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Title: In Defense of Anarchism Author: Ron Tabor Date: July 28, 1996 (original); September 11, 2018 (revised) Language: en Topics: Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, Black Rose Anarchist Federation, Russian Revolution, China, Maoism, Mao Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-07 from https://blackrosefed.org/in-defense-of-anarchism-chris-day-response/ Notes: This is a reply to https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-day-the-historical-failure-of-anarchism written by Chris Day.
Twenty years after its demise in 1998 the Love & Rage Revolutionary
Anarchist Federation continues to be an important organizational
reference for anarchism today. The groupâs origins began in 1989 as a
project based around creating a monthly newspaper, Love & Rage, later
evolving into a more formal network until becoming a formal membership
based federation of local groups in 1993. As the organization
consolidated localized anarchist groups, involving hundreds of members
over its lifespan, it built a vibrant culture of internal debate and
created a pole within anarchism committed to active work within larger
social movements. The range of organizing work members engaged in ranged
from abortion clinic defense, Latin American solidarity, cop watch,
anti-war mobilizations and more.
Importantly members of the organization went on to participate in the
North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists, Bring the Ruckus (of
which the late Joel Olson was an important figure), and later in Black
Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation.
âIn Defense of Anarchism: A Reply to Chris Dayâ by Ron Tabor is an
important but previously unknown piece in the history of Love & Rage and
the debates surrounding its demise. Tabor had been a leading figure in
the Revolutionary Socialist League, a Trotskyist group that became
critical of Leninism and disbanded immediately prior to the founding of
Love & Rage which he participated in. The essay is a response to the
better-known polemic âThe Historical Failure of Anarchismâ by Chris Day,
which criticized anarchism as a political tradition and laid the
groundwork for Day and his supporters to leave anarchism altogether.
Taborâs response had not previously circulated outside of the
organization until it was scanned by a former member in 2017. This is
the first time it has appeared publicly in print form.
The piece is long and detailed but carries its share of important
insights. Tabor argues that Day and others are right to critique the
failures of anarchism, but that Marxist authoritarian revolutions
provide no solutions either, instead they offer a track record of
failure themselves. âYes, anarchism has been a failure,â he writes, âbut
letâs be clear about something: Marxism has also been a failure, and an
abysmal one at that.â Authoritarian Marxism, Tabor argues, whether under
Stalinâs influence in revolutionary Spain or Mao in China, has not
created workersâ liberation. Even Leninâs leadership in Russia, which
contributed to the October Revolution, developed âonly to strangle [the
revolution] ruthlessly in the year or so afterward and to build in its
place one of the most monstrous and violent state-dominated societies
the world has ever seen.â
But Tabor is not without hope; he argues that revolutionaries must
continually strive for liberation, and in the words of Marx, contribute
to the task of the working class liberating themselves. He writes, âto
raise peopleâs political consciousness, including their understanding of
the nature of Marxism and all authoritarian ideologies and social
structures, is one of the chief tasks of anarchists and
anti-authoritarians.â Even in the face of failure, Tabor tells us,
transforming consciousness is part and parcel of authentic, liberatory
revolutionary struggle.
---
Note: This piece has been extensively edited for clarity and length. The
full version can be found
.
Although 22 years old, Ron Taborâs reply to Chris Dayâs Historical
Failure of Anarchism is as relevant today as it was then. The fact that
the Kasama Project, a neo-Maoist group which went defunct in 2016,
continued to circulate Dayâs essay and left publisher Kersplebedeb
reprinted it in 2010 speaks to the issue. At the time Taborâs reply was
written, Day and company had been moving from anarchism to a sort of
warmed-over Maoism within Love & Rage. Day addressed some very real
questions in anarchism, but did so not from an anarchist point of view,
but from one rooted in Marxism. His celebration of the Chinese
Revolution, standing armies and the Stalinist two-stage revolution
theory introduced a strongly authoritarian current into the
anti-authoritarian Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation.
Needless to say, Dayâs piece played a large role in splintering Love &
Rage into two polarized factions: a mushy Maoist (really, social
democratic state capitalist) faction, many of whose members eventually
joined Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO/OSCL); and an anarchist
one, whose members remain in anti-authoritarian organizations to this
day.
In the essay below, Tabor exposes Dayâs misrepresentations of both the
Chinese and Spanish Revolutions. He offers a critique of the two-stage
theory and Marxist âobjective conditions.â He holds to the point of view
that revolutionaries should push uprisings in the most
anti-authoritarian directions internationally rather than settle for
something âsecond bestâ (really, not better at all). Most important, he
emphasizes that people, including revolutionaries, define themselves by
their actions, not by whatever banner they may be waving.
---
Bill Bachmann was a member of Love & Rage and prior to that a member of
the Revolutionary Socialist League together with Ron Tabor. He currently
lives in New York City and is a member of Black Rose/Rosa Negra
Anarchist Federation.
By Ron Tabor | July 28, 1996
At the risk of seeming uncomradely, let me state my conclusions here at
the beginning. When I began my series on Marxism several years ago, I
expected to see a revival of Marxism on the left with which
anarchists/anti-authoritarians would have to contend. What I didnât
expect and what we are now seeing is the revival of Marxism within the
anarchist movement and within Love and Rage in particular. To my even
greater surprise, what we are getting â that is, what Chris is
advocating â is not even the left-wing âlibertarian Marxismâ that the
Revolutionary Socialist League, of which I was a member, advocates, but
a form of warmed-over Maoism. Finally, this Maoism is not even of the
radical variety that dresses itself in anarchistic garb, but one that is
really a variant of Social Democracy, that is, a form of reformist,
statist socialism (actually state capitalism).
Whatâs happening, it seems to me, is that for the first time Chris has
looked at some of the concrete problems anti-authoritarian revolutions
have faced and will face, and then, despairing of finding
anti-authoritarian solutions, has embraced elitist, authoritarian
proposals as the ânext best thing.â To be sure, Chris raises these
issues as questions to be considered. Yet his discussion is largely an
apology, and a distorted, shallow one at that, of the methods of the
Chinese Communist Party. The methods of this Stalinist organization were
authoritarian in the extreme and led not to any kind of
anti-authoritarian revolution, but to a thoroughly bourgeois/capitalist
one, and at the expense of the lives of millions of people, to boot.
Before we proceed further, let me say here that I agree, somewhat, with
three of the points that Chris makes. First, I agree that anarchism has
failed in the sense that there has been no worldwide anti-authoritarian
revolution, or even a successful anti-authoritarian revolution in one
country. Second, I agree that the anarchist movement has not been very
impressive in developing its theory, and that its efforts to explain its
defeats have not been fully convincing. Third, I agree that it is not
possible to carry out an anti-authoritarian revolution in one country
alone. But I draw entirely different conclusions from all this than
Chris does.
Yes, anarchism has been a failure in the sense that Chris means, but
letâs be clear about something: Marxism has also been a failure, and an
abysmal one at that. There is today no international classless,
stateless society that Marxism advocates and predicts, nor is there
socialism (or even a dictatorship of the proletariat), even in one
country. In my opinion, Marxists did lead a proletarian revolution in
Russia in 1917, only to strangle it ruthlessly in the year or so
afterward and to build in its place one of the most monstrous and
violent state-dominated societies the world has ever seen. Is this any
less of a failure than that of anarchism? If anything, it is more so:
anarchism doesnât have the blood of many tens of millions of people on
its hands.
Marxism has been âsuccessfulâ only if one fails to see, or willfully
obscures, the fact that Marxism did not carry out anything like the
socialist transformations they predicted, but bourgeois, that is,
pro-capitalist ones which, whatever their achievements, resulted in the
torture and murder of millions of people.
This is something that Chrisâs document slides over. Chris pays lip
service to the bourgeois nature of the Chinese Revolution, but he never
discusses what this really means. Of course, we can support bourgeois
revolutions, just as we may support various bourgeois reforms under
capitalism, but we should not dress up bourgeois revolutions in
anti-authoritarian clothes. Nor should we transform ourselves into
bourgeois revolutionaries just because bourgeois revolutions have been
successful and anti-authoritarian ones have not.
It is also true that the anarchist movement has not been particularly
strong in the development of its theory, including an analysis of its
failures and weaknesses. But has Marxism been as successful in this
realm as Chris implies? In my opinion, Marxismâs theoretical âsuccessâ
is on a par with its practical accomplishments. Marxist theory is very
impressive in its sheer bulk. But what about its substance?
Marxist theory has contributed an impressive analysis of capitalism,
capitalist ideology and various facets of human history. This material
is often insightful, but not as original or as telling as it appears.
Moreover, its implications are thoroughly authoritarian and represent
the opposite of Marxismâs proletarian and liberationist claims.
Marxismâs attempts to understand itself, both as an ideology and in
terms of its practical results, has been sadly deficient. Marxism has
shown itself to be totally incapable of grasping what it has actually
accomplished and what it really is. Marxist analysis of Communist
revolutions and the societies they have created range from bald-faced
apologetics to self-serving excuses, rarely getting close to a serious
explanation. The best Marxism has been able to do are the
state-capitalist analyses of the Communist system, such as those of Tony
Cliff in Great Britain and Raya Dunayeskaya and C.L.R. James in the US.
And neither of these, nor any of the other less insightful analysis, has
even tried to address the responsibility of Marxism itself for this very
system. Indeed, one of their chief aims is to SAVE Marxism from being
judged by and rejected because of the gruesome regimes it has created.
For a worldview that claims to be self-conscious, in contrast to the
âfalse consciousnessâ that afflicts everyone else, this is not very
impressive.
I agree that the various explanations that anarchists have offered for
the defeats of anarchists movements and revolutions have been deficient:
it isnât enough to say that they were defeated/betrayed by their
enemies. Yet, however limited these explanations are, they are true as
far as they go. But Chrisâs discussion doesnât even give these analyses
the credence they deserve. These revolutionary movements, such as those
in the Ukraine and Spain, faced not only the combined animosity of all
the old ruling classes of the world, but also the systematic sabotage of
the Communists and the Soviet Union. These were indeed overwhelming
odds, and even if the workers, peasants and anarchist militants in each
arena had been smart enough to adopt Chrisâs suggestions, they probably
still would have been defeated.
Beginning in 1918, no methods were too vile, too dishonest or ruthless,
in the Communistsâ campaign to slander, isolate and destroy every
left-wing organization, tendency, and individual that dared even to
criticize them, let alone actually oppose them. They had millions of
dollars at their disposal which they used to finance newspapers,
magazines and books, in fact, an enormous worldwide propaganda
apparatus. They had an army of agents, not just diplomats and spies but
world-famous intellectuals, who repeated every lie, no matter how
absurd, and every slander, no matter how outrageous, about those labeled
âanti-Soviet.â All left-wing critics and opponents of the Soviet Union
and the particular policies it advocated at any given moment were
denounced and, where this was feasible, killed, as
counter-revolutionaries, fascists and agents of Hitler.
The results, over several decades, was a dramatic alteration of the
entire left, the effects of which are still with us. Most important for
our purposes, virtually all of the political trends to the left of the
Communists â anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, left-wing socialist,
Trotskyists â were either destroyed or politically marginalized.
The Soviet role in Spain is particularly instructive here, and those who
are not familiar with it should not leave it to Chrisâs shabby
presentation to satisfy their curiosity. A knowledge of these events is
not only relevant to the immediate point we are discussing, but crucial
to understanding virtually all the issues Chris raises. (For those are
familiar with these developments, please forgive the digression. For
those who are not, please forgive the sketchy nature of the discussion.)
In February, 1936, a coalition of liberal and left-wing parties and
organizations known as the Popular Front won the elections held under
the newly-formed Spanish Republic. Claiming the need to resist the
imminent âSovietizationâ of Spain, a group of fascist generals under the
leadership of Francisco Franco revolted in July and, from various parts
of the country, began to march on Madrid to crush the republic. In
response, workers and peasants throughout Spain rose up to resist them.
They not only organized militias that put up a determined and largely
effective resistance. They also seized factories, workshops, the means
of transportation and communication in the cities, the land in the
countryside, and ran out the capitalists and landlords, their allies and
agents. Not least, they set up collectives and councils to manage what
they had confiscated.
While the fascist forces were being financed and armed by Hitler and
Mussolini, the Republican government was internationally isolated. The
US was officially neutral, while England and France pursued a policy of
appeasement, that is, giving Hitler whatever he wanted in the hopes that
he would leave their countries (and their colonial empires) alone. The
only country that offered to aid the Spanish Republic was the Soviet
Union, but at a price. In exchange for military and other assistance
Stalin insisted that the social revolution in Spain be rolled back and
that the revolutionary struggle there be transformed into a
traditional-style war between two bourgeois armies.
There were two interrelated reasons behind Stalinâs policy. First,
consistent with his theory of âSocialism in One Country,â (that is, the
defense of state capitalism in Russia), he wanted to convince Britain,
France and the US to form an anti-Fascist alliance with the Soviet Union
and was worried that the Revolutionary events in Spain would scare them
off. Second, following from his theory of the two-stage revolution, he
had decided that the objective conditions in Spain were not ripe for a
socialist revolution, but only a bourgeois one.
But in Spain, most of the bourgeoisie had fled and/or had sided with
Franco and most of the state apparatus had collapsed. As a result,
Stalinâs policy meant bringing back the institutions, including the
police and standing army, of the old regime, seizing the land and
factories from the peasants and workers, smashing the revolutionary
organizations they had built and imprisoning and murdering thousands of
leaders and militants of those left-wing organizations that opposed his
policies.
Robbed of the revolutionary conquests, forced to submit to the
oppressive conditions of the old system, and shorn of many of their
leaders, the workers and peasants became demoralized. In part as a
result, the Republican forces, deprived of the mass participation in
revolutionary enthusiasm of the workers and peasants and forced to wage
a traditional military campaign, were defeated.
Chrisâs discussion of the Spanish Revolution is superficial and
mechanical, and conveniently forgets to mention that it entailed the
murder of the most militant and politically conscious workers and
peasants. Chris discusses the militias only in terms of their
traditional military efficiency, and entirely omits the role of the
consciousness and morale of the Spanish workers and peasants. (As we
will see, this is also a major problem with his discussion of the
Chinese Revolution.) Undoubtedly, the militias left a lot to be desired
militarily (and probably could have profited from an increase in
discipline and the coordination of their forces). But the liquidation of
these outfits and the replacement by a traditional army, based on a
traditional military hierarchy and discipline, was inseparable from the
liquidation of the revolutionary conquests and the resulting political
demoralization of the workers and peasants.
And all this, including the execution of their political enemies, was
inseparable from the Stalinistsâ view that the Spanish Revolution was,
and had to be, a bourgeois one. Believing in the inevitability of the
bourgeois revolution in Spain, the Stalinists did everything in their
power to make sure that this, and only this, kind of revolution
occurred.
One of the main reasons the Stalinist were able to do what they did in
Spain and elsewhere was the fact that millions of people, both in Spain
and around the world, believed that the Soviet Union was socialist, a
workersâ state, some other kind of progressive alternative to
capitalism, or, at the very least, the only force capable of waging a
consistent fight against fascism. In other words, millions believed that
if the Russians did or said something, it must be right.
In light of this, the traditional anarchist explanation for the defeat
of the revolution in Spain has a great deal of truth to it, although I
donât think the most significant conclusions have been drawn from it.
What I believe the defeat of the revolution in Spain and of
anti-authoritarian movements elsewhere and the long list of Marxist
âvictoriesâ weâve seen throughout the century reveal is that humanity as
a whole has not yet been ready to carry out the transformation that the
anarchist vision entails. But this is not primarily a question of
so-called âobjective conditions,â but of âsubjectiveâ ones, the
political consciousness and understanding of the majority of oppressed
people. Not only have they accepted the lies about capitalism and lacked
faith in their ability to take over and manage society, millions of
those who did wish to change society believed in Communism and were
willing to follow Marxists. We human beings may well have been
insufficiently prepared for an anti-authoritarian revolution in other
ways, but this one was sufficient.
To raise peopleâs political consciousness, including their understanding
of the nature of Marxism and all authoritarian ideologies and social
structures, is one of the chief tasks of anarchists and
anti-authoritarians in general. But we wonât be able to do this if we
become attracted to and begin to promote authoritarian ideologies
because theyâve been more successful or have more impressive theory. It
seems to me that it is of the very nature of anti-authoritarianism to be
on the losing side of popular struggles for liberation until humanity
achieves the transformation we envision. This is something we should be
proud of, not something we should sell for the chance to emulate
authoritarian revolutionaries.
I realize that my claim that humanity has not been ready for an
anti-authoritarian social transformation because of our illusions in
Marxism and other authoritarian ideologies has not always been popular
in the anarchist movement (nor, of course, in the Marxist one).
Anarchists often argue, or seem to argue, that humanity has always been
ready for anarchism but has been thwarted by the actions of Marxists and
other authoritarians. This downplays human beingsâ responsibility for
our own conditions. If the state is bad, where does it come from? If
capitalism and other class societies are brutal and oppressive, why do
they arise and why do we put up with them? Why do so many people believe
Marxismâs claim to be liberatory, despite all the evidence to the
contrary? This is one area in which anarchist theory, it seems to me,
needs to be developed.
But instead of furthering this theoretical development, Chris has gone
over to an authoritarian standpoint, but without being explicit about
it. He puts forward several propositions which, as he puts it,
âchallenge some basic anarchist prejudices.â One is that âin a world
characterized by gross disparities in the level of economic development
as a consequence of imperialism, it has simply not been possible to
overthrow capitalism in most (if not all) of the imperialized [read:
colonized] countries. Revolutions in those countries have been of
necessity capitalist (and usually state capitalist) revolutions that
have swept away certain horribly oppressive pre-capitalist features and
renegotiated the terms of capitalist exploitation.â
The crucial words here are âof necessity.â What Chris is actually
arguing without drawing out the conclusions is: (1) that the economic
and social conditions in the imperialized countries have guaranteed that
revolutions in these countries have been, and could only have been,
bourgeois revolutions, (2) that efforts on the part of anarchists and
others to carry out more radical transformations have been mistakes, (3)
that, since the same objective conditions apply, attempts to carry out
anti-authoritarian revolutions in imperialized countries in the future
will inevitably fail and should not be attempted, and (4) that
revolutionaries in these countries (and perhaps in the âadvancedâ
industrialized countries), should aim at carrying out state-capitalist
revolutions.
There is a lot to be said about this complex of issues, so let me limit
myself to several points.
Chris uses the term âobjective conditionsâ to justify his position. This
term, as utilized in the Marxist mileu, refers to the economic and
social conditions of a given country which determine that countryâs
supposed ripeness to carry out a given kind of revolution. Prior to
1917, it was used by most Marxists to insist, as Chris now does, that
the imperialized countries were not ripe for socialist revolutions, but
first had to experience bourgeois ones.
The problem with this concept of the âobjective conditionsâ is that it
is very abstract and obscures the actual realities of the countries to
which it refers. Economic and social conditions in all countries are
very uneven. No country is uniformly advanced: nor is any country
totally backward. This is this especially the case since the development
of imperialism, which has brought about a tremendous intermingling of
economic, social, political and ideological forms. As a result, most
imperialized countries have been characterized, and are still
characterized by complex combinations of conditions, ranging from
extremely archaic to extraordinarily modern. It is therefore very
difficult to determine which country is or isnât ripe for a particular
kind of revolution.
For example, at the turn of the century Russia was considered by most
revolutionaries, and certainly by Marxists, to be a âbackwardâ country
(indeed, most Marxists looked to Marxism as a means to modernize the
country, which is what happened). Yet, as Leon Trotsky and others
observed, this characterization was simplistic and obscured the concrete
nature of Russian reality. While it was true that the vast majority of
the people in what was then the Russian Empire were peasants who lived
under barbaric conditions and that the country was ruled by an absolute
monarch, etc., the country also contains some of the worldâs largest and
most technologically advanced factories, in part as a result of
imperialism. Because of such industry, the country also contained a
small but highly concentrated working class which had a tremendous
amount of power at its disposal if only it chose to use it.
As a result of all this, it is incorrect simply to say that Russia
lacked the objective conditions for a socialist revolution. This is
especially so when one considers not merely the objective conditions but
also the subjective conditions, that is, the consciousness of the
popular classes. Throughout the centuries, the Russian peasants,
ânormallyâ quiescent, profoundly conservative and under the domination
of religious and ancient superstitions, periodically rose up in vast,
powerful upheavals. Although generally led by someone who claims to be
the true Tsar, as opposed to the âpretenderâ who occupied the throne,
these uprisings threatened, for a time, the social structure, indeed the
very existence, of the entire country. Moreover, the working class, only
recently come into existence, was extremely receptive to revolutionary
ideas, not only Marxism, but anarchism and anarchist-like programs as
well.
When we consider these subjective conditions (which are objective from
the point of view of revolutionaries, that is, they are something we
face as objective reality, not something we have control over), we can
see that it is profoundly misleading simply to judge of any given
country that the objective conditions are not right for socialist
revolution. This is especially so when we consider another facet of the
question.
Itâs always easy, after the fact, to say that something happened of
necessity, that is, that it was inevitable that things happened as they
did. This is especially true of social and historical developments. Once
some particular social event has occurred, itâs relatively easy to come
up with a theory that appears to explain it. But to develop a theory
that can predict social developments is something else again. This is a
major weakness of bourgeois sociology and its radical manifestation,
Marxism.
The same consideration applies to revolutions, especially so when we are
considering revolutionary defeats. Once a revolution has been smashed,
it sounds convincing to say that this was inevitable. The person who
says this, particularly if he blames the defeat on âobjective
conditions,â comes across as scientific. The revolution was defeated and
science, which at this level is deterministic, comes up with
explanations to explain why this happened. By the same token, those who
argue that the defeat was not inevitable appear to have their heads in
the clouds. In short, reality is hard to argue against.
As a result, when Chris and others contend that a given revolution, say
in China, could only have been a bourgeois one, this seems to make
sense. But this claim then becomes a justification for what actually
happened and an apology for the policy pursued by those who led the
(bourgeois) revolution: since they won, they must have been right.
Simultaneously, the contention becomes the condemnation of those who
tried to carry out a more radical revolution and an argument against
trying to lead similarly radical transformations in the future.
The problem for revolutionaries is that prior to a revolutionary
outbreak neither we nor anyone else can know what will happen. But what
we believe may happen will determine how we act, and how we act may
determine what actually occurs, that is, what kind of revolution takes
place. Thus, if at the beginning of a revolution, we assume that the
objective conditions for an anti-authoritarian revolution are not ripe
and that such a revolution will of necessity be defeated, we will tend
to act in a way that will further that result. This is in fact what
happened in Spain and China.
In Spain, as we saw, Stalin assumed that the country was not ready for a
socialist revolution but only a bourgeois one. He therefore ordered his
agents and followers to dismantle the socialist aspects of the
revolution, that is, to limit the revolution to the so-called bourgeois
stage. But since revolutions canât be so neatly divided in two stages or
any other way, the Stalinist efforts to limit the revolution led to the
destruction of the entire revolution, including the bourgeois one.
Something very similar happened in China. In the 1920s, as part of his
struggle against his opponents in the Russian Communist Party, Stalin
adopted the slogan âSocialism in One Country.â As we discussed, this
meant foregoing attempts to encourage socialist revolutions in other
countries in order to appease the imperialist powers into leaving Russia
(and its state capitalist system) alone. This slogan was integrally
connected to Stalinâs theory of the two stage revolution.
Having decided that the objective conditions in China did not exist for
a socialist revolution, Stalin urged the Chinese Communist Party to
maintain an alliance with the leader of the bourgeois nationalists,
Chiang Kai-shek, at all costs, in order to carry out the revolution in
China. This meant subordinating the struggle of the Chinese workers to
the interests of the Chinese capitalists, whom Chiang represented.
Despite these orders, the workers mounted a wave of increasingly
militant, widespread and coordinated strikes. In 1926, Chiang carried
out a coup in the southern city of Canton and began his âNorthern
Expeditionâ to root out the reactionary warlords who controlled much of
southern China. As Chiang approached the port city of Shanghai in early
1927, the workers there rose up to liberate the city. They mounted two
general strikes, took over the city and set up a provisional government
in March, 1927.
Chiang halted outside the city and began negotiations with local
landlords and capitalists and representatives of the imperialists to
seize control of the city. Consistent with his strategy of not scaring
off Chiang and the Chinese bourgeoisie, Stalin directed the Chinese
Communists to order the Communist-controlled unions to offer no
resistance to Chiang and to have the workers bury their arms. Trusting
their leaders, the workers did so. When Chiang entered the city, his
troops slaughtered over 20,000 workers. Among other things, this led to
the elimination of the most revolutionary workers, destroyed the
Communist Party in Shanghai and ultimately led to the peasant-based
strategy championed by Mao.
The crucial point to understand here is that if revolutionaries decide
before the fact that the objective conditions in a given country mean
that the revolution is there âof necessityâ will be a bourgeois one,
they will act to oppose those struggles that go beyond the bourgeois
revolution. In more graphic terms, they will become the executionerâs of
the most revolutionary workers and peasants and will in all likelihood
destroy the revolution altogether.
After the defeat and slaughter of the Chinese workers in Shanghai, a
section of the Chinese Communist Party and eventually the party as a
whole gave up entirely on organizing the working class and instead
focused on the peasantry. But the result was not a spontaneous peasant
uprising of the sort that powered of the French, Russian and Spanish
Revolutions. The peasants in China did not spontaneously rise up,
slaughter the landlords, seize the land and work it under their own
direction. The Chinese Communist certainly organized peasant armies, but
it would be more accurate to describe these as armies of peasants. The
peasants were organized into formations that were firmly controlled by
the Communists from the top down through officers and party
functionaries.
Moreover, throughout most of the struggle, these armies did not attack
the landlords and let the peasants seize and manage the land as they saw
fit. Quite the contrary, consistent with the theory of the two-stage
revolution, the Chinese Communist strategy centered on maintaining
united front of all patriotic Chinese, including Chiang Kai-shek, the
capitalists and landlords, in a purely nationalist struggle against the
Japanese, who invaded Manchuria in 1931 and attempted to conquer the
rest of China several years later. In the areas they controlled, the
Communists merely limited the extent to which the landlords exploited
the peasants by lowering rents and interest rates. All spontaneous
peasant movements were either absorbed into the Communist armies or
ruthlessly suppressed as âbandits.â
Even after the Japanese were defeated and the Communists turned their
full attention against Chiang, the Communist pursued a purely bourgeois
program and maintained firm, bureaucratic control over the peasants.
Consistent with this, when their armies surround the city, the
Communists did not urge the workers to rise up, throw out the
capitalists and take over the factories. Instead, the workers were urged
to remain at work under the firm control of the capitalists, who
continued to exploit them as before and were assured by the Communists
that their ownership and control of the factories would not be
infringed. In fact, Mao advocated lowering wage rates and lengthening
working hours in order to increase production.
It was not until the 1950s, that is, after the Communists had defeated
Chiang and consolidated their power, that they moved to introduce land
reform and expropriate the capitalists. Even then, these processes were
well controlled by the Communist Party; at no point were the workers
encouraged to form autonomous factory committees or given control over
the factories; nor were the peasants given full and autonomous control
over the land. Meanwhile, the capitalists were compensated for their
property and often hired as managers at generous salaries to run their
former plants, while their children were guaranteed entry into Chinese
colleges and universities.
The authoritarian nature of the Chinese Revolution is revealed by
developments that occurred after the Communist victory in 1949. In the
early 1950s, the Communists encouraged the formation of cooperatives in
the countryside, to which the peasants responded eagerly. But consistent
with their conviction that centralization is economically more efficient
and socially progressive than small-scale production, the Communists in
the late 1950s forced the peasants to enter vast âcommunes.â Like forced
collectivization in Russia, this meant taking the land away from the
peasants and putting it into the hands of party and state bureaucrats.
The purpose of forming these âcommunesâ was to free up large numbers of
peasants to work in new, poorly conceived and hastily constructed rural
industrial projects, including small, backyard steel furnaces. One
result of this âGreat Leap Forwardâ was several years of poor harvests,
a massive famine in which an estimated 40 million people died (!) and
years of economic contraction. China did not recover from this debacle,
which was only possible because of the rigidly hierarchic nature of
Communist rule, until nearly 10 years later.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. For the last several
years, China has been undergoing the transition from a form of state
capitalism in which bureaucrats attempted, not very effectively, to plan
production and manage industry to one in which privately owned and
managed industry is increasingly dominant. If this plan is successful,
China may emerge as one of the worldâs most powerful capitalist and
imperialist powers in the 21^(st) century.
In effect, the Chinese Communists eliminated the traditional capitalist
class, believing that they (the Communist Party) could carry out the
industrial transformation of the country more efficiently than the
capitalists. As it turned out, in China (as well as Russia, North Korea,
Eastern Europe and Cuba), state-run industry was inefficient and
corrupt. As the economy stagnated and fell behind other, traditional
capitalist countries, the only solution was to attempt to recreate an
indigenous traditional capitalist class. In Russia, the attempts to do
this led to the rapid demise of the Communist regime. In China, the
Communist government has managed to hold onto power. But if the economic
transformation is to continue, the regime will most likely evolve into
an autocratic, but non-Communist Chinese state.
This development demonstrates the bourgeois, authoritarian nature of the
Chinese revolution. The current economic transformation can only take
place as smoothly as it has because the country is and always has been
controlled by a bureaucratic elite, rather than the Chinese people.
In the 1960s and 70s, it was fashionable in Maoist circles to contend
that Mao tried to forestall and then reverse the âbureaucratizationâ of
the revolution. The Cultural Revolution, it was said, was his last
effort in this campaign. But Mao never stood for or encouraged the
independent mobilization and organization, let alone the self-rule, of
the workers and peasants. From the beginning, out of power or in power,
Mao believed in tight, centralized, hierarchic control of the economy
and the country as a whole.
But the Chinese state capitalist ruling class, like other nationalist
elites, has often been divided over which measures would best promote
the economic development of the country. Some elements, such as those
around Chou En-lai, sought to encourage economic growth by borrowing
Western technology and leaving workers, peasants and managers alone to
pursue their appointed tasks and daily lives in relative peace.
Mao and the faction he represented believes that this process would be
too slow and would result in China falling victim to its enemies,
particularly the United States, Japan and the Soviet Union. To avoid
this, he sought to âhothouseâ economic growth through periodic
bureaucratic mobilizations of the population. One such campaign, the
Great Leap Forward led, as we saw, to mass starvation and an actual
decline in economic growth. In its aftermath, Mao was discredited within
the elite and politically marginalized. The Cultural Revolution was his
attempt to organize idealistic, that is, fanatically pro-Communist,
students to fight his opponents within the bureaucracy and regain the
autocratic power he once had.
At no point did Mao encourage workers and peasants to organize
independently and rise up against the state capitalist ruling class as a
whole. If anything, the student Red Guards attacked (physically as well
as ideologically) workers and peasants as counterrevolutionaries. As in
his earlier efforts, millions of ordinary people, not just bureaucrats,
suffered imprisonment, internal exile, cruel beatings and death.
What took place, in fact, was a well-ordered bourgeois revolution in
which the peasants were used by the Communists as a massive club to
carry out their bourgeois-nationalist program. Rather than the peasant
armies being the instrument for the establishment of the workersâ and
peasantsâ self-rule, they represented the embryo of a new state
apparatus through which the Communists, substituting themselves for the
traditional bourgeoisie, established their own rule over the workers and
peasants.
Chris justifies the Maoist strategy in part by claiming that the workers
were not ready to take over and run industry. This is classic Maoist
apologetics, conveniently omitting any mention of the fact that the
Chinese workers were politically ready to take over industry, and had in
fact done so, as far back as 1927, until they were ordered to give it
back by their Communist leaders and had been slaughtered for their
obedience. If the Chinese workers were not technically ready to direct
production, neither are workers today, in the imperialist countries as
well as the imperialized countries, ready to do so. Do the members of
Love and Rage need to be reminded that this is the chief argument raised
by supporters of capitalism against all radical programs and especially
against anti-authoritarianism?
Anti-authoritarians can certainly defend the Chinese Revolution as
representing a victory for the Chinese people, insofar as it unified
China, eliminated reactionary social classes and archaic social
practices and improved the countryâs bargaining power vis-a-vis
imperialism. But one can only pretend that this Revolution was in any
way anti-authoritarian by grossly insulting the truth.
Equally important, while we can and should support nationalist/bourgeois
revolutions against imperialism, this does not mean that we should
identify with the new bourgeois elites and defend their politics of
intensifying the exploitation of the workers and peasants, as Chris
does. On the contrary, our job is to defend the workersâ and peasantsâ
efforts to resist capitalist exploitation and to prepare the ground for
an anti-authoritarian revolution.
But Chris would have us see the Chinese Revolution as some kind of model
for anti-authoritarian revolutionaries. To make this absurdity seem
plausible, Chris exhibits the same âconvenient amnesiaâ when discussing
China as he does when discussing Spain. In the case of Spain, Chris
fails to mention the Stalinistsâ assassinations of their political
opponents, which was the logical consequence of their belief that the
revolution in Spain was âof necessityâ of bourgeois one. In the case of
China, Chris ends his discussion in the early 1950s, before the
Communist regime starts killing millions of people in the interests of
capitalist industrialization, likewise the logical consequence of their
belief that the revolution in their country was, and had to be,
bourgeois.
In his document, Chris is careful to claim that he is simply criticizing
anarchists and anarchism, implying that the perspective he is now
promoting can be accommodated under the anti-authoritarian banner. But,
as I have argued, Chrisâs new perspective and the Chinese Revolution
that impresses him so much are/were authoritarian in the extreme.
Rather than being a model for anti-authoritarians, the Chinese
Revolution reveals the logic of Marxistsâ attitudes toward methods.
Unlike anarchists, Marxists are generally not restrained by particular
scruples about the methods they employ. This is especially the case when
they have the power of the state at their disposal. Whatever they may
claim, they have always acted as if all means, no matter how brutal,
dishonest and disgusting, are justified in their struggle against
capitalism. These methods become ipso facto progressive because, they
believe, they represent the proletariat, socialism and the liberation of
all humanity.
But what Marxists donât see is that such methods undermine their own
goals. It is not, as they see it, a question of abstract morality, but
of long-term effectiveness. In the short- and perhaps even the
medium-run, brutal, dishonest methods may win some gains, but they will
ultimately destroy the revolution, even a Marxist one. After the October
Revolution, the Bolsheviks centralized all political and economic power
in their hands, built a revolutionary army and police apparatus and
smashed their political opponents in order to maintain their rule. In
the short- and medium-run, this worked, but they never built socialism
and now they donât even have state capitalism anymore.
The Chinese Stalinists believed it was easier to carry out a bourgeois
revolution than a socialist one, more effective to organize a
hierarchical army of peasant soldiers than to encourage independent
struggles and organizations of workers and peasants. They succeeded in
seizing state power, but only to see the revolution serve as an
incubator for a new, traditional capitalist class.
Chrisâs attitude toward revolutionary strategy and tactics suffers from
the same problem. In the short run, the methods heâs advocating may seem
more realistic, more successful, than the seemingly abstract,
ineffective and overly moralistic methods of anarchists. But the
measures Chris is urging us to consider â state capitalist revolutions
in imperialized countries, revolutionary armies, etc. â will not lead to
our goal, but to new authoritarian societies, not to mention the
millions of deaths that these regimes have a tendency to cause.
Chris appears to be arguing nearly that Love and Rage should drop the
term anarchist from its name and consider certain perspectives that run
counter to traditional anarchism, while remaining committed to
anti-authoritarianism. But what Chris is really proposing is the first
step in the political redefinition of Love and Rage. If he gets his way,
we will start out by dropping the term anarchism and allowing
authoritarian perspectives to be described as anti-authoritarian and
promoted within the organization. We will then accept such perspectives
as the perhaps distasteful but necessary application of
anti-authoritarian politics to concrete reality. Finally, having started
down the slippery slope, we will wind up adopting increasingly
authoritarian politics and dropping the term anti-authoritarianism as
abstract and moralistic.
Chrisâs insistence that the objective conditions for anti-authoritarian
revolutions did not exist in China, Spain and other imperialized
countries and that the revolutions in these countries were âof
necessityâ bourgeois thus raises two interrelated questions. The first
is: What policy does Chris think revolutionaries should have followed in
these countries? Virtually the entire thrust of his argument points to
the conclusion that Chris believes revolutionaries should have supported
the Stalinist policy.
The second question raised by Chrisâs insistence that the Revolutions in
Spain, China and other imperialized countries were of necessity
bourgeois is: what should revolutionaries in the imperialized the
countries do today? Since these countries are still imperialized, they
still do not have, according to Chrisâs definition, the objective
conditions to carry out anti-authoritarian revolutions. It follows that
revolutionaries in those countries, including our comrades in Mexico,
should not fight for an anti-authoritarian revolution, but instead
should aim at a bourgeois, probably state capitalist, revolution.
But in politics, particularly revolutionary politics, you are what you
do. If you claim to be an anti-authoritarian but decide, for whatever
reason (perhaps because the objective conditions are not right), to try
to carry out a bourgeois revolution, you are no longer an
anti-authoritarian: you are a bourgeois, that is, an authoritarian,
revolutionist. By the same token, if Love and Rage were to adopt Chrisâs
perspective, Love and Rage would no longer be an anti-authoritarian
organization, but would join the ranks of the authoritarians. Although
Chris does not explicitly discuss the question of revolution in the
imperialist countries, the logic of his argument, as well as his
new-found infatuation with authoritarian institutions such as standing
armies, suggest that he is, or will soon be, advocating authoritarian
revolutions for these countries too.
The revolutionary, anti-authoritarian solution to the questions Chris is
raising is not to go over to state capitalist Maoism but to defend an
international anti-authoritarian revolutionary perspective. In fact, no
country in the world today, taken by itself, has the full economic,
social and political prerequisites to carry out and maintain for an
indefinite period of time an anti-authoritarian revolution. But this
does not mean that we settle for carrying out state capitalist
revolutions. An anti-authoritarian strategy can be found in the general
perspective that I first encountered under the term âThe Permanent
Revolution,â put forward by Leon Trotsky. Shorn of its Marxist
trappings, this perspective can serve as a general framework for a
worldwide anti-authoritarian revolution.
Basing himself on the uneven nature of the objective conditions, what he
called combined and uneven development, Trotsky argued that the social
revolution in an imperialized country could not be divided into discrete
stages. Instead, what might begin as a bourgeois revolution, addressing
such issues as the elimination of the landed aristocracy and the
division of the land, the overthrow of the monarchy and the
establishment of a democratic republic, would soon go beyond these tasks
and take on more radical questions. For example, workers, going into
motion over the struggle for higher wages and shortening the work day,
might launch a general strike, occupy factories and take over whole
cities.
It is therefore the job of revolutionaries in any one country to
encourage the revolution to go as far as possible, even if that country
lacks the complete prerequisites for an anti authoritarian revolution.
Meanwhile, it is also the task of revolutionaries to encourage
revolutions in other countries, so that the revolution becomes an
international one. The revolution is thus permanent in two senses: (1)
Within one country, the revolution does not limit itself to any one
stage, but seeks to proceed as far as possible; (2) the revolution does
not limit itself to one country, but aims to be international.
It is of the very nature of an anti-authoritarian revolution to be a
worldwide phenomenon. We are, in fact, speaking of a transformation of
the human species. It either happens relatively rapidly or it wonât
happen at all. If the people in any one country, even an economically
âadvancedâ one, carry out an anti-authoritarian revolution and it
remains isolated, it will be defeated. There remains nothing that
anti-authoritarians can do about this but to pick up and start over.
Adopting authoritarian measures, such as a standing army based on
traditional centralization, hierarchy and discipline, will not save the
revolution but will destroy it from within.
This perspective is not as far-fetched as it may seem. It should be
clear that human society as it is currently organized is rapidly
undermining the conditions for its own existence; among other things, it
is destroying the planet on which we live. Human beings will
increasingly be confronted with the need to make a radical
transformation in the way we treat each other and the Earth as a whole.
These two questions are thoroughly interconnected: we must stop viewing
other human beings and the Earth as a whole as tools to increase our own
individual and/or group power. Do we carry out this transformation or do
we all get destroyed?
I have hopes that human beings will make the right decision. I believe
we have the intelligence and moral potential to carry out a global
anti-authoritarian revolution, one that establishes a truly cooperative,
stateless and classless society, a society in which people truly care
for each other and the planet and work cooperatively to meet the needs
of the greater whole of which we are a part. If we canât carry out such
transformation, the human race will face extinction, and will deserve
it.
Chris seems to have decided that heâd rather lead any revolution, even
if it is an authoritarian one, then be part of an anti-authoritarian
revolution that is defeated. I would like to be part of an
anti-authoritarian revolution that wins, and Iâm willing to risk being
defeated if this is the price to pay.
Chris has the right to argue for whatever perspective for Love and Rage
he chooses. But letâs be clear about what we are talking about. We are
not merely discussing whether to drop the term anarchism from our name
and consider certain perspectives that anarchists have refused to
entertain in the past. We are discussing the very nature and direction
of the Federation. Will we continue to advocate and seek to carry out an
anti-authoritarian revolution, or will we abandon our anti-authoritarian
principles and program and turn ourselves into bourgeois revolutionaries
in the interests of a short-sighted conception of revolutionary
efficiency?