Zabalaza Books

Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism

Zabalaza Books — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:40:49 +0000

Author: Thomas (Miami Autonomy & Solidarity)

File size: 279 KB

As anarchist communists, we are against reformism. However, we are for reforms. We believe that fundamentally the entire system of capitalism, the state and all systems of hierarchy, domination, oppression and exploitation of humans over humans must be abolished and replaced with a direct democracy, egalitarian social relations and a classless economy that bases contribution according to ability and distribution according to need. However, such a social revolution can only occur through the power of the popular classes themselves from the bottom-up. In advancing towards such a social revolution and a free and equal society, we must build our power in preparation for this fundamental transformation of the world, building on struggles along the way….

From the website of Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/

Building Power and Advancing:
For Reforms, Not Reformism

by Thomas (Miami Autonomy & Solidarity)

“We shall carry out all possible reforms in the spirit in which an army advances ever forwards by snatching the enemy-occupied territory in its path.”

– Errico Malatesta [1]

Against Reformism

We are against reformism. Reformism is the belief that the system as it currently exists can remain, but just needs to be slightly improved. For reformists, reform is the end goal. They are not against the system; they are against what they see as the “excesses” of the system. We don’t see the harm that the system does as excesses of the system, but expressions of the fundamental nature of the system. We see the reformists trying to hold down the lid of a boiling pot of water, or letting steam go from that boiling pot now and then; but they do not address the fundamental problem.

For example, the problems under capitalism aren’t because some capitalists are greedy or unfair – which they are; but rather that capitalism itself is the problem. Our global wealth has been historically created from the labour, resources and land from around the world. While the genius of human technology, innovation and hard work have been a factor; so slavery, exploitation, monopolization and theft have been a factor. But regardless of the degrees to which oppression or human genius played their respective roles in the creation of wealth, there can be no doubt that every advance is completely rooted in social relations and circumstance, as well as historical processes. Kropotkin describes this from one perspective in The Conquest of Bread.[2] If this is so, why are some allowed to own and control the land, wealth and the means of production? Shouldn’t these be the common property of all as the inheritance of all that has been contributed by human history and the complex social processes that interacted to bring us to, and maintain the wealth that we have today? So how can we justify maintaining a system where some benefit more than others from the historically developed and socially maintained wealth? And how can we call only for reform of that system? It’d be like sitting at a family dinner where your brother claims to own the kitchen even though you’re cooking dinner with your parents. Your brother then receives all of the food produced and gives you and your parents each 10% of the food while he keeps 70% of it as the owner. A reformist response would be to say that if only each member of the family were able to get a 15% or 20% portion each (leaving your brother with a 55% or 40% share for being the “owner”), everyone would be alright and less hungry. Our response would be that it’s not about redistribution, the original distribution itself is flawed, and so is the system of ownership and work responsibility of the family. We must create a completely new system in which people share the common products of labour, which is carried out according to each person’s ability.

Against Purism

So if we’re against reformism, or reforms as the only goal, shouldn’t we be against reforms themselves? No. We want to make gains, and we are against the position that gains are pointless. Purism is the tendency of some to try to be so pure in their ideological position that they are unable to deal with the sloppiness of reality. It wrongly equates reforms with reformism itself. It rejects any position that doesn’t exactly mirror its ideological position. It leaves little room for dialogue and building with others, and instead is trapped in a position of constantly calling for the long-term vision without a clear proposal as to how to get there, or a clear way to build with people along the way. Purism often leads little room for activity besides ungrounded agitational writing and abstract theorizing from the sidelines. This “all or nothing” approach leaves little room for development towards a revolutionary situation. It ignores how the short and medium-term can connect to a long-term vision, and instead only focuses on the long term.

For Building Power and Advancing

So what is the solution for anarchist communists? We seek to build power towards a revolution. We feel that only the mass movements of the oppressed, exploited and dominated classes will be able to end oppression, exploitation and domination. As members of these classes, we seek to contribute to these movements. In the short-term, we seek to make gains in consciousness, capacity, skills, solidarity, and organization. From a revolutionary perspective this involves what the FARJ calls social work and social insertion.3 At first we are participating in the social movements – social work – often times without being able to have our views gain traction. Through consistent, principled and effective participation, we are able to build relationships with others; establish trust and respect; and dialogue with others about our views and positions. After a while, we hope to achieve some degree of social insertion: the influencing of social movements in the direction of being more directly democratic, more combative, more class-conscious, more anti-hierarchical, more infused with a long-term revolutionary consciousness, and so on.

In the short-term, we also want to win reforms. Losing in a reform struggle can demoralize participants around the possibility of struggle achieving gains; and winning in a reform struggle can demobilize participation and energy as people feel that they have succeed. But likewise, winning in reform struggles can build confidence, organization, capacity, solidarity, skills, and power; and losing in a reform struggle, can strengthen resolve and sharpen strategy. The point is that although we want reforms because they improve the lives of the oppressed and popular classes of which we are a part; even more fundamental to struggle– whether we win or lose – is developing the strength of the movement, which can come out of both wins and gains in reform struggles.

Some important elements within reform struggles are to:

fight the reforms directly using bottom-up, collective power against elite power instead of legalistic, electoral or other top-down “solutions”. This will build power rather than reinforcing savior complex dependencies.
always acknowledge before the end of the struggle the risks of losing – and being prepared to deal with this – as well as emphasizing the importance of struggle beyond the particular reform. Whether reforms are won or lost, the struggle continues until the unjust situation is changed.
always reflecting, always acknowledging areas to improve and always attempting to improve these things together. If we aren’t basing our struggle in praxis – the combination of action and reflection – then we’re either engaging in empty, ungrounded theory from the sidelines, or thoughtless, ineffective activism.

In the medium term, we want to build power. Of course we want to lessen exploitation, oppression, and domination where possible; but in the medium term – regardless of whether any given reform is won or lost – the struggle itself must serve to strengthen the social movements and class-based organizations so that they are able to grow and be more effective in future struggles. We want to create a dynamic in which bottom-up, directly democratic, anti-hierarchical, collective and anti-oppressive class-based power grows stronger and stronger over time. This power is the result of increased and shared consciousness of the causes of exploitation, domination and oppression and of the ways to fight and eventually end them. It’s the result of better functioning organizations; more solidarity; less internal oppression between members and a shared commitment of all to centrally challenge different manifestations of institutional, systemic and cultural oppression; more skill development and more equal distribution of skill development; greater commitment to struggle; a realization of more effective ways to struggle; and so on.

In the long-term, we want this popular bottom-up power to grow to the point where it can effectively end all systems of oppression, domination and exploitation, and replace them with directly democratic, egalitarian, anti-hierarchical and cooperative political, economic and social systems. We see this revolutionary situation coming about after decades of battles – wins and losses – in which the popular classes steadily increase their power and continue to demand more and more until the demands of the popular classes are too much to concede for the elite classes; and the power of the popular classes is enough to effectively carry-out revolution: the abolition of the state and all forms of government that dictate from above, and the replacement of this with directly democratic popular decision-making; the expropriation of the land and means of production from the capitalist class and its bottom-up socialized self-management by the workers and communities; the establishment of classless, egalitarian and cooperative global economies in which economic contribution is according to ability and economic distribution is according to need; the abolition of all systems of oppression and their replacement with social systems, cultural practices and relations that value and respect all people in their full humanity and individuality; the abolition of national systems that value one people over another and their replacement that gives dignity, self-determination and freedom to all human beings and values them equally as human beings across the globe; the end of environmental devastation and its replacement with practices of environmental sustainability and stewardship.

Advancing

In short, we must reject the mentality – reformism – that sees any given reform – or even series of reforms – as the final objective in our struggles. We also must reject the mentality – purism – that rejects all reforms as reformism, and as counterproductive and useless. Instead, we must engage in struggles for reforms in the short-term. These reform struggles must be the means by which we build bottom-up and horizontal popular power – and the corresponding consciousness, skills, solidarity, capacity and organization – in the medium-term. We must not stop building this power, but continue grow, develop and advance – even if we falter or are defeated temporarily at times – towards the possibility of a revolutionary situation in which we destroy the fundamental causes of exploitation, domination and oppression themselves, not just their symptoms.

Footnotes:

Malatesta, Errico. The Anarchist Revolution: Polemical Articles 1924-1931. Pg. 81
Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. Chapter 1: Our Riches: http://libcom.org/library/conquestofbread1906peterkropotkin1
“Especifismo in Brazil: An Interview with the Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janeiro (FARJ)” by Jonathan Payn. Anarkismo.net: http://www.anarkismo.net/article/19343

From the website of Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/

Anarcho-Syndicalism and Principles of Urban Planning

Zabalaza Books — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:52:54 +0000

Author: Scott Rittenhouse

File size: 517 KB

Urban Planning is neither boulevards for conquerors, nor a landscape for the palaces of the rich, nor an opportunity for land speculators, nor a design opportunity for artists, nor a conspiracy for social engineers.

Urban planning is conducted to promote the health, safety, and well-being of people living together in urbanized areas; to enable people in urbanized areas to use scarce resources efficiently (all natural resources are “scarce”: supply and demand equals scarcity); and to mitigate the impact of population growth on the health of the planet.

Under capitalism, planning has been used to service the interests of the rich who own property [real estate] and the means of production. Under Anarchism, these will be “socialized”: expropriated, collectively “owned” by the Free Commune / Community, used and self-managed by workers and residents, non-transferable, and non-saleable. People will be able to make the land use decisions which meet their needs and make their lives better. There will be no “property values” or land speculation….

Scott Rittenhouse had a Masters degrees in Planning and Public Administration from USC and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from VCU. He was also a specialist in the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 and the environmental impacts of urban growth.

Anarcho-Syndicalism and Principles
of Urban Planning

by Scott Rittenhouse

Why are there urban centres?

Since the stone age (around 12,000-9,000 B.C.), urban centres are the manner in which people work together to survive and improve their lives by storage, manufacturing, transportation, trade, security and knowledge of people, resources and goods. Centres were permanent population settlements located where there was water and food (plant and animal domestication), so they were places to store food and resources.

They were also places where people had the time to manufacture tools, pottery, baskets, clothing, weapons and other goods. They traded their surpluses with other centres. Extended families would intermarry with other centres for healthy blood lines and trade relations. Some centres were near transportation routes like waterways. So they were centres of trade and transportation.

All culture is based on trade, beginning with language. Centres were a place of security from wild animals (surrounded by a wall or fence), but they also had to be a place of security where people felt safe carry on their activities without being robbed, killed or otherwise molested. So residents agreed to conduct themselves cooperatively in the interest of the community and come together in its defence or an emergency like a fire. Later on, workers associations would each have a militia that shared part of their common defence.

Lastly, centres were places where knowledge was accumulated and shared; eventually, using writing. Writing also allowed the keeping of records like agreements and economic activity. Centres with knowledge, culture and trade are “civilization” and civilization is inevitable (but not necessarily the one we live in today: many were non-hierarchical and did not waste resources building large structures or monuments of stone).

Urban centres have been shaped by the invention of the State (originally, a professional military), technology and economic changes, but their function is the same.

What is urban planning?

Modern urban planning resulted from the failures of Capitalism addressed in 3 social reform movements: (1) The Progressive Era produced zoning and building codes to regulate land use development and structural safety; (2) Social Democracy produced the idea of public goods which could not be produced efficiently by Capitalism, but must be produced socially through public works projects and services (infrastructure, employment and health); and (3) Ecology introduced the idea of The Limits to Growth (e.g., scarce resources, pollution and economy) and produced regulations for environmental health, energy efficiency and adequate infrastructure capacity.

I have tried to encapsulate these into 9 principles of urban planning. I have described some of the cases where Capitalism has deviated from these principles. However, I expect these principles to apply to a new society based on Anarcho-Syndicalist organization, worker self-management and the abolition of social classes.

1. To separate incompatible types of land use, so that people do not have to live in, about, or near dangerous or unhealthy activities. By contrast, the capitalist class system has historically located the housing of poor, immigrant, coloured, and working class peoples near to industrial areas.

2. Planning originated to promote health [e.g., insure proper ventilation to prevent disease, non-lead pipes and paint to prevent lead poisoning], structural integrity and fire safety [e.g., proper electrical wiring, fire walls, fire escapes]; especially, walk-up tenement apartments like the overcrowded apartments of the poor. It is also intended to provide adequate affordable housing for people with working class incomes and special housing needs.

Under capitalism, housing speculators build for the rich and leave the oldest and poorest quality housing for the working class and the poor. “Affordable” rents for the working class often exceed 50% of income; forcing households to under-consume housing (use less than they need) and live in overcrowded or severely overcrowded conditions [based on US Government Dept. of Housing and Urban Development definitions: “overcrowded”=1 to 1.5 persons per habitable room, excluding bathrooms and hallways; “severely overcrowded”= over 1.5 persons per habitable room; many households exceed 2 persons per habitable room according to US Government Census]. Unhealthy and dangerous slum housing for the poor is common and anti-slum laws are rarely enforced and lightly penalized. Liveable apartments are often left unoccupied by speculators who “landbank” the property by writing off any costs on their taxes and waiting to develop the property or sell it until it becomes profitable to use it to benefit rich people.

Housing in immigrant, non-white, and working class neighbourhoods is also penalized by a racial and class discrimination practice called “redlining”. Until 1961, banks, insurance companies and the government literally drew lines around areas they would not serve, based on a standard banking practice adopted by the welfare state of not permitting loans that would allow people from different races or ethnic groups to live in the same neighbourhood. This also set aside areas where the poor and working classes were expected to live in apartments or single room occupancy hotels [where liquor stores, drug addiction, religion, cops, and social welfare could be concentrated to keep the poor under control]. Later, the poorest families were given rent subsidies or housed in “public housing” projects. Unemployment, police profiling and gang activity now lead a lot of poor people to being imprisoned or killed at a young age.

3. All new economic, residential and public/civic development must provide adequate infrastructure and be supported by adequate unused infrastructure and treatment capacity. Capital improvements (public/civic infrastructure construction) requires several years to forecast demand, design, and build—they must be functioning when a new development is completed to service the people and activities which will take place there (e.g., streets, water, electricity, sewers, telecommunications); including the construction of regional scale public generators, treatment plants, and recycling. These activities support life, transport resources, and manage waste externalities (organic, by-products, pollution) to protect the health of the community.

4. Land use decisions should be made by community residents who will be affected by them (and take into consideration the workplaces/jobs which will also be affected). Under capitalism, government is a Plutocracy (rule by the wealthy). Appointed power-elite “commissions” manage the bureaucracy (the State) and claim that bourgeois “citizen advisory groups” provide public input into laws and policy-making (aka. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite). Land use decisions are made to protect the “private property rights” and profits of capitalists, speculators, and bourgeois’. Political machines try to corrupt and control “grass roots activists” in working class communities, so their residents can be more easily exploited and pacified.

Land use decisions should also consider public safety (e.g., fire protection, emergency medical services, and physical security). Capitalists use police violence to protect the rich and maintain the class system. Capitalism is the principle cause of social malaise (poverty, illness, social violence/”crime”, etc.). Night lights and open spaces can be laid out so that people and residents are visible and more safe from “crime” or they can be chained from public use. Concrete barriers and fences have been used to protect children at schools, parks, and in child care from gun fire or abduction. An egalitarian socialistic society will make social violence and exploitation unnecessary—we should not adopt, OR TOLERATE, the methods of our exploiters.

5. People are products of their environments. Each neighbourhood should be landscaped and provide basic “public goods” within walking distance (facilities, services, resources—schools, parks, libraries, etc.; also, grocery stores, drug stores, clothing stores, clinics, cafeterias, and other basic social needs). Under capitalism, working class and poor neighbourhoods are underserved or discriminated against (e.g., school districts buy books for schools in rich neighbourhoods — at working class schools they use the same money to buy security guards, metal detectors, and drugs to sedate and control “problem students”). Working class students have to go to overcrowded schools or are bussed.

Trees (“urban forest”) help mitigate the “urban heat island” effect of paved urban areas. Minimizing impervious paved surfaces, xeroscape (plants needing little irrigation), and building groundwater settling basins helps to mitigate urban runoff water pollution. Reclaimed water can be used instead of fresh water for irrigation. The upper classes develop hostile fire, earthquake and flood-prone environments to suit their vanity and profits. Landscaping with fire-resistant plants and requiring fireproof housing materials can help mitigate brush fires. In a classless society, urban sprawl would not be economically practical, and these areas would be more suitable for conservation due to safety or ecological concerns.

6. Public goods should be socially (publicly) owned and benefit the entire community. The burden of financing public goods should be borne equally like mutual aid by the community. Under capitalism, existing residents vote and have come to scapegoat the impact of growth on newcomers who are then billed for it through environmental impact fees or “proffers” (“voluntary contributions” as a condition of approving a development=government extortion). Similarly, older wealthy residents and capitalists have resisted public good spending not directly beneficial to them and called it “pork barrel”. The result was a lack of maintenance on public facilities like schools, staff service cuts, and work speed-ups of service and infrastructure workers.

In a socialistic society, the definition of what is a public good may change; especially, in counties with very low salaries. The society is responsible for the health and well-being of all its peoples. The rich currently benefit from labour but do not pay for the full value of that labour as part of the cost of production. Under worker self-management, those costs will be shared by workplaces — the equivalent of subsidizing water, electricity, housing, food, clothing, health care and other basic necessities to assure a productive workforce is nominal compared to the wasteful consumption of the bourgeoisie and the rich under the current system. Social needs should be produced based on demand (forecasted use), not speculation or privilege (luxury).

7. Urban areas should be designed to be energy efficient. Communities should be designed around public transportation with mixed use (housing atop parking, stores and other nonindustrial workplaces) and residential populations concentrated along transit right-of-way corridors. Urban sprawl must be contained and precluded. Communities should use “best available practices” to minimize air and water emissions (pollution), and recycle their waste products as is done with reclaimed water (especially toxic and radioactive wastes).

8. All land used must be recyclable and recycled when community needs change. Urban “brownfields” (poisoned land and groundwater), “superfund sites”, leaking underground storage tanks, must be cleaned up and replaced by ecologically friendly land uses. Future uses must be more safely designed.

9. The urban spaces of the future should reflect the classless society including leisure, creative, and artistic activities for everyone; mutual aid; and public meeting spaces (aka, Casa del Pueblo) for conflict resolution, research, information exchange, social-economic planning, decision-making, entertainment, etc.

Conclusions

Neoliberalism is a reaction against planning regulation, enforcement and finance other than in the service of corporate business interests. It would privatize and restrict access to much of the State including infrastructure, services and facilities. American cities are already firing workers, selling buildings and turning public libraries and parks over to private foundations. This idea (e.g., privatizing tap water) has already caused unrest in other countries. The most significant impact of this besides reduced services will be a reduction in the demographic, land use, and environmental information collected by planners and engineers for planning purposes. This makes it harder to understand urban problems.

The future will be driven by scarcity. Capitalism is not up to the job. It promises urban colonialism (working class neighbourhoods run by political machines, cops and absentee landlords), pollution, and global warming (e.g., population growth, migration, climate change, hunger, pestilence, pandemic, economic elitism, police statism, social unrest and resource wars). Clean air, water and open space will be privileges of the Rich and those rewarded by the police state who will live in exclusive communities. Most people will be condemned to ignorance, drudgery and daily toil to survive.

…unless there is an intervention by people willing to fight for a Social Revolution and a better world.

(I have written down my ideas on how this might happen in other essays on the Free Commune, Housing, Health Care, A Living Wage, Agriculture, Ecology, Economics, etc.)

In Memory of
Scott Rittenhouse,
1959-2012

Scott passed away in October 2012. More on Scott, and messages of respect to him can be read here.

Some quotes from him:

The well-being of people is more important than money. Social problems can be done away with by eliminating poverty and cruelty and the reasons people hurt each other out of desperation to survive.”

“There can be no political freedom without economic freedom. There can be no freedom without social equality.”

“Capitalism…can only lead to a social class system with extremes of political power, over-consumption and concentration of wealth supported by extremes of poverty, war and environmental destruction.”

“To resist authoritarian institutions we must undermine their legitimacy.”

“The emancipation of the working class must be the task of the workers themselves (First International Preamble). If I want change I have to be willing to work for it myself. Politicians, leaders and bosses only act in their own interest.”

From the Ideas and Action site

http://ideasandaction.info/

Scott Rittenhouse had a Masters degrees in Planning and Public Administration from USC and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from VCU. He was also a specialist in the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 and the environmental impacts of urban growth.

Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation

Zabalaza Books — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:10:03 +0000

Author: Scott Nappalos

File size: 379 KB

The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Since the collapse of the majority of the “official Communist” regimes, the world has witnessed both events and ideas that have undermined the former dominant thinking within the left. The Zapatistas, Argentina in 2001, South Korean workers movements, Oaxaca in 2006, the struggles around anti-globalization, and Greece’s series of insurrectionary moments have increasingly presented challenges to traditional left answers to movements and organisation. In previous eras Marxist-Leninism was the nexus which all currents by default had to respond to either in agreement or critique. Today, increasingly anarchist practices and theory have come to play this role.

Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea:
A Critical Evaluation

by Scott Nappalos

As a member of an anarchist political organisation, a friend once told me I in fact was practicing democratic centralism. This was perplexing, because the group had no resembling structures, practices, or the associated behaviours of democratic centralism. However, I was told that since we debated, came to common decisions, and acted on that collective democracy, we were in fact democratic centralist. This kind of productive confusion led to questions about the concept, and why the target of democratic centralism has shifted. This move, the shifting conceptual territory of core concepts of a certain orthodoxy, comes up repeatedly not only with democratic centralism, but also surrounding ideas like crisis, dialectics, the State, and class. The resulting cognitive dissonance caused me to investigate attempts at reinvigorating the concept of democratic centralism (democratic centralist revisionism), and understand truly what it is, where it came from, and how it has been practiced.

It can be reasonably asked why someone would choose to address democratic centralism in light of the catastrophic legacy that the so-called official Communist parties of the world (present and former rulers of the Soviet block and associated Marxist-Leninist governments), who popularized globally the concept of democratic centralism, have left us. Indeed, the human tragedy that occurred throughout the old Soviet-aligned nations is so great that we can reasonably question whether we have gotten to the bottom yet, or whether more horrors are still to be discovered. From another perspective, for revolutionaries who find no connection between democratic centralism and these tragedies, we live in a different era from the birth or maturation of democratic centralism. Today is a time of dispersed movement, low-levels of struggle, and failure of the left to organise and sustain itself. The material reality and historical moment of democratic centralism’s heyday could not be further from our own.

Because of the decompositions and changes both in movements and discourse, this has created twin pressures on the thinking around democratic centralism. On the one hand there is a current underway of reframing many such conceptions (likely at least in part as a response to the challenge posed by the failures of so-called official communism and challenges from new libertarian currents and events to such thinking). With the collapse of the Soviet Union attempts to reinvigorate democratic centralism and rescue it from its authoritarian and bureaucratic elements have been increasing. Here, democratic centralism is being remixed for new audiences either by the official communist orthodoxy (Stalinist, Trotskyist, Maoist, etc.), or by the oppositional Marxist-Leninist tradition that argued for a more libertarian interpretation of the concept. Many Marxist-Leninist parties and political formations now give verbal credit to concepts like participatory democracy, worker self-management, and other traditionally libertarian or anarchist concepts. The International Socialist Organisation (US) for example while remaining adherent to democratic centralism frames its democracy beyond simply democracy in terms of participatory democracy. “There have to be formal mechanisms of democracy within the party, but more than that, democracy has to be active and participatory”.[1] The Socialist Workers Party (UK), which earlier was in an international organisation with the International Socialist Organisation, likewise frames workers’ self-activity in terms of a relationship with democratic centralism.

“The ‘self-activity’ of the working class develops through a struggle against the enemy class. As part of this ‘self-activity’ revolutionary workers have to be able to suggest ways of generalizing the struggle, tactics that can produce victory. They can only do so successfully by suggesting tactics, by offering leadership, that fits in with the leadership offered by revolutionaries active in other parts of the class. The question of coordinated direction, of centralized leadership, necessarily arises again. The existence of a centralized revolutionary party does not, therefore, form an obstacle to the self-activity of the masses—on the contrary, the latter is incomplete without it”.[2]

Freedom Road Socialist Organisation draws more explicitly from the anarchist influences within members of its party, and condemns the practices associated with self-identified democratic centralist organisations as bureaucratic centralist.

“Many of our revolutionary youth are under the organisational sway of various anarchist tendencies. Some are strongly influenced by what they believe is Zapatismo. They have also, perhaps rightly, been soured by what they have learned of the bureaucratic centralism and vanguardism practiced by various Marxist-Leninist parties historically”.[3]

Though in this moment such statements seem unassuming, it’s worth reflecting on their significance. Even the fact that a group like the SWP (UK) would have to put forward and defend the concept of the self-activity of the working class is a sign of the times. Democratic centralist thinking is being pushed to defend itself against the critiques of both past democratic centralist movements and the growing dominance of anarchistic thinking that seems to contradict democratic centralism. Democratic centralism is seen either as an unachieved goal, or as a tool which can provide solutions to the new environment we find ourselves in. There are then multiple attempts to contest ownership of democratic centralism, craft a new revisionism about democratic centralism, break it from its most crass Stalinist form, and claim new lineages or practices.

As the Freedom Road quote shows such moves do not only come from within the Marxist-Leninist milieu, but also from ex-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers. This is not neither necessarily new nor solely monopolized by the Marxist-Leninist left. Perceived roadblocks and limitations of the broad libertarian or anarchist milieu have sent some in search of answers to real problems they face as revolutionaries in struggle. The series of protest movements which fueled anarchism’s rise in the global north (anti-nuke, anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-austerity, etc.) have presented insufficient responses to the attacks of states and capital, and the unorganised or anti-organisational libertarian milieu is perceived as not posing sufficient answers to on-the-ground issues of how to respond to repression, how to push forward with revolutionary challenges, and how to build upwards across the peaks and valleys of struggle. Some anti-authoritarians (though likely a small minority) thus have begun to turn to democratic centralism as well as a cure for the perennial disorganisation and out-organisation of social movements at this time, and as a general response to low-points in struggle.

Framing Failure

It’s worth noting though in both cases, there’s thinking around organisation that connects a theory of organisation across the periods with specific problems of movement today. Many thinkers attempt this move, for example when people try to account for the failures of revolutions in terms of the actions, absence, or presence of specific revolutionary organisations. Surely those things are factors, but there is a larger elephant in the room.

Take the Spanish revolution of 1936 for example. One series of analyses relates to questions of organisation either from Trotsky, the Friends of Durruti, factions in the CNT, or relationships to organised international movements. In other words, why weren’t particular organised revolutionaries able to win the war, deepen the revolutionary process, or beat back sabotaging reformist tendencies? Another question though is why did the Spanish popular classes fail to intervene at key moments even when there were organised tendencies representing such positions? There are separate questions and elements in these situations. There are organisations, there are revolutionaries, there are reactionary forces, and there are the activities of the popular classes (as diverse and complex as they are). We should separate out then questions about organisations from large scale popular questions. The two are bound up together, but answers to one do not necessarily provide answers to the other. To be concrete, even if you have the perfect organisation with the correct line in 1936 Barcelona, it’s not given that the people would have destroyed the State and assumed popular control. This is just to say that the question of revolution is bigger (though not independent) than organisation.

The project to revise, expand, or reframe democratic centralism arises from these instincts about organisational questions settling political problems. In trying to do so, democratic centralist thought is pushed in a number of directions that cannot be reconciled. In opening up this discussion, the intention is not just to point the independent anarchist-communist organisational history, but rather to question the way in which the project of democratic centralist revision approaches organisation in our conjuncture: today, here, and with our problems.

Defining the Debate

In Petrograd during the summer of 1917, the Sixth Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolshevik) occurred. At this congress it was later reported that the Bolsheviks defined democratic centralism as follows:

That all directing bodies of the Party, from top to bottom, shall be elected;
That Party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective Party organisations;
That there shall be strict Party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority;
That all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all Party members.[4]

The first three points are relatively uninteresting, whatever we think of directing bodies, elections, minorities, and discipline. The fourth stands out. The history the quote is draw from was written by a special commission of the Communist Party central committee under Stalin, shortly following some of the worst purges in the 1930s, and with the liquidation of much of the leadership of the Bolsheviks from the revolution having been murdered.

Most of the content of this article arose from a debate with friends about the legitimacy of the fourth point above. There are a number of factors. Was it real? Is this actually what democratic centralism represents or merely a Stalinist aberration? To what extent did it actually represent Bolshevik practice? Is democratic centralism inherently Leninist, or is it a more fundamental concept? Did it represent it only for certain periods? Is there another way of interpreting it?

Critics from the libertarian left have often been content to merely attack the most obvious and egregious forms of democratic centralism. This leaves these critiques open to quick dismissal and wastes an opportunity to expose core political issues that can help our movement grow. It is useful then to engage the theory, take on democratic centralism at its best arguments, on its own terms, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the dangers of democratic centralism so that we do not face the same problems under a different banner.

Democratic centralism will be addressed on four fronts to provide a wider scope than is normally given to the concept. First, where did democratic centralism grow out of, and how did it develop in history? Second, what did oppositional revolutionaries who contested the ideas of democratic centralism outside the orthodoxy offer in understanding the debate? Third, moving to the US context, how did democratic centralist practice function in recent history? Lastly what does it look like if we abstract away all the history and practices, and look at it hypothetically as a theory of the process of the internal functioning of organisations?

Within democratic centralism we see for all the theorists, there are two components: a process of internal functioning, and a structural proposal for the interaction of centralized bodies with the base of the party. The interpretations between the two components vary. It is with the process of internal functioning we will find the main motivations for the theory and practice, as well as the best insights it has to offer. The structural proposal on the other hand has the least offered justifications and the worst implications. It is in the ambiguity within and between these two components, and the failure to demarcate the structural component from an authoritarian relation that gives democratic centralism its fatal flaws, and makes any reinvigoration from more democratic motivations unsustainable.

Though unfortunately broad, this investigation tries to reveal a fork created by democratic centralism. On one side is the material reality of democratic centralism as a living theory in the history of class struggle with inherent bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies.[5] As Ngo Van, Vietnamese revolutionary and participant in various Vietnamese Leninist parties, states, “the so-called ‘workers’ parties’ (Leninist parties in particular) are embryonic forms of the state. Once in power, these parties form the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of exploitation”.[6]

On the other side there is democratic centralism as a liberatory concept abstracted from practice, yet so broad that nearly every form of organisation from anarchist to market socialist becomes democratic centralist, and hence meaningless. The goal, as with any revolutionary inquiry, is not to merely castigate or to try and paint the adherents of movements or theories as one-sided pathological villains, but to learn from the mistakes and victories of humanity in pursuit of liberation from centuries of exploitation and oppression.

We will close not simply with the critique, but instead with a brief description of a different methodology for revolutionary organisation. Called especifismo, dual-organisationalism, platformism, or at other times simply anarchist communism, this tradition developed its way of thinking and acting in unity without the structures or concepts of democratic centralism. Coming to life independently in different moments in Asia, South America, Europe, and North America this tradition provides answers for the real problems that democratic centralism wrestled with and ultimately failed to address.

The Birth of Democratic Centralism

Today we can see that democratic centralism was to become the organisational theory of a rising ruling class. It became a tool of domination over all of Russia’s labouring classes, and eventually across the globe. Struggles for liberation led by committed revolutionaries produced state capitalist dictatorships against the proletariat, though under a red banner.[7] The story of democratic centralism is more complicated than this however, and it is important not merely to condemn the mistakes but to attempt to understand what happened.

Democratic centralism lived and changed across its life beginning with Russian Social Democracy and evolved to become a dominant political class with a monopoly of power and illegalized all political opposition. We should say there are many democratic centralisms rather than a single unitary theory. It is easy to look back at its most characteristic form under Stalin and associated official Communist Parties wherein higher bodies had dominant powers and centralization trumped democracy, but both the theory and practice of democratic centralism never had such coherence or continuity.

The most broad and populist formulation of democratic centralism describes it as being a method for internal function, or how to act inside an organisation, that goes through a process of democratic deliberation to form a unity, which will be carried out as a group. It is democracy in deciding, and unity in action. Allegedly, non-democratic centralist groups rejected unity in action, having discussion and then individuals and divisions acting as they pleased irrespective of decision. Still other groups have no democratic debate, and simply implement directives. Democratic centralism is supposed to unify these (dialectically) in a practice of internal democracy, and external unified action. But what were the motivations for this theory, and what relationship does it have to higher bodies, directives, internal oppositions, etc.?

The term was first used by a Lassalean named Schweitzer, who was a German socialist active in the General Association of German Workers. That group was organised under what he called “democratic centralism”. Interestingly Marx and Engels criticized the strict organisation practiced by this group in their September 1868 letters.[8]

The fleshed out democratic centralism as we know it came on the heels of a short period of openness secured by the 1905 revolution in Russian. Both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks introduced the concept when they were in the common social democratic party. The Mensheviks were actually the first ones to put out the concept at their 1905 conference, with the Bolsheviks following shortly thereafter. At a unity conference in 1906 both factions adopted a resolution endorsing democratic centralism.[9] The most common formulation however came from Lenin’s report at that congress, and was “freedom of discussion, unity of action”.[10] In the context of the congress this meant the engagement and debate of the party members, the coming together of branches in a coordinated cohesive organisation, and implementing the decisions made in the open discussions.

The split in Russian social democracy that was to produce a fleshed-out democratic centralism occurred around a division on what membership constituted.[11] Lenin’s conception of democratic centralism sought to respond to a context of illegality and the authoritarianism of the Russian monarchy. Democratic centralism was a proposal for how the party should function both for a level of commitment and unity, and for paid professional revolutionaries.[12] All of these issues were transformed first in the 1905 revolution, and later during the subsequent Russian revolutions. The kernels of this thought underwent shifts alongside the tumult of those struggles.

It is important to see that democratic centralism sought to address real issues. With democratic centralism, Lenin and his associates promoted the idea of revolutionary organisation based on coordinated activity, an internal process for debating and trying craft and hone political positions around that activity, and an orientation of members to that work at a high level of commitment.

Stated in that way, these are important points that are not owned by democratic centralism, but are broad issues many revolutionaries (and their theories) try to grapple with. It was the particular ambiguities and marriages of these concepts to others that gave democratic centralism its historical significance and problems.

Lenin’s conception of commitment was expressed as paid professional revolutionaries.

“I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be (for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.” [13]

There are a number of false assumptions here that led to dangerous paths. We can reasonably question (4) given the unsuccessful experiences of guerrilla movements worldwide. Professionalism and training do not seem to have sheltered movements for example in the Southern Cone of South America from the resources and organisation of local and international imperialism.[14] Today Lenin’s assertions seem naïve:

“When we have forces of specially trained worker-revolutionaries who have gone through extensive preparation (and, of course, revolutionaries “of all arms of the service”), no political police in the world will then be able to contend with them, for these forces, boundlessly devoted to the revolution, will enjoy the boundless confidence of the widest masses of the workers”.[15]

The ability of revolutionary movements to be immersed and supported within popular power under such repressive conditions provided a much better security than professionalism could hope to. Confidence in the workers comes less from professional training than the emergence of revolutionary currents in autonomous struggles. Lenin had no serious response to the alienation of paid professionals from those struggles.

Lenin also failed to see the distinction between seriousness and discipline versus the centralization of decision-making and power. He explicitly rejected such distinctions in fact. Lenin argued for a rigorously applied division of labour, and believed that workers and non-proletarian revolutionaries needed to be removed from wage labour in order to become a professional revolutionary. For instance Lenin argues that “a well-organised secret apparatus requires professionally well-trained revolutionaries and a division of labour applied with the greatest consistency…” [16]

As Larry Gambone and Don Hammerquist point out, there is a difference between political unity and the centralization of power.[17] [18] Many communists of the period conflated the two concepts, in terms of the form or structure of the organisation and the content of the organisation. The point ultimately was to ensure an effective and serious organisation, but the professionalization of this work was to be transformed later in practice into party-bureaucracy officials. This division would eventually become one of the bases by which the party bureaucracies became the administrative ruling class, and sought to liquidate all political opposition in the masses and internally.

For all the talk of seriousness, paid professionals, cadre, etc., it can reasonably be questioned how accurate that was for the Bolsheviks at various points, and the causality of the revolution. It’s often proposed that the Bolshevik’s understanding and practice of democratic centralism, unlike the disorganisation of anarchists say, secured their position at the vanguard of the masses, and made ultimately allowed the revolution to thrive, at least initially. Yet there’s also a different defence of the Bolsheviks that contradicts these ideas. Some put forward the idea that the Bolsheviks were very democratic initially, to the point where the central committees could not have discipline over the party, which had an allegedly thriving democracy.

For example one author, Alexander Rabinowitch, makes reference to a well-cited event in which the central committee suppressed one of Lenin’s letters (Marxism and Insurrection) from the party’s membership in 1917. Lenin criticized the party publicly. Similar disputes and disagreements in the Central Committee at that pivotal time are taken as evidence of the lack of cohesion and authoritarianism charged against the Bolsheviks under Lenin. In the July days of the Russian Revolution the military organisation of the party and regional bureaus (something like locals) acted independently of the Central Committee in partly initiating the demonstrations that led to the July days. Perhaps most famous of all was the incident where Lenin argued for overthrowing the provisional government in an insurrectionary act by the party and revolutionary forces. Key to this for the purposes of argument is the fact that Lenin was in a minority concerning launching the October revolution, for which the majority of the Central Committee opposed even publicly.[19]

This poses a contradiction however. If the Bolsheviks were not a cohesive organisation, with a robust democracy of sections acting independently of each other, a central committee unable to maintain the will of the majority, etc., it begs the question what role democratic centralism plays? If the party was not democratic centralist at that time, then it appears democratic centralism occurred with the rise of the bureaucracy and the death of the revolution. If it was democratic centralist during the chaotic period, in what sense was it centralist? As we will see these ambiguities plague the theory and become a moving target.

At some point even most Leninists would agree that party cadre were transformed from revolutionaries attempting to build initiative, accountability, and discipline into having military like obedience of party hierarchies. Surely the theory itself has a strong role to play in this, but the historical struggles of Bolsheviks and Russian peasantry and workers intrinsically shaped this ideology as well in the course of successive revolutionary waves. As history unfolded, what were once mere concepts in writings were later interpreted and found a voice in the post-revolution world of Russia and other nations.

Today we can see some errors in the theory that should be increasingly obvious, and which had practical consequences. There is a difference between voluntary commitment of militants and compulsory obedience to higher authorities with monopolies of power. This is not merely moralism either; without independent capabilities and assessment skills; revolutionaries will not be able to build anything. Under the soviet bureaucracies, such soldier-like functioning was able to function in accordance with the interests of the State, but in our situation replicating such is suicidal. Paid professional revolutionaries develop interests and perspectives separate and often against that of the working class they are supposed to serve. Through separating both in terms of work, physically, and organisationally from the classes they serve, bureaucracies develop independent perspectives, needs, and desires which they reflect as any class formation does. This should be clear from union bureaucracies that arise from the working class but grow to work against it, for example when union bureaucracies seek to secure a reliable existence through soft-ball contracts and appeasing the bosses. Though in theory they represent the workers, in reality their own interests as bureaucrats can turn them against their fundamental task, and put them in an antagonistic position in relation to workers. Left ideologies have no silver bullet to prevent that transformation.[20]

Some claim that Lenin gets a pass, with Stalin taking the blame for the mechanical and repressive structure of the Russian Communist Party following Lenin’s death. The consequences of this professionalization and centralization proved disastrous in terms of repression against political and popular opposition before Stalin’s rise however, and its role was solidified in the early 1920s in producing a bureaucracy vested in reorganising capitalism within the revolution through attacks on the soviets and collectivization efforts, and eventually introduction of market reforms under the NDP period.[21]

The victory in the civil war against the counter-revolutionary Russian whites brought about new problems for the fledgling Bolshevik regime. Years of war and the backwardness of the Russian economy proved a challenge. Though the whites were defeated, there was far from cohesion both inside the party and outside of it. Imperialist invasions, internal sabotage, and competition with other political currents all weighed heavily on the rising Bolsheviks. External to the party, prior political allies were viewed increasingly as a liability. Economically, Lenin and the party looked to capitalist theory of economic production through Taylorist management, factory time studies, and centralized repressive managerial powers in production. Autonomous workers and peasants movements provided a potential challenge to any plans to implement Taylorist production in Russia. Their direct implementation of collectivisations and proto-socialist experiments created a bulwark and organisation of alternatives that would have to be restrained in order to move in that direction. The Bolsheviks believed that Russia needed to pass through a capitalist phase before graduating to socialism, and sought to increase the productive forces of Russia via state-capitalist measures. Allies of the revolutionary peasantry and working class thus posed a double challenge to Bolshevik power.

The Ukrainian anarchist worker and peasant movements were thus seen as a threat. Earlier, the Ukrainian anarchist militias (often called the Makhnovschina after the most famous of them, Nestor Makhno) saved the Bolsheviks during the White assault that nearly destroyed them. The Whites had advanced to Moscow, only to beat back when the Ukrainians destroyed their supply lines from behind bit by bit, and sent them fleeing. With the whites out of the way, the Bolsheviks turned on their former Makhnovschina allies and sought to destroy the power of the workers and peasants in Ukraine, Siberia, and elsewhere (let alone considering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, etc). Likewise Left Social Revolutionaries party members would face brutal repression in the Bolsheviks’ attempts to centralize power in a party dictatorship. The workers movements, inspired by councilist and anarcho-syndicalist movements, faced military repression including the infamous assault and murder of the communist and anarchist Kronstadt sailors, once amongst the front guard of the revolution.[22] The mass movements were treated as threats to the power of a professional revolutionary force using the might of a centralized military to impose capitalism onto a rebellious and self-organising peasant and workers movement. While these issues are external and democratic centralism only deals with internal manners, it is worth understanding the economic and political transformations the Bolsheviks initiated while consolidating their conception of internal functioning.

Whatever one may think about these external oppositional movements, internally as well the Bolshevik leadership turned its guns on its political opponents with Lenin leading the charge. Two internal factions (there were also other left communists that split from the party) sought to critique the relationship of the party to the mass movements as one of domination and repression, and question the role of centralization internally. The Democratic Centralist faction [23] and the Workers’ Opposition [24] led this fight, and advocated something akin to syndicalism and a communist critique of the Bolsheviks’ repression and imposition of capitalist social relations on the insurgent working and peasant classes. Both factions were made up of old Bolsheviks from early in the party and were proletarian in character, making them more difficult to carry out character assassinations on. Their opposition movement arose specifically to the imposition of one-man rule in the factories and the administration of the economy by the party, and in fact the centralization of the Central Committee. These factions argued at the Ninth Party Congress of the Bolshevik Party that the soviets should remain autonomous from the party’s rule, and that the management of the economy should be by the union and soviet organisations and not the party. They lost this battle with Lenin blasting them. Here Lenin is at his most candid in rejecting their demands:

“I assert that you will find nothing like it in the fifteen years’ pre- revolutionary history of the Social-Democratic movement. Democratic centralism means only that representatives from the localities get together and elect a responsible body, which is to do the administering [my emphasis]. But how? That depends on how many suitable people, how many good administrators are available. Democratic centralism means that the congress supervises the work of the Central Committee, and can remove it and appoint another in its place.” [25]

Immediately the Workers Opposition and Democratic Centralists were attacked for their alleged anarchist and syndicalist deviations. Lenin acknowledged that there were not Makhnovists, but that Makhnovists would use their positions against the Bolsheviks.[26] The response was to endorse the now infamous concept of one-man rule in factories under the banner of the militarization of labour.

This presents some difficulty for those who would seek to pull democratic centralism away from its historical centralization and bureaucracy. The democratic centralist faction tried to expand the democratic elements of the theory, but at what moment did this occur? What was happening was not merely an argument over terms. The emergence of a monopoly of power in a revolutionary situation transformed existing practices and concepts, and created new contradictory political currents within the same body.

This clash would lead to the ban on party factions, and sow the seeds of the imprisonment and murder of any left communist opposition thereafter. While moral and political critiques of this activity are emotionally resonant and meaningful, there are deeper lessons we should draw as well. The Bolsheviks were not merely great men of history greedy and lusting after power, but were revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to the cause of human equality. Here at these crucial moments, elements of the theory of democratic centralism (professional revolutionaries separate from the masses, subservience of mass movements to the party, and centralization) became ideological weapons of a (perhaps unconscious) ruling class in ascendancy. Far from being liberatory tools, these ideas were embedded in a productivist capitalist ideology that sought to bring the insurgent workers autonomy and peasant implementations of direct socialist production (such as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Siberia) under one-man rule of Taylorist capitalism. The liquidation of those revolutionary experiments would span three decades, and would cost the peoples under Bolshevik regimes countless lives and suffering.

Democratic Centralism beyond Lenin – hope in the West?

Even before Lenin fell and Stalin rose, the Bolsheviks lost allies. A growing amalgam of left communist opposition (councilist, ultra-left, and anarchist) built upon their non-Leninist traditions in the struggles and revolutions across the globe. Still some want to have their cake and eat it to. What about those inspired by democratic centralism, but who either had critiques of or broke from the practices of the Bolsheviks? I will look at a few figures to get a sense of the field. Though one can’t possibly look at everyone who wrote anything about democratic centralism, I hope that by spanning theorists as diverse as Gramsci to Bordiga we can get a sense of what role the concept has played.

Antonio Gramsci is one with credentials that would aid democratic centralism. Gramsci came of political age in the libertarian milieu of industrial Turin. Gramsci, though fond of some rather unenlightened critiques of anarchists, he cooperated with the anarchist workers movements in Turin during the Red Years.[27] Of all the Leninist figures, Gramsci is perhaps one of the most thoroughly libertarian leaning, or at least problematizes a narrow reading of either tradition. Gramsci surprisingly wrote very little explicitly about democratic centralism. The one place he takes it up in some detail is The Modern Prince during his internship in fascist prison. There a few unique elements of Gramsci’s interpretation of democratic centralism that set it apart from the Bolsheviks. Gramsci sees democratic centralism not merely as a set of characteristics of an organisation, or a method for internal decision making, but additionally a process embedded in and shaped by history.

“‘Organicity’ can only be found in democratic centralism, which is so to speak a ‘centralism’ in movement-i.e. a continual adaptation of the organisation to the real movement, a matching of thrusts from below with orders from above [my emphasis], a continuous insertion of elements thrown up from the depths of the rank and file into the solid framework of the leadership apparatus which ensures continuity and the regular accumulation of experience. Democratic centralism is ‘organic’ because on the one hand it takes account of movement, which is the organic mode in which historical reality reveals itself, and does not solidify mechanically into bureaucracy; and because at the same time it takes account of that which is relatively stable and permanent, or which at least moves in an easily predictable direction, etc”.[28]

Though Gramsci’s language is somewhat abstract he appears to open the party up to being accountable to history and the proletariat as well as internally democratic. That is to say that for Gramsci, a democratic centralist organisation is such only when it is able to adapt and reflect the real movement of the working class in struggle. This is moreover internal to his concept of democratic centralism.

“Democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adapted to necessity. It consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in apparent uniformity, in order to organise and interconnect closely that which is similar, but in such a way that the organising and the interconnecting appear to ‘be a practical and “inductive” necessity, experimental, and not the result of a rationalistic, deductive, abstract process-i.e. one typical of pure intellectuals (or pure asses). This continuous effort to separate out the “international” and “unitary” element in national and local reality is true concrete political action, the sole activity productive of historical progress”.[29]

Democratic centralism for Gramsci is both an objective measure of judging the co-evolution of the party with the dominated classes, as well as a methodology utilized by the party to ensure its connection and development within resistance to capitalism.

This is an advance over the Bolshevik model for the theory since it requires that the political organisation be judged objectively both in terms of its role in history and its role for the class. Again somewhat obscurely, Gramsci seems to imply a more pluralistic operation of political organisation through the engagement, co-existence, and synthesis of political opposition as opposed to authoritarian practices.

Unfortunately Gramsci does not fully break from the Leninist model, though perhaps he lays down the paving stones for an exit route.

“This element of stability [see first quote] within the State is embodied in the organic development of the leading group’s central nucleus, just as happens on a more limited scale within parties. The prevalence of bureaucratic centralism in the State indicates that the leading group is saturated, that it is turning into a narrow clique which tends to perpetuate its selfish privileges by controlling or even by stifling the birth of oppositional forces-even if these forces are homogeneous with the fundamental dominant interests (e.g. in the ultra-protectionist systems struggling against economic liberalism). In parties which represent socially subaltern classes, the element of stability is necessary to ensure that hegemony will be exercised not by privileged groups but by the progressive elements-organically progressive in relation to other forces which, though related and allied, are heterogeneous and wavering”.[30]

Gramsci understands the problem of rising bureaucracy and their antagonism to the subaltern classes, but retains the division between rulers and ruled, between centralized power and the class organised. This is not merely an issue with some forces being better organised or having advanced ideas, but the existence of a political class with special organisational powers and in a position of authority in relation to the subaltern classes. In other writings Gramsci argues that the proletariat can develop only embryonic consciousness, which lacks full development without the revolutionary communist party.

“[Democratic Centralism] requires an organic unity between theory and practice, between intellectual strata and popular masses, between rulers and ruled. The formulae of unity and federation lose a great part of their significance from this point of view, whereas they retain their sting in the bureaucratic conception, where in the end there is no unity but a stagnant swamp, on the surface calm and “mute”, and no federation but a “sack of potatoes”, i.e. a mechanical juxtaposition of single “units” without any connection between them.” [31]

Likewise, in other places Gramsci speaks of organisation which seems to suggest a belief in the sufficiency and necessity of presumably revolutionary vanguard leadership. “…In reality it is easier to create an army than to create generals. It is equally true that an already existing army is destroyed if the generals disappear, while the existence of a group of generals, trained to work together, amongst themselves, with common ends, soon creates an army even where none exists.” [32]

Reading Gramsci charitably, perhaps we could excuse or read out the more authoritarian interpretations of that division. Indeed it could be seen as fluid and more historical than organisational. These readings may in fact be unfair to Gramsci, but it creates a dilemma. Take Gramsci at face value and he accepts the problematic divisions in democratic centralism which threaten the more liberatory elements he puts forward.

If on the other hand we find the more liberatory elements in his thought, his stress on praxis, the movements and ruptures of history, the necessity of federation, organic intellectuals, etc., it should be reasonably asked in what sense it is democratic centralism?

The problem is that short of that division, it’s unclear what would distinguish democratic centralism from other organisational methodologies, forms, and histories with completely distinct practices and concepts. Anarchist and socialist practices mirror some of these elements Gramsci describes, but fail to take up the democratic centralist call for the “orders from above”. We are not interested in Gramsci here, but whether Gramsci provides a basis for reclaiming or revising democratic centralism. It is quite possible that Gramsci indeed broke with the Bolshevik’s theory, but such a break would hardly leave democratic centralism as a coherent concept intact.

Though merely a side point here, it should be noted that Gramsci does something unique with organisation. By attempting to understand and develop organisational theory as a dynamic within history, he puts it on a footing which goes beyond mere structural proposals. This points to need for historically specific strategies for organisation, and for our organisations to evolve with their practices in the struggles of the popular classes. While easy to understand, this conception of praxis and historically rooted theory is generally absent or under-utilized from most traditions of left thought.

An opponent of Gramsci provides an interesting counterpoint. Amadeo Bordiga, once a large figure in Italian socialist and communist leadership, and later a leading figure of the left communist current, rejected democratic centralism outright. Gramsci is replying to Bordiga in part when he addresses “organic centralism”, which the Bordigists counterposed to democratic centralism. Bordiga had a thorough critique of democracy in general as a product of bourgeois society, and contrasted it to communism which would have no such corollaries (since communism implies the abolition of classes and the state). Bordiga agreed with Lenin’s argument for tight centralized parties, but rejected the democratic portion for somewhat related reasons.

Bordiga said, “…the meaning of unitarism and of organic centralism is that the party develops inside itself the organs suited to the various functions…” and called for the party to “…[eliminate] from its structure one of the starting errors of the Moscow International, by getting rid of democratic centralism and of any voting mechanism, as well as every last member eliminating from his ideology any concession to democratoid, pacifist, autonomist or libertarian trends”.[33]

Bordiga was prone to polemics and obscurity, and the last quote comes from his left communist period following WWII. Looking to an earlier time when he was opposing the Bolshevization of the communist movement (he was the last to call Stalin the gravedigger of the revolution to his face and live) we gain more insight.

“Democracy cannot be a principle for us. Centralism is indisputably one, since the essential characteristics of party organisation must be unity of structure and action. The term centralism is sufficient to express the continuity of party structure in space; in order to introduce the essential idea of continuity in time, the historical continuity of the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances towards the same goal, and in order to combine these two essential ideas of unity in the same formula, we would propose that the communist party base its organisation on ‘organic centralism’”.[34]

For Bordiga then, democratic centralism borrows from bourgeois society democratic formal mechanisms (voting procedures, layered semi-parliamentary structure), and merges them with a centralist orientation of unity around a communist program. This is a rather crass formulation of Bordiga’s quite insightful distinction between content and form.[35] For Bordiga the content of communism was primary, and the party was rigorously centralized around that content. Though he opposed Gramsci, we see a few areas where they differed and others of apparent agreement.

Bordiga was for continuity and a trajectory, while Gramsci was for movement and induction. Bordiga was against democracy, Gramsci roughly for it (obviously not the bourgeois form). Bordiga raises the issue of centralism though in a way which demonstrates the field of contestation. Bordiga’s critical intervention maintains centralization and places it as a point of agreement, even if an artificial, stagnant, and mechanical one.[36] In other words, Bordiga and Gramsci disagree on the meaning and practice of democracy, but agree partly on centralism. That agreement problematizes any attempt to make centralism more innocuous. Centralism is not merely doing what you say you do, but rather a more fundamentally hierarchical power of minorities over majorities.

Jacques Cammatte, an ultra-left figure once close to Bordiga, but who split from the Bordigist movement, criticized these positions on democracy and centralism.

“The central committee of a party or the centre of any sort of regroupment plays the same role as the state. Democratic centralism only managed to mimic the parliamentary form characteristic of formal domination. And organic centralism, affirmed merely in a negative fashion, as refusal of democracy and its form (subjugation of the minority to the majority, votes, congresses, etc.) actually just gets trapped again in the more modern forms. This results in the mystique of organisation (as with fascism). This was how the PCI (International Communist Party [Bordigist]) evolved into a gang.” [37]

It is interesting that here, amongst the extreme of the ultra-left it is again taken without question that it is the role of the centre that is in question. The question of centralism then from Leninism to left-opposition to ultra-left rejection do not contest that concept of centralism during the heyday of the theory. Unless we grant Gramsci a level of exceptionalism,[38] however we construe it the debate around democratic centralism involved an understanding of the role of an organised hierarchical centre with directive powers.

A Dialectical Alternative?

Moving now to a different tradition, some have looked to the structuralists that came out of Europe and Latin America for alternative tools for reconceptualising Marxism. Though infamous for becoming apologists for the worst of Stalinism under Althusser, some of the structuralists (such as Poulantzas) embraced seemingly libertarian positions such as the autonomy of the state, if only from a problematic revisionist Marxist political economic perspective. These thinkers (Balibar, Poulantzas, Marta Harnecker, etc.) inspired a generation of revolutionaries in Latin America and the Caribbean who sought more liberatory forms of Marxism and were more pluralistic in their influences.[39]

In the article Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use consensus?, Marta Harnecker presents arguments for democratic centralism against bureaucratic centralism. Correctly she asserts that:

“For a long time, left-wing parties operated along authoritarian lines. The usual practice was that of bureaucratic centralism, influenced by the experiences of Soviet socialism. All decisions regarding criterion, tasks, initiatives, and the course of political action to take were restricted to the party elite, without the participation or debate of the membership, who were limited to following orders that they never got to discuss and in many cases did not understand. For most people, such practices are increasing intolerable”.[40]

Unfortunately against these experiences, she makes a caricature of its critiques by contrasting it only to largely anti-organisational perspectives such as excessive faith in consensus decision making procedures alone. Ignoring the crass straw men in her arguments, she promotes democratic moves such as supporting positions of minorities, and encouraging full debate while discouraging majorities from dominating and crushing opposition. At the same time she quite explicitly embraces the binding authority of decisions by higher levels on the base and all the baggage that brings with it.

“For the sake of a unified course of action, lower levels of the organisation should respect the decisions made by the higher bodies, and those who have ended up in the minority should accept whatever course of action emerges triumphant, carrying out the task together with all the other members”.[41]

Again, she makes an identification between democratic centralism and unification not merely of positions but rather of a centralized decision making authority. “This combination of single centralised leadership and democratic debate at different levels of the organisation is called democratic centralism. [emphasis is the author’s]”.[42]

Moving to the second facet of democratic centralism, Harnecker presents a different perspective. Unlike Gramsci who sees the role of democratic centralism as a movement in time of the relationship between the masses and party, Harnecker sees the same movement and dialectic between levels of struggle and the party.

“It is a dialectic combination: in complicated political periods, of revolutionary fervour or war, there is no other alternative than to lean towards centralisation; in periods of calm, when the rhythm of events is slower, the democratic character should be emphasised”.[43]

Gramsci seeks to use democratic centralism as a method for building a unity of democracy and centralization, or perhaps centralization is a democratic process of bringing together the diversity in the mass struggle within revolutionary organisation. Yet Harnecker is closer to Bordiga in seeing them as polar opposites. Taking them dialectically in this fashion, we would wonder when the dialectic is overcome and what comes next (the synthesis)? The implications are not comforting as increasing struggles negate democracy and that does not give us the tools to understand how to avoid the errors of the official communist nations, in all their barbarity. This must be contextualized coming from an intellectual of the party elite writing from Habana.

The deeper point is not about the extent to which Harnecker has come to question the legacy of the Bolshevik inspired national experiments. Rather it is that the debate about democratic centralism by its adherents revolves around two poles: the issue of structural centralization, and the dialectical movement of the process of democratic centralism. Positions differ on how the dialectic is understood, how the structure is produced and relates to the masses, and how it all stands via the party and the question of externality. Yet we can see the ambiguities present at the birth of democratic centralism carry through the theory into its later incarnations. Gramsci came closest to breaking with that tradition, but without the ideological apparatus to climb over that wall. In his case, it may have been both the fascist prison walls and the Stalinist wall of communication surrounding him that prevented his escape or elaborating a separate conception.

In Practice

Democratic centralism as a theory revolves around theses about centralization, higher and lower bodies, and internal processes for revolutionary organisation. What about the practice? What about recent practice, near to our own situation here in the United States in the conjuncture we find ourselves in? Luckily we have accounts of people in these movements reflecting on their participation in and construction of democratic centralist political organisation not merely from one sect or tendency, but from a number of different tendencies, communities, and moments. The length of some of these passages is justified, because such accounts are not always readily available, and provide direct insight into these groups from first-hand participants.

Honing in on a few of these, we can see trends in the practice that mirror the problems in the theory. It isn’t that democratic centralism automatically creates bureaucratic or authoritarian practices. This is not a survey or a quantative study of these parties. Theories are not computer programs that spit out copies of their instructions. Practices diverge, struggle, and evolve in a historical context. Yet looking across disparate traditions and moments we do see some regularity of such practices, and when contextualized with the internal conflict in the theory of democratic centralism, we gain tools for understanding both the theory and the practices, and perhaps a way beyond them. From these reports we find themes of the suppression of critical thinking amongst cadre, directive-command structure from central bodies, suppression of debate and dissent within, holding back the political development of cadre, and unaccountable leadership/professionals. Whether deviant or not, recent US democratic centralist practice reflects the acceptance of centralized directive hierarchies rather than showing them to be contested in thought or struggle.

Central bodies

One of the core elements of democratic centralism is the relationship of central bodies to the party as a whole. Likewise as in the theory, in practice this led to strong central bodies with distinct powers and direction of the party as a whole. Max Elbaum discusses democratic centralist practice in the party and pre-party democratic centralist organisations of the New Communist Movement, a collection of Mao-inspired communist groups formed in the 60s-80s.

“…All sections of the New Communist Movement drew heavily on selections from Mao when trying to define democratic centralism, especially his concise stricture that: ‘(1) the individual is subordinate to the organisation; (2) the minority is subordinate to the majority; (3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and (4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee” [44]

With the entire membership subordinated to the authority of the central committee, these groups “…gave far more weight to centralism than democracy”.[45] In an environment of such concentrations of control, questions surface concerning where power lies and how the membership sets the agenda for the organisation. Elbaum, speaking broadly across the various groups, reflects on how this structure proved mystifying and concentrated not merely decision making in the hands of the central bodies, but also the positions of the organisations as a whole were set by a small group of leaders.

“…The new Marxist-Leninist groups functioned with a sophisticated division of labour and pronounced hierarchy [emphasis is mine]… To exercise week-to-week leadership, the larger groups generally had some kind of central body of five to twelve people located at the national headquarters-usually termed a political bureau or executive committee. Sometimes real power rested with an even smaller subgroup dubbed a standing committee or co-chairs collective… In theory all executive committees were subordinate to the larger central committee, but in practice central committees were relegated to a relatively passive role except in periods of upheaval. Executive committees typically retained authority to choose which individuals would be assigned to the most important organisational posts, including the newspaper, theoretical journal and internal bulletin editors. Those individuals (usually members of the executive committee themselves) shaped the way an organisation’s views would be present…” [46]

While perhaps in theory institutionalization of leadership could try to spread that leadership, in practice it creates a bureaucracy with interests in preserving their control over the life of the organisation. Rather than resolving the question of building more capacity, this institutionalized political centre problematized it as struggles emerged to retain political control over the organisation. This is clear in revolutionary moments from the peaks of history, but also is evident in smaller examples from the New Communist Movement as Elbaum demonstrated.

Unaccountable professional leadership

While the formulation of democratic centralism traditionally promoted election of all positions, this has not always been utilized. In fact the convergence of power and centralization, created a situation in which the method of determining leadership became murky in practice. For the New Communist Movement, “in practice, central committees were chosen in a variety of ways, sometimes by members in each local area electing their representatives without an organisation-wide congress, and sometimes without elections at all”.[47] The deep sway, culture, and politicization of institutional leadership clearly facilitates this situation. The importance and power of leadership contributes to an atmosphere of both withdrawal from and manipulation of the direction of the organisation. While the theory may promote elected leadership, the professionalization and unilateral power of directive centres makes the maintenance of that democracy problematic. Historically, there was a similar repetition where that structure began to undermine the theoretical commitment to democracy.

These practices were not merely isolated to groups inspired by Mao however. In fact they ran the gamut from Trotskyists to Lotta Continua, an Italian autonomia group that moved eventually to a variant Marxist-Leninism. In England, one participant in the Trotskyist movement of the same time period discusses the relationship between full time party leadership and the factional splits characteristic of that movement. Speaking of the International Marxist Group, he said “bureaucratic centralism develops with the growth of the full-time apparatus”.[48] More recently a group of young members from the International Socialist Organisation split and formed a new group called the New Socialist Project. Part of their experiences was shaped by their experiences with such organisations, and a desire to move beyond it.

“There have… been subjective weaknesses and factors that we must face up to. In a good year, the socialist micro-sects recruit a handful of students and intellectuals without training them and without any systematic development process. These sects are usually ruled by an unaccountable bureaucracy that runs its micro-empire of mini-branches with an iron-fisted combination of elitism and myopia, whether or not they have any internal ideology or rhetoric to the contrary” [49]

While we can dismiss fights and harsh words within an often-fractured milieu, these experiences and feelings are not isolated, but are pervasive in the democratic centralist organisations. Without taking sides on who is in the right, we see a repetition of the struggle around unaccountable leadership with monopolies of power holding back membership, and contestation around those centres of power. The debate is framed around these questions; even if different factions don’t agree on who is in err.

Directives/lack of critical thinking

Corresponding to the empowerment of the central bodies and the shifting power away from membership, many participants in democratic centralist groups reference a sense of carrying out orders rather than being empowered and developed to think and act as creative cadre. This was also referenced above in the quotation aimed at the International Socialist Organisation from the New Socialist Project. Coming back to the New Communist Movement, Fred Ho edited a book of interviews documenting the histories of some of these groups called Legacy to Liberation. In one such interview, Chris Kando Lijima describes the role of party members under the directives of the central leadership.

“FH: Most people don’t know what [democratic centralism] was like. Describe it some more.

CI: Here’s an example from doing cultural work. Here’s the line, write a song with the line. Period. You don’t write anything else that’s not the line. It’s your job to write songs, perform songs, that illustrate the line. That was my understanding of [democratic centralism] when it came to cultural work.

FH: So it really wasn’t democratic, but directives.

CI: It was a lot of centralism, but not a lot of democracy, which was true of most groups”.[50]

This assessment, that democratic centralism meant in many instances central directives rather than an active and participatory democracy is repeated in many places. Max Elbaum writes that “democratic centralism also meant that central bodies were given a great deal of power to direct the work of every other party committee”.[51] This direction of work was understood as “all members were required to belong to and take assignments from a party unit [my emphasis]”.[52] All of this is a far cry from building organisations which can help create creative, independent, and competent organisations. Contrary to what Harnecker argues, the military model of directives and assignments is here reproduced not merely in military contexts such as perhaps Russia, but rather in wholly dissimilar situations. We can imagine the reason for this lies not only in authoritarian currents in society, and class contradictions within capitalism, but more importantly from the reproduction of democratic centralist ideology and its inherent tensions.

Suppression of dissent

Directives were not simply an activity of central bodies in isolation. Mechanisms for securing the activity of party members required having means of ensuring internal discipline. Many groups effectively self-censured and implemented policies aimed at suppressing dissent and debate within, especially outside the control of the central leadership. In the New Communist Movement, tasks were assigned as stated before, however there were also policies aimed at limiting disagreements inside and outside the parties.

“Members were accountable to conduct their work on the basis of group policy and to follow through on all their assigned tasks… But group discipline went beyond such sensible arguments. Cadre were also responsible for defending their organisation’s positions in all circumstances and usually prohibited from expressing differences or reservations to any non-member. Some groups even had rules forbidding members from expressing disagreements to cadre outside their base unit”.[53]

Unity in action here is interpreted not merely as democratically abiding by collective decisions, but is taken further. There is an imposition of organisational discipline against disagreement that in the most egregious cases isolated militants into cells, with the expression of dissent between cells being forbidden.

Louis Proyect is a well-known blog about Marxist theory and practices by a self-described former Trotskyist and present Marxist. One such article describes his experiences with democratic centralism in the Trotskyist movement. There, he contests the idea that somehow Trotskyist groups were an exception to the centralization of Maoist and Stalinist parties.

“[The Trotskyist] tradition has associated with it a plethora of intellectual strait-jackets, gag rules, norms about when freedom of speech is in order (for a couple of months even’ couple of years, at least in theory!) and not in order (the rest of the time), and demonstrated inability to contain even minor differences within an organisation.”

“The specifically Trotskyist side of it has been plagued by splits, expulsions and the multiplication of sects, things which have degenerated more than once into spying on comrades, using other police-state tactics, goon squads and in the case of the Stalinists even murder.”

“And there is no basis for separating the specifically Trotskyist tradition from the rest of it. History has shown that there is as little room even in the “healthiest” Trotskyist Leninist Party for a diversity of views as there is among the pro-Moscow Stalinists or Maoists, or as close to as makes no serious difference”.[54]

Against seeing these issues as the inherited problems of one or another Leninist tradition, we see such experiences repeated throughout critical literature by Leninists. Don Hammerquist was a youth member of the Communist Party USA and a red-diaper baby. Hammerquist has been a lifelong revolutionary, and helped found the Sojourner Truth Organisation on a Gramscian-Leninist basis after being expelled from the CPUSA. This next passage, though long, gives unique insight into the functioning of these groups as they attempted to manage the information members received, and to filter the responses and criticisms of party decisions through a tightly controlled central structure (whether this was effective or not).

“It’s a bit of a diversion, but a loosely related personal experience might highlight how the M.L. [Marxist-Leninist] approach to democratic and participatory discussion on “serious” issues actually works. By the close of the 1950s there was ample evidence in this country, some of which was widely reported in the capitalist press, that the divisions between China and the Soviet Union were growing larger and more antagonistic. Nevertheless, this was not acknowledged in the CPUSA and was definitely not a permitted topic for membership speculation.”

“The official Sino/Soviet break came at the 81 Party meeting in the fall of 1960. The N.Y. Times immediately carried a detailed report despite the fact that the meeting was supposed to have been closed. The Times reporting had substantial credibility, since a couple of years earlier it had also printed Khruschev’s “Secret Report” to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and forced that report to be made public before the Communist apparatus was prepared to deal with the repercussions. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Hill’s “rebel girl,” was the chairwoman of the U.S. Communist Party and had headed the delegation to the 81 Party meeting. (The U.S. delegation also included the Chicago jeweller, Morris Childs – aka “Solo” – a long time FBI asset, who we now know was the source for both N.Y. Times reports.) Immediately after the Moscow meeting, Gurley Flynn toured the country to report back to the party. I was at two such meetings. The first was for a definitely atypical group of rank and file communists including my parents. The meeting included a number of knowledgeable activists who were not docile receptacles for anyone’s line and who read the N.Y. Times. Gurley Flynn was asked about the reports of a split between China and the Soviet Union and categorically denied that it had happened, launching into a heavy attack on; “comrades who rely too much on the capitalist press and its lies and distortions”.”

“At a meeting of the district leaderships of Washington and Oregon the very next day, a meeting largely populated by hacks who would never think to raise embarrassing questions or to question anything that came from party authority, Gurley Flynn began her report quite differently. I still remember the words quite well:”

“‘Comrades, I regret having to report that the Chinese comrades have fallen into complete adventurism and petty bourgeois leftism and have split with the international communist movement and the working class.’”

“Why the difference in reports? I asked at the time and was told that it was important to organise and plan such discussions carefully in order to “maintain morale and discipline.” That is what “centralized guidance” meant to me in the U.S. communist party, and it looks remarkably like what Mao is pushing in the Chinese Party in this period. The discussion only happens in a managed framework after the party leadership decides what is a “flower” and what is a “weed” for a cadre of slow-witted gardeners prone to fits of depression.” [55]

This is a good example of the infamous incoherence of the political line of communist parties, which people associate with the repressive times under the soviet bureaucracies and secret police. Again it is not isolated. It isn’t the exception, but centres around attempts to manage information and perception of events. This is natural of course for people, but it is a different animal when a paid institutionalized hierarchy, armed with an ideology of self-appointed leadership of the future revolution, uses it to maintain their own dominance.

I hesitate to put a reference in to the Revolutionary Communist Party because of its infamy for personality cults and a broad consensus amongst the left of it’s questionable activity. Yet the quality, detail, and reflection given by Mike Ely from the Kasama Project concerning the Revolutionary Communist Party’s homophobic positions shows in detail similar manipulations of debate and internal discussion by central bodies as was seen above. The secrecy associated with these parties makes such confessions of internal activity valuable in understanding how democratic centralist groups in our time function.

“From 1970 until 2001, the RU/RCP [102] held that homosexuality was incompatible with revolutionary communist goals and ideology. Gay men and lesbians could not be members. Formal programmatic statements held that homosexuality would be abolished under socialism through ideological struggle or “re-education.” The party’s wrong and backward views became rather notorious through the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis exploded and the Republican Right sought to exploit anti-homosexual bigotry.

What is less well known is how such views were maintained. In the early 1970s it was said that gay people couldn’t be communists because they were a security risk of blackmail. Then after the party’s founding in 1975 the stress was on ways homosexuality was linked to “bourgeois degeneracy.” Then after 1988, the argument was that homosexuality had to be rejected because male homosexuality was (supposedly) inherently hostile to women and lesbianism was (supposedly) inherently a manifestation of lifestyle reformism.

In other words, over the first thirty-plus years of the RU/RCP, the end verdict (the incompatibility of homosexuality with communism) remained the same, while the public justifications for that position morphed with time. And there were essentially no open discussions of these views allowed within the party’s ranks, though controversy and debate increasingly raged around the party’s youth brigade (RCYB).

By the late 1990s, these anti-homosexual politics were so controversial (inside and outside the party) that it would have been impossible to create a new program without major changes. The question was opened briefly but then shut down when the discussion proved highly volatile.

The method used for cutting off this debate is revealing: The new party analysis acknowledged that homosexuality is not inherently counter-revolutionary, but insisted that the Party’s long-standing condemnation of gay people had not come from any influence of anti-gay bigotry. The error, it was said, came from general problems of method and reductionism, not from anti-gay prejudices within the Party.

It was officially argued that the question of homosexuality itself had never been a cardinal question, but the method used to criticize the party’s previous position had to be considered a cardinal question. Translated: The party would still not consider the previous anti-gay errors a huge deal, but it would consider any discussion of possible homophobia among leaders to be completely intolerable. Also considered hostile to the party: Any discussion of why the change in line had taken so long, any appraisal of the huge political cost to the revolution because of this error and any discussion of “the closet” within the party (i.e., ways that secretly gay or bisexual members may have been forced to deny their sexual orientations).

In short: The party had adopted a new (and truly better approach) to homosexuality, but slammed the door hard on any real exploration of anti-gay bigotry among communists and its real-world consequences.

What emerges from such methods is a party where discussions are maddeningly confined and ritualized. They generally take place only after positions (or even a whole new synthesis) have been formally adopted. Questions are “opened” so a new orthodoxy can replace an old one, and then discussions are slammed shut again. Throughout that process ready agreement is expected. Real dissent is assumed to be backward (or worse)”.[56]

Rather than seeing a nuance around how a political centre can facilitate great thought, discussion, and cadre development, we see the opposite. It isn’t that a theory such as democratic centralism will resolve all on-the-ground problems for us. Yet democratic centralism makes itself vulnerable by claiming to be a theory, which does centre around the political development of its members internally, and a vanguard force externally. That framing, combined with an institutionalization of a directive hierarchy creates a problematic environment in which the development of a culture of critical thinking, cadre development, and the ability to be flexible and adaptive is suppressed rather than facilitated.

Retardation of development

Limitations on debate and a command-structure of party activity go hand and hand with holding back the development of competent creative organisers. Such a theme is repeated across tendencies. Louis Proyect discusses the cultivated subservience of members to leadership in the Socialist Workers’ Party.

“I always remember one recurring type of incident from my days in the SWP leadership that symbolizes for me one of the biggest problems with what’s come to be called Leninism. And that is when some big development would take place, and younger comrades — and disproportionately women comrades — would ask me what “we” thought of it. It happened time and again, around the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the overthrow of the Grenadian revolutionary government by the Coard faction (yes, in the name of “democratic centralism”), the Peruvian embassy “crisis” in Cuba and the subsequent Mariel boatlift, the Iranian Revolution. What do “we” think of it. That was the question. Acceptance of whatever truth was about to be revealed was assumed, automatic, unquestioned”.[57]

The Autonomia, a broad movement of Italy’s upsurges during the 1970s, was known for its creativity and novel theory in social struggles both inside and outside the workplace. Yet, when one of the autonomia groups transitioned from a rather unformed revolutionary grouping to a Marxist-Leninist democratic centralist group, similar problems began to emerge. We see this discussed in a blog about Big Flame (an autonomist group from England in the 1970s), which drew from that tradition. Their analysis draws from Italian primary sources within Lotta Continua otherwise unavailable in English.

“Lotta Continua’s organisation prior to 1973 was rudimentary. Apart from decision-making at national conventions, it was run by a group of old friends (Sofri in his 1976 congress speech confessed to a “private patrimony”). Then things changed: “The theoretical and political formation of cadres, the election of leaders, the individual responsibilities of the militant in the framework of collective discipline, the division of tasks and specialisation …It is nothing else than the discovery of democratic centralism and the third-internationalist concept of the party” (Bobbio p. 130, translation Della Porta p. 88). As a result from 1973 onwards “the possibility of comrades contributing to the formation of the political line was reduced; the responsibility for the major decisions was ever more concentrated at the top of the pyramid”.[58]

Though some are looking to democratic centralism as a way to move beyond the inability of the movement to develop people, facilitate greater creativity and strategy in action, etc., historically we see even in the autonomist wing of democratic centralism a tendency to reduce such. Don Hammerquist, again drawing from his experience in the Communist Party USA, describes a repressive campaign that ran against such development. Criticism and engaging the positions of leadership were seen as attacks, and interactions amongst the base to develop ideas were actively repressed and discouraged.

“One of the impacts of the Soviet domination of the international movement in the prior decades was the cloistering and sanitizing of important aspects of revolutionary theory and the relevant intellectual history. The Soviet identified communist parties actively discouraged any study of primary writings in the communist tradition – specifically Capital – and opposed any attempts to place major theoretical contributions and debates into their actual historical context. Instead, a list of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ authors, a few sanctioned pieces from Engels, Marx, and Lenin, and some terrible attempts at summarizations and popularizations from house intellectuals were presented as a finished and closed scientific system with simple lessons to be internalized and obeyed – but with nothing that challenged or was meant to be challenged.

(…)

In 1968, a group of us in the C.P.U.S.A. were disciplined by the National Board and a little later I was put on trial before the National Committee for “factionalism”. A number of issues were involved, one of which related indirectly to Althusser. We were charged with engaging in “horizontal” discussions within the party and opening up those discussions to individuals and groupings outside of the party. (The historical precedents for this form of discipline in the Communist movement stretch back to the 10th Congress of the CPSU, but it was pretty much unknown before that time. d.h.) Our particular “factional” discussions centred around a document that challenged the Party’s program which was then in a draft form”.[59]

It is not simply that these organisations failed to facilitate greater development, but that they were organised against such happening. There were systematic attempts to prevent the growth and independent thought amongst cadre, and a disciplinary regime that would respond to potential new powers. Obviously, a retributive or adversarial orientation towards the multiplication of leadership in the movement is reactionary and suicidal. That history raises the question around how democratic centralism can capitalize on the strength of such disagreement and development, given its rotation around an axis of that political centre.

Conclusions in Practice

“…A better way of political organisation than Stalinist hierarchy needs to be found. But the underlying project – cohering revolutionary-minded activists into a collective body of cadre – remains a crucial task for constructing any effective left”.[60] – Max Elbaum

For generations of radicals attempting to build revolutionary movements that can challenge capitalism, neither the legacy of communist movements nor its theories have been neutral. The challenges of building a revolutionary movement in our conjuncture has a negative synergy with the centralizing impulses that drive democratic centralism. Simply put, the challenges of organising outside of a time of movements and with little historical legacy passed on from previous generations are forces that push people towards centralizing shortcuts that they hope will generate the necessary struggle. In fact typically the opposite occurs, struggles are held back by the conservative and dominating tendencies of these groups. While we should not conclude that such reprehensible activity seen above is automatically driven by democratic centralist theory, we should recognize that such tendencies reside deeply within democratic centralism as a potential, and in fact cannot be cleaved from it simply by critiquing bureaucracy and applauding democracy. While this browsing of recent history is inherently incomplete and selective, taking a broad view we can see that it raises serious challenges for anyone trying to revise democratic centralism away from its bureaucratizing and centralist orientations. It isn’t that such examples are the only type of democratic centralism, but rather that the fights and deviations occur around a central axis of democratic centralism that exposes its inherent weaknesses.

Democratic Centralism outside of Time and Space

Not all democratic centralists embrace Leninism however. Some groups in Latin America have rejected their former identification with Marxism and Leninism, and instead called themselves democratic centralist and dialectical materialist without other identifications.[61] There is a possibility then of arguing that everything I described above is actually bureaucratic centralism and that democratic centralism was not practiced historically, even though people claimed it. For instance the Puerto Rican Socialist Workers Movement (MST) criticizes such a conception:

“We socialists who aspire to contribute to unifying broad sectors of the working class and people in one or several mass organisations, fronts, or movements seeking political power, can’t even ponder that possibility if we’re wedded to an organisational conception according to which, in order to fight for a common goal, all members of an organisation must obey a position even if a large sector doesn’t agree with it. Such a conception not only attempts to homogenize, neglecting the existing heterogeneity, by means of a majority vote; even worse, converting “democratic centralism” into a fundamental criteria for being part of an organisation, it sacrifices the concrete contributions that the minority sector can make in those aspects where there is agreement”.[62]

Unlike the Bolshevik conception where democratic centralism is a property of organisations (e.g. democratic centralist organisations), this argument holds that democratic centralism is merely a process or a method for the internal functioning of revolutionary organisations (e.g. organisations do or don’t practice democratic centralism as a process, but there are no democratic centralist organisations). Under such a conception, democracy is the collective process by which we come to have unity, and centralism is where we develop a common course of action, position, or line.[63] The MST for example rejects the discipline of minorities to the majority traditional to most democratic centralist organisations.

“Adherence to a socialist political organisation is a voluntary act, freely agreed upon, that shouldn’t be mediated by coercive threats or disciplinary measures. Discipline in a socialist organisation is a conscious mechanism that allows the unification of individual wills to struggle for collective goals. We’re convinced that once a decision has been taken, the majority (those who voted in favour) should have the main responsibility of putting it in practice; the minority (those who voted against) should have the option of standing by it or not. The organisation should not force anyone, under threat of disciplinary measures, to stand by a decision that may harm the principles of conscience of one or more of its members”.[64]

The dialectic between democracy and centralization supposedly would yield a more democratic organisation than other methods because of the engagement of all in the decision, struggle, and the back and forth between practice, ideas, and unity.[65] Notably absent is the commitment to central bodies with directive powers. This would seem to solve some of the problems above by eliminating the conflations of power and position, centralism and unity, etc.

The problem is that this is not democratic centralism, and it fails to answer the problems of organising by simply trying to cleave the historical baggage that surrounds the concept. This argument is fundamentally flawed because it attempts to take a material concept rooted in history, abstract away all context, and put into its place another. Behind every intellectual move like this, there’s an objective reality. Democratic centralism did not come out of nowhere, but was a concept built in the struggle which developed its own tradition, theorists, and practices. An attempt to contest that tradition and argue for another needs to base itself not merely on asserting a different semantic meaning, but on real practices and engaging with how the theory developed, where it came from, and why this theory of democratic centralism is just that and not some other theory. Moreover, if ambiguities plague the theory itself, simply cutting away the bureaucratic elements of the theory doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll avoid the worst of the centralizing tendencies. That is, if we do not offer a clear alternative to why democratic centralism tended to produce repressive bureaucratic structure, we may simply reproduce it.

Furthermore, politically this is questionable. First, why attempt to ahistorically reconstruct the theory at all? If there is a recognition of the need to pull the theory away from the tradition that elaborated it, why not abandon the problematic concept as well? Why is it better to keep democratic centralism, and try to argue against everything that it was separate from the history and people that developed it? Second, why do so without any attempt to engage that debate, instead merely castigating all the actual democratic centralist tradition as bureaucratic centralist? If we level attacks on the theory, it is better to engage that tradition and offer an alternative than it is to merely ex-communicate it or semantically change definitions. Third, can it even be taken seriously at all when someone attempts to put forward ideas which claim a historical concept but fail to engage or even acknowledge the context out of which it was born? It borders on being unprincipled or intentionally misleading. The response that the horrors of Russia or China were not democratic centralist is unsatisfying; it attempts to skirt real issues by creating semantic moving targets.

These are the problems inherited when we attempt to take up these tools uncritically, and attempt to brush real problems under the rug without confronting them. Merely using a label (bureaucratic centralism) to attack practices you don’t like and democratic centralism for those you do fails to address the actual important debates that produced both insights and errors. This move is essentially idealist, and works against the best of the revolutionary movement, which is the attempt to ground our ideas in the concrete movements of the popular classes, its history, and its tendencies and traditions in struggle.

Worse, it seems to obscure the errors and failures of democratic centralism in a time when we desperately need to move beyond them, rather than to pass over them in silence. The fallout is that we would be inventing a new theory while using a name from another history. This gives legitimacy and space to that real the problems that exist within that tradition and disarms ourselves against those practices. It puts us only in a position to argue for the “real” democratic centralism against the “real” bureaucratic centralism that borders on religious or canonical exercises less than real revolutionary work. Since there are other concepts, other traditions, and work within the struggles of the proletariat that were outside, against, and beyond democratic centralism, there is little reason to keep flawed concepts and uncritically inherit the baggage that poisons the benefits. The ambiguity around the elements of democratic centralist theory creates real problems. These are not problems which can be merely avoided by refining the terms. We need different concepts and practices all together.

Democratic Centralism in Our Time

Whatever may be said of democratic centralism (and it should be rejected), the motivations that led to its development are radically distinct from our situation. If we look at the birth of democratic centralism and its maturation, neither case is analogous to our own. We do not live in the political climate of Russia or Italy in 1905 or 1919, nor the economic climate of China in 1939 or 1950.

Taken in its most broad and dilute form, we can learn from the necessity of having an internal process and life of an organisation of coming to unity, deciding on that unity, and being serious and committed to executing our plans based on our collective democracy. This is too general to be called democratic centralism without making everyone already democratic centralists, but it is a basic theory shared with non-authoritarian traditions and can be seen as the diamond we can extract from the ruff. Moreover, it’s an insight lost on most democratic centralists, given the dangerous conflations of professional revolutionaries, centralization, and discipline.

The more crass (and most popular) form of democratic centralism, with its submission of the base of the party to the decisions of central committees with mandate powers [66] would fare and does fare miserably in our environment. Though countless publications today try to argue that practicing democratic centralism will solve gaps in consciousness and practice, disorganisation, and failures of social movements, in practice we often see the opposite. That is if one is even able to do the mental gymnastics necessary to ignore its role in bringing about repressive state capitalist disasters.

It is totally unclear how this would be a useful method for building revolutionary organisation now. Given that the left itself is deformed and isolated, and its theory starkly abstracted from praxis, democratic centralism stultifies that situation. Focusing on centralizing leadership when the leadership itself is isolated, lacks practice, and reflects all the problems of the dominant society is a recipe for malice. There’s a difference between a political sect centralizing leadership and a revolutionary party doing so (not that that is less problematic either). It’s a logical leap to assume that mimicking Lenin’s party in our time will have a similar effect as the time it arose out of. In actual fact this approach risks (or guarantees) centralizing deformed leadership and making concrete the left’s alienation from struggle. By fetishizing the institutionalized political centre in a time of deep left alienation, democratic centralism intensifies the worst dynamics of isolated micro-sects. Democratic centralism in our time then is even more problematic.

Trotskyists’ analysis of a crisis of leadership in the working class [67] makes this problem still worse, since there is already is a crisis of leadership of the left! Merely codifying that leadership with democratic centralism makes the problem worse. Historically we can see how this has not worked out in practice either, as the revolutionary leadership of Trotskyists in the unions in the US has yielded a reformist practice. Despite 80 years of attempts to capture and lead the unions, when that leadership was achieved usually the reformers became reformists, and in many cases repressed workers struggle just as the reactionary leadership of those institutions did. Whatever merit may be said of having left leadership of business unions (not much), it is clear that the leadership (in the few places it was successful) evaporated in positions of power, or at least left us little revolutionary legacy we can point to as successes. That strategy has left us merely with the same organs of reformism, repression, and stagnation.

Towards a Fresh Organisation

To solve the tension of bureaucracy and repression endemic to democratic centralist practice, we need different concepts and different practices. Indeed this problem itself is bigger than democratic centralism. Like any section of human history, we can and must learn from the experiences that emerged from such movements. There are positive elements that speak to our situation today, but as we have seen democratic centralism carries with it inherent dangers that demand a critical departure.

Likewise the marxist tradition historically hit a fork in the road with organisation. The four main currents of marxist political organisation all ran aground by the end of the last century. Social democracy, which Marx and Engels helped found, eventually lost all illusions of revolution (if it ever had any). Much of the original social democratic forces moved to a reformist gradualism of change within the capitalist state, and in most cases came to embrace the market and capital from the halls of power. Indeed today it is social democracy that is amongst the driving forces of austerity and neoliberalism, even if apologetic, and this is true from Europe to India and Latin America.

Amongst organised revolutionary Marxist thought, foco or guerrilla theory and Leninism remain which are the bastions of democratic centralism. The failures of foco theory in Latin American guerilla movements across the past decades appears to have aided in its waning. Marxist-Leninism itself, while still significant, has suffered enormous blows with the decline of the Soviet block and China’s embrace of Marxist capitalism.

On the libertarian side, most of the Marxist ultra-left (except the Bordiguists who embrace a cousin of Leninism purged of its democratic elements) abandoned organisation all together in favour of spontaneous revolution and/or determinist ideas of revolution as a form of revolutionary destiny. Political and mass organisations alike are seen to carry inherent reformist or reactionary potential which bars the door, or at least until the spontaneous emergence of revolutionary formations amongst the working class. Instead, ultra-left thinkers turn to the internal dynamics of capital itself to deliver revolution. Consequently amongst most councilists and the ultra-left no theory of organisation remains, even the experiments with workers organisation of their early eras has been abandoned.[68]

Leninist substitutionism (the party substitutes itself for the class) and ultra-left faith in spontaneous revolution illuminates the spectrum of the problem. Faced with the historical defeats of the 20^th century, the present state of marxism reveals deep tensions in trying to construct answers building organisation beyond substitution, bureaucratism, authoritarianism, or reformism. Faced with the dead ends of social democracy, the bureaucratic centralist tradition of Leninist inspired movements, and determinist faith of the libertarian marxist currents, marxism indeed today faces a crisis of organisation.

There are other experiences we can draw from however.[69] Separated by continents and decades in time, the organised anarchist-communist movement often came to similar conclusions in their struggles. The Chinese Shifuists,[70] Korean Anarchist Communists in Manchuria,[71] the Uruguayan and Argentinian especifistas,[72] European platformists,[73] and Italian dual organisationalists [74] put forward libertarian conceptions of organisation based on the ruptures from 1917 to the 1970s. Built from the deepest revolutions to have challenged capital in the 20^th century, this broad tradition represents a global praxis of organisation apart from reformist and authoritarian experiences. Common to all is a concept of libertarian organised action with common strategy, analysis, and goals that is at once strategic and based upon collective democracy.

Democratic centralism raises real questions for anti-authoritarians as well of course. In a revolutionary situation of repression, how can we address unevenness in our forces? How can we maintain the democratic decisions of collectivities, while uniting to create communism directly? Though the answers are flawed, it’s dangerous to out of hand dismiss the problems. Here the anarchist communist tradition has a lot to give.

First, there is the concept of organisation as a pole for the development of ideas in the struggle of the popular classes. Rather than a hierarchical conception of a directive minority, this tradition sees the very function of organisation to multiply capacity, and that leadership is about a libertarian pedagogical relationship of developing praxis through the back and forth between ideas and action. Rather than institutionalizing leadership into a professional party class, anarchist communist organisations integrated an educational method into their work as rank and file social movement militants, and internally through trying to elevate all members and counteract the reproduction of class, race, and sex hierarchies transmitted in capitalist and statist relationships.

Second, this tradition offered the ideas of unity achieved through collective accountability. Recognizing the need for coordination and strategy does not imply necessarily specialized authorities either to impose or theorize it. Anarchist communist organisations developed practices around bottom up accountability and horizontal coordination of revolutionary struggle. Experiences in Spain, Uruguay, and Italy for example, showed both the power and necessity for overcoming the false dichotomy of the intervention of minorities in insurrectionary moments with the imposition of the will of a directive minority.

Lastly, anarchist communist organisationalists have shown the ability to create models for building revolutionary currents not just in heat of barricades during revolutions, but in our time, in the core and periphery countries, and to changing realities. Rather than seeing organisation as a timeless method, there is recognition of different tasks (educational, movement, and insurrectionary) in different times. Distinctions between concepts like social work and social insertion, the battle of ideas, and questions of different conjectures and phases are spread across the literature.

Instead of a project of trying to resurrect a purified version of democratic centralism, we need our own theory that can break apart the ambiguities, and make elaborate the revolutionary process of mass struggle and revolutionary development. To do so in a time of low struggle, ruling class assaults and the alienation of the left from practice requires a theory for our own time. No such theory or practice will come pre-packaged, and no critique will provide us with a perfect shield. Still through understanding democratic centralism and alternatives, we can better prepare for building our own.

Footnotes:

Chretien, T. 2007. “Lenin’s theory of the party”. International Socialist Review, 56 November-December.
Harman, C. 1998. “For democratic centralism”. International Socialist Journal, 80.
BJ. 2004. The Crisis within the Left: Theory, Program, Organisation. December 31, 2004. For the Party Building Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organisation/Organisación Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.
Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course. New York: International Publishers, 1939, p. 198
A fair assessment would require a multi-volume book with extensive history and investigation of more theorists. I have strove to make this more accessible to radicals with some knowledge of the history and traditions so that it may help our movement think materially about our strategy and move forward. That is my primary motivation.
Van, Ngo. In the Crossfire: adventures of a Vietnamese revolutionary. 2010 AK Press.
For an introduction to the discussion on the state capitalist nature of the former-soviet states there are a number of sources. CLR James’ State Capitalism and World Revolution is a good account from this perspective. Bordiga alternatively argued that the USSR was merely capitalism plain and simple, but unfortunately Bordiga’s writings are notoriously obscure and infrequently translated. A good secondary source is Aufheben’s discussion of the debate in their 1997 6^th issue reprinted for free on libcom here http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1. Recently some anarchist communists and participatory economics adherents have argued that such economies represent a unique type of organisation centred around a dictatorship of a managerial or bureaucratic class.
Bottomore, T.B. (1991). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA. Pg 134-136.
Louis Proyect blog. Once more on democratic centralism. 12/30/10. http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/once-more-on-democratic-centralism/. The author drew from Paul Leblanc’s book about Lenin and the Revolutionary Party.
Lenin, VI. 1906. Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P: A Letter to the St. Petersburg Workers, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm
See Lenin’s Account of the 2^nd Congress of the R.S.D.L.P, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/sep/15a.htm
For this time period see Lenin’s collected works from the 1901-1903 era particularly his reports from the party congresses and What is to be Done?, Rosa Luxembourg’s Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy for a sense of the debate from Lenin’s left, and Trotsky’s Our Political Tasks from the Menshevik side of things.
Lenin, V.I., What is to be done. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iv.htm
This is true both of Guevarist inspired Foco groups and the Southern Cone urban guerrilla movements that drew from the work of anarchist-marxist Abraham Guillen.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See Gambone’s article The State and Revolution: An anarchist viewpoint http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/state-and-revolution-anarchist.html
I am indebted to the comments of Don Hammerquist throughout this essay, though he would likely take issue with my account of history. For more on Lenin in general and objections to conflating unity and centralization, see Don Hammerquist’s Lenin, Leninism, and some leftovers http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenin-leninism-and-some-leftovers.html
Rabinowitch, Alexander. (2004). The Bolsheviks Come to Power. Pluto Press.
See Anton Pannekoek’s Workers Councils from AK Press for a particularly lucid description of the separation of union bureaucracy from the interests of the working class.
Bolshevik repression of opposition is now well known, but worth repeating. Internally, opposition was tolerated for a time but particularly under Stalin all such opposition was eventually destroyed. A famous case of this occurred under Lenin’s authority and was the left communist Workers’ Opposition, forcibly disbanded in 1922 before Stalin reached ascendancy. Perhaps Lenin’s most reactionary and right-ward looking book dealt with such internal and external left communist opposition in Left-Wing Communism: an infantile disorder. Externally, the Bolsheviks sought to consolidate power via the repression of the Makhnovschina in Ukraine, Kronstadt workers, and the illegalization of all political opposition socialist, communist, and anarchist. Much is already written on these topics. See Alexandre Skirda’s Nestor Makhno – Anarchy’s Cossack: The struggle for free soviets in the Ukraine, 1917-1921 or alternatively Makhno’s own three part memoirs newly translated from Russian by Black Cat Press in Edmonton. For Kronstadt, see Paul Avrich’s Kronstadt, 1921 or his Russian Anarchists. Ian McKay also provides a detailed account in Kronstadt 1921: The end of the Bolshevik Myth http://www.anarkismo.net/article/2654. Trotsky’s defence of the assault is in his Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt 1938 http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm. Alexandra Kollontai’s The Workers’ Opposition or the numerous histories available on libcom.org give a good background on left communist internal Bolshevik opposition. Maurice Brinton’s The Bolsheviks and Workers’ Control covers in detail the struggles between the working class and the rising state-capitalist class which found its expression in the Bolshevik party. This work includes detailed discussion of the evolution of the soviets and the attacks on them by Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin’s Left-wing Communism: an infantile disorder is his rejoinder to those critiques at the time.
Footnote 22 is missing from both the posts of this essay on the MAS site and on anarkismo. For a recommended text on the Kronstadt uprising, see The Kronstadt Rebellion: Still Significant 90 Years On [ZB Ed.]
“The factional group of Democratic Centralists (Sapronov, Osinsky, V. Smirnov and others) opposed the Party line on economic development. Using phrases about democratic centralism, this group spoke against the use of specialists, against centralised state administration, against one-man management and the personal responsibility of managers of enterprise’s; they insisted on unlimited corporate management.” Lenin, V.I. 9^th Congress of the R.C.P.(B) 1920 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/29.htm
Workers’ Opposition was a group that proposed workers self-management and opposed party dictatorship to the rule of the working class itself. They collaborated with other groups inside and outside the party. “Ignatovites or “a group of activists of Moscow city districts” was an anti-Party anarcho-syndicalist group, headed by Y. N. Ignatov, during the trade union discussion of 1920-21. Its activity was limited to the Moscow Party organisation, because it had no influence among the city’s workers and rank-and-file Party members. Before the Tenth Party Congress, it came out with two platforms: the current tasks of the trade unions, and Party organisation. The Ignatovites shared the anarcho-syndicalist views of the Workers’ Opposition; they set the trade unions in opposition to the Soviet state, denied the Party’s leadership in socialist construction: opposed democratic centralism; demanded freedom of discussions, and wanted the Party membership to consist of workers only. They also demanded the handover of the administration of the economy to an organ elected by the All-Russia Trade Union Congress”. Lenin, V.I. The Party Crisis. 1921 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/19.htm
9^th Party Congress of the R.C.P.(B) Ibid. above
Ibid.
For more on early Gramsci’s relationship and work with the Italian anarchists see Levy, Carl. 1999. Gramsci and the Anarchists. Berg Publishers.
Gramsci, Antonio. Translated by Quintin, H & Smith, GN. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers, NY. 1992. Pg 188-190
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1968. The Modern Prince: and other writings. International Publishers.
Bordiga, Amadeo. Considerations on the party’s organic unity when the general situation is historically unfavorable. http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1965/consider.htm
Bordiga, Amadeo. The Democratic Principle. http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm
See Gilles Dauve’s Contribution to a Critique of Political Autonomy. http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008
It should be said that Bordiga was no ultra-left version of Stalin. One of his main contributions is the critique of the Soviet Union as capitalist, and understanding revolution in terms of the abolition of capitalist social relations. He rejected democracy, but instead called for fairly radical abolition of the basis of all oppression, and though unable to break from the Bolsheviks’ rigid centralism went beyond most communists in demanding socialism in an era of state capitalism and theories of productive forces.
Cammatte, Jacques. On Organisation. http://libcom.org/library/on-organisation-jacques-camatte
I am friendly to the idea of this as a historical move, or in trying to understand the thought of a figure. To understand Gramsci we could try to give him some more line. From the perspective of trying to reconstruct democratic centralism this would obliterate any material or historical basis of the concept, and be mere semantics. That is, assuming Gramsci is a saint won’t help us understand democratic centralism outside of its directive authoritarian role.
Specifically the urban guerrilla movements in the southern cone of South America drew equally from anarchist theorist Abraham Guillen as they did the structuralists, Maoists, and Guevarists. This is evident in diverse groups from the Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya pre-1980s, the Tupamarus, and various Brazilian and Argentinian guerrilla groups.
Harnecker, Marta. 2002. “Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use consensus?” from Links the International Journal of Socialist Renewal. http://links.org.au/node/1078
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. Verso. Pg.159
Ibid. Pg. 173
Ibid. Pg. 175
Ibid. Pg. 176
Oxford Communists. (2010). Bureaucratic Centralism and Ineffectiveness. http://oxfordcommunists.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/bureaucratic-centralism-and-ineffectiveness/
Kwoba, Brian. (2010). New Beginnings for a New Time. Gathering Forces blog. http://gatheringforces.org/2010/10/08/new-beginnings-for-a-new-time/
Ho, F., editor. (2000). Legacy to Liberation: politics & culture of Asian/Pacific America. Ak Press. Pg. 249
Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. Verso. Pg. 150
Ibid. Pg. 173
Ibid. Pg. 175
Louis Proyect blog. (2010). Critical Comments on Democratic Centralism. http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/critical-comments-on-democratic-centralism-2/
Hammerquist, Don. Lenin, Leninism, and Some Leftovers. http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenin-leninism-and-some-leftovers.html
Ely, Mike. (2007). 9 Letters to our Comrades. Kasama Project. http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/
Louis Proyect blog. (2010). Critical Comments on Democratic Centralism. http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/critical-comments-on-democratic-centralism-2/
The Big Flame blog. (2009). Lotta Continua. http://bigflameuk.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/lotta-continua/
Hammerquist, Don. (2009). Althusser Comments. http://sojournertruth.blogsome.com/2009/02/25/althusser/
Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. Verso. Pg.180
For instance el Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores in Puerto Rico, and some ex-Maoist groups in Haiti and Latin America.
Movimiento Socialista del Trabajadores. 1999. What is the MST and What Does it Fight for? http://nycenlucha.org/2012/06/12/what-is-the-mst-and-what-does-it-fight-for/
Mackandal, Jan. 2009. Democratic Centralism. Unpublished manuscript.
MST, Ibid.
Mackandal, Ibid.
“… All decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all Party members” from the 6^th party congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1917. As reported by the Stalinist official history during the purges of the 1930s, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course.1939, p. 198
“All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership”. Trotsky, Leon. 1938. The Transitional Programme (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International).
Perhaps an exception to this is the non-bordiguist Italian left communists represented by the International Communist Party – Battaglia Comunista. It’s a worthy investigation, though not within the scope of this article to debate that current. Either way the tension between determinism and organisation is obvious in this tradition, and though there is incredibly valuable lessons to be found there, the absence of either a theory or practice of revolutionary agency within demonstrates their path in thought.
The treatment of the anarchist-communist tradition here will be necessarily surface level only for want of space. Still the references shared here give stepping off points for going into the lessons of this tradition.
Dirlik, Arif. 1991. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. University of California Press.
Ki-Rak, Ha. 1986. History of the Korean Anarchist Movement. Anarchist Publishing Committee.
Editted and translated by Sharkey, Paul. 2009. Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya: Crisis, Armed Struggle, and Dictatorship 1967-1985. Kate Sharpley Library.
Skirda, Alexander. 2002. Facing the Enemy: A history of Anarchist Organisation from Proudhon to May 1968. AK Press.
Italian Anarchist Communist Federation (FdCA). Anarchist Communists: A question of class. http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/organisation/theory/acqoc/index.htm

From Theory to Practice, Taking a Critical Look at Leninism

Zabalaza Books — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:52:59 +0000

Author: Adam Weaver

File size: 303 KB

Where can those looking for a critical understanding of Lenin turn? How can we better understand how the Russian Revolution began as the first modern anti-capitalist revolution from below with workers taking over and running their workplaces, peasants seizing the land, and the creation of democratic soviets (worker committees)? And then in less than a decade its devolution into the brutal dictatorship of Stalin? Is there a continuity between the ideas of Lenin and his particular brand of Marxism that reshaped the Marxist movement in the 1920’s and the number of revolutionary parties that would later achieve state power and claim the Bolshevik party and Lenin as their model and inspiration?

This is a piece that was originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece, which is released in conjunction with a piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.

See Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation by Scott Nappalos, now published by Zabalaza Books.

From Theory to Practice, Taking a Critical Look at Leninism

by Adam Weaver

A Look At Leninism by Ron Taber. 104 pp. New York,
New York: Aspect Foundation, 1988

Little known and barely circulated now over two decades since publication in 1988, A Look At Lenin by Ron Taber is perhaps the only systematic and thorough critique of Leninism as examined through the writings and work of Lenin and the Bolshevik party. For this reason it has been a favourite of mine since I picked it up as a teenage reader of the late Love and Rage magazine. When I came across the book I was someone struggling with and questioning my relationship with anarchism at the time and looking in other directions such as the Leninist tradition. While Taber’s piece did not answer many of the larger political questions I was grappling with at the time (no matter where I’m at politically I don’t think that itch will ever go away), it did help me think deeper about Leninism as a tradition as well as with understanding better the problems I saw in many Leninist inspired political organisations that I was beginning to come into contact with at the time.

What is most useful about the piece is, in the words of one review, it “attempts to draw explicit links from Lenin’s theory to Bolshevik practice.” Taber is well suited to take up this task as a past leader of the Revolutionary Socialist League or RSL (1973-1989) which emerged out of the Trotskyist milieu of the 1960’s. Over time Taber and other members of the RSL steadily became more critical of Leninism and the Trotskyist tradition and by the time of RSL’s dissolution on 1989 a number of members had moved over to anarchism and went on to participate in the founding of what became the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation active throughout the 1990’s. The short booklet was first published as a series of articles in RSL’s publication The Torch and after being published in as a book went on to be distributed by Love and Rage members.

What follows is a summation of the key points of each chapter with a healthy dose of direct quotes. All quotes from Lenin or other source writings by Bolsheviks appear with indentation.

“What Kind of Revolution?”

The opening chapter “What Kind of Revolution?” delves into a discussion of the character of the revolution that the Bolsheviks intended to carry out. Less interesting than the rest of the book, Taber develops his argument that “It was only in early 1917, after the February Revolution had overthrown the Tsar, that the Bolsheviks adopted the point of view that the revolution they sought to carry out would be a socialist one. … throughout the entire formative period of Bolshevism as a political tendency/movement/party, it advocated and sought to implement not a socialist revolution, but a bourgeois one.” (p. 11)

“Party, Class and Socialist Consciousness”

Moving onto Lenin’s conception of the relationship between political organisation, the larger working class movement and revolutionary consciousness, the second chapter “Party, Class and Socialist Consciousness” draws largely from Lenin’s most influential piece What Is To Be Done?

Taber underlines the importance of What Is To Be Done? as having “represented a major ideological assumption of Bolshevism, underpinning the Bolsheviks conception of the nature of the party, its relationship to the working class … [and] remained central despite the various changes in Lenin’s/the Bolsheviks’ ideas” (p. 29)

Taber pulls this key quote from the piece by Lenin:

“We have said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among workers. It could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. (Trade unionism does not exclude “politics” altogether, as some imagine. Trade unions have always conducted some political [but not Social-Democratic] agitation and struggle.) The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals.” (p. 29)

Taber draws the following points from this: “If the workers are able, by themselves, to come only to trade union consciousness, and socialist consciousness must be brought to them from ‘without,’ by revolutionary intellectual/the revolutionary party, then:

The source, repository and guarantee of socialist consciousness are socialist intellectuals/the revolutionary party, not the working class.
What ultimately matters, in terms of a socialist revolution, is that state power is seized by the revolutionary party; the bottom line of what constitutes socialism/the dictatorship of the proletariat is that the state is ruled by a revolutionary party.
In any conflict between the revolutionary party and the working class, the revolutionary party is right, and the party has the right, even duty, to rule “in the name,” “in the interests of,” the working class.” (p. 32)

The chapter is then closed with two quotes showing the logical extension of these ideas, the below is from Leon Trotsky:

“The party [is] entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashe[s] with the passing moods of the workers’ democracy… It is necessary to create among us the awareness of the revolutionary, historical birthright of the party. The party is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering in the spontaneous moods of the masses, regardless of the temporary vacillations even in the working class.” (p. 36)

“The ‘Ethos’ of Bolshevism”

Here Taber puts forward his criticism of the ethos or what we might today call the internal culture of the Bolshevik Party in three aspects: the cult of the “hards”, the adoration of centralism especially in regards to the economy, and the willingness to use brutal and harsh methods.

According to Taber the ethos of the Bolsheviks was defined by what he calls “the cult of the ‘hards’” (p. 37) in which they contrasted themselves the tough, strong, skilful, who acted with “iron discipline”, were more proletarian, more politically radical and had a greater willingness to use violent tactics in comparison to the “softness” of the Mensheviks in working in underground and repressive conditions, who were also seen as less radical, and more prone to political vacillation. He notes that the Bolsheviks referred to themselves as “the hards” and their signature dress was black leather jackets and coats.

As well the title of Lenin’s key work What Is To Be Done? was taken from a book of the same name by Russian populist N.G. Chernyshevsky, which Taber describes as “virtually the bible of the young, mostly middle-class and upper-class radicals of the 1860’s who ‘went to the people’ (the peasants) to bring them enlightenment and radical ideas. … [The key figure Rakhmetov] believes only in the cause and is totally devoted to the ‘people.’ Not least, he prepares himself for the coming struggle (implicitly, a vast upheaval) by sleeping on a bed of nails [and eating raw meat - AW] and otherwise toughening his body and mind. The connection between Rakhmetov’s style and that of the Bolsheviks was no accident.” (p. 39)

The danger that Taber identifies with this culture revolves around power, as “had ‘hardness’ remained a question of individual style or attitude … a cult of ‘hardness’ might not amount to much. What makes a cult of ‘hardness’ in political organisation potentially dangerous is the possibility that it becomes part of a state ideology.” (p. 40) A major weakness of this section of the chapter though is, unlike the rest of the book, we are left to take Tabor on his word as it is presented completely without sources or references.

Next Taber takes up the relationship to the principle of centralism and economic planning which he asserts the Bolsheviks “revered” beyond the immediate needs of operating clandestinely. “The Bolsheviks saw the capitalist factory, run on a centralized basis, as a progressive institution, technically speaking. Lenin, for example, constantly held up the highly centralized and hierarchical German postal system and German industry as a whole as an example for the Russians to adopt. This, after the October Revolution Lenin defined the creation of a highly centralized economic apparatus as a major goal of the Soviet state.

The organisation of accounting, the control of large enterprises, the transformation of the state economic mechanism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan – such was the enormous organisational problem that rested on our shoulders. [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B), delivered March 7, 1918. Collected Works, Vol. 27 pp. 90-91] (p. 41)

But beyond the need for centralized economic planning Tabor emphasizes Lenin and the Bolsheviks belief in not just the necessity based on circumstances but as a matter of principle the need for hierarchical and bureaucratic management of the economy as steps toward socialism. “Thus, as soon as they were able, the Bolsheviks subordinated the factory committees to other institutions (the trade unions) and ultimately effectively did away with them altogether. They were replaced by ‘one-man management.’ While this has often been explained as motivated by necessity (the onset of the Civil War, the drastic decline of the economy, etc.) and this is true to a degree, it was also totally consistent with the Bolsheviks’ pre-existent ideas and leanings, particularly their idolization of centralism.” (p. 43) This lengthy quote serves as a key evidence to his point:

…it must be said that large-scale machine industry – which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism – calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people. The technical, economic and historic necessity of this is obvious, and all those who have thought about socialism have always regarded it as one of the conditions of socialism. But how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will of one.

Given ideal class-consciousness and discipline on the part of those participating in the common work, this subordination would be something like the mild leadership of a conductor of an orchestra. It may assume the sharp forms of a dictatorship if ideal discipline and class consciousness are lacking. But be that as it may, unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale industry. [“The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government” written in March-April 1918. Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 268-269] (pp. 41-42)

Finally, Taber presents his arguments on the Bolsheviks belief in the use of harsh methods in the process of building socialism which he summarizes as: “1) that the Bolsheviks were overly inclined to advocate coercive/brutal methods, in general; 2) that they seemed unaware that this might undermine the very goal they claimed to be fighting for; and, 3) that, at least implicitly, these coercive measures would logically wind up being directed against members, even large sectors, of the working class, whose vanguard the Bolsheviks claimed to be.” (p. 47)

Three examples are given which “were written or spoken in April and May 1918 … after the October Revolution but before the onset of the Civil Way (which was really to get underway in June, 1918).” (p. 47) The final example being a speech by Lenin given at the Moscow Soviet of Workers’, Peasants’ and Red Army Deputies on April 23, 1918:

This country, which the course of history has advanced to the foremost position in the arena of the world revolution, a country devastated and bled white, is in an extremely grave situation and we shall be crushed is we do not counter ruin, disorganisation and despair with the iron dictatorship of the class conscious workers. We shall be merciless both to our enemies and to all waverers and harmful elements in our midst [emphasis added] who dare to bring disorganisation into our difficult creative work of building a new life for the working people [Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 233.]

Pulling these three threads together of the ‘cult of hardness’, the principle of centralization and willingness to use brutal methods Taber comes to his conclusion: “the main point I have been trying to establish is that there were many aspects of the style and culture of the Bolshevik Party that pointed in the direction of state capitalism. These were tendencies that implied the establishment of a dictatorship of a self-proclaimed socialist elite over the workers and peasants ‘in the interests of’ those classes and ‘in the name of’ socialism and communism. … it is not clear to me that, even had there been successful workers’ revolutions in Western Europe, the Bolsheviks would have re-established real proletarian democracy, including legalizing other left tendencies. Nor is it obvious that, given their infatuation with with centralization and ‘scientific’ planning, they would have tried to set up real workers’ control of the factories and the economy as a whole.” (pp. 50-51)

While the revolution in Germany is still slow in ‘coming forth,’ our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort, in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it. Our task is to hasten this copying even more than Peter [Tsar Peter the Great - RT] hastened the copying of Western Culture by barbarian Russia, and we must not hesitate to use barbarous methods in fighting the barbarism. [“Left-wing” Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality, April 1918]

“State and Revolution”

Written during the Russian Revolution itself in the summer of 1917, The State and Revolution is often cited as being Lenin’s most important as well as libertarian work where he puts forward a vision of a communist society, direct worker control and the ultimate goal of the withering away of the state. In this chapter Taber challenges these ideas and perceptions of The State and Revolution around the points that Lenin’s vision of the state withering away relies on first building up the state along hierarchical and bureaucratic lines with a limited vision of workers’ control.

First Taber begins with a key paradox of The State and Revolution, which is the claimed goal of a stateless society and the key task following a revolution of building a new state. “The revolutionaries who claim that they are against the state, and for eliminating the state, … see as their central task after a revolution to build up a state that is more solid, more centralized and more all-embracing than the old state.” (p. 56)

“Until the higher phase of communism arrives, the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labour and the measure of consumption” [emphasis original]

How the transition from the newly built centralized state to the withering away of the state is not outlined in Lenin’s vision though. Rather the elimination of the state is simply presented as part of the ‘historical process’ which Taber sees as rooted in the Hegelian notion of history as “since the theory declares that the ‘logic’ of this essence, purpose and historical direction is that the state will eventually be eliminated, ‘negated,’ ‘transcended’ via a ‘dialectical’ (apparently contradictory) process, this is what will inevitably happen.” (p. 57) But as the history of actual states where communist parties came to power shows, this is anything but the case.

“Direct workers’ control over the factories and worker’ democracy are, to Lenin, stepping stones, part of a transitional stage, towards a very abstract ‘higher democracy,’ what is in fact a very centralized, hierarchical, bureaucratic, regimented ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ … During a revolution, the new, cooperative social relations have to begin appearing among the workers and oppressed classes right away. The workers have to learn now to relate to each other in this new way. They learn this through reorganising their work situations, and through directly governing society at all levels. … This dimension of the socialist revolution seems to be totally lost on Lenin. The socialist revolution, in his conception, is largely a change in form. Bust much of the content of the old society – bourgeois technology, bourgeois managerial techniques, hierarchical structures, factory discipline and, I would suggest, bourgeois social relations- remains.” (p. 64)

“Lenin’s Theory of Knowledge”, Part I and Part II

The final two chapters “take up Lenin’s conception of human knowledge and truth” (p. 67) nearly entirely through the text Materialism and Empirio-criticism written in 1909 where Lenin engages a polemical argument against “two Bolsheviks who were attracted to the ideas of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius, Henri Poincare and other scientists, mathematicians and philosophers who were the precursors of a school of philosophy called logical positivism.” (p. 70) The details of the debates and Lenin’s criticisms are best left reading Taber’s own presentation, and therefore I’ll simply present the key take away point

Taber leads with his conclusions: “I am convinced that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party as a whole believed: 1) that there is an absolute truth (I mean by this that reality is determined and predictable); 2) that absolute knowledge, that is, perfect knowledge of the truth, is possible; 3) that such truth and knowledge exist in respect to human society and history; 4) that Marxism is the knowledge of this truth and 5) that within Russia, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the only real Marxists.” (p. 67)

These two quotes best support and illustrate Taber’s argument:

“Materialism in general recognizes objectively real being (matter) as independent of the consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity. Historical materialism recognizes social being as independent of the social consciousness of humanity. In other cases consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately true (adequate, perfectly exact) reflection of it. From this Marxist philosophy, which is cast from a single piece of steel, you cannot eliminate one basic premise, one essential part, without departing from objective truth, without falling prey to a bourgeois0reactionary falsehood.” [Collected Works, Vol 14, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1986, p. 326]

“If what our practice confirms is the sole, ultimate and objective truth, then from this must follow the recognition that the only path to this truth is the path of science, which holds the materialist point of view. [ibid, 141] … The correspondence of this theory to practice cannot be altered by any future circumstances, for the same simple reason that makes it an eternal truth that Napoleon died on May 5, 1821. But inasmuch as the criterion of practice, i.e., the course of development of all capitalist countries in the last few decades, proves only the objective truth of Marx’s whole social and economic theory in general, and not merely one or the other of its parts, formulations, etc., it is clear that to talk here of the “dogmatism” of the Marxists is to make an unpardonable concession to bourgeois economics. The sole conclusion to be drawn from the opinion held by Marxists that Marx’s theory is an objective truth is that by following the path of Marxian theory we shall draw closer and closer to objective truth (without ever exhausting it); but by following an other path we shall arrive at nothing by confusion and lies.” [ibid, 143]

An important argument underpinning the book is that the ideas, internal culture and practices of Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the antecedents if not basis of the later political direction of the Soviet Union. Here Taber states his case in crystal clear terms: “…Lenin allowed his philosophical preconceptions to prevent him from even considering, let alone accepting an idea that would become a fundamental tenet of this century’s physics. … [W]hen a party with Lenin’s conception of philosophy and science comes to power, it is highly likely that someone in that party will, sooner or later, try to tell scientists what to do and how to think.” (pp. 86-87)

Conclusion

The wrap up of the piece gives a solid summary pulling all the thread of Taber’s criticism: “While I believe that Leninism is not entirely, 100% authoritarian, that is, that there are some truly liberatory and democratic impulses, I believe these impulses are far outweighed by those that point toward and imply state capitalism. Moreover, these latter are so strong that they distort the democratic impulses themselves, rather than merely overshadowing them. For examples, the advocacy of a classless society in The State and Revolution is turned into its opposite by Lenin’s conception of how to achieve it, e.g., through building a strong centralized state modelled after the German postal system.” (p. 92)

“I believe that of the various tendencies within Leninism that point toward state capitalism, the most important are three:

First is the fact that although Leninism advocates the establishment of a stateless society, it not only proposes to use the state to achieve this goal, it sees the use of the state as the main way to accomplish this. Not least, although this state is said to be a proletarian state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, it is to be structured, with relatively minor exceptions, along hierarchical and bureaucratic, that is, capitalistic, principles. Given this, is it any wonder that the outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was not classless, stateless societies, but monstrous, class divided, state-dominated, social systems?

The second state capitalist tendency within Leninism that I believe to be decisive is its advocacy of coercive, ruthless methods. While some kind of armed force/coercion is inevitable in almost any revolution, Lenin almost revels in it: the need to be ‘ruthless towards our enemies,’ ‘not to shrink from the most ruthless measures,’ to ‘shoot and shoot and shoot some more.’ Since morality lies within, is immanent in, history, that is, morality finds its fruition in the outcome of history (as Marx, following Hegel, argues), there is no need to act morally, there is no morality, in the sphere of politics. But outside of Marian/Hegelian (or any other comparable) metaphysics, how can moral neutralism lead to a more moral society? It can’t and hasn’t.

The third fundamental state capitalist tendency in Leninism, and tying all three together, is Lenin’s belief in determinism and absolute knowledge. Physical and social/historical reality is absolute knowledge. Physical and social/historical reality is absolutely determined, Marxism represents true knowledge of this reality (it ever increasingly approaches this reality), the Bolshevik faction/party hold the only correct interpretation of Marxism-these are fundamental tenets of Bolshevik thinking. And they point directly to the establishment of a dictatorship of the party over the proletariat in the name of the proletariat itself.” (pp. 93-94)

Related Links:

http://machete408.wordpress.com/

https://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/

http://anarkismo.net

This is a piece that was originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece, which is released in conjunction with a piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.

See Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation by Scott Nappalos, now published by Zabalaza Books.

Marxism and a Free Society

Zabalaza Books — Sun, 05 May 2013 11:58:31 +0000

Author: Marcus Graham

File size: 288 KB

Isaac Deutscher’s lecture “On Socialist Man” was given to the second annual Socialist Scholars Conference held at the Hotel Commodore, New York, on September 9-11, 1966. Deutscher had come from London as the principal invited guest at the conference. This reply to Deutscher’s address by Romanian-American anarchist writer Marcus Graham deals, in particular, with the Minutes of the First International and the sabotaging of the Hague Congress by the Marx clique.

First published 1976 by Simian Publications (Cienfuegos Press), Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW172BL. See: www.christiebooks.com

Marxism and a Free Society

by Marcus Graham

An anarchist reply to Isaac Deutscher’s address on “Socialist Man” with particular reference to the Minutes of the First International and the sabotaging of the Hague Congress by the Marx clique.

At the second annual Socialist Scholars Conference in New York in September 1966 the late Isaac Deutscher delivered an address on “Socialist Man” which was subsequently printed in the National Guardian of September 24th 1966. This address was all the more striking for what it failed to say rather than what it did say.

Deutscher’s chief contention was that the political acts of the marxist States of Russia, China and elsewhere are contrary to those envisaged by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Such a sweeping statement requires substantiation from the historical facts of the time when the aforementioned individuals lived and acted.

The main public activities of Marx and Engels centred in and around the formation and existence of the First International. Lenin and Trotsky’s main activities lay in their acts as Prime and War Ministers respectively, in the first marxist State of Russia. Factually, Deutscher devoted most of his address to a criticism of Freud in relation to marxist ideology, but failed to point out any activities of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky which would substantiate his contention. It is with these pertinent omissions that this rejoinder will be dealing.

Before proceeding to do this, however, it is only proper to present Deutscher’s principal assertions. He began his address by stating that he felt rather “reluctant” when the subject was suggested to him:

“Marx and Engels have left only a few scattered points about the subject ‘the embryo of socialism within the womb of capitalism’. I must say that this is all that we can do even now. After all the revolutions of our age and despite all that we have learned since Marx, we are not at all ahead in this respect. I have heard it said ‘that the proper subject of analysis ought to be Socialist Man living in the USSR or China today’. I do not accept this assumption and I do not think that the typical or even the advanced member of Soviet or Chinese society can be described as Socialist Man.”

Having thus written off the two outstanding marxist States, in so far as there be any sign of Socialist Man visible in them, after close to 50 and 17 years respectively, Deutscher gave the following reasons in support of his contention:

“We all speak about the USSR, China and the associated states as ‘Socialist countries’, but here I am concerned with a theoretically correct description of the structure of their society and the nature of human relationship evolving within that structure . . “Over 30 years ago Stalin proclaimed that the Soviet Union had completed the building of Socialism” … Stalin’s successors allege the Soviet Union is now engaged in the transition from socialism to communism. Spokesmen of the People’s Republic of China have been making similar claims for their country. One thing is, or ought to be immediately obvious: the typical man of Soviet society, whether under Stalin or his successors, presents so striking a contrast to the Marxist conception of Socialist Man that either we must refuse to consider him a Socialist Man, or we must throw the Marxist conception overboard.”

Overlooking what he himself had asserted at the very outset of his discourse, that he was reluctant to speak on the subject for the reason that his mentors Marx and Engels “left … only a few scattered hints about this subject,” Deutscher proceeded to point out the kind of society that Marx and Engels had in mind.

“Now, Socialist Man was envisioned by Marx and all his followers up to Stalin as a free associated producer working under a rationally planned economy, no longer a buyer or seller, trading products in the market, but someone turns out goods for society at large and receives them for personal consumption from society’s common pool. By definition Socialist Man lives in a classless and stateless society, free from social and political oppression.”

That the kind of Socialist Man which, Deutscher claims Marx and his followers envisaged is certainly not the one being nurtured at the present moment by the rulers of any marxist State is true enough.

The question that begs itself here is whether or not Marx and his followers did in fact ever envisage the kind of society Deutscher ascribes to them. Deutscher produced no evidence to show that Marx and his associates had envisaged that kind of spirit of tolerance, integrity and love in their relationship with fellow human beings, which could be conducive to the building of a Free Society. On the contrary, Marx and his associates employed the very tactics and methods rejected and denounced by Deutscher when used by the disciples of Marx in every existing socialist controlled country.

Evidence in support of the aforementioned statement is to be found in a volume entitled “The First International: Minutes of the Hague Conference of 1872,” edited and translated by Hans Gerth and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1958.

This remarkable volume contains the original longhand report in German of the Minutes, followed by Gerth’s translation. The same volume also contains the Report to the North American Federation of the International Workingmen’s Association written by F.A. Sorge and Maltman Barry’s Report written for the London Standard.

In his preface, Hans Gerth states:

“The Minutes of the Hague Conference, never before published, were found among the papers of Herman Schliiter, author of “Die Internationale in America” (Chicago 1918) and other works. Schliiter’s library, including the Minutes, was presented to the Library of Wisconsin by William E. Walling as part of the William E. Walling Collection.”

In the same preface Gerth sheds some light on Marx’s activities within the First International:

“The International Workingmen’s Association was founded in London in 1864 at a meeting of British Trade Unions, French labour delegates and those, among them Karl Marx, who after 1848 sought refuge in Victorian England from political reaction and police persecution. Despite the conflicting objectives of others, Marx succeeded in making of the First International an organ primarily devoted to socialist propaganda. Because of his rivals Marx in a few years recognised that he had to put an end to the meetings (called Congresses) of the International and move its General Council from England. This he accomplished at the Congress at The Hague in 1872. It is the Minutes of this Congress, recording the manner of Marx’s victory, that make up the contents of this volume.

“Because it was his intention to move the seat of the General Council of the Association, thus putting it at a distance from his rivals, Marx needed to deny seats at the Hague Congress to the delegates who were his enemies and to secure seats to those who were friendly. Those from Spain, Belgium, Holland and England were in general dangerous to his plans. As the Minutes of the Congress show, Marx succeeded in holding the seats of his own delegates and in beating down a number of those who would have gone to the enemy. With this accomplished he was able to turn back the efforts of his rivals to limit the powers of the General Council and to succeed in his proposal to move the Council to New York. Finally, Bakunin and Guillaume, who in Bakunin’s absence led the fight against Marx, were expelled from the Association.”

In his introduction Hans Gerth adduces very pertinent historical proof in support of his summary:

“The Hague Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association represents at once the zenith and nadir of the eight year span of the turbulent career of the Group. With the Hague Congress which met in September 1872, this deeply hated organisation of revolutionary tradition and anti-capitalist labour movements disintegrated. Two years after the Congress, Frederick Engels, who had attended it, wrote from London to F.A. Sorge in New York, “The Hague Conference really was the last.” [1]

“In 1864 Marx had written the Inaugural Address of the International and his draft had been accepted by the French Proudhonists, social liberal trade unionists and Marxists … Everybody could find his aspirations satisfactorily embodied in the statement of policies and aims … The following Congresses of the International at Geneva (1866), Lausanne (1867), Brussels (1868) and Basle (1869) served as a stage for airing well-nigh all the competing anti-capitalist thought, ways and policy proposals of nineteenth century radicals.

“Bakunin … a colourful romantic rebel had built up a following in Italy, in Switzerland and in Spain … He established an organisation the Alliance of Socialist Democracy, in Switzerland. In the summer of 1869 he and his followers were received in the International. “Bakunin held forth at the Basel Congress of 1869 … His personal magnetism, persuasive diction and capacity to win intensely devoted followers made him the menace. Marx and Engels set out to destroy him, using the Hague Congress for that purpose. It was the one Congress of the International which Marx and Engels attended. Bakunin could not come there for he could not travel through France or Germany, where he was ‘wanted.’ He had to rely on James Guillaume, the editor of the Bulletin Jurassien and leader of the Jurassien Federation, the anarchist organisation of Geneva building-workers and watchmakers in the sweatshops of the Jura mountain valleys … Cafiero, a twenty-five year old convert to Bakunin’s cause, had organised the Italian anarchist-minded sections into a federal council and at the founding Congress at Rimini ‘before the workers of the world’ he had declared that the new federation was breaking off all ties with the London General Council because the latter wished to impose the doctrine of the authoritarian German Communists upon the International. Hence the absence of any Italian delegates at The Hague.

“In Spain, Marx and Engels had Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law, and Mesa, a native Spanish anti-Bakuninist on their side. Nevertheless, the Marxists here, too, lost out to the Anarchists … Marx and Engels were firmly convinced that Bakunin … maintained a secret society within the International. The Anarchists have always denied this.

“Engels in a letter to Bebel, referred once to “old Hegel” as having said, “A party proves itself a victorious party by the fact that it splits and can stand the split.” [2] This must have been the hope of Marx and Engels when they prepared for the purge of the International at The Hague. The choice of place was favourable to their followers; for the rest they did what they could to ‘pack’ the Congress. Engels paid the fare for the five members of the General Council he brought over. [3] Marx, in a much quoted letter of June 21, 1872, implored Sorge in New York: “At this Congress the life or death of the International is at stake. You yourself and at least one or two others must come. As regards sections who send no direct delegates, they can send mandates. The German mandates for me, Fr. Engels, Lochmer, Karl Pfander, Lessner. The French for G. Ranvier, August Seraillier, Le Mossu, Ed. Vaillant, F. Cournet, Ant. Arnoud. The Irish for MacDonnell …” [4]

“A similar request was addressed to Kugelmann in July: ‘Germany must … have as many delegates as possible.’” [5]

“When they arrived at The Hague, Marx and Engels could see at a glance that they had an assured majority, that victory was to be theirs. ‘For the first time a sizeable number of German delegates appeared at a congress of the International. Moreover, Sorge had come from New York and had secured mandates from American sections for those who needed them.”

“The Anarchists had shown that they intended to fight the General Council to a finish … Marx and Engels therefore followed the policy of a la guerre comme a la guerre. Marx had secured ammunition from Russia. Bakunin had contracted with a Russian publisher to translate Marx’s Capital and had received an advance of three hundred roubles. Bakunin failed to meet his contractual obligations … A Russian friend of Bakunin, Nechaev, sought to help Bakunin by writing a threatening letter to the publisher’s agent warning him to leave Bakunin in peace and to forget about the contract … Marx probably heard of this … wrote to the Russian economist Danielson informing him of the affair and concluded his letter as follows: ‘It would be of the highest utility for me, if this letter was sent to me immediately … I hope you will procure me that letter. But no time is to be lost.” [6]

“It worked. The publisher’s agent himself sent Nechaev’s letter. It was used against Bakunin in the quasi-judicial procedure of his expulsion. Even Franz Mehring commented, ‘That Bakunin in question of property was to be robbed of his honest name was inexcusable, and unfortunately Marx was to be blamed for this.’” [7]

The Minutes of the Hague Congress bear out the conclusions drawn by Hans Gerth. Just a few striking incidents reported in the Minutes will clearly show this.

The credential committee was staffed with pro-Marxists including Marx himself who led the fight to invalidate pro-Bakuninist delegates. Section 12 of New York City was one of the most active affiliated with the International and it sent W. West as its representative. The following excerpts from the Minutes show Marx in action against an opponent:

“Marx, in the name of the Credentials Committee, proposes that the mandate for W. West be declared null and void because he has been (1) a member of a suspended section; (2) a member of the Philadelphia Congress and (3) a member of the Prince Street Council. West’s credentials are signed by Victoria Woodhull, who for years had had an eye on the presidency (of the United States); she is president of the spiritists, preaches free love, has a banking business, etc. Section 12, founded by Victoria Woodhull, initially consisted almost exclusively of bourgeoisie, it agitated especially for the women’s franchise and released to the English-speaking citizens of the United States the notorious appeal charging the I.W.A. with all sorts of nonsense; this led to the organisation of various sections in that country.” Minutes, p. 194.

The Minutes give this version of W. West’s rebuttal to Marx:

“West speaks for 1 ½ hours and states that he has been pre-judged, but that he has travelled 4000 miles in order to meet his obligations to his voters. He will speak only on three points of the report, not on unproved accusations; he is a member of section 12 and proud of it, for section 12 has established English sections and he demands justice here against the false charges and slander which the other side has levelled against section 12 by letter. The suspension was illegal, for it was accusation, verdict and sanction at once, without a hearing of the accused … Section 12 even wished to recognise the General Council as judge if it were given a fair hearing and tribunal … “we have done and said nothing that is not contained in and based upon the very rules, congressional regulations, etc. The labour question is also a woman’s question and the emancipation of women must precede that of the workers. Woodhull and the others are spiritists and free lovers! Can you forbid it? Can you command love where there is none? (general laughter).”

“That is none of your business.”

“First we are men before we are workers or bourgeoisie … Certainly I have been a member of the Philadelphia Congress, this congress, however, has done nothing against the General Council; besides, yesterday you here recognised the mandate of a section (29) which was represented there (at Philadelphia).”

“We have the sacred right to rebel against all despotism. The General Council has twice violated its duties. The Americans could not accept the two-thirds (membership) rule. After all, the General Council might do all sorts of things unless we had a right to rebel. We do not wish other people’s brains to think for us, the General Council lays down the rule for us in America. We are for the Commune, for universal (women’s) franchise for direct legislation. We find that our republic has been a failure and wish to found a new one.”

“Section 12 has certainly paid for the first year as Sorge will testify and he (West) will affirm under oath that they have paid for the second year, too.”

“The Congress is restless because West takes up too much time … “Sauva does not wish to speak for section 12, but defends the^-good qualities of Mrs. Woodhull and of Section 12 …. Mrs. Woodhull … has made speeches for the commune, has established sections … . Section 2, – believes that the General Council has acted with undue haste in suspending Section 12, which has certainly paid its dues.” Minutes pp. 196-197.

“West’s mandate is invalidated with 49 Nayes against no Ayes and 9 abstentions.”

“Guillaume has abstained because West was not permitted to speak again.”

“The evening session was opened … The Chairman says that West has no right to be present.” p. 199.

“Engels protests against West’s presence in the hall and relates West’s utterance that he (West) would have access to the Congress in any case, ‘if not through the door, then through the window; if not through the window, then through the chimney.’ West is made to withdraw.” p. 203.

Hans Gerth, in a footnote, sheds some interesting light on Section 12 in general, and Victoria Woodhull in particular:

“Section 12 of New York proved troublesome for Marx’s followers. Section 12 was led by Mrs. Victoria Woodhull (1836-1927), who had come to New York from China with her younger sister Tennessee Claflin. In 1870 … they founded Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. The Weekly carried the first translation of the Communist Manifesto (1872), advocated ‘advanced ideas,’and exposed Henry Ward Beecher and appealed to reformist sectarians of all sorts and conditions.” p. 178.

The Issues of Autonomy and Moving the International

The ideological principles and tactics upon which the main discussions centred at the Congress is depicted in the Minutes, as follows:

“Herman takes the floor to comment on the agenda, the General Council and its powers, and he expresses the view of the majority of the delegates who wish to retain the General Council, but to divest it of all power.” p. 206.

“Guillaume takes the floor and says that two great ideas run side by side in the movement, that of centralisation of power in the hands of a few, and that of the free federations of those whom the homogeneity of the economic conditions in each country has united behind the common interests of all countries. The movement cannot represent the conception of a single brain. For the leadership of the movement there is required no General Council with authority … we in the Jura Federation have none ..”

“Sorge replies to Guillaume: we, too, have had experience and we would like to see what the Jurassians have accomplished …” p. 207.

“Morago says he would be in favour of abolishing the General Council, merely retaining a central correspondence and statistics. The Spanish Federation is absolutely autonomous and demands the true, free, autonomous I.W.A. The General Council should have no power whatever, neither over sections nor over federations.

“Sorge, Becker and comrades introduce a motion of precedence that the rules concerning the powers of the General Council be discussed at once by one speaker each, for and against for five minutes after which the vote shall be taken.” p. 208.

“Brisme says that it is futile to discuss the powers of the General Council; we (the Belgians) do not wish the General Council to have any power; this is a question of principle about which we in Belgium all agree … we demand that the General Council be merely the clerk of the I.W.A. and must never interfere in the internal affairs of a country.

“Sauva believes that one speaker for and one against do not represent all opinions.” p. 209-210.

“Marx says: We demand these powers not for ourselves but for the future General Council; we would rather abolish the General Council than follow Brisme’s wish and transform it into a letter box; in that case the leadership of the association would fall into the hands of journalists, mainly non-workers.” p. 211.

“Lafargue says the General Council has been accused of having called the Congress to The Hague in order to secure a majority there: one should just watch how the Dutch always vote with the Belgians against the General Council in order to understand how well prepared the General Council was.” p. 212.

“Engels, Marx and other members of the former Council propose that the seat of the General Council … be transferred to New York and that the General Council should consist of the following members of the New York Federal Council: Kavanagh, St. Clair, Cetti, Laviele, Laurel, Bertand, Bolte and Carl, with the right to increase their number up to a total of fifteen.” p. 213.

“The first question, should the General Council be moved is voted in the affirmative with 25 ayes against 23 nayes. Marceleau complains that people laugh when he and his comrades abstain from voting, they have definite instructions to do so.” p. 215.

“The vote on the question, Where shall the General Council be moved? results in 31 votes for New York, 14 for London, 1 for Barcelona, 11 abstentions.” p. 216.

The Issue of Political Action, the State and Dictatorship

The Minutes show that the Congress passed a resolution which requested that the issue of political action “be placed on the agenda for the next Congress and that the General Council be instructed to prepare a comprehensive statement on the subject.” (p.206). The Minutes, however, show that without any explanation, the issue was taken up and acted upon at this very Congress:

“… the new paragraphs of the Rules concerning the political action of the working class was submitted for discussion.” p. 216.

“Vaillant pleads for … the Rules. Force is used against us and force can only be driven out by force; the economic struggle must become one with the political struggle, and in the revolution (it) must consummate the abolition of classes through the proletariat dictatorship.” p. 217.

“Guillaume replies … ‘We take the stand which Hins took at Brussels when he declared we do not wish to mix with present-day governments, in parliamentarianism, we wish to overthrow (aplatir) all governments … We are adherents of a definite policy, of social revolution, of the destruction of the bourgeois politics, of the state … We reject the seizure of political power in the state, but demand the complete destruction of the state as the expression of political power.” p. 219.

“Lomguet says … had we been better organised as a political party … the Commune would not have been proclaimed and victorious in Paris alone, but also in Berlin and elsewhere … What is to become of Guillaume’s collectivism without some centralisation of forces? Because of the economic struggle the workers must organise into a political party lest nothing remain of the International and Guillaume, whose master is Bakunin, cannot belong to the I.W.A., while holding such views.” pp. 219-220.

“The German Minutes of the Congress carries no report on the customs of this pertinent issue, but Maltman Barry’s report quotes a resolution, reading, in part:

“Article 7A:- In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes, the working class cannot act as a class except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from and opposed to all old parties … The conquest of political power has therefore become the great duty of the working class.” pp. 285-286.

The Expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume

The ultimate purpose of the rigged Congress was revealed when a “Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Association Alliance” came up for discussion and action. The following excerpts from the Minutes point out the following:

“The Committee, lacking the time for submission of a complete report, can render judgement only on the basis of papers received and statements made before it.”

“After having heard on one side the citizens Engels, Marx, Worblewski, Dupont, Seraillier and Swarm for the accusation, and on the other side the citizens Guillaume, Schwitzguebel, Joukowsky, Morago, Marceleau and Farga-Pelicier, accused of belonging to the secret society ‘Alliance,’ the Committee declares:

“Considering that the secret Alliance, established with rules entirely opposed to those of the I.W.A., did exist but that there is insufficient proof of its continued existence;
“whereas a draft of rules and letters signed ‘Bakunin’ prove that the said citizen has tried to establish and perhaps has succeeded in establishing a society in Europe named “Alliance” with rules entirely different from those of the I.W.A. in social and political respects;
“whereas citizen Bakunin has made use of deceptive tricks in order to appropriate a larger or smaller part of other persons’ fortunes, which constitutes fraud;”
“whereas, further, he or his agents have had recourse to threats lest he be compelled to meet his obligations; Therefore the members of the Committee request the Congress:

“to expel citizen Bakunin from the I.W.A.

“likewise to expel citizens Guillaume and Schwitzguebel in the conviction that they still belong to the society “Alliance.” pp. 225-226. (Two members of the Committee, Roz Splingard and Walter von Heddeghem withdrew from the Committee in protest against the Report. pp. 226-227).

“Alerini suggests that the Committee have only moral, not substantive, proof; he was a member of the Alliance and is proud of it, for it propagated, established and strengthened the I.W.A. in Spain so that eighty-four federations exist there now; you are but a holy inquisition, we demand public hearings.” p. 227.

“Splingard requests further information concerning the manner in which Marx managed to get hold of the documents as that could not be done honestly. Bakunin merely failed to keep a promise to translate Marx’s work, because he was advised against this, the Alliance existed in Geneva and Spain before the I.W.A; in Geneva you yourselves recognised it; furnish proof that it still-exists…” pp. 227-228.

“Marx … states … he … has contributed other pieces from Russia, but naturally must not give the name of the sender; for the rest, the committee members have naturally given their word of honour not to disclose what went on in the discussion … the documents have not been obtained in a dishonest manner, they were sent without being requested.”

“Morago takes the floor and speaks at length in Spanish in favour of the Alliance, against the resolutions of the Committee, etc. It is well past midnight; van den Abeel passes word to the chairman that the premises must be cleared. The Congress dispenses with the translation of Morago’s speech the more so as he and his Spanish fellow delegates do not stand accused and it is resolved to give hearing ^-only to the accused, Guillaume and Schwitzguebel and then to take the vote.” p. 228.

“Guillaume says … “The entire proceeding is a political trial with the desire of silencing the minority, that is, actually the majority …”

“Schwitzguebel declares he is convinced that his conviction has been a foregone conclusion; he says he will remain loyal … to the I.W.A … even should he be expelled.” pp. 228-229. (According to Guillaume, Schwitzguebel confined himself by saying: “We have been condemned in advance, the workers, however, will condemn the decision of your majority.” L Internationale, Documents et Souvenirs (1864-1878), Vol. II, p. 348. (Gerth’s footnote, p. 29 of Minutes).

“The expulsion of Mikhail Bakunin from the I.W.A. is passed by the Congress with 29 Ayes against 7 Nayes and 8 abstaining votes.

“The expulsion of James Guillaume from the I.W.A. is passed by the Congress with 25 Ayes against 9 Nayes and 9 abstaining votes.

“The expulsion of Adhemar Schwitzguebel is rejected by the Congress with 25 Ayes against 16 Nayes and 10 abstaining votes.

“Upon Fr. Engels’ notion the Congress resolves by a large majority to table Point 3 of the recommendations of the Committee (further expulsions) …” p. 231.

The Origins of the Alliance

The background to the origin of the Alliance, which served as the main pretext for the rigged majority of the Congress in expelling Bakunin and Guillaume from the International is mentioned nowhere in the Minutes. Nor is any mention made of the accusation by Marx and his close associates that Bakunin was a secret agent of Tsar Nicholas and the Pan-slavists, a fact that the pro-Bakunists no doubt brought up in defence of Bakunin inasmuch as the accusation was a falsehood.

It is therefore of historical interest to adduce some significant data on these two periods in his life as given in the biographical pamphlet “Mikhail Alexandrovitch Bakunin” by Hyppolite Havel, reprinted in the May 1939 issue of MAN!

“Bakunin … and his friends … participated in the Peace Congress held in Geneva in September 1867. Bakunin and his intimate comrades Joukowsky, Mroczkovski, Naguel and others made great efforts to win the Congress to their side … The next Congress voted down the proposal of Bakunin to recognise the social question as the supreme question. Bakunin, Elisee Reclus, Aristide Ray, Joukowsky, Mroczkovski, Fanelli and others (18 members in all) left the organisation and founded the ‘Alliance Internationale de la Democratie Socialiste’. Bakunin proposed that they should join the International Workingmen’s Association and he and his friends became members of the Jura section of the International.”

“In Karl Marx he (Bakunin) found a mean antagonist. Even in the midst of the revolutionary struggles on 1848, Marx published his Neue Rheinische Zeitung articles accusing Bakunin of being a secret agent of Tsar Nicholas and the Panslavists … Whilst Bakunin suffered imprisonment at Olmutz and other Austrian jails, Herzen, the great Russian political writer and Mazzini forced Marx to take back the calumnies. But Marx was not the man to forgive them this humiliation. Many years later after Bakunin had suffered imprisonment in the subterranean cells of the Schlusselburg and exile in Siberia, Marx and his satellites started the despicable game anew. Anonymous denunciations appeared in Social Democratic papers under the editorship of Liebknecht, Hess and others. But at the Congress of the International at Basle in 1869 the slanderers were forced to compromise themselves and to declare the entire baselessness of their charge.”

It is, likewise, worthy of historic note here to point out the relationship which had existed between Marx and Bakunin in earlier days. They were once personal friends. But when disagreements on ideological principles started to develop Marx turned upon Bakunin as an antagonist whom he must destroy.

Marx’s treatment of Bakunin was not a singular one. At one time he considered Max Stirner a personal friend, but after the publication of Stirner’s The Ego and his Own, the friendship ended. Marx considered it an outright attack on his ideas. Also, when J.P. Proudhon’s The Philosophy of Poverty appeared, Marx met this criticism of authoritarian ideas with a bitter attack under the derisive title The Poverty of Philosophy.

A Re-Examination of the Report which brought about the
Expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume from the International

The “Report” of the “Inquiry Committee” and its “recommendations” approved by the rigged majority of the Congress is of such a questionable nature that a closer examination of its contents is called for.

The Report – by stating that “The Committee lacking time for submission of a complete report” – nevertheless proceeded to “render judgement.”

In proof no. 1 the “Report” itself conceded that “there is insufficient proof of its (the Alliance’s) continued existence!”

In proof no. 2 the “report” asserts that “Bakunin … has tried to establish and perhaps has succeeded in establishing a society … named Alliance…

Proof no.’s. 1 and 2 are in themselves of such a questionable nature that the Committee’s own working condemns both as utterly worthless.

Proof no. 3 accuses Bakunin of having “made use of deceptive tricks in order to appropriate a larger or smaller part of other people’s fortunes, which constitutes fraud.” The Minutes of the Congress do not contain a single iota of evidence in support of the concocted assertions made in “Proof No. 3.”

The nearest the Committee’s “Report” comes to submitting a semblance of evidence against Bakunin is in Proof No. 4 when it states that “he (Bakunin) or his agents have had recourse to threats lest he meet his obligations.” And even here the reference is, in reality, to Nechaev’s sole letter to the publisher who advanced Bakunin 300 roubles for a contemplated translation of Marx’s Capital.

Karl Marx who, as the Minutes show, concocted the series of accusations upon which the Committee’s “Report” is based, revealed his true character when admitting that he had “contributed … pieces from Russia … but naturally must not give the name of the sender” and that “the committee members have naturally given their word of honour not to indicate what went on in the discussion.” Furthermore, Marx brazenly asserted: “the documents have not been obtained in a dishonest manner, they were sent without having been requested.”!

What the word “honour” meant to the Committee of Inquiry can best be evaluated by the kind of “Report” they brought in. Is there any wonder that at least two members of the Inquiry Committee had the courage and the decency to resign in protest against the Report?

That the Congress was rigged is most strikingly illustrated, as the Minutes show, by its attitude to the Spanish delegate Morago who spoke against the Report and the “majority” of the Congress decided not to translate what he said – “as he and his Spanish fellow delegates do not stand accused …”!

The Significance of the Minutes

The excerpts brought forward from the Minutes of the last Congress of the First International clearly show how Karl Marx, Engels and their associates resorted to the most despicable tactics against their ideological opponents – tactics totally devoid of integrity, decency and plain honesty.

They came well prepared to assume control of the Congress by a rigged “majority” and to pass whatever resolutions they had prepared in advance – in order to deprive the majority of the constituted numerical membership of the International of every semblance of rights and finally crowned their acts of perfidy by expelling Mikhail Bakunin (who was not even present) and James Guillaume for the International!

The most striking contrast however, as revealed by the Minutes, lies in, the integrity shown by the anti-authoritarians towards the future existence of the International. As Engels admitted to Sorge, the International came to its death after it had been moved to New York. That must have been precisely what the “majority” at the Congress had planned. In Europe the anti-authoritarians exerted a much greater influence than did Marx and his fellow authoritarians.

Without suspecting the true motives of the Marxists in moving the International, the anti-authoritarians, despite the set-backs and humiliations inflicted upon them by the rigged “majority”, submitted the following statement to the Congress through delegate Victor Dave:

“We, the undersigned, members of the minority of the Hague Congress, adherents of autonomy and federation of workingmen’s groups, in view of the decisive vote which appears to us opposed to the principles which are recognised in the countries represented by us in the past Congress; wishing, however, to avoid any sort of split in the body of the I.W.A., make the following statements …:”

“We will continue to maintain administrative relations with the General Council: relations concerning the payment of dues, correspondence and labour statistics.”
“The federations represented by us will exchange direct and regularly continue reports among themselves and all regularly established branches of the International.”
“Should the General Council wish to interfere in the internal affairs of a federation, the federations represented by the undersigned assume joint obligation to maintain their autonomy unless these federations will take a course directly opposed to the General Rules of the I.W.A. accepted at the Geneva Congress.
“We summon all federations and sections to prepare from now until the next Congress for the triumph of the principles of federal autonomy as the organisational basis of work in the body of the International.” - 17 signatures are attached to the statement, pp. 229-230 of the Minutes.

The above position taken by the pro-Bakuninists is the most striking ^,documentary proof of the differences between the pro-Marxian authoritarians and the anti-authoritarian anarchists.

Factually the I.W.A., which had fallen under the control of the rigged majority of the Congress had been moved to New York with the intention of bringing about its death, did not end its life and activity so far as the anti-authoritarians were concerned. In the previously mentioned pamphlet on Bakunin’s life by Havel he states:

“… the Federations (Jura, Spanish, Italian and East Belgians) … concluding a federative alliance among themselves and abolishing all central authority, continued the work of the International Workingmen’s Association on federalist principles and up to 1878 held yearly congresses, until this became impossible owing to Government persecutions …”

The End justifies the Means

The revelations that come to light in reading the excerpts from the Minutes of the Hague Conference of 1872 poses the question as to whether Marx, Engels and their associates were – in view of the tactics they employed against their ideological opponents – devils incarnate? The answer can only be a negative one, although their actions are a far more serious debasement of their integrity than it might have been were it done out of spite. The tragic fact stands out that every one of their actions was undoubtedly done in the name of “The end justifying the means” – a basic tenet of every authoritarian-minded person.

The General Council of the International was controlled by Marx and his followers while most of the sections of the federation throughout the world were under the influence of Bakunin’s anti-authoritarian ideas. It was this fact that led Marx and his associates to choose the course they pursued at the Congress. The decision to besmirch the character of so noble a personality as Victoria Woodhull, who was not even present to defend herself, presented them with no qualms whatsoever.

When one reads the charges brought against her by Marx one can scarcely believe they were uttered by a sincere antagonist. In fact, it was Victoria Woodhull who first published Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” in the United States! Marx’s closest associate at the Congress, Frederick Engels, likewise demonstrated his lack of integrity when he had the Congress eject W. West even as a spectator, in spite of the fact that West had travelled four thousand miles to attend the Congress as the duly accredited delegate of section 12 of New York! Marx’s total lack of integrity, however, was revealed in full when he showed no hesitation in lying outright to the Congress when stating that “the documents” against Bakunin “have not been obtained in a dishonest manner” and that “they were sent without having been requested.” when as a matter of fact it was but one document and, as Hans Gerth shows in his Introduction to the Minutes, Marx urgently requested Danielson, the Russian economist, to obtain for him the sole “document”, Nechaev’s letter to the publisher who had advanced Bakunin 300 roubles for the proposed translation of Marx’s Capital. (p. XVII.)

How thoroughly rigged the Congress was is most strikingly illustrated by the fact recorded in the Minutes on page 213 that not only did Marx, Engels and the other members of the old General Council propose to move the General Council to New York, but that they also named those who should constitute the new General Council. An equally striking illustration of the rigged actions of the Congress is revealed in the Minutes (page 206) recording that a resolution was introduced to the effect that the issue of political action should “be placed on the agenda of the next Congress.” The real manipulators of the Congress, evidently knowing beforehand that there would not be any next Congress, railroaded through a resolution adopting, for the first time, political action as a tenet of the I.W.A. (p. 285, Minutes.)

The Tragic Consequences of Marxist Tactics

The Minutes of the last Congress of the First International are of great historical significance. They help one to understand more clearly events that have taken place in the socialist world since that last Congress in general and events that are taking place in the “successful” marxist countries in particular. Idealists in the intellectual world who readily rejoiced over the October revolution were very reluctant to believe at first the news of the continuous persecutions that the self-styled pure marxist Bolshevik Government of Russia was carrying out against its ideological opponents. Many of these intellectuals attempted to minimise and even justify the persecutions. The Anarchists were the first victims, to be followed by the anarcho-syndicalists, Social-Democrats and Social-Revolutionists. Still the intellectual world hesitated to take a stand. It was only when news leaked out of Russia relating to the persecution of writers who dared to criticise the Government that some intellectuals began to realise that the Bolshevik regime was indeed capable of carrying out indefensible actions.

Then came the news of the infamous trials of the leading members of the Bolshevik Government whom the majority of the Communist Party had chosen to label as counter-revolutionists and in most cases put them to death. The intellectual world that at one time had refused to believe the atrocities attributed to the Bolshevik Government, finally realising the truth, began to speak out in protest against those actions.

Following Stalin’s death, Kruschev, who during Stalin’s reign of terror and assassination against ideological opponents served as his right-hand man and subsequently became one of Stalin’s successors, finally admitted at a secret meeting of the Communist Party that most of the political victims jailed and executed were innocent! Much has been written about the trumped-up trials carried out under the Stalin regime, as well as about the continuous persecutions of other political dissenters, but still no-one has been able to offer a clear-cut explanation as to how self-styled marxist idealists holding the reins of government could be capable of carrying out the kind of actions and policies which they unashamedly repeated over and over again.

It is in this respect that the Minutes of the last Congress of the International is a document of great significance. [*] The excerpts from these Minutes help one, for the first time, to understand the results of the tactics and methods employed by Marx, Engels and their followers at that Hague Conference. They taught the marxists who came after them to emulate their teachers with a vengeance. The latest proof is now being enacted in China following the death of “Chairman” Mao and it may well surpass that which followed Stalin’s death.

Marxism and Humanism

In view of what took place at the Hague Congress of 1872, as shown by the quotes from the Minutes presented here, one cannot help but pose the question as to whether there is any justification for Isaac Deutscher’s attempt to associate humanism with Marx and Engels in particular, and marxists in general. The tactics and methods employed by these two leading spokesmen of marxism against their ideological opponents at the Hague Congress certainly disputes this. Equally as questionable is Deutscher’s depicting Lenin and Trotsky as being closer to the envisaged humanist “Socialist Man” than Stalin and his successors proved to be.

In reality, Lenin and Trotsky, the figure-heads of the first marxist Government to come into existence, instituted persecutions and executions of political opponents, with their final most brutal and murderous act – the drowning in blood of the soldiers, sailors, workers and peasants who took part in the Kronstadt rebellion.

“The end justifies the means” served as a guide for Lenin and Trotsky, even if it led to the murder of ideological opponents. In this respect they only emulated the tactics and methods employed by their marxist predecessors at the Hague Conference of 1872. One may surmise that Mikhail Bakunin, James Guillaume, W. West and Victoria Woodhull escaped death by a marxist firing squad only because the General Council under Marx had no machinery of government at its disposal.

The utter lack of humanism as evinced by every marxist government that has come into existence leaves one puzzled as to how Deutscher failed to realise this – in the face of his own rejection of what each and every one of these Governments stand for.

Marxism and a Classless, Stateless Society

Deutscher’s further contention is that Marx had envisaged a “classless and stateless society free from social and political oppression.” One need only compare the tactics employed by Marx, Engels and their fellow authoritarians at the Hague Congress with the position taken by the anti-authoritarian Bakunists in order to realise that Deutscher’s vision would have been a correct one if he had referred, instead, to the latter.

It was, of course, difficult for Deutscher, being himself a marxist, to realise that the basic foundation upon which centralisation rests is authority and authority cannot be enforced without recourse to every form of repression, including the killing of political opponents. Every past and present Government, regardless of whatever label it carries, fully attests to this fact. To contend, as Deutscher did, that a triumphant marxist State could or would ever lead to the building of a “classless and stateless society free from social and political oppression,” is to engage in pure fantasy.

A truly free society cannot be built by vindictive people imbued with authoritarian concepts. Such a society can only be built by men and women who are, at all times, ready and willing to trust and respect the integrity of ideological opponents in the pursuit of the common goal – the dawn of a classless and stateless society.

The marxian tactics and ideology, based as it is upon the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” has, in reality, proved itself to be nothing other than the dictatorship of the marxian parties in every marxian ruled country. The promised “withering away of the State” once the marxists gained control of the State is no longer repeated by any marxian spokesman in view of the iron-clad rulership which every marxian Government maintains.

It is these facts which have led the intellectual world to total disillusion in what they once trusted and to the rediscovery of the anarchist idea. As a result of this, in the last twenty years, scores of books on anarchism have been published as well as the reprinting of the classical works. Anarchism today stands more vindicated than ever before and it is the anarchist movement everywhere that points out to the oppressed that before they can attain freedom from economic and political exploitation they themselves must arise and bring about the dawn of a truly free society, by overthrowing every existing government – the principle upholder and perpetuator of injustice.

Marcus Graham

About Marcus Graham

Marcus Graham (1893-1985), even at the age of eighty-four, was an excellent example of the indefatigable anarchist propagandist. Born in Rumania in 1893 he immigrated to the United States with his family in 1901 where he became first an egg candler then a garment cutter. Becoming acquainted firstly with socialism he soon turned to anarchism and was an active opponent of militarism during World War I. While working with an anti-war group in New York he was held in Patterson Jail, New Jersey, under the name of Robert Parsons and transferred to Ellis Island in an attempt to have him deported. Since then he was arrested many times, threatened with deportation, beaten by the police and suffered from public apathy or hostility as well as numerous privations. In spite of these obstacles – he helped to bring out several anarchist reviews, edited and published the beautiful “Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry”, and edited and published the monthly American anarchist journal MAN! for seven years until it was closed down by the American Government in 1940.

Graham lived most of his early life in the semi-clandestine world where many fighters for freedom have occasion to find themselves. He contributed to several anarchist papers before launching, in January 1933, MAN!, which, at the time, was the organ of the International Group in San Francisco, which was an important link between different strands of the North American anarchist movement. In its pages Graham published articles covering the whole spectrum of anarchist thought, the politics of Roosevelt’s America, crime, fascism, religion, resistance, art, poetry, literature and anarchist profiles — a real snapshot of life and anarchism throughout most of the Thirties. MAN! continued to be published, despite police and state harassment, until its forced closure by the US government in April 1940.

Endnotes

* Students of social history will be grateful to Hans Gerth for translating the Minutes from the original German long-hand script, and to the University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis., for publishing them.

Letter of September 12 and 17, 1874, The Selected Correspondence of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1846-1895, International Publishers, New York, 1942, p. 330.
The Selected Correspondence of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, p. 327.
Gustav Mayer, Engels, p. 227.
Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil Becker, Joe Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, u.A. an F.A. Sorge und Andere (Stutgart, 1906), p. 597.
E.H. Carr, A Study in Fanaticism: Carl Marx, p. 146.
E.H. Carr, A Study in Fanaticism: Carl Marx, p. 247.
Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, Geschichte seines Lebens (Soziologische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig, 1933) p. 539.

First published 1976 by Simian Publications (Cienfuegos Press), Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW172BL.
See: www.christiebooks.com

Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism

Zabalaza Books — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:09:25 +0000

Author: James Connolly

File size: 235 KB

“There is not a Socialist in the world today who can indicate with any degree of clearness how we can bring about the co-operative commonwealth except along the lines suggested by industrial organisation of the workers.

Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of industry. Only industrial organisations are adapted to the administration of a co-operative commonwealth that we are working for. Only the industrial form of organisation offers us even a theoretical constructive Socialist programme. There is no constructive Socialism except in the industrial field.”

The above extracts from the speech of Delegate Stirton, editor of the Wage Slave, of Hancock, Michigan, so well embody my ideas upon this matter that I have thought well to take them as a text for an article in explanation of the structural form of Socialist society. In a previous chapter I have analysed the weakness of the craft or trade union form of organisation alike as a weapon of defence against the capitalist class in everyday conflict on the economic field, and as a generator of class consciousness on the political field, and pointed out the greater effectiveness for both purposes of an industrial form of organisation…

From Socialism Made Easy, 1908

Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism

by James Connolly

Organising Constructively

In the present article I desire to show how they who are engaged in building up industrial organisations for the practical purpose of today are at the same time preparing the framework of the society of the future. It is the realization of that feat that indeed marks the emergence of Socialism as a revolutionary force from the critical to the positive stage. Time was when Socialists, if asked how society would be organised under Socialism, replied invariably, and airily, that such things would be left to the future to decide. The fact was that they had not considered the matter, but the development of the Trust and Organised Capital in general, making imperative the Industrial Organisations of Labour on similar lines, has provided us with an answer at once more complete to ourselves and more satisfying to our questioners.

Now to analyse briefly the logical consequences of the position embodied in the above quotation.

“Political institutions are not adapted to the administration of industry.”

Here is a statement that no Socialist with a clear knowledge of the essentials of his doctrine can dispute. The political institutions of today are simply the coercive forces of capitalist society they have grown up out of, and are based upon territorial divisions of power in the hands of the ruling class in past ages, and were carried over into capitalist society to suit the needs of the capitalist class when that class overthrew the dominion of its predecessors.

The Old Order and the New

The delegation of the function of government into the hands of representatives elected from certain districts, States or territories, represents no real natural division suited to the requirements of modern society, but is a survival from a time when territorial influences were more potent in the world than industrial influences, and for that reason is totally unsuited to the needs of the new social order, which must be based upon industry.

The Socialist thinker, when he paints the structural form of the new social order, does not imagine an industrial system directed or ruled by a body of men or women elected from an indiscriminate mass of residents within given districts, said residents working at a heterogeneous collection of trades and industries. To give the ruling, controlling, and directing of industry into the hands of such a body would be too utterly foolish.

What the Socialist does realize is that under a social democratic form of society the administration of affairs will be in the hands of representatives of the various industries of the nation; that the workers in the shops and factories will organise themselves into unions, each union comprising all the workers at a given industry; that said union will democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing all foremen etc., and regulating the routine of labour in that industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the needs of its allied trades, and to the departments of industry to which it belongs; that representatives elected from these various departments of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or national government of the country.

Begin in the Workshop

In short, social democracy, as its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of democracy. Such application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of industrial organisation until it reaches the culminating point of national executive power and direction. In other words, social democracy must proceed from the bottom upward, whereas capitalist political society is organised from above downward.

Social democracy will be administered by a committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of the land; capitalist society is governed by representatives elected from districts, and is based upon territorial division.

The local and national governing, or rather administrative, bodies of Socialists will approach every question with impartial minds, armed with the fullest expert knowledge born of experience; the governing bodies of capitalist society have to call in an expensive professional expert to instruct them on every technical question, and know that the impartiality of said expert varies with, and depends upon, the size of his fee.

No ‘Servile State’

It will be seen that this conception of Socialism destroys at one blow all the fears of a bureaucratic State, ruling and ordering the lives of every individual from above, and thus gives assurance that the social order of the future will be an extension of the freedom of the individual, and not the suppression of it. In short, it blends the fullest democratic control with the most absolute expert supervision, something unthinkable of any society built upon the political State.

To focus the idea properly in your mind you have but to realize how industry today transcends all limitations of territory and leaps across rivers, mountains and continents; then you can understand how impossible it would be to apply to such far-reaching intricate enterprises the principle of democratic control by the workers through the medium of political territorial divisions.

Under Socialism, States, territories, or provinces will exist only as geographical expressions, and have no existence as sources of governmental power, though they may be seats of administrative bodies.

Now, having grasped the idea that the administrative force of the Socialist republic of the future will function through unions industrially organised, that the principle of democratic control will operate through the workers correctly organised in such industrial unions, and that the political territorial State of capitalist society will have no place or function under Socialism, you will at once grasp the full truth embodied in the words of this member of the Socialist Party whom I have just quoted, that “only the industrial form of organisation offers us even a theoretical constructive Socialist programme.”

The Political State and its Uses

To some minds constructive Socialism is embodied in the work of our representatives on the various public bodies to which they have been elected. The various measures against the evils of capitalist property brought forward by, or as a result of, the agitation of Socialist representatives on legislative bodies are figured as being of the nature of constructive Socialism.

As we have shown, the political State of capitalism has no place under Socialism; therefore, measures which aim to place industries in the hands of, or under the control of, such a political State are in no sense steps towards that ideal; they are but useful measures to restrict the greed of capitalism and to familiarize the workers with the conception of common ownership. This latter is, indeed, their chief function.

But the enrolment of the workers in unions patterned closely after the structure of modem industries, and following the organic lines of industrial development, is par excellence the swiftest, safest, and most peaceful form of constructive work the Socialist can engage in. It prepares within the framework of capitalist society the working forms of the Socialist republic, and thus, while increasing the resisting power of the worker against present encroachments of the capitalist class, it familiarizes him with the idea that the union he is helping to build up is destined to supplant that class in the control of the industry in which he is employed.

The Union Can Build Freedom

The power of this idea to transform the dry detail work of trade union organisation into the constructive work of revolutionary Socialism, and thus make of the unimaginative trade unionist a potent factor in the launching of a new system of society, cannot be over-estimated. It invests the sordid details of the daily incidents of the class struggle with a new and beautiful meaning, and presents them in their true light as skirmishes between the two opposing armies of light and darkness.

In the light of this principle of industrial unionism every fresh shop or factory organised under its banner is a fort wrenched from the control of the capitalist class and manned with the soldiers of the revolution to be held by them for the workers.

On the day that the political and economic forces of Labour finally break with capitalist society and proclaim the Workers’ Republic, these shops and factories so manned by industrial unionists will be taken charge of by the workers there employed, and force and effectiveness be thus given to that proclamation. Then and thus the new society will spring into existence, ready equipped to perform all the useful functions of its predecessor.

From Socialism Made Easy, 1908

A Critique of Marxism

Zabalaza Books — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:23:06 +0000

Author: Sam Dolgoff

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“This summation is written in response to young people seeking clarification of the main issues involved in the classic controversy between Marxists and anarchists. The subject matter is arranged in the form of extracts from relevant sources. The anarchists as well as the marxists speak for themselves in quotations culled from their works. Since the non-anarchist critique of Marxism has taken a libertarian direction, we have also included extracts from such writings.”….

First published by Soil of Liberty, Minneapolis, 1983

A Critique of Marxism

by Sam Dolgoff

From the original:

The author has meant this pamphlet to be provocative, The Soil of Liberty staff is not in complete agreement with everything in the pamphlet but felt it should be printed. We welcome comments for future magazine issues of Soil of Liberty.

This pamphlet is the second published by Soil of Liberty. The first, “The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society”, is also by Sam Dolgoff and is available for 55¢, including postage. Bulk rates are available.

Sam has been active in the anarchist movement since the 1920s and presently lives in New York City.

Soil of Liberty also has a book service and a catalog will soon be available. Magazine subscriptions are $3 -$4 a-year. Address is on the back cover.

Foreword

This summation is written in response to young people seeking clarification of the main issues involved in the classic controversy between Marxists and anarchists. The subject matter is arranged in the form of extracts from relevant sources. The anarchists as well as the marxists speak for themselves in quotations culled from their works. Since the non-anarchist critique of Marxism has taken a libertarian direction, we have also included extracts from such writings.

Our critique excludes forgotten earlier writings disavowed by Marx and Engels and deals only with their mature works. In his preface to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, Engels revealed that he and Marx had “…abandoned the manuscript of The German Ideology [1846] to the gnawing criticism of the mice…” A Russian visitor, Alexis Vodin, who interviewed Engels in 1893, wrote that Engels “was very embarrassed when I expressed interest in Marx and Engels’ earlier writings…” (see David Mclellan, Marx Before Marxism, 1970, p. 208) Only in 1927 was an edition of the earlier writings published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.

Passages marked in [brackets] are mine. Those marked in (parentheses) are the writer’s. References are also marked in (parentheses).

Economic Determinism

Marxism is based upon the theory of Economic Determinism (or its equivalent terms – Historical Materialism, Dialectical Materialism, Materialistic Conception of History, Scientific Socialism, etc.). Economic Determinism constitutes the essence of Marxism. It is defined by Engels in this famous passage from his introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy:

“…all past history was the history of class struggles… these warring classes of society are always the products of the conditions of production and exchange, in a word, of the economic condition of the time; [Engels’ emphasis] therefore the economic structure of society always forms the real basis from which, in the last analysis, is to be explained, the whole superstructure of legal and political institutions [the state] as well as the religious, philosophical, and other conceptions of each historical period.. .all moral theories are the product, in the last analysis, of the economic stage which society reached at that particular epoch… with the same certainty, can we deduce the social revolution from the existing social conditions and the principles of political economy… now, a materialist conception of history has been propounded and the way found to explain man’s consciousness by his being, instead of his being by his consciousness…”

[Marx formulates this more concisely]

“..,it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence – but their social existence which determines their consciousness…” (Critique of Political Economy)

“…the course of history is governed by inner laws operating in spite of the consciously desired aims of individuals...” (Engels, Ludwig Feurbach, p. 48, emphasis added)

The Critique

Over a century ago Bakunin anticipated much the same arguments against Marx’s theory of Economic Determinism as did later writers. He stressed the point that causes and effects are continuously interacting and replacing themselves. Causes become effects. Effects, in turn, become causes. For example:

“…Marx holds that the political condition of each country is always.., the faithful expression of its economic situation…. He takes no account of other factors in history such as the ever-present reaction of political, juridical and religious institutions on the economic situation. He says poverty produces political slavery, the State, [but ignores the fact] that political slavery, the State, reproduces, in its turn, and maintains poverty as a condition for its own existence…. Marx ignores completely … a multitude of ethnological, climatological and historic causes,.., which independent of the economic conditions of each country, [Bakunin stresses the ‘spirit of revolt’] exert a considerable influence on its destinies and even on its economic development…” (Letter to La Liberte - 1872)

J.M. Cameron, English historian and sociologist:

“…it is not true that in history we are faced, first, with men associating together in economic life, and then with men worshipping the gods, inventing moral codes, .and justifying this or that political order…. We are faced with men engaged in all these activities at once. If we approach history without preconceptions, we have no means by which we can determine certain attitudes to be primary and others secondary. All we know is that they co-exist. As sociologists and historians we ought not single out certain phenomena and describe them as causes and other phenomena as effects. The only assumption that accords with the scientific is that we are faced with a developing whole the parts of which are continuously interacting…” (Scrutiny of Marxism, p. 28; 1948)

The article entitled “Dialectics” in the Encyclopedia Britannia (1969) also stresses the often decisive importance of non-economic factors in the shaping of history, grossly underestimated by Marx:

“…many economic facts are just as much effects as they are causes …changes in artistic tastes, in political institutions, in social traditions and even religious doctrines influence consumption of commodities and thereby become determinants of production and law is just as much a determinant as it is a product of economic life. Thus a maze of causal relationships results and with causes and effects indistinguishable in many instances, no social program could be built on this foundation….”

It may be objected that both Cameron and the Encyclopedia, are too conservative and unfair to Marxism. But R.H. Tawney, a social thinker and historian whose works are highly recommended by the Marxists, voices much the same criticism of Marx’s theory of Economic Determinism:

“…that men should have thought as they did is sometimes as significant as they should have acted as they did… there is an evolution of ideas as well as organisms, and the quality of civilization depends less on physical qualities, than on a complex structure of habits, knowledge and beliefs, the destruction of which would be followed in a year by the death of half the human race… there is a moral and religious, as well as material environment which sets its stamp on the individual… and the effects of changes in this environment are no less profound….” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, pp. 18-19)

Engels himself unintentionally (to be sure) pinpoints the major fallacy of Economic Determinism:

“…causes [the economic structure of society] and effects, [the whole legal, political, moral, etc. ‘superstructure’], are constantly changing places and what is now or here an effect becomes there or then a cause and vice-versa… truly, when a man is in possession of the final and ultimate truth, it is only natural that he should have a certain contempt for erring and unscientific humanity….” (Anti-Duhring, pp. 36, 29)

It follows from this that the fundamental dogma of Marxism, Economic Determinism – “the final and ultimate truth”, is, according to Engels himself, demonstrably false.

Economic Determinism: The Role of the Proletariat

Economic Determinism is a doctrine which in practice saps the revolutionary vitality of the masses, conditions them to accept capitalism and to co-operate with their rulers in their own enslavement. To effect social changes, the workers must, according to Marx, adapt themselves to the slow, progressive evolution of economic structures because “no social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for which it has room, and new higher relations of production never appear before the necessary material conditions are matured in the womb of the old society.” (Critique of Political Economy)

It takes a long time. “We say to the workers and the petty bourgeoisie; ‘suffer in bourgeois society which creates, by developing industry, the material means for the formation of the new society which will free all of you.’” [Marx on the lessons of the 1848 revolutions.] No matter how great the suffering, the workers are promoting progress because “in the evolution of society, ancient, asiatic, feudal and bourgeois modes of production constitute progressive epochs in the economic systems of society…” (Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy)

On the same grounds, Engels goes so far as to defend the institution of slavery: “The introduction of slavery in Greece under the conditions of that time, was a great step forward…, it was slavery that first made possible the development of agriculture and industry and with it the flower of the ancient world, Hellenism. Without slavery, no Greek State, no Greek art and science; without slavery no Roman Empire; without Hellenism and the Roman Empire as a basis, no Europe… without the slavery of antiquity no modern socialism…” (Anti-Duhring, p. 203)

The consistent Economic Determinist could just as well argue on the same grounds that since production had developed to a point where there was a shortage of labor power, and since the shortage was made up by converting prisoners-of-war into slaves, therefore, wars were necessary and ultimately beneficial.

In his polemic against Proudhon (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847, quoted on p. 357 in Handbook of Marxism, International, 1935), Marx maintained that slavery in America was still an economic necessity, arguing that “slavery is an economic category, like any other. Slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery or credit…, without slavery you have no cotton, without cotton, you have no modern industry…, without slavery, North America, the most progressive of countries would be turned into a primitive country. Abolish slavery and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.”

Question: How progressive is a country whose very existence depends on slavery?

Franz Mehring, Marx’s official biographer, explains that “Marx not only shows that machinery and large scale industry created greater misery than any mode of production known in history, but that also in their ceaseless revolutionisation of capitalist society they are preparing the way for a higher social form… the machine which degrades the worker into its mere appendage, creates at the same time the increasing productive forces of society so that all members of society will enjoy a life worthy of human beings, which could not be done before because pre-capitalist societies were too poor.”

Since, according to the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie is the bearer of large-scale industry, it is in the interests of the workers to help the bourgeoisie to seize power as soon as possible and as soon as the bourgeoisie develops industry, to overthrow it. The workers should co-operate gladly because “as long as the rising mode of production furthers the general aims of society, it is enthusiastically welcomed even by those who suffer most from its corresponding mode of distribution. This was the case with the English workers in the beginnings of large scale industry” (Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 167-8). A deliberate brazen falsehood if ever there was one and a calculated insult to the valiant English workers who fought for freedom with unexampled courage. (See E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class)

Mehring explains that “Marx and Engels aimed at utilizing the Franco-Prussian War as thoroughly as possible in the interests of the proletarian struggle for emancipation… Engels condemned the leaders of the German Socialist Party, William Liebknecht and August Bebel, because they abstained from voting war credits… The situation is: Germany has been forced into a war to defend its national existence against Bonaparte… Bonaparte’s war policy was directed against the national unity Germany and, since the establishment of a united German state is necessary for the ultimate emancipation of the workers, the war must be supported. Bismarck [in prosecuting the war and unifying Germany] is doing a share of our work.”

Engels wrote that “militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe. But this militarism carries within itself the seed of its own destruction… Military rivalry forces states to spend more and more money on armaments thus hastening financial catastrophe…, compulsory military service makes the whole people familiar with the use of arms… the people revolt against the commanding military lords.., the armies of the princes become transformed into the armies of the People; the military machine refuses to work and militarism collapses by the dialectic of its own evolution… gunpowder and other inventions not only revolutionized warfare, but in revolutionizing industry, warfare represents an economic advance.” (Anti-Duhring, p. 192)

In an 1872 letter to the anarchist Carlo Cafiero, Engels declared that both Bismarck and King Victor Emanuel rendered immense service to the Revolution by creating political centralization in their respective countries. “…just as in economic evolution there is the tendency for capital to concentrate in fewer hands and for the smaller capitalist to be swallowed by the large, so likewise in political evolution it is inevitable that the small states should be absorbed by the great….” (Franz Mehring quotes Engels in Karl Marx, pp. 164-5)

In criticizing [the young, pre-anarchist – Ed.] Bakunin’s Appeal to the Slavs — which called for the independence of the Slavic peoples and the destruction of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Prussia, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Feb. 14 1849,-edited by Marx) declared that “no Slavic people has a future for the simple reason that they lack the indispensable political and industrial conditions for independence… the stubborn Czechs and the Slovaks should be grateful to the Germans who have taken the trouble to civilize them be introducing them to commerce, industry, agricultural science and education… What would Texas or California have gained if it would be in the hands of the lazy Mexicans?”

It follows from the above quotation that militants who fight against slavery and for racial equality, people who refuse to help the bourgeoisie bosses, people who are against war and militarism, people who are for the freedom and independence of small nations against imperialist domination, are, according to marxist theory, “dialectically” counter-revolutionists against their oppressors who are unconsciously preparing the road for socialism.

Engels extols parliamentary political action and class collaboration — ”…the two million voters for the German Social Democratic Party plus the young men and women non-voters who stand behind them… form the most compact ‘shock troops’ of the international Proletarian Army.., if this goes on, we shall at the close of the century win over the greater part of the middle social layers, the petty bourgeoisie as well as the small peasants, and we shall come to be the decisive power in the land…. The capitalist parties perish because of the legal means set up by themselves,… the Social Democratic revolution… is getting on first rate while abiding by the law…” (pamphlet, “The Revolutionary Act”)

This catastrophic policy which led to the emasculation of the socialist movement and its absorption into the capitalist State, rendered the German socialist movement (numerically the strongest in the world) impotent to resist the First World War as well as the rise of Nazi fascism — historical tragedies whose magnitude it is impossible to assess.

Nature of the State

That economic factors to a greater or lesser degree, depending on circumstances, shape events is an indisputable fact. To assert, however, that the ultimate cause of all social changes is to be found only in changes in the mode and relations of production is a gross distortion which cannot be sustained by the facts of history.

The marxist misconception of history stems primarily from erroneous ideas about the origin and nature of the State and its preponderant role in the shaping of the economic and social life of humanity.

According to the Communist Manifesto, “the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Bakunin maintained that the State is not merely an agent of the dominant economic class, but that the State also constitutes a class in itself and is the most powerful of all by virtue of its monopoly of armed force and its sovereignty over all other social institutions. In contrast to Marx, Bakunin argued that the State is not only the product but also the creator and perpetuator of economic, political and social inequality.

Bakunin’s critique has in this respect been sustained by modern social thinkers. Sidney Hook states flatly that “the existence of the Soviet Union refutes the theory of historical materialism … since the basic economic changes were achieved through political action [the State].” (Marx and the Marxists, p. 124) It was this development which led Rudolf Hilferding, a noted Marxist economist, to revise his ideas about the nature of the State: “…the Marxist sectarian cannot grasp the idea that the present-day State power, having achieved independence, is unfolding its enormous strength according to its own laws, subjecting social forces and compelling them to serve its ends… Therefore, neither the Russian, nor totalitarian systems in general, is determined by the character of the economy. On the contrary, it is the economy that is determined by the policy of the ruling power. An analogy to the totalitarian State may be found in the era of the Roman Empire in the regime of the Praetorians and their emperors….” (quoted by Hook in Marx and the Marxists, p. 241)

In this connection the political scientist, Michel Collinet, observes that “for Lenin, the Revolution is not the necessary consequence of the productive forces, but of a militarized party of professional revolutionaries who knew how to use an effective strategy to profit by political occasions….” (Le Contrat Social, Jan. 1957)

The Marx-Engels notion that in primitive society the State originally arose to “safeguard the common interests of tribal societies against external enemies and later to protect the economic and political position of the ruling class” is false. The contention that exploitation arose through “purely economic causes… and not at all by the State… that historically, private property by no means makes appearance as the result of robbery and violence” is also false. (Engels, Anti-Duhring, pp. 167, 171, 184)

Evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. All competent historians and anthropologists, among them Edward Jenks, agree that:

“…the State, in its origin, was not an economic, but a military institution… formed by conquest and plunder… unwilling themselves to practice the patient arts of husbandry… the invading hosts settled down like a swarm of locusts on their prey… the rich vineyards and fields of Europe… No permanent State was ever built unaided by an invading host… the State itself, though intensely military in character, imposes itself on a solid base of permanent agriculture, which will supply its needs by wealth drawn from the fruitful soil.., the primitive State was simply a band of warriors under a military leader — Clovis, Rurik, Norman William — but as time went on… as the band of warriors settled down as lords and rulers of their fiefs, as hereditary successors to office and title became recognized… the State began to assume in varied forms the character of an institution, a piece of machinery which maintains a perpetual existence, despite the death of kings and barons…” (Edward Jenks, The State and the Nation, 1919, pp. 130, 131)

“…the State is essentially military in character… its methods are mainly non-productive… they do not produce values, but merely preserve or destroy them.. From its earliest stages its policy has been annexation or plunder of its own or alien communities… it creates property by handing over the resources of the community to individuals or small groups and this is, in effect, what the State had done by creating individual and private property and protecting it with its overwhelming power… the State received its return from this reckless squandering of the resources of the community…” (Jenks, p. 237, my emphasis)

“…the Roman Empire rests on force only, a brute force let loose by the lowest appetites.., it bound every man to his occupation… chained him and his descendants to the same post [occupation], established a real caste system… the wholesale destruction of wealth created by the subject peoples … Rome’s industry in the second and first centuries, B.C. had been war and the spoliation of the vanquished… the fruits of conquest were dissipated in a century…” (Ferdinand Lot, The End of the Ancient World and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages, pp. 8, 65, 84, 85, 82)

We cite a few examples from the anarchist Gaston Leval’s excellent analysis of Marxism which awaits translation into English:

“…the Visigoth dynasty [ruling much of Iberia and France after the Roman Empire fell – Ed.] did not derive its origin from the institution of private property nor from changes in the mode of production. It was the creation of the ‘conquistadores’ who institutionalized the domination and economic exploitation of the conquered peoples…”

“…what became France, was founded by Clovis [first king of the Franks – Ed.], a bandit who murdered his rivals and with a savage horde of warriors from the north routed the Romans and the Germans [Visigoths – Ed]. With each victory he and his successors augmented their forces, conquered more territories, and by plunder, rapine and extortion, engineered the economic subjugation of the conquered peoples, dividing property and the spoils of war among themselves. The true creators of the State were the militarists and the politicians, not only in Spain and France, but also in Flanders [Belgium], Germany, Russia and other northern European countries, and in Italy….”

“…the State by its very nature, tends to have a life of its own. It is a parasitic institution living at the expense of society… in Latin America the Spanish and Portuguese ‘conquistadores’ seized the land of the natives, plundered the urban communities, and by brute force, not by changes in the mode of production, imposed feudal regimes which to this day weigh so heavily on the economic and political institutions of so many nations… to give land to its soldiers and officials, the invaders changed the social structure of the conquered territories…”

To illustrate the predominance of the State, Leval points out that during the post-war period in the newly established small States “there already appeared Ministers, a repressive apparatus, jails, and executioners… There already appear classes. The new classes do not owe their existence to technological developments or changes in the mode of production. They are brought into being by the newly created State — the institutionalized political authority controlling or dominating the economic and social life of the people…”

“…the economy of the newly established States, may deteriorate; mass starvation and disease may decimate the population; but the ministries grow. The police and armed forces multiply. The new bureaucracy flourishes. A new powerful class exploits the peasants, levies taxes, and suffocates the people in an avalanche of rules and restrictions…”

“…Rene’ Dumont, a renowned agronomist and sociologist, reports from visits to some of the new States that the principal industry of these new countries is governmental administration. In fifteen former French colonies newly independent — economic production declined, but the production of politicians grew. In Dahomey, the wages of the governmental bureaucracy absorbs 70% of the national income. The situation in Gabon is just as bad or worse, as it is in other countries Dumont visited. As soon as a peasant learns to read and write he goes to the city to become a functionary..,” (above quotes from Gaston Leval, La Falacia del Marxismo, Mexico City, 1967, pp. 116, 117, 118)

Bakunin anticipated just such a development: “…in Turkish Serbia [after independence – Ed.] … there is only one class in control of the government — the bureaucracy. The one and only function of the State, therefore, is to exploit the Serbian people in order to provide the bureaucrats with all the comforts of life…” (Statism and Anarchy)

The State and Production

Marx and Engels praised the bourgeoisie for advancing the economy by “lumping together… loosely connected provinces.., or small independent states into one nation, with one government, one code of laws etc…” (Communist Manifesto). This assumption, that political centralization — the State, facilitates economic development is a dangerous illusion refuted by massive evidence. The fact is that wars between States devastated whole nations. The State wrecked the economy, stifled initiative and held back progress for centuries.

The Class Struggle

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels declare that their “theoretical conclusions are based on the class struggle.” That class struggles are a factor in social change no one will deny. But the dogma that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Communist Manifesto) is false.

Gaston Leval demonstrates that “wars between migratory hordes and sedentary populations, nations and States, count in history more than class wars — particularly in Europe and Asia… In Spain, recall the six centuries of war against the Arabs. Read the literature of the 10th to the 16th Centuries to realize how little part the class war played as compared to religious and racial factors; how little the class war figured in the conquest of Sicily and almost all of Italy, Flanders and part of France by the Spanish armies; the international religious wars between Christians and Mohammendans; or the conquest of Latin America by Spain — the people of Spain sided with the kings…”(La Falacia del Marxismo, pp 121-2)

Contrary to the Communist Manifesto, the Plebians did not constitute a revolutionary class. In the centuries of the Roman Empire, both the Patricians and the Plebians approved the enslavement of prisoners-of-war, who were drafted to reinforce the armies of Caesar, Lucullus, and Pompeii. Although the Patricians represented the big landholders and the Plebians the small farmers; the Plebians were not interested in the abolition of privilege or the establishment of a new economic order. “Their sole concern,” writes Rudolf Rocker, “was to participate in the privileges of the Patricians and to obtain an equal share in the spoils of war.” (Nationalism and Culture, p. 379)

As compared to the catastrophic impact of wars in this century, even the most protracted struggles between workers and employers are of minor significance.

Marx surely underestimated the importance of nationalism in shaping history. He thought that nationalism would be superseded by class struggles because the proletariat would become class conscious in the process of struggle.

In this connection Lewis Mumford disagrees with Marx:

“When Marx wrote in the 1850s, nationalism seemed to him to be a dying movement… it had in fact, taken on a new life… with the massing of the population into national States which continued during the 19th Century, the national struggle for political power cut at right angle to the class struggle… the struggle for political power now became a struggle between States for command of exploitable areas… after 1850, nationalism became the drill master of the restless proletariat who identified themselves with the all-powerful State” (Technics and Civilization, pp. 189, 190, 191)

Marx and Engels believed that “modern industrial labour subjection to capitalism, in England, France, America and Germany, has stripped the proletariat of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to the proletariat so many bourgeois prejudices.” (Communist Manifesto)

The trouble with this argument is that workers still nurse these prejudices and act accordingly. What a worker thinks and feels may determine his or her reaction to events more than what he or she does for a living.

With the coming of World War I (which according to Marxist theory should have signalled the long delayed collapse of capitalism), the proletariat – ”the only really revolutionary class” (Communist Manifesto), became rabid nationalists, and even the German Socialist Party deputies in the Reichstag patriotically voted war credits.

In opposition to Marx, Bakunin argued that the bourgeois-minded workers in the advanced industrialized countries are not going to make revolutions [This is incorrect- Bakunin was often sceptical about the upper layer of workers in all countries, and never rejected the Western working class– Ed.].

History proved Bakunin right and Marx wrong. The most notable revolutions of this century have been those that broke out in Russia and China. Nor did the October Revolution, as Lenin expected, initiate a series of proletarian upheavals in the advanced countries of Western Europe that were deemed ripe for the Social Revolution.

Marx attached slight importance to psychological factors in revolution, but Bakunin insisted that revolution was impossible for people who had “lost the habit of freedom.” He left more room for people’s will, their aspiration for freedom and equality and “the instinct of revolt” which constitutes the “revolutionary consciousness” of oppressed peoples.

Rudolf Rocker writes that:

“…in France, crafts and industries were brought under the regimentation of the State… rigorous regulations and methods of work were decreed for all industries… an army of officials took care that no one deviated even by a hair’s breadth from established norms. Tailors were told how many stitches to make in sewing a sleeve into a coat; the cooper, how many hoops to put around a barrel. The State not only decreed the length, width and colour of woven fabrics but specified the number of threads in each weave. Violations were punished by confiscation of goods; in serious cases, by destruction of material, tools, workshops, etc… Just as agricultural production under serfdom declined sharply; so did the Royal ordinances and regimentation wreck industry and bring France to the brink of ruin…”

“As in France, English industry too, was subjected to severe restrictions. The Court was interested only in filling the Royal treasury. Under the reign of Charles I, the monopoly for the manufacture of soap was sold to a company of London soap boilers and a special ordinance forbade any household to make soap for its own use. Rights to exploit tin and coal deposits in the north of England, glass and other industries were sold to the highest bidders…”

“When England acquired its colonial empire, immense territories were sold to monopolists for ridiculously low payments from which they derived enormous profits in a few years… Queen Elizabeth sold exclusive rights to commercial companies to trade in the East Indies and all lands east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. Charles II gave exclusive rights to exploit Virginia to his father-in-law. Rights were sold to the Hudson Bay Company for 20% of the profits, etc…” (Nationalism and Culture, 1937, pp. 125, 126, 430, 431)

Peter Kropotkin denounced:

“…revolutionaries who glorify the State… the modern radical is a centralist, Statist and rabid Jacobin, and the Socialists (Marxists included) fall in step. Just as the Florentines at the end of the 15th Century knew no better than to call upon the dictatorship of the State to save themselves from the Patricians; so the socialists only call upon the same gods, the dictatorship of the State to save themselves from the horrors of the economic regime, created by the very same State!”

“The role of the nascent State in the 16th and 17th Centuries was to destroy the independence of the cities; to pillage the rich guilds of the merchants and artisans; to concentrate in its hands the external commerce; to lay hands on the internal administration of the guilds and subject internal commerce and all manufacturing to the last detail to the control of a host of officials and in this way, to kill industry and the arts; taking over the local militias and the whole municipal administration; crushing the weak in the interests of the strong by taxation and ruining countries by wars and the lands were either simply stolen by the rich with the connivance of the State or confiscated by the State directly…”

Kropotkin calls attention to the:

“…shameless waste of the Ministers and the Court; the monstrous profits of the private concessionaires who collected indirect taxes and similar profits by the innumerable official collectors who channelled the direct tax into the treasury…. Industry in the 18th Century was dying… all the State was capable of doing was to tighten the screws for the workers; depopulate the countryside; spread misery in the towns; reduce millions of human beings to a state of starvation and impose industrial serfdom,., already, at the close of the 14th Century, an edict by Edward III, King of England, decreed that ‘every alliance, connivance, meetings, enactments and solemn oaths made or to be made between carpenters and masons [or any other trades] are null and void’.., in 1801 the French government itself undertook to appoint mayors and syndics in each of the thirty thousand communes…” (The State: Its Historic Role, pp. 41-43, 46-47)

Engels justified the tyranny of the State on the ground that “forcible measures of Louis 14th, made it easier for the bourgeoisie to carry through their revolution”. But the bourgeoisie, in the name of the “common will” fought the absolute monarchy for the exclusive right to exploit the workers; just as they crushed the revolt of the workers and the sans culottes during the French Revolution a century later. Marx and Engels conceded that the bourgeoisie “established new classes, new oppress-ions… in place of the old ones…” (Communist Manifesto). But their inability to learn from historical events that no State can ever play a revolutionary role, persists to this day.

Marx’s whole theory of history and economic laws led him to predict both the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. But capitalism has not only been able to survive. It has actually become more entrenched by adopting, in various degrees, social-democratic reform measures; thereby absorbing the labour and socialist movements into the structure of the State capitalist economic system (-sometimes designated “welfare state” or “welfare capitalism “)The political scientist Michel Collinet points out that “if the cyclical crises of capitalism are, as Marx predicted, a source of misery and insecurity; it is also a fact that after more than a hundred years, it has not led the working class to make a [PROLETARIAN] Social Revolution. The terrible economic depression of 1929, profoundly divided and demoralized the workers and their political parties who claim to represent them… in Europe the crisis aggravated nationalism and brought on the fascist racist reaction. In America, the ‘New Deal’ of Roosevelt; in France, the popular front… strengthened capitalism…” (Le Contrat Social, January 1967. I have inserted and emphasized the PROLETARIAN to establish the point that neither the largely agrarian Russian nor the Chinese Revolution were really proletarian.)

The Marxist Max Schachtman, in his introduction to Franz Mehring’s biography of Karl Marx, admits the “incontestable fact that the class struggle has not… led to the rule of the working class that was to be transitional-to a classless society — the perspective that Marx himself held to be his unique contribution — cannot be explained away…” And Max Eastman in his introduction to an anthology of Marx and Engels writings, likewise objects that “the very first sentence of the Communist Manifesto, ‘the History of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ shows the disposition to read one’s own interests into the definition of facts…”

Marx and most authoritarian socialists did not give much thought to the forms of organization that might translate into reality the ideal of a free, stateless society. The dialectical method which Marx employed in working out his theory of Dialectical Materialism is essentially a philosophy of perpetual conflict between opposing tendencies or forces interrupted by temporary adjustments. There is conflict, but society is also a vast interlocking network of co-operative labour and the very existence of mankind depends upon this inner cohesion.

In this connection, Paul Avrich emphasizes that “mankind, in fact, owes its existence to mutual assistance. The theories of Hegel, Marx and Darwin notwithstanding, Kropotkin held that co-operation rather than conflict lies at the root of the historical process…” (Introduction to the 1972 edition of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution)

Marx’s failure to appreciate this truth permeates his grossly distorted conceptions.

Marx on Capitalism: The Dialectical Falsification of History

Marx’s notion that the “bourgeoisie has created more colossal productive forces in scarce one hundred years than all preceding generations together…” (Communist Manifesto) is a gross distortion. Lewis Mumford’s classic study, Technics and Civilization, an objective assessment of the relationship of capitalism to technology, corrects Marx on this point:

“While technics owes an honest debt to capitalism, as it does to war, capitalism and technics must be clearly distinguished at every stage … the machine took on characteristics that had nothing essential to do with the technical process or the forms of work… it was because of capitalism that the handicraft industries in Europe and other parts of the world were recklessly destroyed by machine products; even when machine products were inferior to the things they replaced.., the machine has suffered from the sins of capitalism.., contrariwise, capitalism has taken credit for the machine…”

“Although there is a close historical association of modern technics and modern capitalism, there is no necessary connection between them. Capitalism has existed in other civilizations, which had relatively low technical development, and technics made steady improvements from the 10th to the 15th Century without the special incentives of capitalism… between the 10th and the 18th Century all the technical preparations for capitalism had already taken place…” (emphasis added, pp. 26, 27, 28) Which refutes the silly remark that “no earlier century had even a presentiment that such [capitalist] productive forces [existed]…” (Communist Manifesto)

A few examples to refute that falsehood:

John U. Nef:

“…the most startling progress of the physical and mathematical sciences in the 16th and early 17th centuries occurred in parts of Europe that did not participate directly in the speeding-up of industrial growth in England and Northern Europe…” Nef describes the “boom in mining and metallurgy between the late 15th and early 16th centuries… when much of continental Europe was built or rebuilt in the new Renaissance style of architecture…” Nef also documents the “remarkable industrial development especially striking in Northern Italy, parts of Spain, the southern low countries and southern Germany…” (The Conquest of the Material World, pp. 326, 42)

Peter Kropotkin:

“All modern industry came to us from these free cities [of the Middle Ages]. In three centuries, industries and the arts attained such perfection that our century has only been able to surpass them in speed of production, but rarely in quality or the intrinsic beauty of the product… in each of its manifestations, our technical progress is only the child of the civilization that grew up within the free communes… All the great discoveries made by modern science; the compass, the clock, the watch, printing, maritime discoveries, gunpowder, the laws of gravitation, atmospheric pressure, of which the steam engine is a development, the rudiments of chemistry, the scientific methods already outlined by Roger Bacon and applied in the Italian universities… Where do all these things originate if not in the free cities? In the civilization which was developed under the protection of communal liberties… in the 16th century Europe was covered with rich cities… their caravans covered the continent, their vessels ploughed the seas and the rivers…” (The State: Its Historic Role, p. 29)

“The cities of the 13th century [writes Lewis Mumford] were far brighter and cleaner and better ordered than the new victorian towns. Medieval hospitals were more spacious and more sanitary than the hospitals of the victorian towns. In many parts of Europe the medieval workers had a demonstrably higher standard of living than the drudge tied triumphantly to a semi-automatic machine…” (Technics and Civilization, p. 183)

Kropotkin indignantly refutes the false allegations of the “historians and economists who teach us that the village commune, having become an outdated form of land possession which hampered progress, had to disappear under the action of ‘natural economic forces’…” Kropotkin denounces the Marxian “socialists who claim to be ‘scientific socialists’ who repeat this stock fable… this odious calculated lie… History abounds with documents to prove that the village commune was in the first place deprived of all its powers by the State, of its independence, and that afterwards the lands were either stolen with the connivance of the State or confiscated by the State directly… Have we not learned at school that the State had performed the great service of creating, out of the ruins of feudal society, national unions which had been previously made impossible by the rivalries between cities?”

Kropotkin calls attention to the fact that the “Dialectical Materialists” do not even begin to appreciate the:

“…communalist movement that existed in the 11th and 12th centuries… this movement with its virile affirmation of the individual; which succeeded in creating a society through the free federation of’ towns and villages, was the complete negation of the unitarian centralizing Roman outlook. Nor is it linked to any historic personality or central institution… Society was literally covered with a network of sworn brotherhoods; of guilds for mutual aid… it is even very doubtful whether there was a single man in that period, free man or serf, who did not belong to a brotherhood or some guild, as well as to his commune… In the course of a hundred years this movement spread in an impressive harmonious way throughout Europe covering Scotland, France, the Low Countries, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia. In these cities [communes] sheltered by their conquered liberties, inspired by free agreement and free initiative, a whole new civilization grew up and flourished in ways unparalleled to this day.” (The State: Its Historic Role)

Since Kropotkin developed these ideas in 1897, further research by reputable historians and political scientists has confirmed his analysis. Edward Jencks wrote:

“…the typical village of the middle ages in Western Europe and indeed, of people in a corresponding stage the world over, was not like the typical village of modern France or England, merely a locality in which neighbours who carry on their work independently happen to live, but a community, carrying on its work as a single body of co-partners governed by customary rules, to which all must conform, it was not competitive… the self-governing municipality, or borough, was the highest achievement of the patriarchal principle; and after a dark period of repression, it gallantly took up the struggle against the newer ideas of absolute rule which produced the institution of the State…. it was founded on the undying principles of brotherhood, freedom and voluntary co-operation, as opposed to subordination, regimentation or compulsory service…” (The State and the Nation, pp. 94, 116, 118, 137, Jenck’s comments concern patriarchal society in transition to the free cities or communes discussed by Kropotkin)

R.H. Tawney suggests that:

“it may do well to remember that the characteristic… of the medieval guild was that if it sprang from economic needs, it claimed at least to subordinate them to social needs… preserve a rough equality among the good men of the mystery [association]; check economic egotism by insisting that every brother shall share his good fortune with another and-stand by his neighbour in need, resist the encroachments of a conscienceless money-power; preserve professional standards of training and craftsmanship, and to repress by a strict corporate discipline the natural appetite of each to snatch advantages for himself to the detriment of all… much that is now mechanical was then personal, intimate and direct, and there was little room for organization on a scale too vast for the standards that are applied to individuals, or the doctrine that silences scruples and closes all accounts with the final plea of economic expediency…”

“…the most fundamental difference between medieval and modern economic thought is that while modern economic thought normally refers to expediency, medieval economic thought starts from the position that there is a moral authority to which considerations of economic expediency must be subordinated… the fact that the socialist doctrine should have been expounded as early as the middle of the 14th century is a reminder that economic thought contained elements much more modern than is sometimes suggested…” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, pp. 31, 32, 42, 43)

Thorough research by highly qualified historians leads to the inescapable conclusion that capitalism is not, as the marxists insist, the indispensable progressive precondition for the transition to socialism. Actually, capitalism usurped the creative achievements of mankind and reversed the libertarian trend of society, the better to subjugate the people to the greed of the capitalists and the despotism of the State.

Indisputable evidence also demonstrates that capitalism is not inevitable and that there is a libertarian alternative: a flexible society permeated by the principles of individual and collective freedom, solidarity, self-management, federalism and free agreement. The potential for such a society existed in the village communities, brotherhoods, guilds and Free Cities [communes] of the Middle Ages. Kropotkin did not, as is charged, idealize the Free Cities. In analysing medieval society he took into account “the internal conflicts with which the history of these communes is filled… street riots… blood spilled… reprisals, etc…” But Kropotkin did prove that “all the elements, as well as the fact itself, of large human groupings, freely constituted, were already there…” (The State …) Writing thirty years later, Tawney too, found that “the rise of the Free Cities was one of the glories of medieval Europe and the germ of every subsequent advance in civilization…” (Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p. 55)

Conclusion

Marx’s theories have not been sustained by events. His system could be best designated as “The Dialectic Falsification of History.” There are no “laws of history” and progress from one stage of development to another is not inevitable. Marxism is no longer relevant to the growing number of people who are alarmed by the unprecedented proliferation of the economic and military powers of the modern State and the concomitant regimentation of the individual. Nationalization of property and means of production, even in a “socialist” State, as advocated by Marx and Engels, does not fundamentally alter the basic inequality between those wielding power and those subject to it. Even Marxists no longer believe that the State will “wither away”. Freedom is not merely the reflection of the mode of production but the essence of life. The dogma that science, philosophy, the arts, ethics and free institutions only mirror the economic mode of production is giving way to the conviction that these phenomena have an independent share in the shaping of history. A theory for the renewal of society that attaches little or no importance to these supreme values does not merit the respect of freedom-loving people.

First published by Soil of Liberty, Minneapolis, 1983

[Leaflet] How to Stop Unemployment

Zabalaza Books — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:30:21 +0000

Author: Unknown

File size: 193 KB

“Now we all know – the last fifty years’ experience has proved it –that nothing will be done unless the working men … show their teeth to the richer classes. Talk, talk and again talk – and nothing else will be done unless the rich feel menaced in their fortunes and their senseless, lazy existence. Talk in the churches, talk in Parliament, talk in the drawing rooms amidst small “Society talk,” talk in the Boards of Guardians; and – damnably true it is! – as much talk and no action – in the Socialist’ and Labour meetings”….

Reprinted from Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism, October, 1908

How to Stop Unemployment

Author Unknown

It is reported on all sides that the winter will mean terrible misery for the working classes all over the country. Aged people say that they have never seen such a want of employment at the beginning of the autumn as is seen now. Skilled workers are as badly affected as the unskilled ones. Nothing similar has been seen in this country since the terrible years of 1884 to 1886, when from one-fifth to nearly one-fourth of the Trade Unionists in the shipbuilding trade were unemployed, when nearly the same proportion of unemployment prevailed in all the leading trades; and when groups of unemployed men were walking all the day long in the streets of London and all the great cities singing their heart-rending, misery songs.

It is no use hiding our heads in the sand, as do the ostriches. The bare truth must be told. It is a national calamity, and as a national calamity it must be faced by extraordinary measures.

Now we all know – the last fifty years’ experience has proved it – that nothing will be done unless the working men of the United Kingdom show their teeth to the richer classes. Talk, talk and again talk – and nothing else will be done unless the rich feel menaced in their fortunes and their senseless, lazy existence. Talk in the churches, talk in Parliament, talk in the drawing rooms amidst small “Society talk,” talk in the Boards of Guardians; and – damnably true it is! – as much talk and no action – in the Socialist’ and Labour meetings.

“You are idealists!” they tell us on all sides. “You talk of ideals, of principles, while force alone rules the world!” Very well then let it be force that rules the world; but let the working-men show that they also have force; besides their ideas; and only when they will have shown that they are ready to resort to force will they be listened to by those who are the admirers and advocates of force.

* * * * *

But suppose this is done, and peoples realise the gravity of the moment – what next? What will they propose should be done in order to come immediately to the aid of the present unemployment? For our part, we make the following suggestions: –

1. To begin with: to realise that the present want of employment is not a mere accident: That it has its deep causes in the entire present organisation of production and consumption. That it concerns, therefore, the working man who is employed at this moment (but may be thrown out tomorrow) as much as it concerns the man or woman who is at present in the ranks of the unemployed. And that it is a problem in the speedy and prompt solution of which all society is interested.

In short, the present crisis of unemployment and misery is a fact in which all the nation is interested. IT IS A NATIONAL CALAMITY.

2. Whatever may be found necessary to be done will require money. And the crisis is so intense that private charity is unable to cope with it. Consequently, a cumulative levy must be put upon the richer classes of the community. It must fall on all those who pay the income tax, and the rate of imposition must grow proportionately, so as to fall heaviest upon all the incomes that exceed a certain limit, and to amount to one-fourth, or more, of the extravagant incomes of the millionaires.

We say, then, that an enforced levy be imposed upon the rich, the amount of which is to be determined by a National Convention convoked for the purpose of discussing the unemployment problem. This money to be used for immediate relief and for the organisation of useful work needed by the community.

3. Special Conventions on unemployment ought to be convoked immediately; local Conventions first, and a National Convention next, inviting to them ALL interested, and taking the necessary steps to prevent their becoming Party Congresses. Every political party in Great Britain being necessarily dependent in Parliamentary elections upon the goodwill of the middle classes, none of them is sufficiently independent of middle class influences to be able to claim that it represents the poorest classes of this country.

The calamity being a national calamity, all the nation can claim to have a voice in the decisions that may be taken.

4. It is absolutely certain that, whatever the decisions of the Conventions may be, it will be found necessary to give a wide opening for all those who will desire to cultivate the land and to increase its productivity. And it is most probable that true representatives of the willing-to-labour portion of the British nation would also find it necessary that the culture of the land, on the principles of intensive culture, should be organised under the guidance of experienced people, for those town workers who would be willing to perform the less heavy kind of horticultural work.

For all these organisations free access to the land will be of first necessity, and the Conventions will surely discover that one of the causes why unemployment in this country so rapidly takes the form of a national misfortune is the uncultivated condition in which immense portions of the land in this country are kept, and the consequently too small amount of food that is grown on such tracts of land as are available for culture.

The return of the land from the hands of the present landlords into the hands of those who are willing to cultivate it – in other words, some sort of Socialisation of the land – would certainly be one of the conclusions of the National Unemployment Convention.

5. As a preliminary step towards the Socialisation of the land, the following may be recommended:

The return to the town and village communities of all those lands which the urban and country townships have been robbed of by the so-called lords of the manor, under the protection of the abominable Acts passed by Parliament from the year 1702 down to the present time, under the name of Enclosure Acts. By these Acts more than 7,000,000 acres of common lands have been stolen from the people.
The British nation has been robbed by Parliaments of landgrabbers of a considerable portion of its property, and now is the time to restore it to its rightful owners. All the land which passed into private property under the Enclosure Acts must be returned to the urban and village communities.

These few proposals would already give a concrete and practical foundation for opening discussion in the Local and National Unemployment Conventions. The further development of these proposals would depend upon the amount of practical common sense and revolutionary inspiration displayed by those who will join these Conventions.

Of course, it will be asked: How are these proposals to be carried out, and what right have we Anarchists to bring forward propositions which we expect others to put into practical working?

The answer is plain. We appeal, not to the State, with its stupid and impossible machinery and its everlasting red-tape, but to the public spirit of the nation, which if aroused into taking action, will accomplish in a week what Government could not do in a year.

As to ways and means, they can always be discovered when the people are in earnest, and such will suggest themselves when the first Steps are taken in organising relief.

Let it be remembered that the country is in a state of siege: it is besieged by a great crisis of unemployment which is threatening destruction to hundreds and thousands of our population. We do not speak of a revolution, though a revolutionary spirit is required in dealing with this national crisis. Nor are we for the moment concerned with the theories of Anarchist Communism. We simply suggest means that would be recognised as just and necessary in the case of a beleaguered city – the mutual sharing of the burden of the fight.

Let the workers, and especially their “leaders”, insist that the rich shall bear their share in alleviating ‘the overwhelming starvation’ and distress that have overtaken the innocent producers of the wealth they enjoy. It is nothing less than human that this should be done, and it must be done by the direct action of the workers.

Reprinted from Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism, October, 1908

Anarchy and Communism

Zabalaza Books — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:00:13 +0000

Author: Carlo Cafiero

File size: 256 KB

“At the Congress … a speaker who was distinguished by his bitterness against anarchists said: ‘Communism and anarchy howl to find themselves together!’

Another speaker who also spoke against anarchists … cried when speaking of economic liberty: ‘How can liberty be violated when there is equality?’

Well, I think that these two speakers were wrong.”…

First published as a pamphlet by Emile Darnaud in Foix (southern France) in 1890

Anarchy and Communism

by Carlo Cafiero

At the Congress held in Paris by the General Region, a speaker who was distinguished by his bitterness against anarchists said: ‘Communism and anarchy howl to find themselves together!’

Another speaker who also spoke against anarchists, but with less violence, cried when speaking of economic liberty: ‘How can liberty be violated when there is equality?’

Well, I think that these two speakers were wrong.

It is perfectly possible to have economic equality without having the least liberty. Certain religious communities are living proof of this, since the most complete equality exists there at the same time as despotism. Complete equality, for the rulers wear the same cloth and eats at the same table as the others; he is distinguished from them only by the righty which he possesses of giving orders. And the partisans of the ‘Popular State’? If they encounter no obstacles of any kind, I am sure that they will end by achieving perfect equality, but at the same time the most perfect despotism, too; for, let us not forget, the despotism of their State would be equal to the despotism of the present state, increased by the economic despotism of all the capital which would pass into the hands of the State, and the whole would be multiplied by all the centralisation necessary for this new State. And it is for this reason that we, the Anarchists, friends of liberty, we intend to fight them to the end.

Thus, contrary to what has been said, it is perfectly right to fear for liberty even when there is equality; whereas there can be no fear for equality when there is real liberty – that is to say, anarchy.

So anarchy and communism, far from howling at finding themselves together, would howl at not finding themselves together, for these two terms (synonymous with liberty and equality) are the two necessary and indivisible terms of the Revolution.

* * * * *

Our revolutionary ideal is very simple, as may be seen: it consists, like that of all our forerunners, of these two terms, LIBERTY and EQUALITY. Only there is one little difference. Learning from the tricks which the reactionaries of all times have played with liberty and equality, we have decided to put next to these two terms the expression of their precise value. These two precious coins have been forged so often that we now want to know all about them and to measure their precise value.

We therefore place next to these two terms, liberty and equality, two equivalents whose clear meaning cannot allow of any ambiguity, and we say: ‘We want LIBERTY, that is to say ANARCHY, and EQUALITY, that is to say COMMUNISM.’

Anarchy, today, is attack; it is war against every authority, every power, every State. – In the future society, Anarchy will be defence, the prevention of the re-establishment of any authority, any power, any State: Full and complete liberty of the individual who, freely and driven only by his needs, by his tastes and his sympathies, unites with other individuals in a group or association, which is federated with others in the commune or the district; free development of the communes which are federated in the region; – and so on: the regions in the nation; the nations in humanity.

Communism, the question which particularly concerns us today, is the second term of our revolutionary ideal.

Communism, at present, is still attack; it is not the destruction of authority, but is the taking of possession, in the name of all humanity, of all the wealth existing in the world. – In the future society, Communism will be the enjoyment of all existing wealth by all men and according to the principle: FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS FACULTIES, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS NEEDS, that is to say: FROM EACH AND TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS WILL.

It is, however, necessary to point out, – and this above all in reply to our opponents, the authoritarian communists or Statists – that the taking of possession and the enjoyment of all the existing wealth must be, according to us, the deed of the people itself. Because the people, humanity, is not the same as the individuals who managed to seize the wealth and hold it in their hands, some have tried to conclude from this, it is true, that we should for this reason establish a whole class of rulers – of representatives and trustees of the common wealth. But we do not share this opinion. No intermediaries; no representatives who always end by representing only themselves; no mediators of equality, any more than mediators of liberty; no new government, no new State, whether it is called Popular or Democratic, evolutionary or Provisional!

Since the common wealth is spread over the whole earth, and since all of it belongs by right to the whole of humanity, those who find this wealth within their reach and are in a position to use it will use it in common. The people of some country will use the land, the machines, the workshops, the houses, etc., of the country, and they will make use of it in common. Since they are part of humanity, they will exercise here, by deed and directly, their right to a share of the human wealth. But if an inhabitant of Peking came into this country, he would have the same rights as the others: he would enjoy, in common with the others, all the wealth of the country, in the same way that he had done in Peking.

So that speaker was quite wrong who denounced anarchists for wanting to establish corporate property. A fine business we would make if we destroyed the State and replaced it with a mass of little States! killing a monster with one hand and keeping a monster with a thousand heads!

No! We have said and we shall not stop repeating it: no intermediaries, no agents and obedient servants who always end by becoming the real masters! We want all the existing wealth to be taken directly by the people itself, to be kept in the people’s powerful hands, and the people itself to decide the best way of enjoying it, whether for production or for consumption.

* * * * *

But we are asked: Is Communism practicable? Shall we have enough products to allow each person the right to take from them at will, without demanding from individuals more work than they would like to give?

We reply: Yes, it will certainly be possible to apply this principle, from each and to each according to his will, because in the future society production will be so abundant that there will be no need to limit consumption or to demand from men more work than they will be able or willing to give.

This immense increase in production, of which we cannot give a true impression even today, may be predicted by examining the causes which will stimulate it. These causes may be reduced to three main ones:

The harmony of co-operation in various branches of human activity, replacing the present struggle which arises from competition;
The introduction on an immense scale of machines of all kinds;
The considerable economy in the power of labour, the instruments of labour and raw materials, arising from the suppression of dangerous or useless production.

Competition, struggle, is one of the basic principles of capitalist production, having for its motto: MORS TUA VITA MEA, your death is my life. The ruin of one makes the fortune of another. And this bitter struggle spreads from nation to nation, from region to region, from individual to individual, between workers as well as between capitalists. It is war to the knife, a fight at all levels – hand to hand, in squads, in platoons, in regiments, in divisions. One worker finds work where another loses it; one industry or several industries may prosper when another industry or industries may fail.

Well, imagine when, in the future society, this individualist principle of capitalist production, each for himself and against all, and all against each, will be replaced by the true principle of human sociability: EACH FOR ALL AND ALL FOR EACH, – what an enormous change will be obtained in the results of production! Imagine what the increase of production will be when each man, far from having to struggle against all the others, will be helped by them; when he will have them not as enemies but as co-operators. If the collective labour of ten men achieves results absolutely impossible to an isolated man, how great will be the results obtained by the grand co-operation of all the men who today are working in opposition against one another!

And machines? The impact of these powerful auxiliaries of labour, however great it seems to us today, is only very minimal in comparison with what will be in the society to come.

The machine today is opposed often by the ignorance of the capitalist, but even more often by his interest. How many machines remain unused solely because they do not return an immediate profit to the capitalist! Is a coal-mining company, for example, going to put itself to the expense of safeguarding the interests of the workers and building costly apparatus to carry the miners into the pits? Is the municipality going to introduce a machine to break stones, when this terrible work provides it with the means of giving cheap relief to the hungry? How many discoveries, how many applications of science remain a dead letter solely because they don’t bring the capitalist enough!

The worker himself is opposed to machines today, and with reason, since they are for him the monster which comes to drive him from the factory, to starve him, degrade him, torture him, crush him. Yet what a great interest he will have, on the contrary, in increasing their number when he will no longer be at service of the machines and when, on the contrary, the machines will themselves be at his service, helping him and working for his benefit!

So we must take account of the immense economy which will be made by the three elements of labour – strength, instruments and materials – which are horribly wasted today, since they are used for the production of things which are absolutely useless, when they are not actually harmful to humanity.

How many workers, how many materials and how many instruments of labour are used today for the armies of land and sea, to build ships, fortresses, cannons and all the arsenals of offensive and defensive weapons! How much strength is used to produce articles of luxury which serve only to satisfy the needs of vanity and corruption!

And when all this strength, all these materials, all these instruments of labour are used in industry for the production of articles which will themselves be used for production, what a prodigious increase of production we shall see emerge!

* * * * *

Yes, Communism is practicable: We shall indeed be able to let each take at will what he needs, since there will be enough for all; we shan’t need to ask for more work than each wants to give, because there will be enough products for the morrow.

And it is thanks to this abundance that work will lose the ignoble character of enslavement and will have only the attraction of a moral and physical need, like that of study, of living with nature.

* * * * *

This is not just to affirm that Communism is possible, we may affirm that it is necessary. Not only that one can be communist; but that one must, on pain of missing the goal of the revolution.

In fact, after putting the instruments of labour and the raw materials in common, we retains the individual distribution of the products of labour, we would be forced to retain money, sharing out a greater or less accumulation of wealth according to the greater or lesser merit – or rather, skill – of individuals. Equality will thus have disappeared, since he who manages to acquire more wealth will already be raised by that very thing above the level of others. It will be only one step further for the counter-revolutionaries to re-establish the right of inheritance. In fact I have heard a well-known socialist, a so-called revolutionary, who supported individual distribution of products, end by declaring that he couldn’t see any objection to society allowing the transfer of these products by inheritance; the matter, for him, was of little consequence. For us, who know at close hands the position which society has reached from this accumulation of wealth and its transfer by inheritance, there can be no doubt about the subject.

The individual distribution of products would re-establish not only inequality between men, but also inequality between different kinds of work. We would see the immediate reappearance of clean and dirty work, of high and low work; the former would be for the rich, the second would be the lot of the poorer. Then it would be not vocation and personal taste which would decide a man to devote himself to one form of activity rather than another; it would be interest, the hope of winning more in some profession. Thus would be reborn idleness and industry, merit and demerit, good and evil, vice and virtue; and, in consequence, reward on one side and punishment on the other: law, judge, policeman, and jail.

* * * * *

There are socialists who persist in supporting this idea of individual distribution of the products of labour while making much of the sense of justice.

What a strange illusion! With collective labour imposed on us by the necessity of mass production and the application of machinery on a large scale, with this ever-increasing tendency of modern labour to make use of the labour of previous generations, how could we determine what is the share of the product of one and the share of the product of another? It is absolutely impossible, and our opponents recognise this so well themselves that they end by saying: ‘Well, we shall take as a basis for distribution the hours of labour.’ But at the same time they themselves admit that this would be unjust, since three hours of labour by Peter may be worth five hours of labour by Paul.

* * * * *

Once we used to call ourselves collectivists to distinguish ourselves from the individualists and the authoritarian communists; but in reality we were quite plainly anti-authoritarian communists and, when we called ourselves collectivists, we were trying to express by this term our idea that EVERYTHING should be put in common, without making any distinction between instruments and materials of labour and the products of collective labour.

But one fine day we saw the rise again of a new shade of socialist who, reviving the errors of the past, began to philosophise, to distinguish, to differentiate on this question, and who will end by making themselves the apostles of the following thesis:

‘There exist’, they say, ‘values of use and values of production. Use values are those which we use to satisfy our own personal needs: that is, the house we live in, the food we consume, clothes, books, etc.; whereas production values are those we use for production: that is, the factory, the stores, the stable, shops, machines and instruments of labour of every kind, the soil, materials of labour, etc. The former values, which are used to satisfy the needs of the individual, should be distributed individually; whereas the latter, those which are used by everyone for production, should be distributed collectively.’

Such was the new economic theory, discovered – or rather, revived – for the sake of argument.

But I ask you, you who give the charming title of production values to the coal which is used to fuel the machine, the oil used to lubricate it, the oil which lights its operation, – why deny it to the bread and meat which feed me, the oil which I dress my salad with, the gas which lights my labour, to everything which keeps alive and operating the most perfect of all machines, man, the father of all machines?

You class among production values the meadow and the stable which are used to keep cattle and horses, and you want to exclude from them houses and gardens which are used for the most noble of animal: man.

So where is your logic?

Besides, even you who make yourselves the apostles of this theory, you know perfectly well that this demarcation doesn’t exist in reality and that, if it is difficult to trace today, it will completely disappear on the day when we shall all be producers at the same time as consumers.

So this theory – as may be seen – couldn’t give new strength to the partisans of individual distribution of the products of labour. This theory has achieved only result: that of unmasking the game of those socialists who wish to narrow the goal of the revolutionary idea; it has opened our eyes and shown us the necessity of quite clearly declaring ourselves to be communists.

* * * * *

But finally let us grapple with the one and only serious objection which our opponents have advanced against communism.

All are agreed that we are necessarily moving towards communism, but is is pointed out to us that at the start, since the products will not be abundant enough, we shall have to establish rationing, sharing, and that the best method of sharing the products of labour would be that based on the amount of labour which each will have done.

To this we reply that, in the future society, even when we may be obliged to have rationing, we should remain communist; that is to say, the rationing should be carried out not according to merit but according to need.

Let us take the family, that small-scale model of communism; – a communism which is authoritarian rather than anarchist, to be sure, but this doesn’t alter anything in our example.

In the family the father brings, let us suppose, a hundred sous a day, the eldest son three francs, a younger boy forty sous, and the child only twenty sous a day. All bring their pay to the mother who keeps the cash and gives them food to eat. The all bring unequally; but, at mealtime, each is served in his own way and according to his own appetite. There is no rationing. But let hard times come, and let poverty prevent the mother from continuing to allow for the appetite or taste of each in the distribution of the meal. There must be rationing; and, whether by the initiative of the mother or by the unspoken custom of all, the helpings are reduced. But look, this sharing is not done according to merit, for the younger boy and the child above all receive the largest share; and, as for the choice portion, it is kept from the old woman who brings in nothing at all. So even during famine, within the family this principle is applied of rationing according to need. Would it be otherwise in the great humanitarian family of the future?

It is obvious that I would have to say more on this subject if I were not discussing in front of anarchists.

* * * * *

One cannot be anarchist without being communist. In fact, the least idea of limitation already contains within itself the seeds of authoritarianism. It couldn’t appear without immediately leading to law, judge, police.

We must be communists, for it is in communism that we shall achieve true equality.

We must be communists, because the people, who cannot understand collectivist sophisms, understand communism perfectly, as our friends Reclus and Kropotkin have already pointed out.

We must be communists because we are anarchists, because Anarchy and Communism are the two necessary terms of the Revolution.

Text from Sovversiva’s Blog

**Published in The Raven #6, Oct. 1988**

English translation probably by Nicolas Walter, who writes: Anarchie et communisme was delivered on 9 October 1880, reported in Le Révolté on 17 October 1880, and later published in in two instalments (Le Révolté, 13 and 27 November 1880). It was first published as a pamphlet with the same title by Emile Darnaud in Foix (in southern France) in 1890. It has frequently been reprinted in French and translated into other languages – especially Italian, but seldom English. When Henry Seymour’s British Paper The Anarchist adopted anarchist communism for a few months in summer 1886, an English Translation was serialised from May to July but never completed.

Direct Action

Zabalaza Books — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 13:10:10 +0000

Author: Emile Pouget

File size: 850 KB

“Direct Action is the symbol of revolutionary unionism in action. This formula is representative of the twofold battle against exploitation and oppression. It proclaims, with inherent clarity, the direction and orientation of the working class’s endeavours in its relentless attack upon capitalism.

First published by the Fresnes-Antony Group of the French Anarchist Federation, 1994

Direct Action

by Emile Pouget

What we mean by “Direct Action”

Direct Action is the symbol of revolutionary unionism in action. This formula is representative of the twofold battle against exploitation and oppression. It proclaims, with inherent clarity, the direction and orientation of the working class’s endeavours in its relentless attack upon capitalism.

Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action. It means that, against the existing society which recognises only the citizen, rises the producer. And that that producer, having grasped that any social grouping models itself upon its system of production, intends to attack directly the capitalist mode of production in order to transform it, by eliminating the employer and thereby achieving sovereignty in the workshop – the essential condition for the enjoyment of real freedom.

The Negation of Parliamentarism

Direct Action thus implies that the working class subscribes to notions of freedom and autonomy instead of genuflecting before the principle of authority. Now, it is thanks to this authority principle, the pivot of the modern world – Democracy being its latest incarnation – that the human being, tied down by a thousand ropes, moral as well as material, is denied any opportunity to display will and initiative.

From this negation of Parliamentarism, false, and hypocritical, and the ultimate form of the crystallisation of authority, arises the entire syndicalist method. Direct Action therefore arises as simply the fleshing out of the principle of freedom, its realisation in the masses; no longer in abstract, vague, indistinct forms, but rather as clear-cut, practical notions inspiring the rebelliousness that the times require: it is the destruction of the spirit of submissiveness and resignation that degrades individuals and turns them into willing slaves – and a blossoming of the spirit of revolt, the factor fertilising human societies.

This fundamental and complete rupture between capitalist society and the world of labour, as encapsulated in Direct Action, was articulated by the International Working Men’s [sic] Association in its motto: “The emancipation of the workers will be carried out by the workers themselves.” And it made a contribution towards making a reality of this divorce by attaching supreme importance to economic associations. But confused still was the influence it would attribute to them. However, the IWMA had an inkling that the work of social transformation has to begin at the bottom, and that political changes are merely a consequence of amendments made to the system of production. That is why it hailed the action of trades associations and, naturally, legitimised the procedure of expressing their vitality and influence, appropriate to the body in question – and which is nothing other than Direct Action.

Direct Action is in fact the normal function of the unions and their reason for being; it would be a glaring nonsense for such associations to restrict themselves to bringing the waged together, in order to better adapt them to the fate reserved for them in bourgeois society – production for others. It is all too evident that, in the unions, persons of no particularly clear cut social outlooks band together for the purposes of self-defence, in order to struggle first hand and as individuals. The community of interests attracts them there; they gravitate towards it instinctively. There, in that nursery of life, the work of fermentation, elaboration and education is made; the union raises the consciousness of workers blinkered still by the prejudices inculcated into them by the ruling class; it opens their eyes wide to the overriding necessity of struggle, of revolt; it prepares them for social battles by marshalling their concerted efforts. From such instruction, it follows that every individual must act without ever offloading on to others the task of acting in their place. It is in these gymnastics that the individual is imbued with a with a sense of her own worth, and in extolling such worth lies the fertilising power of Direct Action. It marshals human resourcefulness, tempers characters and focuses energies. It teaches self-confidence! And self-reliance! And self-mastery! And acting for oneself!

Now, if we compare the methods in use in democratic associations or groupings, we find that they have nothing in common with this constant tendency to raise consciousness, nor with this adaptation to action that permeates human being from the strangle-hold of passivity and listlessness wherein democratism tends to confine and paralyse her. It teaches her will-power, instead of mere obedience, and to embrace her sovereignty instead of conferring her part upon a representative. By so doing, it shifts the axis of social orientation, so that human energies, instead of being squandered upon harmful and depressing activity, derive from their legitimate expenditure the necessary sustenance for their continued development.

Expropriatory Education

Fifty years ago, in the time around 1848, back in the days when republicans still believed in something, they admitted how much of an illusion, how much of a lie and how powerless the representative system was and they searched for ways to overcome its defects. Rittinghausen, too mesmerised by the political frippery which she supposed was crucial to human progress, reckoned that she had found a solution in the shape of “direct representation”. Proudhon, on the other hand, presaging revolutionary unionism, spoke of the coming economic federalism that would bypass, with all of life’s superiority, the sterile notions of the whole political set-up; the economic federalism being hatched from within the workers’ organisations implies the recuperation by trades bodies of certain useful functions, thanks to which the State conjures up illusions as to its raison d’etre, and at the same time, the elimination of its noxious, restrictive and repression functions, thanks to which capitalist society is perpetuated.

But for this burgeoning of society to become a possibility, preparatory work must first have drawn together within the existing society those elements whose role it will be to make it happen. This is the task assumed by the working class. just as a building is built from the foundations up, so this internal undertaking which involves both the dismantling of the factors making up the old world and incubating the new edifice starts from the bottom up. No longer is it a matter of taking over the State, nor of tinkering with its cogs or changing its personnel: the point is to transform the mechanism of production, by doing away with the boss in workshop and factory, and replacing production for profit with production in common, for the benefit of all … the logical consequence of which is the ruination of the State.

The work of expropriation has begun; step by step it is pursued by day to day struggles against the current master of production, the capitalist; her privileges are undermined and eaten away, the legitimacy of her leadership and mastery functions is denied, and the charge that she levies upon everyone’s output on the pretext of recompense for capital investment, is considered theft. So, little by little, he is being bundled out of the workshop – until such time as he can be driven out entirely and forever.

All of this, this burrowing from within, escalating and intensifying by the day, is Direct Action rampant. And when the working class, having grown in strength and consciousness, is ready to take possession and gets on with doing just that, that too will be Direct Action!

Once the expropriation of capital is underway, and when the railway companies find their shares – the “diplomas” of the financial aristocracy – rendered worthless, and when the parasitical retinue of rail directors and other magnates can no longer survive in idleness, the trains will continue to operate … And this is because the railway workers will have taken things into their own hands; their revolutionary union having turned from a fighting group into a production association, will thereafter take charge of running operations – and not now with an eye to personal gain, nor yet for plain and simple corporative motives, but for the common good.

What will be done in the case of the railways will be replicated in every sphere of production.

But if this task of liquidating the old world of exploitation is to prosper, the working class has to be familiarised with the conditions for realisation of the new social order, and must have acquired the capacity and will to realise this for itself: it must rely, in facing up to the difficulties that will crop up, solely upon its own direct efforts, on the capabilities that it possesses within itself, rather than on the graciousness of “go-betweens”, providential Men, these new-style bishops. In the latter case, exploitation would not be eradicated and would persist under a different guise.

The Revolution is the Work of Day-to-Day Action

Thus, to prepare the way, the restrictive notions, the dead formulae that stand for a persistent past, must be replaced with ideas that point us in the direction of indispensible demonstrations of will. Now, these new ideas cannot but derive from systematic implementation of direct action methods. Of this is, in fact, from the profound current of autonomy and human solidarity, intensified by practical action that erupts and fleshes out the idea of replacing the present social disorder with a form of organisation wherein labour alone has a place and every individual will be free to give expression to her personality and her faculties.

This task of laying the groundwork for the future is, thanks to Direct Action, in no way at odds with the day to day struggle. The tactical superiority of Direct Action resists precisely in its unparalleled plasticity: organisations actively engaged in the practice are not required to confine themselves to beatific waiting for the advent of social changes. They live in the present with all possible combativity, sacrificing neither the present to the future, nor the future to the present. It follows from this, from this capacity for facing up simultaneously to the demands of the moment and those of the future and from this compatibility in the two-pronged task to be carried forward, that the ideal for which they strive, far from being overshadowed or neglected, is thereby clarified, defined and made more discernible.

Which is why it is both inane and false to describe revolutionaries drawing their inspiration from Direct Action methods as “advocates of all-or-nothing”. True, they are advocates of wresting EVERYTHING from the bourgeoisie! But, until such time as they will have amassed sufficient strength to carry through this task of general expropriation, they do not rest upon their laurels and miss no chance to win partial improvements which, being achieved at some cost to capitalist privileges, represent a sort of partial expropriation and pave the way to more comprehensive demands.

From which it is plain that Direct Action is the plain and simple fleshing-out of the spirit of revolt: it fleshes out the class struggle, shifting it from the realm of theory and abstraction into the realm of practice and accomplishment. As a result, Direct Action is the class struggle lived on a daily basis, an ongoing attack upon capitalism.

Which is why it is so despised by the politicians – a breed apart – who had set themselves up as the “representatives” or “bishops” of democracy. Now, should the working class, scorning democracy, go a step further and look for some alternative path, on the terrain of economics, what is to become of the “go-betweens” who used to pose as the proletariat’s spokesmen?

Which is why it is even more despised and repremanded by the bourgeoisie! The latter sees its demise rudely accelerated by the fact that the working class, drawing strength and increasing confidence from Direct Action, and breaking definitely with the past, and relying upon its own resources to espouse an entirely new mentality, is on its way to constructing an entirely new environment.

The Necessity of Effort

It is such a commonplace that there has to be struggle against all the manner of obstacles placed in the way of mankind’s development that it may seem paradoxical to have to extol the necessity of effort.

Besides action, in fact, what else is there but inertia, spinelessness and passive acceptance of slavery? In times of depression and inertia, Women are degraded to the status of beasts of burden, slaves trapped in hopeless toil; their minds are stultified, constipated and thoughtless; their prospects are limited; they cannot imagine the future, nor suppose that it will be any improvement upon the present.

But up pops action! They are shaken from their torpor, their decrepit brains start to work and a radiant energy transforms and transfigures the human masses.

Because action is the salt of life … Or, to put it more plainly and simply, it is life itself! To live is to act … To act is to be alive!

The Catastrophic Miracle

But these are banalities! Yet, the point has to be laboured, and the effort glorified, because stultifying education has washed over the older generation and planted debilitating notions in its ranks. The futility of effort has been elevated to the status of a theory and it has been given out that any revolutionary achievement would flow from the ineluctable course of events; catastrophe, it was proclaimed, would come to pass automatically. Just as soon as, in the ineluctable course of events, capitalist institutions would reach a point of maximum tension. Whereupon they would explode by themselves! Effort by woman in economic terms was proclaimed redundant, her action against the restrictive environment besetting her were affirmed futile. She was left but one hope: that she might infiltrate her own into the bourgeois parliaments and await the inevitable unleashing of catastrophe.

We were taught that this would come to pass mechanically and inescapably when the time was ripe; with concentration of capital being effected through the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, the number of the capitalist magnates, usurpers and monopolists was spiralling ever downwards .. so that a day would come when, thanks to the conquest of political power, the people’s elected representatives would use law and decree to expropriate this handful of great capitalist barons.

What a perilous and stultifying illusion such passive waiting for the coming of the Messiah-revolution represents! And how many years or centuries will it take to capture political power? And even then, supposing that it has been captured, will the number of capitalist magnates have fallen sufficiently by that point? Even allowing that the expansion of trusts may have swallowed up the medium bourgeoisie, does it follow that they will have been thrust down into the ranks of the proletariat? Will they not, rather, have carved themselves out a place in the trusts and will the numbers of parasites living without producing a thing not be at least the same as they are today? If the answer is yes, can we not suppose that the beneficiaries of the old society will put up a fight against the expropriating laws and decrees?

An equal number of problems would be posed, before which the working class would be powerless and bewildered as to what to do, should it have made the mistake of remaining mesmerised by the hope of a revolution’s coming to pass in the absence of any direct effort on its part.

The so-called “Iron Law”

Even as we were being bamboozled with this messianic faith in the Revolution, to stultify us even further and the better to persuade us that there was nothing that could be attempted, nothing to be done, and in order to plunge us even deeper into the mire of inaction, we were indoctrinated with the “iron law of wages”. We were taught that, under this relentless formula (primarily the work of Ferdinand Lassalle), in today’s society any effort is a waste of time, any action futile, in that the economic repercussions soon restore the poverty ceiling through which the proletariat cannot break.

Under this iron law – which was then made into the keystone of socialism – it was proclaimed that “as a general rule, the average wage would be no more than what the worker strictly required for survival’. And it was said: “That figure is governed by capitalist pressure alone and this can even push it below the minimum necessary for the working woman’s subsistence … The only rule with regard to wage levels is the plentiful or scarce supply of woman-power …”

By way of evidence of the relentless operation of this law of wages, comparisons were made between the worker and a commodity: if there is a glut of potatoes on the market, they are cheap; if they are scarce, the price rises … It is the same with the working woman, it was said: her wages fluctuate in accordance with the abundant or short of labour!

Against the relentless arguments of this absurd reasoning, no voice was raised: so the law of wages may be taken as right .. for as long as the working woman is content to be a commodity! For as long as, like a sack of potatoes. she remains passive and inert and endures the fluctuations of the market … For as long as she bends her back and puts up with all of the bosses’ snubs, … the law of wages functions.

But things take a different turn the moment that a glimmer of consciousness stirs this worker-potato into life. When, instead of dooming herself to inertia, spinelessness, resignation and passivity, the worker wakes up to her worth as a human being and the spirit of revolt washes over her: when she bestirs herself, energetic, wilful and active; when, instead of rubbing shoulders absently with her neighbours (like a potato alongside other potatoes) and comes into contact with them, reacts with them, and they in turn respond to her; once the labour bloc comes to life and bestirs itself .. then, the laughable equilibrium of the law of wages is undone.

A Novel Factor: the will of the Worker!

A novel factor has appeared on the labour market: the will of the worker! And this factor, unknown when it comes to setting the price of a bushel of potatoes, has a bearing upon the setting of wages; its impact may be large or small, according to the degree of tension of the labour force, which is a product of the accord of individual wills beating in unison – but, whether it be strong or weak, there is no denying it.

Worker cohesion thus conjures up against capitalist might, a might capable of standing up to it. The inequality between the two adversaries – which cannot be denied when the exploiter is confronted only by the working woman on her own – is attenuated in proportion with the degree of cohesion achieved by the labour bloc. From then on, proletarian resistance, be it latent or acute, is an everyday phenomenon: disputes between labour and capital quicken and become more acute. Labour does not always emerge victorious from these partial struggles: however, even when defeated, the workers in struggle still reap some benefit: resistance from them has obstructed pressure from the employers and often forced the employer to grant some of the demands put. In this case the character of high solidarity in revolutionary unionism is vindicated: the result of the struggle brings benefits to untrustworthy, less conscious brothers, and the strikers relish the moral delights of having fought for the welfare of all.

That labour’s cohesion leads to wage increases is acknowledged with quite good grace by the theoreticians of the “iron law”. The facts are so tanglible that they would be hard put to it to offer a serious rebuttal. But they protest that, in parallel with the wage increases, there is an increase in the cost of living, so that there is no increase in the worker’s purchasing power and the benefits of her higher pay are thereby nullified.

There are circumstances in which we do find such repercussions: but the rise in living costs, in direct association with the rise in pay is not so constant that it can be taken as axiomatic. Moreover, when such rises occur, this is – in most instances – proof that the worker, after having struggled in her producer capacity against her boss, has neglected to look to her interests in her capacity as consumer. Very often it is the passivity of the purchaser vis-a-vis the trader, of the tenant vis a vis the landlord, etc., that allows the landlords, traders, etc., to claw back from added levies upon the working woman as consumer the benefit of the improvements that she has extracted as producer.

Furthermore, the irrefutable proof that wage levels need not necessarily result in parallel increases in the cost of living is furnished by countries where working hours are short and wages high: Life there is less expensive and less restricted than in countries where working hours are long and wages low.

Wages and the Cost of Living

In England, the United States and Australia, the working day often lasts eight hours (nine at most), with weekends off, yet wages there are higher than among us. In spite of which life is easier there. First because, over six working days, or better yet, over five and a half (work grinding to a halt by the Saturday afternoon in most cases), the worker earns enough to support herself through the seven days of the week: then because, as a general rule, the cost of basic necessities is lower than in France, or at any rate more affordable, in terms of wage levels.1

Such findings invalidate the “iron law”. Especially so as it cannot be argued that the high pay rates of the countries in question are merely the consequence of woman-power shortages. In the United States as well as in Australia, and in England too, unemployment bites deep. So it is plain that if working conditions in those countries are better, it is because in their establishment there is a factor at work other than plentiful or restricted supply of labour: the will of the workers! Such improved conditions are the results of workers’ efforts, of the determination of the worker to refuse to accept a vegetative, restricted life, and they were won through the struggle against Capital. However, no matter how violent the economic skirmishes that improved these conditions may have been, they have not created a revolutionary situation: they have not pitted labour against capital, in a face to face confrontation between enemies. The workers have not – at any rate not as a body – attained class consciousness: thus far their aspirations have been unduly modest, at the aspiration to accommodation with the existing society. But times change! The English, the Yanks and the rest are in the process of acquiring the class consciousness that they were lacking.

If we move on from examining high-wage, shorter-hours societies to look at our own peasant regions where, confident of finding an ignorant, compliant population, a number of industrialists have set up their factories, we find the opposite phenomenon: wages there are very low and working conditions unduly demanding. The reason is that since the will of the workers there is lethargic, it is capitalist pressure alone that determines the working conditions; the working woman, still ignorant of and unfamiliar with her own strength, is still reduced to the status of a “commodity”, so that she is prey to the unmitigated operation of the supposed “law of wages”. But should a spark of revolt bring to life the victim of exploitation, the situation will be changed! The dust of humanity, which is what the proletarian masses have been up to now, need only be compacted into a revolutionary union bloc and the pressures from the bosses will be countered by a force that may be weak and clumsy in its beginnings but which will soon increase in might and consciousness.

And so the light of experience shows just how illusory and false this alleged “iron law of wages” is. “Law of iron,” is it? Pull the other one! It isn’t even a law of rubber!

The unfortunate thing is that the consequences of the penetration of the world of labour by that fateful formula have been more serious than mere flawed argument. Who can say how much suffering and disappointment it has engendered? For too long, alas, the working class has reclined and dozed upon this false pillow. There was a logical connection: the theory that effort was futile spawned inaction. Since the pointlessness of action, the futility of struggle, the impossibility of immediate improvement had been proclaimed, every vestige of revolt was stifled. Indeed, what was the point of fighting, once effort had been identified in advance as pointless and unproductive, when one knew that one was doomed to failure? Since struggle promised only blows – with no hope of even slight benefit – was it not the wiser course to remain calm?

And that was the argument that ruled the roost! The working class accommodated itself to an apathy that played right into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Thus, when, under pressure of circumstance, the workers were driven into a dispute, it was only with a heavy heart that the gauntlet was picked up: striking even came to be reputed as an evil to be endured if it could not be averted and one to which one resigned oneself with no illusion that any real improvement might issue from a favourable outcome.

Overwhelming evil is not the seed of Rebellion!

Parallel to this crippling belief in the impossibility of breaking through the vicious circle of the “iron law of wages”, and by way of a warped deduction from this “law”, that trusting to the revolution’s coming to pass as events unfolded without assistance, without any intervening effort on the part of the workers, some people rejoiced if they could detect any increase in “pauperisation”, the worsening of misery, employer arbitrariness, government oppression, and the like. To listen to these poor logicians, the Revolution just had to sprout from overwhelming evil! So every upsurge in misery and calamity, etc., struck them as good thing, hastening the fateful hour.

A crack-brained error! A nonsense! The only thing that abundance of evils – no matter what form these may assume – achieves is to wear down those who suffer them even more. And this is readily appreciated. Instead of bandying words, one need only look around and take it all in.

Which are the trades where revolutionary union activity is most pronounced? The ones where, not having to put in unduly long working hours, the comrades can, when their shift is finished, enjoy a social life, attend meetings, and take an interest in matters of common concern: the ones where wages are not slashed to such an extent that any deduction for dues or a newspaper subscription or the purchase of a book amounts to one loaf less upon the table.

By contrast, in the trades where the length and intensity of the work are excessive, once the worker leaves penal servitude to her boss behind her, she is physically and mentally “spent”; so her only ambition, before making her way home to eat and sleep, is to down a few mouthfuls of alcohol to buck herself up, lift her spirits and stiffen her resolve. It never enters her head to drop by the union, attend meetings, such is the toll taken upon her body by weariness and such is the difficulty her exhausted brain finds in working.

By the same token, what effort could one expect of the wretch fallen upon endemic impoverished circumstances, the ragamuffin ground down by lack of work and deprivation? Maybe, in a fit of rage, she will venture a gesture of revolt .. but that gesture will not bear repetition! Poverty has drained her of all will, of all spirit of revolt.

These observations – which any one of us is free to verify and of which we can find our own examples – amount to a rebuttal of this bizarre theory that misery heaped upon misery and oppression heaped upon oppression sows the seeds of revolution. The very opposite is the case, is true! The weakling, at the mercy of fate, her life restricted and herself materially and morally a slave, will not dare to bridle under oppression: for fear of worse to come, she will draw in her horns and refuse to budge or make any effort and will wallow in her wretchedness. It is different with someone who achieves womanhood through struggle, someone who, having a less narrow life and a more open mind and having looked her exploiter in the face, knows that she is a match for her.

Which is why partial improvements do not have the effect of lulling the workers to sleep: instead they act as a reassurance and a spur to her in staking further claims and making further demands. The result of well-being – which is always a consequence of the display of proletarian might – whether the interested parties wrest it from the struggle, or the bourgeoisie deems it prudent and politic to make concessions, in order to take the edge off clashes which it foresees or fears – is to add to the dignity and consciousness of the working class and also – and above all else! – to increase and hone its appetite for the fight. As it shrugs off its physiological and intellectual poverty, the working class matures: it achieves a greater sensitivity, grows more alive to the exploitation it endures and its determination to break free of this is all the greater: it also gains a clearer perception of the irreconcilable contrast between its own interests and those of the capitalist class.

But, no matter how important one may suppose them to be, piecemeal improvements cannot take the place of the revolution, or stave it off: the expropriation of capital remains a necessity if liberation is to be feasible.

In fact, even supposing that capital’s profiteering could be heavily handicapped and that the State’s poisonous role could be partly done away with, it is unlikely that these handicaps could extinguish them entirely. None of it would have altered the relationships: there would still be, on the one side, the waged and the governed, and, on the other, the bosses and the leaders.

Obviously partial gains (no matter how important we may suppose these to be and even if they should largely whittle away at privileges) do not have the effect of altering economic relationships – the relations obtaining between boss and worker, between leader and led. Therefore the worker’s subordination to Capital and the State endures. From which it follows that the social question looms as large as ever, and the “barricade” dividing the producers from the parasites living off them has not been shifted, much less flattened.

No matter how much the hours of work may be reduced, no matter how high wage rates may climb, no matter how “comfortable” the factory may become from the point of view of hygiene, etc. as long as the relationships of wage-payer to waged, governor to governed persist, there will be two classes, the one struggling against the other. And the contest will grow in degree and scale as the exploited and oppressed class, its strength and consciousness expanding, acquires a truer appreciation of its social worth; as a result, as it improves itself and educates itself and betters itself, it will bring ever more vigour to its undermining of the privileges of the opposing, parasite class.

And this will carry on until all hell breaks loose! Until the day when the working class, after having steeled itself for the final break, after having hardened itself through continual and ever more frequent skirmishes against its class foe, will be powerful enough to mount the crucial assault … And that will be Direct Action taken to its ultimate: the General Strike!

Thus, to sum up, careful scrutiny of social phenomena allows us to set our faces against the fatalistic theory that proclaims the futility of effort, and against the tendency to suppose that better times can spring from bad ones run riot. Instead, a clear-sighted appreciation of these phenomena throws up the notion of a process of unfolding action: we find that the reverses suffered by the bourgeoisie, the piecemeal gains wrested from it, fan the flames of revolt: and we find, too, that just as life springs from life, so action inspires action.

Force and Violence

Direct Action, the manifestation of the workers’ strength and determination, shows itself in accordance with circumstance and setting, through acts that may well be very anodyne, just as they might as easily be very violent. It is simply a matter of what is required.

Thus, there is no specific form of Direct Action. Some people, with a very superficial grasp of things, explain it away in terms of an orgy of window breaking. Making do with such a definition – which brings joy to the hearts of the glaziers – would be to take a really narrow view of this exercise of proletarian might: it would be to reduce Direct Action to a more or less impulsive act, and that would be to ignore what it is in it that constitutes its greatest value and to forget that it is the symbolic enactment of workers’ revolt.

Direct Action, is workers’ might applied to creative purposes: it is the force that acts as midwife to a new law – enshrining social entitlement!

Force lies at the back of every movement and every action and, of necessity, it is the culmination of these. Life is the exercise of force and, beyond force, there is only oblivion. Nothing is made manifest, nothing is materialised in its absence.

The better to pull the wool over our eyes and keep us under their yoke, our class enemies have drummed it into us that immanent justice need not resort to force. Nonsensical exploiters of the people! In the absence of force, justice is nothing but tomfoolery and lies. The grievous martyrdom of the people down through the centuries bears witness to this: though theirs were just causes, force, in the service of the religious authorities and secular masters crushed and trampled the peoples: all in the name of some supposed justice that was nothing but a monstrous injustice. And that martyrdom goes on!

Minority versus Majority

The labouring masses are always exploited and oppressed by a parasitical minority which, had it only its own resources to rely upon, could not preserve its rule for a single day, for one single hour! This minority draws its power from the bovine acquiescence of its victims: it is the latter – the source of all strength – who, in sacrificing themselves for the class that lives off their backs, create and perpetuate Capital and uphold the State.

Now, if this minority is to be unseated, it cannot be enough (today any more than in the past) to dissect the social falsehoods that serve as its principles, expose its iniquity or detail its crimes. Against brute force, an idea, reduced to its powers of persuasion alone, is beaten before it starts. The fact is that, no matter how beautiful it may be, an idea is only a soap-bubble unless sustained by force, unless rendered fertile by it.

So what will it take to stop the unwitting sacrifice of majorities to a sensual, rascally minority?

The establishment of a force capable of counter-balancing what the propertied and ruling class extracts from the people’s delusion and ignorance. It us up to conscious workers to make just such a force a reality: the problem consists, for those desirous of shrugging off the yoke fashioned for them by the majorities, of reacting against so much passivity and seeking one another out, coming to some accommodation, and reaching agreement.

This vital task of revolutionary coalescence and cohesion is carried out inside the revolutionary union organisation: there, a growing minority is formed and grows, its aim to acquire sufficient strength, first, to counter-balance and then to annihilate the forces of exploitation and oppression.

This potential for propaganda and action strives first to bring enlightenment to the unfortunates who, by acting as the defenders of the bourgeois class, perpetuate the depressing saga of slaves armed by their masters to fight against the rebels promising liberation. It would be impossible to focus too much effort on this preparatory task. In fact, we must get the full measure of the dampening potential represented by militarism. The people in arms are always pitted against their own, better armed, offspring. Now there is historical proof aplenty to show that all popular uprisings that have not enjoyed either neutrality or support from the people in greatcoats – to wit, the army – have foundered. So our continual object must be to paralyse the unwitting strength afforded to rulers by a segment of the working class.

That done, there still remains the matter of breaking the power of the parasitical minority proper – and it would be a grave error to regard it as negligible.

This, in broad outline, is the task that falls to the conscious workers.

Ineluctable Violence

As for anticipating the circumstances and timing of the decisive clash between the forces of the past and the forces of the future, that belongs to the realm of hypothesis. What we may be sure of, is that it will have been prefaced and prepared by more or less sudden sniping, clashes and contacts. And another thing of which we may sure is that the forces of the past will not resign themselves to abdication, or bowing the knee. Now, it is precisely this blind resistance to progress which has, in the past, all too often marked the achievement of social progress with brutality and violence. And it cannot be emphasised too strongly: the responsibility for such violence does not lie with the Women looking to the future. For the people to decide on categorical revolt, they must be driven to it by necessity: they resolve upon it only after a lengthy series of experiences have demonstrated the impossibility of following the peaceable route and – even in those circumstances – their violence is merely a benign and humane retort to the excessive and barbaric violence from their masters.

Were the people violent by instinct, they would not endure the life of misery, privation and hard slog – studded with rascality and crime – which is the existence foisted upon them by the parasitical, exploitative minority, for another twenty four hours. Here we need have no recourse to philosophical explanation to demonstrate that Women are born “neither good nor bad”, and become one or the other according to their environment and circumstances. The matter can be resolved by everyday observation: it is beyond doubt that the people, sentimental and soft-hearted, display nothing of the endemic violence that characterises the ruling classes, and which is the mortar holding their rule together – legality being only the thin whitewash of hypocrisy designed to screen this deep-seated violence.

The people, held down by the education inculcated into them, saturated with prejudices, are obliged to make considerable effort to raise themselves to consciousness. Now, even when they pull it off, far from letting themselves be swept along by a justified wrath, they abide by the principle of least resistance: they seek out and stick to the path that looks to them the shortest and least fraught with difficulties. They are like waters following the slope to the sea, peaceable here and thundering there, according to whether they meet with few obstacles or many. To be sure, they are bound for the revolution, regardless of the impediments placed in their way by the privileged: but they proceed by the fits and starts and hesitations which are the products of their peaceable disposition and their wish to fight shy of extreme solutions. So, when the people’s force, smashing through the obstacles raised against it, sweeps over the old societies like a revolutionary hurricane, this is because it has been left no other outlet. Indeed, there is no denying that had this force been able to exercise itself without encumbrance, following the line of least resistance, it might not have manifested itself in violent actions but displayed a peaceable, majestic, calm aspect of itself. Isn’t the river that rolls to the sea with Olympian but irresistible sluggishness not made up of the very same liquid molecules that, tumbling torrentially through steep-sided valleys, barged aside the obstacles placed in their path? The same goes for the power of the people.

Illusory Palliatives

But, given that the people do not resort to force just for the pleasure of it, it would be dangerous to hope to preempt such recourse through the use of palliatives along parliamentary and democratic lines. Thus there is no voting system – not referendum, nor any other procedure that would seek to divine the key to the people’s wishes – thanks to which one might attempt to forestall revolutionary movements. Clinging to illusions of this sort would be tantamount to lapsing back into the unhappy experiences of the past, when the miraculous virtues attributed to universal suffrage were the focus of widespread hopes. True, it is more convenient to believe in the omnipotence of universal suffrage, or even of the referendum, than to see things as they really are: it spares one the need to act – but, on the downside, it brings economic liberation no nearer.

In the final analysis, we must always be brought back to this ineluctable conclusion: recourse to force!

However, the fact that some voting method, some referendum procedure, etc., is unlikely to sound the extent and intensity of revolutionary consciousness, should not be interpreted as finding against their relative worths. Referendum, say, may have its uses. In certain circumstances, recourse to it may well be the best policy. In instances posed with precision and clarity, it is convenient to gauge the tenor of workers’ thinking by this method. Moreover, revolutionary union organisations can use it, as the need arises (and this goes for those of them which, not being as yet completely free of the hold of capitalism, look to State intervention, as well as for those which are plainly revolutionary). And this has long been the case! Neither the one nor the other waited until any attempt was made to enshrine it as a system and for the attempt to be made to pass it off as a by-product of direct action.

It is therefore absurd to argue that the referendum runs counter to the revolutionary method – just as it would be absurd to argue that it is its inevitable complement. It is a mechanism for quantitative measurement and quite unsuited to qualitative assessment. Which is why it would be ill-advised to depend upon its being a lever capable of shifting capitalist society off its foundations. Even if it were to become more commonplace, its practice is not going to take the place of the initiatives required and indispensible vigour when an idea’s time has come.

It is infantile to talk about referendum when what is at stake is revolutionary action such as the storming of the Bastille … Had the Gardes franaises not defected to the people on 14 July 1789, had a conscious minority not set about attacking the fortress .. had an attempt been made first to determine by referendum the fate of that odious prison, the likelihood is that it would still be dominating the entrance to the faubourg Antoine …

Our hypothesis with regard to the seizure of the Bastille is applicable to all revolutionary events: let them be put to the test of a hypothetical referendum and similar conclusions will be reached.

No! There is no suffrage-based or referendum-based panacea likely to take the place of recourse to revolutionary force. But we must be plainly specific on this point: such recourse to force does not imply that the masses are sleeping. Quite the opposite! And it is all the more effective, the more these masses are endowed with a more enlightened consciousness.

For the economic revolution that capitalist society carries within itself to unfold at last and result in achievements, and for backward lurches and savage backlash to be impossible, those beavering away at the great undertaking must know what they want and how they want it. They have to be conscious entities and not impulse-driven! Now, let there be no mistake about this, numerical strength is only truly efficacious from the revolutionary viewpoint if it is fertilised by the initiative of individuals, by their spontaneity. By itself, it is nothing more than an accumulation of indeterminate Women that might be compared to a pile of inert matter prey to the impulses reaching it from without.

Thus it turns out that Direct Action, whilst proclaiming that the use of force cannot be avoided, lays the groundwork for the ruination of the rule of force and violence, in order to supplant it with a society based on consciousness and free agreement. This because it is the popularisation, in the old society of authoritarianism and exploitation, of the creative notions that set the human being free: development of the individual, cultivation of the will and galvanisation for action.

And so we are brought to the conclusion that Direct Action, quite apart from its value as a boon to society, carries within itself a value as a moral fecundation, in that it refines and elevates those whom it impregnates, releasing them from the straitjacket of passivity and inciting them to radiate strength and beauty.

Footnotes:

On the say so of superficial observers, many people unquestioningly swallow and repeat the story that “life is expensive” in the aforementioned countries. The truth of the matter is that luxury items are very expensive there: “society” living is very burdensome there: on the other hand, basic necessities are affordable. Moreover, don’t we know that, from, say, the United States, we get wheat, fruit, canned goods and manufactured products, etc., which (in spite of the additional costs imposed by transport costs and in spite of customs levies too) can compete with similar items on our market here? It must therefore be self-evident that in the United States those goods are not on sale at higher prices … We could cite many other conclusive proofs. But the confines of a pamphlet make that impracticable.

Published by the Fresnes-Antony Group of
the French Anarchist Federation, 1994

English translation by
the Kate Sharpley Library

Text found at the The Stan Iverson
Memorial Library & Anarchist Archives

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/index.html

Zabalaza Books

Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism

From the website of Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/

See also: www.anarkismo.net

Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism

by Thomas (Miami Autonomy & Solidarity)

Against Reformism

Against Purism

For Building Power and Advancing

Advancing

From the website of Miami Autonomy & Solidarity

http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/

See also: www.anarkismo.net

Anarcho-Syndicalism and Principles of Urban Planning

Scott Rittenhouse had a Masters degrees in Planning and Public Administration from USC and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from VCU. He was also a specialist in the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 and the environmental impacts of urban growth.

Anarcho-Syndicalism and Principles of Urban Planning

by Scott Rittenhouse

Why are there urban centres?

What is urban planning?

Conclusions

In Memory of Scott Rittenhouse, 1959-2012

Scott Rittenhouse had a Masters degrees in Planning and Public Administration from USC and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from VCU. He was also a specialist in the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970 and the environmental impacts of urban growth.

Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation

Related Links: https://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/ http://anarkismo.net

Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation

by Scott Nappalos

Framing Failure

Defining the Debate

The Birth of Democratic Centralism

Democratic Centralism beyond Lenin – hope in the West?

A Dialectical Alternative?

In Practice

Democratic Centralism outside of Time and Space

Democratic Centralism in Our Time

Towards a Fresh Organisation

Related Links: https://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/ http://anarkismo.net

From Theory to Practice, Taking a Critical Look at Leninism

This is a piece that was originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece, which is released in conjunction with a piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.

See Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation by Scott Nappalos, now published by Zabalaza Books.

From Theory to Practice, Taking a Critical Look at Leninism

by Adam Weaver

A Look At Leninism by Ron Taber. 104 pp. New York, New York: Aspect Foundation, 1988

“What Kind of Revolution?”

“Party, Class and Socialist Consciousness”

“The ‘Ethos’ of Bolshevism”

“State and Revolution”

“Lenin’s Theory of Knowledge”, Part I and Part II

Conclusion

This is a piece that was originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece, which is released in conjunction with a piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.

See Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A Critical Evaluation by Scott Nappalos, now published by Zabalaza Books.

Marxism and a Free Society

First published 1976 by Simian Publications (Cienfuegos Press), Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW172BL. See: www.christiebooks.com

Marxism and a Free Society

by Marcus Graham

The Issues of Autonomy and Moving the International

The Issue of Political Action, the State and Dictatorship

The Expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume

The Origins of the Alliance

A Re-Examination of the Report which brought about the Expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume from the International

The Significance of the Minutes

The End justifies the Means

The Tragic Consequences of Marxist Tactics

Marxism and Humanism

Marxism and a Classless, Stateless Society

About Marcus Graham

First published 1976 by Simian Publications (Cienfuegos Press), Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW172BL. See: www.christiebooks.com

Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism

From Socialism Made Easy, 1908

Industrial Unionism and Constructive Socialism

by James Connolly

Organising Constructively

The Old Order and the New

Begin in the Workshop

No ‘Servile State’

The Political State and its Uses

The Union Can Build Freedom

From Socialism Made Easy, 1908

A Critique of Marxism

First published by Soil of Liberty, Minneapolis, 1983

Building Power and Advancing:
For Reforms, Not Reformism

Anarcho-Syndicalism and Principles
of Urban Planning

In Memory of
Scott Rittenhouse,
1959-2012

Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea:
A Critical Evaluation

A Look At Leninism by Ron Taber. 104 pp. New York,
New York: Aspect Foundation, 1988

A Re-Examination of the Report which brought about the
Expulsion of Bakunin and Guillaume from the International

First published 1976 by Simian Publications (Cienfuegos Press), Over the Water, Sanday, Orkney, KW172BL.
See: www.christiebooks.com

**Published in The Raven #6, Oct. 1988**