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<title>H.1 Have anarchists always opposed state socialism?</title>
</head>

<h1>H.1 Have anarchists always opposed state socialism?</h1>

<p>
Yes. Anarchists have always argued that real socialism cannot be
created using a state. The basic core of the argument is simple.
Socialism implies equality, yet the state signifies inequality -
inequality in terms of power. As we argued in <a href="secB2.html">section B.2</a>, 
anarchists consider one of the defining aspects of the state is its hierarchical
nature. In other words, the delegation of <b>power</b> into the hands of
a few. As such, it violates a core idea of socialism, namely social equality. 
Those who make up the governing bodies in a state have more power than those 
who have elected them (see <a href="secI1.html">section I.1</a>). 
</p><p>
It is with this perspective that anarchists have combated the idea
of state socialism and Marxism (although we should stress that
libertarian forms of Marxism, such as council communism, have
strong similarities to anarchism). In the case of the Russian
Revolution, the anarchists were amongst the first on the left
to be suppressed by the Bolsheviks. Indeed, the history of Marxism 
is, in part, a history of its struggles against anarchists just
as the history of anarchism is also, in part, a history of its
struggle against the various forms of Marxism and its offshoots.
</p><p>
While both Stirner and Proudhon wrote many pages against the
evils and contradictions of state socialism, anarchists have
only really been fighting the Marxist form of state socialism
since Bakunin. This is because, until the First International,
Marx and Engels were relatively unknown socialist thinkers.
Proudhon was aware of Marx (they had meant in France in the
1840s and had corresponded) but Marxism was unknown in France
during his life time and so Proudhon did not directly argue
against Marxism (he did, however, critique Louis Blanc and
other French state socialists). Similarly, when Stirner wrote
<b>The Ego and Its Own</b> Marxism did not exist bar a few works
by Marx and Engels. Indeed, it could be argued that Marxism
finally took shape after Marx and Engels had read Stirner's classic 
work and produced their notoriously inaccurate diatribe, <b>The 
German Ideology</b>, against him. However, like Proudhon, Stirner 
attacked <b>other</b> state socialists and communists.
</p><p>
Before discussing Bakunin's opposition and critique of Marxism in the 
<a href="secH1.html#sech11">next section</a>, we should consider 
the thoughts of Stirner and Proudhon on state socialism. These 
critiques contain may important ideas and so are worth summarising. 
However, it is worth noting that when both Stirner and Proudhon were 
writing communist ideas were all authoritarian in nature.
Libertarian communism only developed after Bakunin's death in
1876. This means that when Proudhon and Stirner were critiquing
"communism" they were attacking a specific form of communism,
the form which subordinated the individual to the community.
Anarchist communists like Kropotkin and Malatesta also opposed
such kinds of "communism" (as Kropotkin put it, <i>"before and in 
1848"</i> communism <i>"was put forward in such a shape as to fully
account for Proudhon's distrust as to its effect upon liberty.
The old idea of Communism was the idea of monastic communities
. . . The last vestiges of liberty and of individual energy
would be destroyed, if humanity ever had to go through
such a communism."</i> [<b>Act for Yourselves</b>, p. 98]). Of course,
it may be likely that Stirner and Proudhon would have rejected
libertarian communism as well, but bear in mind that not all
forms of "communism" are identical.
</p><p>
For Stirner, the key issue was that communism (or socialism), like 
liberalism, looked to the <i>"human"</i> rather than the unique.
<i>"To be looked upon as a mere <b>part</b>, part of society,"</i> 
asserted Stirner, <i>"the individual cannot bear - because he is 
<b>more</b>; his uniqueness puts from it this limited conception."</i> 
As such, his protest against socialism was similar to his protest 
against liberalism (indeed, he drew attention to their similarity 
by calling it <i>"social liberalism"</i>). Stirner was aware that 
capitalism was not the great defender of freedom it was claimed to 
be by its supporters. <i>"Restless acquisition,"</i> he argued, 
<i>"does not let us take breath, take a claim <b>enjoyment</b>: 
we do not get the comfort of our possessions."</i> Communism, by 
the <i>"organisation of labour,"</i> can <i>"bear its fruit"</i> 
so that <i>"we come to an agreement about <b>human</b> labours, 
that they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and 
toil."</i> However, communism <i>"is silent"</i> over <i>"for whom 
is time to be gained."</i> He, in contrast, stresses that it is for 
the individual, <i>"To take comfort in himself as the unique."</i> 
[<b>The Ego and Its Own</b>, p. 265 and pp. 268-9] Thus state 
socialism does not recognise that the purpose of association is 
to free the individual and instead subjects the individual to a new 
tyranny:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"it is not another State (such as a 'people's State') that
men aim at, but their <b>union,</b> uniting, this ever-fluid
uniting of everything standing - A State exists even
without my co-operation . . . the independent establishment
of the State founds my lack of independence; its condition
as a 'natural growth,' its organism, demands that my nature
do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 224]
</blockquote></p><p>
Similarly, Stirner argued that <i>"Communism, by the abolition 
of all personal property, only presses me back still more 
into dependence on another, to wit, on the generality or
collectivity"</i> which is <i>"a condition hindering my free
movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts
against the pressure that I experience from individual proprietors;
but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of
the collectivity."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 257] History has 
definitely confirmed this fear. By nationalising property,
the various state socialist regimes turned the worker from a 
servant of the capitalist into a serf of the state. In contrast, 
communist-anarchists argue for free association and workers' 
self-management as the means of ensuring that socialised 
property does not turn into the denial of freedom rather 
than as a means of ensuring it. As such, Stirner's attack
on what Marx termed <i>"vulgar communism"</i> is still important
and finds echoes in communist-anarchist writings as well as
the best works of Marx and his more libertarian followers 
(see <a href="secI4.html">section I.4</a> on how libertarian
communism is not <i>"silent"</i> on these matters and incorporates
Stirner's legitimate concerns and arguments).
</p><p>
Similar arguments to Stirner's can be found in Proudhon's works 
against the various schemes of state socialism that existing in 
France in the middle of the nineteenth century. He particularly 
attacked the ideas of Louis Blanc. Blanc, whose most famous book 
was <b>Organisation du Travail</b> (<b>Organisation of Work</b>, 
first published in 1840) argued that social ills resulted from 
competition and they could be solved by means of eliminating 
it via government initiated and financed reforms. More 
specifically, Blanc argued that it was <i>"necessary to use the 
whole power of the state"</i> to ensure the creation and success 
of workers' associations (or <i>"social workshops"</i>). Since 
that <i>"which the proletarians lack to free themselves are the 
tools of labour,"</i> the government <i>"must furnish them"</i> 
with these. <i>"The state,"</i> in short, <i>"should place itself 
resolutely at the head of industry."</i> [quoted by K. Steven 
Vincent, <b>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican 
Socialism</b>, p. 139] Capitalists would be encouraged to invest 
money in these workshops, for which they would be guaranteed 
interest payments but the workers would keep the remaining 
profits generated by the workshops. Such state-initiated workshops 
would soon prove to be more efficient than privately owned industry 
and, by charging lower prices, force privately owned industry 
either out of business or to change into social workshops, so 
eliminating competition. 
</p><p>
Proudhon objected to this scheme on many levels. He argued that 
Blanc's scheme appealed <i>"to the state for its silent partnership; 
that is, he gets down on his knees before the capitalists and 
recognises the sovereignty of monopoly."</i> Given that Proudhon 
saw the state as an instrument of the capitalist class, asking that 
state to abolish capitalism was illogical and impossible. Moreover, 
by getting the funds for the "social workshop" from capitalists, 
Blanc's scheme was hardly undermining their power. <i>"Capital and 
power,"</i> Proudhon argued, <i>"secondary organs of society, are 
always the gods whom socialism adores; if capital and power did not 
exist, it would invent them."</i> [quoted by Vincent, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 157] He stressed the authoritarian nature of Blanc's scheme:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"M. Blanc is never tired of appealing to authority, and 
socialism loudly declares itself anarchistic; M. Blanc 
places power above society, and socialism tends to 
subordinate it to society; M. Blanc makes social life 
descend from above, and socialism maintains that it 
springs up and grows from below; M. Blanc runs after 
politics, and socialism is in quest of science. No more 
hypocrisy, let me say to M. Blanc: you desire neither 
Catholicism nor monarchy nor nobility, but you must 
have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a 
hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks. For my part, I deny 
your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial 
State, and all your representative mystifications."</i>
[<b>System of Economical Contradictions</b>, p. 263]
</blockquote></p><p>
Equally, Proudhon opposed the "top-down" nature of Blanc's
ideas. As it was run by the state, the system of workshops
would hardly be libertarian as <i>"hierarchy would result from 
the elective principle . . . as in constitutional politics. But these social workshops 
again, regulated by law, - will they be anything but corporations? What is the 
bond of corporations? The law. Who will make the law? The government."</i>
Such a regime, Proudhon argued, would be unlikely to function well and the
net result would be <i>"all reforms ending, now in hierarchical corporation, 
now in State monopoly, or the tyranny of communism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
p. 269 and p. 271] This was because of the perspective of state socialists:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"As you cannot conceive of society without hierarchy, you have made 
yourselves the apostles of authority; worshippers of power, you think 
only of strengthening it and muzzling liberty; your favourite maxim is that 
the welfare of the people must be achieved in spite of the people; 
instead of proceeding to social reform by the extermination of power 
and politics, you insist on a reconstruction of power and politics."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 397] 
</blockquote>
</p><p>
Instead of reform from above, Proudhon stressed the 
need for working class people to organise themselves for their
own liberation. As he put it, the <i>"problem before the labouring 
classes . . . [is] not in capturing, but in subduing both 
power and monopoly, - that is, in generating from the bowels 
of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater authority, 
a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the state 
and subjugate them."</i> For, <i>"to combat and reduce power, to 
put it in its proper place in society, it is of no use to 
change the holders of power or introduce some variation into 
its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must 
be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, 
shall become its slave."</i> This was because the state <i>"finds 
itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the 
proletariat."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 398, p. 397 and p. 399]
Unsurprisingly, Proudhon stressed in 1848 that <i>"the proletariat 
must emancipate itself without the help of the government."</i> 
[quoted by George Woodcock, <b>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon</b>, p. 125] 
In addition, by guaranteeing interest payments, Blanc's scheme 
insured the continued exploitation of labour by capital and, of 
course, while opposing capitalist competition, Proudhon did not 
consider it wise to abolish all forms of the market.
</p><p>
Proudhon argued for a two-way approach to undermining capitalism 
from below: the creation of workers associations and the 
organisation of credit. By creating mutual banks, which provided 
credit at cost, workers could create associations to compete with 
capitalist firms, drive them out of business and so eliminate 
exploitation once and for all by workers' self-management. In 
this way, the working class would emancipate itself from 
capitalism and build a socialist society from below upwards 
by their own efforts and activities. Proudhon, as Marxist Paul 
Thomas notes, <i>"believed fervently . . . in the salvation of 
working men, by their own efforts, through economic and social 
action alone . . . Proudhon advocated, and to a considerable extent 
inspired, the undercutting of this terrain [of the state] from 
without by means of autonomous working-class associations."</i> 
[<b>Karl Marx and the Anarchists</b>, pp. 177-8] Rejecting 
violent revolution (as well as strikes as counter-productive),
Proudhon  argued for economic means to end economic exploitation 
and, as such, he saw anarchism as coming about by reform (unlike 
later social anarchists, who were generally revolutionaries and
argued that capitalism cannot be reformed away and so supported 
strikes and other forms of collective working class direct action, 
struggle and combative organisation). 
</p><p>
Unsurprisingly, Proudhon's ideas were shaped by the society in
lived and agitated in. In the mid-nineteenth century, the bulk 
of the French working class were artisans and peasants and so such 
an approach reflected the social context in which it was proposed. 
With a predominance of small-scale industry, the notion of free
credit provided by mutual banks as the means of securing working 
class people access to the means of production is theoretically 
feasible. It was this social context which informed Proudhon's
ideas (see <a href="secH2.html#sech23">section H.2.3</a>). He 
never failed to stress that association would be tyranny if 
imposed upon peasants and artisans (rather, he thought that 
associations would be freely embraced by these workers if 
they thought it was in their interests to). However, he did 
not ignore the rise of large-scale industry and explicitly
proposed workers' associations (i.e., co-operatives) for those 
industries which objectively needed it (i.e. capitalist industry) 
and for those other toilers who desired it. The net effect was
the same, though, namely to abolish wage labour. 
</p><p>
It was this opposition to wage labour which drove Proudhon's 
critique of state socialism. He continually stressed that state 
ownership of the means of production was a danger to the liberty 
of the worker and simply the continuation of capitalism with the 
state as the new boss. As he put it in 1848, he <i>"did not want 
to see the State confiscate the mines, canals and railways; that
would add to monarchy, and more wage slavery. We want the mines, 
canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers' 
associations . . . these associations [will] 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."</i> He contrasted workers' 
associations run by and for their members to those <i>"subsidised, 
commanded and directed by the State,"</i> which would crush <i>"all 
liberty and all wealth, precisely as the great limited companies
are doing."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 62 and 
p. 105]
</p><p>
Marx, of course, had replied to Proudhon's work <b>System of Economic 
Contradictions</b> with his <b>Poverty of Philosophy</b>. However,
Marx's work aroused little interest when published although Proudhon 
did carefully read and annotate his copy of it, claiming it to be <i>"a 
libel"</i> and a <i>"tissue of abuse, calumny, falsification and 
plagiarism"</i> (he even called Marx <i>"the tapeworm of Socialism."</i>) 
[quoted by Woodcock, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 102] Sadly, Proudhon did 
not reply publicly to Marx's work due to an acute family crisis and 
then the start of the 1848 revolution in France. However, given his 
views of Louis Blanc and other socialists who saw socialism being 
introduced after the seizing of state power, he would hardly have been 
supportive of Marx's ideas. 
</p><p>
So while none of Proudhon's and Stirner's arguments were directly aimed 
at Marxism, their critiques are applicable to much of mainstream Marxism 
as this inherited many of the ideas of the state socialism they attacked. 
Much of their analysis was incorporated in the collectivist and communist 
ideas of the anarchists that followed them (some directly, as from Proudhon, 
some by co-incidence as Stirner's work was quickly forgotten and only had 
an impact on the anarchist movement when he was rediscovered in the 1890s). 
This can be seen from the fact that Proudhon's ideas on the management of 
production by workers' associations, opposition to nationalisation as 
state-capitalism and the need for action from below by working people 
themselves, all found their place in communist-anarchism and 
anarcho-syndicalism and in their critique of mainstream Marxism 
(such as social democracy) and Leninism. Echoes of these critiques 
can be found Bakunin's comments of 1868:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty
and because for me humanity is unthinkable without 
liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism 
concentrates and swallows up in itself for the benefit
of the State all the forces of society, because it
inevitably leads to the concentration of property in
the hands of the State . . . I want to see society
and collective or social property organised from below
upwards, by way of free associations, not from above
downwards, by means of any kind of authority whatsoever
. . . That is the sense in which I am a Collectivist
and not a Communist."</i> [quoted by K.J. Kenafick,
<b>Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx</b>, pp. 67-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
It is with Bakunin that Marxism and Anarchism came into direct
conflict as it was Bakunin who lead the struggle against Marx 
in the <b>International Workingmen's Association</b> between 1868 
and 1872. It was in these exchanges that the two schools of
socialism (the libertarian and the authoritarian) clarified
themselves. With Bakunin, the anarchist critique of Marxism 
(and state socialism in general) starts to reach its mature
form. We discuss Bakunin's critique in the 
<a href="secH1.html#sech11">next section</a>.</p>

<a name="sech11"><h2>H.1.1 What was Bakunin's critique of Marxism?</h2></a>

<p>
Bakunin and Marx famously clashed in the first <b>International
Working Men's Association</b> between 1868 and 1872. This 
conflict helped clarify the anarchist opposition to the ideas
of Marxism and can be considered as the first major theoretical
analysis and critique of Marxism by anarchists. Later critiques
followed, of course, particularly after the degeneration of
Social Democracy into reformism and the failure of the Russian 
Revolution (both of which allowed the theoretical critiques to 
be enriched by empirical evidence) but the Bakunin/Marx conflict 
laid the ground for what came after. As such, an overview of
Bakunin's critique is essential as anarchists continued to develop
and expand upon it (particularly after the experiences of actual 
Marxist movements and revolutions confirmed it). 
</p><p>
First, however, we must stress that Marx and Bakunin had many
similar ideas. They both stressed the need for working people
to organise themselves to overthrow capitalism by a social 
revolution. They argued for collective ownership of the means 
of production. They both constantly stressed that the 
emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers 
themselves. They differed, of course, in exactly how
these common points should be implemented in practice. Both,
moreover, had a tendency to misrepresent the opinions of the
other on certain issues (particularly as their struggle reached
its climax). Anarchists, unsurprisingly, argue Bakunin has been 
proved right by history, so confirming the key aspects of his 
critique of Marx.
</p><p>
So what was Bakunin's critique of Marxism? There are six main
areas. Firstly, there is the question of current activity (i.e. 
whether the workers' movement should participate in "politics"
and the nature of revolutionary working class organisation).
Secondly, there is the issue of the form of the revolution (i.e.
whether it should be a political <b>then</b> an economic one, or
whether it should be both at the same time). Thirdly, there is
the prediction that state socialism will be exploitative, replacing
the capitalist class with the state bureaucracy. Fourthly, there 
is the issue of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Fifthly, 
there is the question of whether political power <b>can</b> be 
seized by the working class as a whole or whether it can only be 
exercised by a small minority. Sixthly, there was the issue 
of whether the revolution be centralised or decentralised in 
nature. We shall discuss each in turn.
</p><p>
On the issue of current struggle, the differences between Marx
and Bakunin are clear. For Marx, the proletariat had to take
part in bourgeois elections as an organised political party.
As the resolution of the (gerrymandered) Hague Congress of
First International put it: <i>"In its struggle against the
collective power of the propertied classes the proletariat
cannot act as a class except by constituting itself a political 
party, distinct from and opposed to, all old parties formed by 
the propertied classes . . . The conquest of political power 
has therefore become the great duty of the working class."</i> 
[<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 23, p. 243]
</p><p>
This political party must stand for elections and win 
votes. As Marx argued in the preamble of the French Workers' 
Party, the workers must turn the franchise <i>"from a means of 
deception . . . into an instrument of emancipation."</i> This 
can be considered as part of the process outlined in the 
<b>Communist Manifesto</b>, where it was argued that the 
<i>"immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of 
all the other proletarian parties,"</i> namely the <i>"conquest 
of political power by the proletariat,"</i> the <i>"first step
in the revolution by the working class"</i> being <i>"to raise
the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
the battle of democracy."</i> Engels later stressed (in 1895) 
that the <i>"<b>Communist Manifesto</b> had already proclaimed the 
winning of universal suffrage, of democracy, as one of the 
first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat"</i> 
and that German Social Democracy had showed workers of all 
countries <i>"how to make use of universal suffrage."</i> [<b>Marx 
and Engels Reader</b>, p. 566, p. 484, p. 490 and p. 565]
</p><p>
With this analysis in mind, Marxist influenced political
parties have consistently argued for and taken part in
election campaigns, seeking office as a means of spreading
socialist ideas and as a means of pursuing the socialist
revolution. The Social Democratic parties which were the
first Marxist parties (and which developed under the watchful 
eyes of Marx and Engels) saw revolution in terms of 
winning a majority within Parliamentary elections and 
using this political power to abolish capitalism (once
this was done, the state would "wither away" as classes
would no longer exist). In effect, as we discuss in
<a href="secH3.html#sech310">section H.3.10</a>, these parties 
aimed to reproduce Marx's account of the forming of the 
Paris Commune on the level of the national Parliament. 
</p><p>
Bakunin, in contrast, argued that while the communists
<i>"imagine they can attain their goal by the development
and organisation of the political power of the working
classes . . . aided by bourgeois radicalism"</i> anarchists
<i>"believe they can succeed only through the development
and organisation of the non-political or anti-political
power of the working classes."</i> The Communists <i>"believe 
it necessary to organise the workers' forces in order 
to seize the political power of the State,"</i> while
anarchists <i>"organise for the purpose of destroying 
it."</i> Bakunin saw this in terms of creating new organs
of working class power in opposition to the state,
organised <i>"from the bottom up, by the free association
or federation of workers, starting with the associations,
then going on to the communes, the region, the nations,
and, finally, culminating in a great international and 
universal federation."</i> In other words, a system of
workers' councils. As such, he constantly argued for 
workers, peasants and artisans to organise into unions 
and join the <b>International Workingmen's Association</b>, 
so becoming <i>"a real force . . . which knows what to do 
and is therefore capable of guiding the revolution in the 
direction marked out by the aspirations of the people: a 
serious international organisation of workers' associations 
of all lands capable of replacing this departing world of 
<b>states.</b>"</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, pp. 262-3, 
p. 270 and p. 174] To Marx's argument that workers should 
organise politically (i.e., send their representations to 
Parliament) Bakunin realised that when <i>"common workers"</i>
are sent <i>"to Legislative Assemblies"</i> the result is that
the <i>"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."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, p. 108]
</p><p>
As far as history goes, the experience of Social Democracy
confirmed Bakunin's analysis. A few years after Engels death
in 1895, German Social Democracy was racked by the "revisionism"
debate. This debate did not spring from the minds of a few
leaders, isolated from the movement, but rather expressed 
developments <b>within</b> the movement itself. In effect, the
revisionists wanted to adjust the party rhetoric to what the 
party was actually doing and so the battle against the revisionists
basically represented a battle between what the party <b>said</b> it
was doing and its actual practice. As one of the most distinguished 
historians of this period put it, the <i>"distinction between the 
contenders remained largely a subjective one, a difference of 
ideas in the evaluation of reality rather than a difference in 
the realm of action."</i> [C. Schorske, <b>German Social Democracy</b>, 
p. 38] By the start of the First World War, the Social Democrats had 
become so corrupted by its activities in bourgeois institutions they 
supported its state (and ruling class) and voted for war credits 
rather than denounce the war as Imperialist slaughter for profits. 
Clearly, Bakunin was proved right. (see also 
<a href="secJ2.html#secj26">section J.2.6</a> for more discussion 
on the effect of electioneering on radical parties).
</p><p>
However, we must stress that because Bakunin rejected 
participating in bourgeois politics, it did not mean 
that he rejected "politics" or "political struggle" in 
general (see <a href="secJ2.html#secj210">section J.2.10</a>). 
Bakunin clearly advocated what would later by termed a syndicalist 
strategy (see <a href="secH2.html#sech28">section H.2.8</a>). 
This union movement would be complemented by a specific anarchist 
organisation which would work within it to influence it towards 
anarchist aims by the <i>"natural influence"</i> of its 
members (see <a href="secJ3.html#secj37">section J.3.7</a>). 
</p><p>
Comparing Bakunin and Marx, it is clear whom history has validated. 
Even that anti-anarchist Stalinist hack Eric Hobsbawn could not avoid
admitting that <i>"the remarkable achievement of Spanish anarchism 
which was to create a working-class movement that remained genuinely 
revolutionary. Social democratic and . . . even communist trade unions 
have rarely been able to escape either schizophrenia [i.e., revolutionary 
rhetoric hiding reformist practice] or betrayal of their socialist 
convictions."</i> [<b>Revolutionaries</b>, p. 104] This is probably 
the only accurate comment made in his various diatribes on anarchism 
but, of course, he did not allow the implications of his statement 
to bother his faith in Leninist ideology. So given the long history 
of reformism and betrayal of socialist principles by radicals
utilising elections and political parties, it comes as no surprise that
anarchists consider both Bakunin's critique and alternative to be confirmed
by experience (<a href="secJ2.html">section J.2</a> discusses direct action
and electioneering).
</p><p>
Which brings us to the second issue, namely the nature of the revolution 
itself. For Bakunin, a revolution meant a <b>social</b> revolution from 
below. This involved both the abolition of the state <b>and</b> the 
expropriation of capital. In his words, <i>"the revolution must set out 
from the first [to] radically and totally to destroy the State."</i> The 
<i>"natural and necessary consequences"</i> of which will be the 
<i>"confiscation of all productive capital and means of production on 
behalf of workers' associations, who are to put them to collective use 
. . . the federative Alliance of all working men's associations . . . will
constitute the Commune."</i> There <i>"can no longer be any successful 
political . . . revolution unless the political revolution is transformed 
into social revolution."</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>,
p. 170 and p. 171] 
</p><p>
Which, incidentally, disproves Engels' claims that Bakunin <i>"does not
regard capital . . . but the <b>state</b> as the main evil to be abolished"</i>
after which <i>"capitalism will go to blazes of itself."</i> [<b>The 
Marx-Engels Reader</b>, p. 728] This misrepresents Bakunin's position, as 
he always stressed that economic and political transformation <i>"must 
be accomplished together and simultaneously."</i> [<b>The Basic Bakunin</b>, 
p. 106] Given that Bakunin thought the state was the protector of capitalism, 
no economic change could be achieved until such time as it was abolished. 
This also meant that Bakunin considered a political revolution before an 
economic one to mean the continued slavery of the workers. As he argued, 
<i>"[t]o win political freedom first can signify no other thing but to win 
this freedom only, leaving for the first days at least economic and social 
relations in the same old state, - that is, leaving the proprietors 
and capitalists with their insolent wealth, and the workers with their 
poverty."</i> With capitalists' economic power intact, could the workers' 
<b>political</b> power remain strong? As such, <i>"every political
revolution taking place prior to and consequently without a social 
revolution must necessarily be a bourgeois revolution, and a bourgeois 
revolution can only be instrumental in bringing about bourgeois Socialism 
- that is, it is bound to end in a new, more hypocritical and more 
skilful, but no less oppressive, exploitation of the proletariat by 
the bourgeois."</i> [<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, p. 294 
and p. 289]
</p><p>
Did Marx and Engels hold this position? Apparently so. Discussing 
the Paris Commune, Marx noted that it was <i>"the political form at 
last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of 
labour,"</i> and as the <i>"political rule of the producer cannot 
coexist with the perpetuation of his social slavery"</i> the Commune 
was to <i>"serve as a lever for uprooting the economic foundations 
upon which rests the existence of classes."</i> Engels argued that 
the <i>"proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this 
transforms the . . . means of production . . . into public property."</i> 
In the <b>Communist Manifesto</b> they argued that <i>"the first step 
in the revolution by the working class"</i> is the <i>"rais[ing] the 
proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of 
democracy."</i> The proletariat <i>"will use its political supremacy 
to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeois, to centralise 
all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the 
proletariat organised as the ruling class."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 635, p. 717 and p. 490] 
<p>
This is made even clearer in Engels' <i>"Principles of Communism"</i>
(often considered as a draft of the <b>Manifesto</b>). That document
stressed that it was not possible for <i>"private property to be abolished 
at one stroke"</i>, arguing that <i>"the proletarian revolution will 
transform existing society gradually."</i> The revolution <i>"will 
establish a <b>democratic constitution</b>, and through this, the 
direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, 
where the proletarians are already a majority of the people."</i>
<i>"Democracy"</i>, Engels went on, <i>"would be quite useless to 
the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means of carrying 
through further measures directly attacking private ownership."</i> 
[<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 6, p. 350] Decades later, when Marx 
discussed what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" meant, he 
argued (in reply to Bakunin's question of <i>"over whom will the 
proletariat rule?"</i>) that it simply meant <i>"that so long  as other 
classes continue to exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat 
fights it (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will 
not yet have disappeared), it must use measures of <b>force</b>, hence 
governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the economic 
conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of classes have 
not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or transformed, and the 
process of their transformation must be forcibly accelerated."</i> [<b>The 
Marx-Engels Reader</b>, pp. 542-3] Note, "capitalists," not "former 
capitalists," so implying that the members of the proletariat are, in fact, 
still proletarians after the "socialist" revolution and so still subject to 
wage slavery under economic masters. Which makes perfect sense, as otherwise
the term <i>"dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> would be meaningless.
</p><p>
Then there is the issue of when the working class could seize political 
power. As Engels put it, the struggle <i>"between bourgeoisie and proletariat 
can only be fought out in a republic."</i> This is <i>"the form in which the 
struggle must be fought out"</i> and in countries without a republic, such as 
Germany at the time, workers would <i>"have to <b>conquer</b> it."</i> [Marx 
and Engels, <b>The Socialist Revolution</b>, p. 264] Decades previously, Engels
has argued that the <i>"first, fundamental condition for the introduction of 
community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a 
democratic constitution."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 6, p. 102] Thus 
the bourgeois revolution would come first, then the proletarian one. The <b>Communist 
Manifesto</b> had raised the possibility of a bourgeois revolution in Germany 
being <i>"but a prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution."</i> 
[<b>Selected Writings</b>, p. 63] Within two years, Marx and Engels argued 
that this was wrong, that a socialist revolution was not possible in 
Continental Europe for some time. Even in the 1880s, Engels was still arguing 
that a proletarian revolution was not immediately possible in Germany and the
first results of any revolution would be a bourgeois republic within which the 
task of social democracy was to build its forces and influence.
</p><p>
Clearly, then, Marx and Engels considered the creation of a republic in a 
well developed capitalist economy as the basis for seizing of state power 
as the key event and, later, the expropriation of the expropriators would 
occur. Thus the economic power of the capitalists would remain, with the 
proletariat utilising political power to combat and reduce it. Anarchists 
argue that if the proletariat does not hold economic power, its political 
power would at best be insecure and would in fact degenerate. Would the 
capitalists just sit and wait while their economic power was gradually 
eliminated by political action? And what of the proletariat during this 
period? Will they patiently obey their bosses, continue to be oppressed 
and exploited by them until such time as the end of their "social slavery"
has been worked out (and by whom)? Would they be happy to fight for a 
bourgeois republic first, then wait for an unspecified period of time 
before the party leadership proclaimed that the time was ripe to introduce 
socialism?
</p><p>
As the experience of the Russian Revolution showed, the position of
Marx and Engels proved to be untenable. Bakunin's perspective was 
repeated by a Russian worker in 1906 when he expressed his impatience 
with Menshevik strategy:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Here [the Mensheviks] . . . tells us that the workers' congress 
is the best means of assuring the independence of the proletariat 
in the bourgeois revolution; otherwise, we workers will play the 
role of cannon fodder in it. So I ask: what is the insurance for? 
Will we really make the bourgeois revolution? Is it possible that 
we will spill blood twice - once for the victory of the bourgeois 
revolution, and the time for the victory of our proletarian revolution? 
No, comrades, it is not to be found in the party programme [that 
this must be so]; but if we workers are to spill blood, then 
only once, for freedom and socialism."</i> [quoted by Abraham Ascher, 
<b>The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution</b>, p. 43]
</blockquote></p><p>
In 1917, this lesson was well learned and the Russian workers initially 
followed Bakunin's path (mostly spontaneously and without significant
influence by anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists). The Mensheviks 
repeated their mistakes of 1905 as they <i>"proved unable to harness 
this revolutionary potential to any practical purpose. They were blinded 
by their rigid marxist formula of 'bourgeois revolution first, socialist 
revolution later' and tired to restrain the masses. They preached 
self-abnegation to them, told them to stand aside until such times as 
the bourgeoisie had built a solid capitalist system. This made no sense 
to workers and peasants - why should they renounce the power that was 
in their hands already?"</i> Leading Menshevik Fedor Dan <i>"admitted 
in 1946 that the Menshevik concept of the bourgeois revolution rested 
on 'illusions'"</i> [Vera Broido, <b>Lenin and the Mensheviks</b>, 
p 14 and p. 15] Once Lenin returned to Russia, the Bolsheviks broke 
with this previously shared perspective and started to support and 
encourage the radicalisation of the workers and so managed to gain 
popular support. However, they did so partially and incompletely and,
as a consequence, finally held back and so fatally undermined the revolution.
</p><p>
After the February revolution paralysed the state, the workers organised 
factory committees and raised the idea and practice of workers self-management 
of production. The Russian anarchists supported this movement whole-heartedly, 
arguing that it should be pushed as far as it would go. In contrast, Lenin 
argued for <i>"workers' control over the capitalists."</i> [<b>The Lenin 
Anthology</b>, p. 402] This was, unsurprisingly, the policy applied 
immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power. However, as one 
Leninist writer admits, <i>"[t]wo overwhelmingly powerful forces 
obliged the Bolsheviks to abandon this 'reformist' course."</i> One 
was the start of the civil war, the other <i>"was the fact that the 
capitalists used their remaining power to make the system unworkable. 
At the end of 1917 the All Russian Congress of employers declared that 
those 'factories in which the control is exercised by means of active 
interference in the administration will be closed.' The workers' 
natural response to the wave of lockouts which followed was to demand 
that their [sic!] state nationalise the factories."</i> [John Rees, <i>"In 
Defence of October"</i>, pp. 3-82, <b>International Socialism</b>, no. 52,
p. 42] By July 1918, only one-fifth of nationalised firms had been 
done so by the state, the rest by local committees from below (which,
incidentally, shows the unresponsiveness of centralised power). Clearly, 
the idea that a social revolution can come after a political was shown 
to be a failure - the capitalist class used its powers to disrupt the 
economic life of Russia.
</p><p>
Faced with the predictable opposition by capitalists to their system of 
"control" the Bolsheviks nationalised the means of production. Sadly, 
<b>within</b> the nationalised workplace the situation of the worker 
remained essentially unchanged. Lenin had been arguing for one-man 
management (appointed from above and armed with "dictatorial" powers) 
since late April 1918 (see <a href="secH3.html#sech314">section H.3.14</a>). 
This aimed at replacing the capitalists with state appointed managers, 
<b>not</b> workers self-management. In fact, as we discuss in 
<a href="secH6.html#sech62">section H.6.2</a> the party leaders repeatedly
overruled the factory committees' suggestions to build socialism based on their 
management of the economy in favour of centralised state control. Bakunin's 
fear of what would happen if a political revolution preceded a social one came 
true. The working class continued to be exploited and oppressed as before, 
first by the bourgeoisie and then by the new bourgeoisie of state appointed 
managers armed with all the powers of the old ones (plus a few more). 
Russia confirmed Bakunin's analysis that a revolution must immediately 
combine political and economic goals in order for it to be successful. 
</p><p>
The experience of Bolshevik Russia also confirms Bakunin's prediction 
that state socialism would simply be state capitalism. As Bakunin stressed,
the state <i>"is the government from above downwards of an immense number
of men [and women], very different from the point of view of the degree
of their culture, the nature of the countries or localities that they
inhabit, the occupations they follow, the interests and aspirations
directing them - the State is the government of all these by one or
another minority."</i> The state <i>"has always been the patrimony of
some privileged class"</i> and <i>"when all other classes have exhausted
themselves"</i> it <i>"becomes the patrimony of the bureaucratic class."</i>
The Marxist state <i>"will not content itself with administering 
and governing the masses politically"</i> it will <i>"also administer 
the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the State the
production and distribution of wealth."</i> This will result in <i>"a new
class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and scholars,
and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of 
knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto the
mass of ignorant ones!"</i> Thus exploitation by a new bureaucratic 
class would be the only result when the state becomes <i>"the sole 
proprietor"</i> and <i>"the only banker, capitalist, organiser, and
director of all national labour, and the distributor of all its 
products."</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, pp. 317-8, p. 318 and 
p. 217] Subsequent anarchists have tended to call such a regime <b>state 
capitalism</b> (see <a href="secH3.html#sech313">section H.3.13</a>).
</p><p>
The Bolshevik leadership's rejection of the factory committees and their
vision of socialism also confirmed Bakunin's fear that Marxism urges the
people <i>"not only not abolish the State, but, on the contrary, they 
must strengthen it and enlarge it, and turn it over to . . . the leaders
of the Communist party . . . who will then liberate them in their own 
way."</i> The economic regime imposed by the Bolsheviks, likewise, 
confirmed Bakunin critique as the state <i>"control[led] all the commerce,
industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the people will be
divided into two armies, the agricultural and the industrial under the
direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new 
privileged political-scientific class."</i> Unsurprisingly, this new
state-run economy was a disaster which, again, confirmed his warning
that unless this minority <i>"were endowed with omniscience, omnipresence,
and the omnipotence which the theologians attribute to God, [it] could 
not possibly know and foresee the needs of its people, or satisfy with
an even justice those needs which are most legitimate and pressing."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 332, pp. 332-3 and p. 318]
</p><p>
Which brings us to the "dictatorship of the proletariat." While many 
Marxists basically use this term to describe the defence of the 
revolution and so argue that anarchists do not see the for that, 
this is incorrect. Anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued that 
a revolution would have to defend itself from counter revolution and 
yet we reject the concept totally (see <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a> 
for a refutation of claims that anarchists think a revolution does 
not need defending). To understand why Bakunin rejected the concept, 
we must provide some historical context. 
</p><p>
Anarchists in the nineteenth century rejected the idea of the 
"dictatorship of the proletariat" in part because the proletariat 
was a <b>minority</b> of working class people at the time. To 
argue for a dictatorship of the proletariat meant to argue for 
the dictatorship of a <b>minority</b> class, a class which excluded 
the majority of toiling people. When Marx and Engels wrote the 
<b>Communist Manifesto</b>, for example, over 80% of the population 
of France and Germany were peasants or artisans - what they termed 
the "petit-bourgeois". This meant that their claim that the 
<i>"proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent 
movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense 
majority"</i> was simply not true. Rather, for Marx's life-time (and 
for many decades afterwards) the proletarian movement was like <i>"[a]ll 
previous movements,"</i> namely <i>"movements of minorities, or in the 
interests of minorities."</i> Not that Marx and Engels were unaware of 
this for they also noted that <i>"[i]n countries like France"</i> 
the peasants <i>"constitute far more than half of the population."</i> In 
1875 Marx commented that <i>"the majority of the 'toiling people' in 
Germany consists of peasants, and not of proletarians."</i> He stressed 
elsewhere around the same time that <i>"the peasant . . . forms 
a more of less considerable majority . . . in the countries of the 
West European continent."</i> [<b>The Marx-Engels Reader</b>, p. 482, 
p. 493, p. 536 and p. 543] 
</p><p>
Clearly, then, Marx and Engels vision of proletarian revolution was 
one which involved a minority dictating to the majority and so Bakunin 
rejected it. His opposition rested on the fact that a "dictatorship 
of the proletariat," at the time, actually meant a dictatorship by a 
<b>minority</b> of working people and so a "revolution" which excluded 
the majority of working people (i.e. artisans and peasants). As he
argued in 1873:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"If the proletariat is to be the ruling class . . . then whom 
will it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will 
be subject to this new rule, this new state. It may be the 
peasant rabble . . . which, finding itself on a lower cultural 
level, will probably be governed by the urban and factory
proletariat."</i> [<b>Statism and Anarchy</b>, pp. 177-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
For Bakunin, to advocate the "dictatorship of the proletariat" 
in an environment where the vast majority of working people 
were peasants would be a disaster. It is only when we understand 
this social context that we can understand Bakunin's opposition 
to Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" - it would be a 
dictatorship of a minority class over the rest of the working 
population (he took it as a truism that the capitalist and landlord 
classes should be expropriated and stopped from destroying the
revolution!). Bakunin continually stressed the need for a movement
and revolution of <b>all</b> working class people (see <a href="secH2.html#sech27">section H.2.7</a>)
and that the peasants <i>"will join cause with the city workers as soon 
as they become convinced that the latter do not pretend to impose their 
will or some political or social order invented by the cities for the 
greater happiness of the villages; they will join cause as soon as they
are assured that the industrial workers will not take their lands 
away."</i> For an <i>"uprising by the proletariat alone would not be 
enough; with that we would have only a political revolution which 
would necessarily produce a natural and legitimate reaction on the 
part of the peasants, and that reaction, or merely the indifference 
of the peasants, would strangle the revolution of the cities."</i> 
[<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, p. 401 and p. 378] 
</p><p>
This explains why the anarchists at the St. Imier Congress argued 
that <i>"every political state can be nothing but organised 
domination for the benefit of one class, to the detriment of the 
masses, and that should the proletariat itself seize power, it
would in turn become a new dominating and exploiting class."</i> 
As the proletariat was a minority class at the time, their concerns 
can be understood. For anarchists then, and now, a social revolution 
has to be truly popular and involve the majority of the population 
in order to succeed. Unsurprisingly, the congress stressed the role 
of the proletariat in the struggle for socialism, arguing that <i>"the
proletariat of all lands . . . must create the solidarity of revolutionary 
action . . . independently of and in opposition to all forms of bourgeois
politics."</i> Moreover, the aim of the workers' movement was <i>"free 
organisations and federations . . . created by the spontaneous action 
of the proletariat itself, [that is, by] the trade bodies and the 
autonomous communes."</i> [quoted in <b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, 
p. 438, p. 439 and p. 438]
</p><p>
Hence Bakunin's comment that <i>"the designation of the proletariat, 
the world of the workers, as <b>class</b> rather than as <b>mass</b>"</i> 
was <i>"deeply antipathetic to us revolutionary anarchists who
unconditionally advocate full popular emancipation."</i> To do so, 
he argued, meant <i>"[n]othing more or less than a new aristocracy, 
that of the urban and industrial workers, to the exclusion of the 
millions who make up the rural proletariat and who . . . will in effect
become subjects of this great so-called popular State."</i> [<b>Michael 
Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, pp. 253-4]
</p><p>
Again, the experiences of the Russian Revolution confirm Bakunin's worries. 
The Bolsheviks implemented the dictatorship of the city over the countryside, 
with disastrous results (see <a href="secH6.html#sech62">section H.6.2</a> 
for more details).
</p><p>
One last point on this subject. While anarchists reject the "dictatorship 
of the proletariat" we clearly do not reject the key role the proletariat 
must play in any social revolution (see <a href="secH2.html#sech22">section H.2.2</a> 
on why the Marxist assertion anarchists reject class struggle is false). We 
only reject the idea that the proletariat must dictate over other working 
people like peasants and artisans. We do not reject the need for working 
class people to defend a revolution, nor the need for them to expropriate 
the capitalist class nor for them to manage their own activities and so society.
</p><p>
Then there is the issue of whether, even if the proletariat <b>does</b> seize 
political power, whether the whole class can actually exercise it. Bakunin 
raised the obvious questions: 
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are supposed 
to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power, surely it is 
obvious that this power will never be anything but a sham? It is bound to be
impossible for a few thousand, let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of 
men to wield that power effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, 
which means entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern 
them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit and 
subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief flash of 
liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new State will wake 
up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of ambitious men."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 254-5]
</blockquote></p><p>
He repeated this argument: <i>"What does it mean, 'the proletariat raised 
to a governing class?' Will the entire proletariat head the government? 
The Germans number about 40 million. Will all 40 millions be members of 
the government? The entire nation will rule, but no one will be ruled. 
Then there will be no government, no state; but if there is a state, 
there will also be those who are ruled, there will be slaves."</i> Bakunin 
argued that Marxism resolves this dilemma <i>"in a simple fashion. By 
popular government they mean government of the people by a small number of 
representatives elected by the people. So-called popular representatives 
and rulers of the state elected by the entire nation on the basis of 
universal suffrage - the last word of the Marxists, as well as the 
democratic school - is a lie behind which lies the despotism of a ruling 
minority is concealed, a lie all the more dangerous in that it represents 
itself as the expression of a sham popular will."</i> [<b>Statism and Anarchy</b>,
p. 178]
</p><p>
So where does Marx stand on this question. Clearly, the self-proclaimed 
followers of Marx support the idea of "socialist" governments (indeed, 
many, including Lenin and Trotsky, went so far as to argue that party 
dictatorship was essential for the success of a revolution - see 
<a href="secH1.html#sech12">next section</a>). Marx, however, is less 
clear. He argued, in reply to Bakunin's question if all Germans would be 
members of the government, that <i>"[c]ertainly, because the thing starts 
with the self-government of the township."</i> However, he also commented 
that <i>"[c]an it really be that in a trade union, for example, the entire 
union forms its executive committee,"</i> suggesting that there <b>will</b> 
be a division of labour between those who govern and those who obey in the 
Marxist system of socialism. [<b>The Marx-Engels Reader</b>, p. 545 and 
p. 544] Elsewhere he talks about <i>"a socialist government"</i> coming 
<i>"to the helm in a country"</i>. [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 46, p. 66] 
As we discuss in <a href="secH3.html#sech310">section H.3.10</a>, both
Marx and Engels saw universal suffrage in a republic as expressing the 
political power of the working class.
</p><p>
So Bakunin's critique holds, as Marx clearly saw the "dictatorship 
of the proletariat" involving a socialist government having power. For 
Bakunin, like all anarchists, if a political party is the government, 
then clearly its leaders are in power, not the mass of working people 
they claim to represent. Anarchists have, from the beginning, argued 
that Marx made a grave mistake confusing working class power with the 
state. This is because the state is the means by which the management 
of people's affairs is taken from them and placed into the hands of a 
few. It signifies delegated <b>power.</b> As such, the so-called "workers' 
state" or "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a contradiction in terms. 
Instead of signifying the power of the working class to manage society it, 
in fact, signifies the opposite, namely the handing over of that power to 
a few party leaders at the top of a centralised structure. This is because 
<i>"all State rule, all governments being by their very nature placed outside
the people, must necessarily seek to subject it to customs and purposes 
entirely foreign to it. We therefore declare ourselves to be foes . . . of 
all State organisations as such, and believe that the people can be happy 
and free, when, organised from below upwards by means of its own autonomous 
and completely free associations, without the supervision of any guardians, 
it will create its own life."</i> [Bakunin, <b>Marxism, Freedom and the 
State</b>, p. 63] Hence Bakunin's constant arguments for a decentralised, 
federal system of workers councils organised from the bottom-up. Again,
the transformation of the Bolshevik government into a dictatorship 
<b>over</b> the proletariat during the early stages of the Russian 
Revolution supports Bakunin's critique of Marxism.
</p><p>
Related to this issue is Bakunin's argument that Marxism created a privileged
position for socialist intellectuals in both the current social movement and
in the social revolution. This was because Marx stressed that his theory was
a "scientific socialism" and, Bakunin argued, that implied <i>"because thought, 
theory and science, at least in our times, are in the possession of very few, 
these few ought to be the leaders of social life"</i> and they, not the masses, 
should organise the revolution <i>"by the dictatorial powers of this learned 
minority, which presumes to express the will of the people."</i> This would be 
<i>"nothing but a despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all 
numerous aristocracy of real and pseudoscientists"</i> and so there would 
<i>"be a new [ruling] class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit
scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority
ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And
then, woe unto the mass of ignorant ones!"</i> Thus <i>"every state, even the 
pseudo-People's State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling 
the masses from above, through a privileged minority of conceited intellectuals 
who imagine that they know what the people need and want better than do the people 
themselves."</i> The Russian anarchist predicted that <i>"the organisation and 
the rule of the new society by socialist savants"</i> would be <i>"the worse of 
all despotic governments!"</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, pp. 328-9, p. 331, 
p. 319, p. 338 and p. 295] History proved Bakunin right, with the Bolshevik regime 
being precisely that. As we discuss in <a href="secH5.html">section H.5</a>,
Lenin's vanguardism did produce such a result, with the argument that the party
leadership knew the objective needs of working class people better than they
themselves did being used to justify party dictatorship and the strict 
centralisation of social life in the hands of its leadership.
</p><p>
Which brings us to the last issue, namely whether the revolution
will be decentralised or centralised. For Marx, the issue is somewhat 
confused by his support for the Paris Commune and its federalist 
programme (written, we must note, by a follower of Proudhon). 
However, in 1850, Marx stood for extreme centralisation of power,
arguing that the workers <i>"must not only strive for a single and 
indivisible German republic, but also within this republic for the 
most determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state 
authority."</i> He argued that in a nation like Germany <i>"where 
there is so many relics of the Middle Ages to be abolished"</i> it 
<i>"must under no circumstances be permitted that every village, 
every town and every province should put a new obstacle in the path 
of revolutionary activity, which can proceed with full force from 
the centre."</i> He stressed that <i>"[a]s in France in 1793 so 
today in Germany it is the task of the really revolutionary party 
to carry through the strictest centralisation."</i> [<b>The Marx-Engels 
Reader</b>, pp. 509-10] Lenin followed this aspect of Marx's ideas, 
arguing that <i>"Marx was a centralist"</i> and applying this 
perspective both in the party and once in power [<b>The Essential 
Works of Lenin</b>, p. 310]
</p><p>
Obviously, this issue dove-tails into the question of whether the whole 
class exercises power under the "dictatorship of the proletariat." In a 
centralised system, obviously, power <b>has to be</b> exercised by a few 
(as Marx's argument in 1850 showed). Centralism, by its very nature 
excludes the possibility of extensive participation in the decision 
making process. Moreover, the decisions reached by such a body could 
not reflect the real needs of society. In the words of Bakunin:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"What man, what group of individuals, no matter how great their
genius, would dare to think themselves able to embrace and 
understand the plethora of interests, attitudes and activities
so various in every country, every province, locality and
profession."</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, p. 240]
</blockquote></p><p>
He stressed that <i>"the revolution should be and should everywhere
remain independent of the central point, which must be its expression 
and product - not its source, guide and cause . . . the awakening of 
all local passions and the awakening of spontaneous life at all points, 
must be well developed in order for the revolution to remain alive, real 
and powerful."</i> Anarchists reject centralisation because it destroys 
the mass participation a revolution requires in order to succeed. Therefore
we do <i>"not accept, even in the process of revolutionary transition, 
either constituent assemblies, provisional governments or so-called 
revolutionary dictatorships; because we are convinced that revolution 
is only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that 
when it is concentrated in those of a few ruling individuals it 
inevitably and immediately becomes reaction."</i> Rather, the revolution 
<i>"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."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
pp. 179-80, p. 237 and p. 172]
</p><p>
This, we must stress, does not imply isolation. Bakunin always emphasised 
the importance of federal organisation to co-ordinate struggle and 
defence of the revolution. As he put it, all revolutionary communes 
would need to federate in order <i>"to organise the necessary common 
services and arrangements for production and exchange, to establish the
charter of equality, the basis of all liberty - a charter utterly 
negative in character, defining what has to be abolished for ever 
rather than the positive forms of local life which can be created 
only by the living practice of each locality - and to organise common
defence against the enemies of the Revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
p. 179]
</p><p>
Ironically, it is a note by Engels to the 1885 edition of Marx's 1850 article
which shows the fallacy of the standard Marxist position on centralisation 
and the validity of Bakunin's position. As Engels put it, <i>"this passage 
is based on a misunderstanding"</i> and it was now <i>"a well known fact 
that throughout the whole [Great French] revolution . . . the whole 
administration of the departments, arrondissements and communes consisted 
of authorities elected by the respective constituents themselves, and that 
these authorities acted with complete freedom within general state laws
[and] that precisely this provincial and local self-government . . . became 
the most powerful lever of the revolution."</i> [<b>The Marx-Engels 
Reader</b>, p. 510f] Marx's original comments imply the imposition of 
freedom by the centre on a population not desiring it (and how could 
the centre be representative of the majority in such a case?). Moreover, 
how could a revolution be truly social if it was not occurring in the 
grassroots across a country? Unsurprisingly, local autonomy has played a 
key role in every real revolution.
</p><p>
As such, Bakunin has been proved right. Centralism has always killed a 
revolution and, as he always argued, real socialism can only be worked 
from below, by the people of every village, town, and city. The problems 
facing the world or a revolution cannot be solved by a few people at the 
top issuing decrees. They can only be solved by the active participation 
of the mass of working class people, the kind of participation centralism 
and government by their nature exclude. 
</p><p>
Given Marx's support for the federal ideas of the Paris Commune, 
it can be argued that Marxism is not committed to a policy of 
strict centralisation (although Lenin, of course, argued that
Marx <b>was</b> a firm supporter of centralisation). What is true 
is, to quote Daniel Gurin, that Marx's comments on the Commune 
differ <i>"noticeably from Marx's writings of before and after
1871"</i> while Bakunin's were <i>"in fact quite consistent with
the lines he adopted in his earlier writings."</i> [<b>No Gods,
No Masters</b>, vol. 1, p. 167] Indeed, as Bakunin himself
noted, while the Marxists <i>"saw all their ideas upset by
the uprising"</i> of the Commune, they <i>"found themselves 
compelled to take their hats off to it. They went even further, 
and proclaimed that its programme and purpose were their own, in
face of the simplest logic and their own true sentiments."</i> 
This modification of ideas by Marx in the light of the Commune
was not limited just to federalism, he also praised its system of 
mandating recallable delegates. This was a position which Bakunin had 
been arguing for a number of years previously but which Marx had
never advocated. In 1868, for example, Bakunin was talking about 
a <i>"Revolutionary Communal Council"</i> composed of <i>"delegates . . . 
vested with plenary but accountable and removable mandates."</i> 
[<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, p. 261 and pp. 170-1] 
As such, the Paris Commune was a striking confirmation of Bakunin's 
ideas on many levels, <b>not</b> Marx's (who adjusted his ideas to 
bring them in line with Bakunin's!).
</p><p>
Since Bakunin, anarchists have deepen this critique of Marxism and, with 
the experience of both Social-Democracy and Bolshevism, argue that he 
predicted key failures in Marx's ideas. Given that his followers, particularly
Lenin and Trotsky, have emphasised (although, in many ways, changed them) 
the centralisation and "socialist government" aspects of Marx's thoughts, 
anarchists argue that Bakunin's critique is as relevant as ever. Real 
socialism can only come from below.
</p><p>
For more on Bakunin's critique of Marxism, Mark Leier's excellent biography
of the Russian Anarchist (<b>Bakunin: The Creative Passion</b>) is worth 
consulting, as is Brian Morris's <b>Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom</b>.
John Clark has two useful essays on this subject in his <b>The Anarchist
Moment</b> while Richard B. Saltman's <b>The Social and Political Thought
of Michael Bakunin</b> contains an excellent chapter on Bakunin and Marx. 
A good academic account can be found in Alvin W. Gouldner's <i>"Marx's 
Last Battle: Bakunin and the First International"</i> (<b>Theory and
Society</b>, Vol. 11, No. 6) which is a revised and shortened version of
a chapter of his <b>Against Fragmentation: the Origins of Marxism and the
Sociology of Intellectuals</b>. Obviously, though, Bakunin's original 
writings should be the first starting point.</p>

<a name="sech12"><h2>H.1.2 What are the key differences between Anarchists and Marxists?</h2></a>

<p>
There are, of course, important similarities between anarchism and
Marxism. Both are socialist, oppose capitalism and the current
state, support and encourage working class organisation and action
and see class struggle as the means of creating a social revolution
which will transform society into a new one. However, the differences
between these socialist theories are equally important. In the
words of Errico Malatesta:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The important, fundamental dissension [between anarchists and 
Marxists] is [that] . . . [Marxist] socialists are authoritarians, 
anarchists are libertarians.
</p><p>
"Socialists want power . . . and once in power wish to impose 
their programme on the people. . . Anarchists instead maintain, 
that government cannot be other than harmful, and by its very 
nature it defends either an existing privileged class or creates 
a new one; and instead of inspiring to take the place of the
existing government anarchists seek to destroy every organism
which empowers some to impose their own ideas and interests on
others, for they want to free the way for development towards
better forms of human fellowship which will emerge from
experience, by everyone being free and, having, of course,
the economic means to make freedom possible as well as a
reality."</i> [<b>Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas</b>, p. 142]
</blockquote></p><p>
The other differences derive from this fundamental one. 
So while there are numerous ways in which anarchists and 
Marxists differ, their root lies in the question of power. 
Socialists seek power (in the name of the working class 
and usually hidden under rhetoric arguing that party and 
class power are the same). Anarchists seek to destroy 
hierarchical power in all its forms and ensure that 
everyone is free to manage their own affairs (both 
individually and collectively). From this comes the 
differences on the nature of a revolution, the way the 
working class movement should organise and the tactics it 
should apply and so on. A short list of these differences 
would include the question of the "dictatorship of the 
proletariat", the standing of revolutionaries in elections, 
centralisation versus federalism, the role and organisation 
of revolutionaries, whether socialism can only come <i>"from 
below"</i> or whether it is possible for it come <i>"from below"</i> 
and <i>"from above"</i> and a host of others (i.e. some of the 
differences we indicated in the 
<a href="secH1.html#sech11">last section</a> during our 
discussion of Bakunin's critique of Marxism). Indeed, there
are so many it is difficult to address them all here. As
such, we can only concentrate on a few in this and the 
following sections.
</p><p>
One of the key issues is on the issue of confusing party power
with popular power. The logic of the anarchist case is simple. 
In any system of hierarchical and centralised power (for example, 
in a state or governmental structure) then those at the top are 
in charge (i.e. are in positions of power). It is <b>not</b> "the 
people," nor "the proletariat," nor "the masses," it is those 
who make up the government who have and exercise real power. As 
Malatesta argued, government means <i>"the delegation of power, 
that is the abdication of initiative and sovereignty of all 
into the hands of a few"</i> and <i>"if . . . , as do the 
authoritarians, one means government action when one talks 
of social action, then this is still the resultant of 
individual forces, but only of those individuals who form 
the government."</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, p. 40 and p. 36] Therefore, 
anarchists argue, the replacement of party power for working 
class power is inevitable because of the nature of the state. 
In the words of Murray Bookchin:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Anarchist critics of Marx pointed out with considerable effect 
that any system of representation would become a statist interest 
in its own right, one that at best would work against the interests 
of the working classes (including the peasantry), and that at worst 
would be a dictatorial power as vicious as the worst bourgeois state 
machines. Indeed, with political power reinforced by economic power 
in the form of a nationalised economy, a 'workers' republic' might 
well prove to be a despotism (to use one of Bakunin's more favourite 
terms) of unparalleled oppression . . .
</p><p>
"Republican institutions, however much they are intended to express 
the interests of the workers, necessarily place policy-making in the 
hands of deputies and categorically do not constitute a 'proletariat 
organised as a ruling class.' If public policy, as distinguished from 
administrative activities, is not made by the people mobilised into 
assemblies and confederally co-ordinated by agents on a local, regional, 
and national basis, then a democracy in the precise sense of the term 
does not exist. The powers that people enjoy under such circumstances 
can be usurped without difficulty . . . [I]f the people are to acquire 
real power over their lives and society, they must establish - and in 
the past they have, for brief periods of time established - well-ordered 
institutions in which they themselves directly formulate the policies of 
their communities and, in the case of their regions, elect confederal 
functionaries, revocable and strictly controllable, who will execute 
them.  Only in this sense can a class, especially one committed to 
the abolition of classes, be mobilised as a class to manage society."</i>
[<i>"The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems"</i>, pp. 14-17,
<b>Black Flag</b>, no. 226, pp. 16-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
This is why anarchists stress direct democracy (self-management)
in free federations of free associations. It is the only way to
ensure that power remains in the hands of the people and is not
turned into an alien power above them. Thus Marxist support for
statist forms of organisation will inevitably undermine the
liberatory nature of the revolution. 
</p><p>
Thus the <b>real</b> meaning of a workers state is simply that the 
<b>party</b> has the real power, not the workers. That is nature 
of a state. Marxist rhetoric tends to hide this reality. As an 
example, we can point to Lenin's comments in October, 1921. In 
an essay marking the fourth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, 
Lenin stated that the Soviet system <i>"provides the maximum of democracy 
for the workers and peasants; at the same time, it marks a break with 
<b>bourgeois</b> democracy and the rise of a new, epoch-making type of 
democracy, namely, proletarian democracy, or the dictatorship of the 
proletariat."</i> [<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 33, p. 55] Yet Lenin's 
comments came just a few months after factions within the Communist Party 
had been banned and after the Kronstadt rebellion and a wave of strikes 
calling for free soviet elections had been repressed. It was written 
years after Lenin had asserted that <i>"[w]hen we are reproached with 
having established a dictatorship of one party . . . we say, 'Yes, it 
is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall 
not shift from that position . . .'"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 29, 
p. 535] And, of course, they had not shifted from that position! 
Clearly, the term <i>"proletarian democracy"</i> had a drastically 
different meaning to Lenin than to most people!
</p><p>
The identification of party power and working class power 
reaches its height (or, more correctly, depth) in the works of Lenin 
and Trotsky. Lenin, for example, argued that <i>"the Communists' 
correct understanding of his tasks"</i> lies in <i>"correctly 
gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the 
proletariat can successfully assume power, when it will be able 
- during and after the seizure of power - to win adequate support 
from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the 
non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter 
to maintain, consolidate, and extend its rule by educating, 
training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people."</i> 
Note, the vanguard (the party) seizes power, <b>not</b> the masses. 
Indeed, he stressed that the <i>"mere presentation of the question -
'dictatorship of the party <b>or</b> dictatorship of the class:
dictatorship (party) of the leaders <b>or</b> dictatorship (party) 
of the masses?' - testifies to most incredible and hopelessly 
muddled thinking"</i> and <i>"[t]o go so far . . . as to contrast, 
<b>in general</b>, the dictatorship of the masses with a dictatorship 
of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid."</i> [<b>The Lenin 
Anthology</b>, p. 575, p. 567 and p. 568]
</p><p>
Lenin stressed this idea numerous times. For example, he 
argued that <i>"the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be 
exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, 
because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one 
of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so 
degraded, and so corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking 
in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian 
dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the 
basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the essentials
of transition from capitalism to communism . . . for the dictatorship of 
the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation."</i> 
[<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 32, p. 21] This position had became Communist 
orthodoxy both in Russia and internationally since early 1919. The American
socialist John Reed, author of <b>Ten Days that Shook the World</b>, was a 
defender of <i>"the value of centralisation"</i> and <i>"the dictatorship of 
a revolutionary minority"</i> (noting that <i>"the Communist Party is supreme 
in Russia"</i>). [<b>Shaking the World</b>, p. 238] Similarly with the likes 
of Amedeo Bordiga, the first leader of the Communist Party in Italy. 
</p><p>
Victor Serge, the ex-anarchist and enthusiastic convert to Bolshevism, argued 
this mainstream Bolshevik position until the mid-1930s. In 1919, it was a case 
that <i>"dictatorship"</i> was not some kind of "proletarian" dictatorship by 
the masses. He, like the leading Bolsheviks, explicitly argued against this. Yes, 
he wrote, <i>"if we are looking at what should, that is at what <b>ought to</b>, 
be the case"</i> but this <i>"seems doubtful"</i> in reality. <i>"For it appears 
that by force of circumstances one group is obliged to impose itself on the 
others and to go ahead of them, breaking them if necessary, in order then to 
exercise exclusive dictatorship."</i> The militants <i>"leading the masses . . . 
cannot rely on the consciousness, the goodwill or the determination of those 
they have to deal with; for the masses who will follow them or surround them 
will be warped by the old regime, relatively uncultivated, often unaware, torn 
by feelings and instincts inherited from the past."</i> So <i>"revolutionaries 
will have to take on the dictatorship without delay."</i> The experience of 
Russia <i>"reveals an energetic and innovative minority which is compelled to 
make up for the deficiencies in the education of the backward masses by the 
use of compulsion."</i> And so the party <i>"is in a sense the nervous system 
of the class. Simultaneously the consciousness and the active, physical 
organisation of the dispersed forces of the proletariat, which are often 
ignorant of themselves and often remain latent or express themselves 
contradictorily."</i> And what of the masses? What was their role? Serge was 
equally blunt. While the party is <i>"supported by the entire working 
population,"</i> strangely enough, <i>"it maintains its unique situation in 
dictatorial fashion"</i> while the workers are <i>"[b]ehind"</i> the 
communists, <i>"sympathising instinctively with the party and carrying out 
the menial tasks required by the revolution."</i> [<b>Revolution in Danger</b>, 
p. 106, p. 92, p. 115, p. 67, p. 66 and p. 6] 
</p><p>
Such are the joys of socialist liberation. The party thinks for the 
worker while they carry out the <i>"menial tasks"</i> of the revolution. Like 
doing the work and following the orders - as in any class system. 
</p><p>
Trotsky agreed with this lesson and in 1926 opined that the <i>"dictatorship of 
the party does not contradict the dictatorship of the class either theoretically 
or practically; but is the expression of it, if the regime of workers' democracy 
is constantly developed more and more."</i> [<b>The Challenge of the Left Opposition 
(1926-27)</b>, p. 76] The obvious contradictions and absurdities of this assertion
are all too plain. Needless to say, when defending the concept of <i>"the dictatorship 
of the party"</i> he linked it to Lenin (and so to Leninist orthodoxy):
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Of course, the foundation of our regime is the dictatorship of a class. But this 
in turn assumes . . . it is class that has come to self-consciousness 
through its vanguard, which is to say, through the party. Without this, the 
dictatorship could not exist . . . Dictatorship is the most highly concentrated 
function of function of a class, and therefore the basic instrument of a dictatorship 
is a party. In the most fundamental aspects a class realises its dictatorship through 
a party. That is why Lenin spoke not only of the dictatorship of the class but also 
the dictatorship of the party and, <b>in a certain sense</b>, made them identical."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 75-6]
</p></blockquote>
<p>He repeated this position on party dictatorship into the late 1930s, long after 
it had resulted in the horrors of Stalinism:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not a 
thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is 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. The dictatorship of a party 
belongs to the barbarian prehistory as does the state itself, but we 
can not jump over this chapter, which can open (not at one stroke) 
genuine human history. . . The revolutionary party (vanguard) which 
renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the 
counter-revolution . . . 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."</i> [<b>Writings of Leon Trotsky 
1936-37</b>, pp. 513-4]
</blockquote></p><p>
Significantly, this was the year after his apparent (and much belated) embrace 
of soviet democracy in <b>The Revolution Betrayed</b>. Moreover, as we discuss 
in <a href="secH3.html#sech38">section H.3.8</a>, he was just repeating 
the same arguments he had made while in power during the Russian Revolution. 
Nor was he the only one. Zinoviev, another leading Bolshevik, argued in 1920 
along the same lines:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three years - 
not even three weeks - without the iron dictatorship of the Communist 
Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship 
of the working class can be achieved only by the dictatorship of its 
vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All questions of economic 
reconstruction, military organisation, education, food supply - all 
these questions, on which the fate of the proletarian revolution depends 
absolutely, are decided in Russia before all other matters and mostly 
in the framework of the party organisations . . . Control by the party 
over soviet organs, over the trade unions, is the single durable guarantee 
that any measures taken will serve not special interests, but the interests 
of the entire proletariat."</i> [quoted by Oskar Anweiler, <b>The Soviets</b>, 
pp. 239-40]
</blockquote></p><p>
Three years later, at the Communist Party's congress, he made light of 
<i>"comrades who think that the dictatorship of the party is a thing to 
be realised in practice but not spoken about."</i> He went on to argue that 
what was needed was <i>"a <b>single</b> powerful central committee which 
is leader of everything . . . in this is expressed the dictatorship of 
the party."</i> The Congress itself resolved that <i>"the dictatorship 
of the working class cannot be assured otherwise than in the form of a 
dictatorship of its leading vanguard, i.e., the Communist Party."</i> 
[quoted by E.H. Carr, <b>The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923</b>, vol. 1, 
p. 236, pp. 236-7 and p. 237]
</p><p>
How these positions can be reconciled with workers' democracy, power or 
freedom is not explained. As such, the idea that Leninism (usually 
considered as mainstream Marxism) is inherently democratic or a supporter 
of power to the people is clearly flawed. Equally flawed are the attempts 
by Leninists to distance themselves from, and rationalise, these positions 
in terms of the "objective circumstances" (such as civil war) facing the 
Russian Revolution. As we discuss in <a href="secH6.html">section H.6</a>, 
Bolshevik authoritarianism started <b>before</b> these problems began and continued 
long after they ended (in part because the policies pursued by the Bolshevik 
leadership had roots in their ideology and, as a result, that ideology itself 
played a key role in the failure of the revolution). 
</p><p>
Ultimately, though, the leading lights of Bolshevism concluded from their
experiences that the dictatorship of the proletariat could only be achieved 
by the dictatorship of the party and they generalised this position for 
<b>all</b> revolutions. Even in the prison camps in the late 1920s and 
early 1930s, <i>"almost all the Trotskyists continued to consider that 
'freedom of party' would be 'the end of the revolution.' 'Freedom to choose 
one's party - that is Menshevism,' was the Trotskyists' final verdict."</i> 
[Ante Ciliga, <b>The Russian Enigma</b>, p. 280] While few Leninists today
would subscribe to this position, the fact is when faced with the test of
revolution the founders of their ideology not only practised the dictatorship
of the party, they raised it to an ideological truism. Sadly, most modern 
day Trotskyists ignore this awkward fact in favour of inaccurate claims that 
Trotsky's <b>Left Opposition</b> <i>"framed a policy along [the] lines"</i> 
of <i>"returning to genuine workers' democracy"</i>. [Chris Harman, 
<b>Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe</b>, p. 19] In reality, 
as "Left Oppositionist" Victor Serge pointed out, <i>"the greatest reach 
of boldness of the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party was to demand 
the restoration of inner-Party democracy, and it never dared dispute the 
theory of single-party government - by this time, it was too late."</i> 
[<b>The Serge-Trotsky Papers</b>, p. 181]
</p><p>
Significantly, this position on party rule has its roots in the uneven 
political development within the working class (i.e. that the working class 
contains numerous political perspectives within it). As the party 
(according to Leninist theory) contains the most advanced ideas (and, again 
according to Leninist theory, the working class cannot reach beyond a trade 
union consciousness by its own efforts), the party must take power to ensure 
that the masses do not make "mistakes" or "waver" (show "vacillation") during 
a revolution. From such a perspective to the position of party dictatorship is 
not far (and a journey that all the leading Bolsheviks, including Lenin and 
Trotsky did in fact take).
</p><p>
These arguments by leading Bolsheviks confirm Bakunin's fear that the 
Marxists aimed for <i>"a tyranny of the minority over a majority in the 
name of the people - in the name of the stupidity of the many and the 
superior wisdom of the few."</i> [<b>Marxism, Freedom and the State</b>, p. 63] 
<p>
</p><p>
In contrast, anarchists argue that precisely because of political differences 
we need the fullest possible democracy and freedom to discuss issues and reach 
agreements. Only by discussion and self-activity can the political perspectives 
of those in struggle develop and change. In other words, the fact Bolshevism 
uses to justify its support for party power is the strongest argument against 
it. For anarchists, the idea of a revolutionary government is a contradiction. 
As Malatesta put it, <i>"if you consider these worthy electors as unable to look 
after their own interests themselves, how is it that they will know how to 
choose for themselves the shepherds who must guide them? And how will they be 
able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of producing a genius from the 
votes of a mass of fools?"</i> [<b>Anarchy</b>, pp. 53-4] As such, anarchists 
think that power should be in the hands of the masses themselves. Only freedom 
or the struggle for freedom can be the school of freedom. That means that, to 
quote Bakunin, <i>"since it is the people which must make the revolution 
everywhere . . . the ultimate direction of it must at all times be vested in 
the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial 
organisations . . . organised from the bottom up through revolutionary 
delegation."</i> [<b>No God, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, pp. 155-6]
</p><p>
Clearly, then, the question of state/party power is one dividing anarchists and 
most Marxists. Again, though, we must stress that libertarian Marxists agree 
with anarchists on this subject and reject the whole idea that rule/dictatorship 
of a party equals the dictatorship of the working class. As such, the Marxist 
tradition as a whole does not confuse this issue, although the majority of it 
does. So not all Marxists are Leninists. A few (council communists, Situationists, 
and so on) are far closer to anarchism. They also reject the idea of party 
power/dictatorship, the use of elections, for direct action, argue for the 
abolition of wage slavery by workers' self-management of production and so on. 
They represent the best in Marx's work and should not be lumped with the 
followers of Bolshevism. Sadly, they are in the minority.
</p><p>
Finally, we should indicate other important areas of difference as summarised 
by Lenin in his work <b>The State and Revolution</b>:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The difference between the Marxists and the anarchists is this: 1) the former, 
while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognise that this aim 
can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution,
as the result of the establishment of socialism which leads to the withering away 
of the state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, failing 
to understand the conditions under which the state can be abolished 2) the former 
recognise that after the proletariat has conquered political power it must utterly 
destroy the old state machine and substitute for it a new one consisting of the 
organisation of armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while 
advocating the destruction of the state machine, have absolutely no idea of 
<b>what</b> the proletariat will put in its place and <b>how</b> it will use 
its revolutionary power; the anarchists even deny that the revolutionary 
proletariat should utilise its state power, its revolutionary dictatorship; 
3) the former demand that the proletariat be prepared for revolution by utilising 
the present state; the latter reject this."</i> [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, 
p. 358]
</blockquote></p><p>
We will discuss each of these points in the next three sections. Point one will 
be discussed in <a href="secH1.html#sech13">section H.1.3</a>, the second in 
<a href="secH1.html#sech14">section H.1.4</a> and the third and final one in
<a href="secH1.html#sech15">section H.1.5</a>.</p> 

<a name="sech13"><h2>H.1.3 Why do anarchists wish to abolish the state <i>"overnight"</i>?</h2></a>

<p>
As indicated at the end of the 
<a href="secH1.html#sech12">last section</a>, Lenin argued that
while Marxists aimed <i>"at the complete abolition of the state"</i>
they <i>"recognise that this aim can only be achieved after 
classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution"</i>
while anarchists <i>"want to abolish the state completely 
overnight."</i> This issue is usually summarised by Marxists
arguing that a new state is required to replace the destroyed 
bourgeois one. This new state is called by Marxists <i><b>"the 
dictatorship of the proletariat"</b></i> or a workers' state. Anarchists 
reject this transitional state while Marxists embrace it. Indeed, 
according to Lenin <i>"a Marxist is one who <b>extends</b> the acceptance 
of the class struggle to the acceptance of the <b>dictatorship
of the proletariat</b>."</i> [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 358
and p. 294]
</p><p>
So what does the "dictatorship of the proletariat" actually mean? 
Generally, Marxists seem to imply that this term simply means the 
defence of the revolution and so the anarchist rejection of the 
dictatorship of the proletariat means, for Marxists, the denial the 
need to defend a revolution. This particular straw man was used by 
Lenin in <b>The State and Revolution</b> when he quoted Marx's 
article <i>"Indifference to Politics"</i> to suggest that anarchists 
advocated workers <i>"laying down their arms"</i> after a successful 
revolution. Such a <i>"laying down [of] their arms"</i> would mean 
<i>"abolishing the state"</i> while keeping their arms <i>"in order 
to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie"</i> would mean <i>"giv[ing] 
the state a revolutionary and transitory form,"</i> so setting up
<i>"their revolutionary dictatorship in place of the dictatorship of 
the bourgeoisie."</i> [Marx, quoted by Lenin, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 315] 
</p><p>
That such an argument can be made, never mind repeated, suggests a lack 
of honesty. It assumes that the Marxist and Anarchist definitions of "the 
state" are identical. They are not. For anarchists the state, government, 
means <i>"the delegation of power, that is the abdication of initiative 
and sovereignty of all into the hands of a few."</i> [Malatesta, <b>Anarchy</b>, 
p. 41] For Marxists, the state is <i>"an organ of class <b>rule</b>, an 
organ for the <b>oppression</b> of one class by another."</i> [Lenin, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 274] That these definitions are in conflict is clear and
unless this difference is made explicit, anarchist opposition to the 
"dictatorship of the proletariat" cannot be clearly understood. 
</p><p>
Anarchists, of course, agree that the current state is the means by which the 
bourgeois class enforces its rule over society. In Bakunin's words, <i>"the 
political state has no other mission but to protect the exploitation of the 
people by the economically privileged classes."</i> [<b>The Political Philosophy 
of Bakunin</b>, p. 221] <i>"Throughout history, just as in our time, government
is either the brutal, violent, arbitrary rule of the few over the many or
it is an organised instrument to ensure that domination and privilege will be
in the hands of those who . . . have cornered all the means of life."</i> Under 
capitalism, as Malatesta succulently put, the state is <i>"the bourgeoisie's 
servant and <b>gendarme</b>."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 21 and p. 23] The 
reason why the state is marked by centralised power is due to its role as 
the protector of (minority) class rule. As such, a state cannot be anything 
but a defender of minority power as its centralised and hierarchical structure 
is designed for that purpose. If the working class really were running society, 
as Marxists claim they would be in the "dictatorship of the proletariat," then 
it would not be a state. As Bakunin put it: <i>"Where all rule, there are no 
more ruled, and there is no State."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 223]
</p><p>
The idea that anarchists, by rejecting the "dictatorship of the proletariat," 
also reject defending a revolution is false. We do not equate the "dictatorship 
of the proletariat" with the need to defend a revolution or expropriating the 
capitalist class, ending capitalism and building socialism. Anarchists from Bakunin 
onwards have taken both of these necessities for granted. As we discuss this 
particular Marxist straw man in <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>,
we will leave our comments on anarchist awareness of the need to defend a 
revolution at this. 
</p><p>
Anarchists, then, do not reject defending a revolution and our opposition to the
so-called "revolutionary" or "socialist" state is not based on this, regardless
of what Marx and Lenin asserted. Rather, we argue that the state can and must be 
abolished "overnight" during a social revolution because any state, including the
so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", is marked by hierarchical power 
and can only empower the few at the expense of the many. The state will not 
"wither away" as Marxists claim simply because it excludes, by its very nature, 
the active participation of the bulk of the population and ensures a new class 
division in society: those in power (the party) and those subject to it (the 
working class). Georges Fontenis sums up anarchist concerns on this issue:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The formula 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has been used to mean many different 
things. If for no other reason it should be condemned as a cause of confusion. With 
Marx it can just as easily mean the centralised dictatorship of the party which 
claims to represent the proletariat as it can the federalist conception of the 
Commune.
</p><p>
"Can it mean the exercise of political power by the victorious working class? No, 
because the exercise of political power in the recognised sense of the term can 
only take place through the agency of an exclusive group practising a monopoly of 
power, separating itself from the class and oppressing it. And this is how the 
attempt to use a State apparatus can reduce the dictatorship of the proletariat 
to the dictatorship of the party over the masses.
</p><p>
"But if by dictatorship of the proletariat is understood collective and direct 
exercise of 'political power', this would mean the disappearance of 'political 
power' since its distinctive characteristics are supremacy, exclusivity and 
monopoly. It is no longer a question of exercising or seizing political power, 
it is about doing away with it all together!
</p><p>
"If by dictatorship is meant the domination of the majority by a minority, then 
it is not a question of giving power to the proletariat but to a party, a distinct 
political group. If by dictatorship is meant the domination of a minority by 
the majority (domination by the victorious proletariat of the remnants of a 
bourgeoisie that has been defeated as a class) then the setting up of dictatorship 
means nothing but the need for the majority to efficiently arrange for its defence 
its own social Organisation.
</p><p>
[...]
</p><p>
"The terms 'domination', 'dictatorship' and 'state' are as little appropriate 
as the expression 'taking power' for the revolutionary act of the seizure of 
the factories by the workers.
</p><p>
We reject then as inaccurate and causes of confusion the expressions 'dictatorship 
of the proletariat', 'taking political power', 'workers state', 'socialist state' 
and 'proletarian state'."</i> [<b>Manifesto of Libertarian Communism</b>, pp. 22-3]
</blockquote></p><p>
So anarchists argue that the state has to be abolished "overnight" simply 
because a state is marked by hierarchical power and the exclusion of the bulk of 
the population from the decision making process. It cannot be used to implement
socialism simply because it is not designed that way. To extend and defend a 
revolution a state is not required. Indeed, it is a hindrance:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The mistake of authoritarian communists in this connection is the belief that 
fighting and organising are impossible without submission to a government; and 
thus they regard anarchists . . . as the foes of all organisation and all 
co-ordinated struggle. We, on the other hand, maintain that not only are 
revolutionary struggle and revolutionary organisation possible outside and in 
spite of government interference but that, indeed, that is the only effective 
way to struggle and organise, for it has the active participation of all members 
of the collective unit, instead of their passively entrusting themselves to the 
authority of the supreme leaders.
</p><p>
"Any governing body is an impediment to the real organisation of the broad 
masses, the majority. Where a government exists, then the only really organised 
people are the minority who make up the government; and . . . if the masses do 
organise, they do so against it, outside it, or at the very least, independently 
of it. In ossifying into a government, the revolution as such would fall apart, 
on account of its awarding that government the monopoly of organisation and of 
the means of struggle."</i> [Luigi Fabbri, <i>"Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism"</i>, 
pp. 13-49, <b>The Poverty of Statism</b>, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 27]
</blockquote></p><p>
This is because of the hierarchical nature of the state, its delegation
of power into the hands of the few and so a so-called "revolutionary" 
government can have no other result than a substitution of the few (the 
government) for the many (the masses). This, in turn, undermines the 
mass participation and action from below that a revolution needs to 
succeed and flourish. <i>"Instead of acting for themselves,"</i> 
Kropotkin argued, <i>"instead of marching forward, instead of advancing 
in the direction of the new order of things, the people, confiding in 
their governors, entrusted to them the charge of taking the initiative."</i> 
However, social change is the product of <i>"the people in action"</i> 
and <i>"the brain of a few individuals [are] absolutely incapable of 
finding solutions"</i> to the problems it will face <i>"which can only spring 
from the life of the people."</i> For anarchists, a revolution <i>"is 
not a simple change of governors. It is the taking possession by the 
people of all social wealth"</i> and this cannot be achieved <i>"be
decrees emanating from a government."</i> This <i>"economic change"</i> 
will be <i>"so immense and so profound"</i> that it is <i>"impossible 
for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms which 
must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new 
social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses"</i> 
and <i>"[a]ny authority external to it will only be an obstacle</i>, a 
<i>"drag on the action of the people."</i> A revolutionary state, 
therefore, <i>"becomes the greatest obstacle to the revolution"</i> 
and to <i>"dislodge it"</i> requires the people <i>"to take up arms, 
to make another revolution."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 240, p. 241, 
pp. 247-8, p. 248, p. 249, p. 241 and p. 242] Which, we should stress, 
was exactly what happened in Russia, where anarchists and others (such 
as the Kronstadt rebels) called for a <i>"Third Revolution"</i> against 
the Bolshevik state and the party dictatorship and state capitalism it 
had created.
</p><p>
For anarchists, the abolition of the state does not mean rejecting
the need to extend or defend a revolution (quite the reverse!). It
means rejecting a system of organisation designed by and for minorities
to ensure their rule. To create a state (even a "workers' state") means 
to delegate power away from the working class and eliminate their power 
in favour of party power (<i>"the principle error of the [Paris] Commune, 
an unavoidable error, since it derived from the very principle on which 
power was constituted, was precisely that of being a government, and of 
substituting itself for the people by force of circumstances."</i> [Elise
Reclus, quoted  John P. Clark and Camille Martin, <b>Anarchy, Geography, 
Modernity</b>, p. 72]). 
</p><p>
In place of a state anarchists' argue for a free federation of workers' 
organisations as the means of conducting a revolution (and the framework for 
its defence). Most Marxists seem to confuse centralism and federalism, with
Lenin stating that <i>"if the proletariat and the poor peasants take state power 
into their own hands, organise themselves quite freely in communes, and unite 
the action of all the communes in striking at capital . . . won't that be 
centralism? Won't that be the most consistent democratic centralism and, 
moreover, proletarian centralism?"</i> No, it would be federalism, the most 
consistent federalism as advocated by Proudhon and Bakunin and, under the 
influence of the former, suggested by the Paris Commune. Lenin argued that 
some <i>"simply cannot conceive of the possibility of voluntary centralism, 
of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes, for the sole purpose of 
destroying bourgeois rule and the bourgeois state machine."</i> [<b>The Lenin
Anthology</b>, p. 348] Yet <i>"voluntary centralism"</i> is, at best, 
just another why of describing federalism - assuming that "voluntary" really 
means that, of course. At worse, and in practice, such centralism simply 
places all the decision making at the centre, at the top, and all that is 
left is for the communes to obey the decisions of a few party leaders.
</p><p>
As we discuss in the 
<a href="secH1.html#sech14">next section</a>, anarchists see this federation 
of workers' associations and communes (the framework of a free society)
as being based on the organisations working class people create in 
their struggle against capitalism. These self-managed organisations,
by refusing to become part of a centralised state, will ensure the
success of a revolution.</p>

<a name="sech14"><h2>H.1.4 Do anarchists have <i>"absolutely no idea"</i> of 
what to put in place of the state?</h2></a>

<p>
Lenin's second claim was that anarchists, <i>"while advocating the destruction 
of the state machine, have absolutely no idea of <b>what</b> the proletariat 
will put in its place"</i> and compared this to the Marxists who argued for 
a new state machine <i>"consisting of armed workers, after the type of the 
[Paris] Commune."</i> [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 358] 
</p><p>
For anarchists, Lenin's assertion simply shows his unfamiliarity with anarchist 
literature and need not be taken seriously - anyone familiar with anarchist 
theory would simply laugh at such comments. Sadly, most Marxists are <b>not</b> 
familiar with that theory, so we need to explain two things. Firstly, anarchists 
have very clear ideas on what to "replace" the state with (namely a federation 
of communes based on working class associations). Secondly, that this idea 
is based on the idea of armed workers, inspired by the Paris Commune (although 
predicted by Bakunin). 
</p><p>
Moreover, for anarchists Lenin's comment seems somewhat incredulous. As George 
Barrett put it, in reply to the question <i>"if you abolish government, what 
will you put it its place,"</i> this <i>"seems to an Anarchist very much as if a 
patient asked the doctor, 'If you take away my illness, what will you give me in 
its place?' The Anarchist's argument is that government fulfils no useful purpose 
. . . It is the headquarters of the profit-makers, the rent-takers, and of all 
those who take from but who do not give to society. When this class is abolished 
by the people so organising themselves to run the factories and use the land for 
the benefit of their free communities, i.e. for their own benefit, then the 
Government must also be swept away, since its purpose will be gone. The only 
thing then that will be put in the place of government will be the free 
organisation of the workers. When Tyranny is abolished, Liberty remains, just 
as when disease is eradicated health remains."</i> [<b>Objections
to Anarchism</b>, p. 356]
</p><p>
Barrett's answer contains the standard anarchist position on what will 
be the organisational basis of a revolutionary society, namely that the 
<i>"only thing then that will be put in the place of government will be 
the free organisation of the workers."</i> This is a concise summary of 
anarchist theory and cannot be bettered. This vision, as we discuss in 
<a href="secI2.html#seci23">section I.2.3</a> in some detail, can be found 
in the work of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and a host of other anarchist 
thinkers. Since anarchists from Bakunin onwards have stressed that a 
federation of workers' associations would constitute the framework of a 
free society, to assert otherwise (as Lenin did) is little more than a 
joke or a slander. To quote Bakunin:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The future social organisation must be made solely from the 
bottom up, 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."</i> [<b>Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings</b>, 
p. 206]
</blockquote></p><p>
Similar ideas can easily be found in the works of other anarchists.
While the actual names and specific details of these federations
of workers' associations may change (for example, the factory
committees and soviets in the Russian Revolution, the collectives
in Spain, the section assemblies in the French Revolution are
a few of them) the basic ideas are the same. Bakunin also pointed
to the means of defence, a workers' militia (the people armed,
as per the Paris Commune - <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>).
</p><p>
A major difference between anarchism and Marxism which Lenin 
points to is, clearly, false. Anarchists are well aware of what
should <i>"replace"</i> the bourgeois state and have always been so.
The <b>real</b> difference is simply that anarchists say what they
mean while Lenin's "new" state did not, in fact, mean working
class power but rather party power. 
</p><p>
As for Lenin's comment that we have <i>"absolutely no ideas"</i> of how 
the working class <i>"will use its revolutionary power"</i> suggests 
more ignorance, as we have urged working people to expropriate 
the expropriators, reorganise production under workers' 
self-management and start to construct society from the bottom 
upwards (a quick glance at Kropotkin's <b>Conquest of Bread</b>,
for example, would soon convince any reader of the inaccuracy 
of Lenin's comment). This summary by the anarchist Jura Federation 
(written in 1880) gives a flavour of anarchist ideas on this
subject:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The bourgeoisie's power over the popular masses springs from
economic privileges, political domination and the enshrining
of such privileges in the laws. So we must strike at the 
wellsprings of bourgeois power, as well as its various
manifestations.
</p><p>
"The following measures strike us as essential to the welfare
of the revolution, every bit as much as armed struggle against
its enemies:
</p><p>
"The insurgents must confiscate social capital, landed estates,
mines, housing, religious and public buildings, instruments of
labour, raw materials, gems and precious stones and manufactured
products:
</p><p>
"All political, administrative and judicial authorities are
to be deposed . . . What should the organisational measures of 
the revolution be?
</p><p>
"Immediate and spontaneous establishment of trade bodies:
provisional assumption by those of . . . social capital . . .:
local federation of a trades bodies and labour organisation:
</p><p>
"Establishment of neighbourhood groups and federations of same . . .
</p><p>
"Organisation of the insurgent forces . . . the federation of all the 
revolutionary forces of the insurgent Communes . . . Federation of 
Communes and organisation of the masses, with an eye to the revolution's 
enduring until such time as all reactionary activity has been completely 
eradicated . . .  Once trade bodies have been have been established, the 
next step is to organise local life. The organ of this life is to be the
federation of trades bodies and it is this local federation which is to 
constitute the future Commune."</i> [<b>No Gods, No Masters</b>, vol. 1, 
pp. 246-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
Clearly, anarchists do have some ideas on what the working class
will <i>"replace"</i> the state with and how it will use its 
<i>"revolutionary power"</i>!
</p><p>
Similarly, Lenin's statement that <i>"the anarchists even deny 
that the revolutionary proletariat should utilise its state 
power, its revolutionary dictatorship"</i> again distorts the
anarchist position. As we argued in 
<a href="secH1.html#sech13">the last section</a>, our 
objection to the "state power" of the proletariat is
precisely <b>because</b> it cannot, by its very nature as a
state, actually allow the working class to manage society
directly (and, of course, it automatically excludes other
sections of the working masses, such as the peasantry and
artisans). We argued that, in practice, it would simply
mean the dictatorship of a few party leaders. This position, 
we must stress, was one Lenin himself was arguing in the 
year after completing <b>State and Revolution</b> and so
the leading Bolsheviks confirmed the anarchist argument that the 
"dictatorship of the proletariat" would, in fact, become a 
dictatorship <b>over</b> the proletariat by the party.
</p><p>
Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri summed up the differences well:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The Marxists . . . foresee the natural disappearance of the State 
as a consequence of the destruction of classes by the means of 
'the dictatorship of the proletariat,' that is to say State 
Socialism, whereas the Anarchists desire the destruction of the 
classes by means of a social revolution which eliminates, with the 
classes, the State. The Marxists, moreover, do not propose the 
armed conquest of the Commune by the whole proletariat, but the 
propose the conquest of the State by the party which imagines that 
it represents the proletariat. The Anarchists allow the use of 
direct power by the proletariat, but they understand by the organ 
of this power to be formed by the entire corpus of systems of 
communist administration-corporate organisations [i.e. industrial 
unions], communal institutions, both regional and national-freely 
constituted outside and in opposition to all political monopoly by 
parties and endeavouring to a minimum administrational 
centralisation."</i> [<i>"Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State 
Socialism"</i>, pp. 51-2, <b>Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review</b>, 
no. 4, p. 52]
</blockquote></p><p>
Clearly, Lenin's assertions are little more than straw men. Anarchists
are not only well aware of the need for a federation of working class
associations (workers' councils or soviets) to replace the state, they
were advocating it long before Lenin took up this perspective in 1917
(as we discuss in <a href="secH3.html#sech310">section H.3.10</a>).
The key difference being, of course, anarchists meant it will Lenin 
saw it as a means of securing Bolshevik party power. 
</p><p>
Lastly, it should also be noted that Marxists, having taken so long to 
draw the same conclusions as anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin, have 
tended to make a fetish of workers councils. As an example, we find
Chris Harman of the British SWP complaining that the Argentinean 
masses organised themselves in the wrong way as part of their revolt
against neo-liberalism which started in December 2001. He states that
the <i>"neighbourhood committees and popular assemblies"</i> created by the
revolt <i>"express the need of those who have overthrown presidents to 
organise themselves"</i> and notes <i>"they have certain similarities with 
the characteristic forms of mass self organisation that arose in the 
great working class struggles of the 20th century - the workers' 
councils or soviets."</i> But, he stressed, <i>"they also have very important 
differences from these."</i> Yet Harman's complaints show his own confusions, 
seriously arguing that <i>"the popular assemblies are not yet bodies of 
delegates. The people at them represent themselves, but do not have 
an organic connection with some group of people who they represent - 
and who can recall them if they do not carry out their will."</i> 
[<i>"Argentina: rebellion at the sharp end of the world crisis"</i>, pp. 3-48, 
<b>International Socialism</b>, vol. 94, p. 25] That, of course, is the 
whole point - they are popular <b>assemblies</b>! A popular assembly 
does not "represent" anyone because its members govern themselves, 
i.e. are directly democratic. They are the elemental bodies which 
recall any delegates who do not implement their mandate! But given 
that Leninism aims at party power, this concern for representation is 
perfectly understandable, if lamentable. 
</p><p>
So rather than celebrate this rise in mass self-management and self-organisation, 
Harman complains that these <i>"popular assemblies are not anchored in the workplaces 
where millions of Argentineans are still drawn together on a daily basis to toil."</i> 
Need it be said that such an SWP approved organisation will automatically exclude 
the unemployed, housewives, the elderly, children and other working class people 
who were taking part in the struggle? In addition, any capitalist crisis is marked 
by rising unemployment, firms closing and so on. While workplaces must and have 
been seized by their workers, it is a law of revolutions that the economic 
disruption they cause results in increased unemployment (in this Kropotkin's 
arguments in <b>The Conquest of Bread</b> have been confirmed time and time again). 
Significantly, Harman admits that they include <i>"organisations of unemployed 
workers"</i> as well as <i>"that in some of the assemblies an important leading role 
is played by unemployed activists shaped by their role in past industrial struggles."</i> 
He does not, however, note that creating workers' councils would end their active 
participation in the revolt. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 25]
</p><p>
That the Argentine working class formed organs of power which were not totally 
dependent on the workplace was, therefore, a good sign. Factory assemblies and 
federations must be formed but as a complement to, rather than as a replacement 
of, the community assemblies. Harman states that the assemblies were <i>"closer to 
the sections - the nightly district mass meetings - of the French Revolution 
than to the workers' councils of 1905 and 1917 in Russia"</i> and complains that a 
<i>"21st century uprising was taking the form of the archetypal 18th century 
revolution!"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>. p. 25 and p. 22] Did the Argentineans not realise that 
a 21st century uprising should mimic <i>"the great working class struggles of the 
20th century"</i>, particularly that which took place in a mostly pre-capitalist 
Tsarist regime which was barely out of the 18th century itself? Did they not 
realise that the leaders of the vanguard party know better than themselves how 
they should organise and conduct their struggles? That the people of the 21st 
century knew best how to organise their own revolts is lost of Harman, who prefers 
to squeeze the realities of modern struggles into the forms which Marxists took 
so long to recognise in the first place. Given that anarchists have been discussing 
the possibilities of community assemblies for some time, perhaps we can expect 
Leninists to recognise their importance in a few decades? After all, the Bolsheviks 
in Russia were slow to realise the significance of the soviets in 1905 so Harman's 
position is hardly surprising.
</p><p>
So, it is easy to see what anarchists think of Lenin's assertion that 
<i>"Anarchism had failed to give anything even approaching a true solution 
of the concrete political problems, <b>viz</b>., must the old state machine 
be <b>smashed</b>? and <b>what</b> should supersede it?"</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 350] We simply point out that Lenin was utterly distorting the anarchist
position on social revolution. Revolutionary anarchists had, since the 1860s,
argued that workers' councils (soviets) could be both a weapon of class 
struggle against capitalism and the state as well as the framework of the 
future (libertarian) socialist society. Lenin only came to superficially 
similar conclusions in 1917. Which means that when he talked of workers' 
councils, Lenin was only repeating Bakunin - the difference being we 
anarchists mean it!</p>

<a name="sech15"><h2>H.1.5 Why do anarchists reject <i>"utilising the present state"</i>?</h2></a>

<p>
This is another key issue, the question of Marxists demanding (in 
the words of Lenin) <i>"that the proletariat be prepared for 
revolution by utilising the present state"</i> while anarchists 
<i>"reject this."</i> [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 358]
By this, Lenin meant the taking part of socialists in bourgeois
elections, standing candidates for office and having socialist
representatives in Parliament and other local and national state 
bodies. In other words, what Marx termed <i>"political action"</i>
and the Bolsheviks <i>"revolutionary Parliamentarianism."</i>
</p><p>
For anarchists, the use of elections does not "prepare" the working class for 
revolution (i.e. managing their own affairs and society). Rather, it prepares 
them to follow leaders and let others act for them. In the words of Rudolf 
Rocker:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Participation in the politics of the bourgeois States has not 
brought the labour movement a hair's-breadth nearer to Socialism, 
but thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely 
crushed and condemned to insignificance . . . Participation in 
parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist Labour movement 
like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity 
of constructive Socialist activity, and, worse of all, the impulse 
to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion 
that salvation always comes from above."</i> [<b>Anarcho-Syndicalism</b>, 
p. 54] 
</blockquote></p><p>
While electoral ("political") activity ensures that the masses 
become accustomed to following leaders and letting them act 
on their behalf, anarchists' support direct action as <i>"the 
best available means for preparing the masses to manage their 
own personal and collective interests; and besides, anarchists 
feel that even now the working people are fully capable of 
handling their own political and administrative interests."</i>
Political action, in contrast, needs centralised <i>"authoritarian 
organisations"</i> and results in <i>"ceding power by all to someone, 
the delegate, the representative"</i>. "For direct pressure put against 
the ruling classes by the masses, the Socialist Party has substituted 
representation"</i> and <i>"instead of fostering the class struggle 
. . . it has adopted class collaboration in the legislative arena, 
without which all reforms would remain a vain hope."</i> [Luigi 
Galleani, <b>The End of Anarchism?</b>, pp. 13-4, p. 14 and p. 12]
</p><p>
Anarchists, therefore, argue that we need to reclaim the power 
which has been concentrated into the hands of the state. That 
is why we stress direct action. Direct action means action by 
the people themselves, that is action directly taken by those 
directly affected. Through direct action, we dominate our own 
struggles, it is we who conduct it, organise it, manage it. We 
do not hand over to others our own acts and task of self-liberation. 
That way, we become accustomed to managing our own affairs, creating 
alternative, libertarian, forms of social organisation which can 
become a force to resist the state, win reforms and, ultimately, 
become the framework of a free society. In other words, direct 
action creates organs of self-activity (such as community assemblies, 
factory committees, workers' councils, and so on) which, to
use Bakunin's words, are <i>"creating not only the ideas but 
also the facts of the future itself."</i>
</p><p>
The idea that socialists standing for elections somehow prepares 
working class people for revolution is simply wrong. Utilising 
the state, standing in elections, only prepares people for following 
leaders - it does not encourage the self-activity, self-organisation, 
direct action and mass struggle required for a social revolution. 
Moreover, as Bakunin predicted use of elections has a corrupting 
effect on those who use it. The history of radicals using
elections has been a long one of betrayal and the transformation
of revolutionary parties into reformist ones (see 
<a href="secJ2.html#secj26">section J.2.6</a> for more 
discussion). Using the existing state ensures
that the division at the heart of existing society (namely a
few who govern and the many who obey) is reproduced in the
movements trying to abolish it. It boils down to handing effective
leadership to special people, to "leaders," just when the
situation requires working people to solve their own problems
and take matters into their own hands:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The Social Question will be put . . . long before the Socialists
have conquered a few seats in Parliament, and thus the solution of
the question will be actually in the hands of the workmen [and
women] themselves . . .
</p><p>
"Under the influence of government worship, they may try to nominate
a new government . . . and they may entrust it with the solution of
all difficulties. It is so simple, so easy, to throw a vote into the
ballot-box, and to return home! So gratifying to know that there is
somebody who will arrange your own affairs for the best, while you 
are quietly smoking your pipe and waiting for orders which you have
only to execute, not to reason about."</i> [Kropotkin, <b>Act for 
Yourselves</b>, p. 34]
</blockquote> 
</p><p>
Only the struggle for freedom (or freedom itself) can be the school 
for freedom, and by placing power into the hands of leaders, utilising 
the existing state ensures that socialism is postponed rather than 
prepared for. As such, strikes and other forms of direct action <i>"are
of enormous value; they create, organise, and form a workers' army,
an army which is bound to break down the power of the bourgeoisie
and the State, and lay the ground for a new world."</i> [Bakunin,
<b>The Political Philosophy of Bakunin</b>, pp. 384-5] In contrast, 
utilising the present state only trains people in following leaders
and so socialism <i>"lost its creative initiative and became an ordinary
reform movement . . . content with success at the polls, and no longer
attributed any importance to social upbuilding."</i> [Rocker, <b>Op.
Cit.</b>, p. 55] 
</p><p>
Which highlights another key problem with the notion of utilising the
present state as 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 box 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 social structures. 
Nor can it as it is not 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!
</p><p>
Given that Marxists usually slander anarchists as "individualists" 
the irony is delicious!
</p><p>
If we look at the anti-Poll-Tax campaign in the UK in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, we can see what would happen to a mass movement 
which utilised electioneering. The various left-wing parties, 
particularly Militant (now the Socialist Party) spent a lot of 
time and effort lobbying Labour Councillors not to implement 
the tax (with no success). Let us assume they had succeeded 
and the Labour Councillors had refused to implement the tax 
(or "socialist" candidates had been elected to stop it). What 
would have happened? Simply that there would not have been 
a mass movement or mass organisation based on non-payment, 
nor self-organised direct action to resist warrant sales, 
nor community activism of any form.  Rather, the campaign 
would have consisted to supporting the councillors in their 
actions, mass rallies in which the leaders would have 
informed us of their activities on our behalf and, perhaps, 
rallies and marches to protest any action the government had 
inflicted on them. The leaders may have called for some form 
of mass action but this action would not have come from below 
and so not a product of working class self-organisation, 
self-activity and self-reliance. Rather, it would have been 
purely re-active and a case of follow the leader, without 
the empowering and liberating aspects of taking action by 
yourself, as a conscious and organised group. It would have
replaced the struggle of millions with the actions of a
handful of leaders.
</p><p>
Of course, even discussing this possibility indicates how 
remote it is from reality. The Labour Councillors were not 
going to act - they were far too "practical" for that. 
Years of working within the system, of using elections, 
had taken their toll decades ago. Anarchists, of course, 
saw the usefulness of picketing the council meetings, of 
protesting against the Councillors and showing them a 
small example of the power that existed to resist them 
if they implemented the tax. As such, the picket would 
have been an expression of direct action, as it was based 
on showing the power of our direct action and class 
organisations. Lobbying, however, was building illusions 
in "leaders" acting for us and based on pleading rather 
than defiance. But, then again, Militant desired to replace 
the current leaders with themselves and so had an interest in
promoting such tactics and focusing the struggle on leaders 
and whether they would act for people or not.
</p><p>
Unfortunately, the Socialists never really questioned <b>why</b> 
they had to lobby the councillors in the first place - if utilising 
the existing state <b>was</b> a valid radical or revolutionary tactic, 
why has it always resulted in a de-radicalising of those who use it? 
This would be the inevitable results of any movement which "complements" 
direct action with electioneering. The focus of the movement will change 
from the base to the top, from self-organisation and direct action from 
below to passively supporting the leaders. This may not happen instantly, 
but over time, just as the party degenerates by working within the system, 
the mass movement will be turned into an electoral machine for the party - 
even arguing against direct action in case it harms the election chances 
of the leaders. Just as the trade union leaders have done again and again 
in Britain and elsewhere. 
</p><p>
So anarchists point to the actual record of Marxists <i>"utilising
the present state"</i>. Murray Bookchin's comments about the German 
Social Democrats are appropriate here:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"[T]he party's preoccupation with parliamentarism was taking it
ever away from anything Marx had envisioned. Instead of working
to overthrow the bourgeois state, the SPD, with its intense
focus on elections, had virtually become an engine for getting
votes and increasing its Reichstag representation within the
bourgeois state . . . The more artful the SPD became in these
realms, the more its membership and electorate increased and,
with the growth of new pragmatic and opportunistic adherents, 
the more it came to resemble a bureaucratic machine for 
acquiring power under capitalism rather than a revolutionary
organisation to eliminate it."</i> [<b>The Third Revolution</b>, 
vol. 2, p. 300]
</blockquote></p><p>
The reality of working within the state soon transformed the party 
and its leadership, as Bakunin predicted. If we look at Leninism, 
we discover a similar failure to consider the evidence:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"From the early 1920s on, the Leninist attachment to pre-WWI social 
democratic tactics such as electoral politics and political activity 
within pro-capitalist labour unions dominated the perspectives of the 
so-called Communist. But if these tactics were correct ones, why didn't 
they lead to a less dismal set of results? We must be materialists, not 
idealists. What was the actual outcome of the Leninist strategies? Did
Leninist strategies result in successful proletarian revolutions, giving 
rise to societies worthy of the human beings that live in them? The 
revolutionary movement in the inter-war period was defeated."</i> [Max 
Anger, <i>"The Spartacist School of Falsification"</i>, pp. 50-2, 
<b>Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed</b>, no. 43, pp. 51-2]
</blockquote></p><p>
As Scottish Anarchist Ethel McDonald argued in 1937, the tactics urged 
by Lenin were a disaster in practice:
<p></p><blockquote>
<i>"At the Second Congress of the Third International, Moscow, a comrade 
who is with us now in Spain, answering Zinoviev, urged faith in the 
syndicalist movement in Germany and the end of parliamentary communism. 
He was ridiculed. Parliamentarianism, communist parliamentarianism, but 
still parliamentarianism would save Germany. And it did . . . Saved 
it from Socialism. Saved it for Fascism. Parliamentary social democracy
and parliamentary communism have destroyed the socialist hope of Europe,
has made a carnage of human liberty. In Britain, parliamentarianism 
saved the workers from Socialism . . . Have you not had enough of this
huge deception? Are you still prepared to continue in the same old way,
along the same old lines, talking and talking and doing nothing?"</i> 
[<i>"The Volunteer Ban"</i>, pp. 72-5, <b>Workers City</b>, Farquhar 
McLay (ed.), p. 74]
</blockquote></p><p>
When the Nazis took power in 1933 in Germany the 12 million Socialist 
and Communist voters and 6 million organised workers took no action. In 
Spain, it was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT which lead the battle against 
fascism on the streets and helped create one of the most important social 
revolutions the world has seen. The contrast could not be more clear. And 
many Marxists urge us to follow Lenin's advice today!
</p><p>
All in all, the history of socialists actually using elections has been 
a dismal failure and was obviously a failure long before 1917. Subsequent
experience has only confirmed that conclusion. Rather than prepare the 
masses for revolution, it has done the opposite. As we argue in 
<a href="secJ2.html">section J.2</a>, this is to be expected. 
That Lenin could still argue along these lines even after the rise of 
reformism ("revisionism") in the 1890s and the betrayal of social 
democracy in 1914 indicates a lack of desire to learn the lessons of 
history. 
</p><p> 
The negative effects of <i>"utilising"</i> the present state are, 
sometimes, acknowledged by Marxists although this rarely interferes 
with their support for standing in elections. Thus we find that 
advocate of "revolutionary" parliamentarianism, Trotsky, noting 
that <i>[i]f parliamentarianism served the proletariat to a certain 
extent as a training school for revolution, then it also served the 
bourgeoisie to a far greater extent as the school of counter-revolutionary 
strategy. Suffice it to say that by means of parliamentarianism the 
bourgeoisie was able so to educate the Social Democracy that it is 
today [1924] the main prop of private property."</i> [<b>Lessons of 
October</b>, pp. 170-1] Of course, the followers of Lenin and Trotsky 
are made of sterner stuff than those of Marx and Engels and so utilising
the same tactics will have a different outcome. As one-time syndicalist
William Gallacher put it in reply to Lenin's question <i>"[i]f the workers 
sent you to represent them in Parliament, would you become corrupt?"</i>: 
<i>"No, I'm sure that under no circumstances could the bourgeoisie 
corrupt me."</i> [quoted by Mark Shipway, <b>Anti-Parliamentary 
Communism</b>, p. 21] Mere will-power, apparently, is sufficient to
counteract the pressures and influences of parliamentarianism which
Marx and Engels, unlike Bakunin, failed to predict but whose legacy
still haunts the minds of those who claim to be <i>"scientific socialists"</i>
and so, presumably, base their politics on facts and experience rather 
than wishful thinking.
</p><p>
This is why anarchists reject the notion of radicals utilising 
the existing state and instead urge direct action and solidarity
outside of bourgeois institutions. Only this kind of struggle 
creates the spirit of revolt and new popular forms of organisation
which can fight and replace the hierarchical structures of
capitalist society. Hence anarchists stress the need of working
class people to <i>"rely on themselves to get rid of the oppression
of Capital, without expecting that the same thing can be done for
them by anybody else. The emancipation of the workmen [and women]
must be the act of the workmen [and women] themselves."</i> [Kropotkin,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 32] Only this kind of movement and struggle can 
maximise the revolutionary potential of struggles for reforms within
capitalism. As history shows, the alternative has repeatedly failed.
</p><p>
It should be noted, however, that not all Marxists have refused to
recognise the lessons of history. Libertarian Marxists, such as council 
communists, also reject <i>"utilising the present state"</i> to train the 
proletariat for revolution (i.e. for socialists to stand for elections). 
Lenin attacked these Marxists who had drawn similar conclusions as the
anarchists (<b>after</b> the failure of social-democracy) in his 1920 
diatribe <b>Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder</b>. In that 
pamphlet he used the experiences of the Bolsheviks in semi-Feudal 
Tsarist Russia to combat the conclusions drawn by socialists in the
advanced capitalist countries with sizeable social democratic parties.
Lenin's arguments for revolutionary Parliamentarianism did not convince
the anti-Parliamentarians who argued that its <i>"significance lies
not in its content, but in the person of the author, for the arguments
are scarcely original and have for the most part already been used by
others . . . their fallacy resides mainly in the equation of the 
conditions, parties, organisations and parliamentary practice of
Western Europe with their Russian counterparts."</i> [Anton Pannekoek,
<b>Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism</b>, p. 143] While anarchists would
disagree with the underlying assumption that Marx was right in considering
parliamentarianism as essential and it only became problematic later,
we would agree whole-heartedly with the critique presented (unsurprisingly,
as we made it first). 
</p><p>
Pannekoek's article along with Herman Gorter's <b>Open Letter to Comrade 
Lenin</b> are essential reading for those who are taken in with Lenin's 
arguments, along with the chapter on <i>"Socialism"</i> in Alexander 
Berkman's <b>What is Anarchism?</b>. Interestingly, the Comintern asked 
Berkman to translate Lenin's <b>Left-Wing Communism</b> and he agreed 
until he read its contents. He then said he would continue if he could 
write a rebuttal, a request which was rejected. For anarchists, placing 
the word "revolutionary" in front of "parliamentarianism" does not provide 
a shield against the negative influences and pressures which naturally 
arise by utilising that tactic. Given the sorry history of radicals doing 
so, this is unsurprising. What is surprising is how so many Marxists are 
willing to ignore that history in favour of Lenin's pamphlet.</p>

<a name="sech16"><h2>H.1.6 Why do anarchists try to <i>"build the new world 
in the shell of the old"</i>?</h2></a>

<p>
Another key difference between anarchists and Marxists is on how the movement 
against capitalism should organise in the here and now. Anarchists argue that 
it should prefigure the society we desire - namely it should be self-managed, 
decentralised, built and organised from the bottom-up in a federal structure. 
This perspective can be seen from the justly famous <i>"Circular of the Sixteen"</i>
issued at the Sonvillier congress by the libertarian wing of the First International:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The future society must be nothing else than the universalisation of the 
organisation that the International has formed for itself. We must therefore 
take care to make this organisation as close as possible to our ideal. How 
could one want an equalitarian and free society to issue from an authoritarian 
organisation? It is impossible. The International, the embryo of the future 
human society is held to be henceforward, the faithful image of our principles 
of liberty and of federation, and is considered to reject any principle tending 
to authority and dictatorship."</i> [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, <b>Michael Bakunin 
and Karl Marx</b>, pp. 262-3]
</blockquote></p><p>
Anarchists apply this insight to all organisations they take part in, stressing 
that the only way we can create a self-managed society is by self-managing our 
own struggles and organisations today. It is an essential part of our politics 
that we encourage people to <i>"learn how to participate in the life of the 
organisation and to do without leaders and permanent officials"</i> and 
<i>"practice direct action, decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative."</i> 
This flows logically from our politics, as it is <i>"obvious that anarchists 
should seek to apply to their personal and political lives this same principle 
upon which, they believe, the whole of human society should be based."</i> 
[Malatesta, <b>The Anarchist Revolution</b>, p. 94] In this way we turn our 
class organisations (indeed, the class struggle itself) into practical and 
effective <i>"schools of anarchism"</i> in which we learn to manage our own 
affairs without hierarchy and bosses and so popular organisations become 
the cells of the new society:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Libertarian forms of organisation have the enormous responsibility of
trying to resemble the society they are seeking to develop. They can 
tolerate no disjunction between ends and means. Direct action, so integral
to the management of a future society, has its parallel in the use of 
direct action to change society. Communal forms, so integral to the
structure of a future society, have their parallel in the use of communal
forms - collectives, affinity groups, and the like -  to change society.
The ecological ethics, confederal relationships, and decentralised 
structures we would expect to find in a future society, are fostered 
by the values and networks we try to use in achieving an ecological
society."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>The Ecology of Freedom</b>, pp. 446-7]
</blockquote></p><p>
Marxists reject this argument. Instead they stress the importance
of centralisation and consider the anarchist argument as utopian.
For effective struggle, strict centralisation is required as the
capitalist class and state is also centralised. In other words, to 
fight for socialism there is a need to organise in a way which the
capitalists have utilised - to fight fire with fire. Unfortunately
they forget to extinguish a fire you have to use water. Adding more
flame will only increase the combustion, <b>not</b> put it out!
</p><p>
Of course, Marx and Engels misrepresented the anarchist position. They asserted 
that the anarchist position implied that the Paris Communards <i>"would not have 
failed if they had understood that the Commune was 'the embryo of the future human 
society' and had cast away all discipline and all arms, that is, the things 
which must disappear when there are no more wars!"</i> [<b>Collected
Works</b>, vol. 23, p. 115] Needless to say this is simply a slander on the 
anarchist position particularly as anarchists are well aware of the need to
defend a revolution (see <a href="secH2.html#sech21">section H.2.1</a>) and 
the need for <b>self</b>-discipline (see <a href="secH4.html">section H.4</a>). 
Anarchists, as the Circular makes clear, recognise that we cannot totally reflect 
the future and so the current movement can only be <i>"as near as possible 
to our ideal."</i> Thus we have to do things, such as fighting the bosses, 
rising in insurrection, smashing the state or defending a revolution, which 
we would not have to do in a socialist society. However, we can do these 
things in a manner which is consistent with our values and our aims. For 
example, a strike can be run in two ways. Either it can be managed via 
assemblies of strikers and co-ordinated by councils of elected, mandated 
and recallable delegates or it can be run from the top-down by a few trade 
union leaders. The former, of course, is the anarchist way and it reflects 
<i>"the future human society"</i> (and, ironically, is paid lip-service to 
by Marxists). 
</p><p>
Such common sense, unfortunately, was lacking in Marx and Engels, who instead 
decided to utter nonsense for a cheap polemical point. Neither answered the basic 
point - how do people become able to manage society if they do not directly 
manage their own organisations and struggles today? How can a self-managed
society come about unless people practice it in the here and now? Can people 
create a socialist society if they do not implement its basic ideas in their 
current struggles and organisations? Equally, it would be churlish to note 
that the Commune's system of federalism by mandated delegates had been 
advocated by Bakunin for a number of years before 1871 and, unsurprisingly, 
he took the revolt as a striking, if incomplete, confirmation of anarchism
(see <a href="secA5.html#seca51">section A.5.1</a>).
</p><p>
The Paris Commune, it must be stressed, brought the contradictions of the
Marxist attacks on anarchism to the surface. It is deeply sad to read, say, 
Engels attacking anarchists for holding certain position yet praising the 
1871 revolution when it implement exactly the same ideas. For example, in
his deeply inaccurate diatribe <i>"The Bakuninists at Work"</i>, Engels was
keen to distort the federalist ideas of anarchism, dismissing <i>"the so-called 
principles of anarchy, free federation of independent groups."</i> 
[<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 23, p. 297] Compare this to his praise for 
the Paris Commune which, he gushed, refuted the Blanquist notion 
of a revolution sprung by a vanguard which would create <i>"the strictest,
dictatorial centralisation of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary 
government."</i> Instead the Commune <i>"appealed to [the provinces] to form a 
free federation of all French Communes . . . a national organisation which
for the first time was really created by the nation itself. It was precisely 
the oppressing power of the former centralised government . . . which was to 
fall everywhere, just as it had fallen in Paris."</i> [<b>Selected Writings</b>, 
pp. 256-7] 
</p><p>
Likewise, Engels praised the fact that, to combat the independence of the state 
from society, the Commune introduced wages for officials the same as that 
<i>"received by other workers"</i> and the use of <i>"the binding mandate to 
delegates to representative bodies."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 258] Compare this 
to Engels attack on anarchist support for binding mandates (which, like our 
support for free federation, pre-dated the Commune). Then it was a case of 
this being part of Bakunin's plans to control the international <i>"for a 
secret society . . . there is nothing more convenient than the imperative 
mandate"</i> as all its members vote one way, while the others will 
<i>"contradict one another."</i> Without these binding mandates, <i>"the 
common sense of the independent delegates will swiftly unite them in a 
common party against the party of the secret society."</i> Obviously the 
notion that delegates from a group should reflect the wishes of that group 
was lost on Engels. He even questioned the utility of this system for <i>"if 
all electors gave their delegates imperative mandates concerning all points 
in the agenda, meetings and debates of the delegates would be superfluous."</i> 
[<b>Collected Works</b>, vol. 22, p. 281 and p. 277] It should be
noted that Trotsky shared Engels dislike of "representatives" being forced to
actually represent the views of their constituents within the party. [<b>In 
Defense of Marxism</b>, pp. 80-1]
</p><p>
Clearly a <i>"free federation"</i> of Communes and binding mandates are bad when 
anarchists advocate them but excellent when workers in revolt implement them! 
Why this was the case Engels failed to explain. However, it does suggest that
anarchist ideas that we must reflect the future in how we organise today is no 
hindrance to revolutionary change and, in fact, reflects what is required to
turn a revolt into a genuine social revolution. 
</p><p>
Engels asserted that the anarchist position meant that <i>"the proletariat 
is told to organise not in accordance with the requirements of the struggle 
. . . but according to the vague notions of a future society entertained by 
some dreamers."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, vol. 23, p. 66] In this he was wrong, 
as he failed to understand that the anarchist position was produced by the 
class struggle itself. He failed to understand how that struggle reflects 
our aspirations for a better world, how we see what is wrong with modern 
society and seek to organise to end such abuses rather than perpetuate 
them in new forms. Thus the trade unions which Bakunin argued would be 
the basis of a free society are organised from the bottom-up and based 
upon the direct participation of the workers. This form of organisation 
was not forced upon the workers by some intellectuals thinking they were 
a good idea. Rather they were created to fight the bosses and reflected 
the fact that workers were sick of being treating as servants and did not 
wish to see that repeated in their own organisations. 
</p><p>
As Bakunin argued, when a union delegates authority to its officials it may be
<i>"very good for the committees, but [it is] not at all favourable for the
social, intellectual, and moral progress of the collective power of the 
International."</i> The committees <i>"substituted their own will and their
own ideas for that of the membership"</i> while the membership expressed
<i>"indifference to general problems"</i> and left <i>"all problems to the
decisions of committees."</i> This could only be solved by <i>"call[ing]
general membership meetings,"</i> that is <i>"popular assemblies."</i> 
Bakunin goes on to argue that the <i>"organisation of the International,
having as its objective not the creation of new despotism but the uprooting
of all domination, will take on an essentially different character than the
organisation of the State."</i> This must be the <i>"organisation of the trade 
sections and their representation by the Chambers of Labour"</i> and these 
<i>"bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society which is to replace 
the old world. They are creating not only the ideas, but also the facts of the 
future itself."</i> [<b>Bakunin on Anarchism</b>, pp. 246-7 and p. 255]
</p><p>
Ou Shengbai, a Chinese anarchist, argued that libertarians <i>"deeply feel 
that the causes of popular misery are these: (1) Because of the present 
political system power is concentrated in a few hands with the result that 
the majority of the people do not have the opportunity for free participation.
(2) Because of the capitalist system all means of production are concentrated 
in the hands of the capitalists with the results that the benefits that ought 
to accrue to labourers are usurped by capitalists.</i> [quoted by Arif Dirlik, 
<b>Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution</b>, p. 235] Does it make much sense
to organise in ways which reflect these problems? Surely the reason why people
become socialists is because they seek to change society, to give the mass of
the population an opportunity for free participation and to manage their own
affairs. Why destroy those hopes and dreams by organising in a way which reflects
the society we oppose rather than the one we desire?
</p><p>
Ultimately, Engels dismissed the practical experiences of working class people, 
dismissed our ability to create a better world and our ability to dream. In
fact, he seems to think there is some division of labour between <i>"the 
proletariat"</i> who do the struggling and <i>"some dreamers"</i> who provide
the ideas. The notion that working class people can both struggle <b>and</b>
dream was lost on him, as was the notion that our dreams shape our struggles 
and our struggles shape our dreams. People resist oppression and exploitation 
because we want to determine what goes on in our lives and to manage our own 
affairs. In that process, we create new forms of organisation which allows that 
to happen, ones that reflect our dreams of a better world. This is not in 
opposition to the needs of the struggle, as Engels asserted, but are rather an 
expression of it. To dismiss this process, to advocate organisational methods 
which are the very antithesis of what working class people have shown, repeatedly, 
what they want, is the height of arrogance and, ultimately, little more than a 
dismissal of the hopes, dreams and creative self-activity of working class 
people. As libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis put it:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"the organisation's inspiration can come only from the socialist 
structures created by the working class in the course of its own
history. It must let itself be guided by the principles on which
the soviet and the factory council were founded . . . the principles
of workers' management must govern the operation and structure of
the organisation. Apart from them, there are only capitalist 
principles, which, as we have seen, can only result in the 
establishment of capitalist relationships."</i> [<b>Political
and Social Writings</b>, vol. 2, pp. 217-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
Ironically enough, given their own and their followers claims of Marxism's 
proletarian core, it was Marx and Engels who were at odds with the early 
labour movement, <b>not</b> Bakunin and the anarchists. Historian Gwyn A. 
Williams notes in the early British labour movement there were <i>"to be 
no leaders"</i> and the organisations were <i>"consciously modelled on 
the civil society they wished to create."</i> [<b>Artisans and Sans-Culottes</b>, 
p. 72] Lenin, unsurprisingly, dismissed the fact that the British workers 
<i>"thought it was an indispensable sign of democracy for all the members 
to do all the work of managing the unions"</i> as <i>"primitive democracy"</i> 
and <i>"absurd."</i> He also complained about <i>"how widespread is the 
'primitive' conception of democracy among the masses of the students and 
workers"</i> in Russia. [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, pp. 162-3] Clearly, 
the anarchist perspective reflects the ideas the workers' movement before it
degenerates into reformism and bureaucracy while Marxism reflects it during 
this process of degeneration. Needless to say, the revolutionary nature of 
the early union movement clearly shows who was correct!
</p><p>
Anarchists, in other words, simply generalised the experiences of the workers 
in struggle and Bakunin and his followers were expressing a common position 
held by many in the International. Even Marx paid lip-service to this when he 
stated <i>"in contrast to old society . . . a new society is springing up"</i> 
and the <i>"Pioneer of that new society is the International Working Men's 
Association."</i> [<b>Selected Works</b>, p. 263] Clearly, 
considering the International as the embryo of the future society is worthy 
only of scorn as the correct position is to consider it merely as a pioneer!
</p><p>
As such, libertarians <i>"lay no claims to originality in proposing
this [kind of prefigurative organisation]. In every revolution,
during most strikes and daily at the level of workshop organisation,
the working class resorts to this type of direct democracy."</i>
[Maurice Brinton, <b>For Workers' Power</b>, p. 48] Given how 
Marxists pay lip-service to such forms of working class self-organisation,
it seems amusing to hear them argue that this is correct for everyone
else but not themselves and their own organisations! Apparently, the
same workers who are expected to have the determination and consciousness
necessary to overthrow capitalism and create a new world in the future
are unable to organise themselves in a socialist manner today. Instead, 
we have to tolerate so-called "revolutionary" organisations which are 
just as hierarchical, top-down and centralised as the system which 
provoked our anger at its injustice in the first and which we are trying 
to end!
</p><p>
Related to this is the fact that Marxists (particularly Leninists)
favour centralisation while anarchists favour decentralisation within 
a federal organisation. Anarchists do not think that decentralisation 
implies isolation or narrow localism. We have always stressed the 
importance of federalism to co-ordinate decisions. Power would 
be decentralised, but federalism ensures collective decisions and action. 
Under centralised systems, anarchists argue, power is placed into the 
hands of a few leaders. Rather than the real interests and needs of the 
people being co-ordinated, centralism simply means the imposition of the 
will of a handful of leaders, who claim to "represent" the masses. 
Co-ordination from below, in other words, is replaced by coercion from
above in the centralised system and the needs and interests of all are 
replaced by those of a few leaders at the centre. 
</p><p>
Such a centralised, inevitably top-down, system can only be counter-productive, 
both practically and in terms of generating socialist consciousness:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Bolsheviks argue that to fight the highly centralised forces of modern capitalism 
requires an equally centralised type of party. This ignores the fact that capitalist 
centralisation is based on coercion and force and the exclusion of the overwhelming 
majority of the population from participating in any of its decisions . . . 
</p><p>
"The very structure of these organisations ensures that their personnel do not
think for themselves, but unquestioningly carry out the instructions of their
superiors . . .
</p><p>
"Advocates of 'democratic centralism' insist that it is the only type of organisations 
which can function effectively under conditions of illegality. This is nonsense. The
'democratic centralist' organisation particularly vulnerable to police persecution.
When all power is concentrated in the hands of the leaders, their arrest immediately 
paralyses the whole organisation. Members trained to accept unquestioningly the 
instruction of an all-wise Central Committee will find it very difficult to think 
and act for themselves. The experiences of the German Communist Party [under the 
Nazis] confirm this. With their usual inconsistency, the Trotskyists even explain 
the demise of their Western European sections during World War II by telling people 
how their leaders were murdered by the Gestapo!"</i> [Maurice Brinton, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 43]
</blockquote></p><p>
As we discuss in depth in <a href="secH5.html">section H.5</a> the Leninist
vanguard party does, ironically, create in embryo a new world simply because 
once in power it refashions society in <b>its</b> image. However, no anarchist 
would consider such a centralised, hierarchical top-down class system rooted 
in bureaucratic power as being remotely desirable or remotely socialist.
</p><p>
Therefore anarchists <i>"recognised neither the state nor pyramidal organisation"</i> 
Kropotkin argued, while Marxists <i>"recognised the state and pyramidal methods of 
organisation"</i> which <i>"stifled the revolutionary spirit of the rank-and-file 
workers."</i> [<b>Conquest of Bread and Other Writings</b>, p. 212] The Marxist
perspective inevitably places power into the hands of a few leaders, who then
decree which movements to support and encourage based on what is best for the
long term benefit of the party itself rather than the working class. Thus we 
find Engels arguing while Marxists were <i>"obliged to support every <b>real</b> 
popular movement"</i> they also had to ensure <i>"that the scarcely formed nucleus 
of our proletarian Party is not sacrificed in vain and that the proletariat is not 
decimated in futile local revolts,"</i> for example <i>"a blood-letting like that 
of 1871 in Paris."</i> [Marx and Engels, <b>The Socialist Revolution</b>, p. 294
and p. 320] This produces a conservative approach to social struggle, with mass
actions and revolutionary situations ignored or warned against because of the
potential harm it could inflict on the party. Unsurprisingly, every popular
revolution has occurred against the advice of the so-called "revolutionary" 
Marxist leadership including the Paris Commune and the 1917 February revolution
in Russia (even the October seize of power was done in the face of resistance 
from the Bolshevik party machine).
</p><p>
It is for these reasons that anarchists <i>"[a]s much as is humanly possible 
. . . try to reflect the liberated society they seek to achieve"</i> and 
<i>"not slavishly duplicate the prevailing system of hierarchy, class and 
authority."</i> Rather than being the abstract dreams of isolated thinkers,
these <i>"conclusions . . . emerge from an exacting study of past revolutions, 
of the impact centralised parties have had on the revolutionary process"</i> 
and history has more than confirmed the anarchist warning that the 
<i>"revolutionary party, by duplicating these centralistic, hierarchical 
features would reproduce hierarchy and centralism in the post revolutionary 
society."</i> [Murray Bookchin, <b>Post-Scarcity Anarchism</b>, p. 138, 
p. 139 and p. 137] Moreover, we base our arguments on how social movements 
should organise on the experiences of past struggles, of the forms of
organisation spontaneously produced by those struggles and which, therefore, 
reflect the needs of those struggles and the desire for a better way of life 
which produced them. Ultimately, no one knows when a revolution turns the 
hopes and aspirations of today into tomorrow's reality and it would be wise 
to have some experience of managing our own affairs before hand.
</p><p>
By failing to understand the importance of applying a vision of
a free society to the current class struggle, Marxists help ensure
that society never is created. By copying bourgeois methods within
their "revolutionary" organisations (parties and unions) they ensure
bourgeois ends (inequality and oppression).</p>

<a name="sech17"><h2>H.1.7 Haven't you read Lenin's <i>"State and Revolution"</i>?</h2></a>

<p>
This question is often asked of people who critique Marxism, particularly its 
Leninist form. Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> is often considered his most 
democratic work and Leninists are quick to point to it as proof that Lenin and 
those who follow his ideas are not authoritarian. As such, it is an important 
question. So how do anarchists reply when people point them to Lenin's work as 
evidence of the democratic (even libertarian) nature of Marxism? Anarchists reply 
in two ways. 
</p><p>
Firstly, we argue many of the essential features of Lenin's ideas are to be 
found in anarchist theory and, in fact, had been aspects of anarchism for 
decades <b>before</b> Lenin put pen to paper. Bakunin, for example, talked 
about mandated delegates from workplaces federating into workers' councils 
as the framework of a (libertarian) socialist society in the 1860s as well as
popular militias to defend a revolution. Moreover, he was well aware that 
revolution was a <b>process</b> rather than an event and so would take time 
to develop and flourish. Hence Murray Bookchin:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta were not so naive as to believe that 
anarchism could be established over night. In imputing this notion to 
Bakunin, Marx and Engels wilfully distorted the Russian anarchist's 
views. Nor did the anarchists . . . believe that abolition of the state
involved 'laying down of arms' immediately after the revolution, to use 
Marx's obscurantist choice of terms, thoughtlessly repeated by Lenin 
in <b>State and Revolution</b>. Indeed, much that passes for 'Marxism' 
in <b>State and Revolution</b> is pure anarchism - for example, the 
substitution of revolutionary militias for professional armed bodies 
and the substitution of organs of self-management for parliamentary 
bodies. What is authentically Marxist in Lenin's pamphlet is the 
demand for 'strict centralism,' the acceptance of a 'new' bureaucracy, 
and the identification of soviets with a state."</i> [<b>Post-Scarcity 
Anarchism</b>, p. 137]
</blockquote></p><p>
That this is the case is hidden in Lenin's work as he deliberately distorts 
anarchist ideas in it (see sections <a href="secH1.html#sech13">H.1.3</a> 
and <a href="secH1.html#sech14">H.1.4</a> for example). Therefore, when 
Marxists ask whether anarchist have read Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> 
we reply by arguing that most of Lenin's ideas were first expressed by 
anarchists and his work just strikes anarchists as little more than a 
re-hash of many of our own ideas but placed in a statist context which 
totally and utterly undermines them in favour of party rule.
</p><p>
Secondly, anarchists argue that regardless of what Lenin argued for in 
<b>State and Revolution</b>, he did not apply those ideas in practice 
(indeed, he did the exact opposite). Therefore, the question of whether 
we have read Lenin's work simply drives home how the ideological nature 
and theoretical bankruptcy of Leninism. This is because the person 
is asking you to evaluate their politics based on what they say rather 
than on what they do, like any politician.
</p><p>
To use an analogy, what would you say to a politician who has cut welfare 
spending by 50% and increased spending on the military and who argues that 
this act is irrelevant and that you should look at their manifesto which 
states that they were going to do the opposite? You would dismiss 
this argument as laughable and them as liars as you would evaluate 
them by their actions, not by what they say. Leninists, by urging 
you to read Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> are asking you to evaluate 
them by what their manifesto says and ignore what they did. Anarchists, 
on the other hand, ask you to evaluate the Leninist manifesto by comparing 
it to what they actually did in power. Such an evaluation is the only means 
by which we can judge the validity of Leninist claims and politics.
</p><p>
As we discuss the role of Leninist ideology in the fate of the 
Russian Revolution in <a href="secH6.html">section H.6</a>
we will provide a summary of Lenin's claims in his famous work 
<b>State and Revolution</b> and what he did in practice here. Suffice 
to say the difference between reality and rhetoric was extremely large 
and, therefore, it is a damning indictment of Bolshevism. Post-October, 
the Bolsheviks not only failed to introduce the ideas of Lenin's 
book, they in fact introduced the exact opposite. As one historian 
puts it:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"To consider 'State and Revolution' as the basic statement of
Lenin's political philosophy - which non-Communists as well
as Communists usually do - is a serious error. Its argument
for a utopian anarchism never actually became official policy.
The Leninism of 1917 . . . came to grief in a few short years;
it was the revived Leninism of 1902 which prevailed as the 
basis for the political development of the USSR."</i> [Robert V. 
Daniels, <b>The Conscience of the Revolution</b>, pp. 51-2]
</blockquote></p><p>
Daniels is being far too lenient with the Bolsheviks. It 
was not, in fact, <i>"a few short years"</i> before the promises
of 1917 were broken. In some cases, it was a few short
hours. In others, a few short months. However, in a sense
Daniels is right. It did take until 1921 before all hope
for saving the Russian Revolution finally ended. 
</p><p>
Simply put, if the <b>State and Revolution</b> is the manifesto 
of Bolshevism, then not a single promise in that work was 
kept by the Bolsheviks when they got into power. As such, 
Lenin's work cannot be used to evaluate Bolshevik ideology 
as Bolshevism paid no attention to it once it had taken state 
power. While Lenin and his followers chant rhapsodies about
the Soviet State (this 'highest and most perfect system of
democracy") they quickly turned its democratic ideas into a 
fairy-tale, and an ugly fairy-tale at that, by simply ignoring 
it in favour of party power (and party dictatorship). To state 
the obvious, to quote theory and not relate it to the practice 
of those who claim to follow it is a joke. If you look at the 
actions of the Bolsheviks after the October Russian Revolution 
you cannot help draw the conclusion that Lenin's <b>State and 
Revolution</b> has nothing to do with Bolshevik policy and 
presents a false image of what Leninists desire. As such, we 
must present a comparison between rhetoric and realty.
</p><p>
In order to show that this is the case, we need to summarise 
the main ideas contained in Lenin's work. Moreover, we need
to indicate what the Bolsheviks did, in fact, do. Finally,
we need to see if the various rationales justifying these
actions hold water.
</p><p>
So what did Lenin argue for in <b>State and Revolution</b>? Writing 
in the mid-1930s, anarchist Camillo Berneri summarised the main 
ideas of that work as follows:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The Leninist programme of 1917 included these points: the discontinuance 
of the police and standing army, abolition of the professional bureaucracy, 
elections for all public positions and offices, revocability of all officials, 
equality of bureaucratic wages with workers' wages, the maximum of democracy, 
peaceful competition among the parties within the soviets, abolition of the 
death penalty."</i> [<i>"The Abolition and Extinction of the State,"</i> 
pp. 50-1, <b>Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review</b>, no. 4, p. 50] 
</blockquote></p><p>
As he noted, <i>"[n]ot a single one of the points of this programme has 
been achieved."</i> This was, of course, under Stalinism and most Leninists 
will concur with Berneri. However what Leninists tend not to mention is
that by the end of the 7 month period of Bolshevik rule before the start
of the civil war (i.e., from November 1917 to May 1918) none of these 
points existed. So, as an example of what Bolshevism "really" stands 
for it seems strange to harp on about a work which was never really 
implemented when the its author was in a position to do so (i.e. before 
the onslaught of a civil war Lenin thought was inevitable anyway!).
Similarly, if <b>State and Revolution</b> indicates the features a
"workers' state" must have then, by May 1918, Russia did not have such a
state and so, logically, it can only be considered as such only if we
assume that the good intentions of its rulers somehow overcome its 
political and economic structure (which, sadly, <b>is</b> the basic 
Trotskyist defence of Leninism against Stalinism!).
</p><p>
To see that Berneri's summary is correct, we need to quote Lenin directly. 
Obviously the work is a wide ranging defence of Lenin's interpretation of 
Marxist theory on the state. As it is an attempt to overturn decades of 
Marxist orthodoxy, much of the work is quotes from Marx and Engels and Lenin's
attempts to enlist them for his case (we discuss this issue
in <a href="secH3.html#sech310">section H.3.10</a>). Equally, we need to ignore 
the numerous straw men arguments about anarchism Lenin inflicts on his reader. 
Here we simply list the key points as regards Lenin's arguments about his 
"workers' state" and how the workers would maintain control of it:
</p><p><blockquote>
1) Using the Paris Commune as a prototype, Lenin argued for the abolition of 
<i>"parliamentarianism"</i> by turning  <i>"representative institutions from 
mere 'talking shops' into working bodies."</i> This would be done by removing 
<i>"the division of labour between the legislative and the executive."</i> 
[<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 304 and p. 306]
</p><p>
2) <i>"All officials, without exception, to be elected and subject to recall 
<b>at any time</b>"</i> and so <i>"directly responsible to their constituents."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 302 and p. 306]
</p><p>
3) The <i>"immediate introduction of control and superintendence by <b>all,</b> 
so that <b>all</b> shall become 'bureaucrats' for a time and so that, therefore, 
<b>no one</b> can become a 'bureaucrat'."</i> Proletarian democracy would
<i>"take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down to the roots . . . to the 
complete abolition of bureaucracy"</i> as the <i>"<b>essence</b> of bureaucracy"</i> 
is officials becoming transformed<i>" into privileged persons divorced from the 
masses and <b>superior to</b> the masses."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 355 and p. 360]
</p><p>
4) There should be no <i>"special bodies of armed men"</i> standing apart from 
the people <i>"since the majority of the people itself suppresses its oppressors, 
a 'special force' is no longer necessary."</i> Using the example of the Paris 
Commune, Lenin suggested this meant <i>"abolition of the standing army"</i> by 
the <i>"armed masses."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 275, p. 301 and p. 339]
</p><p>
5) The new (workers) state would be <i>"the organisation of violence for the 
suppression of . . . the exploiting class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. The toilers 
need a state only to overcome the resistance of the exploiters"</i> who are <i>"an 
insignificant minority,"</i> that is <i>"the landlords and the capitalists."</i> 
This would see <i>"an immense expansion of democracy . . . for the poor, democracy 
for the people"</i> while, simultaneously, imposing <i>"a series of restrictions
on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists . . . their 
resistance must be broken by force: it is clear that where there is suppression 
there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 287 and pp. 337-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
This would be implemented after the current, bourgeois, state had been smashed. This 
would be the <i>"dictatorship of the proletariat"</i> and be <i>"the introduction of 
complete democracy for the people."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 355] However, the key 
practical ideas on what the new "semi-state" would be are contained in these five 
points. He generalised these points, considering them valid for all countries. 
</p><p>
The first point as the creation of "working bodies", the combining of legislative 
and executive bodies. The first body to be created by the Bolshevik revolution 
was the "Council of People's Commissars" (CPC) This was a government separate 
from and above the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the soviets congress 
which, in turn, was separate from and above the national soviet congress. 
It was an executive body elected by the soviet congress, but the soviets 
themselves were not turned into "working bodies." The promises of Lenin's 
<b>State and Revolution</b> did not last the night. 
</p><p>
The Bolsheviks, it must be stressed, clearly recognised that the Soviets had 
alienated their power to this body with the party's Central Committee arguing 
in November 1917 that <i>"it is impossible to refuse a purely Bolshevik 
government without treason to the slogan of the power of the Soviets, since a 
majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets . . . handed power over to 
this government."</i> [contained in Robert V. Daniels (ed.), <b>A Documentary 
History of Communism</b>, vol. 1, pp. 128-9] However, it could be argued that 
Lenin's promises were kept as the new government simply gave itself legislative 
powers four days later. Sadly, this is not the case. In the Paris Commune the 
delegates of the people took executive power into their own hands. Lenin 
reversed this and his executive took legislative power from the hands of 
the people's delegates. As we discuss in <a href="secH6.html#sech61">section H.6.1</a>,
this concentration of power into executive committees occurred at all levels 
of the soviet hierarchy.
</p><p>
What of the next principle, namely the election and recall of all officials? This 
lasted slightly longer, namely around 5 months. By March of 1918, the Bolsheviks 
started a systematic campaign against the elective principle in the workplace, in 
the military and even in the soviets. In the workplace, Lenin was arguing for 
appointed one-man managers <i>"vested with dictatorial powers"</i> by April 1918 
(see <a href="secH3.html#sech314">section H.3.14</a>). In the military, Trotsky
simply decreed the end of elected officers in favour of appointed officers. As 
far as the soviets go, the Bolsheviks were refusing to hold elections because 
they <i>"feared that the opposition parties would show gains."</i> When elections 
were held, <i>"Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results"</i> in provincial
towns. Moreover, the Bolsheviks <i>"pack[ed] local soviets"</i> with representatives 
of organisations they controlled <i>"once they could not longer count on an electoral 
majority."</i> [Samuel Farber, <b>Before Stalinism</b>, p. 22, p. 24 and p. 33] This 
kind of packing was even practised at the national level when the Bolsheviks 
gerrymandered a Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Congress of Soviets. So much for 
competition among the parties within the soviets! And as far as the right of recall 
went, the Bolsheviks only supported this when the workers were recalling the opponents 
of the Bolsheviks, not when the workers were recalling them.
</p><p>
Then there was the elimination of bureaucracy. The new state soon had a new 
bureaucratic and centralised system quickly emerge around it. Rather than 
immediately cutting the size and power of the bureaucracy, it <i>"grew by 
leaps and bounds. Control over the new bureaucracy constantly diminished, 
partly because no genuine opposition existed. The alienation between 'people' 
and 'officials,' which the soviet system was supposed to remove, was back 
again. Beginning in 1918, complaints about 'bureaucratic excesses,' lack 
of contact with voters, and new proletarian bureaucrats grew louder and louder."</i> 
[Oskar Anweiler, <b>The Soviets</b>, p. 242] So the rise of a state bureaucracy 
started immediately with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, particularly as
the state's functions grew to include economic decisions as well as political ones. 
Instead of the state starting to <i>"wither away"</i> it grew:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"The old state's political apparatus was 'smashed,' but in its place a new 
bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary rapidity. After 
the transfer of government to Moscow in March 1918 it continued to expand . . . 
As the functions of the state expanded so did the bureaucracy, and by August 
1918 nearly a third of Moscow's working population were employed in offices. 
The great increase in the number of employees . . . took place in early to 
mid-1918 and, thereafter, despite many campaigns to reduce their 
number, they remained a steady proportion of the falling population"</i> 
[Richard Sakwa, <i>"The Commune State in Moscow in 1918,"</i> pp. 429-449, 
<b>Slavic Review</b>, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8]
</blockquote></p><p>
This, anarchists would stress, is an inherent feature of centralised system.
As such, this rise of bureaucracy confirmed anarchist predictions that
centralisation will recreate bureaucracy. After all, some means were required 
to gather, collate and provide information by which the central bodies made 
their decisions. Overtime, this permanent collection of bodies would become 
the real power in the state, with the party members nominally in charge really 
under the control of an unelected and uncontrolled officialdom. Thus a necessary 
side-effect of Bolshevik centralism was bureaucracy and it soon became the real 
power in the state (and, ultimately, in the 1920s became the social base for 
the rise of Stalin). This is to be expected as any state <i>"is already a 
privileged class and cut off from the people"</i> and would <i>"seek to extend 
its powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and to give 
priority to special interests."</i> Moreover, <i>"what an all-powerful, oppressive, 
all-absorbing oligarchy must be one which has at its services, that is at its 
disposal, all social wealth, all public services."</i> [Malatesta, <b>Anarchy</b>, 
p. 36 and p. 37]
</p><p>
Then there is the fourth point, namely the elimination of the standing army, the 
suppression of <i>"special bodies of armed men"</i> by the <i>"armed masses."</i> 
This promise did not last two months. On the 20th of December, 1917, the Council 
of People's Commissars decreed the formation of a political (secret) police force, 
the <i>"Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution."</i> This was more 
commonly known by the Russian initials of the first two terms of its official 
name: The Cheka. 
</p><p>
While it was initially a small organisation, as 1918 progressed it grew in size 
and activity. The Cheka soon became a key instrument of Bolshevik rule and it 
was most definitely a <i>"special body of armed men"</i> and not the same as 
the <i>"armed workers."</i> In other words, Lenin's claims in <b>State and 
Revolution</b> did not last two months and in under six months the Bolshevik state
had a mighty group of <i>"armed men"</i> to impose its will. This is not all. The 
Bolsheviks also conducted a sweeping transformation of the military within the 
first six months of taking power. During 1917, the soldiers and sailors (encouraged 
by the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries) had formed their own committees and 
elected officers. In March 1918, Trotsky simply abolished all this by decree
and replaced it with appointed officers (usually ex-Tsarist ones). In this way, the 
Red Army was turned from a workers' militia (i.e. an armed people) into a <i>"special 
body"</i> separate from the general population.
</p><p>
So instead of eliminating a <i>"special force"</i> above the people, the 
Bolsheviks did the opposite by creating a political police force (the Cheka) 
and a standing army (in which elections were a set aside by decree). These 
were special, professional, armed forces standing apart from the people and 
unaccountable to them. Indeed, they were used to repress strikes and working 
class unrest which refutes the idea that Lenin's "workers' state" would simply 
be an instrument of violence directed at the exploiters. As the Bolsheviks 
lost popular support, they turned the violence of the "worker's state" against 
the workers (and, of course, the peasants). When the Bolsheviks lost soviet 
elections, force was used to disband them. Faced with strikes and working 
class protest during this period, the Bolsheviks responded with state violence 
(see <a href="secH6.html#sech63">section H.6.3</a>). So, as regards the claim 
that the new ("workers") state would repress only the exploiters, the truth 
was that it was used to repress whoever opposed Bolshevik power, including 
workers and peasants. If, as Lenin stressed, <i>"where there is suppression 
there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy"</i> then there 
cannot be working class freedom or democracy if the "workers' state" is 
suppressing that class.
</p><p>
As can be seen, after the first six months of Bolshevik rule not a single measure 
advocated by Lenin in <b>State and Revolution</b> existed in "revolutionary" Russia. 
Some of the promises were broken quite quickly (overnight, in one case).  Most took 
longer. Yet Leninists may object by noting that many Bolshevik degrees did, in fact, 
reflect <b>State and Revolution</b>. For example, the democratisation of the armed 
forces was decreed in late December 1917. However, this was simply acknowledging 
the existing revolutionary gains of the military personnel. Similarly, the Bolsheviks 
passed a decree on workers' control which, again, simply acknowledged the actual 
gains by the grassroots (and, in fact, limited them for further development).
</p><p>
Yet this cannot be taken as evidence of the democratic nature of Bolshevism as most 
governments faced with a revolutionary movement will acknowledge and "legalise" the 
facts on the ground (until such time as they can neutralise or destroy them). For 
example, the Provisional Government created after the February Revolution also 
legalised the revolutionary gains of the workers (for example, legalising the soviets, 
factory committees, unions, strikes and so forth). The real question is whether 
Bolshevism continued to encourage these revolutionary gains once it had consolidated 
its power. It did not. Indeed, it can be argued that the Bolsheviks simply 
managed to do what the Provisional Government it replaced had failed to do, namely 
destroy the various organs of popular self-management created by the revolutionary 
masses. So the significant fact is not that the Bolsheviks recognised the gains of 
the masses but that their toleration of the application of what their followers say 
were their real principles did not last long and, significantly, the leading 
Bolsheviks did not consider the abolition of such principles as harming the 
"communist" nature of the regime.
</p><p>
We have stressed this period for a reason. This was the period <b>before</b> the 
out-break of major Civil War and thus the policies applied show the actual nature 
of Bolshevism, it's essence if you like. This is a significant period as most Leninists 
blame the failure of Lenin to live up to his promises on this even. In reality, the 
civil war was <b>not</b> the reason for these betrayals - simply because it had not 
started yet. Each of the promises were broken in turn months before the civil war
happened. <i>"All Power to the Soviets"</i> became, very quickly, "All Power to 
the Bolsheviks." Unsurprisingly, as this was Lenin's aim all along and so we
find him in 1917 continually repeating this basic idea (see 
<a href="secH3.html#sech33">section H.3.3</a>).
</p><p>
Given this, the almost utter non-mention of the party and its role in 
<b>State and Revolution</b> is deeply significant. Given the emphasis 
that Lenin had always placed on the party, it's absence is worrying. 
When the party is mentioned in that work, it is done so in an ambiguous 
manner. For example, Lenin noted that <i>"[b]y educating the workers' 
party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which 
is capable of assuming power and of <b>leading the whole people</b> 
to socialism, of directing and organising the new order."</i> It is 
not clear whether it is the vanguard or the proletariat as a whole 
which assumes power. Later, he stated that <i>"the dictatorship of 
the proletariat"</i> was <i>"the organisation of the vanguard of 
the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of crushing the 
oppressors."</i> [<b>Essential Works of Lenin</b>, p. 288 and p. 337] 
Based on subsequent Bolshevik practice after the party seized power, 
it seems clear that it is the vanguard which assumes power rather 
than the whole class.  
</p><p>
As such, given this clear and unambiguous position throughout 1917 by 
Lenin, it seems incredulous, to say the least, for Leninist Tony Cliff 
to assert that <i>"[t]o start with Lenin spoke of the <b>proletariat,</b> 
the <b>class</b> - not the Bolshevik Party - assuming state power."</i> 
[<b>Lenin</b>, vol. 3,  p. 161] Surely the title of one of Lenin's most 
famous pre-October essays, usually translated as <i>"Can the Bolsheviks 
Retain State Power?"</i>, should have given the game away? As would, 
surely, quoting numerous calls by Lenin for the Bolsheviks to seize 
power? Apparently not.
</p><p>
Where does that leave Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b>? Well, 
modern-day Leninists still urge us to read it, considering it his 
greatest work and the best introduction to what Leninism really 
stands for. For example, we find Leninist Tony Cliff calling that 
book <i>"Lenin's real testament"</i> while, at the same time, 
acknowledging that its <i>"message . . . which was the guide for 
the first victorious proletarian revolution, was violated again 
and again during the civil war."</i> Not a very good <i>"guide"</i> 
or that convincing a <i>"message"</i> if it was not applicable in 
the very circumstances it was designed to be applied in (a bit like 
saying you have an excellent umbrella but it only works when it is 
not raining). Moreover, Cliff is factually incorrect. As we discuss in
<a href="secH6.html">section H.6</a>, the Bolsheviks <i>"violated"</i> 
that <i>"guide"</i> before the civil war started (i.e. when <i>"the 
victories of the Czechoslovak troops over the Red Army in June 1918, 
that threatened the greatest danger to the Soviet republic,"</i> to 
quote Cliff). [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 161 and p. 18] Similarly, much of 
the economic policies implemented by the Bolsheviks had their roots 
in that book and the other writings by Lenin from 1917. 
</p><p>
The conclusions of dissent Marxist Samuel Farber seem appropriate here. 
As he puts it, <i>"the very fact that a Sovnarkom had been created as 
a separate body from the CEC [Central Executive Committee] of the soviets 
clearly indicates that, Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> notwithstanding, 
the separation of at least the top bodies of the executive and the legislative 
wings of the government remained in effect in the new Soviet system."</i> 
This suggests <i>"that <b>State and Revolution</b> did not play a decisive 
role as a source of policy guidelines for 'Leninism in power.'"</i> After 
all, <i>"immediately after the Revolution the Bolsheviks established an 
executive power . . . as a clearly separate body from the leading body of 
the legislature . . . Therefore, some sections of the contemporary Left 
appear to have  greatly overestimated the importance that <b>State and 
Revolution</b> had for Lenin's government. I would suggest that this 
document . . . can be better understood as a distant, although doubtless 
sincere [!], socio-political vision . . . as opposed to its having been a 
programmatic political statement, let alone a guide to action, for the 
period immediately after the successful seizure of power."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
pp. 20-1 and p. 38]
</p><p>
That is <b>one</b> way of looking at it. Another would be to draw the conclusion 
that a <i>"distant . . . socio-political vision"</i> drawn up to sound like a 
<i>"guide to action"</i> which was then immediately ignored is, at worse, little 
more than a deception, or, at best, a theoretical justification for seizing 
power in the face of orthodox Marxist dogma. Whatever the rationale for Lenin 
writing his book, one thing is true - it was never implemented. Strange, 
then, that Leninists today urge use to read it to see what "Lenin really 
wanted." Particularly given that so few of its promises were actually 
implemented (those that were just recognised the facts on the ground) and 
<b>all</b> of were no longer applied in less than six months after the 
seize of power.
</p><p>
It will be objected in defence of Leninism that it is unfair to hold Lenin 
responsible for the failure to apply his ideas in practice. The terrible 
Civil War, in which Soviet Russia was attacked by numerous armies, and the 
resulting economic chaos meant that the objective circumstances made it 
impossible to implement his democratic ideas. This argument contains  
flaws. Firstly, as we indicated above, the undemocratic policies of the 
Bolsheviks started <b>before</b> the start of the Civil War (so suggesting 
that the hardships of the Civil War were not to blame). Secondly, Lenin 
himself mocked those who argued that revolution was out of the question 
because of difficult circumstances and so to blame these for the failure 
of the Bolsheviks to apply the ideas in <b>State and Revolution</b> means 
to argue that those ideas are inappropriate for a revolution (which, we 
must stress, is what the leading Bolsheviks actually <b>did</b> end up 
arguing by their support for party dictatorship). You cannot have it both 
ways.
</p><p>
Lenin at no time indicated in <b>State and Revolution</b> that it was 
impossible or inapplicable to apply those ideas during a revolution in 
Russia (quite the reverse!). Given that Marxists, including Lenin, argue 
that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to defend the revolution 
against capitalist resistance it seems incredulous to argue that Lenin's major 
theoretical work on that regime was impossible to apply in precisely the 
circumstances it was designed for.
</p><p>
All in all, discussing Lenin's <b>State and Revolution</b> without indicating 
that the Bolsheviks failed to implement its ideas (indeed, did the exact 
opposite) suggests a lack of honesty. It also suggests that the libertarian 
ideas Lenin appropriated in that work could not survive being grafted onto 
the statist ideas of mainstream Marxism. In the words of historian Marc Ferro:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"In a way, <b>The State and Revolution</b> even laid the foundations and sketched 
out the essential features of an alternative to Bolshevik power, and only the 
pro-Leninist tradition has used it, almost to quieten its conscience, because Lenin, 
once in power, ignored its conclusions. The Bolsheviks, far from causing the state 
to wither away, found endless reasons for justifying its enforcement."</i> [<b>October 
1917</b>, pp. 213-4]
</blockquote></p><p>
Anarchists would suggest that this alternative was anarchism. The Russian Revolution 
shows that a workers state, as anarchists have long argued, means minority power, not
working class self-management of society. As such, Lenin's work indicates the 
contradictory nature of Marxism - while claiming to support democratic/libertarian 
ideals they promote structures (such as centralised states) which undermine those 
values in favour of party rule. The lesson is clear, only libertarian means can ensure 
libertarian ends and they have to be applied consistently within libertarian structures 
to work. To apply them to statist ones will simply fail.

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