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Title: Means and Ends
Author: Anarchist Affinity
Date: 14 September 2016
Language: en
Topics: praxis, Anarchism, Marxism
Source: Retrieved on April 18, 2017 from https://web.archive.org/web/20170418214143/http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2016/09/means-and-ends-anarchist-vs-marxist-praxis/
Notes: By Mitch. Published in The Platform Issue 4 — Winter 2016.

Anarchist Affinity

Means and Ends

“The very revolutionaries who claim that they are against the state, and

for eliminating the state…see as their central task after a revolution

to build up a state that is more solid, more centralized and more

all-embracing than the old one.” – Ron Taber, 1988 [1].

The remarkably common attitude among revolutionaries of all stripes is

that “the means justify the ends”. We’re told it is acceptable to

embrace authoritarian organisational practices because these practices

are necessary to achieve an anti-capitalist revolution. As Anarchists we

argue that the theory and organisational practice of revolutionary

groups must be consistent with the principles upon which we want a

future society to be based. We believe that the praxis of groups which

seek communism should point them toward communism, and not toward

statism, authoritarianism, hierarchy, and centralism. This is not mere

idealism, the cold hard fact is that “ends” do not justify “means”,

rather “means create ends”. Revolutionaries that embrace “means” that

are in contradiction with the kind of society they wish to create will

consistently fail to create that society.

Amongst Marxist-Leninist political tendencies the contradiction between

means and ends starts with the idea of the vanguard party as the vehicle

for social change. The vanguard party is supposed to be comprised of the

most enlightened and class-conscious members of the working class. In

practice, the vanguard party begins as a self-selecting minority. It

seeks to draw in the most militant elements of the working class, but

its structure remains centralised and authoritarian. This minority

occupies centralised leadership positions and directs the political

activity, strategy and tactics of the party. Whether or not there is

real democratic accountability within the vanguard party on some

intermittent basis, the vanguard party is a command structure in which

decisions are made by a minority, and the majority is expected to put

the plans and desires of the leadership into action.

The end goal of the vanguard party is to prosecute a revolution and

achieve control of a ‘workers’ state’. During a transitional period

between capitalism and communism called, ‘the dictatorship of the

proletariat’, the vanguard would utilise this authoritarian,

hierarchical, and centralised state, in order to coordinate the running

of society.

The structure of the vanguard party prefigures the structure of the

workers’ state after the revolution, but it does not achieve the

directly democratic communist society it claims to aspire toward. As a

centralised minority, the party would have gained control over all the

working class in a society. The same working class that historically and

necessarily did the grunt-work to bring the revolution to that point.

Vladimir Lenin himself said, “a party is the vanguard of a class, and

its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average

political level of the masses” [2].

According to Leninists, the vanguard party is necessitated by the idea

that the working class is too burdened by ‘the muck of ages’ to

emancipate itself, for itself. This means that the ruling ideas of

capitalism plague people’s ability to be satisfactorily class conscious.

These ruling ideas include sexism, racism, homophobia, and nationalism.

This is the historically-selective and pessimistic base on which the

enlightened vanguardists decide that their party is necessary.

Yet the vanguard, who set out on a convoluted road which is

‘diametrically opposed to communism’ are plagued by some muck of their

own [3]. The latent authoritarian and hierarchical nature of the

capitalist state remain as unchecked cornerstones of the workers’ state.

As Murray Bookchin argued in ‘Listen, Marxist’, ‘…the deep-rooted

conservatism of [so called] “revolutionaries” is almost painfully

evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch

and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the

discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political

obedience replaces the state; the credo of “proletarian morality”

replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance

of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag,

etc…’ [4].

Classical Marxist and Leninist analyses of the state fail to acknowledge

the way that assuming state power changes any ‘workers’ who do so.

Contrary to what Marx argued, workers cease being workers when they take

control of a state. They become self-appointed managers of workers, and

so they cement themselves as a new managerial class, entirely distinct

from the working class.

Mikhail Bakunin was correct when he argued that the ‘workers state’,

“will consist of ex-workers. And from the heights of the State they

begin to look down upon the whole common world of the workers. From that

time on they represent not the people but themselves” [5].

It’s a perversion and a contradiction of the politics that originate

these theories that workers should die in droves to overthrow thousands

of bosses and replace them all with one boss — the state. Especially

when this boss conceals its class status; cloaks itself in the guise of

a fellow worker, of a comrade. It deviously calls itself a worker and

not a manager of workers to justify its authority.

Leon Trotsky was right when he complained of Stalinism that, “In a

country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by

slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has

been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat” [6]. It is

ironic that he saw no contradiction in this state of affairs when he was

so intimately involved in constructing Russia’s one party state.

It seems the over-worked proletariat is destined to remain the

over-worked proletariat but a few enlightened workers graduate to a

privileged position where they coordinate what work will be done, by

whom, and by when. The creativity, initiative, and the ideas the

emancipated working class have for the new society are apparently

disposable in the eyes of Marxists. At least, they’re not worth as much

as the ideas of the vanguardists who make the familiar and misguided

claim that they know what’s right for people better than people do

themselves.

It is evident that the praxis of vanguardists doesn’t prefigure anything

beyond their own ascent to power. After they have gained power, the

so-called ‘withering away’ of the workers’ state is a barely developed

and meaningless sentiment based on the false idea that no classes would

exist after workers (read: ex-workers turned administrators of workers)

take power. This means that the fixed state institutions; its armies;

its centralised networks of production; its education and media

facilities that fill the society with the state’s own ideas, would

magically disappear with the abolition of class.

The workers’ state won’t and can’t wither away. All ruling minorities

have an interest in maintaining their position as such. A newly

installed ruling minority will use its power and authority to further

justify and entrench its own power and authority. It will have under its

thumb a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence in a society, which

has historically been used to give the workers’ state the authority to

eliminate the state’s non-reactionary dissenters. Instead of encouraging

the expression of ideas for the betterment of society from all who make

up that society, the workers’ state creates itself with its own elitism

and belief in the superiority of the ideas of the ruling vanguard. This

is a fundamental part of the praxis leading to it. In order to maintain

its rule, the so-called workers’ state will actively combat any opposing

ideas with propaganda through the centralised control of media outlets

and educational facilities, if not with direct force.

Fabbri notes that the state has ‘bureaucratic, military and economic

foundations…’ and that ‘…in a short space of time what one would have

would not be the state abolished, but a state stronger and more

energetic than its predecessor and which would come to exercise those

functions proper to it – the ones Marx recognised as being such –

“keeping the great majority of producers under the yoke of a numerically

small exploiting minority”’ [7].

Anarchists argue that while a revolutionary force is being built to

smash the capitalist state, we must also be building the kinds of

prefigurative institutions that will make libertarian socialism

possible. Our task is to argue for and build a practice of

neighbourhood, community, and workers councils. The alternative to a

vanguard party is the creation of federations of participatory

democratic bodies, outside the control of this or that political

faction. To the greatest extent possible, before, during, but most

importantly, after a revolution, these directly democratic, horizontal,

and decentralised institutions must replace the centralised, state-run

equivalents. In this way, anarchists seek to build the embryo of

communism within the capitalist system, with the aim of both providing

for the people where the state can’t, and of building the new world in

the shell of the old.

When the capitalist state is smashed by the popular uprising, these

decentralised institutions and councils can continue functioning, and

any remaining useful functions of the state become coordinated by

further federated councils of workers and regular people. If we have

built the practice of participatory democracy, a centralised workers’

state is never required.

Of course, there would be the need to defend the revolution, and to this

end anarchists argue for a people’s militia ‘rooted in workplaces and

communities… and directed overall by the federation of councils [would]

enforce its will against armed counterrevolution or foreign invasion,’

according to Wayne Price [8].

If we are opposed to the domination of a ruling class, clique or party,

we must build a libertarian socialism that involves the participation of

the mass of society in the process of decision making, economic

coordination, and military defence.

The partisans of the ‘workers’ state’ and the vanguard party have a

revolutionary program committed to anything but communism. Given they

propose a society where power and initiative are both necessarily

centralised features belonging only to the state and not to every person

equally, they are not creating the necessary basis for communism, but

rather totalitarianism.

Anarchists wish to create a society where no one person can exploit

another for their own gain, and so the stepladder to power that is the

state must be knocked over so that it can’t be reassembled — Not left to

stand, and certainly not used to govern with a pessimistic fear that the

people necessary to the revolution’s success are incapable of creating a

new society through their own organising efforts.

[1] Taking a Critical Look at Leninism by Ron Taber.

[2] Speech on the Agrarian Question November 14 by Vladimir Lenin

[3] The Poverty of Statism: Anarchism vs Marxism.

[4] Listen, Marxist! by Murray Bookchin

[5] Marxism, Freedom and the State by Mikhail Bakunin.

[6] The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky

[7] The Poverty of Statism: Anarchism vs Marxism.

[8] Confronting the Question of Power by Wayne Price