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Title: The Critique of Marxism Author: Sam Dolgoff Date: 1983 Language: en Topics: Marxism, critique, the State, class struggle, economics Notes: First published by **Soil of Liberty**, Minneapolis, 1983
From the original:
The author has meant this pamphlet to be provocative, The Soil of
Liberty staff is not in complete agreement with everything in the
pamphlet but felt it should be printed. We welcome comments for future
magazine issues of Soil of Liberty.
This pamphlet is the second published by Soil of Liberty. The first,
“The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society”, is also by Sam Dolgoff
and is available for 55¢, including postage. Bulk rates are available.
Sam has been active in the anarchist movement since the 1920s and
presently lives in New York City.
Soil of Liberty also has a book service and a catalog will soon be
available. Magazine subscriptions are $3 -$4 a-year. Address is on the
back cover.
This summation is written in response to young people seeking
clarification of the main issues involved in the classic controversy
between Marxists and anarchists. The subject matter is arranged in the
form of extracts from relevant sources. The anarchists as well as the
marxists speak for themselves in quotations culled from their works.
Since the non-anarchist critique of Marxism has taken a libertarian
direction, we have also included extracts from such writings.
Our critique excludes forgotten earlier writings disavowed by Marx and
Engels and deals only with their mature works. In his preface to Marx’s
Critique of Political Economy, Engels revealed that he and Marx had
“…abandoned the manuscript of The Ger*ma*n Ideology [1846] to the
gnawing criticism of the mice…” A Russian visitor, Alexis Vodin, who
interviewed Engels in 1893, wrote that Engels “was very embarrassed when
I expressed interest in Marx and Engels’ earlier writings…” (see David
Mclellan, Marx Before Marxism, 1970, p. 208) Only in 1927 was an edition
of the earlier writings published by the Marx-Engels Institute in
Moscow.
Passages marked in [brackets] are mine. Those marked in (parentheses)
are the writer’s. References are also marked in (parentheses).
Marxism is based upon the theory of Economic Determinism (or its
equivalent terms – Historical Materialism, Dialectical Materialism,
Materialistic Conception of History, Scientific Socialism, etc.).
Economic Determinism constitutes the essence of Marxism. It is defined
by Engels in this famous passage from his introduction to Marx’s
Critique of Political Economy:
“…all past history was the history of class struggles… these warring
classes of society are always the products of the conditions of
production and exchange, in a word, of the economic condition of the
time; [Engels’ emphasis] therefore the economic structure of society
always forms the real basis from which, in the last analysis, is to be
explained, the whole superstructure of legal and political institutions
[the state] as well as the religious, philosophical, and other
conceptions of each historical period.. .all moral theories are the
product, in the last analysis, of the economic stage which society
reached at that particular epoch… with the same certainty, can we deduce
the social revolution from the existing social conditions and the
principles of political economy… now, a materialist conception of
history has been propounded and the way found to explain man’s
consciousness by his being, instead of his being by his consciousness…”
[Marx formulates this more concisely]
“..,it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence –
but their social existence which determines their consciousness…”
(Critique of Political Economy)
“…the course of history is governed by inner laws operating in spite of
the consciously desired aims of individuals...” (Engels, Ludwig
Feurbach, p. 48, emphasis added)
Over a century ago Bakunin anticipated much the same arguments against
Marx’s theory of Economic Determinism as did later writers. He stressed
the point that causes and effects are continuously interacting and
replacing themselves. Causes become effects. Effects, in turn, become
causes. For example:
“…Marx holds that the political condition of each country is always..,
the faithful expression of its economic situation…. He takes no account
of other factors in history such as the ever-present reaction of
political, juridical and religious institutions on the economic
situation. He says poverty produces political slavery, the State, [but
ignores the fact] that political slavery, the State, reproduces, in its
turn, and maintains poverty as a condition for its own existence…. Marx
ignores completely … a multitude of ethnological, climatological and
historic causes,.., which independent of the economic conditions of each
country, [Bakunin stresses the ‘spirit of revolt’] exert a considerable
influence on its destinies and even on its economic development…”
(Letter to La Liberte – 1872)
J.M. Cameron, English historian and sociologist:
“…it is not true that in history we are faced, first, with men
associating together in economic life, and then with men worshipping the
gods, inventing moral codes, .and justifying this or that political
order…. We are faced with men engaged in all these activities at once.
If we approach history without preconceptions, we have no means by which
we can determine certain attitudes to be primary and others secondary.
All we know is that they co-exist. As sociologists and historians we
ought not single out certain phenomena and describe them as causes and
other phenomena as effects. The only assumption that accords with the
scientific is that we are faced with a developing whole the parts of
which are continuously interacting…” (Scrutiny of Marxism, p. 28; 1948)
The article entitled “Dialectics” in the Encyclopedia Britannia (1969)
also stresses the often decisive importance of non-economic factors in
the shaping of history, grossly underestimated by Marx:
“…many economic facts are just as much effects as they are causes
…changes in artistic tastes, in political institutions, in social
traditions and even religious doctrines influence consumption of
commodities and thereby become determinants of production and law is
just as much a determinant as it is a product of economic life. Thus a
maze of causal relationships results and with causes and effects
indistinguishable in many instances, no social program could be built on
this foundation….”
It may be objected that both Cameron and the Encyclopedia, are too
conservative and unfair to Marxism. But R.H. Tawney, a social thinker
and historian whose works are highly recommended by the Marxists, voices
much the same criticism of Marx’s theory of Economic Determinism:
“…that men should have thought as they did is sometimes as significant
as they should have acted as they did… there is an evolution of ideas as
well as organisms, and the quality of civilization depends less on
physical qualities, than on a complex structure of habits, knowledge and
beliefs, the destruction of which would be followed in a year by the
death of half the human race… there is a moral and religious, as well as
material environment which sets its stamp on the individual… and the
effects of changes in this environment are no less profound….” (Religion
and the Rise of Capitalism, pp. 18-19)
Engels himself unintentionally (to be sure) pinpoints the major fallacy
of Economic Determinism:
“…causes [the economic structure of society] and effects, [the whole
legal, political, moral, etc. ‘superstructure’], are constantly changing
places and what is now or here an effect becomes there or then a cause
and vice-versa… truly, when a man is in possession of the final and
ultimate truth, it is only natural that he should have a certain
contempt for erring and unscientific humanity….” (Anti-Duhring, pp. 36,
29)
It follows from this that the fundamental dogma of Marxism, Economic
Determinism – “the final and ultimate truth”, is, according to Engels
himself, demonstrably false.
Economic Determinism is a doctrine which in practice saps the
revolutionary vitality of the masses, conditions them to accept
capitalism and to co-operate with their rulers in their own enslavement.
To effect social changes, the workers must, according to Marx, adapt
themselves to the slow, progressive evolution of economic structures
because “no social formation ever disappears before all the productive
forces are developed for which it has room, and new higher relations of
production never appear before the necessary material conditions are
matured in the womb of the old society.” (Critique of Political Economy)
It takes a long time. “We say to the workers and the petty bourgeoisie;
‘suffer in bourgeois society which creates, by developing industry, the
material means for the formation of the new society which will free all
of you.’” [Marx on the lessons of the 1848 revolutions.] No matter how
great the suffering, the workers are promoting progress because “in the
evolution of society, ancient, asiatic, feudal and bourgeois modes of
production constitute progressive epochs in the economic systems of
society…” (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy)
On the same grounds, Engels goes so far as to defend the institution of
slavery: “The introduction of slavery in Greece under the conditions of
that time, was a great step forward…, it was slavery that first made
possible the development of agriculture and industry and with it the
flower of the ancient world, Hellenism. Without slavery, no Greek State,
no Greek art and science; without slavery no Roman Empire; without
Hellenism and the Roman Empire as a basis, no Europe… without the
slavery of antiquity no modern socialism…” (Anti-Duhring, p. 203)
The consistent Economic Determinist could just as well argue on the same
grounds that since production had developed to a point where there was a
shortage of labor power, and since the shortage was made up by
converting prisoners-of-war into slaves, therefore, wars were necessary
and ultimately beneficial.
In his polemic against Proudhon (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, quoted
on p. 357 in Handbook of Marxism, International, 1935), Marx maintained
that slavery in America was still an economic necessity, arguing that
“slavery is an economic category, like any other. Slavery is just as
much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery or credit…, without
slavery you have no cotton, without cotton, you have no modern
industry…, without slavery, North America, the most progressive of
countries would be turned into a primitive country. Abolish slavery and
you will have wiped America off the map of nations.”
Question: How progressive is a country whose very existence depends on
slavery?
Franz Mehring, Marx’s official biographer, explains that “Marx not only
shows that machinery and large scale industry created greater misery
than any mode of production known in history, but that also in their
ceaseless revolutionisation of capitalist society they are preparing the
way for a higher social form… the machine which degrades the worker into
its mere appendage, creates at the same time the increasing productive
forces of society so that all members of society will enjoy a life
worthy of human beings, which could not be done before because
pre-capitalist societies were too poor.”
Since, according to the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie is the
bearer of large-scale industry, it is in the interests of the workers to
help the bourgeoisie to seize power as soon as possible and as soon as
the bourgeoisie develops industry, to overthrow it. The workers should
co-operate gladly because “as long as the rising mode of production
furthers the general aims of society, it is enthusiastically welcomed
even by those who suffer most from its corresponding mode of
distribution. This was the case with the English workers in the
beginnings of large scale industry” (Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 167-8). A
deliberate brazen falsehood if ever there was one and a calculated
insult to the valiant English workers who fought for freedom with
unexampled courage. (See E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English
Working Class)
Mehring explains that “Marx and Engels aimed at utilizing the
Franco-Prussian War as thoroughly as possible in the interests of the
proletarian struggle for emancipation… Engels condemned the leaders of
the German Socialist Party, William Liebknecht and August Bebel, because
they abstained from voting war credits… The situation is: Germany has
been forced into a war to defend its national existence against
Bonaparte… Bonaparte’s war policy was directed against the national
unity Germany and, since the establishment of a united German state is
necessary for the ultimate emancipation of the workers, the war must be
supported. Bismarck [in prosecuting the war and unifying Germany] is
doing a share of our work.”
Engels wrote that “militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But
this militarism carries within itself the seed of its own destruction…
Military rivalry forces states to spend more and more money on armaments
thus hastening financial catastrophe…, compulsory military service makes
the whole people familiar with the use of arms… the people revolt
against the commanding military lords.., the armies of the princes
become transformed into the armies of the People; the military machine
refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectic of its own
evolution… gunpowder and other inventions not only revolutionized
warfare, but in revolutionizing industry, warfare represents an economic
advance.” (Anti-Duhring, p. 192)
In an 1872 letter to the anarchist Carlo Cafiero, Engels declared that
both Bismarck and King Victor Emanuel rendered immense service to the
Revolution by creating political centralization in their respective
countries. “…just as in economic evolution there is the tendency for
capital to concentrate in fewer hands and for the smaller capitalist to
be swallowed by the large, so likewise in political evolution it is
inevitable that the small states should be absorbed by the great….”
(Franz Mehring quotes Engels in Karl Marx, pp. 164-5)
In criticizing [the young, pre-anarchist – Ed.] Bakunin’s Appeal to the
Slavs — which called for the independence of the Slavic peoples and the
destruction of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and
Prussia, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Feb. 14 1849,-edited by Marx)
declared that “no Slavic people has a future for the simple reason that
they lack the indispensable political and industrial conditions for
independence… the stubborn Czechs and the Slovaks should be grateful to
the Germans who have taken the trouble to civilize them be introducing
them to commerce, industry, agricultural science and education… What
would Texas or California have gained if it would be in the hands of the
lazy Mexicans?”
It follows from the above quotation that militants who fight against
slavery and for racial equality, people who refuse to help the
bourgeoisie bosses, people who are against war and militarism, people
who are for the freedom and independence of small nations against
imperialist domination, are, according to marxist theory,
“dialectically” counter-revolutionists against their oppressors who are
unconsciously preparing the road for socialism.
Engels extols parliamentary political action and class collaboration —
”…the two million voters for the German Social Democratic Party plus the
young men and women non-voters who stand behind them… form the most
compact ‘shock troops’ of the international Proletarian Army.., if this
goes on, we shall at the close of the century win over the greater part
of the middle social layers, the petty bourgeoisie as well as the small
peasants, and we shall come to be the decisive power in the land…. The
capitalist parties perish because of the legal means set up by
themselves,… the Social Democratic revolution… is getting on first rate
while abiding by the law…” (pamphlet, “The Revolutionary Act”)
This catastrophic policy which led to the emasculation of the socialist
movement and its absorption into the capitalist State, rendered the
German socialist movement (numerically the strongest in the world)
impotent to resist the First World War as well as the rise of Nazi
fascism — historical tragedies whose magnitude it is impossible to
assess.
That economic factors to a greater or lesser degree, depending on
circumstances, shape events is an indisputable fact. To assert, however,
that the ultimate cause of all social changes is to be found only in
changes in the mode and relations of production is a gross distortion
which cannot be sustained by the facts of history.
The marxist misconception of history stems primarily from erroneous
ideas about the origin and nature of the State and its preponderant role
in the shaping of the economic and social life of humanity.
According to the Communist Manifesto, “the executive of the modern State
is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.” Bakunin maintained that the State is not merely an agent
of the dominant economic class, but that the State also constitutes a
class in itself and is the most powerful of all by virtue of its
monopoly of armed force and its sovereignty over all other social
institutions. In contrast to Marx, Bakunin argued that the State is not
only the product but also the creator and perpetuator of economic,
political and social inequality.
Bakunin’s critique has in this respect been sustained by modern social
thinkers. Sidney Hook states flatly that “the existence of the Soviet
Union refutes the theory of historical materialism … since the basic
economic changes were achieved through political action [the State].”
(Marx and the Marxists, p. 124) It was this development which led Rudolf
Hilferding, a noted Marxist economist, to revise his ideas about the
nature of the State: “…the Marxist sectarian cannot grasp the idea that
the present-day State power, having achieved independence, is unfolding
its enormous strength according to its own laws, subjecting social
forces and compelling them to serve its ends… Therefore, neither the
Russian, nor totalitarian systems in general, is determined by the
character of the economy. On the contrary, it is the economy that is
determined by the policy of the ruling power. An analogy to the
totalitarian State may be found in the era of the Roman Empire in the
regime of the Praetorians and their emperors….” (quoted by Hook in Marx
and the Marxists, p. 241)
In this connection the political scientist, Michel Collinet, observes
that “for Lenin, the Revolution is not the necessary consequence of the
productive forces, but of a militarized party of professional
revolutionaries who knew how to use an effective strategy to profit by
political occasions….” (Le Contrat Social, Jan. 1957)
The Marx-Engels notion that in primitive society the State originally
arose to “safeguard the common interests of tribal societies against
external enemies and later to protect the economic and political
position of the ruling class” is false. The contention that exploitation
arose through “purely economic causes… and not at all by the State… that
historically, private property by no means makes appearance as the
result of robbery and violence” is also false. (Engels, Anti-Duhring,
pp. 167, 171, 184)
Evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. All competent historians and
anthropologists, among them Edward Jenks, agree that:
“…the State, in its origin, was not an economic, but a military
institution… formed by conquest and plunder… unwilling themselves to
practice the patient arts of husbandry… the invading hosts settled down
like a swarm of locusts on their prey… the rich vineyards and fields of
Europe… No permanent State was ever built unaided by an invading host…
the State itself, though intensely military in character, imposes itself
on a solid base of permanent agriculture, which will supply its needs by
wealth drawn from the fruitful soil.., the primitive State was simply a
band of warriors under a military leader — Clovis, Rurik, Norman William
— but as time went on… as the band of warriors settled down as lords and
rulers of their fiefs, as hereditary successors to office and title
became recognized… the State began to assume in varied forms the
character of an institution, a piece of machinery which maintains a
perpetual existence, despite the death of kings and barons…” (Edward
Jenks, The State and the Nation, 1919, pp. 130, 131)
“…**the State is essentially military in character… its methods are
mainly non-productive… they do not produce values, but merely preserve
or destroy them.. From its earliest stages its policy has been
annexation or plunder of its own or alien communities… it creates
property by handing over the resources of the community to individuals
or small groups and this is, in effect, what the State had done by
creating individual and private property and protecting it with its
overwhelming power… the State received its return from this reckless
squandering of the resources of the community…” (Jenks, p. 237, my
emphasis)
“…the Roman Empire rests on force only, a brute force let loose by the
lowest appetites.., it bound every man to his occupation… chained him
and his descendants to the same post [occupation], established a real
caste system… the wholesale destruction of wealth created by the subject
peoples … Rome’s industry in the second and first centuries, B.C. had
been war and the spoliation of the vanquished… the fruits of conquest
were dissipated in a century…” (Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient
World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages, pp. 8, 65, 84, 85, 82)
We cite a few examples from the anarchist Gaston Leval’s excellent
analysis of Marxism which awaits translation into English:
“…the Visigoth dynasty [ruling much of Iberia and France after the Roman
Empire fell – Ed.] did not derive its origin from the institution of
private property nor from changes in the mode of production. It was the
creation of the ‘conquistadores’ who institutionalized the domination
and economic exploitation of the conquered peoples…”
“…what became France, was founded by Clovis [first king of the Franks –
Ed.], a bandit who murdered his rivals and with a savage horde of
warriors from the north routed the Romans and the Germans [Visigoths –
Ed]. With each victory he and his successors augmented their forces,
conquered more territories, and by plunder, rapine and extortion,
engineered the economic subjugation of the conquered peoples, dividing
property and the spoils of war among themselves. The true creators of
the State were the militarists and the politicians, not only in Spain
and France, but also in Flanders [Belgium], Germany, Russia and other
northern European countries, and in Italy….”
“…the State by its very nature, tends to have a life of its own. It is a
parasitic institution living at the expense of society… in Latin America
the Spanish and Portuguese ‘conquistadores’ seized the land of the
natives, plundered the urban communities, and by brute force, not by
changes in the mode of production, imposed feudal regimes which to this
day weigh so heavily on the economic and political institutions of so
many nations… to give land to its soldiers and officials, the invaders
changed the social structure of the conquered territories…”
To illustrate the predominance of the State, Leval points out that
during the post-war period in the newly established small States “there
already appeared Ministers, a repressive apparatus, jails, and
executioners… There already appear classes. The new classes do not owe
their existence to technological developments or changes in the mode of
production. They are brought into being by the newly created State — the
institutionalized political authority controlling or dominating the
economic and social life of the people…”
“…the economy of the newly established States, may deteriorate; mass
starvation and disease may decimate the population; but the ministries
grow. The police and armed forces multiply. The new bureaucracy
flourishes. A new powerful class exploits the peasants, levies taxes,
and suffocates the people in an avalanche of rules and restrictions…”
“…Rene’ Dumont, a renowned agronomist and sociologist, reports from
visits to some of the new States that the principal industry of these
new countries is governmental administration. In fifteen former French
colonies newly independent — economic production declined, but the
production of politicians grew. In Dahomey, the wages of the
governmental bureaucracy absorbs 70% of the national income. The
situation in Gabon is just as bad or worse, as it is in other countries
Dumont visited. As soon as a peasant learns to read and write he goes to
the city to become a functionary..,” (above quotes from Gaston Leval, La
Falacia del Marxismo, Mexico City, 1967, pp. 116, 117, 118)
Bakunin anticipated just such a development: “…in Turkish Serbia [after
independence – Ed.] … there is only one class in control of the
government — the bureaucracy. The one and only function of the State,
therefore, is to exploit the Serbian people in order to provide the
bureaucrats with all the comforts of life…” (Statism and Anarchy)
Marx and Engels praised the bourgeoisie for advancing the economy by
“lumping together… loosely connected provinces.., or small independent
states into one nation, with one government, one code of laws etc…”
(Communist Manifesto). This assumption, that political centralization —
the State, facilitates economic development is a dangerous illusion
refuted by massive evidence. The fact is that wars between States
devastated whole nations. The State wrecked the economy, stifled
initiative and held back progress for centuries.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels declare that their
“theoretical conclusions are based on the class struggle.” That class
struggles are a factor in social change no one will deny. But the dogma
that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles” (Communist Manifesto) is false.
Gaston Leval demonstrates that “wars between migratory hordes and
sedentary populations, nations and States, count in history more than
class wars — particularly in Europe and Asia… In Spain, recall the six
centuries of war against the Arabs. Read the literature of the 10th to
the 16th Centuries to realize how little part the class war played as
compared to religious and racial factors; how little the class war
figured in the conquest of Sicily and almost all of Italy, Flanders and
part of France by the Spanish armies; the international religious wars
between Christians and Mohammendans; or the conquest of Latin America by
Spain — the people of Spain sided with the kings…”(La Falacia del
Marxismo, pp 121-2)
Contrary to the Communist Manifesto, the Plebians did not constitute a
revolutionary class. In the centuries of the Roman Empire, both the
Patricians and the Plebians approved the enslavement of
prisoners-of-war, who were drafted to reinforce the armies of Caesar,
Lucullus, and Pompeii. Although the Patricians represented the big
landholders and the Plebians the small farmers; the Plebians were not
interested in the abolition of privilege or the establishment of a new
economic order. “Their sole concern,” writes Rudolf Rocker, “was to
participate in the privileges of the Patricians and to obtain an equal
share in the spoils of war.” (Nationalism and Culture, p. 379)
As compared to the catastrophic impact of wars in this century, even the
most protracted struggles between workers and employers are of minor
significance.
Marx surely underestimated the importance of nationalism in shaping
history. He thought that nationalism would be superseded by class
struggles because the proletariat would become class conscious in the
process of struggle.
In this connection Lewis Mumford disagrees with Marx:
“When Marx wrote in the 1850s, nationalism seemed to him to be a dying
movement… it had in fact, taken on a new life… with the massing of the
population into national States which continued during the 19th Century,
the national struggle for political power cut at right angle to the
class struggle… the struggle for political power now became a struggle
between States for command of exploitable areas… after 1850, nationalism
became the drill master of the restless proletariat who identified
themselves with the all-powerful State” (Technics and Civilization, pp.
189, 190, 191)
Marx and Engels believed that “modern industrial labour subjection to
capitalism, in England, France, America and Germany, has stripped the
proletariat of every trace of national character. Law, morality,
religion, are to the proletariat so many bourgeois prejudices.”
(Communist Manifesto)
The trouble with this argument is that workers still nurse these
prejudices and act accordingly. What a worker thinks and feels may
determine his or her reaction to events more than what he or she does
for a living.
With the coming of World War I (which according to Marxist theory should
have signalled the long delayed collapse of capitalism), the proletariat
– ”the only really revolutionary class” (Communist Manifesto), became
rabid nationalists, and even the German Socialist Party deputies in the
Reichstag patriotically voted war credits.
In opposition to Marx, Bakunin argued that the bourgeois-minded workers
in the advanced industrialized countries are not going to make
revolutions [This is incorrect—Bakunin was often sceptical about the
upper layer of workers in all countries, and never rejected the Western
working class– Ed.].
History proved Bakunin right and Marx wrong. The most notable
revolutions of this century have been those that broke out in Russia and
China. Nor did the October Revolution, as Lenin expected, initiate a
series of proletarian upheavals in the advanced countries of Western
Europe that were deemed ripe for the Social Revolution.
Marx attached slight importance to psychological factors in revolution,
but Bakunin insisted that revolution was impossible for people who had
“lost the habit of freedom.” He left more room for people’s will, their
aspiration for freedom and equality and “the instinct of revolt” which
constitutes the “revolutionary consciousness” of oppressed peoples.
Rudolf Rocker writes that:
“…in France, crafts and industries were brought under the regimentation
of the State… rigorous regulations and methods of work were decreed for
all industries… an army of officials took care that no one deviated even
by a hair’s breadth from established norms. Tailors were told how many
stitches to make in sewing a sleeve into a coat; the cooper, how many
hoops to put around a barrel. The State not only decreed the length,
width and colour of woven fabrics but specified the number of threads in
each weave. Violations were punished by confiscation of goods; in
serious cases, by destruction of material, tools, workshops, etc… Just
as agricultural production under serfdom declined sharply; so did the
Royal ordinances and regimentation wreck industry and bring France to
the brink of ruin…”
“As in France, English industry too, was subjected to severe
restrictions. The Court was interested only in filling the Royal
treasury. Under the reign of Charles I, the monopoly for the manufacture
of soap was sold to a company of London soap boilers and a special
ordinance forbade any household to make soap for its own use. Rights to
exploit tin and coal deposits in the north of England, glass and other
industries were sold to the highest bidders…”
“When England acquired its colonial empire, immense territories were
sold to monopolists for ridiculously low payments from which they
derived enormous profits in a few years… Queen Elizabeth sold exclusive
rights to commercial companies to trade in the East Indies and all lands
east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.
Charles II gave exclusive rights to exploit Virginia to his
father-in-law. Rights were sold to the Hudson Bay Company for 20% of the
profits, etc…” (Nationalism and Culture, 1937, pp. 125, 126, 430, 431)
Peter Kropotkin denounced:
“…revolutionaries who glorify the State… the modern radical is a
centralist, Statist and rabid Jacobin, and the Socialists (Marxists
included) fall in step. Just as the Florentines at the end of the 15th
Century knew no better than to call upon the dictatorship of the State
to save themselves from the Patricians; so the socialists only call upon
the same gods, the dictatorship of the State to save themselves from the
horrors of the economic regime, created by the very same State!”
“The role of the nascent State in the 16th and 17th Centuries was to
destroy the independence of the cities; to pillage the rich guilds of
the merchants and artisans; to concentrate in its hands the external
commerce; to lay hands on the internal administration of the guilds and
subject internal commerce and all manufacturing to the last detail to
the control of a host of officials and in this way, to kill industry and
the arts; taking over the local militias and the whole municipal
administration; crushing the weak in the interests of the strong by
taxation and ruining countries by wars and the lands were either simply
stolen by the rich with the connivance of the State or confiscated by
the State directly…”
Kropotkin calls attention to the:
“…shameless waste of the Ministers and the Court; the monstrous profits
of the private concessionaires who collected indirect taxes and similar
profits by the innumerable official collectors who channelled the direct
tax into the treasury…. Industry in the 18th Century was dying… all the
State was capable of doing was to tighten the screws for the workers;
depopulate the countryside; spread misery in the towns; reduce millions
of human beings to a state of starvation and impose industrial
serfdom,., already, at the close of the 14th Century, an edict by Edward
III, King of England, decreed that ‘every alliance, connivance,
meetings, enactments and solemn oaths made or to be made between
carpenters and masons [or any other trades] are null and void’.., in
1801 the French government itself undertook to appoint mayors and
syndics in each of the thirty thousand communes…” (The State: Its
Historic Role, pp. 41-43, 46-47)
Engels justified the tyranny of the State on the ground that “forcible
measures of Louis 14th, made it easier for the bourgeoisie to carry
through their revolution”. But the bourgeoisie, in the name of the
“common will” fought the absolute monarchy for the exclusive right to
exploit the workers; just as they crushed the revolt of the workers and
the sans culottes during the French Revolution a century later. Marx and
Engels conceded that the bourgeoisie “established new classes, new
oppress-ions… in place of the old ones…” (Communist Manifesto). But
their inability to learn from historical events that no State can ever
play a revolutionary role, persists to this day.
Marx’s whole theory of history and economic laws led him to predict both
the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the dictatorship of the
proletariat. But capitalism has not only been able to survive. It has
actually become more entrenched by adopting, in various degrees,
social-democratic reform measures; thereby absorbing the labour and
socialist movements into the structure of the State capitalist economic
system (-sometimes designated “welfare state” or “welfare capitalism
“)The political scientist Michel Collinet points out that “if the
cyclical crises of capitalism are, as Marx predicted, a source of misery
and insecurity; it is also a fact that after more than a hundred years,
it has not led the working class to make a [PROLETARIAN] Social
Revolution. The terrible economic depression of 1929, profoundly divided
and demoralized the workers and their political parties who claim to
represent them… in Europe the crisis aggravated nationalism and brought
on the fascist racist reaction. In America, the ‘New Deal’ of Roosevelt;
in France, the popular front… strengthened capitalism…” (Le Contrat
Social, January 1967. I have inserted and emphasized the PROLETARIAN to
establish the point that neither the largely agrarian Russian nor the
Chinese Revolution were really proletarian.)
The Marxist Max Schachtman, in his introduction to Franz Mehring’s
biography of Karl Marx, admits the “incontestable fact that the class
struggle has not… led to the rule of the working class that was to be
transitional-to a classless society — the perspective that Marx himself
held to be his unique contribution — cannot be explained away…” And Max
Eastman in his introduction to an anthology of Marx and Engels writings,
likewise objects that “the very first sentence of the Communist
Manifesto, ‘the History of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles’ shows the disposition to read one’s own interests
into the definition of facts…”
Marx and most authoritarian socialists did not give much thought to the
forms of organization that might translate into reality the ideal of a
free, stateless society. The dialectical method which Marx employed in
working out his theory of Dialectical Materialism is essentially a
philosophy of perpetual conflict between opposing tendencies or forces
interrupted by temporary adjustments. There is conflict, but society is
also a vast interlocking network of co-operative labour and the very
existence of mankind depends upon this inner cohesion.
In this connection, Paul Avrich emphasizes that “mankind, in fact, owes
its existence to mutual assistance. The theories of Hegel, Marx and
Darwin notwithstanding, Kropotkin held that co-operation rather than
conflict lies at the root of the historical process…” (Introduction to
the 1972 edition of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution)
Marx’s failure to appreciate this truth permeates his grossly distorted
conceptions.
Marx’s notion that the “bourgeoisie has created more colossal productive
forces in scarce one hundred years than all preceding generations
together…” (Communist Manifesto) is a gross distortion. Lewis Mumford’s
classic study, Technics and Civilization, an objective assessment of the
relationship of capitalism to technology, corrects Marx on this point:
“While technics owes an honest debt to capitalism, as it does to war,
capitalism and technics must be clearly distinguished at every stage …
the machine took on characteristics that had nothing essential to do
with the technical process or the forms of work… it was because of
capitalism that the handicraft industries in Europe and other parts of
the world were recklessly destroyed by machine products; even when
machine products were inferior to the things they replaced.., the
machine has suffered from the sins of capitalism.., contrariwise,
capitalism has taken credit for the machine…”
“Although there is a close historical association of modern technics and
modern capitalism, there is no necessary connection between them*.*
Capitalism has existed in other civilizations, which had relatively low
technical development, and technics made steady improvements from the
10th to the 15th Century without the special incentives of capitalism…
between the 10th and the 18th Century all the technical preparations for
capitalism had already taken place…” (emphasis added, pp. 26, 27, 28)
Which refutes the silly remark that “no earlier century had even a
presentiment that such [capitalist] productive forces [existed]…”
(Communist Manifesto)
A few examples to refute that falsehood:
John U. Nef:
“…the most startling progress of the physical and mathematical sciences
in the 16th and early 17th centuries occurred in parts of Europe that
did not participate directly in the speeding-up of industrial growth in
England and Northern Europe…” Nef describes the “boom in mining and
metallurgy between the late 15th and early 16th centuries… when much of
continental Europe was built or rebuilt in the new Renaissance style of
architecture…” Nef also documents the “remarkable industrial development
especially striking in Northern Italy, parts of Spain, the southern low
countries and southern Germany…” (The Conquest of the Material World,
pp. 326, 42)*
Peter Kropotkin:
“All modern industry came to us from these free cities [of the Middle
Ages]. In three centuries, industries and the arts attained such
perfection that our century has only been able to surpass them in speed
of production, but rarely in quality or the intrinsic beauty of the
product… in each of its manifestations, our technical progress is only
the child of the civilization that grew up within the free communes… All
the great discoveries made by modern science; the compass, the clock,
the watch, printing, maritime discoveries, gunpowder, the laws of
gravitation, atmospheric pressure, of which the steam engine is a
development, the rudiments of chemistry, the scientific methods already
outlined by Roger Bacon and applied in the Italian universities… Where
do all these things originate if not in the free cities? In the
civilization which was developed under the protection of communal
liberties… in the 16th century Europe was covered with rich cities…
their caravans covered the continent, their vessels ploughed the seas
and the rivers…” (The State: Its Historic Role, p. 29)
“The cities of the 13th century [writes Lewis Mumford] were far brighter
and cleaner and better ordered than the new victorian towns. Medieval
hospitals were more spacious and more sanitary than the hospitals of the
victorian towns. In many parts of Europe the medieval workers had a
demonstrably higher standard of living than the drudge tied triumphantly
to a semi-automatic machine…” (Technics and Civilization, p. 183)
Kropotkin indignantly refutes the false allegations of the “historians
and economists who teach us that the village commune, having become an
outdated form of land possession which hampered progress, had to
disappear under the action of ‘natural economic forces’…” Kropotkin
denounces the Marxian “socialists who claim to be ‘scientific
socialists’ who repeat this stock fable… this odious calculated lie…
History abounds with documents to prove that the village commune was in
the first place deprived of all its powers by the State, of its
independence, and that afterwards the lands were either stolen with the
connivance of the State or confiscated by the State directly… Have we
not learned at school that the State had performed the great service of
creating, out of the ruins of feudal society, national unions which had
been previously made impossible by the rivalries between cities?”
Kropotkin calls attention to the fact that the “Dialectical
Materialists” do not even begin to appreciate the:
“…communalist movement that existed in the 11th and 12th centuries… this
movement with its virile affirmation of the individual; which succeeded
in creating a society through the free federation of’ towns and
villages, was the complete negation of the unitarian centralizing Roman
outlook. Nor is it linked to any historic personality or central
institution… Society was literally covered with a network of sworn
brotherhoods; of guilds for mutual aid… it is even very doubtful whether
there was a single man in that period, free man or serf, who did not
belong to a brotherhood or some guild, as well as to his commune… In the
course of a hundred years this movement spread in an impressive
harmonious way throughout Europe covering Scotland, France, the Low
Countries, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia. In these cities [communes]
sheltered by their conquered liberties, inspired by free agreement and
free initiative, a whole new civilization grew up and flourished in ways
unparalleled to this day.” (The State: Its Historic Role)
Since Kropotkin developed these ideas in 1897, further research by
reputable historians and political scientists has confirmed his
analysis. Edward Jencks wrote:
“…the typical village of the middle ages in Western Europe and indeed,
of people in a corresponding stage the world over, was not like the
typical village of modern France or England, merely a locality in which
neighbours who carry on their work independently happen to live, but a
community, carrying on its work as a single body of co-partners governed
by customary rules, to which all must conform, it was not competitive…
the self-governing municipality, or borough, was the highest achievement
of the patriarchal principle; and after a dark period of repression, it
gallantly took up the struggle against the newer ideas of absolute rule
which produced the institution of the State…. it was founded on the
undying principles of brotherhood, freedom and voluntary co-operation,
as opposed to subordination, regimentation or compulsory service…” (The
State and the Nation, pp. 94, 116, 118, 137, Jenck’s comments concern
patriarchal society in transition to the free cities or communes
discussed by Kropotkin)
R.H. Tawney suggests that:
“it may do well to remember that the characteristic… of the medieval
guild was that if it sprang from economic needs, it claimed at least to
subordinate them to social needs… preserve a rough equality among the
good men of the mystery [association]; check economic egotism by
insisting that every brother shall share his good fortune with another
and-stand by his neighbour in need, resist the encroachments of a
conscienceless money-power; preserve professional standards of training
and craftsmanship, and to repress by a strict corporate discipline the
natural appetite of each to snatch advantages for himself to the
detriment of all… much that is now mechanical was then personal,
intimate and direct, and there was little room for organization on a
scale too vast for the standards that are applied to individuals, or the
doctrine that silences scruples and closes all accounts with the final
plea of economic expediency…”
“…the most fundamental difference between medieval and modern economic
thought is that while modern economic thought normally refers to
expediency, medieval economic thought starts from the position that
there is a moral authority to which considerations of economic
expediency must be subordinated… the fact that the socialist doctrine
should have been expounded as early as the middle of the 14th century is
a reminder that economic thought contained elements much more modern
than is sometimes suggested…” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, pp.
31, 32, 42, 43)
Thorough research by highly qualified historians leads to the
inescapable conclusion that capitalism is not, as the marxists insist,
the indispensable progressive precondition for the transition to
socialism. Actually, capitalism usurped the creative achievements of
mankind and reversed the libertarian trend of society, the better to
subjugate the people to the greed of the capitalists and the despotism
of the State.
Indisputable evidence also demonstrates that capitalism is not
inevitable and that there is a libertarian alternative: a flexible
society permeated by the principles of individual and collective
freedom, solidarity, self-management, federalism and free agreement. The
potential for such a society existed in the village communities,
brotherhoods, guilds and Free Cities [communes] of the Middle Ages.
Kropotkin did not, as is charged, idealize the Free Cities. In analysing
medieval society he took into account “the internal conflicts with which
the history of these communes is filled… street riots… blood spilled…
reprisals, etc…” But Kropotkin did prove that “all the elements, as well
as the fact itself, of large human groupings, freely constituted, were
already there…” (The State …) Writing thirty years later, Tawney too,
found that “the rise of the Free Cities was one of the glories of
medieval Europe and the germ of every subsequent advance in
civilization…” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 55)
Marx’s theories have not been sustained by events. His system could be
best designated as “The Dialectic Falsification of History.” There are
no “laws of history” and progress from one stage of development to
another is not inevitable. Marxism is no longer relevant to the growing
number of people who are alarmed by the unprecedented proliferation of
the economic and military powers of the modern State and the concomitant
regimentation of the individual. Nationalization of property and means
of production, even in a “socialist” State, as advocated by Marx and
Engels, does not fundamentally alter the basic inequality between those
wielding power and those subject to it. Even Marxists no longer believe
that the State will “wither away”. Freedom is not merely the reflection
of the mode of production but the essence of life. The dogma that
science, philosophy, the arts, ethics and free institutions only mirror
the economic mode of production is giving way to the conviction that
these phenomena have an independent share in the shaping of history. A
theory for the renewal of society that attaches little or no importance
to these supreme values does not merit the respect of freedom-loving
people.