracy and, like Lenin, had
sought to root the argument in Marxist orthodoxy (partly to justify
the argument, partly to expose the Menshevik opposition as being
non-Marxists). Stalin argued along similar lines to Lenin:
"the question now is: who works out, who is able to work out
this socialist consciousness (i.e. scientific socialism)?
Kautsky says, and I repeat his idea, that the masses of
proletarians, as long as they remain proletarians, have
neither the time nor the opportunity to work out socialist
consciousness . . . The vehicles of science are the
intellectuals . . . who have both the time and opportunity
to put themselves in the van of science and workout socialist
consciousness. Clearly, socialist consciousness is worked
out by a few Social-Democratic intellectuals who posses the
time and opportunity to do so." [Collected Works, vol. 1,
p. 164]
Stalin stressed the Marxist orthodoxy by stating Social-Democracy
"comes in and introduces socialist consciousness into the working
class movement. This is what Kautsky has in mind when he says
'socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian
class struggle from without.'" [Op. Cit., pp. 164-5]
That Stalin was simply repeating Lenin's and Kautsky's arguments
is clear, as is the fact it was considered the orthodox position
within social-democracy.
If Draper was right, then Lenin would have taken the opportunity
to attack Stalin's article and express the alternative viewpoint
Draper was convinced he held. Lenin, however, put pen to paper to
praise Stalin's work, noting "the splendid way in which the
problem of the celebrated 'introduction of a consciousness from
without' had been posed." Lenin explicitly agreed with Stalin's
summary of his argument, writing that "social being determines
consciousness . . . Socialist consciousness corresponds to the
position of the proletariat" before quoting Stalin: "'Who can
and does evolve this consciousness (scientific socialism)?'" He
answers by again approvingly quoting Stalin: "its 'evolution' is
a matter for a few Social-Democratic intellectuals who posses the
necessary means and time.'" Lenin did argue that Social-Democracy
meets "an instinctive urge towards socialism" when it
"comes to the proletariat with the message of socialism,"
but this does not counter the main argument that the working class
cannot develop socialist consciousness by it own efforts and the,
by necessity, elitist and hierarchical politics that flow from
this position. [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 388]
That Lenin did not reject his early formulations can also be
seen from in his introduction to the pamphlet "Twelve Years"
which contained What is to be Done?. Rather than explaining
the false nature of that work's more infamous arguments, Lenin
in fact defended them. For example, as regards the question
of professional revolutionaries, he argued that the statements
of his opponents now "look ridiculous" as "today
the idea of an organisation of professional revolutionaries has
already scored a complete victory," a victory which
"would have been impossible if this idea had not been pushed to
the forefront at the time." He noted that his work had
"vanquished Economism . . . and finally created this
organisation." On the question of socialist consciousness,
he simply reiterated the Marxist orthodoxy of his position,
noting that its "formulation of the relationship between
spontaneity and political consciousness was agreed upon by
all the Iskra editors . . . Consequently, there could be
no question of any difference in principle between the draft
Party programme and What is to be Done? on this issue." So
while Lenin argued that his book "straightens out what had
been twisted by the Economists," (who had "gone to one
extreme") he did not correct his earlier arguments.
[Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 101, p. 102 and p. 107]
Looking at Lenin's arguments at the Communist International on
the question of the party we see an obvious return to the ideas
of WITBD (see section H.5.5).
Here was have a similar legal/illegal duality, strict centralism,
strong hierarchy and the vision of the party as the "head"
of the working class (i.e. its consciousness). In Left-Wing
Communism, Lenin mocks those who reject the idea that
dictatorship by the party is the same as that of the class
(see section H.3.3).
For Draper, the key problem was that critics of Lenin "run two
different questions together: (a) What was, historically, the
initial role of intellectuals in the beginnings of the
socialist movement, and (b) what is - and above all, what
should be - the role of bourgeois intellectuals in a working-class
party today." He argued that Kautsky did not believe that
"if it can be shown that intellectuals historically
played a certain initiatory role, they must and should
continue to play the same role now and forever. It does not follow;
as the working class matured, it tended to throw off leading strings."
However, this is unconvincing. If socialist consciousness cannot
be generated by the working class by its own struggles then this
is applicable now and in the future. Thus workers who join the
socialist movement will be repeating the party ideology, as
developed by intellectuals in the past. If they do develop
new theory, it would be, as Lenin stressed, "not as workers,
but as socialist theoreticians" and so socialist consciousness
still does not derive from their own class experiences. This
places the party in a privileged position vis-à-vis the working
class and so the elitism remains.
Somewhat ironically given how much Draper is at pains to distance his
hero Lenin from claims of elitism, he himself agreed with the
arguments of Kautsky and Lenin. For Draper socialism did not
develop out of the class struggle: "As a matter of fact, in the
International of 1902 no one really had any doubts about the historical
facts concerning the beginnings of the movement." This was true.
Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, made similar arguments to
Kautsky's before Lenin put pen to paper. For Plekhanov, the socialist
intelligentsia "will bring consciousness into the working
class." It must "become the leader of the working class"
and "explain to it its political and economic interests."
This would "prepare them to play an independent role in the
social life of Russia." [quoted by Neil Harding, Lenin's
Political Thought, vol. 1, p. 50 and p. 51]
As one expert notes, "Lenin's position . . . did not differ in
any essentials" from those "Plekhanov had himself expressed."
Its "basic theses were his own", namely that it is "clear
from Plekhanov's writing that it was the intelligentsia which virtually
created the working class movement in its conscious form. It brought
it science, revolutionary theory and organisation." In summary,
"Lenin's views of the Party . . . are not to be regarded as
extraordinary, innovatory, perverse, essentially Jacobin or unorthodox.
On the contrary" they were "the touchstone of orthodoxy" and
so "what it [What is to be Done?] presented at the time"
was "a restatement of the principles of Russian Marxist orthodoxy."
By quoting Kautsky, Lenin also proved that he was simply repeating the
general Marxist orthodoxy: "Those who dispute Lenin's conclusions on
the genesis of socialist consciousness must it seems, also dispute
Kautsky's claim to represent Social-Democratic orthodoxy." [Harding,
Op. Cit., p. 170, p. 172, pp. 50-1, p. 187, p. 188, p. 189 and
p. 169]
Moreover, Engels wrote some interesting words in the 1840s on this
issue which places the subsequent development of Marxism into sharper
light. He noted that "it is evident that the working-men's movement
is divided into two sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The
Chartists are theoretically the more backward, the less developed,
but they are genuine proletarians . . . The Socialists are more
far-seeing . . . but proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie,
are for this reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working
class. The union of Socialism with Chartism . . . will be the next step
. . . Then, only when this has been achieved, will the working class be
the true intellectual leader of England." Thus socialist ideas have
to be introduced into the proletariat, as they are "more backward"
and cannot be expected to develop theory for themselves! In the same year,
he expounded on what this "union" would entail, writing in an
Owenite paper that "the union between the German philosophers . . .
and the German working men . . . is all but accomplished. With the
philosophers to think, and the working mean to fight for us, will any
earthly power be strong enough to resist our progress?" [Collected
Works, vol. 4, pp. 526-7 and p. 236] This, of course, fits in with
the Communist Manifesto's assertion that "a small section of
the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class."
Today, this "portion of the bourgeois ideologists" have "raised
themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical
movement as a whole." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 481] This,
needless to say, places "bourgeois ideologists" (like Marx, Engels,
Kautsky and Lenin) in a privileged position within the movement and has
distinctly vanguardist undercurrents.
Seemingly unaware how this admission destroyed his case, Draper went on to
ask: "But what followed from those facts?" To which he argued that
Marx and Engels "concluded, from the same facts and subsequent
experiences, that the movement had to be sternly warned against the
influence of bourgeois intellectuals inside the party." (We wonder
if Marx and Engels included themselves in the list of "bourgeois
intellectuals" the workers had to be "sternly warned" about?)
Thus, amusingly enough, Draper argued that Marx, Engels, Kautsky and
Lenin all held to the "same facts" that socialist consciousness
developed outside the experiences of the working classes!
Ultimately, the whole rationale for the kind of wishful thinking
that Draper inflicted on us is flawed. As noted above, you do not
combat what you think is an incorrect position with one which
you consider as also being wrong or do not agree with! You
counter what you consider as an incorrect position with one
you consider correct and agree with. As Lenin, in WITBD,
explicitly did. This means that later attempts by his followers
to downplay the ideas raised in Lenin's book are unconvincing.
Moreover, as he was simply repeating Social-Democratic orthodoxy
it seems doubly unconvincing.
Clearly, Draper was wrong. Lenin did, as indicated above, actually meant
what he said in WITBD. The fact that Lenin quoted Kautsky simply
shows, as Lenin intended, that this position was the orthodox Social
Democratic one, held by the mainstream of the party (one with roots in
Marx and Engels). Given that Leninism was (and still is) a "radical"
offshoot of this movement, this should come as no surprise. However,
Draper's comments remind us how religious many forms of Marxism are -
why do we need facts when we have the true faith?
H.5.5 What is "democratic centralism"?
Anarchists oppose vanguardism for three reasons, one of which is the
way it recommends how revolutionaries should organise to influence the
class struggle.
So how is a "vanguard" party organised? To quote the Communist
International's 1920 resolution on the role of the Communist
Party in the revolution, the party must have a "centralised
political apparatus" and "must be organised on the basis of
iron proletarian centralism." This, of course, suggests a
top-down structure internally, which the resolution explicitly
calls for. In its words, "Communist cells of every kind must be
subordinate to one another as precisely as possible in a strict
hierarchy." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress
1920, vol. 1, p. 193, p. 198 and p. 199] Therefore, the vanguard
party is organised in a centralised, top-down way. However, this
is not all, as well as being "centralised," the party is also meant
to be democratic, hence the expression "democratic centralism."
On this the resolution states:
"The Communist Party must be organised on the basis of democratic
centralism. The most important principle of democratic centralism
is election of the higher party organs by the lowest, the fact
that all instructions by a superior body are unconditionally and
necessarily binding on lower ones, and existence of a strong
central party leadership whose authority over all leading party
comrades in the period between one party congress and the next
is universally accepted." [Op. Cit., p. 198]
For Lenin, speaking in the same year, democratic centralism meant
"only that representatives from the localities meet and elect a
responsible body which must then govern . . . Democratic centralism
consists in the Congress checking on the Central Committee, removing
it and electing a new one." [quoted by Robert Service, The
Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 131] Thus, "democratic
centralism" is inherently top-down, although the "higher"
party organs are, in principle, elected by the "lower." However,
the key point is that the central committee is the active element, the
one whose decisions are implemented and so the focus of the structure
is in the "centralism" rather than the "democratic" part
of the formula.
As we noted in section H.2.14,
the Communist Party was expected to have a dual structure, one legal
and the other illegal. It goes without saying that the illegal
structure is the real power in the party and that it cannot be
expected to be as democratic as the legal party, which in turn
would be less than democratic as the illegal would have the real
power within the organisation.
All this has clear parallels with Lenin's What is to be done?,
where he argued for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation,
which concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities,
an organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation."
This call for centralisation is not totally dependent on secrecy,
though. As he noted, "specialisation necessarily presupposes
centralisation, and in its turn imperatively calls for it." Such
a centralised organisation would need leaders and Lenin argued that
"no movement can be durable without a stable organisation of
leaders to maintain continuity." As such, "the organisation
must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities
as a profession." Thus, we have a centralised organisation which
is managed by specialists, by "professional revolutionaries."
This does not mean that these all come from the bourgeoisie or petit
bourgeoisie. According to Lenin a "workingman agitator who is at
all talented and 'promising' must not be left to work eleven
hours a day in a factory. We must arrange that he be maintained by
the Party, that he may in due time go underground." [Essential
Works of Lenin, p. 158, p. 153, p. 147, p. 148 and p. 155]
Thus the full time professional revolutionaries are drawn from
all classes into the party apparatus. However, in practice
the majority of such full-timers were/are middle class. Trotsky
noted that "just as in the Bolshevik committees, so at the
[1905] Congress itself, there were almost no workingmen. The
intellectuals predominated." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 101]
This did not change, even after the influx of working class members
in 1917 the "incidence of middle-class activists increases at
the highest echelons of the hierarchy of executive committees."
[Robert Service, Op. Cit., p. 47] An ex-worker was a rare
sight in the Bolshevik Central Committee, an actual worker
non-existent. However, regardless of their original class
background what unites the full-timers is not their origin
but rather their current relationship with the working class,
one of separation and hierarchy.
The organisational structure of this system was made clear
at around the same time as What is to be Done?, with
Lenin arguing that the factory group (or cell) of the
party "must consist of a small number of revolutionaries,
receiving direct from the [central] committee orders and
power to conduct the whole social-democratic work in the
factory. All members of the factory committee must regard
themselves as agents of the [central] committee, bound to
submit to all its directions, bound to observe all 'laws
and customs' of this 'army in the field' in which they
have entered and which they cannot leave without permission
of the commander." [quoted by E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik
Revolution, vol. 1, p. 33] The similarities to the structure
proposed by Lenin and agreed to by the Comintern in 1920 is
obvious. Thus we have a highly centralised party, one run by
"professional revolutionaries" from the top down.
It will be objected that Lenin was discussing the means of
party building under Tsarism and advocated wider democracy
under legality. However, given that in 1920 he universalised
the Bolshevik experience and urged the creation of a dual
party structure (based on legal and illegal structures), his
comments on centralisation are applicable to vanguardism in
general. Moreover, in 1902 he based his argument on experiences
drawn from democratic capitalist regimes. As he argued, "no
revolutionary organisation has ever practised broad
democracy, nor could it, however much it desired to do so."
This was not considered as just applicable in Russia under the
Tsar as Lenin then goes on to quote the Webb's "book on trade
unionism" in order to clarify what he calls "the confusion of
ideas concerning the meaning of democracy." He noted that
"in the first period of existence in their unions, the
British workers thought it was an indispensable sign of
democracy for all members to do all the work of managing the
unions." This involved "all questions [being] decided by the
votes of all the members" and all "official duties" being
"fulfilled by all the members in turn." He dismissed "such
a conception of democracy" as "absurd" and "historical
experience" made them "understand the necessity for
representative institutions" and "full-time professional
officials." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 161 and pp. 162-3]
Needless to say, Lenin linked this to Kautsky, who "shows the
need for professional journalists, parliamentarians, etc.,
for the Social-Democratic leadership of the proletarian class
struggle" and who "attacks the 'socialism of anarchists and
litterateurs' who . . . proclaim the principle that laws
should be passed directly by the whole people, completely failing
to understand that in modern society this principle can have only
a relative application." The universal nature of his dismissal
of self-management within the revolutionary organisation in favour of
representative forms is thus stressed. Significantly, Lenin stated
that this "'primitive' conception of democracy" exists in
two groups, the "masses of the students and workers" and the
"Economists of the Bernstein persuasion" (i.e. reformists).
Thus the idea of directly democratic working class organisations
is associated with opportunism. He was generous, noting that he
"would not, of course, . . . condemn practical workers who have
had too few opportunities for studying the theory and practice of
real democratic [sic!] organisation" but individuals "play[ing]
a leading role" in the movement should be so condemned!
[Op. Cit., p. 163] These people should know better! Thus
"real" democratic organisation implies the restriction of
democracy to that of electing leaders and any attempt to widen the
input of ordinary members is simply an expression of workers who
need educating from their "primitive" failings!
In summary, we have a model of a "revolutionary" party which is
based on full-time "professional revolutionaries" in which the
concept of direct democracy is replaced by a system of, at
best, representative democracy. It is highly centralised, as
befitting a specialised organisation. As noted in
section H.3.3,
the "organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy"
was "to proceed from the top downward" rather than "from the
bottom upward." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7]
Rather than being only applicable in Tsarist Russia, Lenin
drew on examples from advanced, democratic capitalist countries
to justify his model in 1902 and in 1920 he advocated a similar
hierarchical and top-down organisation with a dual secret and
public organisation in the Communist International. The
continuity of ideas is clear.
H.5.6 Why do anarchists oppose "democratic centralism"?
What to make of Lenin's suggested model of "democratic
centralism" discussed in the
last section? It is, to use
Cornelius Castoriadis's term, a "revolutionary party
organised on a capitalist manner" and so in practice
the "democratic centralist" party, while being
centralised, will not be very democratic. In fact, the
level of democracy would reflect that in a capitalist
republic rather than a socialist society:
"The dividing up of tasks, which is indispensable wherever there
is a need for co-operation, becomes a real division of labour,
the labour of giving orders being separate from that of carrying
them out . . . this division between directors and executants
tends to broaden and deepen by itself. The leaders specialise
in their role and become indispensable while those who carry
out orders become absorbed in their concrete tasks. Deprived
of information, of the general view of the situation, and of
the problems of organisation, arrested in their development by
their lack of participation in the overall life of the Party,
the organisation's rank-and-file militants less and less have
the means or the possibility of having any control over those at
the top.
"This division of labour is supposed to be limited by 'democracy.'
But democracy, which should mean that the majority rules, is
reduced to meaning that the majority designates its rulers;
copied in this way from the model of bourgeois parliamentary
democracy, drained of any real meaning, it quickly becomes a
veil thrown over the unlimited power of the rulers. The base
does not run the organisation just because once a year it elects
delegates who designate the central committee, no more than the
people are sovereign in a parliamentary-type republic because
they periodically elect deputies who designate the government.
"Let us consider, for example, 'democratic centralism' as it
is supposed to function in an ideal Leninist party. That the
central committee is designated by a 'democratically elected'
congress makes no difference since, once it is elected, it
has complete (statutory) control over the body of the Party
(and can dissolve the base organisations, kick out militants,
etc.) or that, under such conditions, it can determine the
composition of the next congress. The central committee
could use its powers in an honourable way, these powers
could be reduced; the members of the Party might enjoy
'political rights' such as being able to form factions,
etc. Fundamentally this would not change the situation,
for the central committee would still remain the organ
that defines the political line of the organisation and
controls its application from top to bottom, that, in a
word, has permanent monopoly on the job of leadership. The
expression of opinions only has a limited value once the
way the group functions prevents this opinion from forming
on solid bases, i.e. permanent participation in the
organisation's activities and in the solution of problems
that arise. If the way the organisation is run makes the
solution of general problems the specific task and permanent
work of a separate category of militants, only their opinion
will, or will appear, to count to the others." [Castoriadis,
Social and Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 204-5]
Castoriadis' insight is important and strikes at the heart of
the problem with vanguard parties. They simply reflect the
capitalist society they claim to represent. As such, Lenin's
argument against "primitive" democracy in the revolutionary
and labour movements is significant. When he asserts that
those who argue for direct democracy "completely" fail to
"understand that in modern society this principle can have
only a relative application," he is letting the cat out of
the bag. [Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 163] After all, "modern society"
is capitalism, a class society. In such a society, it is
understandable that self-management should not be applied
as it strikes at the heart of class society and how it
operates. That Lenin can appeal to "modern society" without
recognising its class basis says a lot. The question becomes,
if such a "principle" is valid for a class system, is it
applicable in a socialist society and in the movement aiming to
create such a society? Can we postpone the application of our
ideas until "after the revolution" or can the revolution
only occur when we apply our socialist principles in resisting
class society?
In a nutshell, can the same set of organisational structures
be used for the different ends? Can bourgeois structures be
considered neutral or have they, in fact, evolved to ensure and
protect minority rule? Ultimately, form and content are not
independent of each other. Form and content adapt to fit each
other and they cannot be divorced in reality. Thus, if the
bourgeoisie embrace centralisation and representation they have
done so because it fits perfectly with their specific form of
class society. Neither centralisation and representation can
undermine minority rule and, if they did, they would quickly be
eliminated.
Interestingly, both Bukharin and Trotsky acknowledged that
fascism had appropriated Bolshevik ideas. The former demonstrated
at the 12th Congress of the Communist Party in 1923 how Italian
fascism had "adopted and applied in practice the experiences of
the Russian revolution" in terms of their "methods of combat." In
fact, "[i]f one regards them from the formal point of view, that
is, from the point of view of the technique of their political
methods, then one discovers in them a complete application of
Bolshevik tactics. . . in the sense of the rapid concentration of
forced [and] energetic action of a tightly structured military
organisation." [quoted by R. Pipes, Russia Under the Bolshevik
Regime, 1919-1924, p. 253] The latter, in his uncompleted
biography on Stalin noted that "Mussolini stole from the
Bolsheviks . . . Hitler imitated the Bolsheviks and Mussolini."
[Stalin, vol. 2, p. 243] The question arises as to whether the
same tactics and structures serve both the needs of fascist
reaction and socialist revolution? Now, if Bolshevism can
serve as a model for fascism, it must contain structural and
functional elements which are also common to fascism. After
all, no one has detected a tendency of Hitler or Mussolini, in
their crusade against democracy, the organised labour movement
and the left, to imitate the organisational principles of
anarchism.
Surely we can expect decisive structural differences
to exist between capitalism and socialism if these societies
are to have different aims. Where one is centralised to
facilitate minority rule, the other must be decentralised and
federal to facilitate mass participation. Where one is top-down,
the other must be from the bottom-up. If a "socialism" exists
which uses bourgeois organisational elements then we should not
be surprised if it turns out to be socialist in name only. The
same applies to revolutionary organisations. As the anarchists
of Trotwatch explain:
"In reality, a Leninist Party simply reproduces and
institutionalises existing capitalist power relations
inside a supposedly 'revolutionary' organisation:
between leaders and led; order givers and order takers;
between specialists and the acquiescent and largely
powerless party workers. And that elitist power relation
is extended to include the relationship between the party
and class." [Carry on Recruiting!, p. 41]
If you have an organisation which celebrates centralisation,
having an institutionalised "leadership" separate from the
mass of members becomes inevitable. Thus the division of
labour which exists in the capitalist workplace or state is
created. Forms cannot and do not exist independently of
people and so imply specific forms of social relationships
within them. These social relationships shape those subject
to them. Can we expect the same forms of authority to have
different impacts simply because the organisation has
"socialist" or "revolutionary" in its name? Of course not.
It is for this reason that anarchists argue that only in
a "libertarian socialist movement the workers learn about
non-dominating forms of association through creating and
experimenting with forms such as libertarian labour
organisations, which put into practice, through struggle
against exploitation, principles of equality and free
association." [John Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 79]
As noted above, a "democratic centralist" party requires that
the "lower" party bodies (cells, branches, etc.) should be
subordinate to the higher ones (e.g. the central committee).
The higher bodies are elected at the (usually) annual
conference. As it is impossible to mandate for future
developments, the higher bodies therefore are given
carte blanche to determine policy which is binding on the
whole party (hence the "from top-down" principle). In between
conferences, the job of full time (ideally elected, but not
always) officers is to lead the party and carry out the
policy decided by the central committee. At the next
conference, the party membership can show its approval of
the leadership by electing another. The problems with this
scheme are numerous:
"The first problem is the issue of hierarchy. Why should
'higher' party organs interpret party policy any more
accurately than 'lower' ones? The pat answer is that the
'higher' bodies compromise the most capable and experienced
members and are (from their lofty heights) in a better
position to take an overall view on a given issue. In fact
what may well happen is that, for example, central committee
members may be more isolated from the outside world than
mere branch members. This might ordinarily be the case
because given the fact than many central committee members
are full timers and therefore detached from more real issues
such as making a living . . ." [ACF, Marxism and its
Failures, p. 8]
Equally, in order that the "higher" bodies can evaluate the
situation they need effective information from the "lower"
bodies. If the "lower" bodies are deemed incapable of formulating
their own policies, how can they be wise enough, firstly, to
select the right leaders and, secondly, determine the appropriate
information to communicate to the "higher" bodies? Given
the assumptions for centralised power in the party, can we not
see that "democratic centralised" parties will be
extremely inefficient in practice as information and knowledge
is lost in the party machine and whatever decisions which are
reached at the top are made in ignorance of the real situation
on the ground? As we discuss in
section H.5.8, this is usually
the fate of such parties.
Within the party, as noted, the role of "professional revolutionaries"
(or "full timers") is stressed. As Lenin argued, any worker which
showed any talent must be removed from the workplace and become a
party functionary. Is it surprising that the few Bolshevik cadres
(i.e. professional revolutionaries) of working class origin soon
lost real contact with the working class? Equally, what will their
role within the party be? As we discuss in
section H.5.12,
their role in the Bolshevik party was essentially conservative in
nature and aimed to maintain their own position.
That the anarchist critique of "democratic centralism" is valid,
we need only point to the comments and analysis of numerous
members (and often soon to be ex-members) of such parties. Thus
we get a continual stream of articles discussing why specific
parties are, in fact, "bureaucratic centralist" rather than
"democratic centralist" and what is required to reform them.
That every "democratic centralist" party in existence is
not that democratic does not hinder their attempts to create one
which is. In a way, the truly "democratic centralist" party is
the Holy Grail of modern Leninism. As we discuss in
section H.5.10,
their goal may be as mythical as that of the Arthurian
legends.
H.5.7 Is the way revolutionaries organise important?
As we discussed in the
last section, anarchists argue that
the way revolutionaries organise today is important. However,
according to some of Lenin's followers, the fact that the
"revolutionary" party is organised in a non-revolutionary
manner does not matter. In the words of Chris Harman, a leading
member of the British Socialist Workers Party, "[e]xisting
under capitalism, the revolutionary organisation [i.e. the
vanguard party] will of necessity have a quite different
structure to that of the workers' state that will arise in
the process of overthrowing capitalism." [Party and Class,
p. 34]
However, in practice this distinction is impossible to make. If the
party is organised in specific ways then it is so because this is
conceived to be "efficient," "practical" and so on.
Hence we find Lenin arguing against "backwardness in organisation"
and that the "point at issue is whether our ideological struggle is
to have forms of a higher type to clothe it, forms of Party
organisation binding on all." Why would the "workers' state" be
based on "backward" or "lower" kinds of organisational forms? If, as
Lenin remarked, "the organisational principle of revolutionary
Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the top downward",
why would the party, once in power, reject its "organisational
principle" in favour of one it thinks is "opportunist,"
"primitive" and so on? [Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 389,
p. 388 and pp. 396-7]
Therefore, as the vanguard the party represents the level
to which the working class is supposed to reach then its
organisational principles must, similarly, be those which
the class must reach. As such, Harman's comments are
incredulous. How we organise today is hardly irrelevant,
particularly if the revolutionary organisation in question
seeks (to use Lenin's words) to "tak[e] full state power
alone." [Op. Cit., vol. 26, p. 94] These prejudices
(and the political and organisational habits they generate)
will influence the shaping of the "workers' state" by the
party once it has taken power. This decisive influence of
the party and its ideological as well as organisational
assumptions can be seen when Trotsky argued in 1923 that
"the party created the state apparatus and can rebuild it
anew . . . from the party you get the state, but not the
party from the state." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 161] This
is to be expected, after all the aim of the party is to take,
hold and execute power. Given that the vanguard party is
organised as it is to ensure effectiveness and efficiency,
why should we assume that the ruling party will not seek to
recreate these organisational principles once in power? As
the Russian Revolution proves, this is the case (see section H.6)
To claim how we organise under capitalism is not important to a
revolutionary movement is simply not true. The way revolutionaries
organise have an impact both on themselves and how they will view
the revolution developing. An ideological prejudice for centralisation
and "top-down" organisation will not disappear once the revolution starts.
Rather, it will influence the way the party acts within it and, if it aims
to seize power, how it will exercise that power once it has.
For these reasons anarchists stress the importance of building
the new world in the shell of the old (see section H.1.6).
All organisations create social relationships which shape their memberships.
As the members of these parties will be part of the revolutionary process,
they will influence how that revolution will develop and any "transitional"
institutions which are created. As the aim of such organisations is to
facilitate the creation of socialism, the obvious implication
is that the revolutionary organisation must, itself, reflect
the society it is trying to create. Clearly, then, the idea that
how we organise as revolutionaries today can be considered somehow
independent of the revolutionary process and the nature of
post-capitalist society and its institutions cannot be maintained
(particularly if the aim of the "revolutionary" organisation is
to seize power on behalf of the working class).
As we argue elsewhere (see section J.3) anarchists
argue for revolutionary groups based on self-management, federalism and
decision making from below. In other words, we apply within our
organisations the same principles as those which the working
class has evolved in the course of its own struggles. Autonomy
is combined with federalism, so ensuring co-ordination of decisions
and activities is achieved from below upwards by means of mandated
and recallable delegates. Effective co-operation is achieved as
it is informed by and reflects the needs on the ground. Simply
put, working class organisation and discipline - as exemplified
by the workers' council or strike committee - represents a
completely different thing from capitalist organisation and
discipline, of which Leninists are constantly asking for more
(albeit draped with the Red Flag and labelled "revolutionary").
And as we discuss in the
next section, the Leninist model of
top-down centralised parties is marked more by its failures
than its successes, suggesting that not only is the vanguard
model undesirable, it is also unnecessary.
H.5.8 Are vanguard parties effective?
In a word, no. Vanguard parties have rarely been proven to be
effective organs for fermenting revolutionary change which is,
let us not forget, their stated purpose. Indeed, rather than
being in the vanguard of social struggle, the Leninist parties
are often the last to recognise, let alone understand, the
initial stirrings of important social movements and events.
It is only once these movements have exploded in the streets
that the self-proclaimed "vanguards" notice them and decide
they require the party's leadership.
Part of this process are constant attempts to install their
political program onto movements that they do not understand,
movements that have proven to be successful using different
tactics and methods of organisation. Rather than learn from
the experiences of others, social movements are seen as raw
material, as a source of new party members, to be used in order
to advance the party rather than the autonomy and combativeness
of the working class. This process was seen in the "anti-globalisation"
or "anti-capitalist" movement at the end of the 20th century.
This started without the help of these self-appointed vanguards, who
once it appeared spent a lot of time trying to catch up with the
movement while criticising its proven organisational principles
and tactics.
The reasons for such behaviour are not too difficult to find. They
lie in the organisational structure favoured by these parties and the
mentality lying behind them. As anarchists have long argued, a
centralised, top-down structure will simply be unresponsive to
the needs of those in struggle. The inertia associated with the
party hierarchy will ensure that it responds slowly to new
developments and its centralised structure means that the
leadership is isolated from what is happening on the ground
and cannot respond appropriately. The underlying assumption of
the vanguard party, namely that the party represents the interests
of the working class, makes it unresponsive to new developments
within the class struggle. As Lenin argued that spontaneous
working class struggle tends to reformism, the leaders of a
vanguard party automatically are suspicious of new developments
which, by their very nature, rarely fit into previously agreed
models of "proletarian" struggle. The example of Bolshevik
hostility to the soviets spontaneously formed by workers during
the 1905 Russian revolution is one of the best known examples of
this tendency.
Murray Bookchin is worth quoting at length on this subject:
"The 'glorious party,' when there is one, almost invariably lags
behind the events . . . In the beginning . . . it tends to have an
inhibitory function, not a 'vanguard' role. Where it exercises
influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not 'co-
ordinate' the revolutionary forces. This is not accidental. The
party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
society it professes to oppose. Despite its theoretical pretensions,
it is a bourgeois organism, a miniature state, with an apparatus
and a cadre whose function it is to seize power, not dissolve
power. Rooted in the pre-revolutionary period, it assimilates all
the forms, techniques and mentality of bureaucracy. Its membership
is schooled in obedience and in the preconceptions of a rigid dogma
and is taught to revere the leadership. The party's leadership,
in turn, is schooled in habits born of command, authority,
manipulation and egomania. This situation is worsened when the
party participates in parliamentary elections. In election
campaigns, the vanguard party models itself completely on
existing bourgeois forms and even acquires the paraphernalia
of the electoral party. . .
"As the party expands, the distance between the leadership and
the ranks inevitably increases. Its leaders not only become
'personages,' they lose contact with the living situation below.
The local groups, which know their own immediate situation better
than any remote leaders, are obliged to subordinate their insights
to directives from above. The leadership, lacking any direct
knowledge of local problems, responds sluggishly and prudently.
Although it stakes out a claim to the 'larger view,' to greater
'theoretical competence,' the competence of the leadership tends
to diminish as one ascends the hierarchy of command. The more
one approaches the level where the real decisions are made, the
more conservative is the nature of the decision-making process,
the more bureaucratic and extraneous are the factors which come
into play, the more considerations of prestige and retrenchment
supplant creativity, imagination, and a disinterested dedication
to revolutionary goals.
"The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of
view the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres
and centralisation. Although everyone marches in step, the orders
are usually wrong, especially when events begin to move rapidly
and take unexpected turns - as they do in all revolutions. . .
"On the other hand, this kind of party is extremely vulnerable
in periods of repression. The bourgeoisie has only to grab its
leadership to destroy virtually the entire movement. With its
leaders in prison or in hiding, the party becomes paralysed;
the obedient membership has no one to obey and tends to flounder.
Demoralisation sets in rapidly. The party decomposes not only
because of the repressive atmosphere but also because of its
poverty of inner resources.
"The foregoing account is not a series of hypothetical inferences,
it is a composite sketch of all the mass Marxian parties of the
past century - the Social Democrats, the Communists and the
Trotskyist party of Ceylon (the only mass party of its kind). To
claim that these parties failed to take their Marxian principles
seriously merely conceals another question: why did this failure
happen in the first place? The fact is, these parties were
co-opted into bourgeois society because they were structured
along bourgeois lines. The germ of treachery existed in them
from birth." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 123-6]
The evidence Bookchin summarises suggests that vanguard
parties are less than efficient in promoting revolutionary change.
Sluggish, unresponsive, undemocratic, they simply cannot
adjust to the dynamic nature of social struggle, never mind
revolution. This is to be expected:
"For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of
organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity
in social life for the maintenance of political and social
equilibrium. But for a movement whose very existence depends
on prompt action at any favourable moment and on the independent
thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a
curse by weakening its power of decision and systematically
repressing all immediate action. If, for example, as was the
case in Germany, every local strike had first to be approved
by the Central, which was often hundreds of miles away and was
not usually in a position to pass a correct judgement on the
local conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the
apparatus of organisation renders a quick attack quite impossible,
and there thus arises a state of affairs where the energetic and
intellectually alert groups no longer serve as patterns for the
less active, but are condemned by these to inactivity, inevitably
bringing the whole movement to stagnation. Organisation is, after
all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it
kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and
sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic
of all bureaucracies." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism,
p. 61]
As we discuss in
section H.5.12, the example of the Bolshevik
party during the Russian Revolution amply proves Rocker's point.
Rather than being a highly centralised, disciplined vanguard
party, the Bolshevik party was marked by extensive autonomy
throughout its ranks. Party discipline was regularly ignored,
including by Lenin in his attempts to get the central party
bureaucracy to catch up with the spontaneous revolutionary
actions and ideas of the Russian working class. As Bookchin
summarised, the "Bolshevik leadership was ordinarily extremely
conservative, a trait that Lenin had to fight throughout 1917
- first in his efforts to reorient the Central Committee
against the provisional government (the famous conflict
over the 'April Theses'), later in driving the Central
Committee toward insurrection in October. In both cases he
threatened to resign from the Central Committee and bring
his views to 'the lower ranks of the party.'" Once in power,
however, "the Bolsheviks tended to centralise their party to
the degree that they became isolated from the working class."
[Op. Cit., pp. 126 and p. 127]
The "vanguard" model of organising is not only inefficient
and ineffective from a revolutionary perspective, it
generates bureaucratic and elitist tendencies which undermine
any revolution unfortunate enough to be dominated by such a
party. For these extremely practical and sensible reasons
anarchists reject it wholeheartedly. As we discuss in the
next section,
the only thing vanguard parties
are effective at is to supplant the diversity produced and
required by revolutionary movements with the drab conformity
produced by centralisation and to replace popular power and
freedom with party power and tyranny.
H.5.9 What are vanguard parties effective at?
As we discussed the last section,
vanguard parties are not
efficient as agents of revolutionary change. So, it may be
asked, what are vanguard parties effective at? If they
are harmful to revolutionary struggle, what are they good
at? The answer to this is simple. No anarchist would deny
that vanguard parties are extremely efficient and effective
at certain things, most notably reproducing hierarchy and
bourgeois values into so-called "revolutionary" organisations
and movements. As Murray Bookchin put it, the party "is
efficient in only one respect - in moulding society in its
own hierarchical image if the revolution is successful. It
recreates bureaucracy, centralisation and the state. It
fosters the very social conditions which justify this
kind of society. Hence, instead of 'withering away,' the
state controlled by the 'glorious party' preserves the very
conditions which 'necessitate' the existence of a state -
and a party to 'guard' it." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism,
pp. 125-6]
By being structured along hierarchical lines that reflect
the very system that it professes to oppose, the vanguard
party very "effectively" reproduces that system within both
the current radical social movements and any revolutionary
society that may be created. This means that once in power,
it shapes society in its own image. Ironically, this tendency
towards conservatism and bureaucracy was noted by Trotsky:
"As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the
classes in motion and the interests of the party machines.
Even the Bolshevik Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit
of exceptional revolutionary training, were definitely
inclined to disregard the masses and to identify their own
special interests and the interests of the machine on the
very day after the monarchy was overthrown. What, then,
could be expected of these cadres when they became an
all-powerful state bureaucracy?" [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 298]
In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that urging party
power and identifying it with working class power would have
less than revolutionary results. Discussing the Bolsheviks
in 1905 Trotsky points out this tendency existed from the
start:
"The habits peculiar to a political machine were already
forming in the underground. The young revolutionary
bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions
of conspiracy, true enough, offered rather merge scope
for such formalities of democracy as electiveness,
accountability and control. Yet, undoubtedly the
committeemen narrowed these limitations considerably
more than necessity demanded and were far more intransigent
and severe with the revolutionary workingmen than with
themselves, preferring to domineer even on occasions
that called for lending an attentive ear to the voice
of the masses." [Op. Cit., p. 101]
He quoted Krupskaya, a party member, on these party bureaucrats,
the "committeemen." Krupskaya stated that "as a rule"
they "did not recognise any party democracy" and "did
not want any innovations. The 'committeeman' did not desire,
and did not know how to, adapt himself to rapidly changing
conditions." [quoted by Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 101]
This conservatism played havoc in the party during 1917,
incidentally. It would be no exaggeration to argue that
the Russian revolution occurred in spite of, rather than
because of, Bolshevik organisational principles (see
section H.5.12).
These principles, however, came into their own
once the party had seized power, ensuring the consolidation
of bureaucratic rule by an elite.
That a vanguard party helps to produces a bureaucratic regime
once in power should not come as a surprise. If the party,
to use Trotsky's expression, exhibits a "caste tendency of
the committeemen" can we be surprised if once in power it
reproduces such a tendency in the state it is now the master
of? [Op. Cit., p. 102] And this "tendency" can be seen today
in the multitude of Leninist sects that exist.
H.5.10 Why does "democratic centralism" produce "bureaucratic centralism"?
In spite of the almost ritualistic assertions that vanguard
parties are "the most democratic the world has seen," an
army of ex-members, expelled dissidents and disgruntled
members testify that they do not live up to the hype. They
argue that most, if not all, "vanguard" parties are not
"democratic centralist" but are, in fact, "bureaucratic
centralist." Within the party, in other words, a bureaucratic
clique controls it from the top-down with little democratic
control, never mind participation. For anarchists, this is hardly
surprising. The reasons why this continually happens are rooted in
the nature of "democratic centralism" itself.
Firstly, the assumption of "democratic centralism" is that
the membership elect a leadership and give them the power to
decide policy between conferences and congresses. This has
a subtle impact on the membership, as it is assumed that the
leadership has a special insight into social problems above
and beyond that of anyone else, otherwise they would not
have been elected to such an important position. Thus many
in the membership come to believe that disagreements with
the leadership's analysis, even before they had been clearly
articulated, are liable to be wrong. Doubt dares not speak
its name. Unquestioning belief in the party leadership has
been an all to common recurring theme in many accounts of
vanguard parties. The hierarchical structure of the party
promotes a hierarchical mentality in its members.
Conformity within such parties is also reinforced by the
intense activism expected by members, particularly leading
activists and full-time members. Paradoxically, the more
deeply people participate in activism, the harder it becomes
to reflect on what they are doing. The unrelenting pace
often induces exhaustion and depression, while making it
harder to "think your way out" - too many commitments have
been made and too little time is left over from party activity
for reflection. Moreover, high levels of activism prevent
many, particularly the most committed, from having a personal
life outside their role as party members. This high-speed
political existence means that rival social networks
atrophy through neglect, so ensuring that the party line
is the only perspective which members get exposed to. Members
tend to leave, typically, because of exhaustion, crisis, even
despair rather than as the result of rational reflection
and conscious decision.
Secondly, given that vanguard parties are based on the belief
that they are the guardians of "scientific socialism," this
means that there is a tendency to squeeze all of social life
into the confines of the party's ideology. Moreover, as the
party's ideology is a "science" it is expected to explain
everything (hence the tendency of Leninists to expound on
every subject imaginable, regardless of whether the author
knows enough about the subject to discuss it in an informed
way). The view that the party's ideology explains everything
eliminates the need for fresh or independent thought, precludes
the possibility of critically appraising past practice or
acknowledging mistakes, and removes the need to seek meaningful
intellectual input outside the party's own ideological fortress.
As Victor Serge, anarchist turned Bolshevik, admitted in his
memoirs: "Bolshevik thinking is grounded in the possession of
the truth. The Party is the repository of truth, and any
form of thinking which differs from it is a dangerous or
reactionary error. Here lies the spiritual source of its
intolerance. The absolute conviction of its lofty mission
assures it of a moral energy quite astonishing in its
intensity - and, at the same time, a clerical mentality
which is quick to become Inquisitorial." [Memoirs of
a Revolutionary, p. 134]
The intense level of activism means that members are bombarded
with party propaganda, are in endless party meetings, or
spend time reading party literature and so, by virtue of the
fact that there is not enough time to read anything, members
end up reading nothing but party publications. Most points of
contact with the external world are eliminated or drastically
curtailed. Indeed, such alternative sources of information
and such thinking is regularly dismissed as being contaminated
by bourgeois influences. This often goes so far as to label
those who question any aspect of the party's analysis
revisionists or deviationists, bending to the "pressures
of capitalism," and are usually driven from the ranks as
heretics. All this is almost always combined with contempt
for all other organisations on the Left (indeed, the closer
they are to the party's own ideological position the more
likely they are to be the targets of abuse).
Thirdly, the practice of "democratic centralism" also aids this
process towards conformity. Based on the idea that the party must
be a highly disciplined fighting force, the party is endowed with
a powerful central committee and a rule that all members must
publicly defend the agreed-upon positions of the party and the
decisions of the central committee, whatever opinions they might
hold to the contrary in private. Between conferences, the party's
leading bodies usually have extensive authority to govern the
party's affairs, including updating party doctrine and deciding
the party's response to current political events.
As unity is the key, there is a tendency to view any opposition
as a potential threat. It is not at all clear when "full freedom
to criticise" policy internally can be said to disturb the unity
of a defined action. The norms of democratic centralism confer
all power between conferences onto a central committee, allowing
it to become the arbiter of when a dissident viewpoint is in
danger of weakening unity. The evidence from numerous vanguard
parties suggest that their leaderships usually view any
dissent as precisely such a disruption and demand that dissidents
cease their action or face expulsion from the party.
It should also be borne in mind that Leninist parties also view
themselves as vitally important to the success of any future
revolution. This cannot help but reinforce the tendency to view
dissent as something which automatically imperils the future of
the planet and, therefore, something which must be combated at all
costs. As Lenin stressed an a polemic directed to the international
communist movement in 1920, "[w]hoever brings about even the
slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the
proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) is actually
aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat." [Collected
Works, vol. 31, p. 45] As can be seen, Lenin stresses the
importance of "iron discipline" at all times, not only during
the revolution when "the party" is applying "its dictatorship"
(see section H.3.8
for more on this aspect of Leninism). This
provides a justification of whatever measures are required to
restore the illusion of unanimity, including the trampling
underfoot of whatever rights the membership may have on paper
and the imposition of any decisions the leadership considers
as essential between conferences.
Fourthly, and more subtly, it is well known that when people take
a public position in defence of a proposition, there is a
strong tendency for their private attitudes to shift so that
they harmonise with their public behaviour. It is difficult to
say one thing in public and hold to a set of private beliefs at
variance with what is publicly expressed. In short, if people
tell others that they support X (for whatever reason), they will
slowly begin to change their own opinions and, indeed, internally
come to support X. The more public such declarations have been,
the more likely it is that such a shift will take place. This has
been confirmed by empirical research (see R. Cialdini's Influence:
Science and Practice). This suggests that if, in the name of
democratic centralism, party members publicly uphold the party line,
it becomes increasingly difficult to hold a private belief at
variance with publicly expressed opinions. The evidence suggests
that it is not possible to have a group of people presenting a
conformist image to society at large while maintaining an
inner party regime characterised by frank and full discussion.
Conformity in public tends to produce conformity in private. So
given what is now known of social influence, "democratic
centralism" is almost certainly destined to prevent genuine
internal discussion. This is sadly all too often confirmed
in the internal regimes of vanguard parties, where debate is
often narrowly focused on a few minor issues of emphasis
rather than fundamental issues of policy and theory.
It has already been noted (in
section H.5.5) that the
organisational norms of democratic centralism imply a
concentration of power at the top. There is abundant
evidence that such a concentration has been a vital feature
of every vanguard party and that such a concentration limits
party democracy. An authoritarian inner party regime is
maintained, which ensures that decision making is
concentrated in elite hands. This regime gradually dismantles
or ignores all formal controls on its activities. Members are
excluded from participation in determining policy, calling
leaders to account, or expressing dissent. This is usually
combined with persistent assurances about the essentially
democratic nature of the organisation, and the existence of
exemplary democratic controls - on paper. Correlated with this
inner authoritarianism is a growing tendency toward the abuse
of power by the leaders, who act in arbitrary ways, accrue
personal power and so on (as noted by Trotsky with regards
to the Bolshevik party machine). Indeed, it is often the case
that activities that would provoke outrage if engaged in by
rank-and-file members are tolerated when their leaders do it.
As one group of Scottish libertarians noted:
"Further, in so far as our Bolshevik friends reject and defy
capitalist and orthodox labourist conceptions, they also
are as much 'individualistic' as the anarchist. Is it not
boasted, for example, that on many occasions Marx, Lenin
and Trotsky were prepared to be in a minority of one - if
they thought they were more correct than all others on the
question at issue? In this, like Galileo, they were quite
in order. Where they and their followers, obsessed by the
importance of their own judgement go wrong, is in their
tendency to refuse this inalienable right to other
protagonists and fighters for the working class." [APCF,
"Our Reply," Class War on the Home Front, p. 70]
As in any hierarchical structure, the tendency is for those in
power to encourage and promote those who agree with them.
This means that members usually find their influence and position
in the party dependent on their willingness to conform to the
hierarchy and its leadership. Dissenters will rarely find their
contribution valued and advancement is limited, which produces
a strong tendency not to make waves. As Miasnikov, a working
class Bolshevik dissident, argued in 1921, "the regime within
the party" meant that "if someone dares to have the courage of
his convictions," they are called either a self-seeker or, worse,
a counter-revolutionary, a Menshevik or an SR. Moreover, within
the party, favouritism and corruption were rife. In Miasnikov's
eyes a new type of Communist was emerging, the toadying careerist
who "knows how to please his superiors." [quoted by Paul
Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin, p. 8 and p. 7] At
the last party congress Lenin attended, Miasnikov was expelled.
Only one delegate, V. V. Kosior, "argued that Lenin had taken
the wrong approach to the question of dissent. If someone . . . had
the courage to point out deficiencies in party work, he was marked
down as an oppositionist, relieved of authority, placed under
surveillance, and - a reference to Miasnikov - even expelled
from the party." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p. 15] Serge
noted about the same period that Lenin "proclaimed a purge of
the Party, aimed at those revolutionaries who had come in from other
parties - i.e. those who were not saturated with the Bolshevik
mentality. This meant the establishment within the Party of a
dictatorship of the old Bolsheviks, and the direction of
disciplinary measures, not against the unprincipled careerists
and conformist late-comers, but against those sections with a
critical outlook." [Op. Cit., p. 135]
This, of course, also applies to the party congress, on paper
the sovereign body of the organisation. All too often
resolutions at party conferences will either come from the
leadership or be completely supportive of its position. If
branches or members submit resolutions which are critical of
the leadership, enormous pressure is exerted to ensure that
they are withdrawn. Moreover, often delegates to the congress
are not mandated by their branches, so ensuring that rank and
file opinions are not raised, never mind discussed. Other,
more drastic measures have been known to occur. Victor Serge
saw what he termed the "Party steamroller" at work in early
1921 when "the voting [was] rigged for Lenin's and Zinoviev's
'majority'" in one of the districts of Petrograd. [Op. Cit.,
p.123]
All to often, such parties have "elected" bodies which have,
in practice, usurped the normal democratic rights of members
and become increasingly removed from formal controls. All
practical accountability of the leaders to the membership
for their actions is eliminated. Usually this authoritarian
structure is combined with militaristic sounding rhetoric and
the argument that the "revolutionary" movement needs to be
organised in a more centralised way than the current class
system, with references to the state's forces of repression
(notably the army). As Murray Bookchin argued, the Leninist
"has always had a grudging admiration and respect for that
most inhuman of all hierarchical institutions, the military."
[Toward an Ecological Society, p. 254f]
The modern day effectiveness of the vanguard party can be
seen by the strange fact that many Leninists fail to join
any of the existing parties due to their bureaucratic
internal organisation and that many members are expelled
(or leave in disgust) as a result of their failed attempts to
make them more democratic. If vanguard parties are such positive
organisations to be a member of, why do they have such big
problems with member retention? Why are there so many vocal
ex-members? Why are so many Leninists ex-members of vanguard
parties, desperately trying to find an actual party which
matches their own vision of democratic centralism rather
than the bureaucratic centralism which seems the norm?
Our account of the workings of vanguard parties explains, in
part, why many anarchists and other libertarians voice concern
about them and their underlying ideology. We do so because
their practices are disruptive and alienate new activists,
hindering the very goal (socialism/revolution) they claim
to be aiming for. As anyone familiar with the numerous groupings
and parties in the Leninist left will attest, the anarchist
critique of vanguardism seems to be confirmed in reality while
the Leninist defence seems sadly lacking (unless, of course,
the person is a member of such a party and then their
organisation is the exception to the rule!).
H.5.11 Can you provide an example of the negative nature of vanguard parties?
Yes. Our theoretical critique of vanguardism we have presented
in the last few sections is more than proved by the empirical
evidence of such parties in operation today. Rarely do
"vanguard" parties reach in practice the high hopes their
supporters like to claim for them. Such parties are usually
small, prone to splitting as well as leadership cults, and
usually play a negative role in social struggle. A long line
of ex-members complain that such parties are elitist,
hierarchical and bureaucratic.
Obviously we cannot hope to discuss all such parties. As such,
we will take just one example, namely the arguments of one
group of dissidents of the biggest British Leninist party,
the Socialist Workers Party. It is worth quoting their
account of the internal workings of the SWP at length:
"The SWP is not democratic centralist but bureaucratic
centralist. The leadership's control of the party is
unchecked by the members. New perspectives are initiated
exclusively by the central committee (CC), who then
implement their perspective against all party opposition,
implicit or explicit, legitimate or otherwise.
"Once a new perspective is declared, a new cadre is selected
from the top down. The CC select the organisers, who select the
district and branch committees - any elections that take place
are carried out on the basis of 'slates' so that it is virtually
impossible for members to vote against the slate proposed by the
leadership. Any members who have doubts or disagreements are
written off as 'burnt out' and, depending on their reaction to
this, may be marginalised within the party and even expelled.
"These methods have been disastrous for the SWP in a number of
ways: Each new perspective requires a new cadre (below the
level of the CC), so the existing cadre are actively
marginalised in the party. In this way, the SWP has failed
to build a stable and experienced cadre capable of acting
independently of the leadership. Successive layers of cadres
have been driven into passivity, and even out of the
revolutionary movement altogether. The result is the loss
of hundreds of potential cadres. Instead of appraising the
real, uneven development of individual cadres, the history
of the party is written in terms of a star system (comrades
currently favoured by the party) and a demonology (the
'renegades' who are brushed aside with each turn of the
party). As a result of this systematic dissolution of the
cadre, the CC grows ever more remote from the membership
and increasingly bureaucratic in its methods. In recent
years the national committee has been abolished (it obediently
voted for its own dissolution, on the recommendation of the
CC), to be replaced by party councils made up of those
comrades active at any one time (i.e. those who already
agree with current perspectives); district committees are
appointed rather than elected; the CC monopolise all
information concerning the party, so that it is impossible
for members to know much about what happens in the party
outside their own branch; the CC give a distorted account
of events rather than admit their mistakes . . . history
is rewritten to reinforce the prestige of the CC . . . The
outcome is a party whose conferences have no democratic
function, but serve only to orientate party activists to carry
out perspectives drawn up before the delegates even set out
from their branches. At every level of the party, strategy and
tactics are presented from the top down, as pre-digested
instructions for action. At every level, the comrades 'below'
are seen only as a passive mass to be shifted into action,
rather than as a source of new initiatives . . .
"The only exception is when a branch thinks up a new tactic
to carry out the CC's perspective. In this case, the CC may
take up this tactic and apply it across the party. In no way
do rank and file members play an active role in determining
the strategy and theory of the party - except in the negative
sense that if they refuse to implement a perspective eventually
even the CC notice, and will modify the line to suit. A political
culture has been created in which the leadership outside of the
CC consists almost solely of comrades loyal to the CC, willing
to follow every turn of the perspective without criticism . . .
Increasingly, the bureaucratic methods used by the CC to enforce
their control over the political direction of the party have
been extended to other areas of party life. In debates over
questions of philosophy, culture and even anthropology an
informal party 'line' emerged (i.e. concerning matters in
which there can be no question of the party taking a 'line').
Often behind these positions lay nothing more substantial
than the opinions of this or that CC member, but adherence
to the line quickly became a badge of party loyalty,
disagreement became a stigma, and the effect was to close
down the democracy of the party yet further by placing
even questions of theory beyond debate. Many militants,
especially working class militants with some experience
of trade union democracy, etc., are often repelled by the
undemocratic norms in the party and refuse to join, or
keep their distance despite accepting our formal politics."
[ISG, Discussion Document of Ex-SWP Comrades]
The dissidents argue that a "democratic" party would involve
the "[r]egular election of all party full-timers, branch and
district leadership, conference delegates, etc. with the right of
recall," which means that in the SWP appointment of full-timers,
leaders and so on is the norm. They argue for the "right of
branches to propose motions to the party conference" and for
the "right for members to communicate horizontally in the party,
to produce and distribute their own documents." They stress
the need for "an independent Control Commission to review all
disciplinary cases (independent of the leadership bodies that
exercise discipline), and the right of any disciplined comrades
to appeal directly to party conference." They argue that in
a democratic party "no section of the party would have a
monopoly of information" which indicates that the SWP's
leadership is essentially secretive, withholding information from
the party membership. Even more significantly, given our discussion
on the influence of the party structure on post-revolutionary society in
section H.5.7,
they argue that "[w]orst of all, the SWP are training a
layer of revolutionaries to believe that the organisational norms
of the SWP are a shining example of proletarian democracy, applicable
to a future socialist society. Not surprisingly, many people are
instinctively repelled by this idea."
Some of these critics of specific Leninist parties do not give up
hope and still look for a truly democratic centralist party rather
than the bureaucratic centralist ones which seem so common. For
example, our group of ex-SWP dissidents argue that "[a]nybody
who has spent time involved in 'Leninist' organisations will have
come across workers who agree with Marxist politics but refuse to
join the party because they believe it to be undemocratic and
authoritarian. Many draw the conclusion that Leninism itself is
at fault, as every organisation that proclaims itself Leninist
appears to follow the same pattern." [ISG, Lenin vs. the
SWP: Bureaucratic Centralism Or Democratic Centralism?] This
is a common refrain with Leninists - when reality says
one thing and the theory another, it must be reality that
is at fault. Yes, every Leninist organisation may be
bureaucratic and authoritarian but it is not the theory's
fault that those who apply it are not capable of actually
doing so successfully. Such an application of scientific
principles by the followers of "scientific socialism" is
worthy of note - obviously the usual scientific method
of generalising from facts to produce a theory is
inapplicable when evaluating "scientific socialism" itself.
However, rather than ponder the possibility that "democratic
centralism" does not actually work and automatically generates
the "bureaucratic centralism," they point to the example of the
Russian revolution and the original Bolshevik party as proof
of the validity of their hopes.
Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to argue that the only reason
people take the vanguard party organisational structure seriously
is the apparent success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution.
However, as noted above, even the Bolshevik party was subject
to bureaucratic tendencies and as we discuss in the
next section,
the experience of the 1917 Russian Revolutions disprove the
effectiveness of "vanguard" style parties. The Bolshevik party
of 1917 was a totally different form of organisation than the
ideal "democratic centralist" type argued for by Lenin in 1902
and 1920. As a model of revolutionary organisation, the
"vanguardist" one has been proven false rather than confirmed
by the experience of the Russian revolution. Insofar as the
Bolshevik party was effective, it operated in a non-vanguardist
way and insofar as it did operate in such a manner, it held back
the struggle.
H.5.12 Surely the Russian Revolution proves
that vanguard parties work?
No, far from it. Looking at the history of vanguardism we
are struck by its failures, not its successes. Indeed, the
proponents of "democratic centralism" can point to only one
apparent success of their model, namely the Russian Revolution.
Strangely, though, we are warned by Leninists that failure to use
the vanguard party will inevitably condemn future revolutions to
failure:
"The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. . .
Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without
support of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk
of the conquest of power . . . The Soviets are the only
organised form of the tie between the vanguard and the
class. A revolutionary content can be given to this form
only by the party. This is proved by the positive
experience of the October Revolution and by the negative
experience of other countries (Germany, Austria, finally,
Spain). No one has either shown in practice or tried to
explain articulately on paper how the proletariat can
seize power without the political leadership of a party
that knows what it wants." [Trotsky, Writings
1936-37, p. 490]
To anarchist ears, such claims seem out of place. After all,
did the Russian Revolution actually result in socialism or
even a viable form of soviet democracy? Far from it. Unless
you picture revolution as simply the changing of the party
in power, you have to acknowledge that while the Bolshevik
party did take power in Russian in November 1917, the net
effect of this was not the stated goals that justified
that action. Thus, if we take the term "effective" to mean
"an efficient means to achieve the desired goals" then
vanguardism has not been proven to be effective, quite
the reverse (assuming that your desired goal is a socialist
society, rather than party power). Needless to say, Trotsky
blames the failure of the Russian Revolution on "objective"
factors rather than Bolshevik policies and practice, an
argument we address in section H.6 and will not
do so here.
So while Leninists make great claims for the effectiveness of
their chosen kind of party, the hard facts of history are
against their positive evaluation of vanguard parties.
Ironically, even the Russian Revolution disproves the claims
of Leninists. The fact is that the Bolshevik party in 1917
was very far from the "democratic centralist" organisation
which supporters of vanguardism like to claim it is. As
such, its success in 1917 lies more in its divergence from
the principles of "democratic centralism" than in their
application. The subsequent degeneration of the revolution
and the party is marked by the increasing application
of those principles in the life of the party.
Thus, to refute the claims of the "effectiveness" and
"efficiency" of vanguardism, we need to look at its one
and only success, namely the Russian Revolution. As the Cohen-Bendit
brothers argued, "far from leading the Russian Revolution forwards,
the Bolsheviks were responsible for holding back the struggle of the
masses between February and October 1917, and later for turning the
revolution into a bureaucratic counter-revolution - in both cases
because of the party's very nature, structure and ideology." Indeed,
"[f]rom April to October, Lenin had to fight a constant battle
to keep the Party leadership in tune with the masses." [Obsolete
Communism, p. 183 and p. 187] It was only by continually violating
its own "nature, structure and ideology" that the Bolshevik
party
played an important role in the revolution. Whenever the principles
of "democratic centralism" were applied, the Bolshevik party
played
the role the Cohen-Bendit brothers subscribed to it (and once in
power, the party's negative features came to the fore).
Even Leninists acknowledge that, to quote Tony Cliff, throughout
the history of Bolshevism, "a certain conservatism arose."
Indeed,
"[a]t practically all sharp turning points, Lenin had to rely on
the lower strata of the party machine against the higher, or on
the rank and file against the machine as a whole." [Lenin,
vol. 2, p. 135] This fact, incidentally, refutes the basic
assumptions of Lenin's party schema, namely that the broad party
membership, like the working class, was subject to bourgeois
influences so necessitating central leadership and control from
above.
Looking at both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, we are struck
by how often this "conservatism" arose and how often the higher
bodies lagged behind the spontaneous actions of the masses and
the party membership. Looking at the 1905 revolution, we discover
a classic example of the inefficiency of "democratic centralism."
Facing the rise of the soviets, councils of workers'
delegates elected to co-ordinate strikes and other forms of
struggle, the Bolsheviks did not know what to do. "The
Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks," noted Trotsky, "was
frightened at first by such an innovation as a non-partisan
representation of the embattled masses, and could find nothing
better to do than to present the Soviet with an ultimatum:
immediately adopt a Social-Democratic program or disband. The
Petersburg Soviet as a whole, including the contingent of
Bolshevik workingmen as well ignored this ultimatum without
batting an eyelash." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 106] More than
that, "[t]he party's Central Committee published the resolution
on October 27, thereby making it the binding directive for all
other Bolshevik organisations." [Oskar Anweiler, The
Soviets,
p. 77] It was only the return of Lenin which stopped the
Bolshevik's open attacks against the Soviet. As we discuss
in section H.6.2, the rationale
for these attacks is significant as they were based on arguing
that the soviets could not reflect workers' interests because
they were elected by the workers! The implications of this
perspective came clear in 1918, when the Bolsheviks gerrymandered
and disbanded soviets to remain in power (see
section H.6.1). That the Bolshevik's
position flowed naturally from Lenin's arguments in What is to be
Done? is clear. Thus the underlying logic of Lenin's
vanguardism ensured that the Bolsheviks played a negative
role with regards the soviets which, combined with "democratic
centralism" ensured that it was spread far and wide. Only by
ignoring their own party's principles and staying in the
Soviet did rank and file Bolsheviks play a positive role in
the revolution. This divergence of top and bottom would be
repeated in 1917.
Given this, perhaps it is unsurprising that Leninists started
to rewrite the history of the 1905 revolution. Victor Serge, an
anti-Stalinist Leninist, asserted in the late 1920s that in
1905 the Petrograd Soviet was "led by Trotsky and inspired
by the Bolsheviks." [Year One of the Russian Revolution,
p. 36]. While the former claim is partially correct, the latter
is not. As noted, the Bolsheviks were initially opposed the
soviets and systematically worked to undermine them.
Unsurprisingly, Trotsky at that time was a Menshevik, not
a Bolshevik. After all, how could the most revolutionary
party that ever existed have messed up so badly? How could
democratic centralism faired so badly in practice? Best,
then, to suggest that it did not and give the Bolsheviks
a role better suited to the rhetoric of Bolshevism than
its reality.
Trotsky was no different. He, needless to say, denied the obvious implications
of these events in 1905. While admitting that the Bolsheviks "adjusted
themselves more slowly to the sweep of the movement" and that the Mensheviks
"were preponderant in the Soviet," he tries to save vanguardism
by asserting that "the general direction of the Soviet's
policy proceeded in the main along Bolshevik lines." So, in
spite of the lack of Bolshevik influence, in spite of the
slowness in adjusting to the revolution, Bolshevism was, in
fact, the leading set of ideas in the revolution! Ironically,
a few pages later, he mocks the claims of Stalinists that Stalin
had "isolated the Mensheviks from the masses" by noting that
the "figures hardly bear [the claims] out." [Op. Cit., p.
112
and p. 117] Shame he did not apply this criteria to his own assertions.
Of course, every party makes mistakes. The question is,
how did the "most revolutionary party of all time" fare
in 1917. Surely that revolution proves the validity of
vanguardism and "democratic centralism"? After all, there
was a successful revolution, the Bolshevik party did seize
power. However, the apparent success of 1917 was not due
to the application of "democratic centralism," quite the
reverse. While the myth of 1917 is that a highly efficient,
democratic centralist vanguard party ensured the overthrow
of the Provisional Government in November 1917 in favour
of the Soviets (or so it seemed at the time) the facts are
somewhat different. Rather, the Bolshevik party throughout
1917 was a fairly loose collection of local organisations
(each more than willing to ignore central commands and
express their autonomy), with much internal dissent and
infighting and no discipline beyond what was created by
common loyalty. The "democratic centralist" party, as
desired by Lenin, was only created in the course of the
Civil War and the tightening of the party dictatorship.
In other words, the party became more like a "democratic
centralist" one as the revolution degenerated. As such,
the various followers of Lenin (Stalinists, Trotskyists
and their multitude of offshoots) subscribe to a myth,
which probably explains their lack of success in
reproducing a similar organisation since. So assuming
that the Bolsheviks did play an important role in the
Russian revolution, it was because it was not the
centralised, disciplined Bolshevik party of Leninist
myth. Indeed, when the party did operate in a vanguardist
manner, failure was soon to follow.
This claim can be proven by looking at the history of the 1917
revolution. The February revolution started with a spontaneous
protests and strikes yet "the Petrograd organisation of the
Bolsheviks opposed the calling of strikes precisely on the eve
of the revolution which was destined to overthrow the Tsar.
Fortunately, the workers ignored the Bolshevik 'directives'
and went on strike anyway. In the events which followed, no one
was more surprised by the revolution than the 'revolutionary'
parties, including the Bolsheviks." [Murray Bookchin,
Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 123] Trotsky quoted one
of the Bolshevik leaders at the time:
"Absolutely no guiding initiative from the party centres
was felt . . . the Petrograd Committee had been arrested
and the representative of the Central Committee . . . was
unable to give any directives for the coming day." [quoted
by Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1,
p. 147]
Not the best of starts. Of course rank and file Bolsheviks
took part in the demonstrations, street fights and strikes
and so violated the principles their party was meant
to be based on. As the revolution progressed, so did the
dual nature of the Bolshevik party (i.e. its practical
divergence from "democratic centralism" in order to be
effective and attempts to force it back into that schema
which handicapped the revolution). However, during 1917,
"democratic centralism" was ignored in order to ensure
the Bolsheviks played any role at all in the revolution.
As one historian of the party makes clear, in 1917 and
until the outbreak of the Civil War, the party operated
in ways that few modern "vanguard" parties would tolerate:
"The committees were a law unto themselves when it came to
accepting orders from above. Democratic centralism, as
vague a principle of internal administration as there ever
has been, was commonly held at least to enjoin lower
executive bodies that they should obey the behests of all
higher bodies in the organisational hierarchy. But town
committees in practice had the devil's own job in imposing
firm leadership . . . Insubordination was the rule of the
day whenever lower party bodies thought questions of
importance were at stake.
"Suburb committees too faced difficulties in imposing
discipline. Many a party cell saw fit to thumb its nose
at higher authority and to pursue policies which it
felt to be more suited to local circumstances or more
desirable in general. No great secret was made of this.
In fact, it was openly admitted that hardly a party
committee existed which did not encounter problems
in enforcing its will even upon individual activists."
[Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution
1917-1923, pp. 51-2]
So while Lenin's ideal model of a disciplined, centralised
and top-down party had been expounded since 1902, the
operation of the party never matched his desire. As Service
notes, "a disciplined hierarchy of command stretching down
from the regional committees to party cells" had "never
existed in Bolshevik history." In the heady days of the
revolution, when the party was flooded by new members, Bolshevik
party life was the exact opposite of that usually considered
(by both opponents and supporters of Bolshevism) as it
normal mode of operation. "Anarchist attitudes to higher
authority," he argues, "were the rule of the day" and
"no Bolshevik leader in his right mind could have
contemplated a regular insistence upon rigid standards of
hierarchical control and discipline unless he had abandoned
all hope of establishing a mass socialist party." This
meant that "in the Russia of 1917 it was the easiest thing
in the world for lower party bodies to rebut the demands and
pleas by higher authority." He stresses that "[s]uburb and
town committees . . . often refused to go along with official
policies . . . they also . . . sometimes took it into their
heads to engage in active obstruction." [Op. Cit., p. 80,
p. 62 p. 56 and p. 60]
This worked both ways, of course. Town committees did "snub
their nose at lower-echelon viewpoints in the time before the
next election. Try as hard as they might, suburb committees
and ordinary cells could meanwhile do little to rectify
matters beyond telling their own representative on their
town committee to speak on their behalf. Or, if this too
failed, they could resort to disruptive tactics by
criticising it in public and refusing it all collaboration."
[Op. Cit., pp. 52-3] Even by early 1918, the Bolshevik
party bore little resemblance to the "democratic centralist"
model desires by Lenin:
"The image of a disciplined hierarchy of party committees was
therefore but a thin, artificial veneer which was used by
Bolshevik leaders to cover up the cracked surface of the
real picture underneath. Cells and suburb committees saw
no reason to kow-tow to town committees; nor did town
committees feel under compulsion to show any greater respect
to their provincial and regional committees than before."
[Op. Cit., p. 74]
It is this insubordination, this local autonomy and action
in spite of central orders which explains the success of
the Bolsheviks in 1917. Rather than a highly centralised
and disciplined body of "professional" revolutionaries,
the party saw a "significant change . . . within
the membership of the party at local level . . . From the
time of the February revolution requirements for party
membership had been all but suspended, and now Bolshevik
ranks swelled with impetuous recruits who knew next to
nothing about Marxism and who were united by little more
than overwhelming impatience for revolutionary action."
[Alexander Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution, p. 41]
This mass of new members (many of whom were peasants who
had just recently joined the industrial workforce) had a
radicalising effect on the party's policies and structures.
As even Leninist commentators argue, it was this influx of
members who allowed Lenin to gain support for his radical
revision of party aims in April. However, in spite of this
radicalisation of the party base, the party machine still
was at odds with the desires of the party. As Trotsky
acknowledged, the situation "called for resolute
confrontation of the sluggish Party machine with
masses and ideas in motion." He stressed that "the
masses were incomparably more revolutionary than the
Party, which in turn was more revolutionary than its
committeemen." Ironically, given the role Trotsky usually
gave the party, he admits that "[w]ithout Lenin, no one
had known what to make of the unprecedented situation."
[Stalin, vol. 1, p. 301, p. 305 and p. 297]
Which is significant in itself. The Bolshevik party is
usually claimed as being the most "revolutionary" that
ever existed, yet here is Trotsky admitting that its
leading members did not have a clue what to do. He even
argued that "[e]very time the Bolshevik leaders had to
act without Lenin they fell into error, usually inclining
to the Right." [Op. Cit., p. 299] This negative opinion
of the Bolsheviks applied even to the "left Bolsheviks,
especially the workers" whom we are informed "tried with
all their force to break through this quarantine" created
by the Bolshevik leaders policy "of waiting, of accommodation,
and of actual retreat before the Compromisers" after the
February revolution and before the arrival of Lenin.
Trotsky argued that "they did not know how to refute the
premise about the bourgeois character of the revolution
and the danger of an isolation of the proletariat. They
submitted, gritting their teeth, to the directions of
their leaders." [History of the Russian Revolution,
vol. 1, p. 273] It seems strange, to say the least, that
without one person the whole of the party was reduced to
such a level given that the aim of the "revolutionary"
party was to develop the political awareness of its
members.
Lenin's arrival, according to Trotsky, allowed the influence
of the more radical rank and file to defeat the conservatism
of the party machine. By the end of April, Lenin had managed
to win over the majority of the party leadership to his
position. However, this "April conflict between Lenin and
the general staff of the party was not the only one of its
kind. Throughout the whole history of Bolshevism . . . all
the leaders of the party at all the most important moments
stood to the right of Lenin." [Op. Cit.,
p. 305] As such, if "democratic centralism" had worked as
intended, the whole party would have been arguing for
incorrect positions the bulk of its existence (assuming, of
course, that Lenin was correct most of the time).
For Trotsky, "Lenin exerted influence not so much as an
individual but because he embodied the influence of the
class on the Party and of the Party on its machine."
Yet, this was the machine which Lenin had forged, which
embodied his vision of how a "revolutionary" party should
operate and was headed by him. To argue that the party machine
was behind the party membership and the membership behind the
class shows the bankruptcy of Lenin's organisational scheme.
This "backwardness", moreover, indicates an independence of
the party bureaucracy from the membership and the membership
from the masses. As Lenin's constantly repeated aim was for
the party to seize power (based on the dubious assumption
that class power would only be expressed, indeed was identical
to, party power) this independence held serious dangers,
dangers which became apparent once this goal was achieved.
This is confirmed when Trotsky asked the question "by what
miracle did Lenin manage in a few short weeks to turn the Party's
course into a new channel?" Significantly, he answers as follows:
"Lenin's personal attributes and the objective situation."
[Stalin, vol. 1, p. 299] No mention is made of the
democratic features of the party organisation, which suggests
that without Lenin the rank and file party members would not
have been able to shift the weight of the party machine in their
favour. Trotsky seemed close to admitting this:
"As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the
classes in motion and the interests of the party machines.
Even the Bolshevik Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit
of exceptional revolutionary training, were definitely
inclined to disregard the masses and to identify their own
special interests and the interests of the machine on the
very day after the monarchy was overthrown." [Op. Cit.,
vol. 1, p. 298]
Thus the party machine, which embodied the principles of
"democratic centralism" proved less than able to the task
assigned it in practice. Without Lenin, it is doubtful
that the party membership would have overcome the party
machine:
"Lenin was strong not only because he understood the laws
of the class struggle but also because his ear was
faultlessly attuned to the stirrings of the masses in
motion. He represented not so much the Party machine as
the vanguard of the proletariat. He was definitely
convinced that thousands from among those workers who
had borne the brunt of supporting the underground Party
would now support him. The masses at the moment were
more revolutionary than the Party, and the Party more
revolutionary than its machine. As early as March the
actual attitude of the workers and soldiers had in many
cases become stormily apparent, and it was widely at
variance with the instructions issued by all the parties,
including the Bolsheviks." [Op. Cit., p. 299]
Little wonder the local party groupings ignored the
party machine, practising autonomy and initiative in
the face of a party machine inclined to conservatism,
inertia, bureaucracy and remoteness. This conflict
between the party machine and the principles it was
based on and the needs of the revolution and party
membership was expressed continually throughout 1917:
"In short, the success of the revolution called for action
against the 'highest circles of the party,' who, from
February to October, utterly failed to play the
revolutionary role they ought to have taken in theory.
The masses themselves made the revolution, with or even
against the party - this much at least was clear to
Trotsky the historian. But far from drawing the correct
conclusion, Trotsky the theorist continued to argue
that the masses are incapable of making a revolution
without a leader." [Daniel & Gabriel Cohn-Bendit,
Op. Cit., p. 188]
Looking at the development of the revolution from April
onwards, we are struck by the sluggishness of the party
hierarchy. At every revolutionary upsurge, the party
simply was not to the task of responding to the needs of
masses and the local party groupings closest to them.
The can be seen in June, July and October itself. At
each turn, the rank and file groupings or Lenin had to
constantly violate the principles of their own party
in order to be effective.
For example, when discussing the cancellation by the central
committee of a demonstration planned for June 10th by
the Petrograd Bolsheviks, the unresponsiveness of the
party hierarchy can be seen. The "speeches by Lenin and
Zinoviev [justifying their actions] by no means satisfied
the Petersburg Committee. If anything, it appears that
their explanations served to strengthen the feeling that
at best the party leadership had acted irresponsibly and
incompetently and was seriously out of touch with reality."
Indeed, many "blamed the Central Committee for taking so
long to respond to Military Organisation appeals for a
demonstration." During the discussions in late June,
1917, on whether to take direct action against the Provisional
Government there was a "wide gulf" between lower organs
evaluations of the current situation and that of the Central
Committee. [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 88, p. 92 and
p. 129] Indeed, among the delegates from the Bolshevik military
groups, only Lashevich (an old Bolshevik) spoke in favour of the
Central Committee position and he noted that "[f]requently it
is impossible to make out where the Bolshevik ends and the Anarchist
begins." [quoted by Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 129]
In the July days, the breach between the local party groups
and the central committee increased. This spontaneous uprising
was opposed to by the Bolshevik leadership, in spite of the
leading role of their own militants (along with anarchists)
in fermenting it. While calling on their own activists to
restrain the masses, the party leadership was ignored by
the rank and file membership who played an active role in
the event. Sickened by being asked to play the role of
"fireman", the party militants rejected party discipline in
order to maintain their credibility with the working class.
Rank and file activists, pointing to the snowballing of
the movement, showed clear dissatisfaction with the Central
Committee. One argued that it "was not aware of the latest
developments when it made its decision to oppose the movement
into the streets." Ultimately, the Central Committee appeal
"for restraining the masses . . . was removed from"
Pravda "and so the party's indecision was reflected
by a large blank space on page one." [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit.,
p. 150, p. 159 and p. 175] Ultimately, the indecisive nature
of the leadership can be explained by the fact it did not
think it could seize state power for itself ("the state of
popular consciousness . . . made impossible the seizure of power
by the Bolsheviks in July." [Trotsky, History of the
Russian Revolution, vol. 2, p. 81]).
The indecision of the party hierarchy did have an effect,
of course. While the anarchists at Kronstadt looked at the
demonstration as the start of an uprising, the Bolsheviks
there were "wavering indecisively in the middle" between
them and the Left-Social Revolutionaries who saw it as a
means of applying pressure on the government. This was because
they were "hamstrung by the indecision of the party Central
Committee." [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 187] Little wonder
so many Bolshevik party organisations developed and protected
their own autonomy and ability to act!
Significantly, one of the main Bolshevik groupings
which helped organise and support the July uprising,
the Military Organisation, started their own paper
after the Central Committee had decreed after the
failed revolt that neither it, nor the Petersburg
Committee, should be allowed to have one. It "angrily
insisted on what it considered its just prerogatives"
and in "no uncertain terms it affirmed its right to
publish an independent newspaper and formally protested
what is referred to as 'a system of persecution and repression
of an extremely peculiar character which had begun with
the election of the new Central Committee.'" [Rabinowitch,
Op. Cit., p. 227] The Central Committee backed down,
undoubtedly due to the fact it could not enforce its
decision.
This was but one example of what the Cohn-Bendit brothers pointed
to, namely that "five months after the Revolution and three months
before the October uprising, the masses were still governing themselves,
and the Bolshevik vanguard simply had to toe the line." [Op. Cit.,
p. 186] Within that vanguard, the central committee proved to be out of
touch with the rank and file, who ignored it rather than break with their
fellow workers.
Even by October, the party machine still lagged behind the
needs of the revolution. In fact, Lenin could only impose
his view by going over the head of the Central Committee.
According to Trotsky's account, "this time he [wa]s not
satisfied with furious criticism" of the "ruinous Fabianism
of the Petrograd leadership" and "by way of protest he
resign[ed] from the Central Committee." [History of the
Russian Revolution, vol. 3, p. 131] Trotsky quoted
Lenin as follows:
"I am compelled to request permission to withdraw from
the Central Committee, which I hereby do, and leave
myself freedom of agitation in the lower ranks of the
party and at the party congress." [quoted by Trotsky,
Op. Cit., p. 131]
Thus the October revolution was precipitated by a blatant
violation of the principles Lenin spent his life advocating.
Indeed, if someone else other than Lenin had done this we
are sure that Lenin, and his numerous followers, would have
dismissed it as the action of a "petty-bourgeois intellectual"
who cannot handle party "discipline." This is itself is
significant, as is the fact that he decided to appeal to
the "lower ranks" of the party - rather than
being "democratic" the party machine effectively blocked
communication and control from the bottom-up. Looking to
the more radical party membership, he "could only impose
his view by going over the head of his Central Committee."
[Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Op. Cit., p. 187] He
made sure to send his letter of protest to "the Petrograd
and Moscow committees" and also made sure that "copies fell
into the hands of the more reliable party workers of the
district locals." By early October (and "over the heads of
the Central Committee") he wrote "directly to the Petrograd
and Moscow committees" calling for insurrection. He also
"appealed to a Petrograd party conference to speak a firm
word in favour of insurrection." [Trotsky, Op. Cit.,
p. 131 and p. 132]
In October, Lenin had to fight what he called "a wavering"
in the "upper circles of the party" which lead to a "sort
of dread of the struggle for power, an inclination to replace this
struggle with resolutions protests, and conferences." [quoted
by Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 132] For Trotsky, this represented
"almost a direct pitting of the party against the Central
Committee," required because "it was a question of the fate
of the revolution" and so "all other considerations fell
away." On October 8th, when Lenin addressed the Bolshevik
delegates of the forthcoming Northern Congress of Soviets on this
subject, he did so "personally" as there "was no party
decision" and the "higher institutions of the party had not
yet expressed themselves." [Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 132-3
and p. 133] Ultimately, the Central Committee came round to Lenin's
position but they did so under pressure of means at odds with the
principles of the party.
This divergence between the imagine and reality of the Bolsheviks
explains their success. If the party had applied or had remained
true to the principles of "democratic centralism" it is doubtful
that it would have played an important role in the movement. As
Alexander Rabinowitch argues, Bolshevik organisational unity and
discipline is "vastly exaggerated" and, in fact, Bolshevik
success in 1917 was down to "the party's internally relatively
democratic, tolerant, and decentralised structure and method of
operation, as well as its essentially open and mass character -
in striking contrast to the traditional Leninist model."
In 1917, he goes on, "subordinate party bodies like the
Petersburg Committee and the Military Organisation were
permitted considerable independence and initiative . . .
Most importantly, these lower bodies were able to tailor
their tactics and appeals to suit their own particular
constituencies amid rapidly changing conditions. Vast
numbers of new members were recruited into the party . . . The
newcomers included tens of thousands of workers and soldiers . . .
who knew little, if anything, about Marxism and cared nothing
about party discipline." For example, while the slogan
"All Power to the Soviets" was "officially withdrawn
by the Sixth [Party] Congress in late July, this change did not
take hold at the local level." [The Bolsheviks Come to
Power, p. 311, p. 312 and p. 313]
It is no exaggeration to argue that if any member of a current
vanguard party acted as the Bolshevik rank and file did in 1917,
they would quickly be expelled (this probably explains why no
such party has been remotely successful since). However, this
ferment from below was quickly undermined within the party
with the start of the Civil War. It is from this period when
"democratic centralism" was actually applied within the party
and clarified as an organisational principle:
"It was quite a turnabout since the anarchic days before the
Civil War. The Central Committee had always advocated the
virtues of obedience and co-operation; but the rank-and-filers
of 1917 had cared little about such entreaties as they did
about appeals made by other higher authorities. The wartime
emergency now supplied an opportunity to expatiate on this
theme at will." [Service, Op. Cit., p. 91]
Service stresses that "it appears quite remarkable how
quickly the Bolsheviks, who for years had talked idly
about a strict hierarchy of command inside the party, at
last began to put ideas into practice." [Op. Cit., p. 96]
In other words, the conversion of the Bolshevik party into a
fully fledged "democratic centralist" party occurred
during the degeneration of the Revolution. This was both a
consequence of the rising authoritarianism within the party,
state and society as well as one of its causes so it
is quite ironic that the model used by modern day followers
of Lenin is that of the party during the decline of the
revolution, not its peak. This is not surprising. Once in
power, the Bolshevik party imposed a state capitalist regime
onto the Russian people. Can it be surprising that the party
structure which it developed to aid this process was also
based on bourgeois attitudes and organisation? The party model
advocated by Lenin may not have been very effective during a
revolution but it was exceedingly effective at promoting
hierarchy and authority in the post-revolutionary regime.
It simply replaced the old ruling elite with another, made
up of members of the radical intelligentsia and the odd
ex-worker or ex-peasant.
This was due to the hierarchical and top-down nature of
the party Lenin had created. While the party base was
largely working class, the leadership was not. Full-time
revolutionaries, they were either middle-class intellectuals
or (occasionally) ex-workers and (even rarer) ex-peasants
who had left their class to become part of the party machine.
Even the delegates at the party congresses did not truly
reflect class basis of the party membership. For example,
the number of delegates was still dominated by white-collar
or others (59.1% to 40.9%) at the sixth party congress at
the end of July 1917. [Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 160] So
while the party gathered more working class members in
1917, it cannot be said that this was reflected in the
party leadership which remained dominated by non-working
class elements. Rather than being a genuine working class
organisation, the Bolshevik party was a hierarchical group
headed by non-working class elements whose working class
base could not effectively control them even during the
revolution in 1917. It was only effective because these
newly joined and radicalised working class members
ignored their own party structure and its defining
ideology.
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks saw their membership
start to decrease. Significantly, "the decline in numbers
which occurred from early 1918 onwards" started happening
"contrary to what is usually assumed, some months before
the Central Committee's decree in midsummer that the party
should be purged of its 'undesirable' elements." These lost
members reflected two things. Firstly, the general decline in
the size of the industrial working class. This meant that the
radicalised new elements from the countryside which had flocked
to the Bolsheviks in 1917 returned home. Secondly, the lost of
popular support due to the realities of the Bolshevik regime.
This can be seen from the fact that while the Bolsheviks were
losing members, the Left SRS almost doubled in size to 100,000
(the Mensheviks claimed to have a similar number). Rather
than non-proletarians leaving, "[i]t is more probable by
far that it was industrial workers who were leaving in
droves. After all, it would have been strange if the
growing unpopularity of Sovnarkom in factory milieu
had been confined exclusively to non-Bolsheviks."
Unsurprisingly, given its position in power, "[a]s the
proportion of working-class members declined, so that
of entrants from the middle-class rose; the steady drift
towards a party in which industrial workers no longer
numerically predominated was under way." By late 1918
membership started to increase again but "[m]ost newcomers
were not of working-class origin . . . the proportion of
Bolsheviks of working-class origin fell from 57 per cent
at the year's beginning to 48 per cent at the end." It
should be noted that it was not specified how many were
classed as having working-class origin were still employed
in working-class jobs. [Robert Service, Op. Cit., p. 70,
pp. 70-1 and p. 90] A new ruling elite was thus born,
thanks to the way vanguard parties are structured and the
application of vanguardist principles which had previously
been ignored.
In summary, the experience of the Russian Revolution does
not, in fact, show the validity of the "vanguard" model.
The Bolshevik party in 1917 played a leading role in the
revolution only insofar as its members violated its own
organisational principles (Lenin included). Faced with a
real revolution and an influx of more radical new members,
the party had to practice anarchist ideas of autonomy,
local initiative and the ignoring of central orders which
had no bearing to reality on the ground. When the party
did try to apply the top-down and hierarchical principles
of "democratic centralism" it failed to adjust to the
needs of the moment. Moreover, when these principles were
finally applied they helped ensure the degeneration of
the revolution. This was to be expected, given the nature
of vanguardism and the Bolshevik vision of socialism.