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Title: The SWP versus Anarchism Author: Anarcho Date: March 25, 2011 Language: en Topics: Trotskyism, letter, anti-globalization Source: Retrieved on 5th February 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=509
These are two letters and part of a leaflet related to an article in the
SWP’s Socialist Review by Pat Stack on anarchism. This article
(imaginatively entitled “Anarchy in the UK?”) was an attempt to rubbish
anarchism in the eyes of the “anti-globalisation” movement at the time
(around 2000). It had to be the worse article on anarchism I had seen
(and there is stiff competition for that honour, usually from the SWP!).
The first letter was published in an edited form. That produced a reply
from an SWP and I sent in the second letter, which was not published (no
reason was given). I also used Pat Stack’s article in a leaflet handed
out at one of the SWP’s Marxism events. In it I contrasted what Stack
proclaimed about Bakunin and Kropotkin with what they actually
advocated.
My account of attending Stack’s Marxism meeting on anarchism can be
found here. Here is a humorous (I hope!) sketch inspired by a comment
said at one of the meetings (yes, a SWPer DID proclaim that “we are all
individuals”): The Dead Dogma Sketch.
(published in edited form)
Dear Socialist Review
It is difficult to know where to start in Pat Stack’s “Anarchy in the
UK?” article (issue no. 246). It contains so many inaccuracies that I
can only assume that Stack either knows nothing about anarchism or is
deliberately lying. I know that the SWP wish to combat anarchist
influence in the anti-globalisation movement but this article will
surely backfire on you. This is because anyone with even a small
understanding of anarchist theory and history will instantly know that
Stack’s “analysis” of anarchism is so flawed as to be laughable.
Needless to say, I cannot reply to every mistake in the article. I will,
however, concentrate on a few of the more glaring ones in order to give
your readers a taste of the level of inaccuracy it contains.
The most amazing assertion is that anarchists like Kropotkin and Bakunin
did not see “class conflict” as “the motor of change, the working class
is not the agent and collective struggle not the means.” Obviously the
author has never read any of Bakunin’s and Kropotkin’s work. Indeed,
Kropotkin’s The Great French Revolution was written explicitly to show
“the part played by the people of the country and town in the [French]
Revolution.” He did not deny the importance of collective class
struggle, rather he stressed it. As he wrote, “to make the revolution,
the mass of workers will have to organise themselves. Resistance and the
strike are excellent means of organisation for doing this.” Kropotkin
could not be clearer on this subject.
He always stressed that “the Anarchists have always advised taking an
active part in those workers’ organisations which carry on the direct
struggle of Labour against Capital and its protector, the State.” Such
struggle, “better than any other indirect means, permits the worker to
obtain some temporary improvements in the present conditions of work,
while it opens his eyes to the evil done by Capitalism and the State
that supports it, and wakes up his thoughts concerning the possibility
of organising consumption, production, and exchange without the
intervention of the capitalist and the State.”
Similarly, Bakunin argued “the natural organisation of the masses ... is
organisation based on the various ways that their various types of work
define their day-to-day life; it is organisation by trade association.”
He thought that the International Workers Association should become “an
earnest organisation of workers associations from all countries, capable
of replacing this departing world of States and bourgeoisie.” In other
words, the “future social organisation must be made solely from the
bottom upwards, by the free association of workers, first in their
unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great
federation, international and universal.”
He stresses this vision in his last work Statism and Anarchy: “the
Slavic proletariat ... must enter the International [Workers’
Association] en masse, form[ing] factory, artisan, and agrarian
sections, and unite them into local federations” as “a social revolution
... is by nature an international revolution.” Which, I must note, makes
a mockery of Stack’s claim Bakunin did not see “skilled artisans and
organised factory workers” as “the source of the destruction of
capitalism” and “agents for change.”
Bakunin, like Kropotkin, saw a socialist society as being based on “the
collective ownership of producers’ associations, freely organised and
federated in the communes, and by the equally spontaneous federation of
these communes.” Thus “the land, the instruments of work and all other
capital [will] become the collective property of the whole of society
and be utilised only by the workers, in other words by the agricultural
and industrial associations.” The link between present and future would
be labour unions (workers’ associations). These played the key role in
Bakunin’s politics both as the means to abolish capitalism and the state
and as the framework of a socialist society (this support for workers’
councils predates Marxist support by five decades, I must note).
Bakunin, like Kropotkin, thought the strike was “the beginnings of the
social war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie... Strikes are a
valuable instrument from two points of view. Firstly, they electrify the
masses ... awaken in them the feeling of the deep antagonism which
exists between their interests and those of the bourgeoisie... secondly
they help immensely to provoke and establish between the workers of all
trades, localities and countries the consciousness and very fact of
solidarity: a twofold action, both negative and positive, which tends to
constitute directly the new world of the proletariat, opposing it almost
in an absolute way to the bourgeois world.” This would accumulate in “a
general strike” which could “only lead to a cataclysm which would make
society start a new life after shedding its old skin.” This would be
combined with ” an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary
organisation of the workers from below upward.”
Indeed, you do not have to read Bakunin to find this out, you can read
Marx and Engels. As Marx noted, Bakunin thought that the “working class
... must only organise themselves by trades-unions.” Engels acknowledged
that the anarchists aimed to “dispose all the authorities, abolish the
state and replace it with the organisation of the International.”
As can be seen, the claim Kropotkin or Bakunin, or anarchists in
general, ignored the class struggle and collective working class
struggle is either a lie or indicates ignorance.
All this indicates that Stack’s claim that “the huge advantage”
anarcho-syndicalists have “over other anarchists was their understanding
of the power of the working class, the centrality of the point of
production (the workplace) and the need for collective action” is simply
nonsense. Bakunin and Kropotkin, as can be seen, also understood all
this. Little wonder that all serious historians see the obvious
similarities between syndicalism and Bakunin’s anarchism. As Kropotkin
put it: “Syndicalism is nothing other than the rebirth of the
International — federalist, worker, Latin.” Stack shows his ignorance
yet again.
Kropotkin’s comments on the state as the “protector” of capitalism, I
must note, indicates the false nature of Stack’s claim that “the idea
that dominates anarchist thought” is that “the state is the main enemy,
rather than identifying the state as one aspect of a class society that
has to be destroyed.” Anarchists, as Kropotkin indicates, are well aware
that the state exists to defend capitalism. As he wrote elsewhere, the
“State is there to protect exploitation, speculation and private
property; it is itself the by-product of the rapine of the people. The
proletariat must reply on his own hands; he can expect nothing of the
State. It is nothing more than an organisation devised to hinder
emancipation at all costs.”
Similarly with Bakunin, who argued that the state “is authority,
domination, and forced, organised by the property-owning and so-called
enlightened classes against the masses.” He saw the social revolution as
destroying capitalism and the state at the same time, that is “to
overturn the State’s domination, and that of the privileged classes whom
it solely represents.” Thus the state and capitalism must be destroyed
at the same time. In the words of Bakunin, “no revolution could succeed
... today unless it was simultaneously a political and a social
revolution”
To state otherwise is to misrepresent anarchist theory.
The difference between anarchists and Marxists on the issue of the state
is the recognition that the state bureaucracy has interests of its own
due to its hierarchical nature. This means that any state-like
organisation will develop a bureaucracy with interests separate and
opposed to the people it claims to represent. As Kropotkin argued,
Anarchists “maintain that the State organisation, having been the force
to which minorities resorted for establishing and organising their power
over the masses, cannot be the force which will serve to destroy these
privileges.” The so-called “workers’ state” is not exception to this as
it is based on the same principles of delegation of power into the hands
of the few every state is based on.
Stack’s discussion of Kropotkin’s idea of Mutual Aid is simply false.
Stack’s examples of “mutual aid” were, in fact, examples used by
Kropotkin to show that people could organise themselves and social life
without the government and without capitalist economic values. He used
these as evidence that libertarian communism was not utopian but rather
expressed the logical outcome of certain tendencies in social life
towards anarchy and communism (see his Anarchist Communism for details).
As far as mutual aid goes, Kropotkin simply argues that it was “a factor
of evolution.” He wrote the book Mutual Aid to refute capitalist claims
that competition was natural and only key to change. Kropotkin saw
mutual aid (i.e. solidarity or co-operation) as an evolutionary response
to difficulties faced by animals and humans to survive in a hostile
world. Unsurprisingly, when he talks about mutual aid in modern society
he discusses labour unions and strikes. He stresses that unionism was an
“expression” of “the workers’ need of mutual support.” In other words,
the realities of capitalism, of exploitation and oppression by the boss
and by the state, forced workers to practice mutual aid (i.e.
solidarity) and take collective action (strikes) to survive. Mutual aid
(or co-operation), in other words, was the outcome of class conflict in
Kropotkin’s eyes and definitely not its replacement as a means of social
change. As he wrote elsewhere, “the strike develops the sentiment of
solidarity.”
As for anarcho-syndicalists rejecting “political action,” well this is
not true. They reject bourgeois political action — the standing of
socialists in elections. As Rudolf Rocker noted in his classic work
Anarcho-Syndicalism, “the point of attack in the political struggle
lies, not in the legislative bodies, but in the people” and so
anarcho-syndicalists, like other anarchists, think that it “must take
the form of direct action”, using” instruments of economic power.” Why
do anarchists reject electioneering? To quote Bakunin, the
“worker-deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, into an
atmosphere of purely bourgeois ideas, will in fact cease to be workers
and, becoming Statesmen, they will become bourgeois ... For men do not
make their situations; on the contrary, men are made by them.” The
history of Marxist Social Democracy and the German Greens confirmed this
analysis.
Moreover, Marxist support for electioneering is somewhat at odds with
their claims of being in favour of collective, mass action. There is
nothing more isolated, atomised and individualistic than voting. It is
the act of one person in a closet by themselves. It is the total
opposite of collective struggle. The individual is alone before, during
and after the act of voting. Indeed, unlike direct action, which, by its
very nature, throws up new forms of organisation in order to manage and
co-ordinate the struggle, voting creates no alternative organs of
working class self-management. Nor can it. Neither is it based on nor
does it create collective action or organisation. It simply empowers an
individual (the elected representative) to act on behalf of a collection
of other individuals (the voters). Such delegation will hinder
collective organisation and action as the voters expect their
representative to act and fight for them — if they did not, they would
not vote for them in the first place!
Given that Marxists usually slander anarchists as “individualists” the
irony is delicious!
Stack revives the old Marxist myth that anarchism “yearns for what has
gone.” This is not true. Anarchists have always based their ideas on
current developments and have always looked forward, not backwards, as
would be obvious from even a quick reading of Proudhon, Bakunin or
Kropotkin. Proudhon, for example, argued for “the mines, canals,
railways handed over to democratically organised workers’ associations
... We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry
and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and
societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic social
Republic.” He stressed that workers’ associations would manage
production and while under capitalism “large industry ... come to us by
big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in the future to make
them rise from the association.”
The author claims that Bakunin “industrialisation was an evil.” Actually
Bakunin argued that “to destroy... all the instruments of labour [i.e.
technology]... would be to condemn all humanity — which is infinity too
numerous today to exist... on the simple gifts of nature... — to...
death by starvation ... Only when workers “obtain not individual but
collective property in capital” and capital is no longer “concentrated
in the hands of a separate, exploiting class” will they be able “to
smash the tyranny of capital.” Indeed, as noted above, Bakunin
considered one of the first acts of the revolution would be workers’
associations taking over the means of production and turning them into
collective property managed by the workers themselves. Hence Daniel
Guerin’s comment:
“Proudhon and Bakunin were ‘collectivists,’ which is to say they
declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common
exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the
large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon has
been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of private
property
With a similar disregard of facts (and logic) Stack asserts that
Kropotkin’s “ideal society would be based on small autonomous
communities, devoted to small scale production. He had witnessed such
communities among Siberian peasants and watchmakers in the Swiss
mountains.” Firstly, if Kropotkin actually saw these communities then
how could they be “what has gone”? Secondly, Kropotkin based his classic
work Field, Factories and Workshops on detailed analysis of current
developments in the economy and came to the conclusion that industry
would spread across the global (which has happened) and that small
industries will continue to exist side by side with large ones (which
also has been confirmed). From these facts he argued that a socialist
society would aim to decentralise production, combining agriculture with
industry and both using modern technology to the fullest. As Kropotkin
argued, the “scattering of industries over the country — so as to bring
the factory amidst the fields ... agriculture ... combined with industry
... to produce a combination of industrial with agricultural work — is
surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our
present conditions is possible.” He did not argue for “small-scale
production” (he still saw the need for factories, for example) but
rather the transformation of capitalism into a society human beings
could live full and meaningful lives in.
Thirdly, the obvious implication of Stack’s comments is that the SWP
think that a socialist society will basically be the same as capitalism,
using the technology, industrial structure and industry developed under
class society without change. After all, did Lenin not argue that
“Socialism is merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole
people”? Needless to say, capitalist industry has not developed
neutrally. Rather it has been distorted by the twin requirements to
maintain capitalist profits and power. As Kropotkin stressed, the
concentration of capital Marxists base their arguments for socialism on
simply is “an amalgamation of capitalists for the purpose of dominating
the market, not for cheapening the technical process.”
The first task of the revolution will be to transform the industrial
structure, not keep it as it is. Anarchists have long argued that that
capitalist methods cannot be used for socialist ends. In our battle to
democratise the workplace, in our awareness of the importance of
collective initiatives by the direct producers in transforming the work
situation, we show that factories are not merely sites of production,
but also of reproduction — the reproduction of a certain structure of
social relations based on the division between those who give orders and
those who take them, between those who direct and those who execute.
Kropotkin’s vision of a decentralised, federated communal society was
one in which “the workers” were “the real managers of industries.”
The real differences between anarchism and Marxism can be seen from the
discussion on Kronstadt. In spite of Stack’s assertion, the “central
demand” of the uprising was, essentially, “all power to the soviets” (as
Paul Avrich noted, “‘Soviets without Communists’ was not, as is often
maintained by both Soviet and non-Soviet writers, a Kronstadt slogan.”).
They rejected the idea that soviet power equalled party power.
Thus the Kronstadt revolt was an attempt to re-introduce the soviet
democracy and power abolished by the Bolsheviks before the start of the
Russian Civil War. The Bolshevik suppression of Kronstadt was the end
point of a series of actions by the Bolsheviks which began with them
abolishing soviets which elected non-Bolshevik majorities, elected
officers and soldiers soviets in the Red Army and replacing workers’
self-management of production by state-appointed managers with
“dictatorial” powers. While the Kronstadt revolt is an important event
in showing the anti-working class nature of Bolshevism it is not the
only one. The activities of the Bolsheviks before the start of the
Russian Civil War indicates well Kropotkin’s argument that
“revolutionary government” is a contradiction in terms.
Therefore, it seems somewhat strange to here Stack blame all the
repressive acts of the Bolsheviks on the Civil War. After all, they
started before it. Moreover, Lenin had argued in 1917 that “revolution
is the sharpest, most furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a
single great revolution in history has escaped civil war. If Bolshevism
cannot survive the inevitable then it is hardly a model to follow.
Stack argues that the Russian working class had been “decimated” by
1921. While there is no denying that the urban working class had been
greatly reduced in number, it cannot be said to have disappeared. Nor
had its ability for collective action (and so collective decision
making) been destroyed. After all, the Kronstadt uprising was provoked
by a wave of strikes, protest meetings and demonstrations (and Bolshevik
repression of them) in Petrograd. Similar events occurred in Moscow. As
Bakunin argued, strikes showed “indicate a certain collective strength”
and, after all, it was a similar spontaneous wave of protest which had
created the soviets and factory committees in 1917.
This indicates that Stack’s argument is flawed. Rather than objective
factors eliminating soviet democracy, we can point to Bolshevik politics
and actions as contributing to its destruction. After all, the Russian
workers were strong enough to strike, to take collective action, in the
face of terrible objective conditions. Why could they not collectively
manage society in their soviets? Perhaps because the Bolsheviks would
not let them as the workers would not have voted for the “workers”
party?
Similarly, Stack argues that the Bolsheviks could not allow workers to
vote freely after the end of the Civil War as this would inevitably
result in White victory, a victory Stack argues the working class “would
have paid a huge price.” Yes, by repressing Kronstadt Lenin and Trotsky
saved the revolution — saved it for Stalin. The ramifications of
suppressing Kronstadt and the arguments used to justify the
“revolutionary” Bolshevik dictatorship paved the way for Stalinism, but
the SWP appear incapable of seeing this.
Ultimately, Stack’s comments show that the SWP’s commitment to workers’
power and democracy is non-existent. If the party leaders decide a
decision by the masses is incorrect, then the masses are overridden (and
repressed). What is there left of workers’ self-emancipation, power or
democracy when “the workers state” turns on the workers for trying to
practice these essential features of any real form of socialism? As
Trotsky put it in 1921: As if the Party were not entitled to assert its
dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of
the workers’ democracy!” He continued by stating the “Party is obliged
to maintain its dictatorship ... regardless of temporary vacillations
even in the working class ... The dictatorship does not base itself at
every moment on the formal principle of a workers’ democracy.”
In this he followed Lenin. While the SWP like to say they are for
“socialism from below,” Lenin argued in 1905 that “the principle, ‘only
from below’ is an anarchist principle.” For Lenin, Marxists must be in
favour of “From above as well as from below” and “renunciation of
pressure also from above is anarchism” According to Lenin, “pressure
from below is pressure by the citizens on the revolutionary government.
Pressure from above is pressure by the revolutionary government on the
citizens.” Needless to say, having the weapons and armed forces makes
the “pressure” of the “revolutionary” government much stronger than the
pressure of the citizens (as the Russian workers discovered). In 1920,
he was arguing that “revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed
towards the wavering and unstable elements among the masses themselves.”
Who is such an element? Anyone who does not do what the party decrees.
It is the experience of Bolshevism in power that best refutes the
Marxist claim that the workers’ state “will be democratic and
participatory. Once workers have taken power they will set about the
task of creating a new world free from exploitation and class struggle.”
Rather than the workers’ taking power in Russian, it was the Bolshevik
party which took power (as Trotsky noted, “the proletariat can take
power only through its vanguard.”) Rather than the working class as a
whole “seizing power”, it is the “vanguard” which takes power — “a
revolutionary party, even after seizing power ... is still by no means
the sovereign ruler of society.” (Trotsky) Which is, of course, true.
They are still organs of working class self-management (such as factory
committees, workers councils, trade unions, soldier committees) through
which working people can still exercise their sovereignty. Let us not
forget that it was precisely these organs which the Bolsheviks came into
conflict with and abolished or undermined in favour of party/state
power.
Anarchists are well aware of the fact that there is an “uneven
consciousness” within the working class. That is why we organise into
groups and federations to influence the class struggle as equals within
working class organisations. However, the Leninist solution to this
problem (party power) creates minority rule as the party uses its
so-called advanced ideas to repress workers who refuse to accept them. A
revolution will solve social problems in the interests of the working
class only if working class people solve them themselves. For this to
happen it requires working class people to manage their own affairs
directly and that implies self-managed organising from the bottom up
(i.e. anarchism) rather than delegating power to a minority at the top,
to a “revolutionary” party or government. This applies economically,
socially and politically. As Bakunin argued, the “revolution should not
only be made for the people’s sake; it should also be made by the
people.” Bolshevism in theory and in practice justifies the repression
of workers in their “objective” interests (as determined by the party).
Little wonder the Bolshevik tradition is being rejected by a new
generation of activists.
As I noted above, there is so much more I could write but space excludes
it. For example, I could have discussed Proudhon’s ideas more fully and
shown that he, like Bakunin and Kropotkin, saw the central role of the
working class in changing society and how his ideas were not solely for
the artisan or peasant. Similarly, I could discuss how anarchist’s
organise to win people to our ideas in more depth. Equally, I could
indicate why the events of the Spanish Revolution indicate a failure of
anarchists rather than a failure of anarchism. If your readers are
interested in finding out what anarchism really stands for as well as an
anarchist discussion on the Spanish Revolution I would suggest they
visit this webpage: www.anarchistfaq.org
yours in disgust
Iain McKay
(submitted but unpublished)
Dear Socialist Review
I must admit to being bemused by Howard Miles reply to my letter
(Socialist Review no. 249). He states that the “nub of the issue in this
debate seems to consist of disagreement over two fundamental notions,”
namely that “democratic centralist revolutionary party is necessary for
a successful socialist revolution” and, secondly, “the necessity of a
workers’ state arising from a socialist revolution.” Nothing could be
further from the truth. While these are two fundamental disagreements
between anarchism and Marxism, they had absolutely nothing to do with my
letter, which indicated how Pat Stack had misrepresented anarchist
thought in his article. That Mr. Miles fails to acknowledge this is sad,
if not unsurprising. It seems that Stack is not the only SWP member who
considers accuracy as an irrelevance when discussing other points of
view.
I am happy to discuss Miles arguments, in spite of their irrelevance to
the content of my letter. He asks “do anarchists imagine that the
capitalist class internationally will just give up and go away” after a
revolution? The “threat of counter-revolution,” he argues, necessitates
“both local and national structures, under the control of the mass of
the working class.” Anarchists are well aware of this. To quote Bakunin:
“the federative alliance of all working men’s associations ...
constitute the Commune ... all provinces, communes and associations ...
by first reorganising on revolutionary lines ... [will] constitute the
federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces ... [and]
organise a revolutionary force capable defeating reaction ... [and for]
self-defence ... [The] revolution everywhere must be created by the
people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised
into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations ...
organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary
delegation...”
As can be seen, we are clear on this issue (and the others he wonders
about). Not that Miles did not know this already, as this quote is
contained in the same article as the “fighting fire with fire” analogy
he uses (www.infoshop.org/texts/swp.html). Perhaps his use of this
analogy is pure co-incidence, but I doubt it.
Now I turn to his argument that the “political unevenness that exists
within the working class” makes federalism impractical. Miles talks
about “enabling the class to seize power.” Is this the actual aim of
Leninism? Let us quote Trotsky: “the proletariat can take power only
through its vanguard.” Thus, rather than the working class as a whole
seizing power, it is the “vanguard” which takes power — “a revolutionary
party, even after seizing power ... is still by no means the sovereign
ruler of society.” Which is, of course, true — they are still organs of
working class self-management (such as factory committees, workers
councils, trade unions, soldier committees) through which working people
can still exercise their sovereignty. Such working class organs do
conflict with the sovereign rule of the party and so have to be
undermined. Little wonder the Bolsheviks disbanded soviets with elected
non-Bolshevik majorities, decreed the end of soldier democracy in the
Red Army and urged “dictatorial” one-man management instead of workers’
self-management.
Why does the “revolutionary party” have to be the “sovereign ruler of
society” rather than the working class as a whole? Simply because of the
latter’s “political unevenness.” As Trotsky argued:
“The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does
the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter... Abstractly
speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be
replaced by the ‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people without any
party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development
among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist
conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the circumstance
that capitalism does not permit the material and the moral development
of the masses.”
In this he was just repeating the Platform of the Left Opposition and
its “Leninist principle” (“inviolable for every Bolshevik”) that “the
dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
dictatorship of the party.”
Such a position necessitates centralism, of course, but it is a denial
of workers’ power and any claim that the working class seizes power in
the so-called “workers’ state.” Centralism was designed for minority
rule and to “exclude the mass of people from taking part in
decision-making processes in society” in class society (again Miles is
paraphrasing my article), so it comes as no surprise that Bolshevism
argues for it.
Miles states that “failure to use the only form of revolutionary
organisation that has worked in the past” will “inevitably condemn
future revolutions to failure.” Strange. Did the Russian Revolution
actually result in soviet democracy? Far from it. The Kronstadt revolt
was repressed because it demanded soviet power. Nor was this an isolated
example. The Bolsheviks had been disbanding soviets with elected
non-Bolshevik majorities since early 1918 (i.e. before the start of the
Civil War).
It will, of course, be argued that the Civil War caused the degeneration
of the revolution. Let us ignore that this had begun before it started
(as well as Trotsky’s arguments) and instead assume that the Civil War
was the cause of party dictatorship. Lenin argued in 1917 that “not a
single great revolution in history has escaped civil war.” If Civil War
is inevitable and Bolshevism cannot survive it without degenerating
then, clearly, Bolshevism failed in the Russian Revolution. Bolshevism,
with its centralism, party power and statism did not work in the past,
as Russia proved.
The real “nub” of the issue is whether you confuse workers’ power with
party power. Leninism clearly does. Anarchism does not. We do not deny
that there is political unevenness within the working class. Indeed,
that is why we support federalism (and the need for specific anarchist
organisations to influence the class struggle). Only by encouraging the
active participation of working class people in their own organisations,
struggles and revolution can the political development of the working
classes be ensured. By discussing and debating the needs of the class
struggle and revolution, by organising from the bottom up and using
federated workers’ councils to co-ordinate struggle, the political
awareness of the majority will be increased. By centralising power in a
state, this process is aborted as the working class is divested of its
power to manage its own revolution and its organisations just become fig
leafs for party power.
That is why anarchists follow Bakunin when he argued for “the free
organisation of the working masses from below upwards” as the basis of a
real working class revolution. If you are interested in real “socialism
from below” discover anarchism (“the principle, ‘only from below’ is an
anarchist principle” — Lenin). I would again suggest you visit
www.anarchistfaq.org.uk for details and a further discussion of these
issues.
yours sincerely
Iain McKay
(from an leaflet handed out at the SWP’s Marxism event)
Here are a few quotes from Pat Stack’s Socialist Review article “Anarchy
in the UK?” which formed the basis of his talk at Marxism 2001. Ask
yourself why the SWP leadership systematically lies about anarchism and,
more importantly, why its membership lets them get away with it. Can you
trust anything they tell you?
“Anarchism… despises the collectivity… By dismissing the importance of
the collective nature of change anarchism, of necessity, downplays the
centrality of the working class… For… anarchists, revolutions were not
about… collective struggle” (Stack)
“Organise ever more strongly the practical militant solidarity of the
workers of all trades in all countries… you will constitute an immense
irresistible force when organised and united in the universal
collectivity.” (Bakunin)
“To be able to make the revolution, the mass of workers will have to
organise themselves. Resistance and the strike are excellent means of
organisation for doing this… It is a question of organising societies of
resistance for all trades in each town… of giving more solidarity to the
workers’ organisations… of federating them.” (Kropotkin)
“the idea that dominates anarchist thought, namely that the state is the
main enemy, rather than identifying the state as one aspect of a class
society that has to be destroyed.” (Stack)
“The Anarchists consider the wage system and capitalist production
altogether as an obstacle to progress… while combatting the present
monopolisation of land, and capitalism altogether, the Anarchists combat
with the same energy the State.”(Kropotkin)
“I think that equality must be established… by… the collective ownership
of producers’ associations, freely organised and federated into
communes… [and] by the development and organisation… of the social power
of the working masses… The future social organisation must be made
solely from the bottom upwards, by the free association or federation of
workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations
and finally in a great federation, international and universal.”
(Bakunin)
“State is there to protect exploitation, speculation and private
property; it is itself the by-product of the rapine of the people. The
proletariat must rely on his own hands; he can expect nothing of the
State. It is nothing more than an organisation devised to hinder
emancipation at all costs.” (Kropotkin)
“For Bakunin ... skilled artisans and organised factory workers, far
from being the source of the destruction of capitalism, were ‘tainted by
pretensions and aspirations’ ... the ‘uncivilised, disinherited,
illiterate’, as he put it, would be his agents for change.” (Stack)
“Organise the city proletariat ... unite it into one preparatory
organisation together with the peasantry ... Only a wide-sweeping
revolution embracing both the city workers and peasants would be
sufficiently strong to overthrow ... the State, backed as it is by all
the resources of the possessing classes.” (Bakunin)
“Kropotkin, far from seeing class conflict as the dynamic for social
change… saw co-operation being at the root of the social process… It
follows that if class conflict is not the motor of change, the working
class is not the agent and collective struggle not the means.” (Stack)
“Anarchists… have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst
the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle
against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary
legislation.” (Kropotkin)
“The union is absolutely necessary. It is the only form of workers’
grouping which permits the direct struggle to be maintained against
capital without falling into parliamentarism.” (Kropotkin)
“The huge advantage [anarcho-syndicalists] had over other anarchists was
their understanding of the power of the working class, the centrality of
the point of production (the workplace) and the need for collective
action.” (Stack)
“To become strong you must unite… nothing less is needed than the union
of all local and national workers’ associations into a worldwide
association… It means workers’ solidarity in their struggle against the
bosses. It means trades-unions, organisation.” (Bakunin)
“Anarchists have always advised taking an active part in those workers’
organisations which carry on the direct struggle of Labour against
Capital and its protector – the State.” (Kropotkin)