Chapter 15

Saku Pinta and David Berry

There is something that has amazed and even shocked me for a long time. There is a tragicomical paradox in the spectacle of people who claim to be revolutionary, who wish to overthrow the world and at the same time try to cling at all costs to a reference system, who would feel lost if the author or the system which guarantees the truth of what they believe, were to be taken away from them. How is it possible not to see that these people place themselves by their own volition in a position of mental subjection to a work which is already there, which has mastered a truth which henceforth can only be interpreted, refined, patched up?

Cornelius Castoriadis[1146]

It is difficult to imagine the ‘Black and Red’ conference (in which this volume originated) having been conceived of, were it not for the epochal events of the 1980s and 1990s and the subsequent depolarization of global politics, the generalized ideological crisis of the Left and the increased ‘illegibility’ of many social struggles since then, the emergence of movements of resistance to globalized capital such as zapatismo (seen by some as ‘post-ideological’[1147]) and the blossoming of the worldwide ‘movement of movements’ and the associated Social Forums.[1148] The corollary of this seems to have been not only a renewed interest in the history and theory of anarchisms (in Europe and North America, at least), but also a new willingness to revisit the essentialist tribalism that has arguably always (but especially since the Comintern’s ‘Bolshevisation’ of the mid-1920s) characterized the Left. Many would concur with John Holloway’s remark that ‘One thing that is new and exciting about the re-articulation of ideas is that the old divisions between anarchism and Marxism are being eroded.’[1149] These reexaminations of how anarchist and communist theories and practices interact — and how some of the old divisions within the radical Left milieu might be overcome — have acquired a renewed sense of urgency following the 2008 economic and financial crisis and the search for a new emancipatory politics. David Harvey, in a recent discussion of the changing nature of present-day anticapitalist movements, stated:

Contemporary attempts to revive the communist hypothesis typically abjure state control and look to other forms of collective social organization […]. Horizontally networked, as opposed to hierarchically commanded, systems of coordination between autonomously organized and self-governing collectives of producers and consumers are envisaged as lying at the core of a new form of communism. […] All manner of small-scale experiments around the world can be found in which such economic and political forms are being constructed. In this there is a convergence of some sort between the Marxist and anarchist traditions that harks back to the broadly collaborative situation between them in the 1860s in Europe before their breakup into warring camps after the Paris Commune in 1871 and the blowup between Karl Marx and one of the leading radicals of the time, the anarchist Michael Bakunin, in 1872.[1150]

The reference to the hoary old story of Marx versus Bakunin might seem tiresome, but interestingly echoes the theme of a conference held in Paris a few years ago — organized largely by militants associated with the Trotskyist Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, the libertarian communist Alternative Libertaire and syndicalists from the SUD (Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques) unions — which took as its starting point a return to the history of the First International. The point, however, was not to rehearse the divergences and conflicts, or to attempt to apportion blame — all of which has been done quite enough already by both ‘sides.’ It was to hold up the story of the International Working Men’s Association as ‘an interesting example for the future,’ ‘a democratic, multiple, diverse, internationalist movement’ in which both Marxists and anarchists (among others) participated, and where ‘it was possible for distinct, if not opposed, political options to converge in reflection and in action over several years, playing a major role in the first great modern proletarian revolution. An International where libertarians and Marxists were able — despite conflicts — to work together and engage in common actions.’[1151]

The purpose of this collection of papers has been similarly to provide a back-story, as it were, to these developments: to rediscover the lost histories of a libertarian socialist tradition — an ideological current effectively blurring the boundaries between anarchist and Marxist variants of revolutionary socialist thought — and to open up debate about the development of socialist ideologies by reexamining the relationship between Marxism and anarchism — or rather between Marxisms and anarchisms — emphasizing the complexities and the convergences, but also engaging with the very real divergences not only between Marxism and anarchism, but also between different Marxisms and between different anarchisms.

Indeed, as was noted in the introduction to this volume and has been made abundantly clear by more than one contribution, one of the standard features of established socialist and labor historiography has been to reduce the complexity of multiple anarchisms and multiple Marxisms. The result has been an ahistorical portrayal of ‘anarchism’ that routinely lumps individualists together with advocates of collective social action, and an equally ahistorical and reductionist ‘Marxism’ that fails to differentiate between separate trends in this tradition, often assumed to be Leninist, similarly to the way in which ‘communism’ is often equated with Stalinism by antisocialists or anticommunists. Articles and books which draw a bold, unbroken and unproblematic line between ‘authoritarian’ and ‘anti-authoritarian’ socialisms are legion.[1152]

One of the conclusions that may be drawn from the examinations of revolutionary socialist theory and history offered in this volume, is that any such schematic division of the Left along anarchist and Marxist lines is highly problematic, and furthermore, that if we are to accept a dividing line in the socialist tradition between ‘libertarian’ and ‘authoritarian’ currents, then this does not neatly correspond to anarchist and Marxist ideological designations. In addition to the fact that multiple anarchisms and Marxisms throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been, and continue to be, internally divided on a variety of strategic and theoretical matters, it is equally clear that those currents on both ‘sides’ of the anarchist-Marxist ‘divide’ most concerned with working-class self-organization have displayed a remarkable degree of commonality, as have, ironically perhaps, variants of both traditions that have routinely been viewed as diametrically opposed. One could argue, for example, that there is a similarity between the ‘substitutionism’ of anarchist ‘illegalists’ or proponents of ‘propaganda by the deed’ — substituting the exemplary actions of activists as the spark which will ignite spontaneous mass revolt — with the leadership role assigned by some Leninists to an avant-garde party composed of enlightened professional revolutionaries substituted for a similarly conceived mass of followers. Victor Serge, more than any other historical revolutionary figure, perhaps best exemplifies this unusual convergence of perspectives, shifting from a vocal and active advocate of individualist anarchism to, at a later stage, a member of the Russian Communist Party (employed as a journalist, editor, and translator with the Communist International) — ending his political trajectory as a Trotskyist and an anti-Stalinist socialist critic of the Soviet Union. Historically, it has proved quite possible to make the rather short conceptual leap from a Stirnerite or Nietzschean idea of a ruthless egoist or overman — and associated negative or paternalistic attitudes towards the ‘mass’ or ‘herd’ — to the embrace of a powerful political elite.[1153] Conversely, the evolutionary approach typically identified with the reformist tendencies in social democracy — focused on gradual and piecemeal changes to the existing system — have certain parallels with ‘liberal’ anarchisms which similarly advocate the construction of various counter institutions and lifestyles as a moral rebellion against the state and capital.

Tensions and debates, common to both anarchists and Marxists, surrounding appropriate forms of organization have frequently arisen, although often employing different political vocabulary. The ‘party’ as interpreted by anti-parliamentary Marxists — as an organization uniting the most politically advanced and conscious elements of the working class — has parallels with, for example, the General Union of Anarchists as elaborated by the platformist-Makhnovists; similarly, there are parallels between the outright rejection of these political formations — in favor of looser groupings or strictly autonomous labor combinations — both by Marxists such as Otto Rühle as well as by anarchists such as Voline.[1154] (Indeed it is perhaps worth mentioning here that before the term ‘party’ acquired its modern meaning, and in particular prior to its association with Bolshevik conceptions, anarchist-communists such as Errico Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin spoke of forming anarchist ‘parties,’ and the term ‘vanguard’ — adopted as the name of one US anarchist-communist journal[1155] — was embraced by anarchists.)

Debates surrounding the ‘transitional period’ — describing, or speculating, how a society might undergo the transformation from capitalism to communism and what (if any) intermediate steps are to be deemed necessary in this process — have proved to be another traditional dividing point between some anarchists and Marxists, raising further matters of contention — crucially, the role of the state in social change (and the nature of that state). Again, this matter is not always so clear cut. One variation of the ‘transition period,’ the ‘two stage’ theory most closely associated with the Social Democratic parties of the Second International as well as with Stalinist orthodoxy, suggests that societies (above all economically ‘underdeveloped’ societies) would first have to pass through a capitalist stage of economic development in order to build the industrial and technological foundations necessary to support a socialist economy — ‘socialist’ meaning yet another transitional stage of state ownership of productive assets prior to the emergence of full-blown communism.[1156] Although couched in Marxist terminology the stagist strategy, the emphasis which it placed on the state as a key instrument for social change, and its political consequences were not accepted by all Marxists. Moreover, while it is true that Marx himself remained rather vague or ambiguous about how he envisaged the process of a revolutionary transformation (at least up to the Paris Commune in 1871), the familiar accusation of a thoroughly ‘determinist’ and ‘teleological’ Marx has also been contested.[1157] Another variation on the ‘transitional period’ theme, the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ is often understood to mean an authoritarian and centralized state controlled by a political elite. Anarchists have criticized this political form as totalitarian and as tending towards a permanent (rather than transitional) existence, and claimed that the results of this transitional period were foreseen by Bakunin in his warnings of Marx’s ‘red bureaucracy.’ Instead, anarchists have posed the alternative of an immediate dissolution of the state following a revolutionary upheaval. However, the interpretation of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as the armed suppression of bourgeois counter-revolution under the direction of democratic workers’ councils, embraced by councilists and other anti-state Marxist groupings, also finds (controversial) parallels in anarchist praxis in the militias of revolutionary Ukraine and Spain.

These theoretical or practical convergences, if routinely ignored or unacknowledged, are unsurprising when considering the variety of interpretations and geographic spread of these ideas and practices since the mid-nineteenth century. However, convergences are all the more notable when considering those currents, such as the ones primarily discussed in this volume, associated with working-class movements. If one were to exclude from consideration, on the one hand, individualist, anti-organizational, market-oriented or non-socialist currents from the broad anarchist tradition, and on the other, reformist, electoralist or state-centric approaches most often associated with the two dominant expressions of Marxism in the twentieth century (social democracy and Bolshevism), the gray area between these positions — what has sometimes been referred to as ‘libertarian socialism’ or ‘libertarian communism’ (despite the lack of any universally accepted usage of these terms) — display a number of common commitments and considerations: the role assigned to the working class as the social grouping most clearly associated with carrying out the task of human liberation; an anti-parliamentary disposition, rejecting the formal political democracy (as opposed to, and distinct from, economic democracy) of bourgeois parliaments or participation in electoral activity as effective methods for advancing social change; working-class self-activity and direct action as both a method for circumventing mediating bureaucracies, argued to stifle initiative and channel grievances into acceptable areas, and as a way to forge solidarities and create a sense of collective workers’ power.

Few sustained or conscious instances of such an alliance — the merger of an anarchistic insistence on non-hierarchical organization and antiauthoritarian praxis and a Marxist critique of alienation and capitalist social relations — are evident through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ‘revolutionary industrial unionism’ of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — distinct from, but with more than a passing family resemblance to, revolutionary syndicalism — is one prominent example.[1158] Indeed for union organizer and labor historian Ferd Thompson, the IWW represented a working-class ‘Marxism in overalls.’[1159] Small wonder, then, that the IWW has served as a major reference point for multiple anarchist and Marxist currents.[1160]

Syndicalism early on, itself a fairly heterogeneous form of working-class radicalism, was viewed by many as a synthesis of anarchist and Marxist perspectives through the avowal of class struggle combined with a rejection of electoralism (see Lewis Mates’ contribution to this volume). French ‘anarcho-Marxist’ syndicalist Georges Sorel was but one theorist who, as Renzo Llorente points out, acknowledged an intellectual debt to both Marx and the anarchists. The Hungarian revolutionary Ervin Szabó (1877–1918) would be another example. However, as syndicalism began to adopt a more consciously anarchist political orientation in the 1920s, theorists such as Rudolf Rocker began to distance themselves from Marxist contributions to syndicalist theory (and for their open acceptance of Marxist categories and terminology, the IWW was excluded by Rocker from the anarcho-syndicalist tradition).[1161]

‘The revolutionary syndicalism of the early twentieth century,’ writes historian Vadim Damier, ‘was not born in the heads of theoreticians,’ but rather developed through ‘the practice of the workers’ movement which sought its own doctrine — above all, the practice of direct action’ and only subsequently was it theorized.[1162] Similarly, periods of revolutionary upheaval and collective action, more than philosophical speculation, have contributed to the forging of common perspectives between self-identified revolutionary anarchists and Marxists in the years following the First World War. Specifically, the workers’ council, as a directly democratic social form prefiguring postcapitalist economic and social arrangements emerging from actual workers’ struggles, became a central organizational concept through the interwar period (and beyond). The workers’ councils were embraced by revolutionary Marxists (ranging from the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch-German council communists to the defenders of the Italian factory occupations like Antonio Gramsci); anarchists such as the Ukrainian Makhnovschina or the positions adopted by the Friends of Durruti group in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War in 1937; as well as more variegated political constellations, for example, the Kronstadt naval mutineers in 1921 and their demands for democracy in the soviets against single-party rule. In the late 1940s, council communist theorist Anton Pannekoek came to the view that the workers’ council form had effectively synthesized anarchist notions of liberty and spontaneity with Marxist conceptions of class struggle and working-class organization, and as a result, had transcended the limitations of both pre-war ‘classical anarchism’ and ‘orthodox Marxism.’[1163]

Also drawing inspiration from workers’ councils, in the postwar era, were groups of activists such as Socialisme ou Barbarie and the situationists in France, the Facing Reality group in the USA, Solidarity in the UK, and others who saw the continued relevance of this social form in its reemergence in the Hungarian workers’ struggle in 1956.[1164] Indeed, for some the Hungarian workers’ councils — like the 1905 soviets and the soviets or workers’ councils thrown up during and immediately after the First World War — were a revelation and it is clear from a number of the contributions to this volume how important they were in the development of new thinking among revolutionaries. This was not only important with regard to the development of non-Leninist Marxism, but also for many on the radical Left who were committed to creating something new and innovative beyond standard divisions. An editorial written by the Aberdeen Solidarity group expressed this desire to overcome sectarian divisions, stating that ‘It is often said by Solidarists that Marxists call us anarchists and anarchists call us Marxists. This paradox is a result of the inability of traditional revolutionaries to understand anything which falls outwith their own outdated categories.’[1165]

The recovery of the workers’ councils paved the way for a renewed interest in self-management or autogestion in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. For many this was connected to an analysis of post-1945 technocratic modernization, managerialism, bureaucratization: self-management thus acquired heightened importance, implying the need to abolish not just capitalist property relations but also the bureaucratic/manager ‘class’ — what Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel would later call ‘co-ordinatorism.’[1166] The critique of the domination of economic and political life by ‘bureaucratism’ became a major focus of both anarchists and Marxists, and was directed by many at both modern capitalism/state capitalism and Leninist organizational conceptions. This was often connected, as we can see in the papers by Jean-Christophe Angaut, Toby Boraman and Benoit Challand, to a reflection on alienation in modern capitalist society, and a new focus on the quality of everyday life. Modern capitalism was to be analyzed as a total social, cultural and even esthetic system — a system that had extended its dominance beyond the immediate ‘point of production.’ As Guérin remarked (in 1969) when quizzed by a journalist about the simultaneous appearance of two of his books, one on libertarian Marxism and the other on the sexual revolution: ‘The libertarian critique of the bourgeois regime is not possible without a critique of bourgeois mores. The revolution cannot be simply political. It must be, at the same time, both cultural and sexual and thus transform every aspect of life and of society. […] The revolt of the spring of 68 rejected all the faces of subjugation.’[1167]

If there are many examples of convergence and overlap, there are also clearly a number of tensions which go beyond reciprocated complaints of caricatural misrepresentation. An important one — perhaps the fundamental one — is the question of the limits to individual freedom, a point discussed here by Paul Blackledge, and also raised by Ruth Kinna in the context of Morris’ criticism of the anarchists, who for him were all individualists. This has historically been a matter of debate and even a source of conflict between anarchists, too, with the platformists notably arguing that the insistence on the absolute freedom of the individual so beloved of many anarchists was incompatible with the effectiveness of a revolutionary movement. (Indeed Matthew Wilson has recently argued convincingly that an unacknowledged problem in contemporary anarchism is that the concept of freedom is inadequately worked out.[1168]) Like Paul Thomas before him, Blackledge argues that this represents a fundamental philosophical divide between Marxism and anarchism — even social anarchism.[1169] He nevertheless concedes that there was greater convergence between Marx and Bakunin than there had been between Marx and Proudhon — Donald Clark Hodges, as Renzo Llorente points out, described Bakunin as ‘the first anarcho-Marxist’[1170] — and it is surely clear from a number of contributions to this volume that some Marxist currents’ views have been entirely compatible with the anarchist critique of hierarchy, centralization and authoritarian organization.

Another issue which has continued to be much debated — although as much between anarchists as between anarchists and Marxists — has been the question of the historic agent of change. C. Wright Mills and others associated with the New Left were critical of what seemed to them to be the ‘labor metaphysic’ of European revolutionaries, condemning it as ‘a legacy from Victorian Marxism’ which had become ‘unrealistic’ in the light of economic, social and cultural change.[1171] For such activists, the modern radicals were the intelligentsia, in particular the young intelligentsia. Although some anarchists, especially individualists, have always been drawn to social marginals, the so-called ‘lumpenproletariat,’ to déclassé bohemians — the ‘outsider’ as the title of E. Armand’s individualist organ l’en dehors had it — anarchist communists and syndicalists have tended to be just as oriented towards the working class and organized labor as Marxists. As is made clear in contributions to this collection, redefinitions of the working class prompted both by social change and by shifts in analytical frames have represented an area of (qualified) convergence between social anarchists, syndicalists and Marxists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Andrew Cornell, emphasizing the importance of the conditions that produce convergence (often movements of opposition to racism, colonialism and war), points out the impact of the US civil rights movement in breaking down some anarchists’ attachment to a focus on class and state. The same can of course be said of second-wave feminism.

Can the often violent history of Left sectarianism be overcome in the interests of the common objective of realizing an emancipatory society in which ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’? Perhaps the answer to this question lies less in the activities and mutual recriminations of groupuscules and revolutionary formulas concocted in sterile theoretical laboratories, and more in relating to, learning and drawing inspiration from social struggles. History, it might be said, is a good teacher but a poor master in that we can only draw lessons from our collective experiences but should be wary of coloring our expectations of the future too neatly with past events.