Socialism and Anarchism
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Author : Anton Pannekoek

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1. THE SOCIAL IDEAL.

When we read the books of the official professors of social science on the
subject of Socialism and Anarchism, we are astonished to find how little the
sociologists, even those friendly to us, understand of the great scientific
revolution which Engels called the Development of Socialism from Utopia to
Science, a revolution now more than half a century old.

Scientific Socialism, as established by Marx and Engels, combined into a
harmonious unity two things which from the bourgeois point of view appeared to
be irreconcilable opposites: on the one hand dispassionate objectivity, science
indifferent to ideals, and on the other hand the passionately sought subjective
ideal of a better society. Those who do not take the point of view of scientific
Socialism believe that an ideal, that is to say, something, which we desire, can
never be a subject matter of science, and that, conversely, passionate desire
must be a hindrance to objective truth. To the alleged objective science of
society they give the name of sociology; and the sterility, the lack of results
which is everywhere in evidence in the countless books of these "sociologists,"
furnishes the best refutation of their contention that social truth is born of
dry book-learning, rather than of participation in the social struggles. A
social ideal, on the contrary, they know only as Utopianism — as the
conception and propaganda of a better or best social system — which has
nothing to do with the science of society, even though its advocates maintain
that they are able to prove "scientifically" the excellence of their new
system.

Scientific Socialism has overcome this contradiction through the discovery of
the economic basis of social evolution. It has taught us that with the
continuous improvement in the technical methods of labor and the social organs
and organizations necessary to their operation, the entire social order
undergoes an uninterrupted transformation, including the opinions and ideals of
mankind. Man must continually adapt his ideas and opinions of possible and
desirable institutions and organizations, to the progress of the productive
forces; in other words, he follows ever new social ideals. Therefore, such a
social ideal does not signify the construction of a faultless social system, but
it is a mental picture of a subsequent, more highly developed social system, in
which the disadvantages of the preceding system have been overcome, and which is
adapted to that development of the forces of production which has just been
attained. Since everything which man does must first exist in his mind as
purpose and will, therefore every new social order, before it becomes a reality,
must first exist as a more or less adequate, conscious ideal.

Thus in the youth of capitalism, when the new inventions of the steam engine
by James Watt and the spinning machine by Arkwright opened up boundless
possibilities to industrial development, the natural social ideal was:
unconfined freedom of private production and of competition, the sweeping away
of all feudal and guild obstacles. So now, when capitalistic appropriation
stands in the way of the full employment and development of the forces of
production, when the gigantic establishments and trusts have shown the
possibility of a well-devised organization of labor, the natural social ideal
is: the socialization of the means of production. And this social ideal forms
the chief demand in the programs of the Socialist parties of all countries.

Consequently, if we Socialists are asked: "What order of society do you
recommend as the best?" we answer: "None at all." We do not extoll any system of
society as the most perfect or the only good one, in comparison with which all
others are objectionable. Various social orders are necessary, hence
advantageous, according to the height of technical and economic development;
upon a certain plane of development, an order, which previously was necessary,
becomes injurious and unbearable, as is now the case with capitalism. Hence all
our struggling and striving is now directed toward the next step, and toward the
removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of the acquisition by society of
the means of production. These obstacles are mainly two: the political supremacy
of the capitalists and the defective organization and discipline of the working
class; therefore, our most immediate aims are the organization and training of
the workers and, by means of these, the conquest of political power.

Consequently, we are by no means of the opinion that after this victory and
with the commencement of the nationalization of the great industries, the ideal
of the best of all worlds will have been attained. On the contrary, it is our
conviction that this new condition — like its predecessor, capitalism
— is only a link in a continuous chain of development. Our program
naturally contains nothing in regard to the further phases; our practical task
is merely the realization of our present social ideal, that is, the displacement
of capitalism by the social order which naturally follows it. We must leave it
to the members of the society of the future to raise the banner of new social
ideals to correspond to the new needs that will arise.

This does not mean that the subsequent forms of development do not interest
us and that we therefore need not concern ourselves about them. It simply means
that it would be absurd for us to put our views in regard to future orders of
society into the form of demands the realization of which should determine our
practical line of action. On the contrary, since it tends to clarify our views
and opinions, it may be of value in our present struggle to attempt to forecast
the various future phases of social development by means of our
historic-materialistic method.

2. THE FUTURE STATE.

The substitution of Socialism for capitalism will not be a single,
world-convulsing act, but a process of gradual change, however rapid as compared
with the present time (1).
The nationalization of the great industries and trusts will effect no
fundamental change in capitalism, for certain industries are even now
nationalized; the fundamental change will lie only in the fact that the power of
the state will be at the disposal of the working class. The great contrast
between the new proletarian supremacy and the former capitalist supremacy will
manifest itself immediately, not in a deliberate revolution of the mode of
production, but in vast cultural measures — promotion of education, care
of the public health, aid for poverty and suffering — by which the new
society must make up for the neglects of capitalism. Although we are unable to
say to what extent private production will at once be replaced by social
production — certainly not completely — yet it is certain that the
vigorously executed measures for the promotion of the welfare of great masses of
the people will form the basis of the new economic development. Kautsky has
already shown how the simplest, most necessary and, to every worker, immediately
urgent measure for the checking of poverty, namely, bounteous provision by the
state for the unemployed, strikes at the very roots of capitalism; it will be
one of the most effective levers for putting a speedy end to private production
undertaken for the sake of profit.

When private production is then, for the greater part, replaced by social
production, there will nevertheless be little change apparent in the method of
production, except that in place of many producers and employers there will be
but one; hence the expressions and forms originating in the production of
commodities will continue to exist. To the products there will be attributed a
certain value for which they are sold; the participants in production
will be paid a wage for the labor-power they have expended in the
service of society — to be sure, the value> of labor-power will be rated
far higher than now — and perhaps this wage will be calculated to vary
according to performance and supposed service. The division of that portion of
the social products intended for individual consumption will, at this stage of
development, be effected by their purchase from society by means of the wage
which society pays to its members for their labor. Hence private property will
still play an important role; disparities in this form of property will exist;
money will be used for the payment of wages, and for buying and selling among
the still existent private producers. However completely the abolition of
poverty may change the aspect of society, production will at first be but little
altered in its superficial aspect by the overthrow of capitalism. Nevertheless
this aspect will be deceptive. Even in production the basic difference will be
enormous; it will no longer be a means for the creation of surplus value, and it
will no longer be left to the hazards of private undertakings, but it will be
directed toward the satisfaction of needs as its immediate aim, and hence will
be controlled with conscious foresight.

This stage of social development cannot endure; it will gradually undermine
itself. Internal contradictions will even in the future be levers of social
evolution; to be sure, they cannot, as under capitalism, manifest themselves in
a class struggle, for the classes will have vanished; the contradictions will
become perceptible in the form of inadequacies, and will furnish the inducement
for their removal by means of conscious modification of the foundations of
society. Here the contradiction consists in this, that value is a quality of
products which originates in private production, and hence vanishes when private
production ceases to exist. In a society of commodity-producers value expresses
the social character of their private labors; it is in their common quality as
values that the products of these private labors announce themselves to be
qualitatively similar to each other and to incorporate within themselves social,
abstract labor. That the private persons are participants in a social
labor-process, becomes apparent only in the quality of value that is common to
their products; hence in the inverted form of a quality of things. In the act of
exchange the producers and the products meet; there the social character of
their private labors comes to light; there value is formed, or more correctly,
there it passes from an abstract, conceptual existence into reality. "It is only
in exchange that the products of labor receive a socially equal existence as
values which is distinguished from their naturally different existences as
use-values" (Marx, "Capital," I).

When the social character of labor is immediately apparent to everyone, it
need not be embodied in the fanciful form of an objective quality of the
product. With the disappearance of private labors, which formerly constituted
value through their equalization in exchange, value itself will vanish. It may
for a time lead a traditional existence: the impossibility of determining it
practically when it has lost its real existence will put an end to the order of
society in which it played the chief role in the distribution of the means of
consumption. When a generation shall have passed after the first abolition of
capitalist poverty and new generations have been born which only know it from
hearsay, men will gradually cease to comprehend the capitalistic idea of paying
wages for work done. With the universalizing of that scientific and technical
education which under capitalism is the monopoly of privileged classes and is
used by them to extort higher payment for their labor power, the differences in
wages will disappear. With the memory of capitalistic inequality will also
disappear the feeling that a man who accomplishes more than another should
receive more. Moreover, how would the measure of performance be determined,
except in entirely similar labors? Therefore some other rule for the
distribution of articles of consumption will have to be sought for.

Possibly, for lack of something better, recourse will be had to the idea that
everybody is entitled to the same amount. However, the development of the
productive forces will soon lead to another standard. One of the first and most
obvious consequences of the abolition of capitalism will be a tremendous
development, to an extent now hardly conceivable, of natural science and its
technical applications. The universality of scientific education will augment
the now small group of natural scientists and inventors by countless numbers of
powerful, creative minds. Nowadays this group works only for the profit of the
capitalists and to satisfy the thirst for knowledge of a small guild of
scholars; in addition, it is demoralized by avarice and place-hunting, as well
as hampered by worry and disappointment. Under Socialism the natural scientists
and inventors will be sustained by the ennobling consciousness that all their
researches and discoveries will redound to the immediate benefit of the
community. Then the knowledge of the forces of nature and their technical
application will receive an impetus never possible before; the productivity of
labor will increase enormously, and the drudgery of the individual will be
considerably lightened. The means of life will thus be produced in such
abundance that it will no longer be necessary to use painful exactness in
apportioning to each his rightful share. Where unlimited abundance reigns, each
can take as much as he needs without arousing the jealousy of others. On the
other hand, the knowledge that there is always enough will restrain each one
from taking more than he actually needs, whether to hoard it or to waste it,
both of which would be equally without purpose. The only measure at this stage
of social development for the division of the means of consumption will,
therefore, be the necessity of the individual. It is obvious that under these
circumstances, where each takes what he needs from the social store, the idea of
private property, even in means of consumption, will gradually disappear.

This immense increase in the productivity of labor, as a result of the
advance in science and education, can commence only when the Socialist order
shall have prevailed for some time; for the increase itself will be a
consequence of the cultural measures of the new society. Therefore, in the
beginning the superiority of Socialist production over capitalist production
will have to be based upon entirely different factors. All these factors will be
directed toward an effective economical and carefully planned system of
production and the avoidance of all useless waste of material and labor-power,
in one word, organization. We often conceive the aim of our present
struggle to be the organization of scattered, wasteful and anarchic production,
and this is to be accomplished by the state as soon as we shall have seized it.
The proletariat, then, needs the power of the state to force its will upon the
classes it has conquered, to advance education, culture and instruction by vast
measures, and in addition to organize the process of social production. Old
political institutions will be remolded into new organs, which will play a part
in the management of production; hence they will receive an entirely new
significance, while the old forms and names will remain unaltered. Thus the
political structure will also be altered but little in its superficial aspect,
but greatly in reality. The nature of the State will undergo such a basic
transformation that Engels could say with justice: The state will die. Instead
of an institution for the oppression of one class by the other it becomes a
corporate body with purely economic functions. In accordance with this
combination of political form and economic substance, the working regulations
will have the form and force of laws.

The organization of labor implies a certain measure of legal compulsion, that
is to say, of the subordination of the will of the minority to that of the
majority. But whence will this order of society obtain the force to execute its
laws? Under capitalism the state has at its disposal a great mass of forcible
means: police, prisons and courts, and finally the army; it is only through the
physical means of force at its disposal that a minority is able to maintain its
rule over the great mass of the people. These physical means of force are
unnecessary to the rule of the mass, which will accomplish its purpose by moral
force alone. The political system which the proletariat will introduce after its
victory, and which may be designated as a consistent democracy, will be governed
by the same principles which the workers now employ in their fighting
organizations: equality of rights for all members, expression of the will of the
whole in legal provisions and resolutions which each must obey, execution of the
will of the majority by an executive. The means of compulsion that are employed
here to impose the will of the majority upon the minority will probably also be
employed in the future industrial democracy — namely, discipline.

This discipline consists in the voluntary subordination of the individual to
the whole; it is the chief proletarian virtue, which the working masses have
acquired in their struggle against capitalism. The workers will never be able to
overthrow capitalism until they have brought this virtue to its highest
development, the subordination of their personal desires and of their egoism to
the interests of the whole class; this virtue they will carry with them into the
new society, and there it will become the moral cement of the Socialist order.
It will be the moral counterpart to political democracy; the latter will need no
other means of force.

In any case, discipline means the overcoming of an existing instinct; the
safeguarding of the interests of the whole does not, in this case, spring
spontaneously from direct inclination, but from rational consideration. This
instinct, which must be overcome, is egoism, self-interest, which has been
fostered by the economic conditions of commodity production and competition
until it has become the predominant instinct. Whoever does not possess this
characteristic, or possesses it in insufficient measure, is hopelessly lost
under capitalism. A characteristic that for countless generations has been ever
necessary, and almost essential to life, and hence is firmly rooted in human
nature, will require several generations of disuse to become weakened to a
considerable degree and finally to disappear. Therefore, the Socialist order of
society will be unable to uproot this impulse immediately; its advance over
capitalism will consist in this, that egoism will be restrained by discipline
(that is, by rational conviction grown into a habit), that the preservation of
the common interest will become the most efficacious means of preserving the
individual interest.

But the new order of society will itself foster far different traits of
character. The common labor for a common end, the community of individual
interests with those of society as a whole, will develop to an extraordinary
degree the feeling of brotherhood and comradeship. It was economic necessity
that made egoism the most prominent trait of men under capitalism; it was
economic necessity that made solidarity and discipline the leading traits of the
revolutionary labor movement; and it is economic necessity that will, to the
same extent, develop the feeling of sociability above all other traits of
character in the Socialist society. Men will regard themselves, first of all,
not as individuals, but as members of society; the welfare of the whole will
dominate all their thoughts and feelings. This tendency will then no longer rest
upon the self-conquest of the individual, who sacrifices his inclination to that
which he recognizes as necessary; it will rest upon direct inclination Instead
of having to overcome an inherited instinct, this tendency will rather consist
in the active exercise of the newly born instinct.

This evolution of human instincts will also entail a change in the social
organization. In the beginning, the organization of social labor will require
special measures, which will be decided upon by the majority, executed with
conscientious care by a central body, and faithfully observed by the individual.
But as organized work becomes a habit, and as the interest of all becomes the
highest aim of each, the deliberate organization and regulation of labor will
gradually become superfluous. And to this extent the last vestiges of political
authority will vanish, the authority which in the beginning, under the form of
laws and controlling bodies, kept the minority in subordination to the majority.
The organization of labor will then be no longer a product of external
regulation, but of inner impulse. And when the enormous increase in
productivity, due to the advance of science, becomes a reality, the results of
labor will no longer have to be obtained through carefully planned organization.
Thus the substitution of Socialism for capitalism signifies from the very
beginning an enormous advance in liberty, since the rational force of discipline
in behalf of individual and common interests takes the place of brutal
compulsion in the service of alien and hostile interests; but in the further
development of the Socialist society even the compulsion of discipline will
gradually disappear, and no compulsion will remain other than that of the
individual's own sense of sociability, the appreciation or the blame of his
fellowmen.

It is self-evident that with greater or less probability much more can be
inferred from the given premises in regard to the various phases of development
of the future society: in regard to the technique of labor, artistic activity,
the return to the land, etc., there are many valuable hints in our literature.
The statements made here, however, suffice for an appreciation of the views of
the modern Utopians.

3. MODERN UTOPIANISM.

As long as no working class movement was in existence, utopianism was the
natural form of Socialism, of the aspiration for a form of society based upon
common property. Until the appearance upon the stage of history of a class whose
struggles had Socialism for their necessary goal, Socialism was bound to be an
artfully contrived idea, of which hopes were entertained that it might be made
sufficiently attractive to the rest of mankind. To have foreseen this goal,
signified at that time a tremendous advance. Therefore the modern Socialistic
working class holds in high honor the great Utopians of the early part of the
nineteenth century, whom it regards as its precursors.

Even with the appearance of scientific communism and of the working class
movement, Utopianism has not utterly vanished from the scene. The defects and
faults of the existing social order are so plainly apparent to countless men
outside the working class, that the question is forced upon them: Could not
society be better organized? But only an infinitesimal portion of them come into
the workers' camp as allies; the conceptions of the Social Democracy remain
foreign to them; and although some, after much difficulty and painful shedding
of numberless prejudices, do finally find their way there, the great majority
are prevented by bourgeois limitations. To these there is no other course left
than to construct a better world in their own imagination and to try to gain
adherents to it; to the professional vanity of clever literati it appears far
more honorable to invent a "system" of their own, than to be incorporated
recruits in the great army of the party of Labor.

Thus the two roots of modern Utopianism are the defects of capitalism and the
great intellectual eminence of the Socialist movement, so sharply opposed to all
conventional bourgeois conceptions and so far superior to them. But while the
classical Utopianism was in advance of its time, modern Utopianism lags behind
our age. It remains beneath the intellectual level of the present, because it
has not freed itself of the intellectual backwardness of the bourgeois mode of
thought. Within the latter, it is true, it occupies an honorable place because
of its wider vision and keener critical attitude; this honorary testimonial must
compensate it for the fact that it is practically without influence in society.
A Utopia, an imagined best order of society, cannot form the program of a
fighting class; a Utopia cannot gather around itself a party, it can only be the
nucleus of a sect.

It is true that even Utopian social constructions can temporarily gain
considerable influence. In America, after the publication of Bellamy's "Looking
Backward," a group of people (it was even called a party) was formed, which set
for itself the task of realizing the system of society described by Bellamy.
Similarly, in the beginnings of the German working class movement the Utopian
constructions of Eugen Duhring met with so much response that Engels was forced
into the famous controversy with him.

Among all modern Utopian systems, Anarchism in its various forms has become
the most influential and significant for the labor movement. In countries that
have remained backward in capitalistic development, where the government is in
the hands of a small, corrupt clique serving only special petty interests,
instead of in the hands of an energetic capitalist class that has strongly
organized the power of the State, the Anarchistic watchword, abstinence from
corrupting politics, meets with ready response among the workers. Thus it was
for a long time in Italy, thus it is still in Spain. As the logical successor to
liberalism, it forces the latter's individualism — worship of abstract
liberty and aversion to the power of the State and all authority — into a
complete opposite to capitalism. Its Socialism is Utopianism, that is, it has no
idea of the necessary evolution of social formations upon the basis of the
evolution of the forces of production, but places before itself the ideal of an
absolutely just and best world, for which it seeks to win adherents by means of
propaganda.

Regarded superficially, this ideal appears to have some features in common
with the state of society which we have predicted above as the farthest result
of evolution. The division of the means of consumption according to need and the
absence of all compulsory authority, which we expect as the final consequence of
evolution, is set up by the Anarchists as an absolute demand for society. This
coincidence is the basis of the curious idea that the Anarchists are more
logical and more radical than the Socialists, because they aspire to an order of
society that is higher and further developed than the Socialist order of
society.

This idea is ridiculous. In the first place, there is no such thing as a
definite Socialist order of society. And in the second place the liberty
demanded by the Anarchists takes no account of the foundation work — the
highly developed productive forces — which alone makes that liberty
possible. In Kropotkin's famous work, "The Conquest of Bread," the workers are
advised, when the revolution breaks out, to throw off all authority and to
establish no new authority, but to combine into free laboring groups. All that
could result from this is cooperative, or private, petty industry. The
Anarchistic ideal discloses itself here as a petty-bourgeois ideal, a yearning
for the "liberty" of the small, independent producer; some Anarchists, who call
themselves the most logical, even put their theory into practice and settle as
hermits upon some small estate, far removed from the tumult of world conflicts
and development.

However, this idea is easily comprehensible, because all those who have not
freed themselves from the bourgeois conceptions, hence also the Anarchists,
cannot conceive of Socialism and the striving for the abolition of capitalism,
otherwise than as the realization of a Utopia. Therefore, they believe the
Socialists to be the adherents of a definite future social order, one that has
already been fixed and determined upon. This error is especially prevalent in
France: the alleged ideal of the Socialists — the socialization of the
means of production exclusively — is there called Collectivism, while the
more radical, who demand the abolition of all private property, call themselves
Communists. It is further said of the Collectivists that they advocate a
division of goods according to service, while the Communists want them to be
divided according to need.

This idea often prevails among those who seek exact definitions of Socialism
and Anarchism, in order to answer the question whether the Anarchists also
belong to the great family of Socialists, and whether they are justly or
unjustly rejected by the Social-Democrats as illegitimate "brothers."
Practically, the question is not of the slightest importance; we fight the
Anarchists most energetically, in spite of the fact that they call themselves
enemies of capitalism, because they are enemies of the working class movement;
because their propaganda always threatens to destroy organization and
discipline, the chief weapons of the proletariat in its struggles, and tends to
divert the workers from the most important part of their struggle, the conquest
of the power of the State. And so it is not because of a formal definition, but
in the interests of the practical struggle, that we regard the Anarchists as
opponents who do not belong to our Socialist movement.


Footnotes:

(1). This theory of transformation has been set forth at length by Karl Kautsky in the second part of "The Social Revolution."


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