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Title: The State Author: Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici Date: 22 June 2008 Language: en Topics: the State Source: Retrieved on 17th October 2021 from http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/organization/sdf/sdf_state.htm
Faced with the crisis in the Welfare State, is it a contradiction that
in our trade-union and political activities, we anarchist communists
often end up being supporters of State intervention? Is it not
paradoxical that we of all people end up supporting the need for the
State to extend its intervention, given that one of the defining
features of our political ideology is the extinction of the State?
As is well known, the Welfare State came about as a result of
Keynesianism and, once adopted by social democrats, went on to become
the cornerstone of the development of the society supported by advanced
capitalist systems. It enables social conflicts to be absorbed and
indeed uses them to achieve a more balanced growth of accumulation and
reinvest wages in such a way as to guarantee constant economic growth,
while at the same time guaranteeing citizens better living conditions.
The welfare State does not eliminate poverty and inequality in the
distribution of resources, but it does make the conflict between poverty
and wealth less dramatic, and it was supposed to guarantee equal access
to so-called essential services such as healthcare, education, housing,
a minimum wage — in other words, living conditions that were, all told,
acceptable.
This concept of the role of the State was countered in the so-called
“real socialist” countries by the Planner-State which, through the
planning of resources and production, was supposed to achieve equitable
distribution of goods. And like the Welfare State, this plan for the
functioning of the State is not exempt from shortcomings; the one
suffers from bureaucratism, the other from abuse of power, dishonesty
and underhand dealings, to the point that the reasons for criticism of
each system often intertwine.
The long phase of expansion that the world’s economy went through has
forced both systems of social management into crisis. Hence the crisis
of the “people’s democracies” and that of the Welfare State societies
under neo-liberalism. In the new situation the role of the State is
changing, both East and West, and we see the appearance of new systems
for the management of accumulation which are characterized by
deregulation and the maximization of profits achieved by concessions by
nation States to multinationals and to the progressive economic and
financial concentration that has now reached planet-wide dimensions. The
necessary corollary of this strategy by capital is the progressive and
unrelenting impoverishment of the Fourth World, the worsening of living
and working conditions even for the inhabitants of rich countries, the
disappearance of social security and the barbarization of interpersonal
relations with an increasing drive towards individualism and
satisfaction of one’s needs through competition with others. In other
words, it is the phenomenon that we often call the logic of
privatization.
One of the forms of partial defence from this process of transformation
adopted by the stronger groups is that of coming together into social
groupings by social area. These are groupings of individuals who
identify strongly with each other for various reasons (social standing,
financial standing, religion, race, etc.), who set out to defend the
shared collective interests of the grouping they belong to. A society
thus composed can establish rules of conduct for living together and
achieve balanced distribution of resources, but it is certainly not the
society we want.
Nonetheless, the crisis in the structure of the Welfare State is driving
some of us to hypothesize the creation of self-managed structures and
services that reflect our cultural leanings and satisfy our needs.
Although in the past such experiences (think for example of the Cecilia
Colony in Brazil or Ferrer’s Modern Schools) were acceptable either as
an immature experience (as in the case of the former example) or as an
instrument of struggle (as in the case of the latter), such a working
hypothesis today is destined to be re-absorbed into society as it is
perfectly in line with the logic of consociation, which indeed
facilitates its re-absorption.
As anarchist communists we can and must fight for the liquidation of the
State, but that does not mean that we should stop fighting for the cost
and the responsibility for the provision of certain services to continue
to be borne by the social structure. Certainly, both the political and
administrative bodies would change in our view of social management; we
would never propose something like today’s health service, but we will
have to come up with a health service that actually offers assistance
and helps every citizen, whose costs would be borne by society as a
whole. The same is true for schools, for cleaning services, water
distribution, transport services, etc. The problem, then, is not whether
some services are public or private; it is the political body or
political bodies that manage society and will manage tomorrow’s society,
the composition of the administrative bodies which are in any event
necessary from a technical point of view and the point of view of
political control over them by the collectivity.
One of the basics of Anarchism throughout its history is without doubt
its anti-Statism. We do not wish to fall into the excesses of those who
even reject the Welfare State simply because it includes that little
word, allowing them to fall victim to the worst that neo-liberalism has
to offer. However, the need for a stateless society too often produces
distortions in Anarchist Communist thinking, the origin of which lies in
a hurried acceptance of the historical baggage of Anarchism. This
baggage needs contextualizing and careful analysis, particularly at a
time when capitalism in its exuberance is advocating the dissolution of
the State as an administrative, bureaucratic apparatus for the
collection of taxes and the provision of services.
A little history never hurt anyone! The beast that is the modern State
was born over two centuries ago and was closely connected with the
emergence of the bourgeoisie as the new dominant class. It is not by
chance that a large part of the typical functions of the modern State
owe their origins to revolutionary France in 1789. It is a good idea to
examine the reasons behind this profound transformation of the power
structures in society, which social relationships ceased to exist in
order to make way for others, what effects all this had on class
relations and, above all, how the domination of the emerging bourgeoisie
came about...
When Anarchists rightly denounce the ill effects that the State as a
bourgeois organization of society has on the underlying classes, they
abstract in an overly superficial way from the situation of those
classes before the birth of the “liberal State”. The total absence of
rules allowed the holders of power to behave as they wanted towards the
weak, and there is no shortage of evidence for this, even in literature
(the Italian novel “I promessi sposi” is a fine example). Even a little
reflection will confirm that this is the real essence of absolute power.
Poor countries were not only very poor (and still are), but they also
provided manpower in the extreme form of slavery.
Even the very concept of rights did not exist, and idea which was
strictly reserved for the free citizens of city states, which in the
degeneration of feudalism became limited further still to the
aristocracy and the higher clergy. The vast majority of the populace
lived in conditions where human dignity was totally denied.
“Liberté, fraternité, égalité”. The slogan which founded the modern
liberal State. We know only too well the hypocrisy that lies behind it.
What is of interest, though, is another consideration. The shift from
social organization without rules (except for that of the strongest) to
a form of social organization which claims to be based on certain ground
rules which go beyond the individual. This is anything but irrelevant.
The principle exists (even though generally ignored) and it does have
its effects, despite the arrogance of the powerful.
By way of example, a workers’ organization would have been unthinkable
in a feudal society — keeping in mind that a revolt does not count as
“workers’ organization”. In fact, before the bourgeois revolution there
were many bloody revolutions (even victorious ones). But what was not
possible was the gradual conquest of growing portions of wealth. It is
obvious that these conquests are partial and often temporary due to the
fact that they can be re-absorbed by the power (as we see only too well
today) and that the only road that counts is that of revolution. But
this does not deny two things. On the one hand, as Malatesta used to
say, the gymnastics of struggle are a form of preparation for the
revolution. This is especially important for us as we believe in a
revolution which is conscious and aware and thus impossible to re-absorb
at the hands of a new dominant class which considers itself more
knowledgeable. On the other hand, the fact that everything which serves
to improve the quality of someone’s life is by no means to be scorned
simply because it is not libertarian communism.
By cloaking itself with the mantle of rights, necessary for its struggle
against the old dominant classes, liberal society gives its approval for
a principle which is progressive (both in fact and in its results), even
with regard to those classes which remain the weakest.
“Kropotkinist solidarity, which was developed in the naturalist and
ethnographical field, confused the biologically necessary harmony of
bees with the discordia concors and concordia discors of social
aggregation and had too many (sic!) present primitive forms of
society/association to understand the ubi societas ibi jus [wherever
there is society, there is law] which exists in all non-prehistoric
political forms”.
This quotation provides us with two useful bases for reflection.
The first is that no society is possible without rules. One can discuss
(and anarchists do) how these rules can be formulated, who has the power
to establish them, how they can be equally applied to all, and so on.
However, in the absence of rules there can be no anarchy, only a jungle
— and that is something that always penalizes the weakest and rewards
the strongest.
The second is that “shared” rules have a dual function: placing limits
on the individual’s freedom on the one hand, but providing guarantees
and social justice for the protection of all on the other.
The point of departure for anarchist thinking regarding the role of the
State before, during and after the social revolution is undoubtedly
Bakunin. However, it must be said that for the purposes of understanding
the role of the modern State and possible ways to overcome it, Bakunin’s
ideas are of little use as they are too closely linked to the needs of
the struggles of his time. Unfortunately, certain unarguable statements
of Bakunin’s have been adopted as cast-iron, untouchable principles of
Anarchism, even though they have perhaps been taken out of context with
no attempt to interpret their sense. So, in order to free ourselves form
the chains of a few watchwords which only serve to distort any political
enterprise, it is necessary to clarify a few points.
Bakunin’s ideas on the matter developed during the last decade of his
life, during his activities as part of the International Workingman’s
Association and the polemics with its Marxist element. Then his main
reference points (strictly linked to the development of the
anti-authoritarian group’s action) were Italy, Spain, Russia and
Austria, to which must be added the German empire, both for its role as
the emerging power in continental Europe and for the fact that it was
host to the main nucleus of Social Democrats.
Given this situation, Bakunin was immediately concerned with three
points:
means) or its transformation (by means of reforms) are not viable means
of reaching a society of equality and solidarity;
that therefore no forms of social organization is better than any other
unless it is one where property, classes and hierarchies do not exist;
survive the Social Revolution.
These points remain unquestionably the most basic and most distinctive
features of any concept of Anarchism.
In his urgency to establish the above points, Bakunin (who was convinced
that the masses’ revolutionary uprising was imminent, thanks to the
unstoppable rise f the International) had neither the time nor the
opportunity to analyze deeply enough the role that the State had been
assuming over the previous 75 years in a slow, contradictory arc, at
times hard to make out but nonetheless constant and in some respects
irreversible. For him, the State was summed up in Germany or in the
autocratic tsarism of Russia. In fact, he did not even consider England
to be a true State as it did not meet what he believed were the
distinguishing features of the “modern State”, that is to say “military
police and bureaucratic centralization”. Clearly, from the theoretical
point of view, there is a certain distortion resulting from confusing
state organizations (or better still, centralized organizations) left
over from the past with the modern State, a good example of which would
be the United Kingdom or the rapidly-changing French State, even with
its centuries-long heritage of centralization.
The bogeyman of the State actually first appeared in Anarchist theory in
this conception of a military, police and bureaucratic centralization
and this is the source of all future deformations and the inability to
produce appropriate analyses. Every evolution of the State was
interpreted as a concentration of this centralization, impeding any
understanding of new (and not always negative) functions. The result
today is that many Anarchists are theoretically unprepared when faced
with forms of decentralization and the apparent dissolution of the
apparatus of oppression.
Bakunin realized, however, that the (decentralized) English non-State
was no less dangerous, though his works on the subject (necessary in
order to urge on the revolution which quite rightly needed to occur at
the time, and in order to dispel some pernicious illusions) tended to
lump together different forms of bourgeois domination without studying
too closely the differences between them — even if only to establish the
actual conditions of the masses under the various systems. In fact, at
times the illusion of democracy was even considered more negative for
the development of a revolutionary consciousness among the people.
But Bakunin does always appear to be indifferent to the rules of the
society within which the revolutionary struggle has to evolve,
confirmation of what was said above about this aspect being simply a
part of his thought that remained undeveloped.
Although by the mid-19^(th) century, the evolution of the State organism
had already reached a point where its distinguishing features could be
perceived (though Bakunin failed to do so for the above reasons, and
Marx too, by the way), it was extremely difficult to forecast the tasks
that the State would gradually adopt. Two considerations are worth
developing here. On the one hand, the web of responsibilities the State
would take on and their effect on the social organization as a whole. On
the other hand, we should examine if the stage of statism has had only
negative effects on human “progress” and, consequently, if it can be
considered a parenthesis in the original human tendency towards mutual
solidarity. Clearly, the answers to these two questions are anything but
irrelevant in dealing with the analysis of today’s struggles, even
though it is most unlikely they can have, as we shall see, any effect on
the prospects of reaching a society without classes and, for that very
reason, without States.
When speaking of the modern State, three functions that the apparatus of
State performs are often fused together, even though they are profoundly
different and in no way mutually necessary. They are the regulation of
the economic cycle, direct intervention in the economy and the welfare
system. These three characteristics were all added during the course of
the 20^(th) century, in addition to the traditional role of guardian of
bourgeois interests, well known to the revolutionaries of the 19^(th)
century.
Theoreticians of the advent of the techno-bureaucracy saw in this
multiplication of prerogatives the confirmation of their expectations of
a total englobing of society into the omnivorous monster of the State.
In perfect continuity with Kropotkinist determinism, for them history is
a one-way affair and the paths of social evolution are already marked
out. In this way, the tendencies which existed between the 1930s and the
1970s are held to demonstrate unequivocally the future turn of events —
their finalistic vision is simply the other side of the coin with
respect to Marxism and both fail to take into account the functionality
of social organization with the contingent interests of capital and
consequently the reversibility of choices which seem to them to be
definitive. Not by chance does the dismantlement of the State (which has
been in course during the last two decades) leave them theoretically
thrown and desperately grasping for proposals, if not decidedly and
irremediably coherent with the moves of the leaders of the world’s
economy.
The impossibility of preventing the ever more devastating cycle of
crises, after the failure of those marginalist theories designed to
interpret scientifically the state of the markets, led capital to
drastically modify its features. In the course of the years from the
early 1940s to the late 1970s, the State changed from being simply the
guardian of capitalist interests (tax drainage, police control, customs
policy, etc.) into a motor of the economy, by taking on responsibility —
by means of substantial tax increases — for revitalizing the economic
cycle which was precipitating towards the abyss of crisis.
A necessary consequence of this new economic form (Keynesianism) was the
expansion of the market, an indispensable condition for the absorption
of an ever-increasing quantity of goods, which depended on a perennial
progressive cycle. Wages become the flywheel of the economic situation
(Fordism) and increase, though at a level below productivity, driven by
the technological innovations in the organization of work (Taylorism).
It was an attempt to weaken the class struggle, turning it into a normal
way of rationalizing the system.
Clearly, capitalism was inventing a new era of prosperity for itself,
but at the same time, growing masses of the metropolitan proletariat in
the industrialized countries were gaining access to goods which were
once out of their reach. The period of struggle in the late ‘60s made it
clear, though, that this situation did not translate into a permanent
integration of the weaker classes into the commercial mindset. In fact,
it was from the very sectors which could be said to be representative of
the so-called working masses that the protests against the system
emanated and to them that they continued.
A further step was taken in the 1930s. This evolution took place almost
naturally, but it was a far from necessary one, so much so that it did
not arise at the centre of the capitalist system — the USA.
Superficially, there is much in common between the situation that
developed in the two antagonistic areas of totally-planned economies
(the Soviet area) and directed-planning economies (capitalist Europe).
But, as we will see, the two cases had certain characteristics that
clearly indicate how different they were.
The first stimulus developed almost by chance in fascist Italy. Faced
with the crisis in many industrial complexes, the regime set up the
Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI — Institute for
Industrial Reconstruction) in 1933. This body took over struggling
companies with the stated intention of re-introducing them into the
market once they had been put in order. Instead, the IRI quickly found
itself in possession of notable portions of industrial production and
ended up holding onto them, managing them directly and creating a new
sector — that of State Participation. The IRI survived the fascist era
and following World War II became the most important player in the
country’s economic life. Its success in softening the blows of the
economic cycle (thanks partly to the enormous availability of capital
even from the State) was so great that British Labour Party members in
the 1950s came to study it to see if it could be reproduced in the UK,
followed by the French and Germans. Thus was born the State which
participates directly in the country’s economic life with its own
capital — the State as businessman.
The Soviet economy was entirely a different affair. There, the State
management of the economy was total and did not involve any competition.
It was the result of the coming to power of a class which was not the
entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, but the educated petite bourgeoisie with
its own methods of extracting surplus value. These two systems provided
different types of economic planning which were only nominally similar.
At this stage, we cannot avoid making a quick appraisal of this new role
of the State which developed in continuity with, but not in consequence
of, the previously-examined role as regulator and stimulator of the
economic cycle. Those of us who remember the labour struggles of the
Sixties and Seventies will certainly recall the fact that two different
national labour contracts were signed for workers in a private companies
and for workers in State Participation companies, with the latter often
preceding the former. In this way, the terms of the latter were often
seen as a target, thereby forcing the bosses of the private sector to
reluctantly make greater concessions to their workers. However, in an
age of rampant liberalism the State Participation firms became
synonymous with corruption and waste and on a wave of emotional reaction
were dismantled and sold off to the private sector. Thus it became
possible for a model firm like Nuovo Pignone in Florence (having been
acquired by AGIP — part of the IRI group — and converted to a new type
of production, having developed avant-garde technology, having won
itself a good slice of the world market in its sector and having become
an excellent source of profit for the State) to be sold off to its US
competitor, General Electric.
Doubtlessly, certain elements within public sector management got rich
through running the State Participation companies, but there is no doubt
either that wage levels and workers’ conditions in this privileged
sector served as a reference point for other workers in their demands.
It is therefore perfectly legitimate to think that perhaps the desperate
drive to destroy this sector came about principally as a result of the
needs of the bosses in the private sector to eliminate an uncomfortable
competitor rather than from some vague and barely credible moral drive
to eliminate corruption.
Furthermore, the physical elimination of Enrico Mattei (president of
AGIP and promoter of an autonomous supply of crude oil by-passing the
international oil cartel, the Seven Sisters) on the orders of the oil
companies is certainly food for thought.
In the course of the 20^(th) century, the State gradually took on the
role of provider of social services (education, healthcare, social
insurance, transport, etc.). The advantage for the bosses was obvious.
Taxes (to which they contributed to a much lower degree than workers)
paid for a whole series of services, giving the bosses a
better-educated, healthier and (it was hoped) less restive workforce.
But it is also true that for the workers there was an undeniable
advantage, too. The alternative would not have been lower taxation
(something we will come back to) but the abandoning of all forms of
social protection to the jungle of profit — something which we are now
witnessing in all clarity.
Welfare, in fact, was once known as “social salary” and was considered
by workers’ organizations as another form of pay for their work. Public
education may have concentrated on the acquisition of the skills
required for work, but it also enabled the weaker classes to gain access
to general educational standards which had hitherto been impossible. If
healthcare was designed to “repair” the damaged workforce, from another
point of view it also guaranteed treatment of illnesses which had once
cut swathes through the proletariat. While pensions often tended to
transfer the costs of an obsolete or redundant workforce onto the whole
of society, they can also be said to provide an alternative to the
poorhouse and to the total degradation of old age which members of the
weakest classes were once subjected to. The public transport system may
have made it possible for huge numbers of the proletariat to be
abandoned amid the marginalization of the outlying districts of cities,
but it has to be said that it also allowed greater enjoyment of leisure
time by large sections of the population which once had no access to
mobility.
Refusing to examine the State in all its various guises is simply
short-sighted.
As a result, there are those who think that if the State is the enemy,
then everything that comes from the State must be rejected. But this
type of reasoning does not take into account the other enemy —
capitalism — which is today aiming at the destruction of the State. And
there is yet another misconception, even more insidious but nonetheless
erroneous: as the proletariat and capital have opposing interests,
everything that goes to the advantage of the latter can only be to the
disadvantage of the former.
But if this were the case, seeing that wages are undeniably at the
lowest level that the bosses are prepared to cede in order to exploit
the workforce fully and are thus an advantage to employers, then
employees should refuse them. In effect, while we fight (or rather,
should do) to increase wages at the cost of profit, we should at the
same time be fighting to ensure that services are increasingly directed
towards the exploited classes and increasingly away from the wealthier
classes.
But this should never mean, obviously, that we renounce the
revolutionary subverting of the system in order to obtain a just, free
and egalitarian society.
As has been made clear from what we have said thus far, over the last
150 years, the State has substantially changed its role, its functions
and its structure. But, on the other hand, while Marxism separates the
role of government (a bourgeois entrepreneurial committee, as it has
been called) from that of the State as an apparatus, and therefore
developed the concept of using the State machine for revolutionary ends,
certain sectors of Anarchism, on the other hand, unite both functions
and have ended up over time losing the ability to distinguish and,
consequently, the capacity for political orientation.
We therefore need to think again about the whole question if we are to
avoid the risk of accepting the apparatus of state as it is or avoid
rejection a priori of anything that comes from the State, both of which
would serve only to deliver us into the hands of aggressive
neo-liberalism.
Much has been said about the absolutist or theocratic State, the pure
expression of the power of a privileged caste (and against which
Bakunin’s criticisms were directed), which still existed in many
countries in the mid-18^(th) century, though not for much longer. Our
attention, however, is best concentrated on the liberal State which by
now is firmly established throughout the world with a high level of
capitalist development (and that it is the lesser of two evils is only
too clear to those “third-world” countries which are still living under
oppressive dictatorships).
It is true that bourgeois rights are fictitious — the State is never
impartial. In a society divided by class, even the consequences of
illegality are divided by class. But it does no harm to keep in mind the
old saying about throwing the baby out with the bathwater — even if the
water is very dirty and the baby very small. And for two good reasons.
The first is simply that it would be stupid to sacrifice the baby. The
second is that we would be helping our class enemy, who is trying to
hold on to the bathwater but wants to throw out the baby.
One point on which Anarchists have always been in disagreement with
Marxists is regarding the need for the survival of the State during the
transitional period. The use of the State’s functions in order to spread
and defend the revolution, according to the followers of so-called
scientific socialism; decentralization and direct management of society
by the proletariat, in order to ensure that the proletariat immediately
takes control of the revolution as the solution for the problems
generated by class society, for Anarchist Communists.
Marxists have accused Anarchist positions of being cooperativist,
sustaining that if our methods were followed the result would be
conflict and inequality, not to mention an inability to defeat the
inevitable bourgeois reaction. For their part, Anarchists have
maintained that the survival of a centralized power (the State) would
generate a new expropriator class and would distance the masses from the
revolution. Experience has provided unequivocal evidence of the truth of
this. Moreover, there have been notable examples of solidarity between
the dispossessed whenever the revolutionary self-management of the
proletariat has had even the slightest possibility to exist freely.
Having established that, let us now look at the matter a little more
carefully. First of all, Anarchists’ legitimate criticism has led them
towards a slippery slope which could be fatal unless it is adequately
dealt with. Solidarity is a blueprint for civilization which humans must
be educated into and it is not by chance that the examples we have
already mentioned all occurred in places where revolutionary militants
had already been exerting their influence for some time, in other words
where the masses were better prepared for revolution. Put another way,
it would be dangerous to confuse anarchy, which is the final condition
of human evolution (the result of a growth of civilization and the
awareness of our role in society), with the primordial conduct of man
the animal — violent, crude and aggressive.
In the second place, we need to avoid confusion in our goals: no
concentration of power must be allowed in the administration of the res
publica. Instead, it is important to maintain a centralized role (on the
basis of free agreement from below, obviously) for public services in
order to guarantee the same rights for everyone.
The Spanish anarchists in 1936 had no doubts. Knowing full well that the
revolution can succeed only if everything works from day one (as far as
possible) with regard to supplies and to services, they ensured that the
workers organized public services (for example transport in Barcelona)
in order to keep them operational. It follows from this that though it
is right for the bourgeois State apparatus to be demolished and not
transformed (as some have said in the past), the same cannot be said
where public services are concerned — children’s education, care of the
elderly and the sick, public transport and so on. It can also be deduced
that where such services already exist and are provided to citizens on
the basis of equality, then the transition to collectivized management
by the workers of those sectors will be so much easier than would be the
case if these services were to be sold off piecemeal to the private
sector and forced to operate in order to create profit.
Marxists have always maintained the entire evolution of history to be
determined by structure (the production system with its related social
relations), while other aspects such as politics, culture and war are
merely more or less direct consequences of the structure, even though
they bring their own effects (superstructure).
Anarchists, on the other hand, agree that the structure is the primary
source of the social system (history is the history of the class
struggle), but that the superstructure is not so closely dependent on
it, that it has a life of its own and that at times it can even interact
with the structure, contributing to its development. [A brief aside:
strangely enough, Marxists developed a notable taste for political
involvement and electoral activity, whereas Anarchists developed a
fanatical lack of interest in these areas.]
As for the State, Marxists drew the conclusion that, once the production
relationships (ownership) had changed as a result of the revolution, the
superstructure of the State should continue to exist until such times as
its functions became unnecessary (on the basis of this, Trotskyists
speak about the USSR as a degenerated workers’ State, ignoring the
complete failure of the revolutionary ideals as a result of the new
Soviet bureaucratic apparatus). Anarchists maintain that it is essential
to abolish the State apparatus immediately, substituting it with
alternative forms of cooperative associationism, as we are convinced
that power can regenerate exploitation even if the exploitation is
initially abolished as a result of the revolution — something which
clearly came true in the case of the USSR.
Once again, the principle was good but the course of time and bad
propaganda caused a corruption of the principle in an extremely
dangerous way. By forgetting that our prime enemy is the exploitation by
one man of another (as Bakunin well knew) and that the State was one of
the historic manifestations of exploitation and was neither the only one
nor a necessary one, Anarchists have confused the theory of the
transitional phase with the theory of history and have ended up
proclaiming the State as the proletariat’s number one enemy (and even,
for some, its only enemy!). Marxist “statophilia” has been
counterbalanced by an equally obtuse Anarchist “statophobia”. In other
words, they have concentrated their criticism on capital’s instrument of
domination developed during one particular historical phase, only to
forget the domination itself and the various other forms it can take.
And all because of the fear that the State might once again reproduce
the exploitation should it survive during the revolutionary phase.
This is the reason why much Anarchist writing talks of the State being
the main enemy and why anyone who claims instead that our main enemy is
the bourgeoisie is accused of being a crypto-Marxist. So why, then, is
the boss class now aiming at the dissolution of the State, in its
20^(th)-century form? And why do some extremist fringe elements of US
neo-liberalism (like Friedmann) even recommend privatizing police
forces, going back to the good old days of vigilante groups or all the
various other forms of private police (and/or criminal manpower) that
are used to repress in various ways and at various times in almost every
State in the world?
Neither should it be forgotten that mafias throughout the world were
born or survive for the very reason that they are a form of social and
police control wherever, in the absence of the abolishment of
exploitation in production, the State or its equivalent is unable to
guarantee the bourgeoisie full control of the territory, even with
force, and is forced to share it with mafia-like “dark powers”,
absorbing them and allowing them to permeate through every institutional
level.
As we near the end of this study, it must be repeated that a generic
approach to the subject of the State cannot move us forward (and can
actually set us back). We therefore need to distinguish between the
various functions of the modern State (or at least what they were until
the recent neo-liberal attack), between the functions of social order
both in one single area and internationally (the Warfare State, as some
have called it), and the functions of assuring minimum standards of
security to citizens (the Welfare State, in other words). The various
functions are often linked and support each other but this does not take
away from the fact that they are based on different principles. The
former are purely coercive and have no place within an egalitarian
society, whereas the latter are designed to ease social integration and
have a role to play that any society worthy of the name would wish to
cover, albeit with necessary changes in their form.
However, the way things are going at present, it seems that the
direction we are going in is not the one we would like. It is a road
which capitalism has taken with great willingness. The elimination of
the Welfare State and the maintaining, and indeed strengthening, of the
Warfare State. EU treaties, the growth of NATO, the development of
professional armies in Italy and other countries — all these point in
the same direction, a direction which, among other things, excludes any
consistent diminution in the tax burden, at least as far as employees
are concerned.
In fact, we could add that anything other than a development of the
Welfare State only plays into the hands of the class enemy. It is the
struggle for the Welfare State that can prepare us for (and not move us
further away from) the collective and solid self-management of
relationships. Instead, it seems that for some so-called anarchists, the
evil lies in public healthcare, education and social security because
they are provided by State bodies, and not the exploitation of illness,
knowledge and old age for profit.
But let us not forget that while the State is an obstacle to any
revolutionary success and that it must disappear from the very start of
any future revolution in the relationships between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat, its appearance in history was a step forward from the
barbarism that preceded it and that its disappearance, if not
accompanied by a revolutionary change in the relationships of ownership,
will end up pushing us further from and not bringing us closer to our
goal.
Anarchist anti-Statism has, without doubt, been useful in drawing
attention to several aspects that Marxism failed to deal with: the role
of political power, the role of the institutions during and following
the revolution, the role of the intellectual classes, the inner nature
of the administration and its ability to reproduce itself, the evolutive
autonomy of the superstructure under certain conditions and its
influence on the general evolution. In all these areas there have been
irreversible theoretical advances which have been proved in the field
during the various attempts to install socialism using the parameters of
different varieties of Marxism.
However, we need to clean up anti-Statism and remove the detritus which
has gathered around it as a result of the accumulation of often
overly-superficial interpretations based on simple analogies. In
particular, the pernicious confusion between state and public, between
bureaucracy and services, between hierarchic and collective. It is, of
course, true that public services are affected by bureacratization and a
lack of attention to the needs of the individuals who use them. But it
is also true that the daily scandal created in the media (controlled by
the powers-that-be) regarding disservices and inefficiency serves only
to pave the way for private profit. The road which leads from today’s
justly-criticizable public services to an egalitarian, classless society
does not run through the impervious jungle of capitalism in its wildest
form and of the so-called interests of each citizen. It is a different
road, one which runs in the opposite direction:
form of “political representation”, and on the quality of distribution
of services.
This is they way to prepare for an efficient future self-management of
society and of the services which are designed to remove any
inequalities created among humans by nature. This is the true and most
profound meaning of a “public service”.
Before dealing with the problem of the Transitional Period, the
anarchist communist political organization first needs to be clear on
the various conceptions which foresee the end of the Bourgeois State as
a result of the political and institutional rupture provoked by a
successful proletarian revolution, not only from the point of view of
terminology, but in terms of our basic strategy.
We go beyond the concepts of the “abolition of the State” or the
“destruction of the State” as they imply two aspects regarding the end
of the State that are based on the violent action by a group of
professional politicians and the instantaneous or rapid nature of this
action.
Diametrically opposed to these two concepts can be found two others,
which we equally reject. They are the concept of the “withering away of
the State” and the “extinction of the State”. We go beyond both these
concepts as they imply, in the case of the first, reference to an
entirely objective, mechanical process that would lead to the
disappearance of the State and, in the case of the latter, to a more
gradual nature for the same process.
While in the first two cases we believe there is no sense to violent
action by a political minority against the State if there is no real
proletarian self-organization, as far as the second two go, we believe
it is impossible for the extinction of the State to be a spontaneous and
automatic process, without revolutionary action carried on by the
subordinate class working towards that goal.
The anarchist communist choice for our basic strategy is the conception
of the “liquidation of the State” — the political and economic action of
organization of proletarian autonomy which seeks to make any re-building
of the State impossible and remove any basis for it on a social level.
The liquidation of the State is therefore the final act of a process
that is born and develops already within, and in total contrast to, the
society divided into classes, which marks the definitive and total break
between the authoritarian, class system on the one hand and the new
anarchist communist society on the other.
The liquidation of the State is, then, the destruction of the structures
of exploitation and the apparatus of domination, and the move from a
society divided into classes to an anarchist communist society. It makes
a reality of the revolutionary goal of getting rid of the legal,
military and administrative institutions which regulate class society,
in order that communist methods of production, distribution and social
regulation under the control and the self-government of self-managed
proletarian structures in a federated and libertarian manner can be
brought into being.