... This is because of the hierarchical nature of the state, its delegation of power into the hands of the few and so a so-called "revolutionary" government can have no other result than a substitution of the few (the government) for the many (the masses). This, in turn, undermines the mass participation and action from below that a revolution needs to succeed and flourish. "Instead of acting for themselves," Kropotkin argued, "instead of marching forward, instead of advancing in the direction of the new order of things, the people, confiding in their governors, entrusted to them the charge of taking the initiative." However, social change is the product of "the people in action" and "the brain of a few individuals [are] absolutely incapable of finding solutions" to the problems it will face "which can only spring from the life of the people." For anarchists, a revolution "is not a simple change of governors. It is the taking possession by the people of all social wealth" and this cannot be achieved "be decrees emanating from a government." This "economic change" will be "so immense and so profound" that it is "impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms which must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses" and "[a]ny authority external to it will only be an obstacle, a "drag on the action of the people." A revolutionary state, therefore, "becomes the greatest obstacle to the revolution" and to "dislodge it" requires the people "to take up arms, to make another revolution." [Anarchism, p. 240, p. 241, pp. 247-8, p. 248, p. 249, p. 241 and p. 242] Which, we should stress, was exactly what happened in Russia, where anarchists and others (such as the Kronstadt rebels) called for a "Third Revolution" against the Bolshevik state and the party dictatorship and state capitalism it had created.
For anarchists, the abolition of the state does not mean rejecting the need to extend or defend a revolution (quite the reverse!). It means rejecting a system of organisation designed by and for minorities to ensure their rule. To create a state (even a "workers' state") means to delegate power away from the working class and eliminate their power in favour of party power ("the principle error of the [Paris] Commune, an unavoidable error, since it derived from the very principle on which power was constituted, was precisely that of being a government, and of substituting itself for the people by force of circumstances." [Elisée Reclus, quoted John P. Clark and Camille Martin, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, p. 72]).
In place of a state anarchists' argue for a free federation of workers' organisations as the means of conducting a revolution (and the framework for its defence). Most Marxists seem to confuse centralism and federalism, with Lenin stating that "if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organise themselves quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the communes in striking at capital . . . won't that be centralism? Won't that be the most consistent democratic centralism and, moreover, proletarian centralism?" No, it would be federalism, the most consistent federalism as advocated by Proudhon and Bakunin and, under the influence of the former, suggested by the Paris Commune. Lenin argued that some "simply cannot conceive of the possibility of voluntary centralism, of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes, for the sole purpose of destroying bourgeois rule and the bourgeois state machine." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 348] Yet "voluntary centralism" is, at best, just another why of describing federalism - assuming that "voluntary" really means that, of course. At worst, and in practice, such centralism simply places all the decision making at the centre, at the top, and all that is left is for the communes to obey the decisions of a few party leaders.
As we discuss in the next section, anarchists see this federation of workers' associations and communes (the framework of a free society) as being based on the organisations working class people create in their struggle against capitalism. These self-managed organisations, by refusing to become part of a centralised state, will ensure the success of a revolution.
H.1.4 Do anarchists have "absolutely no idea" of what to put in place of the state?
Lenin's second claim was that anarchists, "while advocating the destruction of the state machine, have absolutely no idea of what the proletariat will put in its place" and compared this to the Marxists who argued for a new state machine "consisting of armed workers, after the type of the [Paris] Commune." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 358]
For anarchists, Lenin's assertion simply shows his unfamiliarity with anarchist literature and need not be taken seriously - anyone familiar with anarchist theory would simply laugh at such comments. Sadly, most Marxists are not familiar with that theory, so we need to explain two things. Firstly, anarchists have very clear ideas on what to "replace" the state with (namely a federation of communes based on working class associations). Secondly, that this idea is based on the idea of armed workers, inspired by the Paris Commune (although predicted by Bakunin).
Moreover, for anarchists Lenin's comment seems somewhat incredulous. As George Barrett put it, in reply to the question "if you abolish government, what will you put it its place," this "seems to an Anarchist very much as if a patient asked the doctor, 'If you take away my illness, what will you give me in its place?' The Anarchist's argument is that government fulfils no useful purpose . . . It is the headquarters of the profit-makers, the rent-takers, and of all those who take from but who do not give to society. When this class is abolished by the people so organising themselves to run the factories and use the land for the benefit of their free communities, i.e. for their own benefit, then the Government must also be swept away, since its purpose will be gone. The only thing then that will be put in the place of government will be the free organisation of the workers. When Tyranny is abolished, Liberty remains, just as when disease is eradicated health remains." [Objections to Anarchism, p. 356]
Barrett's answer contains the standard anarchist position on what will be the organisational basis of a revolutionary society, namely that the "only thing then that will be put in the place of government will be the free organisation of the workers." This is a concise summary of anarchist theory and cannot be bettered. This vision, as we discuss in section I.2.3 in some detail, can be found in the work of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and a host of other anarchist thinkers. Since anarchists from Bakunin onwards have stressed that a federation of workers' associations would constitute the framework of a free society, to assert otherwise (as Lenin did) is little more than a joke or a slander. To quote Bakunin:"The future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 206]
Similar ideas can easily be found in the works of other anarchists. While the actual names and specific details of these federations of workers' associations may change (for example, the factory committees and soviets in the Russian Revolution, the collectives in Spain, the section assemblies in the French Revolution are a few of them) the basic ideas are the same. Bakunin also pointed to the means of defence, a workers' militia (the people armed, as per the Paris Commune - section H.2.1).
A major difference between anarchism and Marxism which Lenin points to is, clearly, false. Anarchists are well aware of what should "replace" the bourgeois state and have always been so. The real difference is simply that anarchists say what they mean while Lenin's "new" state did not, in fact, mean working class power but rather party power.
As for Lenin's comment that we have "absolutely no ideas" of how the working class "will use its revolutionary power" suggests more ignorance, as we have urged working people to expropriate the expropriators, reorganise production under workers' self-management and start to construct society from the bottom upwards (a quick glance at Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, for example, would soon convince any reader of the inaccuracy of Lenin's comment). This summary by the anarchist Jura Federation (written in 1880) gives a flavour of anarchist ideas on this subject:
"The bourgeoisie's power over the popular masses springs from economic privileges, political domination and the enshrining of such privileges in the laws. So we must strike at the wellsprings of bourgeois power, as well as its various manifestations.
"The following measures strike us as essential to the welfare of the revolution, every bit as much as armed struggle against its enemies:
"The insurgents must confiscate social capital, landed estates, mines, housing, religious and public buildings, instruments of labour, raw materials, gems and precious stones and manufactured products:
"All political, administrative and judicial authorities are to be deposed . . . What should the organisational measures of the revolution be?
"Immediate and spontaneous establishment of trade bodies: provisional assumption by those of . . . social capital . . .: local federation of a trades bodies and labour organisation:
"Establishment of neighbourhood groups and federations of same . . .
"Organisation of the insurgent forces . . . the federation of all the revolutionary forces of the insurgent Communes . . . Federation of Communes and organisation of the masses, with an eye to the revolution's enduring until such time as all reactionary activity has been completely eradicated . . . Once trade bodies have been have been established, the next step is to organise local life. The organ of this life is to be the federation of trades bodies and it is this local federation which is to constitute the future Commune." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 246-7]
Clearly, anarchists do have some ideas on what the working class will "replace" the state with and how it will use its "revolutionary power"!
Similarly, Lenin's statement that "the anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should utilise its state power, its revolutionary dictatorship" again distorts the anarchist position. As we argued in the last section, our objection to the "state power" of the proletariat is precisely because it cannot, by its very nature as a state, actually allow the working class to manage society directly (and, of course, it automatically excludes other sections of the working masses, such as the peasantry and artisans). We argued that, in practice, it would simply mean the dictatorship of a few party leaders. This position, we must stress, was one Lenin himself was arguing in the year after completing State and Revolution and so the leading Bolsheviks confirmed the anarchist argument that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would, in fact, become a dictatorship over the proletariat by the party.
Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri summed up the differences well:"The Marxists . . . foresee the natural disappearance of the State as a consequence of the destruction of classes by the means of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat,' that is to say State Socialism, whereas the Anarchists desire the destruction of the classes by means of a social revolution which eliminates, with the classes, the State. The Marxists, moreover, do not propose the armed conquest of the Commune by the whole proletariat, but they propose the conquest of the State by the party which imagines that it represents the proletariat. The Anarchists allow the use of direct power by the proletariat, but they understand by the organ of this power to be formed by the entire corpus of systems of communist administration-corporate organisations [i.e. industrial unions], communal institutions, both regional and national-freely constituted outside and in opposition to all political monopoly by parties and endeavouring to a minimum administrational centralisation." ["Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State Socialism", pp. 51-2, Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 52]
Clearly, Lenin's assertions are little more than straw men. Anarchists are not only well aware of the need for a federation of working class associations (workers' councils or soviets) to replace the state, they were advocating it long before Lenin took up this perspective in 1917 (as we discuss in section H.3.10). The key difference being, of course, anarchists meant it while Lenin saw it as a means of securing Bolshevik party power.
Lastly, it should also be noted that Marxists, having taken so long to draw the same conclusions as anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin, have tended to make a fetish of workers councils. As an example, we find Chris Harman of the British SWP complaining that the Argentinean masses organised themselves in the wrong way as part of their revolt against neo-liberalism which started in December 2001. He states that the "neighbourhood committees and popular assemblies" created by the revolt "express the need of those who have overthrown presidents to organise themselves" and notes "they have certain similarities with the characteristic forms of mass self organisation that arose in the great working class struggles of the 20th century - the workers' councils or soviets." But, he stressed, "they also have very important differences from these." Yet Harman's complaints show his own confusions, seriously arguing that "the popular assemblies are not yet bodies of delegates. The people at them represent themselves, but do not have an organic connection with some group of people who they represent - and who can recall them if they do not carry out their will." ["Argentina: rebellion at the sharp end of the world crisis", pp. 3-48, International Socialism, vol. 94, p. 25] That, of course, is the whole point - they are popular assemblies! A popular assembly does not "represent" anyone because its members govern themselves, i.e. are directly democratic. They are the elemental bodies which recall any delegates who do not implement their mandate! But given that Leninism aims at party power, this concern for representation is perfectly understandable, if lamentable.
So rather than celebrate this rise in mass self-management and self-organisation, Harman complains that these "popular assemblies are not anchored in the workplaces where millions of Argentineans are still drawn together on a daily basis to toil." Need it be said that such an SWP approved organisation will automatically exclude the unemployed, housewives, the elderly, children and other working class people who were taking part in the struggle? In addition, any capitalist crisis is marked by rising unemployment, firms closing and so on. While workplaces must and have been seized by their workers, it is a law of revolutions that the economic disruption they cause results in increased unemployment (in this Kropotkin's arguments in The Conquest of Bread have been confirmed time and time again). Significantly, Harman admits that they include "organisations of unemployed workers" as well as "that in some of the assemblies an important leading role is played by unemployed activists shaped by their role in past industrial struggles." He does not, however, note that creating workers' councils would end their active participation in the revolt. [Op. Cit., p. 25]
That the Argentine working class formed organs of power which were not totally dependent on the workplace was, therefore, a good sign. Factory assemblies and federations must be formed but as a complement to, rather than as a replacement of, the community assemblies. Harman states that the assemblies were "closer to the sections - the nightly district mass meetings - of the French Revolution than to the workers' councils of 1905 and 1917 in Russia" and complains that a "21st century uprising was taking the form of the archetypal 18th century revolution!" [Op. Cit.. p. 25 and p. 22] Did the Argentineans not realise that a 21st century uprising should mimic "the great working class struggles of the 20th century", particularly that which took place in a mostly pre-capitalist Tsarist regime which was barely out of the 18th century itself? Did they not realise that the leaders of the vanguard party know better than themselves how they should organise and conduct their struggles? That the people of the 21st century knew best how to organise their own revolts is lost on Harman, who prefers to squeeze the realities of modern struggles into the forms which Marxists took so long to recognise in the first place. Given that anarchists have been discussing the possibilities of community assemblies for some time, perhaps we can expect Leninists to recognise their importance in a few decades? After all, the Bolsheviks in Russia were slow to realise the significance of the soviets in 1905 so Harman's position is hardly surprising.
So, it is easy to see what anarchists think of Lenin's assertion that "Anarchism had failed to give anything even approaching a true solution of the concrete political problems, viz., must the old state machine be smashed? and what should supersede it?" [Op. Cit., p. 350] We simply point out that Lenin was utterly distorting the anarchist position on social revolution. Revolutionary anarchists had, since the 1860s, argued that workers' councils (soviets) could be both a weapon of class struggle against capitalism and the state as well as the framework of the future (libertarian) socialist society. Lenin only came to superficially similar conclusions in 1917. Which means that when he talked of workers' councils, Lenin was only repeating Bakunin - the difference being we anarchists mean it!
H.1.5 Why do anarchists reject "utilising the present state"?
This is another key issue, the question of Marxists demanding (in the words of Lenin) "that the proletariat be prepared for revolution by utilising the present state" while anarchists "reject this." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 358] By this, Lenin meant the taking part of socialists in bourgeois elections, standing candidates for office and having socialist representatives in Parliament and other local and national state bodies. In other words, what Marx termed "political action" and the Bolsheviks "revolutionary Parliamentarianism."
For anarchists, the use of elections does not "prepare" the working class for revolution (i.e. managing their own affairs and society). Rather, it prepares them to follow leaders and let others act for them. In the words of Rudolf Rocker:"Participation in the politics of the bourgeois States has not brought the labour movement a hair's-breadth nearer to Socialism, but thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely crushed and condemned to insignificance . . . Participation in parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist Labour movement like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity of constructive Socialist activity, and, worse of all, the impulse to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that salvation always comes from above." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 54]
While electoral ("political") activity ensures that the masses become accustomed to following leaders and letting them act on their behalf, anarchists' support direct action as "the best available means for preparing the masses to manage their own personal and collective interests; and besides, anarchists feel that even now the working people are fully capable of handling their own political and administrative interests." Political action, in contrast, needs centralised "authoritarian organisations" and results in "ceding power by all to someone, the delegate, the representative". "For direct pressure put against the ruling classes by the masses, the Socialist Party has substituted representation" and "instead of fostering the class struggle . . . it has adopted class collaboration in the legislative arena, without which all reforms would remain a vain hope." [Luigi Galleani, The End of Anarchism?, pp. 13-4, p. 14 and p. 12]
Anarchists, therefore, argue that we need to reclaim the power which has been concentrated into the hands of the state. That is why we stress direct action. Direct action means action by the people themselves, that is action directly taken by those directly affected. Through direct action, we dominate our own struggles, it is we who conduct it, organise it, manage it. We do not hand over to others our own acts and task of self-liberation. That way, we become accustomed to managing our own affairs, creating alternative, libertarian, forms of social organisation which can become a force to resist the state, win reforms and, ultimately, become the framework of a free society. In other words, direct action creates organs of self-activity (such as community assemblies, factory committees, workers' councils, and so on) which, to use Bakunin's words, are "creating not only the ideas but also the facts of the future itself."
The idea that socialists standing for elections somehow prepares working class people for revolution is simply wrong. Utilising the state, standing in elections, only prepares people for following leaders - it does not encourage the self-activity, self-organisation, direct action and mass struggle required for a social revolution. Moreover, as Bakunin predicted, participation in elections has a corrupting effect on those who do so. The history of radicals using elections has been a long one of betrayal and the transformation of revolutionary parties into reformist ones (see section J.2.6 for more discussion). Using the existing state ensures that the division at the heart of existing society (namely a few who govern and the many who obey) is reproduced in the movements trying to abolish it. It boils down to handing effective leadership to special people, to "leaders," just when the situation requires working people to solve their own problems and take matters into their own hands:
"The Social Question will be put . . . long before the Socialists have conquered a few seats in Parliament, and thus the solution of the question will be actually in the hands of the workmen [and women] themselves . . .
"Under the influence of government worship, they may try to nominate a new government . . . and they may entrust it with the solution of all difficulties. It is so simple, so easy, to throw a vote into the ballot-box, and to return home! So gratifying to know that there is somebody who will arrange your own affairs for the best, while you are quietly smoking your pipe and waiting for orders which you have only to execute, not to reason about." [Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, p. 34]
Only the struggle for freedom (or freedom itself) can be the school for freedom, and by placing power into the hands of leaders, utilising the existing state ensures that socialism is postponed rather than prepared for. As such, strikes and other forms of direct action "are of enormous value; they create, organise, and form a workers' army, an army which is bound to break down the power of the bourgeoisie and the State, and lay the ground for a new world." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 384-5] In contrast, utilising the present state only trains people in following leaders and so socialism "lost its creative initiative and became an ordinary reform movement . . . content with success at the polls, and no longer attributed any importance to social upbuilding." [Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 55]
Which highlights another key problem with the notion of utilising the present state as Marxist support for electioneering is somewhat at odds with their claims of being in favour of collective, mass action. There is nothing more isolated, atomised and individualistic than voting. It is the act of one person in a box by themselves. It is the total opposite of collective struggle. The individual is alone before, during and after the act of voting. Indeed, unlike direct action, which, by its very nature, throws up new forms of organisation in order to manage and co-ordinate the struggle, voting creates no alternative social structures. Nor can it as it is not based on nor does it create collective action or organisation. It simply empowers an individual (the elected representative) to act on behalf of a collection of other individuals (the voters). This will hinder collective organisation and action as the voters expect their representative to act and fight for them - if they did not, they would not vote for them in the first place!
Given that Marxists usually slander anarchists as "individualists" the irony is delicious!
If we look at the anti-Poll-Tax campaign in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we can see what would happen to a mass movement which utilised electioneering. Various left-wing parties spent a lot of time and effort lobbying Labour Councillors not to implement the tax (with no success). Let us assume they had succeeded and the Labour Councillors had refused to implement the tax (or "socialist" candidates had been elected to stop it). What would have happened? Simply that there would not have been a mass movement or mass organisation based on non-payment, nor self-organised direct action to resist warrant sales, nor community activism of any form. Rather, the campaign would have consisted of supporting the councillors in their actions, mass rallies in which the leaders would have informed us of their activities on our behalf and, perhaps, rallies and marches to protest any action the government had inflicted on them. The leaders may have called for some form of mass action but this action would not have come from below and so not be a product of working class self-organisation, self-activity and self-reliance. Rather, it would have been purely re-active and a case of follow the leader, without the empowering and liberating aspects of taking action by yourself, as a conscious and organised group. It would have replaced the struggle of millions with the actions of a handful of leaders.
Of course, even discussing this possibility indicates how remote it is from reality. The Labour Councillors were not going to act - they were far too "practical" for that. Years of working within the system, of using elections, had taken their toll decades ago. Anarchists, of course, saw the usefulness of picketing the council meetings, of protesting against the Councillors and showing them a small example of the power that existed to resist them if they implemented the tax. As such, the picket would have been an expression of direct action, as it was based on showing the power of our direct action and class organisations. Lobbying, however, was building illusions in "leaders" acting for us and based on pleading rather than defiance. But, then again, Militant desired to replace the current leaders with themselves and so had an interest in promoting such tactics and focusing the struggle on leaders and whether they would act for people or not.
Unfortunately, the Socialists never really questioned why they had to lobby the councillors in the first place - if utilising the existing state was a valid radical or revolutionary tactic, why has it always resulted in a de-radicalising of those who use it? This would be the inevitable result of any movement which "complements" direct action with electioneering. The focus of the movement will change from the base to the top, from self-organisation and direct action from below to passively supporting the leaders. This may not happen instantly, but over time, just as the party degenerates by working within the system, the mass movement will be turned into an electoral machine for the party - even arguing against direct action in case it harms the election chances of the leaders. Just as the trade union leaders have done again and again in Britain and elsewhere.
So anarchists point to the actual record of Marxists "utilising the present state". Murray Bookchin's comments about the German Social Democrats are appropriate here:"the party's preoccupation with parliamentarism was taking it ever away from anything Marx had envisioned. Instead of working to overthrow the bourgeois state, the SPD, with its intense focus on elections, had virtually become an engine for getting votes and increasing its Reichstag representation within the bourgeois state . . . The more artful the SPD became in these realms, the more its membership and electorate increased and, with the growth of new pragmatic and opportunistic adherents, the more it came to resemble a bureaucratic machine for acquiring power under capitalism rather than a revolutionary organisation to eliminate it." [The Third Revolution, vol. 2, p. 300]
The reality of working within the state soon transformed the party and its leadership, as Bakunin predicted. If we look at Leninism, we discover a similar failure to consider the evidence:
"From the early 1920s on, the Leninist attachment to pre-WWI social democratic tactics such as electoral politics and political activity within pro-capitalist labour unions dominated the perspectives of the so-called Communists. But if these tactics were correct ones, why didn't they lead to a less dismal set of results? We must be materialists, not idealists. What was the actual outcome of the Leninist strategies? Did Leninist strategies result in successful proletarian revolutions, giving rise to societies worthy of the human beings that live in them? The revolutionary movement in the inter-war period was defeated." [Max Anger, "The Spartacist School of Falsification", pp. 50-2, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no. 43, pp. 51-2]
As Scottish Anarchist Ethel McDonald argued in 1937, the tactics urged by Lenin were a disaster in practice:"At the Second Congress of the Third International, Moscow, a comrade who is with us now in Spain, answering Zinoviev, urged faith in the syndicalist movement in Germany and the end of parliamentary communism. He was ridiculed. Parliamentarianism, communist parliamentarianism, but still parliamentarianism would save Germany. And it did . . . Saved it from Socialism. Saved it for Fascism. Parliamentary social democracy and parliamentary communism have destroyed the socialist hope of Europe, has made a carnage of human liberty. In Britain, parliamentarianism saved the workers from Socialism . . . Have you not had enough of this huge deception? Are you still prepared to continue in the same old way, along the same old lines, talking and talking and doing nothing?" ["The Volunteer Ban", pp. 72-5, Workers City, Farquhar McLay (ed.), p. 74]
When the Nazis took power in 1933 in Germany the 12 million Socialist and Communist voters and 6 million organised workers took no action. In Spain, it was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT which lead the battle against fascism on the streets and helped create one of the most important social revolutions the world has seen. The contrast could not be more clear. And many Marxists urge us to follow Lenin's advice today!
All in all, the history of socialists actually using elections has been a dismal failure and was obviously a failure long before 1917. Subsequent experience has only confirmed that conclusion. Rather than prepare the masses for revolution, it has done the opposite. As we argue in section J.2, this is to be expected. That Lenin could still argue along these lines even after the rise of reformism ("revisionism") in the 1890s and the betrayal of social democracy in 1914 indicates a lack of desire to learn the lessons of history.
The negative effects of "utilising" the present state are, sometimes, acknowledged by Marxists although this rarely interferes with their support for standing in elections. Thus we find that advocate of "revolutionary" parliamentarianism, Trotsky, noting that [i]f parliamentarianism served the proletariat to a certain extent as a training school for revolution, then it also served the bourgeoisie to a far greater extent as the school of counter-revolutionary strategy. Suffice it to say that by means of parliamentarianism the bourgeoisie was able so to educate the Social Democracy that it is today [1924] the main prop of private property." [Lessons of October, pp. 170-1] Of course, the followers of Lenin and Trotsky are made of sterner stuff than those of Marx and Engels and so utilising the same tactics will have a different outcome. As one-time syndicalist William Gallacher put it in reply to Lenin's question "[i]f the workers sent you to represent them in Parliament, would you become corrupt?": "No, I'm sure that under no circumstances could the bourgeoisie corrupt me." [quoted by Mark Shipway, Anti-Parliamentary Communism, p. 21] Mere will-power, apparently, is sufficient to counteract the pressures and influences of parliamentarianism which Marx and Engels, unlike Bakunin, failed to predict but whose legacy still haunts the minds of those who claim to be "scientific socialists" and so, presumably, base their politics on facts and experience rather than wishful thinking.
This is why anarchists reject the notion of radicals utilising the existing state and instead urge direct action and solidarity outside of bourgeois institutions. Only this kind of struggle creates the spirit of revolt and new popular forms of organisation which can fight and replace the hierarchical structures of capitalist society. Hence anarchists stress the need of working class people to "rely on themselves to get rid of the oppression of Capital, without expecting that the same thing can be done for them by anybody else. The emancipation of the workmen [and women] must be the act of the workmen [and women] themselves." [Kropotkin, Op. Cit., p. 32] Only this kind of movement and struggle can maximise the revolutionary potential of struggles for reforms within capitalism. As history shows, the alternative has repeatedly failed.
It should be noted, however, that not all Marxists have refused to recognise the lessons of history. Libertarian Marxists, such as council communists, also reject "utilising the present state" to train the proletariat for revolution (i.e. for socialists to stand for elections). Lenin attacked these Marxists who had drawn similar conclusions as the anarchists (after the failure of social-democracy) in his 1920 diatribe Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. In that pamphlet he used the experiences of the Bolsheviks in semi-Feudal Tsarist Russia to combat the conclusions drawn by socialists in the advanced capitalist countries with sizeable social democratic parties. Lenin's arguments for revolutionary Parliamentarianism did not convince the anti-Parliamentarians who argued that its "significance lies not in its content, but in the person of the author, for the arguments are scarcely original and have for the most part already been used by others . . . their fallacy resides mainly in the equation of the conditions, parties, organisations and parliamentary practice of Western Europe with their Russian counterparts." [Anton Pannekoek, Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism, p. 143] While anarchists would disagree with the underlying assumption that Marx was right in considering parliamentarianism as essential and it only became problematic later, we would agree whole-heartedly with the critique presented (unsurprisingly, as we made it first).
Pannekoek's article along with Herman Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade Lenin are essential reading for those who are taken in with Lenin's arguments, along with the chapter on "Socialism" in Alexander Berkman's What is Anarchism?. Interestingly, the Comintern asked Berkman to translate Lenin's Left-Wing Communism and he agreed until he read its contents. He then said he would continue if he could write a rebuttal, a request which was rejected. For anarchists, placing the word "revolutionary" in front of "parliamentarianism" does not provide a shield against the negative influences and pressures which naturally arise by utilising that tactic. Given the sorry history of radicals doing so, this is unsurprising. What is surprising is how so many Marxists are willing to ignore that history in favour of Lenin's pamphlet.
H.1.6 Why do anarchists try to "build the new world in the shell of the old"?
Another key difference between anarchists and Marxists is on how the movement against capitalism should organise in the here and now. Anarchists argue that it should prefigure the society we desire - namely it should be self-managed, decentralised, built and organised from the bottom-up in a federal structure. This perspective can be seen from the justly famous "Circular of the Sixteen" issued at the Sonvillier congress by the libertarian wing of the First International:"The future society must be nothing else than the universalisation of the organisation that the International has formed for itself. We must therefore take care to make this organisation as close as possible to our ideal. How could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from an authoritarian organisation? It is impossible. The International, the embryo of the future human society is held to be henceforward, the faithful image of our principles of liberty and of federation, and is considered to reject any principle tending to authority and dictatorship." [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, pp. 262-3]
Anarchists apply this insight to all organisations they take part in, stressing that the only way we can create a self-managed society is by self-managing our own struggles and organisations today. It is an essential part of our politics that we encourage people to "learn how to participate in the life of the organisation and to do without leaders and permanent officials" and "practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative." This flows logically from our politics, as it is "obvious that anarchists should seek to apply to their personal and political lives this same principle upon which, they believe, the whole of human society should be based." [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, p. 94] In this way we turn our class organisations (indeed, the class struggle itself) into practical and effective "schools of anarchism" in which we learn to manage our own affairs without hierarchy and bosses and so popular organisations become the cells of the new society:"Libertarian forms of organisation have the enormous responsibility of trying to resemble the society they are seeking to develop. They can tolerate no disjunction between ends and means. Direct action, so integral to the management of a future society, has its parallel in the use of direct action to change society. Communal forms, so integral to the structure of a future society, have their parallel in the use of communal forms - collectives, affinity groups, and the like - to change society. The ecological ethics, confederal relationships, and decentralised structures we would expect to find in a future society, are fostered by the values and networks we try to use in achieving an ecological society." [Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, pp. 446-7]
Marxists reject this argument. Instead they stress the importance of centralisation and consider the anarchist argument as utopian. For effective struggle, strict centralisation is required as the capitalist class and state is also centralised. In other words, to fight for socialism there is a need to organise in a way which the capitalists have utilised - to fight fire with fire. Unfortunately they forget to extinguish a fire you have to use water. Adding more flame will only increase the combustion, not put it out!
Of course, Marx and Engels misrepresented the anarchist position. They asserted that the anarchist position implied that the Paris Communards "would not have failed if they had understood that the Commune was 'the embryo of the future human society' and had cast away all discipline and all arms, that is, the things which must disappear when there are no more wars!" [Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 115] Needless to say this is simply a slander on the anarchist position particularly as anarchists are well aware of the need to defend a revolution (see section H.2.1) and the need for self-discipline (see section H.4). Anarchists, as the Circular makes clear, recognise that we cannot totally reflect the future and so the current movement can only be "as near as possible to our ideal." Thus we have to do things, such as fighting the bosses, rising in insurrection, smashing the state or defending a revolution, which we would not have to do in a socialist society. However, we can do these things in a manner which is consistent with our values and our aims. For example, a strike can be run in two ways. Either it can be managed via assemblies of strikers and co-ordinated by councils of elected, mandated and recallable delegates or it can be run from the top-down by a few trade union leaders. The former, of course, is the anarchist way and it reflects "the future human society" (and, ironically, is paid lip-service to by Marxists).
Such common sense, unfortunately, was lacking in Marx and Engels, who instead decided to utter nonsense for a cheap polemical point. Neither answered the basic point - how do people become able to manage society if they do not directly manage their own organisations and struggles today? How can a self-managed society come about unless people practice it in the here and now? Can people create a socialist society if they do not implement its basic ideas in their current struggles and organisations? Equally, it would be churlish to note that the Commune's system of federalism by mandated delegates had been advocated by Bakunin for a number of years before 1871 and, unsurprisingly, he took the revolt as a striking, if incomplete, confirmation of anarchism (see section A.5.1).
The Paris Commune, it must be stressed, brought the contradictions of the Marxist attacks on anarchism to the surface. It is deeply sad to read, say, Engels attacking anarchists for holding certain positions yet praising the 1871 revolution when it implemented exactly the same ideas. For example, in his deeply inaccurate diatribe "The Bakuninists at Work", Engels was keen to distort the federalist ideas of anarchism, dismissing "the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups." [Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 297] Compare this to his praise for the Paris Commune which, he gushed, refuted the Blanquist notion of a revolution sprung by a vanguard which would create "the strictest, dictatorial centralisation of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary government." Instead the Commune "appealed to [the provinces] to form a free federation of all French Communes . . . a national organisation which for the first time was really created by the nation itself. It was precisely the oppressing power of the former centralised government . . . which was to fall everywhere, just as it had fallen in Paris." [Selected Writings, pp. 256-7]
Likewise, Engels praised the fact that, to combat the independence of the state from society, the Commune introduced wages for officials the same as that "received by other workers" and the use of "the binding mandate to delegates to representative bodies." [Op. Cit., p. 258] Compare this to Engels attack on anarchist support for binding mandates (which, like our support for free federation, pre-dated the Commune). Then it was a case of this being part of Bakunin's plans to control the international "for a secret society . . . there is nothing more convenient than the imperative mandate" as all its members vote one way, while the others will "contradict one another." Without these binding mandates, "the common sense of the independent delegates will swiftly unite them in a common party against the party of the secret society." Obviously the notion that delegates from a group should reflect the wishes of that group was lost on Engels. He even questioned the utility of this system for "if all electors gave their delegates imperative mandates concerning all points in the agenda, meetings and debates of the delegates would be superfluous." [Collected Works, vol. 22, p. 281 and p. 277] It should be noted that Trotsky shared Engels dislike of "representatives" being forced to actually represent the views of their constituents within the party. [In Defense of Marxism, pp. 80-1]
Clearly a "free federation" of Communes and binding mandates are bad when anarchists advocate them but excellent when workers in revolt implement them! Why this was the case Engels failed to explain. However, it does suggest that the anarchist idea that we must reflect the future in how we organise today is no hindrance to revolutionary change and, in fact, reflects what is required to turn a revolt into a genuine social revolution.
Engels asserted that the anarchist position meant that "the proletariat is told to organise not in accordance with the requirements of the struggle . . . but according to the vague notions of a future society entertained by some dreamers." [Op. Cit., vol. 23, p. 66] In this he was wrong, as he failed to understand that the anarchist position was produced by the class struggle itself. He failed to understand how that struggle reflects our aspirations for a better world, how we see what is wrong with modern society and seek to organise to end such abuses rather than perpetuate them in new forms. Thus the trade unions which Bakunin argued would be the basis of a free society are organised from the bottom-up and based upon the direct participation of the workers. This form of organisation was not forced upon the workers by some intellectuals thinking they were a good idea. Rather they were created to fight the bosses and reflected the fact that workers were sick of being treating as servants and did not wish to see that repeated in their own organisations.
As Bakunin argued, when a union delegates authority to its officials it may be "very good for the committees, but [it is] not at all favourable for the social, intellectual, and moral progress of the collective power of the International." The committees "substituted their own will and their own ideas for that of the membership" while the membership expressed "indifference to general problems" and left "all problems to the decisions of committees." This could only be solved by "call[ing] general membership meetings," that is "popular assemblies." Bakunin goes on to argue that the "organisation of the International, having as its objective not the creation of new despotism but the uprooting of all domination, will take on an essentially different character than the organisation of the State." This must be the "organisation of the trade sections and their representation by the Chambers of Labour" and these "bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society which is to replace the old world. They are creating not only the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 246-7 and p. 255]
Ou Shengbai, a Chinese anarchist, argued that libertarians "deeply feel that the causes of popular misery are these: (1) Because of the present political system power is concentrated in a few hands with the result that the majority of the people do not have the opportunity for free participation. (2) Because of the capitalist system all means of production are concentrated in the hands of the capitalists with the results that the benefits that ought to accrue to labourers are usurped by capitalists. [quoted by Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, p. 235] Does it make much sense to organise in ways which reflect these problems? Surely the reason why people become socialists is because they seek to change society, to give the mass of the population an opportunity for free participation and to manage their own affairs. Why destroy those hopes and dreams by organising in a way which reflects the society we oppose rather than the one we desire?
Ultimately, Engels dismissed the practical experiences of working class people, dismissed our ability to create a better world and our ability to dream. In fact, he seems to think there is some division of labour between "the proletariat" who do the struggling and "some dreamers" who provide the ideas. The notion that working class people can both struggle and dream was lost on him, as was the notion that our dreams shape our struggles and our struggles shape our dreams. People resist oppression and exploitation because we want to determine what goes on in our lives and to manage our own affairs. In that process, we create new forms of organisation which allows that to happen, ones that reflect our dreams of a better world. This is not in opposition to the needs of the struggle, as Engels asserted, but is rather an expression of it. To dismiss this process, to advocate organisational methods which are the very antithesis of what working class people have shown, repeatedly, that they want, is the height of arrogance and, ultimately, little more than a dismissal of the hopes, dreams and creative self-activity of working class people. As libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis put it:"the organisation's inspiration can come only from the socialist structures created by the working class in the course of its own history. It must let itself be guided by the principles on which the soviet and the factory council were founded . . . the principles of workers' management must govern the operation and structure of the organisation. Apart from them, there are only capitalist principles, which, as we have seen, can only result in the establishment of capitalist relationships." [Political and Social Writings, vol. 2, pp. 217-8]
Ironically enough, given their own and their followers claims of Marxism's proletarian core, it was Marx and Engels who were at odds with the early labour movement, not Bakunin and the anarchists. Historian Gwyn A. Williams notes in the early British labour movement there were "to be no leaders" and the organisations were "consciously modelled on the civil society they wished to create." [Artisans and Sans-Culottes, p. 72] Lenin, unsurprisingly, dismissed the fact that the British workers "thought it was an indispensable sign of democracy for all the members to do all the work of managing the unions" as "primitive democracy" and "absurd." He also complained about "how widespread is the 'primitive' conception of democracy among the masses of the students and workers" in Russia. [Essential Works of Lenin, pp. 162-3] Clearly, the anarchist perspective reflects the ideas of the workers' movement before it degenerates into reformism and bureaucracy while Marxism reflects it during this process of degeneration. Needless to say, the revolutionary nature of the early union movement clearly shows who was correct!
Anarchists, in other words, simply generalised the experiences of the workers in struggle and Bakunin and his followers were expressing a common position held by many in the International. Even Marx paid lip-service to this when he stated "in contrast to old society . . . a new society is springing up" and the "Pioneer of that new society is the International Working Men's Association." [Selected Works, p. 263] Clearly, considering the International as the embryo of the future society is worthy only of scorn as the correct position is to consider it merely as a pioneer!
As such, libertarians "lay no claims to originality in proposing this [kind of prefigurative organisation]. In every revolution, during most strikes and daily at the level of workshop organisation, the working class resorts to this type of direct democracy." [Maurice Brinton, For Workers' Power, p. 48] Given how Marxists pay lip-service to such forms of working class self-organisation, it seems amusing to hear them argue that this is correct for everyone else but not themselves and their own organisations! Apparently, the same workers who are expected to have the determination and consciousness necessary to overthrow capitalism and create a new world in the future are unable to organise themselves in a socialist manner today. Instead, we have to tolerate so-called "revolutionary" organisations which are just as hierarchical, top-down and centralised as the system which provoked our anger at its injustice in the first and which we are trying to end!
Related to this is the fact that Marxists (particularly Leninists) favour centralisation while anarchists favour decentralisation within a federal organisation. Anarchists do not think that decentralisation implies isolation or narrow localism. We have always stressed the importance of federalism to co-ordinate decisions. Power would be decentralised, but federalism ensures collective decisions and action. Under centralised systems, anarchists argue, power is placed into the hands of a few leaders. Rather than the real interests and needs of the people being co-ordinated, centralism simply means the imposition of the will of a handful of leaders, who claim to "represent" the masses. Co-ordination from below, in other words, is replaced by coercion from above in the centralised system and the needs and interests of all are replaced by those of a few leaders at the centre.
Such a centralised, inevitably top-down, system can only be counter-productive, both practically and in terms of generating socialist consciousness:"Bolsheviks argue that to fight the highly centralised forces of modern capitalism requires an equally centralised type of party. This ignores the fact that capitalist centralisation is based on coercion and force and the exclusion of the overwhelming majority of the population from participating in any of its decisions . . .
"The very structure of these organisations ensures that their personnel do not think for themselves, but unquestioningly carry out the instructions of their superiors . . .
"Advocates of 'democratic centralism' insist that it is the only type of organisations which can function effectively under conditions of illegality. This is nonsense. The 'democratic centralist' organisation is particularly vulnerable to police persecution. When all power is concentrated in the hands of the leaders, their arrest immediately paralyses the whole organisation. Members trained to accept unquestioningly the instruction of an all-wise Central Committee will find it very difficult to think and act for themselves. The experiences of the German Communist Party [under the Nazis] confirm this. With their usual inconsistency, the Trotskyists even explain the demise of their Western European sections during World War II by telling people how their leaders were murdered by the Gestapo!" [Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 43]
As we discuss in depth in section H.5 the Leninist vanguard party does, ironically, create in embryo a new world simply because once in power it refashions society in its image. However, no anarchist would consider such a centralised, hierarchical top-down class system rooted in bureaucratic power as being remotely desirable or remotely socialist.
Therefore anarchists "recognised neither the state nor pyramidal organisation" Kropotkin argued, while Marxists "recognised the state and pyramidal methods of organisation" which "stifled the revolutionary spirit of the rank-and-file workers." [Conquest of Bread and Other Writings, p. 212] The Marxist perspective inevitably places power into the hands of a few leaders, who then decree which movements to support and encourage based on what is best for the long term benefit of the party itself rather than the working class. Thus we find Engels arguing while Marxists were "obliged to support every real popular movement" they also had to ensure "that the scarcely formed nucleus of our proletarian Party is not sacrificed in vain and that the proletariat is not decimated in futile local revolts," for example "a blood-letting like that of 1871 in Paris." [Marx and Engels, The Socialist Revolution, p. 294 and p. 320] This produces a conservative approach to social struggle, with mass actions and revolutionary situations ignored or warned against because of the potential harm it could inflict on the party. Unsurprisingly, every popular revolution has occurred against the advice of the so-called "revolutionary" Marxist leadership including the Paris Commune and the 1917 February revolution in Russia (even the October seize of power was done in the face of resistance from the Bolshevik party machine).
It is for these reasons that anarchists "[a]s much as is humanly possible . . . try to reflect the liberated society they seek to achieve" and "not slavishly duplicate the prevailing system of hierarchy, class and authority." Rather than being the abstract dreams of isolated thinkers, these "conclusions . . . emerge from an exacting study of past revolutions, of the impact centralised parties have had on the revolutionary process" and history has more than confirmed the anarchist warning that the "revolutionary party, by duplicating these centralistic, hierarchical features would reproduce hierarchy and centralism in the post revolutionary society." [Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 138, p. 139 and p. 137] Moreover, we base our arguments on how social movements should organise on the experiences of past struggles, of the forms of organisation spontaneously produced by those struggles and which, therefore, reflect the needs of those struggles and the desire for a better way of life which produced them. Ultimately, no one knows when a revolution turns the hopes and aspirations of today into tomorrow's reality and it would be wise to have some experience of managing our own affairs before hand.
By failing to understand the importance of applying a vision of a free society to the current class struggle, Marxists help ensure that society never is created. By copying bourgeois methods within their "revolutionary" organisations (parties and unions) they ensure bourgeois ends (inequality and oppression).
H.1.7 Haven't you read Lenin's "State and Revolution"?
This question is often asked of people who critique Marxism, particularly its Leninist form. Lenin's State and Revolution is often considered his most democratic work and Leninists are quick to point to it as proof that Lenin and those who follow his ideas are not authoritarian. As such, it is an important question. So how do anarchists reply when people point them to Lenin's work as evidence of the democratic (even libertarian) nature of Marxism? Anarchists reply in two ways.
Firstly, we argue many of the essential features of Lenin's ideas are to be found in anarchist theory and, in fact, had been aspects of anarchism for decades before Lenin put pen to paper. Bakunin, for example, talked about mandated delegates from workplaces federating into workers' councils as the framework of a (libertarian) socialist society in the 1860s as well as popular militias to defend a revolution. Moreover, he was well aware that revolution was a process rather than an event and so would take time to develop and flourish. Hence Murray Bookchin:"Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta were not so naive as to believe that anarchism could be established over night. In imputing this notion to Bakunin, Marx and Engels wilfully distorted the Russian anarchist's views. Nor did the anarchists . . . believe that abolition of the state involved 'laying down of arms' immediately after the revolution, to use Marx's obscurantist choice of terms, thoughtlessly repeated by Lenin in State and Revolution. Indeed, much that passes for 'Marxism' in State and Revolution is pure anarchism - for example, the substitution of revolutionary militias for professional armed bodies and the substitution of organs of self-management for parliamentary bodies. What is authentically Marxist in Lenin's pamphlet is the demand for 'strict centralism,' the acceptance of a 'new' bureaucracy, and the identification of soviets with a state." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 137]
That this is the case is hidden in Lenin's work as he deliberately distorts anarchist ideas in it (see sections H.1.3 and H.1.4 for example). Therefore, when Marxists ask whether anarchists have read Lenin's State and Revolution we reply by arguing that most of Lenin's ideas were first expressed by anarchists and his work just strikes anarchists as little more than a re-hash of many of our own ideas but placed in a statist context which totally and utterly undermines them in favour of party rule.
Secondly, anarchists argue that regardless of what Lenin argued for in State and Revolution, he did not apply those ideas in practice (indeed, he did the exact opposite). Therefore, the question of whether we have read Lenin's work simply drives home the ideological nature and theoretical bankruptcy of Leninism. This is because the person is asking you to evaluate their politics based on what they say rather than on what they do, like any politician.
To use an analogy, what would you say to a politician who has cut welfare spending by 50% and increased spending on the military and who argues that this act is irrelevant and that you should look at their manifesto which states that they were going to do the opposite? You would dismiss this argument as laughable and them as liars as you would evaluate them by their actions, not by what they say. Leninists, by urging you to read Lenin's State and Revolution are asking you to evaluate them by what their manifesto says and ignore what they did. Anarchists, on the other hand, ask you to evaluate the Leninist manifesto by comparing it to what they actually did in power. Such an evaluation is the only means by which we can judge the validity of Leninist claims and politics.
As we discuss the role of Leninist ideology in the fate of the Russian Revolution in section H.6 we will provide a summary of Lenin's claims in his famous work State and Revolution and what he did in practice here. Suffice to say the difference between reality and rhetoric was extremely large and, therefore, it is a damning indictment of Bolshevism. Post-October, the Bolsheviks not only failed to introduce the ideas of Lenin's book, they in fact introduced the exact opposite. As one historian puts it:"To consider 'State and Revolution' as the basic statement of Lenin's political philosophy - which non-Communists as well as Communists usually do - is a serious error. Its argument for a utopian anarchism never actually became official policy. The Leninism of 1917 . . . came to grief in a few short years; it was the revived Leninism of 1902 which prevailed as the basis for the political development of the USSR." [Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, pp. 51-2]
Daniels is being far too lenient with the Bolsheviks. It was not, in fact, "a few short years" before the promises of 1917 were broken. In some cases, it was a few short hours. In others, a few short months. However, in a sense Daniels is right. It did take until 1921 before all hope for saving the Russian Revolution finally ended.
Simply put, if the State and Revolution is the manifesto of Bolshevism, then not a single promise in that work was kept by the Bolsheviks when they got into power. As such, Lenin's work cannot be used to evaluate Bolshevik ideology as Bolshevism paid no attention to it once it had taken state power. While Lenin and his followers chant rhapsodies about the Soviet State (this 'highest and most perfect system of democracy") they quickly turned its democratic ideas into a fairy-tale, and an ugly fairy-tale at that, by simply ignoring it in favour of party power (and party dictatorship). To state the obvious, to quote theory and not relate it to the practice of those who claim to follow it is a joke. If you look at the actions of the Bolsheviks after the October Russian Revolution you cannot help draw the conclusion that Lenin's State and Revolution has nothing to do with Bolshevik policy and presents a false image of what Leninists desire. As such, we must present a comparison between rhetoric and realty.
In order to show that this is the case, we need to summarise the main ideas contained in Lenin's work. Moreover, we need to indicate what the Bolsheviks did, in fact, do. Finally, we need to see if the various rationales justifying these actions hold water.
So what did Lenin argue for in State and Revolution? Writing in the mid-1930s, anarchist Camillo Berneri summarised the main ideas of that work as follows:"The Leninist programme of 1917 included these points: the discontinuance of the police and standing army, abolition of the professional bureaucracy, elections for all public positions and offices, revocability of all officials, equality of bureaucratic wages with workers' wages, the maximum of democracy, peaceful competition among the parties within the soviets, abolition of the death penalty." ["The Abolition and Extinction of the State," pp. 50-1, Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 50]
As he noted, "[n]ot a single one of the points of this programme has been achieved." This was, of course, under Stalinism and most Leninists will concur with Berneri. However what Leninists tend not to mention is that by the end of the 7 month period of Bolshevik rule before the start of the civil war (i.e., from November 1917 to May 1918) none of these points existed. So, as an example of what Bolshevism "really" stands for it seems strange to harp on about a work which was never really implemented when the its author was in a position to do so (i.e. before the onslaught of a civil war Lenin thought was inevitable anyway!). Similarly, if State and Revolution indicates the features a "workers' state" must have then, by May 1918, Russia did not have such a state and so, logically, it can be considered as such only if we assume that the good intentions of its rulers somehow overcome its political and economic structure (which, sadly, is the basic Trotskyist defence of Leninism against Stalinism!).
To see that Berneri's summary is correct, we need to quote Lenin directly. Obviously the work is a wide ranging defence of Lenin's interpretation of Marxist theory on the state. As it is an attempt to overturn decades of Marxist orthodoxy, much of the work is quotes from Marx and Engels and Lenin's attempts to enlist them for his case (we discuss this issue in section H.3.10). Equally, we need to ignore the numerous straw men arguments about anarchism Lenin inflicts on his reader. Here we simply list the key points as regards Lenin's arguments about his "workers' state" and how the workers would maintain control of it:1) Using the Paris Commune as a prototype, Lenin argued for the abolition of "parliamentarianism" by turning "representative institutions from mere 'talking shops' into working bodies." This would be done by removing "the division of labour between the legislative and the executive." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 304 and p. 306]
2) "All officials, without exception, to be elected and subject to recall at any time" and so "directly responsible to their constituents." [Op. Cit., p. 302 and p. 306]
3) The "immediate introduction of control and superintendence by all, so that all shall become 'bureaucrats' for a time and so that, therefore, no one can become a 'bureaucrat'." Proletarian democracy would "take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down to the roots . . . to the complete abolition of bureaucracy" as the "essence of bureaucracy" is officials becoming transformed" into privileged persons divorced from the masses and superior to the masses." [Op. Cit., p. 355 and p. 360]
4) There should be no "special bodies of armed men" standing apart from the people "since the majority of the people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force' is no longer necessary." Using the example of the Paris Commune, Lenin suggested this meant "abolition of the standing army" by the "armed masses." [Op. Cit., p. 275, p. 301 and p. 339]
5) The new (workers) state would be "the organisation of violence for the suppression of . . . the exploiting class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. The toilers need a state only to overcome the resistance of the exploiters" who are "an insignificant minority," that is "the landlords and the capitalists." This would see "an immense expansion of democracy . . . for the poor, democracy for the people" while, simultaneously, imposing "a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists . . . 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." [Op. Cit., p. 287 and pp. 337-8]
This would be implemented after the current, bourgeois, state had been smashed. This would be the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and be "the introduction of complete democracy for the people." [Op. Cit., p. 355] However, the key practical ideas on what the new "semi-state" would be are contained in these five points. He generalised these points, considering them valid for all countries.
The first point was the combining of legislative and executive functions in "working bodies". The first body to be created by the Bolshevik revolution was the "Council of People's Commissars" (CPC) This was a government separate from and above the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the soviets congress which, in turn, was separate from and above the national soviet congress. It was an executive body elected by the soviet congress, but the soviets themselves were not turned into "working bodies." The promises of Lenin's State and Revolution did not last the night.
The Bolsheviks, it must be stressed, clearly recognised that the Soviets had alienated their power to this body with the party's Central Committee arguing in November 1917 that "it is impossible to refuse a purely Bolshevik government without treason to the slogan of the power of the Soviets, since a majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets . . . handed power over to this government." [contained in Robert V. Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, pp. 128-9] However, it could be argued that Lenin's promises were kept as the new government simply gave itself legislative powers four days later. Sadly, this is not the case. In the Paris Commune the delegates of the people took executive power into their own hands. Lenin reversed this and his executive took legislative power from the hands of the people's delegates. As we discuss in section H.6.1, this concentration of power into executive committees occurred at all levels of the soviet hierarchy.
What of the next principle, namely the election and recall of all officials? This lasted slightly longer, namely around 5 months. By March of 1918, the Bolsheviks started a systematic campaign against the elective principle in the workplace, in the military and even in the soviets. In the workplace, Lenin was arguing for appointed one-man managers "vested with dictatorial powers" by April 1918 (see section H.3.14). In the military, Trotsky simply decreed the end of elected officers in favour of appointed officers. As far as the soviets go, the Bolsheviks were refusing to hold elections because they "feared that the opposition parties would show gains." When elections were held, "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results" in provincial towns. Moreover, the Bolsheviks "pack[ed] local soviets" with representatives of organisations they controlled "once they could not longer count on an electoral majority." [Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism, p. 22, p. 24 and p. 33] This kind of packing was even practised at the national level when the Bolsheviks gerrymandered a Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Congress of Soviets. So much for competition among the parties within the soviets! And as far as the right of recall went, the Bolsheviks only supported this when the workers were recalling the opponents of the Bolsheviks, not when the workers were recalling them.
Then there was the elimination of bureaucracy. The new state soon had a new bureaucratic and centralised system quickly emerge around it. Rather than immediately cutting the size and power of the bureaucracy, it "grew by leaps and bounds. Control over the new bureaucracy constantly diminished, partly because no genuine opposition existed. The alienation between 'people' and 'officials,' which the soviet system was supposed to remove, was back again. Beginning in 1918, complaints about 'bureaucratic excesses,' lack of contact with voters, and new proletarian bureaucrats grew louder and louder." [Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 242] So the rise of a state bureaucracy started immediately with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, particularly as the state's functions grew to include economic decisions as well as political ones. Instead of the state starting to "wither away" it grew:"The old state's political apparatus was 'smashed,' but in its place a new bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary rapidity. After the transfer of government to Moscow in March 1918 it continued to expand . . . As the functions of the state expanded so did the bureaucracy, and by August 1918 nearly a third of Moscow's working population were employed in offices. The great increase in the number of employees . . . took place in early to mid-1918 and, thereafter, despite many campaigns to reduce their number, they remained a steady proportion of the falling population" [Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918," pp. 429-449, Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8]
This, anarchists would stress, is an inherent feature of centralised systems. As such, this rise of bureaucracy confirmed anarchist predictions that centralisation will recreate bureaucracy. After all, some means were required to gather, collate and provide information by which the central bodies made their decisions. Overtime, this permanent collection of bodies would become the real power in the state, with the party members nominally in charge really under the control of an unelected and uncontrolled officialdom. Thus a necessary side-effect of Bolshevik centralism was bureaucracy and it soon became the real power in the state (and, ultimately, in the 1920s became the social base for the rise of Stalin). This is to be expected as any state "is already a privileged class and cut off from the people" and would "seek to extend its powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and to give priority to special interests." Moreover, "what an all-powerful, oppressive, all-absorbing oligarchy must be one which has at its services, that is at its disposal, all social wealth, all public services." [Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 36 and p. 37]
Then there is the fourth point, namely the elimination of the standing army, the suppression of "special bodies of armed men" by the "armed masses." This promise did not last two months. On the 20th of December, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars decreed the formation of a political (secret) police force, the "Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution." This was more commonly known by the Russian initials of the first two terms of its official name: The Cheka.
While it was initially a small organisation, as 1918 progressed it grew in size and activity. The Cheka soon became a key instrument of Bolshevik rule and it was most definitely a "special body of armed men" and not the same as the "armed workers." In other words, Lenin's claims in State and Revolution did not last two months and in under six months the Bolshevik state had a mighty group of "armed men" to impose its will. This is not all. The Bolsheviks also conducted a sweeping transformation of the military within the first six months of taking power. During 1917, the soldiers and sailors (encouraged by the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries) had formed their own committees and elected officers. In March 1918, Trotsky simply abolished all this by decree and replaced it with appointed officers (usually ex-Tsarist ones). In this way, the Red Army was turned from a workers' militia (i.e. an armed people) into a "special body" separate from the general population.
So instead of eliminating a "special force" above the people, the Bolsheviks did the opposite by creating a political police force (the Cheka) and a standing army (in which elections were a set aside by decree). These were special, professional, armed forces standing apart from the people and unaccountable to them. Indeed, they were used to repress strikes and working class unrest which refutes the idea that Lenin's "workers' state" would simply be an instrument of violence directed at the exploiters. As the Bolsheviks lost popular support, they turned the violence of the "worker's state" against the workers (and, of course, the peasants). When the Bolsheviks lost soviet elections, force was used to disband them. Faced with strikes and working class protest during this period, the Bolsheviks responded with state violence (see section H.6.3). So, as regards the claim that the new ("workers") state would repress only the exploiters, the truth was that it was used to repress whoever opposed Bolshevik power, including workers and peasants. If, as Lenin stressed, "where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy" then there cannot be working class freedom or democracy if the "workers' state" is suppressing that class.
As can be seen, after the first six months of Bolshevik rule not a single measure advocated by Lenin in State and Revolution existed in "revolutionary" Russia. Some of the promises were broken quite quickly (overnight, in one case). Most took longer. Yet Leninists may object by noting that many Bolshevik degrees did, in fact, reflect State and Revolution. For example, the democratisation of the armed forces was decreed in late December 1917. However, this was simply acknowledging the existing revolutionary gains of the military personnel. Similarly, the Bolsheviks passed a decree on workers' control which, again, simply acknowledged the actual gains by the grassroots (and, in fact, limited them for further development).
Yet this cannot be taken as evidence of the democratic nature of Bolshevism as most governments faced with a revolutionary movement will acknowledge and "legalise" the facts on the ground (until such time as they can neutralise or destroy them). For example, the Provisional Government created after the February Revolution also legalised the revolutionary gains of the workers (for example, legalising the soviets, factory committees, unions, strikes and so forth). The real question is whether Bolshevism continued to encourage these revolutionary gains once it had consolidated its power. It did not. Indeed, it can be argued that the Bolsheviks simply managed to do what the Provisional Government it replaced had failed to do, namely destroy the various organs of popular self-management created by the revolutionary masses. So the significant fact is not that the Bolsheviks recognised the gains of the masses but that their toleration of the application of what their followers say were their real principles did not last long and, significantly, the leading Bolsheviks did not consider the abolition of such principles as harming the "communist" nature of the regime.
We have stressed this period for a reason. This was the period before the out-break of major Civil War and thus the policies applied show the actual nature of Bolshevism, it's essence if you like. This is a significant period as most Leninists blame the failure of Lenin to live up to his promises on this event. In reality, the civil war was not the reason for these betrayals - simply because it had not started yet. Each of the promises were broken in turn months before the civil war happened. "All Power to the Soviets" became, very quickly, "All Power to the Bolsheviks." Unsurprisingly, as this was Lenin's aim all along and so we find him in 1917 continually repeating this basic idea (see section H.3.3).
Given this, the almost utter non-mention of the party and its role in State and Revolution is deeply significant. Given the emphasis that Lenin had always placed on the party, it's absence is worrying. When the party is mentioned in that work, it is done so in an ambiguous manner. For example, Lenin noted that "[b]y educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and organising the new order." It is not clear whether it is the vanguard or the proletariat as a whole which assumes power. Later, he stated that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was "the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the oppressors." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 288 and p. 337] Based on subsequent Bolshevik practice after the party seized power, it seems clear that it is the vanguard which assumes power rather than the whole class.
As such, given this clear and unambiguous position throughout 1917 by Lenin, it seems incredulous, to say the least, for Leninist Tony Cliff to assert that "[t]o start with Lenin spoke of the proletariat, the class - not the Bolshevik Party - assuming state power." [Lenin, vol. 3, p. 161] Surely the title of one of Lenin's most famous pre-October essays, usually translated as "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", should have given the game away? As would, surely, quoting numerous calls by Lenin for the Bolsheviks to seize power? Apparently not.
Where does that leave Lenin's State and Revolution? Well, modern-day Leninists still urge us to read it, considering it his greatest work and the best introduction to what Leninism really stands for. For example, we find Leninist Tony Cliff calling that book "Lenin's real testament" while, at the same time, acknowledging that its "message . . . which was the guide for the first victorious proletarian revolution, was violated again and again during the civil war." Not a very good "guide" or that convincing a "message" if it was not applicable in the very circumstances it was designed to be applied in (a bit like saying you have an excellent umbrella but it only works when it is not raining). Moreover, Cliff is factually incorrect. As we discuss in section H.6, the Bolsheviks "violated" that "guide" before the civil war started (i.e. when "the victories of the Czechoslovak troops over the Red Army in June 1918, that threatened the greatest danger to the Soviet republic," to quote Cliff). [Op. Cit., p. 161 and p. 18] Similarly, much of the economic policies implemented by the Bolsheviks had their roots in that book and the other writings by Lenin from 1917.
The conclusions of dissident Marxist Samuel Farber seem appropriate here. As he puts it, "the very fact that a Sovnarkom had been created as a separate body from the CEC [Central Executive Committee] of the soviets clearly indicates that, Lenin's State and Revolution notwithstanding, the separation of at least the top bodies of the executive and the legislative wings of the government remained in effect in the new Soviet system." This suggests "that State and Revolution did not play a decisive role as a source of policy guidelines for 'Leninism in power.'" After all, "immediately after the Revolution the Bolsheviks established an executive power . . . as a clearly separate body from the leading body of the legislature . . . Therefore, some sections of the contemporary Left appear to have greatly overestimated the importance that State and Revolution had for Lenin's government. I would suggest that this document . . . can be better understood as a distant, although doubtless sincere [!], socio-political vision . . . as opposed to its having been a programmatic political statement, let alone a guide to action, for the period immediately after the successful seizure of power." [Op. Cit., pp. 20-1 and p. 38]
That is one way of looking at it. Another would be to draw the conclusion that a "distant . . . socio-political vision" drawn up to sound like a "guide to action" which was then immediately ignored is, at worse, little more than a deception, or, at best, a theoretical justification for seizing power in the face of orthodox Marxist dogma. Whatever the rationale for Lenin writing his book, one thing is true - it was never implemented. Strange, then, that Leninists today urge us to read it to see what "Lenin really wanted." Particularly given that so few of its promises were actually implemented (those that were just recognised the facts on the ground) and all of them were no longer applied in less than six months after the seize of power.
It will be objected in defence of Leninism that it is unfair to hold Lenin responsible for the failure to apply his ideas in practice. The terrible Civil War, in which Soviet Russia was attacked by numerous armies, and the resulting economic chaos meant that the objective circumstances made it impossible to implement his democratic ideas. This argument contains flaws. Firstly, as we indicated above, the undemocratic policies of the Bolsheviks started before the start of the Civil War (so suggesting that the hardships of the Civil War were not to blame). Secondly, Lenin himself mocked those who argued that revolution was out of the question because of difficult circumstances and so to blame these for the failure of the Bolsheviks to apply the ideas in State and Revolution means to argue that those ideas are inappropriate for a revolution (which, we must stress, is what the leading Bolsheviks actually did end up arguing by their support for party dictatorship). You cannot have it both ways.
Lenin at no time indicated in State and Revolution that it was impossible or inapplicable to apply those ideas during a revolution in Russia (quite the reverse!). Given that Marxists, including Lenin, argue that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to defend the revolution against capitalist resistance it seems incredulous to argue that Lenin's major theoretical work on that regime was impossible to apply in precisely the circumstances it was designed for.
All in all, discussing Lenin's State and Revolution without indicating that the Bolsheviks failed to implement its ideas (indeed, did the exact opposite) suggests a lack of honesty. It also suggests that the libertarian ideas Lenin appropriated in that work could not survive being grafted onto the statist ideas of mainstream Marxism. In the words of historian Marc Ferro:"In a way, The State and Revolution even laid the foundations and sketched out the essential features of an alternative to Bolshevik power, and only the pro-Leninist tradition has used it, almost to quieten its conscience, because Lenin, once in power, ignored its conclusions. The Bolsheviks, far from causing the state to wither away, found endless reasons for justifying its enforcement." [October 1917, pp. 213-4]
Anarchists would suggest that this alternative was anarchism. The Russian Revolution shows that a workers state, as anarchists have long argued, means minority power, not working class self-management of society. As such, Lenin's work indicates the contradictory nature of Marxism - while claiming to support democratic/libertarian ideals they promote structures (such as centralised states) which undermine those values in favour of party rule. The lesson is clear, only libertarian means can ensure libertarian ends and they have to be applied consistently within libertarian structures to work. To apply them to statist ones will simply fail.
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