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version of Section H.
H.3 What are the myths of state socialism?
Ask most people what socialism means and they will point to the former Soviet
Union, China, Cuba and a host of other authoritarian, centralised
and oppressive party dictatorships. These regimes have in common two
things. Firstly, the claim that their rulers are Marxists or socialists.
Secondly, that they have successfully alienated millions of working
class people from the very idea of socialism. Indeed, the supporters
of capitalism simply had to describe the "socialist paradises" as
they really were in order to put people off socialism. Moreover, the
Stalinist regimes (and their various apologists and even "opponents",
like the Trotskyists, who defended them as "degenerated workers'
states") let the bourgeoisie have an easy time in dismissing all
working-class demands and struggles as so many attempts to set up
similar party dictatorships.
The association of "socialism" or "communism" with
these dictatorships has often made anarchists wary of calling themselves
socialists or communists in case our ideas are associated with them.
As Errico Malatesta argued in 1924:
"I foresee the possibility that the communist anarchists
will gradually abandon the term 'communist': it is growing
in ambivalence and falling into disrepute as a result of
Russian 'communist' despotism. If the term is eventually
abandoned this will be a repetition of what happened with
the word 'socialist.' We who, in Italy at least, were the
first champions of socialism and maintained and still maintain
that we are the true socialists in the broad and human sense
of the word, ended by abandoning the term to avoid confusion
with the many and various authoritarian and bourgeois
deviations of socialism. Thus too we may have to abandon
the term 'communist' for fear that our ideal of free human
solidarity will be confused with the avaricious despotism
which has for some time triumphed in Russia and which one
party, inspired by the Russian example, seeks to impose
worldwide." [The Anarchist Revolution, p. 20]
That, to a large degree happened, with anarchists simply calling
themselves by that name, without adjectives, to avoid confusion. This,
sadly, resulted in two problems. Firstly, it gave Marxists even more
potential to portray anarchism as being primarily against the state
and not as equally opposed to capitalism, hierarchy and inequality
(as we argue in section H.2.4, anarchists
have opposed the state as just one aspect of class society). Secondly,
extreme right-wingers tried to appropriate the names "libertarian"
and "anarchist" to describe their vision of extreme capitalism
as "anarchism," they claimed, was simply "anti-government"
(see section F for discussion on why "anarcho"-capitalism
is not anarchist). To counter these distortions of anarchist ideas,
many anarchists have recently re-appropriated the use of the words
"socialist" and "communist," although always in combination
with the words "anarchist" and "libertarian."
Such combination of words is essential as the problem Malatesta
predicted still remains. If one thing can be claimed for the 20th
century, it is that it has seen the word "socialism" become
narrowed and restricted into what anarchists call "state socialism"
-- socialism created and run from above, by the state (i.e. by the
state bureaucracy). This restriction of "socialism" has been supported
by both Stalinist and Capitalist ruling elites, for their own reasons
(the former to secure their own power and gain support by associating
themselves with socialist ideals, the latter by discrediting those
ideas by associating them with the horror of Stalinism).
This means that anarchists and other libertarian socialists have
a major task on their hands -- to reclaim the promise of socialism
from the distortions inflicted upon it by both its enemies (Stalinists
and capitalists) and its erstwhile and self-proclaimed supporters
(Social Democracy and its various offspring like the Bolsheviks and
its progeny like the Trotskyists). A key aspect of this process is
a critique of both the practice and ideology of Marxism and its various
offshoots. Only by doing this can anarchists prove, to quote Rocker,
that "Socialism will be free, or it will not be at all."
[Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 20]
Such a critique raises the problem of which forms of "Marxism"
to discuss. There is an extremely diverse range of Marxist viewpoints
and groups in existence. Indeed, the different groups spend a lot
of time indicating why all the others are not "real" Marxists
(or Marxist-Leninists, or Trotskyists, and so on) and are just "sects"
without "real" Marxist theory or ideas. This "diversity" is,
of course, a major problem (and somewhat ironic, given that some Marxists
like to insult anarchists by stating there are as many forms of anarchism
as anarchists!). Equally, many Marxists go further than dismissing
specific groups. Some even totally reject other branches of their
movement as being non-Marxist (for example, some Marxists dismiss
Leninism as having little, or nothing, to do with what they consider
the "real" Marxist tradition to be). This means that discussing
Marxism can be difficult as Marxists can argue that our FAQ does not
address the arguments of this or that Marxist thinker, group or tendency.
With this in mind, this section of the FAQ will concentrate on the
works of Marx and Engels (and so the movement they generated, namely
Social Democracy) as well as the Bolshevik tradition started by Lenin
and continued (by and large) by Trotsky. These are the core ideas
(and the recognised authorities) of most Marxists and so latter derivations
of these tendencies can be ignored (for example Maoism, Castroism
and so on). It should also be noted that even this grouping will produce
dissent as some Marxists argue that the Bolshevik tradition is not
part of Marxism. This perspective can be seen in the "impossiblist"
tradition of Marxism (e.g. the Socialist Party of Great Britain and
its sister parties) as well as in the left/council communist tradition
(e.g. in the work of such Marxists as Anton Pannekoek and Paul Mattick).
The arguments for their positions are strong and well worth reading
(indeed, any honest analysis of Marxism and Leninism cannot help but
show important differences between the two). However, as the vast
majority of Marxists today are also Leninists, we have to reflect
this in our FAQ (and, in general, we do so by referring to "mainstream
Marxists" as opposed to the small minority of libertarian Marxists).
Another problem arises when we consider the differences not only
between Marxist tendencies, but also within a specific tendency before
and after its representatives seize power. For example, "there
are . . . very different strains of Leninism . . . there's the Lenin
of 1917, the Lenin of the 'April Theses' and State and Revolution.
That's one Lenin. And then there's the Lenin who took power and acted
in ways that are unrecognisable . . . compared with, say, the doctrines
of 'State and Revolution.' . . . this [is] not very hard to explain.
There's a big difference between the libertarian doctrines of a person
who is trying to associate himself with a mass popular movement to
acquire power and the authoritarian power of somebody who's taken
power and is trying to consolidate it. . . that is true of Marx also.
There are competing strains in Marx." [Noam Chomsky, Language
and Politics, p. 177]
As such, this section of our FAQ will try and draw out the contradictions
within Marxism and indicate what aspects of the doctrine aided the
development of the "second" Lenin. The seeds from which authoritarianism
grew post-October 1917 existed from the start. Anarchists agree with
Noam Chomsky when he stated that he considered it "characteristic
and unfortunate that the lesson that was drawn from Marx and Lenin
for the later period was the authoritarian lesson. That is, it's the
authoritarian power of the vanguard party and destruction of all popular
forums in the interests of the masses. That's the Lenin who became
know to later generations. Again, not very surprisingly, because that's
what Leninism really was in practice." [Ibid.]
Ironically, given Marx's own comments on the subject, a key hindrance
to such an evaluation is the whole idea and history of Marxism itself.
While, as Murray Bookchin noted "to his lasting credit," Marx
tried (to some degree) "to create a movement that looks to the
future instead of to the past," his followers have not done so.
"Once again," Bookchin argues, "the dead are walking in
our midst -- ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried
to bury the dead of the nineteenth century. So the revolution of our
own day can do nothing better than parody, in turn, the October Revolution
of 1918 and the civil war of 1918-1920 . . . The complete, all-sided
revolution of our own day . . . follows the partial, the incomplete,
the one-sided revolutions of the past, which merely changed the form
of the 'social question,' replacing one system of domination and hierarchy
by another." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 174 and p. 175]
In Marx's words, the "tradition of all the dead generations weighs
down like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Marx's own
work, and the movements it inspired, now add to this dead-weight.
In order to ensure, as Marx put it, the social revolution draws is
poetry from the future rather than the past, Marxism itself must be
transcended.
Which, of course, means evaluating both the theory and practice
of Marxism. For anarchists, it seems strange that for a body of work
whose followers stress is revolutionary and liberating, its results
have been so bad. If Marxism is so obviously revolutionary and democratic,
then why have so few of the people who read it drawn those conclusions?
How could it be transmuted so easily into Stalinism? Why are there
so few libertarian Marxists, if it was Lenin (or Social Democracy)
which "misinterpreted" Marx and Engels? So when Marxists argue
that the problem is in the interpretation of the message not in the
message itself, anarchists reply that the reason these numerous, allegedly
false, interpretations exist at all simply suggests that there are
limitations within Marxism as such rather than the readings
it has been subjected to. When something repeatedly fails (and produces
such terrible results), then there has to be a fundamental flaw somewhere.
Thus Cornelius Castoriadis:
"Marx was, in fact, the first to stress that the significance
of a theory cannot be grasped independently of the historical
and social practice it inspires and initiates, to which it
gives rise, in which it prolongs itself and under cover of
which a given practice seeks to justify itself.
"Who, today, would dare proclaim that the only significance of Christianity
for history is to be found in reading unaltered versions of the
Gospels or that the historical practice of various Churches over
a period of some 2,000 years can teach us nothing fundamental about
the significance of this religious movement? A 'faithfulness to
Marx' which would see the historical fate of Marxism as something
unimportant would be just as laughable. It would in fact be quite
ridiculous. Whereas for the Christian the revelations of the Gospels
have a transcendental kernel and an intemporal validity, no theory
could ever have such qualities in the eyes of a Marxist. To seek
to discover the meaning of Marxism only in what Marx wrote (while
keeping quiet about what the doctrine has become in history) is
to pretend -- in flagrant contradiction with the central ideas of
that doctrine -- that real history doesn't count and that the truth
of a theory is always and exclusively to be found 'further on.'
It finally comes to replacing revolution by revelation and the understanding
of events by the exegesis of texts." ["The Fate of Marxism,"
pp. 75-84 The Anarchist Papers, Dimitrios Roussopoulos (ed.),
p. 77]
This does not mean forsaking the work of Marx and Engels. It means
rejecting once and for all the idea that two people, writing over
a period of decades over a hundred years ago have all the answers.
As should be obvious! Ultimately, anarchists think we have to build
upon the legacy of the past, not squeeze current events into it. We
should stand on the shoulders of giants, not at their feet.
Thus this section of our FAQ will attempt to explain the various
myths of Marxism and provide an anarchist critique of Marxism and
its offshoots. Of course, the ultimate myth of Marxism is what Alexander
Berkman called "The Bolshevik Myth," namely the idea that the
Russian Revolution was a success. However, as we discuss this revolution
in the appendix on "What happened during the
Russian Revolution?" we will not do so here except when it provides
useful empirical evidence for our critique. Our discussion here will
concentrate for the most part on Marxist theory, showing its inadequacies,
its problems, where it appropriated anarchist ideas and how anarchism
and Marxism differ. This is a big task and this section of the FAQ
can only be a small contribution to it.
As noted above, there are minority trends in Marxism which are libertarian
in nature (i.e. close to anarchism). As such, it would be simplistic
to say that anarchists are "anti-Marxist" and we generally
do differentiate between the (minority) libertarian element and the
authoritarian mainstream of Marxism (i.e. Social-Democracy and Leninism
in its many forms). Without doubt, Marx contributed immensely to the
enrichment of socialist ideas and analysis (as acknowledged by Bakunin,
for example). His influence, as to be expected, was both positive
and negative. For this reason he must be read and discussed critically.
This FAQ is a contribution to this task of transcending the work of
Marx. As with anarchist thinkers, we must take what is useful from
Marx and reject the rubbish. But never forget that anarchists are
anarchists precisely because we think that anarchist thinkers have
got more right than wrong and we reject the idea of tying our politics
to the name of a long dead thinker.
Ultimately, the greatest myth of Marxism is the idea that anarchists and most
Marxists want the same thing. Indeed, it could be argued that it is
anarchist criticism of Marxism which has made them stress the similarity
of long term goals with anarchism. "Our polemics against them [the
Marxists]," Bakunin argued, "have forced them to recognise
that freedom, or anarchy -- that is, the voluntary organisation of
the workers from below upward -- is the ultimate goal of social development."
He continued by stressing that the means to this apparently similar
end were different. The Marxists, he argues, "say that [a] state
yoke, [a] dictatorship, is a necessary transitional device for achieving
the total liberation of the people: anarchy, or freedom, is the goal,
and the state, or dictatorship, is the means . . . We reply that no
dictatorship can have any other objective than to perpetuate itself,
and that it can engender and nurture only slavery in the people who
endure it. Liberty can be created only by liberty, by an insurrection
of all the people and the voluntary organisation of the workers from
below upwards." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 179]
As such, it is commonly taken for granted that the ends of both
Marxists and Anarchists are the same, we just disagree over the means.
However, within this general agreement over the ultimate end (a classless
and stateless society), the details of such a society are somewhat
different. This, perhaps, is to be expected given the differences
in means. As is obvious from Bakunin's argument, anarchists stress
the unity of means and goals, that the means which are used affect
the goal reached. This unity between means and ends is expressed well
by Martin Buber's observation that "[o]ne cannot in the nature
of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to
put forth leaves." [Paths in Utopia, p. 127] In summary,
we cannot expect to reach our end destination if we take a path going
in the opposite direction. As such, the agreement on ends may not
be as close as often imagined.
So when it is stated that anarchists and state socialists want the
same thing, the following should be borne in mind. Firstly, there
are key differences on the question of current tactics. Secondly,
there is the question of the immediate aims of a revolution. Thirdly,
there is the long term goals of such a revolution. These three aspects
form a coherent whole, with each one logically following on from the
last. As we will show, the anarchist and Marxist vision of each aspect
are distinctly different, so suggesting that the short, medium and
long term goals of each theory are, in fact, different. We will discuss
each aspect in turn.
Firstly, the question of the nature of the revolutionary movement.
Here anarchists and most Marxists have distinctly opposing ideas.
The former argue that both the revolutionary organisation (i.e. an
anarchist federation) and the wider labour movement should be organised
in line with the vision of society which inspires us. This means that
it should be a federation of self-managed groups based on the direct
participation of its membership in the decision making process. Power,
therefore, is decentralised and there is no division between those
who make the decisions and those who execute them. We reject the idea
of others acting on our behalf or on behalf of the people and so urge
the use of direct action and solidarity, based upon working class
self-organisation, self-management and autonomy. Thus, anarchists
apply their ideas in the struggle against the current system, arguing
what is "efficient" from a hierarchical or class position is deeply
inefficient from a revolutionary perspective.
Marxists disagree. Most Marxists are also Leninists. They argue
that we must form "vanguard" parties based on the principles
of "democratic centralism" complete with institutionalised
leaderships. They argue that how we organise today is independent
of the kind of society we seek and that the party should aim to become
the recognised leadership of the working class. Every thing they do
is subordinated to this end, meaning that no struggle is seen as an
end in itself but rather as a means to gaining membership and influence
for the party until such time as it gather enough support to seize
power. As this is a key point of contention between anarchists and
Leninists, we discuss this in some detail in section
H.5 and its related sections and so not do so here.
Obviously, in the short term anarchists and Leninists cannot be
said to want the same thing. While we seek a revolutionary movement
based on libertarian (i.e. revolutionary) principles, the Leninists
seek a party based on distinctly bourgeois principles of centralisation,
delegation of power and representative over direct democracy. Both,
of course, argue that only their system of organisation is effective
and efficient (see section H.5.8 on
a discussion why anarchists argue that the Leninist model is not effective
from a revolutionary perspective). The anarchist perspective is to
see the revolutionary organisation as part of the working class, encouraging
and helping those in struggle to clarify the ideas they draw from
their own experiences and its role is to provide a lead rather than
a new set of leaders to be followed (see section
J.3.6 for more on this). The Leninist perspective is to see the
revolutionary party as the leadership of the working class, introducing
socialist consciousness into a class which cannot generate itself
(see section H.5.1).
Given the Leninist preference for centralisation and a leadership
role by hierarchical organisation, it will come as no surprise that
their ideas on the nature of post-revolutionary society are distinctly
different from anarchists. While there is a tendency for Leninists
to deny that anarchists have a clear idea of what will immediately
be created by a revolution (see section
H.1.4), we do have concrete ideas on the kind of society a revolution
will immediately create. This vision is in almost every way different
from that proposed by most Marxists.
Firstly, there is the question of the state. Anarchists, unsurprisingly
enough, seek to destroy it. Simply put, while anarchists want a stateless
and classless society and advocate the means appropriate to those
ends, most Marxists argue that in order to reach a stateless society
we need a new "workers'" state, a state, moreover, in which
their party will be in charge. Trotsky, writing in 1906, made this
clear when he argued that "[e]very political party deserving of
the name aims at seizing governmental power and thus putting the state
at the service of the class whose interests it represents." [quoted
by Israel Getzler, "Marxist Revolutionaries and the Dilemma of
Power", pp. 88-112, Revolution and Politics in Russia,
Alexander and Janet Rabinowitch and Ladis K.D. Kristof (eds,), p.
105] This fits in with Marx's 1852 comments that "Universal Suffrage
is the equivalent of political power for the working class of England,
where the proletariat forms the large majority of the population .
. . Its inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of
the working class." [Collected Works, vol. 11, pp.
335-6] In other words, "political power" simply means the ability
to nominate a government. Thus Engels:
"In every struggle of class against class, the next end
fought for is political power; the ruling class defends
its political supremacy, that is to say its safe majority
in the Legislature; the inferior class fights for, first
a share, then the whole of that power, in order to become
enabled to change existing laws in conformity with their
own interests and requirements. Thus the working class of
Great Britain for years fought ardently and even violently
for the People's Charter [which demanded universal suffrage
and yearly general elections], which was to give it that
political power." [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 386]
While Marxists like to portray this new government as "the dictatorship
of the proletariat," anarchist argue that, in fact, it will be
the dictatorship over the proletariat. This is because if the
working class is the ruling class (as Marxists claim) then,
anarchists argue, how can they delegate their power to a government
and remain so? Either the working class directly manages its own affairs
(and so society) or the government does. We discuss this issue in
section H.3.7 any state is simply
rule by a few and so is incompatible with socialism. The obvious implication
of this is that Marxism seeks party rule, not working class direct
management of society (as we discuss in section
H.3.8, the Leninist tradition is extremely clear on this matter).
Then there is the question of the building blocks of socialism.
Yet again, there is a clear difference between anarchism and Marxism.
Anarchists have always argued that the basis of socialism is working
class organisations, created in the struggle against capitalism and
the state (see section H.1.4 for details).
This applies to both the social and economic structure of a post-revolutionary
society. For most forms of Marxism, a radically different picture
has been the dominant one. As we discuss in section
H.3.10, Marxists only reached a similar vision for the political
structure of socialism in 1917 when Lenin supported the soviets as
he framework of his workers' state. However, as we prove in section
H.3.11, he did so for instrumental purposes only, namely as the
best means of assuring Bolshevik power. If the soviets clashed with
the party, it was the latter which took precedence. Unsurprisingly,
the Bolshevik mainstream moved from "All Power to the Soviets"
to "dictatorship of the party" rather quickly. Thus, unlike
anarchism, most forms of Marxism aim for party power, a "revolutionary"
government above the organs of working class self-management.
Economically, there are also clear differences. Anarchists have
consistently argued that the workers "ought to be the real managers
of industries." [Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops
Tomorrow, p. 157] To achieve this, we have pointed to various
organisations over time, such as factory committees and labour unions
as the "medium which Socialist forms of life could find . . . realisation."
Thus they would "not only [be] an instrument for the improvement
of the conditions of labour, but also of [were capable of] becoming
an organisation which might . . . take into its hands the management
of production." [Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, pp.
22-3]
As we discuss in more detail in section
H.3.12, Lenin, in contrast, saw socialism as being constructed
on the basis of structures and techniques (including management ones)
developed under capitalism. Rather than see socialism as being built
around new, working class organisations, Lenin saw it being constructed
on the basis of developments in capitalist organisation. "The Leninist
road to socialism," notes one expert on Lenin, "emphatically
ran through the terrain of monopoly capitalism. It would, according
to Lenin, abolish neither its advanced technological base nor its
institutionalised means for allocating resources or structuring industry.
. . The institutionalised framework of advanced capitalism could,
to put it shortly, be utilised for realisation of specifically socialist
goals. They were to become, indeed, the principal (almost exclusive)
instruments of socialist transformation." [Neil Harding, Leninism,
p.145] As Lenin explained, socialism is "nothing but the next step
forward from state capitalist monopoly. In other words, Socialism
is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole
people; by this token it ceases to be capitalist monopoly."
[The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid it, p. 37]
The role of workers' in this vision was basically unchanged. Rather
than demand, like anarchists, workers' self-management of production
in 1917, Lenin raised the demand for "universal, all-embracing
workers' control over the capitalists." [Will the Bolsheviks
Maintain Power, p. 52] Once the Bolsheviks were in power, the
workers' own organs (the factory committees) were integrated into
a system of state control, losing whatever power they once held at
the point of production. Lenin then modified this vision by raising
"one-man management" over the workers (see section
H.3.14). In other words, a form of state capitalism in
which workers would still be wage slaves under bosses appointed by
the state. Unsurprisingly, the "control" workers exercised
over their bosses (i.e. those with real power in production)
proved to be as elusive in production as it was in the state. In this,
Lenin undoubtedly followed the lead of the Communist Manifesto
which stressed state ownership of the means of production without
a word about workers' self-management of production. As we discuss
in section H.3.13, state "socialism"
cannot help being "state capitalism" by its very nature.
Needless to say, as far as means go, few anarchists and syndicalists
are complete pacifists. As syndicalist Emile Pouget argued, "[h]istory
teaches that the privileged have never surrendered their privileges
without having been compelled so to do and forced into it by their
rebellious victims. It is unlikely that the bourgeoisie is blessed
with an exceptional greatness of soul and will abdicate voluntarily."
This meant that "[r]ecourse to force . . . will be required."
[The Party Of Labour] This does not mean that libertarians
glorify violence or argue that all forms of violence are acceptable
(quite the reverse!), it simply means that for self-defence against
violent opponents violence is, unfortunately, sometimes required.
The way an anarchist revolution would defend itself also shows a
key difference between anarchism and Marxism. As we discussed in section
H.2.1, anarchists (regardless of Marxist claims) have always argued
that a revolution needs to defend itself. This would be organised
in a federal, bottom-up way as the social structure of a free society.
It would be based on voluntary working class militias. As Bakunin
put it, "the peasants, like the industrial city workers, should
unite by federating the fighting battalions, district by district,
this assuring a common co-ordinated defence against internal and external
enemies." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 190] This model of
working class self-defence was applied successfully in both the Spanish
and Ukrainian revolutions (by the CNT-FAI and the Makhnovists, respectively).
In contrast, the Bolshevik method of defending a revolution was the
top-down, hierarchical and centralised "Red Army" (see section
14 of the appendix on "What happened during
the Russian Revolution?" for details). As the example of the Makhnovists
(see the appendix on "Why does the Makhnovist
movement show there is an alternative to Bolshevism?") showed,
the "Red Army" was not the only way the Russian Revolution could have
been defended although it was the only way Bolshevik power could be.
So while Anarchists have consistently argued that socialism must
be based on working class self-management of production and society
based on working class organisations, the Leninist tradition has not
supported this vision (although it has appropriated some of its imagery
to gain popular support). Clearly, in terms of the immediate aftermath
of a revolution, anarchists and Leninists do not seek the same thing.
The former want a free society organised and run from below-upwards
by the working class based on workers self-management of production
while the latter seek party power in a new state structure which would
preside over an essentially state capitalist economy.
Lastly, there is the question of the long term goal. Even in this
vision of a classless and stateless society there is very little in
common between anarchist communism and Marxist communism, beyond the
similar terminology used to describe it. This is blurred by the differences
in terminology used by both theories. Marx and Engels had raised in
the 1840s the (long term) goal of "an association, in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free development
of all" replacing "the old bourgeois society, with its classes
and class antagonisms," in the Communist Manifesto. Before
this "vast association of the whole nation" was possible, the
proletariat would be "raise[d] . . . to the position of ruling
class" and "all capital" would be "centralise[d] . .
. in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as
the ruling class." As economic classes would no longer exist,
"the public power would lose its political character" as political
power "is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing
another." [Manifesto of the Communist Party, p. 53]
It was this, the means to the end, which was the focus of much debate
(see section H.1.1 for details). However,
it cannot be assumed that the ends desired by Marxists and anarchists
are identical. The argument that the "public power" could stop
being "political" (i.e. a state) is a tautology, and a particularly
unconvincing one at that. After all, if "political power" is
defined as being an instrument of class rule it automatically follows
that a classless society would have a non-political "public power"
and so be without a state! This does not imply that a "public power"
would no longer exist as a structure within (or, more correctly, over)
society, it just implies that its role would no longer be "political"
(i.e. an instrument of class rule). Given that, according to the Manifesto,
the state would centralise the means of production, credit and transportation
and then organise it "in accordance with a common plan" using
"industrial armies, especially for agriculture" this would
suggest that the state structure would remain even after its "political"
aspects had, to use Engels term, "withered away." [Marx and
Engels, Op. Cit., pp. 52-3]
>From this perspective, the difference between anarchist communism
and Marxist-communism is clear. "While both," notes John Clark,
"foresee the disappearance of the state, the achievement of social
management of the economy, the end of class rule, and the attainment
of human equality, to mention a few common goals, significant differences
in ends still remain. Marxist thought has inherited a vision which
looks to high development of technology with a corresponding degree
of centralisation of social institutions which will continue even
after the coming of the social revolution. . . . The anarchist vision
sees the human scale as essential, both in the techniques which are
used for production, and for the institutions which arise from the
new modes of association . . . In addition, the anarchist ideal has
a strong hedonistic element which has seen Germanic socialism as ascetic
and Puritanical." [The Anarchist Moment, p. 68]
Moreover, it is unlikely that such a centralised system could become
stateless and classless in actuality. As Bakunin argued, in the Marxist
state "there will be no privileged class. Everybody will be equal,
not only from the judicial and political but also from the economic
standpoint. This is the promise at any rate . . . So there will be
no more class, but a government, and, please note, an extremely complicated
government which, not content with governing and administering the
masses politically . . . will also administer them economically, by
taking over the production and fair sharing of wealth, agriculture,
the establishment and development of factories, the organisation and
control of trade, and lastly the injection of capital into production
by a single banker, the State." Such a system would be, in fact,
"the reign of the scientific mind, the most aristocratic,
despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes" base on "a
new class, a new hierarchy of real or bogus learning, and the world
will be divided into a dominant, science-based minority and a vast,
ignorant majority." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
p. 266]
George Barrett's words also seem appropriate:
"The modern Socialist . . . have steadily worked for
centralisation, and complete and perfect organisation
and control by those in authority above the people. The
anarchist, on the other hand, believes in the abolition
of that central power, and expects the free society to
grow into existence from below, starting with those
organisations and free agreements among the people
themselves. It is difficult to see how, by making a
central power control everything, we can be making a
step towards the abolition of that power." [Objections
to Anarchism]
As Brain Morris notes, "Bakunin's fears that under Marx's kind
of socialism the workers would continue to labour under a regimented,
mechanised, hierarchical system of production, without direct control
over their labour, has been more than confirmed by the realities of
the Bolshevik system. Thus, Bakunin's critique of Marxism has taken
on an increasing relevance in the age of bureaucratic State capitalism."
[Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 132]
Therefore, anarchists are not convinced that a highly centralised
structure (as a state is) managing the economic life of society can
be part of a truly classless society. While economic class as defined
in terms of property may not exist, social classes (defined in terms
of inequality of power and wealth) will continue simply because the
state is designed to create and protect minority rule (see section
H.3.7). As Bolshevik and Stalinist Russia showed, nationalising
the means of production does not end class society. As Malatesta argued:
"When F. Engels, perhaps to counter anarchist criticisms,
said that once classes disappear the State as such has no
raison d'etre and transforms itself from a government of
men into an administration of thing, he was merely playing
with words. Whoever has power over things has power over men;
whoever governs production also governs the producers; who
determines consumption is master over the consumer.
"This is the question; either things are administered on the basis of free
agreement of the interested parties, and this is anarchy; or they
are administered according to laws made by administrators and this
is government, it is the State, and inevitably it turns out to be
tyrannical.
"It is not a question of the good intentions or the good will
of this or that man, but of the inevitability of the situation,
and of the tendencies which man generally develops in given circumstances."
[Life and Ideas, p. 145]
The anarchist vision of the future society, therefore, does not
exactly match the state communist vision, as much as the latter would
like to suggest it does. The difference between the two is authority,
which cannot be anything but the largest difference possible. Anarchist
economic and organisational theories are built around an anti-authoritarian
core and this informs both our means and aims. For anarchists, the
Leninist vision of socialism is unattractive. Lenin continually stressed
that his conception of socialism and "state capitalism" were
basically identical. Even in State and Revolution, allegedly
Lenin's most libertarian work, we discover this particularly unvisionary
and uninspiring vision of "socialism":
"All citizens are transformed into the salaried employees of
the state . . . All citizens become employees and workers of
a single national state 'syndicate' . . . The whole of
society will have become a single office and a single factory
with equality of work and equality of pay." [Essential Works
of Lenin, p. 348]
To which, anarchists point to Engels and his comments on the tyrannical
and authoritarian character of the modern factory (as we discuss in
section H.4.4). Engels, let us not
forget, had argued against the anarchists that large-scale industry
(or, indeed, any form of organisation) meant that "authority"
was required (organisation meant that "the will of a single individual
will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions
are settled in an authoritarian way."). He (like the factory owner
he was) stated that factories should have "Lasciate ogni autonomia,
voi che entrate" ("Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind")
written above their doors. This obedience, Engels argued, was necessary
even under socialism, as applying the "forces of nature" meant
"a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation."
This meant that "[w]anting to abolish authority in large-scale
industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself."
[Marx-Engels Reader, p. 731] Clearly, Lenin's idea of turning
the world into one big factory takes on an extremely frightening nature
given Engels lovely vision of the lack of freedom in industry.
For these reasons anarchists reject the simplistic Marxist analysis
of inequality being rooted simply in economic class. Such an analysis,
as the comments of Lenin and Engels prove, show that social inequality
can be smuggled in by the backdoor of a proposed classless and stateless
society. Thus Bookchin:
"Basic to anti-authoritarian Socialism ---specifically,
to Anarchist Communism -- is the notion that hierarchy and
domination cannot be subsumed by class rule and economic
exploitation, indeed, that they are more fundamental to
an understanding of the modern revolutionary project.
Before 'man' began to exploit 'man,' he began to dominate
woman . . . Power of human over human long antedates the
very formation of classes and economic modes of social
oppression. . . . This much is clear: it will no longer
do to insist that a classless society, freed from material
exploitation, will necessarily be a liberated society.
There is nothing in the social future to suggest that
bureaucracy is incompatible with a classless society,
the domination of women, the young, ethnic groups or
even professional strata." [Toward an Ecological
Society, pp. 208-9]
Ultimately, anarchists see that "there is a realm of domination
that is broader than the realm of material exploitation. The tragedy
of the socialist movement is that, steeped in the past, it uses the
methods of domination to try to 'liberate' us from material exploitation."
Needless to say, this is doomed to failure. Socialism "will simply
mire us in a world we are trying to overcome. A non-hierarchical society,
self-managed and free of domination in all its forms, stands on the
agenda today, not a hierarchical system draped in a red flag."
[Murray Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 272 and pp. 273-4]
In summary, it cannot be said that anarchists and most Marxists
want the same thing. While they often use the same terms, these terms
often hide radically different concepts. Just because, say, anarchists
and mainstream Marxists talk about "social revolution," "socialism,"
"all power to the soviets" and so on, it does not mean that
we mean the same thing by them. For example, the phrase "all power
to the soviets" for anarchists means exactly that (i.e. that the
revolution must be directly managed by working class organs). Leninists
mean "all power to a central government elected by a national soviet
congress." Similarly with other similar phrases (which shows the
importance of looking at the details of any political theory and its
history).
We have shown that discussion over ends is as important as discussion
over means as they are related. As Kropotkin once pointed out, those
who downplay the importance of discussing the "order of things
which . . . should emerge from the coming revolution" in favour
of concentrating on "practical things" are being less than
honest as "far from making light of such theories, they propagate
them, and all that they do now is a logical extension of their ideas.
In the end those words 'Let us not discuss theoretical questions'
really mean: 'Do not subject our theory to discussion, but help us
to put it into execution.'" [Words of a Rebel, p. 200]
Hence the need to critically evaluate both ends and means. This
shows the weakness of the common argument that anarchists and Leftists
share some common visions and so we should work with them to achieve
those common things. Who knows what happens after that? As can be
seen, this is not the case. Many aspects of anarchism and Marxism
are in opposition and cannot be considered similar (for example, what
a Leninist considers as socialism is extremely different to what an
anarchist thinks it is). If you consider "socialism" as being
a "workers' state" presided over by a "revolutionary"
government, then how can this be reconciled with the anarchist vision
of a federation of self-managed communes and workers' associations?
As the Russian Revolution shows, only by the armed might of the "revolutionary"
government crushing the anarchist vision.
The only thing we truly share with these groups is a mutual opposition
to existing capitalism. Having a common enemy does not make someone
friends. Hence anarchists, while willing to work on certain mutual
struggles, are well aware there is substantial differences in both
terms of means and goals. The lessons of revolution in the 20th Century
is that once in power, Leninists will repress anarchists, their current
allies against the capitalist system. This is does not occur by accident,
it flows from the differences in vision between the two movements,
both in terms of means and goals.
Some Marxists, such as the International Socialist Tendency, like to
portray their tradition as being "socialism from below." Under
"socialism from below," they place the ideas of Marx, Engels,
Lenin and Trotsky, arguing that they and they alone have continued
this, the true, ideal of socialism (Hal Draper's essay "The Two
Souls of Socialism" seems to have been the first to argue along
these lines). They contrast this idea of "democratic" socialism
"from below" with "socialism from above," in which they
place reformist socialism (social democracy, Labourism, etc.), elitist
socialism (Lassalle and others who wanted educated and liberal members
of the middle classes to liberate the working class) and Stalinism
(bureaucratic dictatorship over the working class).
For those who uphold this idea, "Socialism from below" is
simply the self-emancipation of the working class by its own efforts.
To anarchist ears, the claim that Marxism (and in particular Leninism)
is socialism "from below" sounds paradoxical, indeed laughable.
This is because anarchists from Proudhon onwards have used the imagery
of socialism being created and run from below upwards. They have been
doing so for far longer than Marxists have. As such, "socialism
from below" simply sums up the anarchist ideal!
Thus we find Proudhon in 1848 talking about being a "revolutionary
from below" and that every "serious and lasting Revolution"
was "made from below, by the people." A "Revolution
from above" was "pure governmentalism," "the
negation of collective activity, of popular spontaneity" and is
"the oppression of the wills of those below." [quoted by George
Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 143] For Proudhon, the
means of this revolution "from below" would be working class
associations for both credit (mutual banks) and production (workers'
associations or co-operatives). The workers, "organised among themselves,
without the assistance of the capitalist" would march by "Work
to the conquest of the world" by the "force of principle."
Thus capitalism would be reformed away by the actions of the workers
themselves. The "problem of association," Proudhon argues,
"consists in organising . . . the producers, and by this
subjecting capital subordinating power. Such is the war of liberty
against authority, a war of the producer against the non-producer;
a war of equality against privilege . . . An agricultural and industrial
combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler
of society, shall become its slave." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism,
p. 148 and p. 157]
Similarly, Bakunin saw an anarchist revolution as coming "from
below." As he put it, "liberty can be created only by liberty,
by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organisation
of the workers from below upward." [Statism and Anarchy,
p. 179] Elsewhere he writes that "popular revolution" would
"create its own organisation from the bottom upwards and from the
circumference inwards, in accordance with the principle of liberty,
and not from the top downwards and from the centre outwards, as in
the way of authority." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
p. 170] His vision of revolution and revolutionary self-organisation
and construction from below was a core aspect of his anarchist ideas,
arguing repeatedly for "the free organisation of the people's lives
in accordance with their needs -- not from the top down, as we have
it in the State, but from the bottom up, an organisation formed by
the people themselves . . . a free union of associations of agricultural
and factory workers, of communes, regions, and nations." He stressed
that "the politics of the Social Revolution" was "the abolition
of the State" and "the economic, altogether free organisation
of the people, an organisation from below upward, by means of federation."
[The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 297-8]
While Proudhon wanted to revolutionise society, he rejected revolutionary
means to do so (i.e. collective struggle, strikes, insurrection, etc.).
Bakunin, however, was a revolutionary in this, the popular, sense
of the word. Yet he shared with Proudhon the idea of socialism being
created by the working class itself. As he put it, in "a social
revolution, which in everything is diametrically opposed to a political
revolution, the actions of individuals hardly count at all, whereas
the spontaneous action of the masses is everything. All that individuals
can do is clarify, propagate and work out the ideas corresponding
to the popular instinct, and, what is more, to contribute their incessant
efforts to revolutionary organisation of the natural power of the
masses -- but nothing else beyond that; the rest can and should be
done by the people themselves . . . revolution can be waged and brought
to its full development only through the spontaneous and continued
mass action of groups and associations of the people." [Op.
Cit., pp. 298-9]
Therefore, the idea of "socialism from below" is a distinctly
anarchist notion, one found in the works of Proudhon and Bakunin and
repeated by anarchists ever since. As such, to hear Marxists appropriate
this obviously anarchist terminology and imagery appears to many anarchists
as opportunistic and attempt to cover the authoritarian reality of
mainstream Marxism with anarchist rhetoric. However, there are "libertarian"
strains of Marxism which are close to anarchism. Does this mean that
there are no elements of a "socialism from below" to be found
in Marx and Engels?
If we look at Marx, we get contradictory impressions. On the one
hand, he argued that freedom "consists in converting the state
from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate
to it." Combine this with his comments on the Paris Commune (see
his "The Civil War in France"), we can say that there are clearly
elements of "socialism from below" in Marx's work. On the other
hand, he often stresses the need for strict centralisation of power.
In 1850, for example, he argued that the workers must "not only
strive for a single and indivisible German republic, but also within
this republic for the most determined centralisation of power in the
hands of the state authority." This was because "the path of
revolutionary activity" can "proceed only from the centre."
This meant that the workers must be opposed to the "federative
republic" planned by the democrats and "must not allow themselves
to be misguided by the democratic talk of freedom for the communities,
of self-government, etc." This centralisation of power was essential
to overcome local autonomy, which would allow "every village, every
town and every province" to put "a new obstacle in the path"
the revolution due to "local and provincial obstinacy." Decades
later, Marx dismisses Bakunin's vision of "the free organisation
of the worker masses from bottom to top" as "nonsense."
[Marx-Engels Reader, p. 537, p. 509 and p. 547]
Thus we have a contradiction. While arguing that the state must
become subordinate to society, we have a central power imposing its
will on "local and provincial obstinacy." This implies a vision
of revolution in which the centre (indeed, "the state authority")
forces its will on the population, which (by necessity) means that
the centre power is "superimposed upon society" rather than
"subordinate" to it. Given his dismissal of the idea of organisation
from bottom to top, we cannot argue that by this he meant simply the
co-ordination of local initiatives. Rather, we are struck by the "top-down"
picture of revolution Marx presents. Indeed, his argument from 1850
suggests that Marx favoured centralism not only in order to prevent
the masses from creating obstacles to the revolutionary activity of
the "centre," but also to prevent them from interfering with
their own liberation.
Looking at Engels, we discover him writing that "[a]s soon as
our Party is in possession of political power it has simply to expropriate
the big landed proprietors just like the manufacturers in industry
. . . thus restored to the community [they] are to be turned over
by us to the rural workers who are already cultivating them and are
to be organised into co-operatives." He even states that this
expropriation may "be compensated," depending on "the circumstances
which we obtain power, and particularly by the attitude adopted by
these gentry." [Marx-Engels Selected Writings, pp. 638-9]
Thus we have the party taking power, then expropriating the means
of life for the workers and, lastly, "turning over"
these to them. While this fits into the general scheme of the Communist
Manifesto, it cannot be said to be "socialism from below"
which can only signify the direct expropriation of the means of production
by the workers themselves, organising themselves into free producer
associations to do so.
This vision of revolution as the party coming to power can be seen
from Engels' warning that the "worse thing that can befall the
leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to assume power at a
time when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class
he represents and for the measures this domination implies." [Collected
Works, vol. 10, p. 469] Needless to say, such a vision is hard
to equate with "socialism from below" which implies the active
participation of the working class in the direct management of society
from the bottom-up. If the leaders "assume power" then they
have the real power, not the class they claim to "represent."
Equally, it seems strange that socialism can be equated with a vision
which equates "domination" of a class being achieved by the
fact a leader "represents" it. Can the working class really
be said to be the ruling class if its role in society is to select
those who exercise power on its behalf (i.e. to select representatives)?
Bakunin quite rightly answered in the negative. While representative
democracy may be acceptable to ensure bourgeois rule, it cannot be
assumed that it be utilised to create a socialist society. It was
designed to defend class society and its centralised and top-down
nature reflects this role.
Moreover, Marx and Engels had argued in The Holy Family that
the "question is not what this or that proletarian, or even the
whole of the proletariat at the moment considers as its aim.
The question is what the proletariat is, and what, consequent
on that being, it will be compelled to do." [quoted by
Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 280] As Murray
Bookchin argues:
"These lines and others like them in Marx's writings were
to provide the rationale for asserting the authority of
Marxist parties and their armed detachments over and
even against the proletariat. Claiming a deeper and
more informed comprehension of the situation then
'even the whole of the proletariat at the given moment,'
Marxist parties went on to dissolve such revolutionary
forms of proletarian organisation as factory committees
and ultimately to totally regiment the proletariat
according to lines established by the party leadership."
[Op. Cit., p. 289]
Thus the ideological underpinning of a "socialism from above"
is expounded, one which dismisses what the members of the working
class actually want or desire at a given point (a position which Trotsky,
for one, explicitly argued). A few years later, they argued in The
Communist Manifesto that "a portion of the bourgeois goes over
to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois
ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending
theoretically the historical movement as a whole." They also noted
that the Communists are "the most advanced and resolute section
of the working-class parties . . . [and] they have over the great
mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the
line of march, the conditions, and the general results of the proletarian
movement." [Selected Works, p. 44 and p. 46] This gives
a privileged place to the party (particularly the "bourgeois ideologists"
who join it), a privileged place which their followers had no problem
abusing in favour of party power and hierarchical leadership from
above. As we discuss in section H.5, Lenin
was just expressing orthodox Social-Democratic (i.e. Marxist) policy
when he argued that socialist consciousness was created by bourgeois
intellectuals and introduced into the working class from outside.
Against this, we have to note that the Manifesto states that the proletarian
movement was "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense
majority, in the interests of the immense majority" (although,
as discussed in section H.1.1, when
they wrote this the proletariat was a minority in all countries
bar Britain). [Op. Cit., p. 45]
Looking at the tactics advocated by Marx and Engels, we see a strong
support for "political action" in the sense of participating
in elections. This support undoubtedly flows from Engel's comments
that universal suffrage "in an England two-thirds of whose inhabitants
are industrial proletarians means the exclusive political rule of
the working class with all the revolutionary changes in social conditions
which are inseparable from it." [Collected Works, vol.
10, p. 298 Marx argued along identical lines. [Op. Cit., vol.
11, pp. 335-6] However, how could an entire class, the proletariat
organised as a "movement" exercise its power under such a system?
While the atomised voting to nominate representatives (who, in reality,
held the real power in society) may be more than adequate to ensure
bourgeois, i.e. minority, power, could it be used for proletarian,
i.e. majority, power?
This is because such institutions are designed to place policy-making
in the hands of representatives and do not (indeed, cannot) constitute
a "proletariat organised as a ruling class." If public policy,
as distinguished from administrative activities, is not made by the
people themselves, in federations of self-managed assemblies, then
a movement of the vast majority in the precise sense of the term cannot
exist. For people to acquire real power over their lives and society,
they must establish institutions organised and run, as Bakunin constantly
stressed, from below. This would necessitate that they themselves
directly manage their own affairs, communities and workplaces and,
for co-ordination, mandate federal assemblies of revocable and strictly
controllable delegates, who will execute their decisions. Only in
this sense can a majority class, especially one committed to the abolition
of all classes, organise as a class to manage society.
As such, Marx and Engels tactics are at odds with any idea of "socialism
from below." While, correctly, supporting strikes and other forms
of working class direct action (although, significantly, Engels dismissed
the general strike) they placed that support within a general political
strategy which emphasised electioneering and representative forms.
This, however, is a form of struggle which can only really be carried
out by means of leaders. The role of the masses is minor, that of
voters. The focus of the struggle is at the top, in parliament, where
the duly elected leaders are. As Luigi Galleani argued, this form
of action involved the "ceding of power by all to someone, the
delegate, the representative, individual or group." This meant
that rather than the anarchist tactic of "direct pressure put against
the ruling classes by the masses," the Socialist Party "substituted
representation and the rigid discipline of the parliamentary socialists,"
the inevitably resulted in it "adopt[ing] class collaboration in
the legislative arena, without which all reforms would remain a vain
hope." It also resulted in the socialists needing "authoritarian
organisations", i.e. ones which are centralised and disciplined
from above down. [The End of Anarchism?, p. 14, p. 12 and p.
14] The end result was the encouragement of a viewpoint that reforms
(indeed, the revolution) would be the work of leaders acting on behalf
of the masses whose role would be that of voters and followers, not
active participants in the struggle (see section
J.2 for a ddiscussion on direct action and why anarchists reject
electioneering).
By the 1890s, the top-down and essentially reformist nature of these
tactics had made their mark in both Engels politics and the practical
activities of the Social-Democratic parties. Engels "introduction"
to Marx's The Class Struggles in France indicated how far Marxism
had progressed. Engels, undoubtedly influenced by the rise of Social-Democracy
as an electoral power, stressed the use of the ballot box as the ideal
way, if not the only way, for the party to take power. He notes that
"[w]e, the 'revolutionists', the 'overthrowers'" were "thriving
far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow"
and the bourgeoisie "cry despairingly . . . legality is the death
of us" and were "much more afraid of the legal than of the
illegal action of the workers' party, of the results of elections
than of those of rebellion." He argued that it was essential "not
to fitter away this daily increasing shock force [of party voters]
in vanguard skirmishes, but to keep it intact until the decisive day."
[Selected Writings, p. 656, p. 650 and p. 655]
The net effect of this would simply be keeping the class struggle
within the bounds decided upon by the party leaders, so placing the
emphasis on the activities and decisions of those at the top rather
than the struggle and decisions of the mass of working class people
themselves. As we noted in section H.1.1,
when the party was racked by the "revisionism" controversy
after Engels death, it was fundamentally a conflict between those
who wanted the party's rhetoric to reflect its reformist tactics and
those who sought the illusion of radical words to cover the reformist
practice. The decision of the Party to support their state in the
First World War simply proved that radical words cannot defeat reformist
tactics.
Needless to say, from this contradictory inheritance, Marxists had
two ways of proceeding. Either they become explicitly anti-state (and
so approach anarchism) or become explicitly in favour of party and
state power and so, by necessity, "revolution from above."
The council communists and other libertarian Marxists followed the
first path, the Bolsheviks and their followers the second. As we discuss
in the next section, Lenin explicitly
dismissed the idea that Marxism proceeded "only from below,"
stating that this was an anarchist principle. Nor was he shy in equating
party power with working class power. Indeed, this vision of socialism
as involving party power was not alien to the mainstream social-democracy
Leninism split from. The leading left-wing Menshevik Martov argued
as follows:
"In a class struggle which has entered the phase of civil war,
there are bound to be times when the advance guard of the
revolutionary class, representing the interests of the broad
masses but ahead of them in political consciousness, is
obliged to exercise state power by means of a dictatorship
of the revolutionary minority. Only a short-sighted and
doctrinaire viewpoint would reject this prospect as such.
The real question at stake is whether this dictatorship, which
is unavoidable at a certain stage of any revolution, is
exercised in such a way as to consolidate itself and create
a system of institutions enabling it to become a permanent
feature, or whether, on the contrary, it is replaced as soon
as possible by the organised initiative and autonomy of the
revolutionary class or classes as a whole. The second of
these methods is that of the revolutionary Marxists who,
for this reason, style themselves Social Democrats; the
first is that of the Communists." [The Mensheviks in the
Russian Revolution, Abraham Ascher (Ed.), p. 119]
All this is to be expected, given the weakness of the Marxist theory
of the state. As we discuss in section
H.3.7, Marxists have always had an a-historic perspective on the
state, considering it as purely an instrument of class rule rather
than what it is, an instrument of minority class rule. For
anarchists, the "State is the minority government, from the top
downward, of a vast quantity of men." This automatically means
that a socialism, like Marx's, which aims for a socialist government
and a workers' state automatically becomes, against the wishes of
its best activists, "socialism from above." As Bakunin argued,
Marxists are "worshippers of State power, and necessarily also
prophets of political and social discipline and champions of order
established from the top downwards, always in the name of universal
suffrage and the sovereignty of the masses, for whom they save the
honour and privilege of obeying leaders, elected masters." [Michael
Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 265 and pp. 237-8]
For this reason anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued for
a bottom-up federation of workers' councils as the basis of revolution
and the means of managing society after capitalism and the state have
been abolished. If these organs of workers' self-management are co-opted
into a state structure (as happened in Russia) then their power will
be handed over to the real power in any state -- the government and
its bureaucracy. The state is the delegation of power -- as such,
it means that the idea of a "workers' state" expressing "workers'
power" is a logical impossibility. If workers are running society
then power rests in their hands. If a state exists then power rests
in the hands of the handful of people at the top, not in the hands
of all. The state was designed for minority rule. No state can be
an organ of working class (i.e. majority) self-management due to its
basic nature, structure and design.
So, while there are elements of "socialism from below" in
the works of Marx and Engels they are placed within a distinctly centralised
and authoritarian context which undermines them. As John Clark summarises,
"in the context of Marx's consistent advocacy of centralist programmes,
and the part these programmes play in his theory of social development,
the attempt to construct a libertarian Marxism by citing Marx's
own proposals for social change would seem to present insuperable
difficulties." [Op. Cit., p. 93]
As discussed in the last section, Marx and
Engels left their followers with an ambiguous legacy. On the one hand,
there are elements of "socialism from below" in their
politics (most explicitly in Marx's comments on the libertarian influenced
Paris Commune). On the other, there are distinctly centralist and
statist themes in their work.
>From this legacy, Leninism took the statist themes. Which explains
why anarchists think the idea of Leninism being "socialism from
below" is incredible. Simply put, the actual comments and actions
of Lenin and his followers show that they had no commitment to a "socialism
from below." As we will indicate, Lenin disassociated himself
repeatedly from the idea of politics "from below," considering
it (quite rightly) an anarchist idea. In contrast, he stressed the
importance of a politics which somehow combined action "from above"
and "from below." For those Leninists who maintain that their
tradition is "socialism from below" (indeed, the only "real"
socialism "from below"), this is a major problem and, unsurprisingly,
they generally fail to mention it.
So what was Lenin's position on "from below"? In 1904, during
the debate over the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin
stated that the argument "[b]ureaucracy versus democracy
is in fact centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational
principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the organisational
principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The latter strives to proceed
from the bottom upward, and, therefore, wherever possible . . . upholds
autonomism and 'democracy,' carried (by the overzealous) to the point
of anarchism. The former strives to proceed from the top downward.
. ." [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Thus it is the
non-Bolshevik ("opportunist") wing of Marxism which bases itself
on the "organisational principle" of "from the bottom upward,"
not the Bolshevik tradition (as we note in section
H.5.5, Lenin also rejected the "primitive democracy" of
mass assemblies as the basis of the labour and revolutionary movements).
Moreover, this vision of a party run from the top down was enshrined
in the Bolshevik ideal of "democratic centralism" (see section
H.5.5). How you can have "socialism from below" when your
"organisational principle" is "from the top downward"
is not explained by Leninist exponents of "socialism from below."
Lenin repeated this argument in his discussion on the right tactics
to apply during the near revolution of 1905. He mocked the Mensheviks
for only wanting "pressure from below" which was "pressure
by the citizens on the revolutionary government." Instead, he
argued for "pressure . . . from above as well as from below,"
where "pressure from above" was "pressure by the revolutionary
government on the citizens." He notes that Engels "appreciated
the importance of action from above" and that he saw the need
for "the utilisation of the revolutionary governmental power."
Lenin summarised his position (which he considered as being in line
with that of orthodox Marxism) by stating that "[l]imitation, in
principle, of revolutionary action to pressure from below and renunciation
of pressure also from above is anarchism." [Marx, Engels
and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 189-90, p.
193, p. 195 and p. 196] This seems to have been a common Bolshevik
position at the time, with Stalin stressing in the same year that
"action only from 'below'" was "an anarchist principle,
which does, indeed, fundamentally contradict Social-Democratic tactics."
[Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 149]
It is in this context of "above and below" in which we must
place Lenin's comments in 1917 that socialism was "democracy from
below, without a police, without a standing army, voluntary social
duty by a militia formed from a universally armed people."
[Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 170] Given that Lenin had rejected
the idea of "only from below" as an anarchist principle (which
it is), we need to bear in mind that this "democracy from below"
was always placed in the context of a Bolshevik government.
Lenin always stressed that the Bolsheviks would "take over
full state power," that they "can and must take state power
into their own hands." His "democracy from below" always
meant representative government, not popular power or self-management.
The role of the working class was that of voters and so the Bolsheviks'
first task was "to convince the majority of the people that its
programme and tactics are correct." The second task "that confronted
our Party was to capture political power." The third task was
for "the Bolshevik Party" to "administer Russia."
[Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 352, p. 328 and p. 589] Thus Bolshevik
power was equated with working class power.
Towards the end of 1917, he stressed this vision of a Bolshevik
run "democracy from below" by arguing that "[a]fter the
1905 revolution Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners . . . yet they
tell us that Russia will not be able to be governed by the 240,000
members of the Bolshevik party." He even equated rule by the party
with rule by the class -- "the power of the Bolsheviks -- that
is, the power of the proletariat," while admitting that the proletariat
could not actually govern itself. As he put it, "[w]e know that
just any labourer or any cook would be incapable of taking over immediately
the administration of the State . . . We demand that the teaching
of the business of government be conducted by the class-conscious
workers and soldiers." The "conscious workers must be in control,
but they can attract to the actual work of management the real labouring
and oppressed masses." Ironically, he calls this system "real
popular self-administration" and "teaching the people to manage
their own affairs." He also indicated that once in power, the
Bolsheviks "shall be fully and unreservedly for a strong government
and centralism." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power, pp.
61-2, p. 66, p. 69 and p. 75]
Clearly, Lenin's position had not changed. The goal of the revolution
was simply a Bolshevik government, which, if it was to be effective,
had to have the real power in society. Thus, socialism would be implemented
from above, by the "strong" government of the "conscious
workers" who would be "in control." While, eventually,
the "labouring" masses would take part in the administration
of state decisions, the initial role of the workers could be the same
as under capitalism. And, we must note, there is a difference between
making policy and taking part in administration (i.e. between the
"work of management" and management itself), a difference Lenin
obscures.
All of which, perhaps, explains the famous leaflet addressed to
the workers of Petrograd immediately after the October Revolution,
informing that "the revolution has won." The workers were called
upon to "show . . . the greatest firmness and endurance,
in order to facilitate the execution of all the aims of the new People's
Government." They were asked to "cease immediately all economic
and political strikes, to take up your work, and do it in perfect
order . . . All to your places." It stated that the "best way
to support the new Government of Soviets in these days" was "by
doing your job." [cited by John Read, Ten Days that Shook the
World, pp. 341-2] Which smacks far more of "socialism from
above" than "socialism from below"!
The implications of Lenin's position became clearer after the Bolsheviks
had taken power in 1917. In that situation, it was not a case of "dealing
with the general question of principle, whether in the epoch of the
democratic revolution it is admissible to pass from pressure
from below to pressure from above." [Lenin, Collected Works,
vol. 24, p. 190] Rather, it was the concrete situation of a "revolutionary"
government exercising power "from above" onto the very class
it claimed to represent. Thus we have a power over the working class
which was quite happy to exercise coercion to ensure its position.
As Lenin explained to his political police, the Cheka, in 1920:
"Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed
enemies of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to
break down the resistance of these exploiters. On the other
hand, revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards
the wavering and unstable elements among the masses
themselves." [Collected Works, vol. 42, p. 170]
It could be argued that this position was forced on Lenin by the
problems facing the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, but such an argument
is flawed. This is for two reasons. Firstly, according to Lenin himself
civil war was inevitable and so, unsurprisingly, Lenin considered
his comments as universally applicable. Secondly, this position fits
in well with the idea of pressure "from above" exercised by
the "revolutionary" government against the masses (and nothing
to do with any sort of "socialism from below"). Indeed, "wavering"
and "unstable" elements is just another way of saying "pressure
from below," the attempts by those subject to the "revolutionary"
government to influence its policies. As we noted in section
H.1.2, it was in this period (1919 and 1920) that the Bolsheviks
openly argued that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was,
in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" (see section
H.3.8 on how the Bolsheviks modified the Marxist theory of the
state in line with this). Rather than the result of the problems facing
Russia at the time, Lenin's comments simply reflect the unfolding
of certain aspects of his ideology when his party held power (as we
make clear in the appendix on "How did Bolshevik
ideology contribute to the failure of the Revolution?", the ideology
of the ruling party and the ideas held by the masses are also factors
in history).
To show that Lenin's comments were not caused by circumstantial
factors, we can turn to his infamous work Left-Wing Communism.
In this 1920 tract, written for the Second Congress of the Communist
International, Lenin lambasted those Marxists who argued for direct
working class power against the idea of party rule (i.e. the various
council communists around Europe). We have already noted in section
H.1.2 that Lenin had argued in that work that it was "ridiculously
absurd and stupid" to "a contrast in general between the dictatorship
of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders." [p. 25] Here
we provide his description of the "top-down" nature of Bolshevik
rule:
"The interrelations between leaders-Party-class-masses . . .
now present themselves concretely in Russia in the following
form. The dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat
which is organised in the Soviets and is led by the
Communist Party . . . The Party, which holds annual
congresses . . . is directed by a Central Committee of
nineteen elected at the congress, while the current work
in Moscow [the capital] had to be carried on by [two] still
smaller bodies . . . which are elected at the plenary sessions
of the Central Committee, five members of the Central
Committee in each bureau. This, then, looks like a real
'oligarchy.' Not a single important political or organisational
question is decided by any State institution in our republic
[sic!] without the guiding instructions of the Central
Committee of the Party.
"In its work the Party relies directly on the trade unions . . . In
reality, all the controlling bodies of the overwhelming majority
of the unions . . . consists of Communists, who secure the carrying
out of all the instructions of the Party. Thus . . . we have a .
. . very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party
is closely linked up with the class and with the masses,
and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class
dictatorship of the class is realised." [Left-Wing Communism,
pp. 31-2]
Combined with "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences"
and Soviet Congresses, this was "the general mechanism of the proletarian
state power viewed 'from above,' from the standpoint of the practical
realisation of the dictatorship" and so "all talk about 'from
above' or 'from below,' about 'the dictatorship of leaders' or
'the dictatorship of the masses,' cannot but appear to be ridiculous,
childish nonsense." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Perhaps this explains
why he did not bother to view "proletarian" state power "from
below," from the viewpoint of the proletariat? If he did, perhaps
he would have recounted the numerous strikes and protests broken by
the Cheka under martial law, the gerrymandering and disbanding of
soviets, the imposition of "one-man management" onto the workers
in production, the turning of the unions into agents of the state/party
and the elimination of working class freedom by party power? After
all, if the congresses of soviets were "more democratic"
than anything in the "best democratic republics of the bourgeois
world," the Bolsheviks would have no need for non-Party conferences
"to be able to watch the mood of the masses, to come closer to
them, to respond to their demands." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and
p. 32] How the Bolsheviks "responded" to these conferences
and their demands is extremely significant. They disbanded them. This
was because "[d]uring the disturbances" of late 1920, "they
provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik policies."
Their frequency was decreased and they "were discontinued soon
afterward." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power,
p. 203]
At the Comintern congress itself, Zinoviev announced that "the
dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship
of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and Documents of the
Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 152] Trotsky, for his part, also
universalised Lenin's argument when he pondered the important decisions
of the revolution and who would make them in his reply to the anarchist
delegate from the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT:
"Who decides this question [and others like it]? We have
the Council of People's Commissars but it has to be subject
to some supervision. Whose supervision? That of the working
class as an amorphous, chaotic mass? No. The Central
Committee of the party is convened to discuss . . . and to
decide . . . Who will solve these questions in Spain? The
Communist Party of Spain." [Op. Cit., p. 174]
As is obvious, Trotsky was drawing general lessons for the international
revolutionary movement. Needless to say, he still argued that the
"working class, represented and led by the Communist Party, [was]
in power here" in spite of it being "an amorphous, chaotic
mass" which did not make any decisions on important questions
affecting the revolution!
Incidentally, his and Lenin's comments of 1920 disprove Trotsky's
later assertion that it was "[o]nly after the conquest of power,
the end of the civil war, and the establishment of a stable regime"
when "the Central Committee little by little begin to concentrate
the leadership of Soviet activity in its hands. Then would come Stalin's
turn." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 328] While it was definitely
the "conquest of power" by the Bolsheviks which lead to the
marginalisation of the soviets, this event cannot be shunted to after
the civil war as Trotsky would like (particularly as Trotsky admitted
that "[a]fter eight months of inertia and of democratic chaos,
came the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks." [Op. Cit., vol.
2, p. 242]). We must note (see sections H.1.2
or H.3.8) Trotsky argued for the "objective
necessity" of the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian
party" until his death.
Clearly, the claim that Leninism (and its various off-shoots like
Trotskyism) is "socialism from below" is hard to take seriously.
As proven above, the Leninist tradition is explicitly against the
idea of "only from below," with Lenin explicitly stating that
it was an "anarchist stand" to be for "'action only from
below', not 'from below and from above'" which was the position
of Marxism. [Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 77] Once in power,
Lenin and the Bolsheviks implemented this vision of "from below
and from above," with the highly unsurprising result that "from
above" quickly repressed "from below" (which was dismissed
as "wavering" by the masses). This was to be expected, for
a government to enforce its laws, it has to have power over its citizens
and so socialism "from above" is a necessary side-effect of
Leninist theory.
Ironically, Lenin's argument in State and Revolution comes
back to haunt him. In that work he had argued that the "dictatorship
of the proletariat" meant "democracy for the people" which
"imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors,
the exploiters, the capitalists." These must be crushed "in
order to free humanity from wage-slavery; their resistance must be
broken by force; it is clear that where there is suppression there
is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy." [Essential
Works of Lenin, pp. 337-8] If the working class itself is being
subject to "suppression" then, clearly, there is "no freedom,
no democracy" for that class -- and the people "will feel no
better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labelled 'the
people's stick'." [Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 338]
Thus, when Leninists argue that they stand for the "principles
of socialism from below" and state that this means the direct
and democratic control of society by the working class then, clearly,
they are being less than honest. Looking at the tradition they place
themselves, the obvious conclusion which must be reached is that Leninism
is not based on "socialism from below" in the sense
of working class self-management of society (i.e. the only condition
when the majority can "rule" and decisions truly flow from
below upwards). At best, they subscribe to the distinctly bourgeois
vision of "democracy" as being simply the majority designating
(and trying to control) its rulers. At worse, they defend politics
which have eliminated even this form of democracy in favour of party
dictatorship and "one-man management" armed with "dictatorial"
powers in industry (most members of such parties do not know how the
Bolsheviks gerrymandered and disbanded soviets to maintain power,
raised the dictatorship of the party to an ideological truism and
wholeheartedly advocated "one-man management" rather than workers'
self-management of production). As we discuss in section
H.5, this latter position flows easily from the underlying assumptions
of vanguardism which Leninism is based on.
So, Lenin, Trotsky and so on simply cannot be considered as exponents
of "socialism from below." Any one who makes such a claim is
either ignorant of the actual ideas and practice of Bolshevism or
they seek to deceive. For anarchists, "socialism from below"
can only be another name, like libertarian socialism, for anarchism
(as Lenin, ironically enough, acknowledged). This does not mean that
"socialism from below," like "libertarian socialism,"
is identical to anarchism, it simply means that libertarian Marxists
and other socialists are far closer to anarchism than mainstream Marxism.
No, far from it. While it is impossible to quote everything a person or an
ideology says, it is possible to summarise those aspects of a theory
which influenced the way it developed in practice. As such, any
account is "selective" in some sense, the question is whether
this results in a critiqued rooted in the ideology and its practice
or whether it presents a picture at odds with both. As Maurice Brinton
puts it in the introduction to his classic account of workers' control
in the Russian Revolution:
"Other charges will also be made. The quotations from Lenin
and Trotsky will not be denied but it will be stated that
they are 'selective' and that 'other things, too' were said.
Again, we plead guilty. But we would stress that there are
hagiographers enough in the trade whose 'objectivity' . . .
is but a cloak for sophisticated apologetics . . . It
therefore seems more relevant to quote those statements of
the Bolsheviks leaders of 1917 which helped determine Russia's
evolution [towards Stalinism] rather those other statements
which, like the May Day speeches of Labour leaders, were for
ever to remain of rhetoric." [The Bolsheviks and Workers'
Control, p. xv]
Hence the need to discuss all aspects of Marxism rather than take
what its adherents like to claim for it as granted. In this, we agree
with Marx himself who argued that we cannot judge people by what they
say about themselves but rather what they do. Unfortunately while
many self-proclaimed Marxists (like Trotsky) may quote these comments,
fewer apply them to their own ideology or actions (again, like Trotsky).
This can be seen from the almost ritualistic way many Marxists response
to anarchist (or other) criticisms of their ideas. When they complain
that anarchists "selectively" quote from the leading proponents
of Marxism, they are usually at pains to point people to some document
which they have selected as being more "representative" of
their tradition. Leninists usually point to Lenin's State and Revolution,
for example, for a vision of what Lenin "really" wanted. To
this anarchists reply by, as we discussed in section H.1.7 (Haven't
you read Lenin's "State and Revolution"?), pointing out
that much of that passes for 'Marxism' in State and Revolution
is anarchist and, equally important, it was not applied in practice.
This explains an apparent contradiction. Leninists point to the Russian
Revolution as evidence for the democratic nature of their politics.
Anarchists point to it as evidence of Leninism's authoritarian nature.
Both can do this because there is a substantial difference between
Bolshevism before it took power and afterwards. While the Leninists
ask you to judge them by their manifesto, anarchists say judge them
by their record!
Simply put, Marxists quote selectively from their own tradition,
ignoring those aspects of it which would be unappealing to potential
recruits. While the leaders may know their tradition has skeletons
in its closet, they try their best to ensure no one else gets to know.
Which, of course, explains their hostility to anarchists doing so!
That there is a deep divide between aspects of Marxist rhetoric and
its practice and that even its rhetoric is not consistent we will
now prove. By so doing, we can show that anarchists do not, in fact,
quote Marxist's "selectively."
As an example, we can point to the leading Bolshevik Grigorii Zinoviev.
In 1920, as head of the Communist International he wrote a letter
to the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary labour union,
which stated that the "Russian Soviet Republic. . . is the most
highly centralised government that exists. It is also the most democratic
government in history. For all the organs of government are in constant
touch with the working masses, and constantly sensitive to their will."
[Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol.
2, p. 928] The same year, he explained in a Communist journal that
"soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three
years -- not even three weeks -- without the iron dictatorship of
the Communist Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that
the dictatorship of the working class can by achieved only by the
dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All
questions . . ., on which the fate of the proletarian revolution depends
absolutely, are decided . . . in the framework of the party organisations."
[quoted by Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, pp. 239-40] It seems
redundant to note that the second quote is the accurate one, the one
which matches the reality of Bolshevik Russia. Therefore it is hardly
"selective" to quote the latter and not the former, rather
it expresses what was actually happening.
This duality and the divergence between practice and rhetoric comes
to the fore when Trotskyists discuss Stalinism and try to counter
pose the Leninist tradition to it. For example, we find the British
SWP's Chris Harman arguing that the "whole experience of the workers'
movement internationally teaches that only by regular elections, combined
with the right of recall by shop-floor meetings can rank-and-file
delegates be made really responsible to those who elect them."
[Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, pp. 238-9] Significantly,
Harman does not mention that both Lenin and Trotsky rejected this
experience (see section H.3.8 for
a full discussion on how Leninism argues for state power explicitly
to eliminate such control from below). How can Trotsky's comment that
the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is . . .
an objective necessity" be reconciled with it? And what of the
claim that the "revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces
its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution"?
[Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4] Or his similar argument sixteen
years earlier that the Party was "entitled to assert its dictatorship
even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers'
democracy"? [quoted by Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78]
The ironies do not stop there, of course. Harman correctly notes
that under Stalinism, the "bureaucracy is characterised, like the
private capitalist class in the West, by its control over the means
of production." [Op. Cit., p. 147] However, he fails to
note that it was Lenin, in early 1918, who had raised and then
implemented such "control" in the form of "one-man management."
As he put it: "Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that,
during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators
elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial
powers." [Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government,
p. 44] To fail to note this link between Lenin and the Stalinist
bureaucracy on this issue is quoting "selectively."
The contradictions pile up. He argues that "people who seriously
believe that workers at the height of revolution need a police guard
to stop them handing their factories over to capitalists certainly
have no real faith in the possibilities of a socialist future."
[Op. Cit., p. 144] Yet this does not stop him praising the
regime of Lenin and Trotsky and contrasting it with Stalinism, in
spite of the fact that this was precisely what the Bolsheviks did
from 1918 onwards! Indeed this tyrannical practice played a role in
provoking the strikes in Petrograd which preceded the Kronstadt revolt
in 1921, when "the workers wanted the special squads of armed Bolsheviks,
who carried out a purely police function, withdrawn from the factories."
Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, p. 42] It seems equally strange
that Harman denounces the Stalinist suppression of the Hungarian revolution
for workers' democracy and socialism while he defends the Bolshevik
suppression of the Kronstadt revolt for the same goals (and as we
discuss in "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?",
the rationales both regimes used to justify their actions were akin).
Similarly, when Harman argues that if by "political party"
it is "meant a party of the usual sort, in which a few leaders
give orders and the masses merely obey . . . then certainly such organisations
added nothing to the Hungarian revolution." However, as we discuss
in section H.5, such a party was precisely
what Leninism argued for and applied in practice. Simply put, the
Bolsheviks were never a party "that stood for the councils taking
power." [Op. Cit., p. 186 and p. 187] As Lenin repeatedly
stressed, its aim was for the Bolshevik party to take power through
the councils (see section H.3.11).
This confusion between what was promised and what was done is a
common feature of Leninism. Felix Morrow, for example, wrote what
is usually considered the definitive Trotskyist work on the Spanish
Revolution (in spite of it being, as we discuss in the appendix "Marxists
and Spanish Anarchism," deeply flawed). In that work he states
that the "essential points of a revolutionary program [are] all
power to the working class, and democratic organs of the workers,
peasants and combatants, as the expression of the workers' power."
[Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, p. 133] How this
can be reconciled with Trotsky's comment, written in the same year,
that "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is
still by no means the sovereign ruler of society."? Or the opinion
that it was "only thanks to the party dictatorship [that] were
the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and
attain the state form of the proletariat"? [Stalinism and Bolshevism]
Or Lenin's opinion that "an organisation taking in the whole proletariat
cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship" and that it
"can be exercised only by a vanguard"? [Collected Works,
vol. 32, p. 21] How can the working class "have all power"
if power is held by a vanguard party? Particularly when this party
has power specifically to enable it "overcom[e] the vacillation
of the masses themselves." [Trotsky, The Moralists and Sycophants,
p. 59]
Given all this, who is quoting who "selectively"? The Marxists
who ignore what the Bolsheviks did when in power and repeatedly point
to Lenin's State and Revolution or the anarchists who link
what they did with what they said outside of that holy text? Considering
this absolutely contradictory inheritance, anarchists feel entitled
to ask the question "Will the real Leninist please stand up?"
What is it to be, popular democracy or party rule? If we look at Bolshevik
practice, the answer is the latter. As we discuss in section
H.3.8, the likes of Lenin and Trotsky concur, incorporating the
necessity of party power into their ideology as a lesson of the revolution.
As such, anarchists do not feel they are quoting Leninism "selectively"
when they argue that it is based on party power, not working class
self-management. That Leninists often publicly deny this aspect of
their own ideology or, at best, try to rationalise and justify it,
suggests that when push comes to shove (as it does in every revolution)
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