💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anarcho-on-the-bolshevik-myth.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:24:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: On the Bolshevik Myth
Author: Anarcho
Date: December 4, 2007
Language: en
Topics: anti-Bolshevism, myth, critique, Makhnovists
Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=107][anarchism.pageabode.com]] and on 28th October 2021 from [[http://www.anarkismo.net/article/7001
Notes: An anarchist critique of an ISO attack on the Makhnovists. Corrects the distortions and shows how the Makhnovists show that Bolshevik authoritarian had its roots in Leninist ideology and cannot be solely explained by the civil war. Also refutes claims that the Haymarket Martyrs were Marxists as well as correcting the usual distortions about Kronstadt.

Anarcho

On the Bolshevik Myth

I always have mixed feelings when I see Leninists attack anarchism in

their press. On the one hand, I despair as I know they will waste a lot

of space getting it wrong. And that a lot of time will be required to

correct the errors, distortions and stupidities they inflict on the

world (as I have already done in “An Anarchist FAQ”). I also feel hope

as it shows that anarchism is growing so much that they feel they have

to spend time attacking us. We have three classic examples of this in

International Socialist Review issue no. 53.

For some reason, while attacking anarchists and anarchism Marxists feel

they have to take our best ideas, experiments and activists. Often they

discuss anarchist activists and strangely fail to mention they were

anarchists. Louise Michel has suffered this fate, as have the Haymarket

Martyrs. The latter have now suffered an even worse fate, with an

academic, James Green, trying to appropriate them for Marxism!

In an interview in ISR and a recent book, Green tries his best to turn

the Haymarket Martyrs into Marxists. He asserts that “Albert Parsons

believed a strong socialist movement needed to follow the prescription

put forward by Karl Marx: that is, such a movement needed a mass

working-class following.” As if that were not Bakunin’s position: “for

the International to be a real power, it must be able to organise within

its ranks the immense majority of the proletariat of Europe, of America,

of all lands.” (Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 293) (see “An Anarchist FAQ”:

H.2.7)

Green states that because the Martyrs were “busy organising their own

unions” they “didn’t stop being Marxists.” Yet Marx had mocked Bakunin

for arguing that (to quote Marx) the working class “must only organise

themselves by trades- unions” and “not occupy itself with politics.”

(Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 48) Like

the Martyrs, Bakunin argued that “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” and once “every occupation ... is represented within the

International, its organisation, the organisation of the masses of the

people will be complete.” Moreover, Bakunin stressed that the working

class had “but a single path, that of emancipation through practical

action which meant “workers’ solidarity in their struggle against the

bosses” by ”trades-unions, organisation, and the federation of

resistance funds” (The Basic Bakunin, p. 139 and p. 103) So attempts to

portray the ideas of the Martyrs as Marxist requires ignoring Bakunin’s

syndicalism and Marx’s consistent opposition to it. (H.2.8)

The Martyrs did come to see that both the state and capitalism had to be

abolished at the same time and, as Green says, “the working class had to

have its own institutions and its own militia, its own communal forms of

decision-making.” That is, they came to the same conclusion as Bakunin

had and is why they called themselves anarchists:

“the Alliance of all labour associations ... will constitute the Commune

... there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a

Revolutionary Communal Council ... [made up of] delegates ... invested

with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times ... all

provinces, communes and associations ... [will] delegate deputies to an

agreed place of assembly (all ... invested with binding mandated and

accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of

insurgent associations, communes and provinces ... and to organise a

revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction ... it

is through the very act of extrapolation and organisation of the

Revolution with an eye to the mutual defences of insurgent areas that

the universality of the Revolution ... will emerge triumphant.”

(Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 155–6)

As Lucy Parsons (the wife of Albert) put it “we hold that the granges,

trade-unions, Knights of Labour assemblies, etc., are the embryonic

groups of the ideal anarchistic society ...” (contained in Albert R.

Parsons, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, p. 110) Compare

this to Bakunin when he argued that the “organisation of the trade

sections, their federation in the International, and their

representation by Chambers of Labour, ... [allow] the workers ... [to]

combin[e] theory and practice ... [and] bear in themselves the living

germs of the social order, which is to replace the bourgeois world. They

are creating not only the ideas but also the facts of the future

itself.” (quoted by Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 45)

Clearly, Green’s attempt to expropriate the Martyrs for Marxism runs

aground on the shores of reality.

It is one of the ironies of Marxism is that attempts of working class

people to organise communally have always been repressed not only by

traditional ruling classes but also by the so-called “dictatorship of

the proletariat.” This has always been an embarrassment for modern day

Leninists, who seek to defend such repression. If this means ignoring or

denying well known facts then so be it.

Phil Gasper (in an article ironically entitled “Critical Thinking”) does

precisely this when he defends Trotsky against bourgeois criticism,

arguing as regards the crushing of Kronstadt that “the sailors were

threatening an armed rebellion and demanding that the Bolsheviks be

purged from the soviets.” One slight problem, though, it is not true. As

Paul Avrich proved long ago, ”’Soviets without Communists’ was not, as

is often maintained by both Soviet and non-Soviet writers, a Kronstadt

slogan.” In fact, the Kronstadt program “did allow a place for the

Bolsheviks in the soviets, alongside the other left-wing organisations

... Communists ... participated in strength in the elected conference of

delegate, which was the closest thing Kronstadt ever had to the free

soviets of its dreams.” (Kronstadt 1921, p. 181)

It is true that the soviet democracy the Kronstadt rebels actually

demanded would have resulted in the Bolsheviks losing power as few

people would have voted for them. Yet the results democratic process can

hardly be termed a “purge.”

Was it “an armed rebellion”? Well, the Kronstadt rebels were sailors and

soldiers and so had access to arms. That is true, but the actual revolt

was peaceful. It was the Bolsheviks who fired the first shots and the

Kronstadters defended themselves. In this the Kronstadt rebellion

differed from other rebellions by other working class people — being

unarmed, they had no means of defending themselves against Bolshevik

repression.

Thus, for example, the Petrograd general strike which immediately

preceded and inspired the Kronstadt revolt was put down “peacefully” by

means of a three-man Defence Committee which “proclaimed martial law”

which was enforced by the Communist officer cadets (as the local

garrisons had been caught up the general ferment and could not be relied

upon to carry out the government’s orders). “Overnight Petrograd became

an armed camp. In every quarter pedestrians were stopped and their

documents checked ... the curfew [was] strictly enforced.” The Petrograd

Cheka made widespread arrests. (Avrich, p. 39, pp. 46–7)

It would have been nice if Gasper had bothered to find out the facts.

May I suggest the appendix on Kronstadt in “An Anarchist FAQ”?

It is important to remember that the Bolshevik response to Kronstadt was

not an isolated event. In fact, their attack on soviet democracy dates

back to the spring of 1918 when they had began disbanding any soviet

elected with a non-Bolshevik majority. Significantly, this started

before the start of the civil war and was driven by lack of popular

support. (Vladimir Brovkin, “The Mensheviks’ Political Comeback: The

Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918”, The Russian

Review, vol. 42, pp. 1–50; Charles Duval, “Yakov M. Sverdlov and the

All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK)”, pp. 3–22,

Soviet Studies, vol. XXXI, no. 1). Thus Russia had become a one-party

dictatorship before the start of the civil war. Needless to say, party

ideology was adjusted to reflect this reality soon after and the

necessity of party dictatorship became official dogma by the start of

1919. (H.3.15)

This helps explains why, as Grasper notes, the soviets “became little

more than talking shops” yet this had happened long before the start of

the civil war (a fact he fails to note). As for a “disintegration of the

working class” which “left the Bolsheviks suspended in air, controlling

the state machine but lacking a social base,” this fails to note the

systematic repression of working class protest by the Bolsheviks between

1918 and 1921. In fact, Grasper’s argument dates back to Lenin who,

significantly, first formulated it “to justify a political clamp-down”

and was developed in response to rising working class protest rather

than its lack: “As discontent amongst workers became more and more

difficult to ignore, Lenin ... began to argue that the consciousness of

the working class had deteriorated ... workers had become ‘declassed.’”

(J. Aves, Workers Against Lenin, p. 18 and p. 90)

A disintegrated working class does not need martial law, lockouts, mass

arrests and the purging of the workforce to control it. So, clearly, the

Leninist argument can be faulted. Somewhat ironically, given the last

anti-Anarchist article in ISR, Grasper concludes his piece as follows:

“Today the technique of the big lie is apparently alive and well ... But

the fact that he was moved to level his absurd accusations is an

indication that Trotsky’s life and ideas continue to resonate with a

layer of political activists. And that, at least, is cause for a little

optimism.”

Replace Trotsky with Makhno and you get a feel for the quality and

inspiration for Jason Yanowitz’s “On the Makhno Myth.” Like Monty

Python’s King Arthur faced with a searing anarcho-syndicalist critique

of Monarchy, Yanowitz’s response to the awkward fact of the Makhnovist

refutation of Leninist dogma is to mutter “Bloody peasant!” and trust

that the faithful will not actually read the source material his

numerous footnotes he selectively references.

Space precludes any detailed critique of Yanowitz’s article but,

luckily, I do not have to as he repeats the usual Marxist attacks I

debunk in detail in “An Anarchist FAQ” (see the appendix on the

Makhnovist movement). For some strange reason Yanowitz does not mention

that. He obviously hopes his silence will convince those ignorant of the

subject that anarchists have no answer to the points he raises. As such,

you have to laugh when he asserts that “Makhno was not the saint his

supporters suppose.” As if anarchists thought he was! In fact, most

anarchist accounts of the Makhnovist movement discuss its failings and

problems as well as the personal failings of Makhno. Yanowitz is aware

of this as he quotes them! The best that can he said of his account is

that acknowledges that the Makhnovist “leadership was principally

against anti-Semitism or alliances with the Whites” yet strangely fails

to note that the Bolsheviks and their followers repeatedly claimed

otherwise. (Makhno appendix: 9 and 12) While the subjects may have

changed, the approach has not.

Suffice to say, Yanowitz presents the same lack of common sense,

distortion and lack of understanding of anarchism and the Makhnovists I

have come to expect from Marxists and refuted before. The only real new

development is that Yanowitz relies heavily on another Marxist’s PhD

thesis on Makhno by Colin Darch. Yet this new source leaves much to be

desired. To get a taste of Darch’s perspective, we can point to his

first essay on the subject (“The myth of Nestor Makhno”, Economy and

Society, 14(4)) where he considered “Makhno’s role as a leader of

peasant counterrevolution in the USSR” as “a significant one, and merits

careful investigation.” That suggests his Marxism may get in the way of

his objectivity. His PhD thesis relies on Soviet sources for many of his

key attacks on the Makhnovists (it is on the basis of these that

Yanowitz states the anarchist “timeline and version of events is well

refuted by Darch”!). Significantly, for all Darch’s rummaging around in

Soviet sources, non-Marxist scholars like Michael Palij (The Anarchism

of Nestor Makhno, 1918–1921) and Christopher Reed (From Tsar to Soviets)

confirm the anarchist version of events.

Yet even reading Darch’s obviously biased account shows that the main

Bolshevik complaints about the Makhnovists were simply that they refused

to stop spreading their own political ideas countering Bolshevik

propaganda (“the political commissar of the Trans-Dnepr Division

complained that anarchist and Left SR agitation was making his work very

difficult”); they involved the general population in discussing social

and military affairs by organising soviet conferences (“the reaction of

the Bolshevik commanders to ... the summoning of yet another anarchist

[sic!] congress ... at a time of military crisis — was decisive and

harsh”); and generally not allowing themselves to be treated like canon

fodder for the Bolshevik dictatorship (“Despite the seriousness of the

military situation for the Red Army and for the revolution in general,

the Congress apparently felt no compunction about adopting and endorsing

an anarchist platform that the Bolsheviks inevitably viewed as a

provocation”).

Which raises an obvious question: Does being a Leninist make you stupid?

I ask because Yanowitz simply cannot see the obvious replies to his

attacks on the Makhnovists. In a footnote, he seriously wonders why, if

the Makhnovist accounts of Bolshevik betrayal were true, then why did

the Whites manage to breach the front (and it should be noted that both

he and Darch take the Bolshevik claims on this as gospel). However, it

is hardly difficult to work out why the Whites breached the front if the

Bolsheviks refused to arm the Makhnovists. Troops without weapons or

ammunition can hardly fight. That Yanowitz cannot see this shows that

discovering the truth about the Makhnovists was the last thing on his

mind.

Then there are the numerous factual errors. An example is his claim that

“parties were banned from organizing for election to regional bodies.”

That hardly fits with the fact that they had SR, Menshevik and Communist

delegates. What the Makhnovists opposed were “party lists” in soviet

elections, not delegates that were members of a political party. It is

this aspect of “soviet” elections which allowed the Menshevik leader

Martov to be picked as a factory “delegate” over Lenin in early 1920.

The Makhnovists argued that delegates had to be workers from the village

or workplace which elected them. Rather than “obliterate existing state

structures before moving on,” they organised soviet congresses in both

liberated towns and countryside and only left when forced to by military

necessity. As for them “regulat[ing] the press,” it seems ironic that an

increase in press freedom under the Makhnovists compared to the

Bolsheviks becomes a rod with which to beat them! Much the same applies

to Yanowitz’s other examples of Makhnovist so-called authoritarianism.

Then there is Makhno’s advice to the railway workers. Well, that is the

key thing — it was advice as he thought that working class people had to

solve their own problems by themselves, through their own organisations.

In contrast, Trotsky imposed martial law on them along strict military

and bureaucratic lines. One-man management or workers’ control? Which is

more socialist? And which the railway workers preferred? And which

worked better, given the railway network totally collapsed after Trotsky

got his way with it? Needless to say, in spite of the Bolshevik track

record of breaking strikes, disbanding soviets, suppressing freedom of

organisation, assembly and speech and imposing political and economic

dictatorship onto the working class, Yanowitz still tries to argue that

it was the Makhnovists who were anti-working class rather than the

Bolsheviks! (Makhno appendix: 10)

Yanowitz’s assertions to the contrary, in reality, it was the lack of

“local autonomy” which lead the Bolshevik “coordinated, centralised plan

for war production and defence” into inefficiency, waste and

bureaucracy, i.e. it made matters much worse (see Silvana Malle’s The

Economic Organisation of War Communism 1918–1921). This mismanagement

started early. One historian summarises the situation in 1918:

“it seems apparent that many workers themselves ... had now come to

believe ... that confusion and anarchy [sic!] at the top were the major

causes of their difficulties, and with some justification. The fact was

that Bolshevik administration was chaotic ... Scores of competitive and

conflicting Bolshevik and Soviet authorities issued contradictory

orders, often brought to factories by armed Chekists. The Supreme

Economic Council... issu[ed] dozens of orders and pass[ed] countless

directives with virtually no real knowledge of affairs.” [William G.

Rosenberg, Russian Labour and Bolshevik Power, p. 116]

Significantly, the one-man management imposed by the Bolsheviks made

things worse. On the railways, for example, abolishing the workers’

committees resulted in more confusion, isolation and ignorance of local

conditions. It got so bad that “a number of local Bolshevik officials

... began in the fall of 1918 to call for the restoration of workers’

control, not for ideological reasons, but because workers themselves

knew best how to run the line efficiently, and might obey their own

central committee’s directives if they were not being constantly

countermanded.” (William G. Rosenberg, Workers’ Control on the

Railroads, pp. D1208-9) Leninist wishful thinking and fantasy aside, the

destruction of the Russian economy under the weight of centralisation

confirmed the anarchist argument on the importance decentralisation,

from the bottom-up organising and federalism.

As for the old myth “anarchists ignore the objective difficulties facing

the revolution,” that is debunked in AFAQ (there is a whole appendix on

it). Strangely Yanowitz could not bring himself to discuss that. It is

as perplexing as his silence over the Bolsheviks disbanding any soviet

elected with a non-Bolshevik majority since before the Civil War

started, how they had been advocating party dictatorship since the start

of 1919 and how this influenced their relations with the Makhnovists.

The identification of party dictatorship with the dictatorship of the

proletariat” helps explain the Makhnovist “hostility” which Yanowitz

finds so puzzling (As one delegate to a Makhnovist soviet congress put

it, “No party has a right to usurp governmental power into its own hands

... We want life, all problems, to be decided locally, not by order from

any authority above; and all peasants and workers should decide their

own fate, while those elected should only carry out the toilers’ wish.”

(quoted by Palij, Op. Cit., p. 154)). And who, precisely, decides when

“objective circumstances” cannot permit a social transformation? The

Bolsheviks never asked working class people or peasants their opinion on

this. Perhaps, as seems likely, they took their rejection in soviet

elections as the sign?

Space also excludes much discussion of the political issues Yanowitz

raises as much as the factual ones. As he repeats the standard Marxist

attacks anarchists have been debunking for decades, I can simply

recommend visiting AFAQ for the anarchist critique to Marxism, our

vision of social revolution and how to defend it (see section H). A few

basic points can be made, however.

The central fallacy of his critique is to assume that abolishing or

resisting authority is somehow authoritarian. Few people would consider

stopping someone trying to kill or enslave you as being “authoritarian.”

They would rightly consider your actions as self-defense. This applies

to his examples of Makhnovist “authoritarianism.” He seems to assume

that the true “libertarian” approach is to let others impose their rule

on you as stopping them is “authoritarian”! As Malatesta put it, some

“seem almost to believe that after having brought down government and

private property we would allow both to be quietly built up again,

because of respect for the freedom of those who might feel the need to

be rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our

ideas.” (Anarchy, p. 41)

The next fallacy is his assumptions about anarchism and his curious

interpolations about what opposing authority means — inspired no doubt

by Engels’ “On Authority” (H.4). Rather than some individualistic notion

which makes collective decision making impossible, anarchist opposition

to authority logically implies the importance of collective decision

making by those who are affected by the decision. Bakunin argued that

“the principle of authority” was the “eminently theological,

metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of

governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke of

a wisdom and a justice, which in one way or another, is imposed from

above.” (Marxism, Freedom and the State, p. 33)

Clearly, by the term “principle of authority” Bakunin meant hierarchy

rather than organisation and the need to make agreements (what is now

called self-management). And note the collective nature of Bakunin’s

definition – “themselves” and “the masses.” Thus the “principle of

authority” refers to the elimination of collective decision making by

the people and its replacement by the power of the few who govern them

on their behalf. This support for self-management (collective freedom)

has its roots in individual freedom, of course, as its rationale is that

only in self-managed organisations can individuals express their

freedom. It also explains anarchist support for dissent within free

organisations as the majority can be wrong and minorities have the right

to point this out and resist if need be. (H.2.11)

Underlying his attack is the assumption that self-management is

impossible, that we cannot manage our own affairs and need someone to

rule us. Usually, Leninists argue that self-management is possible –

when the state withers away. For Yanowitz, any complex organisation

seems to be a state because it necessitates, at best, collective

decision making, or, at worse, hierarchy and so anarchism is impossible.

Yet if that is the case, then Marx and Lenin were wrong – the state will

never “wither away.” Yet anarchists have long pointed out that

government is not the same as collective decision making. We are also

aware that a delegate body and any associated administrative organs may,

by force of circumstances or by design, start to act like a state. That

is why we have always argued for instant recall of mandated delegates

rather than representatives who elect a government. However, to argue

that we should just give up trying to organise in this way because of

this possibility makes as much sense as becoming reformists because of

the possibility that a revolution will fail.

Which brings us to the next fallacy: the assumption that any form of

social organisation equals a state. As he puts it:

“But left in control of territory that they wanted to secure, the

Makhnovists ended up forming what most would call a state ... They

organized regional legislative conferences. They controlled armed

detachments to enforce their policies ... They banned authority with

which they disagreed to ‘prevent those hostile to our political ideas

from establishing themselves’ ... The Makhnovists used their military

authority to suppress rival political ideas and organizations.”

Yet there is a fundamental difference between a social organization

based on self-government from the bottom up and one based on top-down,

centralized power held by a minority. The latter has what has always

been rightly termed a state and its structure has evolved precisely to

exclude the majority from decision making. The former is not a state as

it empowers the many to govern themselves. This can be seen under

“primitive communism.” Tribes practiced communal decision making and

used delegates to form federations to co-ordinate their joint interests

(“legislative conferences”). They had war bands to fight their enemies

(“armed detachments”) and defended their liberty by force (“banned

authority with which they disagreed”). Even Engels and Marx acknowledged

that these were not states. States came later when the masses were

subjected to minority rule, a rule which required a state to impose.

So to call the communal system anarchists aim for a “state” when its

role is to promote and ensure mass participation in social life is

nonsense. (H.3.7) That Leninists are vaguely aware of this obvious fact

explains why they sometimes talk of a “semi-state” or a “new kind of

state.” This not a matter of mere “labels” as Yanowitz asserts, but

rather revolves around who has the real power in a revolution – the

people armed or a new minority (a “revolutionary” government).

Anarchists argue for the former, the Leninists for the latter (hidden,

usually, under democratic rhetoric).

Failing to understand that anarchists and Leninists do not share the

same definition on what constitutes a state, Yanowitz bolsters the

anarchist analysis:

“Why did self-proclaimed anarchists create a state? They were not

confused or impure. They built a state because they had no choice.

Ultimately, states are coercive instruments whereby one class rules

society. A workers’ state is unique in history because the class

wielding power does so in the interests of the vast majority.”

Can it be considered “coercive” to stop people ruling or oppression you?

(H.4.7) As for “unique in history,” quite! So why call it a state?

Simply because, in reality, the working class does not wield power in

the so-called “workers’ state”: the party does. This was the case in

Russia. The working class never wielded power under the Bolsheviks and

here is the most obvious contradiction in Yanowitz’s account. (H.3.8)

Throughout 1917, Lenin constantly called for the Bolsheviks to seize

power not the working class – and that is precisely what happened. The

first result of the Bolshevik revolution was the creation of an

executive organ above the All-Russian Soviet Congress which was in

direct contradiction to Lenin’s arguments in “State and Revolution.”

(H.1.7) From top to bottom of the new state, the Bolsheviks centralised

power in executive bodies, gerrymandered soviet elections and simply

disbanded any soviet with a non-Bolshevik majority. (H.3.15).

So the working class did not wield power, the Bolsheviks did. This can

also be seen by whom the so-called “workers’ state” actually repressed.

Yanowitz complains that “[i]n the midst of a civil war, [the

Makhnovists] emptied all the prisons and jails.” Considering who were in

Bolshevik jails, they had a point. Of the 17,000 prison camp detainees

on whom statistical information was available on 1 November 1920,

peasants and workers constituted the largest groups, at 39% and 34%

respectively. Similarly, of the 40,913 prisoners held in December 1921

(of whom 44% had been committed by the Cheka) nearly 84% were illiterate

or minimally educated, clearly, therefore, either peasants or workers.

(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police, p. 178) I’m also

sure that Robespierre and the reactionaries of Thermidor that followed

him were disappointed that the ignorant masses had demolished the

Bastille. Stalin, I am sure, was grateful that he did not have to build

new prisons for the Trotskyists – they simply joined the anarchists and

other socialist political prisoners who had been rotting in them since

Lenin’s time.

As such, Bolshevik Russia confirmed Bakunin warning that ”[b]y popular

government [the Marxists] mean government of the people by a small under

of representatives elected by the people.” That is, “government of the

vast majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority,

the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps, of former

workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the

people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole

workers’ world from the heights of the state. They will no longer

represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern

the people.” (Statism and Anarchy, p. 178)

Or, to quote Trotsky summarising the lessons of the Bolshevik

revolution, the “very same masses are at different times inspired by

different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a

centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party,

wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the

vacillation of the masses themselves.” (The Moralists and Sycophants, p.

59) Such “vacillation” is expressed by democratic organisations.

Unsurprisingly, Trotsky (echoing Lenin) explicitly argued that the

“revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party” was “an objective

necessity imposed upon us by the social realities — the class struggle,

the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a

selected vanguard in order to assure the victory.” This “dictatorship of

a party” was essential and “we can not jump over this chapter” of human

history. He stressed that the “revolutionary party (vanguard) which

renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the

counter-revolution” and argued that “the party dictatorship” could not

be replaced by “the ‘dictatorship’ of the whole toiling people without

any party.” This was because the “level of political development among

the masses” was not “high” enough as “capitalism does not permit the

material and the moral development of the masses.” (Trotsky, Writings

1936–37, pp. 513–4)

So much for “the class wielding power”! (H.1.2)

Anarchists are well aware that any libertarian socialist society will

not be created overnight. (H.2.5) In fact, as AFAQ proves, we have

always been at pains to stress that a social revolution would be

difficult, facing both economic disruption and counter-revolution. As

such, we know that “[d]uring the civil war, the Ukraine was far from a

classless society, as the actions of the Makhnovists show.” That, in its

own way, gives the game away. Yes, the Bolsheviks were fighting a civil

war. The Makhnovists were fighting a revolution, not merely a civil war.

So it looks like the old Stalinist argument from the Spanish Revolution

of winning the civil war first, then having the revolution has an old

heritage.

Yanowitz argues that the Makhnovists “had repeatedly declared

overwhelming hostility to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and had

nothing but vague platitudes to offer as a substitute.” Given that the

Bolsheviks themselves equated the “dictatorship of the proletariat” with

the dictatorship of the party by this time, this in itself suggests that

Makhnovist “hostility” was understandable. This rather than “their

utopian views prevented them from uniting with the workers’ state.”

Equally, since when were soviet democracy, workers’ self-organisation

and self-management, freedom of press, association and speech mere

“vague platitudes”? How do you expect a socialist society to be created

without the active participation of the working class and peasantry? How

do you expect an economy not to break-down in the face of centralized

bureaucratic ignorance? But then, Yanowitz seems unable to understand

what “socialism from below” actually means:

“The Makhnovists were organized with an approach of anarchism from above

as the peasant army would roll into a town and obliterate existing state

structures before moving on.”

Presumably, the Makhnovists should have waited outside of the town

leaving the workers to the tender mercies of the Whites until they had

organized their own insurrection? What about solidarity? Equally, should

the Makhnovists have allowed the White state structures to remain

intact? Whatever happened to smashing the capitalist state? The lack of

commonsense is staggering. And what was the Bolshevik (and, presumably,

“socialism from below”) approach? Well, the Red Army would roll into a

town and obliterate existing state structures. What happened next is

what counts. Rather than impose, as the Bolsheviks did, a revolutionary

committee to exercise power the Makhnovists called a soviet conference

in order for working class people to start to manage their own affairs

by means of their own organizations. Unlike under the Bolsheviks, all

parties could publish their papers and their members could, and did, get

elected to attend the congress. As Arshinov notes, the “only restriction

that the Makhnovists considered necessary to impose on the Bolsheviks,

the left Socialist-Revolutionaries and other statists was a prohibition

on the formation of those ‘revolutionary committees’ which sought to

impose a dictatorship over the people.” (The History of the Makhnovist

Movement pp. 153–4)

Now, how is this “anarchism from above”? With his, let me say, unique

understanding of up and down, Yanowitz should not be put in charge of a

lift never mind a powerful centralised state. That is the fundamental

issue. (H.3.2 and H.3.3) As he states in his conclusion:

“But the strength required to fundamentally transform society and set it

on new foundations cannot exist only among the enlightened few who ‘get

it.’ Instead, it is found in the collective energy and self-activity of

the working class. With their hand on the lever of production, only the

working class can revolutionise society. The Russian experience

demonstrates they will need a state when they do so—to defend their new

gains.”

This is precisely what did not happen in Russia precisely because the

Bolsheviks created a state! If it had, I’m sure that most anarchists

would be Marxists now. Instead, Bakunin’s grim predictions of party rule

became all too true (i.e., the “dictatorship of the proletariat” quickly

became a dictatorship over the proletariat). (H.1.1) The working class

was dispossessed of political, economic and social power by the

Bolshevik government which implemented its vision of centralised state

“socialism” rather than that, for example, of the factory committees

(“On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the [factory]

committees leaders sought to bring their model [of workers’

self-management of the economy] into being. At each point the party

leadership overruled them. The Bolshevik alternative was to vest both

managerial and control powers in organs of the state which were

subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them.” (Thomas F.

Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia, p. 38)). (H.3.13 and

H.3.14)

That any future “socialist” revolution preceded over by Leninists will

suffer the same fate can be seen by Yanowitz’s words: “when workers’

power next establishes itself, its wielders will have to put tremendous

energy into helping workers in other countries in their project of

self-emancipation.” That is, the working class will not be wielding

“workers’ power” but rather something else will — namely the party.

Ignoring all the evidence that refutes him (including, ironically, some

he mentions himself), Yanowitz states that “Makhno had ... no

generalized plan or vision for the future.” Needless to say, the

Makhnovists, like anarchists, had a vision for the future and tried to

implement it. They also recognised that the means shaped the ends. There

is no point having a vision of the future if your current actions take

you on a path which leads away from it. Anarchists do not seek

perfection; simply that society is changing in ways which will make

anarchy more likely rather than less. As Emma Goldman put it, she had

not “come to Russia expecting to find Anarchism realised.” Such idealism

was alien to her (although that has not stopped Leninists saying the

opposite). Rather, she expected to see “the beginnings of the social

changes for which the Revolution had been fought.” She was aware that

revolutions were difficult, involving “destruction” and “violence.” That

Russia was not perfect was not the source of her opposition to

Bolshevism. Rather, it was the fact that “the Russian people have been

locked out” of their own revolution and that the Bolshevik state used

“the sword and the gun to keep the people out.” As a revolutionary she

refused “to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the

Communist Party.” (My Disillusionment in Russia, p. xlvii and p. xlix)

That was why she, like so many anarchists then and now, supported the

Makhnovists.

Could the Makhnovists have won the civil war? Not on their own. That

would have required similar movements in all parts of Russia and the

Ukraine. What anarchists argue is that the principles which inspired the

Makhnovists and which they tried their best to implement could have.

They show that Bolshevik authoritarianism was not simply a product of

“objective circumstances” as Leninists argue. Rather, Bolshevik ideology

played a key role. Their vanguardism produced the ideological

justification for party dictatorship once their popular support receded.

(H.5) Their centralism dispossessed working class people from their own

revolution and turned organs of popular self-management into

marginalised talking shops within a state. Their vision of socialism as

“merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people” (to

use Lenin’s term) justified the elimination of the factory committees

and workers’ control, so making the economic situation worse. (See the

appendix on “How did Bolshevik ideology contribute to the failure of the

Revolution?”). As Kropotkin summarised, “We are learning to know in

Russia how not to introduce communism.” (Anarchism, p. 254)

Ultimately, the logic in Yanowitz’s attack fails him. True, the

Makhnovists did not live up to all their anarchist ideals but they did a

remarkable job in difficult circumstances. The Bolsheviks did far worse

in relation to theirs! Yet, for Marxists, the former must be pilloried

far more than the latter. I can only surmise that this is because the

Makhnovists, for all their faults, expose the authoritarian core of

Bolshevism and show that libertarian alternatives were possible after

all.

All I can do is sketch the real facts and sources of disagreement

between anarchism and Marxism. I hope that those interested will seek

the facts for themselves. As Peter Arshinov put it: “Proletarians of the

world, look into the depths of your own beings, seek out the truth and

realise it yourselves: you will find it nowhere else.” Hopefully, An

Anarchist FAQ would be a good starting place for that journey.