African Anarchism : The History of A Movement

Chapter 2 : Anarchism In History

The relationship between anarchism and related social movements — notably syndicalism, guild socialism, and marxist socialism (in its 57 varieties : leninism, stalinism, maoism, trotskyism, social democracy, etc., etc.) — remains as contentious today as it ever was, even though they all share the common goal of the abolition of capitalism and the radical reconstruction of society.

Marxist socialism, of course, derives from the revolutionary writings of Karl Marx, who was inspired by the depressing spectacle of working-class misery in 19th-century industrial England. Many, including Bertrand Russell, credit Marx with producing the first coherent body of socialist doctrine.[35] It had three main planks : first, the materialist concept of history ; second, the theory of the concentration of capital ; and third, class war.

According to Marx’s materialistic interpretation of history, the substructure, that is, the socioeconomic formation, provides the axis around which other aspects of society revolve. The substructure invariably determines the superstructure, namely social and political systems, and laws and values. However, the economic structure is not wholly determining ; the economic, social, and ideological structures are interdependent and interact with one another in various ways, and mutually influence each other.

The theory of concentration of capital correctly anticipated the worldwide emergence of monopolies and oligopolies, spurred by the profit motive and including the export of capital, and culminating in the division of the world into a handful of usurer states and a multitude of debtor states.

Based on the foregoing, Marx conceived capitalists (“the bourgeoisie”) and wage earners (“the proletariat”) as being in perpetual conflict due to irreconcilably opposed economic interests. “The two classes, since they have antagonistic interests, are forced into a class-war which generates within the capitalist regime internal forces of disruption.”[36]

As The Communist Manifesto[37] proclaims : “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” A resolution of the class war is possible only with the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, it says. Marx was to elaborate on these doctrines in detail in Das Capital, an immensely rigorous and technical critique of capitalism, as well as in a succession of brutally provocative works on capitalist production, distribution and exchange, and social relations.

Anarchism is, essentially, an outgrowth of the socialist movement. We believe that the historical connection between the world views of marxism and anarchism is as important as their marked differences. It is important, therefore, to return to the uneasy relationship that existed between Marx and Bakunin, and ultimately the convulsions within the first International Workingmen’s Association.

Marx and Bakunin, by all accounts, did not get along well. Bakunin acknowledged Marx’s genius and revolutionary zeal ;[38] but at the same time he was quick to point out Marx’s arrogance, egotism, and (German) nationalism. The following account is provided by Bakunin himself : “I respected him much for his learning and his passionate and serious devotion (always mixed, however, with personal vanity) to the cause of the proletariat, and I sought eagerly his conversation, which was always instructive and clever, when it was not inspired by paltry hate, which, alas ! happened only too often. But there was never any frank intimacy between us. Our temperaments would not suffer it. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right ; I called him a vain man, perfidious and crafty, and I also was right.”[39]

This air of mutual antagonism persisted and permeated all facets of their relationship. It was profoundly evident in their involvement in the activities of the International Workingmen’s Association after its founding in London in 1864. The First International had been founded largely by Marx as a platform for all workers and activists of socialist persuasion. The ideas of the First International “spread with remarkable rapidity in many countries and soon became a great power for the propagation of socialist ideas.”[40]

Bakunin was not initially enthusiastic about the International, but that soon changed. While living in Italy in 1864, he founded the Alliance of Socialist Revolutionaries ; and in 1869, in Switzerland, he co-founded the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. The latter group applied to join the International, but its application was turned down because “branches must be local, and could not be international.”[41] Members of the Alliance were subsequently admitted in sections after it had disbanded as a separate body in July 1869.

At the Fourth Congress of the International in Basel in September 1869, a major rift emerged between Marx and his followers on the one hand, and Bakunin and his followers on the other. Bakunin states that, “It was fundamentally a difference on the question as to the role of the state in the socialist programme. The Marxian view was essentially that the state must be used to bring about and consolidate socialism ; the views of the Bakuninists (at this period beginning to be called anarchists) was that the state must be abolished, and that it could never under any circumstances be used to attain either socialism or any form of social justice for the workers.”[42]

The Basel Congress, Bertrand Russell stated in a related account, gave birth to two strong currents within the International. “The Germans and English followed Marx in his belief in the state as it was to become after the abolition of private property ; they followed him also in his desire to found labour parties in the various countries, and to utilise the machinery of democracy for the election of representatives of labour to parliaments. On the other hand, the Latin nations in the main followed Bakunin in opposing the state and disbelieving in the machinery of representative government.”[43]

Dissension between these two camps deepened in intensity and scope both within the International and outside it. This culminated in the expulsion of Bakunin from the International at its General Congress in Amsterdam in 1872. There Bakunin had made a case for the International to be made a loose association of fully autonomous, national groups devoted only to the economic struggle as opposed to Marx’s well known preference for a centralized political movement and all that goes with such a movement.

In the end, the International broke up, leaving in its wake two feuding factions embodying the fundamental differences between anarchism and marxist socialism — namely, total rejection of the state system by the former, and its embrace by the latter.

Engels had, in fact, advocated “a very strong government” within the overall framework of proletarian dictatorship to replace the capitalist state. Lucraft, a member of the General Council of the Basel Congress, had advanced the idea that all land in a country should become the property of the state, and that the cultivation of the land should be directed and administered by state officials, “which will only be possible in a democratic and socialist state, which the people will have to watch carefully over the good administration of the national land by the state.”[44] Similarly, the German Social Democratic Labor Party, founded under the auspices of Marx, Bebel and Liebknecht, stated in its blueprint that the acquisition of political power was the preliminary condition for the economic emancipation of the proletariat. The state system was in this sense transitional, pending its withering away in the long term with the full accomplishment of the socialist revolution. At that point, all class differences and antagonisms would be eliminated, resulting in, as Engels put it, the “abolition of the state as a state.” For marxist socialism, therefore, the withering away of the state constitutes an end in itself. Assuming that this were logical and feasible, it would still amount, in the transitional period, to fighting old tyrannies with new ones.

As Bakunin put it, “The Marxians think that, just as in the 18th century, the bourgeoisie dethroned the nobility to take its place and to absorb it slowly into its own body, sharing with it the domination and exploitation of the toilers in towns as well as in the country, so that the proletariat of the towns is called on today to dethrone the bourgeoisie, to absorb it, and to share with it the domination and exploitation of the proletariat of the countryside ;...”[45] In other words, the marxists advocated not the abolition of coercive state power, but merely the substitution of a new dominator class for the old one at the helm of the state.

This mistake leads to others, such as advocacy of political parties and, in some varieties of marxism, participation in electoral politics as the primary means of attaining socialism. In his address to the General Congress of the International in Amsterdam in 1872, Marx stated : “We know that the institutions, customs and traditions of separate countries have to be taken into account ; and we do not deny that there are countries like America and Britain... in which workers can achieve their goal by peaceful means.”[46] By “peaceful means,” of course, Marx meant electoralism and parliamentary action — simply put, political struggle which precludes tampering with the state system.

Even though both anarchism and marxist socialism have advocated the international solidarity of workers in all trades and in all countries in their economic struggle against the powers of capital, the issue of the state has constituted a major wedge between them.

Says Bakunin :

It is in the real organization of this solidarity, by the spontaneous organization of the working masses and by the absolutely free federation, powerful in proportion as it will be free, of the working masses of all languages and nations, and not in their unification by decrees and under the rod of any government whatever, that there resides the real and living unity of the International.... We do not understand that anyone could speak of international solidarity when they want to keep states... the state by its very nature being a rupture of this solidarity... State means domination and all domination presupposes the subjection of the masses, and consequently their exploitation to the profit of some minority or other.[47]

He adds in another passage :

The Marxists... console themselves with the idea that [their] rule will be temporary. They say that the only care and objective will be to educate and elevate the people economically and politically to such a degree that such a government will soon become unnecessary, and the State, after losing its political or coercive character, will automatically develop into a completely free organization of economic interests and communities.

There is a flagrant contradiction in this theory. If their state would really be of the people, why eliminate it ?... Every state, not excepting their People’s State, is a yoke, on the one hand giving rise to despotism and on the other to slavery. They say that such a yoke-dictatorship is a transitional step towards achieving full freedom for the people : anarchism or freedom is the aim, while state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses of the people, they have first to be enslaved !

Upon this contradiction our polemic has come to a halt. They insist that only dictatorship (of course their own) can create freedom for the people. We reply that all dictatorship has no objective other than self-perpetuation, and that slavery is all it can generate and instill in the people who suffer it. Freedom can be created only by freedom.[48]

As Bakunin foresaw, retention of the state system under socialism would lead to a barrack regime. Here the workers, peasants and the people as a whole “would wake, sleep, work and live to the beat of the drum ; for the clever and the learned a privilege of governing.”[49] Even if such a regime were democratically elected, it could still easily be a despotism. Bertrand Russell explains : “It is undeniable that the rule of a majority may be almost as hostile to freedom as the rule of a minority : the divine right of majorities is a dogma as little possessed of absolute truth as any other. A strong democratic state may easily be led into oppression of its best citizens, namely those whose independence of mind would make them a force for progress.”[50]

Unfortunately, Bakunin’s predictions about marxist socialism have proven to be uncannily accurate. Even some marxists have acknowledged this. One such acknowledgement came from Burton Hall in the Winter 1968 issue of New Politics :

... it is most uncomfortable for a devout socialist to look over the argument exchanged between Marx and Bakunin and reflect that maybe it was Bakunin who was right all the time... not only because of the accuracy of his predictions as to what socialism would look like, if it were ever to come into existence, but even more to the point, because the reasoning on which he based these predictions, reinforced by the historical evidence of the past half-century, seems almost unanswerably persuasive.[51]

But having said that, it’s still worthwhile to elucidate the parallels between anarchism and marxism. Conor McLoughlin outlines some of them : “Both systems were founded on the idea of historical materialism, both accepted the class struggle, both were socialist in the sense of being opposed to private property in the means of production. They differed in that Bakuninism refused to accept the state under any circumstances whatever, that it rejected politics or parliamentary action, and that it was founded on the principle of liberty as against that of authority.”[52] McLoughlin concludes : “One can accept a materialist method of analysis and Marx’s critique of capitalism without accepting the politics of Marx and Engels.

As well, marxism does not reject the anarchist program completely. Both anarchism and marxism champion the aspirations of the wage earner and seek the abolition of the wage system. Marxism, however, quarrels with the seeming impatience of anarchism as well as its willingness to ignore the “scientific” law of evolution which supposedly determines the orderly march of history. Both systems are nevertheless impelled by a common and genuine desire to extinguish the evils of capitalism through the abolition of wage labor, the ways and means of commodity exchange, and, most of all, the needless misery, inequality, and exploitation characterizing the relationship between the have-nots and the owners of capital.

There are similar striking parallels between anarchism, guild socialism, and syndicalism. An outlining of the latter two theories is thus necessary at this juncture.

Guild socialism, made popular through the writings of S.G. Hobson and G.D.H. Cole, strives toward autonomy in industry and a drastic curtailment in the powers of the state, but not its abolition. Put differently, for the workers’ guild, the goal is not merely to secure better work conditions, but to achieve socialism through the control of industry. Each factory is to be free to manage its own affairs, including control of production through the supervision of managers elected directly by the workers. “The state would own the means of production as a trustee for the community : the Guilds would manage them, also as trustees for the community, and would pay to the state a single tax or rent. Any Guild that chose to set its own interests above those of the community would be violating its trust, and would have to bow to the judgement of a tribunal equally representing the whole body of producers and the whole body of consumers.”[53]

This tribunal, known as the Joint Committee of Parliament and the Guild Congress, would adjudicate on matters involving the interests of consumers and producers alike. Below the joint committee lie two parallel bodies with equal powers : the parliament (state) representing the community in their capacity as consumers, and the guild congress, representing the community in their capacity as producers. Guild socialism postulates that all social systems to date have perceived society from the point of view of either producers or consumers, but never from both points of view. It thus insists on functional representation as a basis for the organization of society, which necessarily involves the abolition of the wage system. Its theoretical assumptions are summarized in the following.

Capitalism has made of work a purely commercial activity, a soulless and a joyless thing. But substitute the national service of the Guilds for the profiteering of the few ; substitute responsible labour for a saleable commodity ; substitute self-government and decentralization for the bureaucracy and demoralising hugeness of the modern state and the modern joint stock company ; and then it may be just once more to speak of a “joy in labour” and once more to hope that men may be proud of quality and not only of quantity in their work.[54]

Syndicalism, on the other hand, is a social theory “which regards the trade union organisations as at once the foundation of the new society and the instrument whereby it is to be brought into being.”[55] (The word “syndicalism” derives from the French words “syndicat” and “syndicalisme,” which mean “trade union” and “trade unionism” respectively.) Syndicalism advocates direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order, including the state, and to establish in its place a social order based on workers organized in production units. The syndicalist movement, in concrete terms, grew out of a strong anarchist and anti-parliamentary tradition among the French working class, who were greatly influenced by the teachings of the anarchist P.J. Proudhon and the socialist Auguste Blanqui.

According to Bertrand Russell, “Syndicalism stands essentially for the point of view of the producer as opposed to that of the consumer, as it is concerned with reforming actual work and the organisation of industry, not merely with securing greater rewards for work.”[56] In Appadori’s words, “The syndicalists accept the general socialist position that society is divided into two classes, the capitalist and the proletariat, whose claims are irreconcilable ; that the modern state is a class state dominated by the few capitalists ; that the institution of private capital is the root of all social evils and that the only remedy for them is to substitute collective capital in place of private capital.”[57]

The syndicalist current manifested itself within two French labor unions in the 1890s, the Confederation General du Travail (CGT — which declared revolutionary syndicalism its creed), and the Federation des Bourses du Travail (FBT), which led to their joining forces in 1902. The secretary general of the FBT, Fernand Pelloutier, himself essentially an anarchist, was influential in the formulation of syndicalist principles. “The task of the revolution is to free mankind, not only from all authority, but also from every institution which has not for its essential purpose the development of production,”[58] he stated.

Class war conducted by direct industrial methods at the point of production, including the general strike, the boycott, and sabotage (as opposed to electoral political methods) is held out as the principal syndicalist weapon. Being fundamentally opposed to capitalism, syndicalism advocates the abolition of the state : “The state was by nature a tool of capitalist oppression and, in any event, was inevitably rendered inefficient and despotic by its bureaucratic structure.”[59]

Proceeding from this standpoint, syndicalists aim at using the strike as a means of undermining and eventually overthrowing capitalism, not simply as a means of securing better working conditions and wages. The ultimate expression of the strike as a weapon is the general strike (a total work stoppage in all services and industries), the aim of which is to paralyze the capitalist system.

Syndicalists are no less contemptuous of state socialism than anarchists, convinced that it is equivalent to state capitalism, with the state being the sole employer (with the police and army to back up its dictates) ; because of this, they are also convinced that the lot of the working class will be (and has been) even worse under state socialism than under corporate capitalism.