The Feral Underclass
13th May 2004, 09:11
Anarchism and Marxism
Anarchism and Marxism are two very different political philosophies; however, there is some similarity between the methodology and ideology of certain anarchists and Marxists, and the history of the two have very often been intertwined.
The historical conflict between Marxism and anarchism was inevitable; while revolutionary Marxists advocate taking over the machinery of the state as a means of working towards communism, even anarchist communists -- with the same objective in mind -- argue that the state must be done away with completely and immediately.
The International Workingmen's Association, at its founding, was an alliance of socialist groups, including both anarchists and Marxists. Both sides had a common aim (stateless communism) and common political opponents (conservatives and other right-wing elements). But each was critical of the other, and the inherent conflict between the two groups soon embodied itself in an ongoing argument between Mikhail Bakunin, representative of anarchist ideas, and Karl Marx himself. In 1872, the conflict in the First International climaxed with the expulsion of Bakunin and those who had become known as the "Bakuninists" when they were outvoted by the Marx Party at the Hague congress.
Arguments surrounding the issue of the state
Marxism has a very precise definition of the state: that the state is an organ of one class's repression of all other classes. To Marxists any state is necessarily a dictatorship by one class over all others. Within this definition the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" can mean anything from the monopoly of force by armed working people's councils, through to a monopoly of force by a party composed of intellectuals claiming to be the leadership of the working people. Within Marxist theory, should the differentiation between classes disappear, so too will the state disappear.
Anarchism has a broader series of definitions of the state, varying from the bourgeois state formation of army, bureaucracy and representative parliament through to an idea of the state as a monopoly of violence. Left wing anarchists disagree amongst themselves if democratic workers councils with a monopoly of violence constitutes a state or not.
While left-wing anarchists and Marxists both agree on the desirability of a stateless Communism, they have deep arguments about phases of a revolution between now and that ideal. Anarchists often wish to "smash" the state, replacing it with workers' councils, syndicates and/or other methods of organisation. Marxists often wish to "smash" the bourgeois state, and replace it with a "workers' state." This Marxist desire is often referred to as "seizing state power." As the argument between these conceptions often hides an argument about whose ideas lead the revolution, Anarchists and Marxists have on a number of occasions tried to eliminate each other during revolutions. These arguments are often seen as critical, because they involved the autonomy of workers councils, the existance of secret police, and the transparency of justice.
The issue of the state, and the idea of seizing the state for a party, bring up the issue of political parties, which also often divides Anarchists and Marxists. In general, anarchists refuse to participate in governments, and so do not form political parties. Marxists, on the other hand, see political parties as tools for seizing power and are not as suspicous of the capability of power to corrupt.
Arguments concerning the method of historical materialism
Marxism uses a strong a persuasive form of dialectical analysis of human societies called historical materialism. At the crux of historical materialist analysis is the idea that people find themselves in a predetermined material world, and act to produce changes upon that world within the limits of what changes they can concieve of. An example of historical materialism would be that a feudal peasant would find themself with a lord above them, and imagine religious, instead of political, solutions to the problem of their unfree status. Underlying these processes is an idea that contradictions and opposed social groups will naturally form and drive social progress.
However, Marxism also contains another method of analysis called dialectical materialism. This method claims that all physical and non-physical elements of the world have contradictary properties within them, driving things forward through change. Dialectical materialism claims that all natural phenomena, not simply human society, are governed by dialectics. This analysis is more tenuously established than historical materialism, and is often associated with Frederick Engels and Stalinism.
Anarchists use a wide variety of tools of social analysis. However, most anarchists recognise the value of historical materialism as a tool for social analysis. Some anarchist organisations like the Irish Workers Solidarity Movement make agreeing with the historical materialist method's value a central point of unity. Anarchists use historical materialism for the same reason that Marxists do: it gives them a materially supportable insight into how society currently works.
Anarchists were one of the first groups to criticise the dialectical materialist trend, on the basis that it dehumanises social and political analysis, and is not sustainable as a universal methodology. Anarchists have, however, pointed out when dialectics seem to govern the behaviour of natural phenomena, as Peter Kropotkin does in Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution regarding the structure of bee hives and rabbit populations.
Points of political commonality
Marxism and Anarchism are not always incompatible. At the beginning of the 20th century many Marxists and Anarchists were united within syndicalist movements for militant revolutionary trade unions. Many Marxists have participated honestly in Anarchist revolutions, and many Anarchists have participated honestly in Marxist revolutions. More over, a large number of political groups attempt a synthesis of Marxist and Anarchist traditions with the aim of a liberated workers society.
Anarchism and Marxism (http://www.fact-index.com/a/an/anarchism_and_marxism.html)
elijahcraig
13th May 2004, 19:49
Two replies from Lenin on the subject of Anachism and the State from "The State and Revolution" just to even the propaganda out here.
1. Plekhanov's Controversy with the Anarchists
Plekhanov wrote a special pamphlet on the relation of anarchism to socialism, entitled Anarchism and Socialism, which was published in german in 1894.
In treating this subject, Plekhanov contrived completely to evade the most urgent, burning, and most politically essential issue in the struggle against anarchism, namely, the relation of the revolution to the state, and the question of the state in general! His pamphlet falls into two distinct parts: one of them is historical and literary, and contains valuable material on the history of the ideas of Stirner, Proudhon, and others; the other is philistine, and contains a clumsy dissertation on the theme that an anarchist cannot be distinguished from a bandit.
It is a most amusing combination of subjects and most characteristic of Plekhanov's whole activity on the eve of the revolution and during the revolutionary period in Russia. In fact, in the years 1905 to 1917, Plekhanov revealed himself as a semi-doctrinaire and semi-philistine who, in politics, trailed in the wake of the bourgeoisie.
We have now seen how, in their controversy with the anarchists, marx and Engels with the utmost thoroughness explained their views on the relation of revolution to the state. In 1891, in his foreword to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, Engels wrote that "we"--that is, Engels and Marx--"were at that time, hardly two years after the Hague Congress of the [First] International,[1] engaged in the most violent struggle against Bakunin and his anarchists."
The anarchists had tried to claim the Paris Commune as their "own", so to say, as a collaboration of their doctrine; and they completely misunderstood its lessons and Marx's analysis of these lessons. Anarchism has given nothing even approximating true answers to the concrete political questions: Must the old state machine be smashed? And what should be put in its place?
But to speak of "anarchism and socialism" while completely evading the question of the state, and disregarding the whole development of Marxism before and after the Commune, meant inevitably slipping into opportunism. For what opportunism needs most of all is that the two questions just mentioned should not be raised at all. That in itself is a victory for opportunism.
Lenin quotes Marx on the State:
"The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free people's state', both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists' demand that the state be abolished overnight." (Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
Read it all there.
2. What is to Replace the Smashed State Machine?
In 1847, in the Communist Manifesto, Marx's answer to this question was as yet a purely abstract one; to be exact, it was an answer that indicated he tasks, but not the ways of accomplishing them. The answer given in the Communist Manifesto was that this machine was to be replaced by "the proletariat organized as the ruling class", by the "winning of the battle of democracy".
Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms this organisation of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which this organisation would be combined with the most complete, most consistent "winning of the battle of democracy."
Marx subjected the experience of the Commune, meagre as it was, to the most careful analysis in The Civil War in France. Let us quote the most important passages of this work. [All the following quotes in this Chapter, with one exception, are so citied - Ed.]
Originating from the Middle Ages, there developed in the 19th century "the centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature." With the development of class antagonisms between capital and labor, "state power assumed more and more the character of a public force organized for the suppression of the working class, of a machine of class rule. After every revolution, which marks an advance in the class struggle, the purely coercive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief." After the revolution of 1848-49, state power became "the national war instruments of capital against labor". The Second Empire consolidated this.
"The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune." It was the "specific form" of "a republic that was not only to remove the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself."
What was this "specific" form of the proletarian, socialist republic? What was the state it began to create?
"The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people."
This demand now figures in the programme of every party calling itself socialist. The real worth of their programme, however, is best shown by the behavior of our Social-Revolutionists and mensheviks, who, right after the revolution of February 27, refused to carry out this demand!
"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at any time. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class.... The police, which until then had been the instrument of the Government, was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen's wages. The privileges and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves.... Having once got rid of the standing army and the police, the instruments of physical force of the old government, the Commune proceeded at once to break the instrument of spiritual suppression, the power of the priests.... The judicial functionaries lost that sham independence... they were thenceforward to be elective, responsible, and revocable."[3]
The Commune, therefore, appears to have replaced the smashed state machine "only" by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be elected and subject to recall. But as a matter of fact this "only" signifies a gigantic replacement of certain institutions by other institutions of a fundamentally different type. This is exactly a case of "quantity being transformed into quality": democracy, introduced as fully and consistently as is at all conceivable, is transformed from bourgeois into proletarian democracy; from the state (= a special force for the suppression of a particular class) into something which is no longer the state proper.
It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush their resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. The organ of suppression, however, is here the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself suppresses its oppressors, a 'special force" for suppression is no longer necessary! In this sense, the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority (privileged officialdom, the chiefs of the standing army), the majority itself can directly fulfil all these functions, and the more the functions of state power are performed by the people as a whole, the less need there is for the existence of this power.
In this connection, the following measures of the Commune, emphasized by Marx, are particularly noteworthy: the abolition of all representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges to officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of "workmen's wages". This shows more clearly than anything else the turn from bourgeois to proletarian democracy, from the democracy of the oppressors to that of the oppressed classes, from the state as a "special force" for the suppression of a particular class to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority of the people--the workers and the peasants. And it is on this particularly striking point, perhaps the most important as far as the problem of the state is concerned, that the ideas of Marx have been most completely ignored! In popular commentaries, the number of which is legion, this is not mentioned. The thing done is to keep silent about it as if it were a piece of old-fashioned "naivete", just as Christians, after their religion had been given the status of state religion, "forgot" the "naivete" of primitive Christianity with its democratic revolutionary spirit.
The reduction of the remuneration of high state officials seem "simply" a demand of naive, primitive democracy. One of the "founders" of modern opportunism, the ex-Social-Democrat Eduard Bernstein, has more than once repeated the vulgar bourgeois jeers at "primitive" democracy. Like all opportunists, and like the present Kautskyites, he did not understand at all that, first of all, the transition from capitalism to socialism is impossible without a certain "reversion" to "primitive" democracy (for how else can the majority, and then the whole population without exception, proceed to discharge state functions?); and that, secondly, "primitive democracy" based on capitalism and capitalist culture is not the same as primitive democracy in prehistoric or precapitalist times. Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis the great majority of the functions of the old "state power" have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed for ordinary "workmen's wages", and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of "official grandeur".
All officials, without exception, elected and subject to recall at any time, their salaries reduced to the level of ordinary "workmen's wages" — these simple and "self-evident" democratic measures, while completely uniting the interests of the workers and the majority of the peasants, at the same time serve as a bridge leading from capitalism to socialism. These measures concern the reorganization of the state, the purely political reorganization of society; but, of course, they acquire their full meaning and significance only in connection with the "expropriation of the expropriators" either bring accomplished or in preparation, i.e., with the transformation of capitalist private ownership of the means of production into social ownership.
"The Commune," Marx wrote, "made the catchword of all bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality, by abolishing the two greatest sources of expenditure--the army and the officialdom."
From the peasants, as from other sections of the petty bourgeoisie, only an insignificant few "rise to the top", "get on in the world" in the bourgeois sense, i.e., become either ell-to-do, bourgeois, or officials in secure and privileged positions. In every capitalist country where there are peasants (as there are in most capitalist countries), the vast majority of them are oppressed by the government and long for its overthrow, long for "cheap" government. This can be achieved only by the proletariat; and by achieving it, the proletariat at the same time takes a step towards the socialist reorganization of the state.
The Feral Underclass
13th May 2004, 20:17
Originally posted by
[email protected] 13 2004, 09:39 PM
I am a very nice person, and I don't like to hurt other people...
It is not a nice thing to think about I admit. Violence is a disgusting thing and it is always difficult to put yourself in that situation. How would we react? I think for many people it would be difficult.
Unfortunatly capitalism and the bourgeoisie use violence against us every day. They exploiation and oppression creates violent situations all the time and it will be no different when the workers decide they want to change society. At this point we have to be clear and decisive. I would very much like to believe that we can change the present world order through non-violent means but the nature of the the present economic system and the state which protects will not allow that to happen without applying violence at some point.
Having said that, this actual conversation although interesting is an abstraction. We have a long way to go before this happens, and it may never happen in our life time. What our task is right now is to build our movement so we can challange capitalism and propogate our ideas among the working class.
Although I, in a sence want to do it, I also think of those who will suffer. Also, I might destroy my own life...
Take on step at a time. We need to have an effective movement that is big enough to create such unrest. Of course a revolutionary situation is a scarey prospect and the possibility of being killed in the process exists. But it only exists in a revolutionary situation and at present we are no where near that point.
I don't think I could do it in a society where people are happy and think the system is OK, or even good.
This would defeat the whole purpose of a liberatory revolution. Any revolution which is going to be lasting and meaningful has to come from the working class as a majority. It would be very difficult to liberate people if they did not want to be librated.
However, Leninists would have you believe that this is the only way to create working class power. Some of them even believe that the working class should be forced to accept change. Look back in history and you will see that this kind of tactic does not create the desired effects...A bit cleaning your clothes with dirt.
Also, are there any good anarchist forums you know of?
Anarchist Federation England - Forum (http://www.enrager.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=62)
This is one that I have been to a few times and I also think that another che-lives anarchist Morpheus posts here quite regulaly. Also there is another che-lives moderater Comrade James who has a website with a forum. You should pm him for the address.
I think however, that this website is by far the best for educational purposes.
Subversive Pessimist
14th May 2004, 16:02
Unfortunatly capitalism and the bourgeoisie use violence against us every day.
Who's us?
Communists and anarchists? The working class?
Another thing I do not understand... Although I would see I'm a little rich (petty bourgeoisie?), I don't understand why other leftists are so much against the middle class? After all, the biggest opressors are those god damn capitalists high up. Even though I have a lot of money, I have always had sympathy for the poor, and I've said to the family that after this, I want money on christmas and my birthday, instead of other kinds of gifts, and they will be used to help the poor in other countries. So, I guess I don't use violence against the working class, nor do I spit at the poor. Why don't we focus to bring down Bill Gates or the other assholes, instead of normal people? Thank you for the link. I'll check the forum out.
The Feral Underclass
14th May 2004, 17:08
Originally posted by
[email protected] 14 2004, 06:02 PM
Who's us?
The working class and other oppressed people.
I don't understand why other leftists are so much against the middle class?
It is not that we are against them, it is that they are against us. In a revolutionary situation the petty-bourgeoisie will very often side with the ruling class in fighting us. That is because many members of the middle classes are actually bosses who use exploitation to gain a wage, albeit not on the scale of Bill Gates, but they exploit nevertheless.
There are different kinds of middle class people though. I am not entirely sure how you define it specifically but you have people who are teachers and doctors, probation workers who are general very liberal. I have nothing against these people. In fact, many people like this are members of revolutionary parties. In the UK the Socialist Workers Party, which is a marxist-leninst party is full of these kind of people.
What we as communists should be against is exploitation. Any person who is using wage slaves to create profit for themselves are the enemy. Anyone or anything which protects that system is our enemy. Anyone who rejects those things, or has the potential do that so, are not. It seems a little sectarian, but it is a good starting point.
Why don't we focus to bring down Bill Gates or the other assholes, instead of normal people?
We should. But also remember that these are also normal people who use other normal people to protect them. But remember it is not just people we want to "bring down" it is and idea and an economic and political structure. We want to remove these people from power, but we also want to change the entire structure of the planets managment and organization. A lot or normal people don't want us to do that.
elijahcraig
17th May 2004, 20:19
No, not really. The opposition is exaggerated by Nihilists and Stalinists, groups that are neither Anarchists nor Marxists. The differences are mostly about perception and method, and not about what a society should be like. Marxism just puts less emphasis on the process of the elimination fo the state, basically just saying that it will, but not how, when or what we should do to make it.
I obviously disagree with your comments on Stalin, etc., but I also disagree with you about the State. Marxists are opposed to the State, but are also aware that you can’t “jump” over periods of economic transition. Under Capitalism, there is no way how you can know what the death of the State will look like, which is why Marxists refuse to “utopianize” about its disappearance.
Whether you think the end of hierarchy should begin with the end of classes or the state is up to you. In the end though, we all want the same thing. Neither classes nor the state.
Maybe Christians want that as well; don’t mean that Anarchists’ methods are useful or even revolutionary. Marxists should condemn all “romanticizing” about Revolution, in which Anarchists take place.
[ Don't think that establishing "one big nation for the whole world" will work, all you're doing is pulling power further and further away from the workers as the state expands. Communism is about the opposite.
But we’re speaking of socialism in the real world, not about communism in the idealized future.
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