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Quite a bit stands on how anarchists are supposed to relate to
Marxists--the kind of socialists who believe there is to be a worker's
state, after the social revolution.
I have had many conversations with you all over the years about the
approach our organising takes with respect to Statism. I agree with
our resolute stance against __any__ form of hierarchy. In other
circles this might be verbalised as a slight--"sectarianism". But what
does this actually mean? Does it mean we are excluding legitimate
comrades from our cause? I always took it this way. Really what such
criticism amounts to is a disagreement over the aims, principles, and
methods of revolution.
Marxists are the ones who have--historically--excluded our ideas from
the cause of worker's struggle. So too in their attempts to re-animate
their conception of the social revolution. It is not that they
turned-back the argument for Free Association on itself; this is
absurd. Because, intolerance cannot be with with tolerarance.
A Statist Socialist--be their a Trotskyists, a follower of Bookchin,*
a Stalinist, any kind of Bolshevik, and academic, or a measly social
democrat--has not parted ways with the current social and political
epoch.
They still hold fast to the idea of there still existing or operating
some form of Government; some form of hierarchy existing and
percolating through every section of the planet's social ecology.
Let us imagine we are to form a political party--and through some, or
any means, form the state-within-the-capitalist state, their either
conquers, assumes, dissolves, or takes over the existing social
order. What is left? We are--on all accounts from the Bolsheviks--left
with the epoch of Socialism. But, so __we__ understand in the
Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation, we have not advanced one iota towards
Communism. We have replaced one form of Government with another.
I am not so interested in whether this Socialist State is of a
cosmopolitan political composition, because, whether any state is a
multi-party monopoly on power, it still remains some monopoly over the
social affairs of our ecology. Emma Goldman was clear on this topic:
in the same way as Religion is a monopolistic tyranny on the beliefs
of humanity, so too the State is a tyranny over the social behaviours
of our complex social and natural environment.
The kind of "unity" that State Socialism--in any of its forms--is a
trick. Really all a Statist is saying to you when they discuss "unity"
amongst the workers is the "unity" of the State. Co-operate with the
State!
No. The terms of the question have not been properly posed by the
Orthodox Marxists. Engels did say that he considered Anarchism to have
the strategy of revolution the "wrong way around".* This is because he
was the one with the solution sagging upside down on its head!
This brings me to the other topic I wanted to discuss with you
all. This is to ask you: what is it when anarchists are advocating for
a "social revolution"?
The Marxists were once the animals of the "Social Democratic"
parties. Look at what the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were called
before their parties split: the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party (RSDLP). But, a Marxist revolution is just a reorganisation of
social life under a State. It is a substitute of one form of
Government for yet another.
The anarchist conception of revolution demands that human, as well as
the rest of planet Earth's ecology, must undergo a radical
restructuring. The collectivisation of Property is still a monopoly
over the means of subsistence and the instruments of
production. Consider, for instance, the following thought experiment:
Socialist Alternative seizes power. This unorthodox Trotskyist party
who follow the teachings of Tony Cliff achieve their wildest
phantasies. The revolution goes as well as it possibly could have:
completely according to their plan.* The party assumes the name of the
Communist Party, and they, following the tradition of the Bolsheviks,
assume control of the 'former' Australian Capitalist State. Whether it
be a multi-party State matters not. They dutifully replicate in
reality Marx's dictum that the Executive and Legislative arms of their
imagined Soviets are to be fused.*
Now--watch carefully: in the same way as the Sophist speaks of there
being no foundation to truth, it is "turtles all the way down":
50% + 1 member of their Soviets awards the 'Alternatives' their
control of the State apparatus. 50% + 1 member of their National
Council (NC) awards control of the Party to their National Executive
(NE). Power over the whole clockworks of the State is now collected in
the same number of people at a board-room meeting.
So much for unity! This is the substitution of the letters "U-N-I-O-N"
for the letters "T-Y-R-A-N-N-Y". Indeed where Statists such as
Socialist Alternative enjoy collection, anarchists enjoy dissolution.
_This_ is the foundation of the Anarchist conception of
Democracy--"Democracy Without State Characteristics", if I am allowed
to speak so cheekily.
Anarchism wanta nothing of that. Our conception of Democracy, the
'true one' so as we regard planet Earth's social ecology, still
involves bodies of assemblies of humans, but nowise involving
political parties, and, similarly, we eliminate the need for the
permanence and everlastingness of these social bodies. Perhaps once
the purpose of a collective communal body has achieved its aims, it
can be unwound and dissolved.
Engels attempted to frame his rejection of anarchism in terms of the
necessity of Authority, but really, what he was describing is what
Anarchists would verbalise as 'Discipline'.* There is, in a distorted
way, a conception of free co-operation and mutual aid in Marxism, but
too often these Statists will confuse--or, perhaps, conspire--to
replace the meaning of 'SOLIDARITY' with 'COERCION'.
I hope this letter finds you all well. I have been thinking baout this
topic for a while now, as I had been wondering about this question of
the relationship between unity, coercion, and the state.
To health and anarchy,
~vidak.