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international / history of anarchism / review Wednesday February 28, 2024 08:50 byWayne Price

A review of the writings and speeches of Errico Malatesta, the great Italian anarchist and comrade of Bakunin and Kropotkin. Material is taken from the 13 years he spent in London exile. His views remain relevant--and controversial among anarchists.

The Italian Errico Malatesta (1853—1932) was a comrade and friend of Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. Calling himself an anarchist-socialist, he was respected and loved by large numbers of anarchists and workers, in Italy and other countries. He was closely watched by the police forces of several nations. He had escaped imprisonment in Italy and lived in various countries in Europe, the Middle East, the U.S.A., and Latin America. Four times he spent time in Britain. This volume has collected works from his longest stay there, from 1900 to 1913, from when he was 48 to 61.

Britain, secure in its wealth and imperial power, was the most open European country in providing asylum to political refugees—so long as they obeyed local laws. As a result, the UK had communities of anarchists and other socialists from all over Europe. There was also an overlapping colony of Italians. Malatesta lived in London, supporting himself by running a small electrician’s shop. Only at one point, in 1912, did the police and courts make a serious effort to expel him. This set off massive demonstrations of British and immigrant workers and outcries from liberal newspapers and politicians. The attempt at expulsion was dropped.

However, Malatesta was frustrated by being penned up in Britain. He made several efforts to produce an anarchist-socialist paper which would circulate in Italy, but with limited success. He participated in anarchist activities in Britain, but his English, while apparently serviceable, was not fluent (when not speaking Italian, he preferred French). This volume includes his translated articles, pamphlets, and written speeches, as well as interviews of him by both bourgeois and radical newspapers. There are also reports by police spies (at least one of whom passed as a close comrade). They faithfully recorded his speeches and private comments and passed them on to their superiors.

In the course of Malatesta’s lengthy sojourn in London, he discussed a number of topics which were important to anarchists then and are still important. He was not an major theorist of political economy or history, but he was brilliant about strategic and tactical issues of the anarchist movement. This makes the study of Malatesta’s collected work valuable even today.

Terrorism

Around the time the book begins, in 1900, an Italian anarchist who had been living in the U.S., went back to Europe and assassinated Humbert, the Italian king. Apparently Malatesta had met the assassin, Bresci, briefly while in Patterson NJ. Otherwise he knew nothing about the affair. However the press continually tried to interview him about it, seeking to tie anarchism to assassination.

Malatesta always opposed indiscriminate mass terrorism (such as throwing bombs into restaurants). Nor did he call for assassination of prominent individuals, whether kings, presidents, or big businesspeople. In general, it did not advance the cause. His approach had become one of building revolutionary anarchist organizations, to participate in mass struggles. However, he was understanding of the motives of individual anarchists driven to assassination—and not sympathetic at all to the rulers and exploiters whom they killed. The Italian king, he noted, had previously ordered soldiers to massacre peasants and workers.

When US President William McKinley was shot dead by Czolgosz, who claimed to be anarchist, Malatesta called the president, “the head of [the] North American oligarchy, the instrument and defender of the great capitalists, the traitor of the Cubans and Filipinos, the man who authorized the massacre of the Hazelton strikers, the tortures of the Idaho miners and the thousand disgraces being committed in the ‘model republic.’” (Malatesta 2023; p. 75) He felt no sorrow for the death of this man, only compassion for the assassin, who “with good or bad strategy,” sacrificed himself for “the cause of freedom and equality.” (p. 75)

However, he did not advocate this as a political strategy. It was more important to win workers to reliance upon themselves rather than kings, bosses, and official leaders. “…Overthrowing monarchy…cannot be accomplished by murder. The Sovereigns who die would only be succeeded by other Sovereigns. We must kill kings in the hearts of the people; we must assassinate toleration of kings in the public conscience; we must shoot loyalty and stab allegiance to tyranny of whatever form wherever it exists.” (p. 59)

In another incident in London, a small group of Russian anarchist exiles was interrupted in the process of robbing a jewelry store. There was a shoot-out with the police (led by Home Secretary Winston Churchill) which ended in the death of some officers and all the robbers. As it happened, one of the thieves had met Malatesta at an anarchist club, and ended up buying a gas tank from him, claiming a benevolent use for it. In fact it was used to break open the jewelry safe.

Malatesta patiently explained to the police and the newspapers that he had no foreknowledge of the robbery. However he wrote that it was unfair to link the robbers’ actions with their anarchist politics. Was a murder in the U.S. blamed on the murderer being a Democrat or Republican? Were thieves’ thievery usually ascribed to their opinions on Free Trade versus Tariffs? Or perhaps their belief in vegetarianism? No, they were essentially regarded as thieves, regardless of their beliefs on politics, economics, or religion. The same should be true for these jewelry thieves, whatever their views on anarchism.

Syndicalism/Trade Unionism

By the last decades of the 19th century, many anarchists had given up on only actions and propaganda by individuals and small groups. These tactics had mainly resulted in isolation and futility. Instead many turned toward mass organizing and the trade unions. Anarchists joined, and worked to organize, labor unions in several countries. (Often these efforts were called “syndicalism,” which is the French for “unionism.”)

There remained anarchists who opposed unions: individualists and anti-organizational communists. But most turned in the pro-union direction. This gave a big boost to the anarchist movement at the time.

Errico Malatesta had long been an advocate of unions. He had contacts with militant unionists throughout Britain and other countries. In London in this period, he directly participated in unionizing waiters and catering staff. He gave support to the struggles of tailors to form a union, which led to a large strike.

“Syndicalism, or more precisely the labor movement…has always found me a resolute, but not blind, advocate.…I see it as a particularly propitious terrain for our revolutionary propaganda and…a point of contact between the masses and ourselves.” (p. 240)

But once it was decided that anarchists should participate in the labor movement, the next question was how should they participate? What should be the relation between anarchist activists and the trade unions? On this question, differences among anarchists were made explicit at the 1907 anarchist conference held in Amsterdam.

At the conference, Malatesta took issue with the views of Pierre Monatte, who spoke for the French syndicalist movement. Malatesta argued, “The conclusion Monatte reached is that syndicalism is a necessary and sufficient means of social revolution. In other words, Monatte declares that syndicalism is sufficient unto itself. And this, in my opinion, is a radically false doctrine.” (p. 240)

The unions had great advantages, as they brought together working people in enterprises, industries, cities, and regions. They included only workers, and not capitalists or management. They had the potential of stopping businesses and whole economies, in the pursuit of working class demands. They were schools of cooperation and joint struggle.

Yet, the unions’ very strengths also pointed to certain weaknesses. They are institutions within capitalist society. They exist (at least in the short term) to win a better deal for the workers under capitalism. Therefore they must compromise with the bosses and the state. Further, they need as many members as possible, to counter the power of the bosses. They cannot just recruit revolutionary anarchists and socialists. They must take in workers of every political, economic, and religious persuasion. (A union which only accepted anarchists would not be much of a threat to the bourgeoisie.)

These and other factors brought constant pressure on unions to be more conservative, corrupt, and bureaucratic. All anarchists recognized these tendencies among officials of political parties, even among liberals or socialists. But the same tendencies existed for union officials.

Malatesta drew certain conclusions. Anarchist-socialists should not dissolve themselves into the unions, becoming good union militants (as he understood Monatte to be saying). Instead, they should build revolutionary anarchist groups to operate inside and outside union structures. Nor should they take union offices which gave them power over people. But they could take positions which were clearly carrying out tasks agreed to by the membership—but with no wages higher than the other workers. They should be the best union militants, always advocating more democratic, less bureaucratic, and more militant policies, while still raising their revolutionary libertarian politics.

“In the union, we must remain anarchists, in the full strength and full breadth of the term. The labor movement for me is only a means—evidently the best among all means that are available to us.” (p. 241)

A central concept of the syndicalists was the goal of a general strike. Malatesta had certain criticisms. Not that he opposed the idea of getting all the workers of a city or country to go on strike at the same time. This could show the enormous power of the working class, if it would use it—much more powerful than electing politicians. But there is no magic in a general strike. The capitalist class has supplies stored away with which they could outlast the workers—starve them out. The state has its police and armed forces to break up the strike organization, arrest the organizers, and forcibly drive the workers back to their jobs.

In brief, Malatesta did not believe in the possibility of a successful nonviolent general strike (this is not considering a one-day “general strike” set by the union bureaucrats for show). He felt that a serious general strike would require occupation of factories and workplaces, arming of the workers, and plans for their military self-defense. It would have to be the beginning of a revolution. (Hence the book’s title.)

However much he criticized aspects of syndicalism, Malatesta was completely opposed to “…the anti-organizationalist anarchists, those who are against participation in the labor struggle, establishment of a party, etc. [By ‘party,’ he means here an organization of anarchists—WP] ….The secret of our success lies in knowing how to reconcile revolutionary action and spirit with everyday practical action; in knowing how to participate in small struggles without losing sight of the great and definitive struggle.” (p. 78)

War and National Self-Determination

This collection of writings by and about Malatesta ends in 1913. Therefore it does not cover his response to World War I which began the next year—nor his break with Kropotkin for supporting the imperialist Allies in the war.

However, in the period covered here, he could see the increase in wars, both between imperialist powers and between imperial states and oppressed peoples. “…Weaker nations are robbed of their independence. The kaiser of Germany urges his troops to give the Chinese no quarter; the British government treats the Boers…as rebels, and burns their farms, hunts down housewives…and re-enacts Spain’s ghastly feats in Cuba; the Sultan [of Turkey] has the Armenians slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands; and the American government massacres the Filipinos, having first cravenly betrayed them.” (p. 33)

He opposed all sides in wars among imperialist governments—as he was to do during World War I. The only solution to such wars was the social revolution.

But Malatesta supported oppressed nations which rebelled against imperial domination. (Some ignorant people believe that it is un-anarchist to support such wars. Yet Malatesta did, as did Bakunin, Kropotkin, Makhno, and many other anarchists—even though they rarely used the term “national self-determination”.) Malatesta wrote, “…True socialism consists of hoping for and provoking, when possible, the subjected people to drive away the invaders, whoever they are.” (p. 58)

This does not mean that anarchist-socialists have to agree with the politics of the rebelling people. Speaking of the Boers, who were fighting the British empire, he wrote without illusions, “The regime they will probably establish will certainly not have our sympathies; their social, political, religious ideas are the antipodes of our own.” (p. 59) Nevertheless, it would be better if they win and British imperialists are defeated. For the people of the imperialist country, “It is not the victory but the defeat of England that will be of use to the English people, that will prepare them for socialism.” (p. 58) (The British won.)

The Italian and Turkish states went to war over north Africa around 1912. Malatesta condemned both sides, but supported the struggle of the Arab population. “I hope that the Arabs rise up and throw both the Turks and the Italians into the sea.” (p. 321)

He understood that “love of birthplace” (p. 328) was typically felt by people, including their roots in the community, their childhood language, their love of local nature, and perhaps their pride in the contributions their people have made to world culture. But this natural sentiment is then misused by the rulers to develop a patriotism which masks class division and exploitation.

The rulers “…turned gentle love of homeland into that feeling of antipathy…toward other peoples which usually goes by the name of patriotism, and which the domestic oppressors in various countries exploit to their advantage. ….We are internationalists…We extend our homeland to the whole world, feel ourselves to be brothers to all human beings, and seek well-being, freedom, and autonomy for every individual and group…..We abhor war…and we champion the fight against the ruling classes.” (p. 329)

As can be seen, to Malatesta, internationalism did not conflict with support for “autonomy for every…group.” This included groups of people who held a common identity as a nation. Anarchists are internationalist, but
unlike the centralism of Lenin, anarchists do not want a homogenous world state. They advocate regionalism, pluralism, and decentralized federations. This particular passage went on to support the Arabs against Italian imperialism. “…It is the Arabs’ revolt against the Italian tyrant that is noble and holy.” (p. 329)

Yet Malatesta may be faulted for his lack of concern about racism. In supporting the Boers, and even when listing their extreme (antipodal) differences with anarchists, he does not mention their exploitation of the indigenous Africans. Nor does he make other references to racial oppression (such as in U.S. segregation). This must be put beside his fervent anti- colonialism and support for the rebellion of oppressed peoples.

Similarly, he does not mention the oppression of women or its intersection with class and national exploitation. It is not at all that he was misogynist (like Proudhon). I am sure he treated Emma Goldman as an equal at the 1907 international anarchist conference. But, like most male radicals of his time, he had a “blind spot” in thinking about this major aspect of overall oppression.

Imperialism, war, national oppression, and national revolt are issues which are still with us. Look at Palestine or Ukraine or the Kurds, among other peoples. These issues will be with us as long as capitalism survives, as Malatesta knew.

Other Topics

Besides terrorism, syndicalism, and national wars, Malatesta covered quite a lot of topics in the course of these thirteen years, as we would expect.

He condemned a French anti-clerical town council which outlawed the wearing by priests of their cassocks within the municipal borders. Malatesta was an opponent of religion and certainly of the Catholic Church. But he did not believe that people would be won from it by means of police coercion. That would only provoke resistance. At most, it would replace the religious priests with secularist ones, “which would all the same preach subjugation to masters….” (p. 68)

Today, the French government forbids Muslim girls and women from wearing headscarfs in schools and other public buildings—in the name of “secular” government. The left and feminists are divided on how to respond. “Oh, when will those who call themselves friends of freedom, decide to desire truly freedom for all!” (p.68)

Unlike Kropotkin, Elisee Reclus or (more recently) Murray Bookchin, there was not much of an ecological dimension to Malatesta. However he was concerned with the way landlords and capitalists had kept Italian agriculture backward. He believed that under anarchy, the peasants would be able to make the barren lands bloom.

By 1913, his experience with state socialists was mainly with the reformist Marxist “democratic socialists” (social democrats). This was four years before the Russian Revolution, which ended in the dictatorship of Lenin’s Bolsheviks and the rise of authoritarian state capitalism.

Yet he was prescient enough to write: “…Depending on the direction in which competing and opposite efforts of men and parties succeed in driving the movement, the coming social revolution could open to humanity the main road to full emancipation, or simply serve to elevate a new layer of the privileged above the masses, leaving unscathed the principle of authority and privilege.” (p. 102) The validity of this anarchist insight (which goes back to Proudhon and Bakunin) has been repeatedly demonstrated.

All the subjects Errico Malatesta discussed in this period had one guiding social philosophy. Quoting the famous lines written by, but not created by, Marx: “…The emancipation of the workers must be conquered by the workers themselves.…Throughout history the oppressed have never achieved anything beyond what they were able to take, push away pimps and philanthropists and politicos, take their own fate in their own hands, and decide to act directly.” (p. 220) This was the principle of Malatesta’s revolutionary anarchist-socialism and remains true today.

References
Malatesta, Errico (2023).  The Armed Strike: The Long London Exile of 1900—13.  The Complete Works of Errico Malatesta.  Vol. V.  (Ed.: Davide Turcato; Trans.: Andrea Asali).  Chico CA:  AK Press.

 

international / the left / review Wednesday November 22, 2023 05:26 byWayne Price

Trotsky's "Transitional Program" has both strengths and weaknesses from the viewpoint of revolutionary anarchist-socialism. It is an important document of historical socialism, although deeply flawed.

This is a discussion, from the viewpoint of revolutionary anarchism, of Leon Trotsky’s Transitional Program, perhaps the central text of Trotskyism. (Trotsky 1977)

There are huge differences between anarchism and Trotskyism, centered on the state. Yet there is also a significant overlap. Both are on the far-left, opposed to Stalinism, in all its hideous varieties, as well as to social-democracy (“democratic socialism”). Both propose the overturn of the existing state and capitalism, by the working class and all oppressed, to be replaced by alternate institutions. There are many varieties of Trotskyism as of anarchism, some more in agreement than others.

Given this overlap, there have been quite a few Trotskyists who have become anarchists, of one sort or another—and anarchists who have become Trotskyists. Personally, I have done both. In high school I became an anarchist-pacifist, and then in college turned to an unorthodox version of Trotskyism. Eventually I became a revolutionary class-struggle anarchist-socialist. However, I still remain influenced by aspects of unorthodox-dissident Trotskyism (also by libertarian—“ultra left”—Marxism, and other influences.)

This is not a discussion of Trotsky’s earlier years in politics, when he opposed V.I. Lenin’s authoritarian approach (similar to Rosa Luxemburg’s views). Nor of Trotsky’s collaboration with Lenin in leading the Russian Revolution. Following which they created a one-party police state, the foundation for Stalinism. The Transitional Program is from the last period of Trotsky’s life, when he fought against the totalitarian bureaucracy. This was until he was murdered by a Stalinist agent—about a year after the document was written. (For a critical overview of Trotskyism, from a libertarian socialist perspective, see Hobson & Tabor 1988.)

Anarchism and Trotskyism have certain things in common as well as major distinctions. It may be useful to explore these similarities and differences, from the perspective of analyzing Trotsky’s Transitional Program. In my opinion, it is an important historical document of socialism, but remains deeply flawed.

The Program’s Expectations

This document was adopted in 1938, as the founding program of the new “Fourth International” of Trotsky’s followers. Its official title was “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International.” It became known as the Transitional Program. Mostly written by Trotsky, he held extensive discussions about it beforehand. (Trotsky 1977)

Of course, a work written this long ago, before the upheavals of World War II, must be out of date in various ways. There is a section on the “fascist countries,” although the explicitly fascist regimes are now gone. Another section is on the USSR, a country which no longer exists. One is on “colonial” countries, but the colonial empires of Britain, France, and so on have been mostly destroyed. Yet fascism, Stalinism, and imperialism are still with us.

We can judge the Transitional Program by comparing what it predicted to what actually happened. Trotsky’s program is based on a belief that the world was going through “the death agony of capitalism.” Aside from the Marxist analysis of capitalist decline, empirically there had been the First World War, the Great Depression, a series of revolutions (mostly defeated), the rise of Stalinism, and the rise of fascism. It was widely expected that a Second World War would break out soon—as it did within a year. The state of world capitalism looked pretty dismal.

Trotsky had expected the war to be followed by a return to Depression conditions. So did most bourgeois economists as well as most Marxist theorists. Under such conditions, he believed, there would be continuing revolutionary upheavals throughout the world. The Soviet Union would either be overthrown in a workers’ revolution or would collapse back into capitalism. These developments would give the Trotskyists, although few at first, a chance to out-organize the Stalinists, social democrats, and colonial nationalists, and lead successful socialist revolutions.

In fact, there were upheavals and revolutions following the world war—from the huge wave of union strikes in the United States, to the election of the Labour Party in the U.K., to the big growth of Communist Parties in Italy and France, to the Communist-led revolutions in eastern Europe (Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece—the last failed) to the independence won by India and the great Chinese revolution, among other Asian revolutions. These were followed by decades of revolutionary struggles throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Despite the Trotskyists’ best intentions, almost all the upheavals and attempted revolutions were led by liberals, social democrats, and“Third World” nationalists—but worst of all was the disastrous misleadership of the Communists. In places where they had a working class base, such as France and Italy, they followed reformist programs. In other countries they channeled popular revolutions into one-party, authoritarian, state-capitalisms (as in Yugoslavia and China, and later Cuba).

This could happen because the “developed” countries did not collapse into a further Depression. Instead they blossomed in a period of prosperity, often referred to as “Capitalism’s Golden Age.” The world war had reorganized international imperialism, with the U.S. now at its center. There had been an expanded arms economy, a concentration of international capital, and a major looting of the environment.

This period of high prosperity (at least for white people in the imperialist countries) lasted until about 1970. The Soviet Union had difficulties after this too, but lasted until about 1990. Then it finally fell back into a traditional capitalist economy.

In discussions before the international conference, Trotsky considered the possibility of a temporary period of prosperity. “The first question is if a conjunctural improvement is probable in the near future….We can theoretically suppose that [a] new upturn…can give a greater, a more solid upturn….It is absolutely not contradictory to our general analysis of a sick, declining capitalism….This theoretical possibility is to a certain degree supported by the military investment….A new upturn will signify that the definite crisis, the definite conflicts, are postponed for some years.” (Trotsky 1977; Pp. 186-7, 189) At one point he even speculated that the U.S. might have “a period of prosperity before its own decline …[for] ten to thirty years.” (p. 164)

In other words, there might be a period of apparent prosperity within the general epoch “of a sick, declining capitalism.” This possibility does not seem to have been taken very seriously by the Trotskyists. In any case, the prosperous period was not brief or brittle, as the Trotskyists expected, but lasted for decades.

In my opinion, Trotsky (and other Marxists and anarchists) were correct to conclude that we are living in the general epoch of capitalist decline. Developments since the 1970s have supported this belief. But he downplayed the probability of the results of the world war creating an extensive period of prosperity within the overall epoch of decline.

In particular, he overlooked the possible effects of the technological and ecological effects of the war and its aftermath. Of course, he could not foresee the nuclear bomb and nuclear power. Also, he did not realize that the massive use of “cheap” petroleum would provide a boost to the capitalist economy. And then its aftereffects would create the ecological disasters of global warming, international pollution, species extinction, and pandemics. These are all signs “of a sick, declining capitalism.”

Few radicals of Trotsky’s generation focused on ecology. This is even though Marx and Engels had considered the negative effects of capitalism on the natural world (as has been examined by John Bellamy Foster and other ecological Marxists). Among anarchists, Kropotkin and Reclus had explored ecological issues. More recently, so has Murray Bookchin, even before the eco-Marxists.

In the current period, conditions of crisis and pre-revolutionary situations may be recurring—economically, politically, and ecologically. These conclusions imply that at least some of Trotsky’s proposals for a revolutionary program may still be useful for anarchists to consider, even as other aspects are rejected.

The Most Oppressed

Perhaps the most libertarian part of the Transitional Program is its insistence on revolutionaries reaching out to the most oppressed and super-exploited layers of the working class. Trotsky is not against better-off unionists, not to mention intellectuals, but he most wants to win the worse-off workers.

During militant struggles, he writes, factory committees may stir workers whom the unions do not reach. “…Such working class layers as the trade union is usually incapable of moving to action. It is precisely from these more oppressed layers that the most self-sacrificing battalions of the revolution will come.” (p. 119) “The Fourth International should seek bases of support among the most exploited layers of the working class, consequently among the women workers.” (p. 151) “The unemployed…the agricultural workers, the ruined and semi-ruined farmers, the oppressed of the cities, women workers, housewives, proletarianized layers of the intelligentsia—all of these will seek unity and leadership.” (P. 136) “Open the road to the youth!” (p. 151) (Elsewhere, in his discussions with U.S. Trotskyists, he criticized them for not reaching Black workers.) Bakunin, who always looked to the most oppressed, could agree!

Councils and Committees

When the working class was in a militant and rebellious temper, Trotsky advocated that revolutionaries advocate the formation of councils and committees—not instead of existing unions but in addition to them. In particular, he called for “factory committees” which would be “elected by all the factory employees.” (p. 118) These would begin to oversee the activities of the bosses and their managers. They would organize regular meetings with each other, regionally, industrially, and nationally—laying the basis for a democratic planned economy. He also writes of “committees elected by small farmers” as well as “committees on prices.” (pp. 126-7)

This focus on democratic committees of workers and others does not (to Trotsky) necessarily contradict a belief in governmental economic action. He is all for “a broad and bold organization of public works.” But this should be done under “direct workers’ management.” (p. 121) Further, “Where military industry is ‘nationalized,’ as in France, the slogan of workers’ control preserves its full strength. The proletariat has as little confidence in the government of the bourgeoisie as in an individual capitalist.” (p. 131) This last sentence is certainly one with which an anarchist would agree!

The Transitional Program considered how a new workers’ revolution in the Soviet Union would change the economy. It would have a “planned economy” but in a democratic form—managed by committees. “[To] factory committees should be returned the right to control production. A democratically organized consumers’ cooperative should control the quality and price of products.” (p. 146)

Anarchists might agree that society should be organized through radically democratic committees. But anarchists would disagree with the notion that all committees should be representative. The Transitional Program does not mention face-to-face direct democracy. Perhaps, in Trotsky’s concept, the workers will gather together in order to elect the factory committee, and then go back to their work stations, waiting for orders from the committee? Anarchists are not against choosing delegates to go to meetings with other committees or to do special jobs. But an association of committees must be based in directly-democratic participatory assemblies, if people are really to control their lives.

A society of democratic committees should culminate in an association of overall councils or “soviets” (Russian word for “council”). “The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the program of transitional demands.” (p. 136) Under capitalism, these soviets would be a center of power which would be an alternative to the state—a “dual power.” In the course of a revolution, the soviets would replace the bourgeois state as the center of society. To Trotsky, this would make it the basis of a “workers’ state”—“the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Instead, anarchists work towards the federation of councils and committees, of the workers and all oppressed, federated with all voluntary associations. They would form overall councils (although we probably would not use the term “soviet”!). This federation would be the alternate to capitalism and the state.

The Transitional Program states that the soviets must be pluralistic. “All political currents of the proletariat can struggle for leadership of the soviets on the basis of the widest democracy.” (p. 136) Democracy would include “the struggle of various tendencies and parties within the soviets.” (p. 185) Presumably this would include anarchists as a “political current”or “tendency.”

Trotsky proposed the competition of various parties and tendencies within the soviets, implying that one would eventually win the “struggle for leadership.” He does not mention the possibility of mergers, alliances, and united fronts—as if one tendency could have all the best militants and all the right answers. Yet the October Russian Revolution was carried out by a coalition of Lenin’s Communists, Left Social Revolutionaries (peasant-populists), and anarchists. The first Soviet government was an alliance of the Communists and the Left SRs, supported by the anarchists. It was the Leninists whose policies created the one-party state, and made it a matter of principle.

In the Transitional Program, Trotsky never explains why Lenin and himself established the Soviet Union as a one-party state. In all his writings, he never explained why they made a principle out of it. Within the USSR, the Trotskyists opposed Stalin, bravely going to their deaths, but still advocating a one-party state. It was only in the mid-thirties that Trotsky came out for multi-party soviets.

A federation of soviets and of committees in workplaces and neighborhoods would be able to take care of overall problems, including economic coordination, collective decision-making, settling of disputes, setting up a popular militia to replace the police and army (managed through committees), and so on. But anarchists insist that it would not be a state. A “state” is a bureaucratic, centralized, institution, over the rest of society. Inevitably it would serve a ruling minority. The Trotskyists regard a soviet-council system as the basis of a new (“workers’”) state, once it is led by (their) truly revolutionary party.

This might seem like an argument over phrases. But once accepting that your goal is a “state,” then you are not limited to a radically-democratic council system. Trotsky continued to call the Soviet Union under Stalin a “workers’ state”—if a “degenerated workers’ state.” He fully recognized that the Russian working class (not to speak of the peasant majority) had absolutely no power under Stalin’s bureaucratic dictatorship. Nevertheless, Russia kept “nationalization, collectivization, and monopoly of foreign trade.” (p. 143) That, to Trotsky, is what made Russia still a “workers’ state”—however much “degenerated.” Trotsky advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy, but meanwhile it had to be defended from capitalism.

To Trotsky then, the key criteria for a state of the working class was not that the “state” was the self-organization of the workers, but that property was nationalized, etc.

Following this logic, the “orthodox” Trotskyist majority regarded the new Communist states after World War II as “deformed workers’ states.” The countries of eastern Europe, China, etc., all had nationalized property and monopolies of foreign trade. So they too were “workers’ states” —just “deformed.” And Cuba and maybe Vietnam were “healthy workers’ states.”

A minority dissented. They regarded the Soviet Union (like its imitations) as a class-divided society, ruled by a collectivized bureaucratic class, which exploited the workers and peasants. Some called it “state capitalism,” others a “new class” system. Anarchists agree overall with this view—but believe the system’s roots lay in Lenin and Trotsky’s policies.

The key question is not so much the analysis of the Soviet Union, a country which no longer exists (replaced by Putin’s Russia). It is: What is meant by socialism (or a “workers’ state” or a society moving toward socialism)? Is socialism defined by nationalization of industry, or by the freedom and self-management of the working people—the anarchist view?

National Self-Determination

Most of the world was (and is) the victims of imperialism. Therefore the Transitional Program expected “colonial or semicolonial countries to use the war in order to cast off the yoke of slavery. Their war will be not imperialist but liberating. It will be the duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed nations in their war against the oppressors.” (p. 131)

Historically many anarchists similarly supported wars of oppressed peoples “against the oppressors”: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and many others. (See Price 2022; 2023) But today quite a number do not. They do not accept that imperialism divides the world between imperialist and exploited nations. They reject all wars between states without distinguishing between oppressor and oppressed countries.

This issue has divided anarchists over the Ukrainian-Russian war. Yet to many of us, the situation seems clear: the Ukrainian people are waging a defensive war of national self-determination, while the Russian state is engaged in imperialist aggression. Anarchist-socialists must be on the side of the oppressed, especially when they fight back.

It is possible that another imperialist government—in competition with the one oppressing the rebellious country—might give aid to that country (as the USA is aiding Ukraine). The Transitional Program says that revolutionaries should not give support to that “helpful” imperialist state. “The workers of imperialist countries, however, cannot help an anti-imperialist country through their own government….The proletariat of the imperialist country continues to remain in class opposition to its own government and supports the non-imperialist ‘ally’ through its own methods….” (p. 132)

At the same time, “…the proletariat does not in the slightest degree solidarize…with the bourgeois government of the colonial country….It maintains full political independence….Giving aid in a just and progressive war, the revolutionary proletariat wins the sympathy of the workers in the colonies…and increases its ability to help overthrow the bourgeois government in the colonial country.” (p. 132) This is not nationalism but internationalism. “Our basic slogan remains: Workers of the World Unite!” (p. 133)

In contemporary terms, revolutionaries should be in solidarity with the Ukrainian workers and oppressed people in their military struggle—“giving aid in a just and progressive war.” (Interestingly, several current Trotskyist groupings do not support Ukraine against Russian imperialism, despite their formal belief in “national self-determination.” This says something about the present state of Trotskyism.) Yet revolutionary socialists do not give political support to Biden’s US government nor to the Zelensky Ukrainian government. Our goals are the eventual revolutionary overturn of these states, as well as that of Putin’s Russia. The same approach goes for other anti-imperialist national struggles around the world, most of which are directed against the U.S. and its allies.

[This was written before the latest irruption of the Israeli-Palestinian War. Following the above approach, revolutionary anarchist-socialists should be on the side of the Palestinian people struggling for national self-determination against the Israeli state, while opposing the reactionary politics of Hamas as well as its reactionary and criminal tactics. Again, many Trotskyist groups of today do not follow this approach.]

An anarchist perspective on national self-determination would be in agreement with that of the Transitional Program—with one important difference. Like Trotsky, the anarchists’ ultimate goal of supporting a nation’s struggles is to “overthrow the bourgeois government,” in both the imperialist and oppressed countries. For Trotsky, this is to be followed by establishing “workers’ states.” But anarchists want to replace all bourgeois governments with non-state associations of councils, committees, assemblies, and self-managed organizations.

The Transitional Method

Trotsky objects to the traditional Marxist approach to program, as developed by the social democratic parties (especially in pre-World War I Germany). That approach had two parts: a “maximal” and a “minimal” program. The maximal program was the ultimate goal of socialism. It was raised in speeches at yearly May Day parades. Like the Christian’s hope of heaven, it had little to do with day-to-day living. The minimal program was one of union recognition, better wages and conditions, public services, and democratic rights. These demands were limited to what could be achieved under capitalism.

Trotsky was concerned with the wide gap between the objective crises of capitalism in decay and the consciousness of most workers and oppressed people. He proposed a “bridge” between the crises and workers’ thinking. These demands would offer a “transition” from the old minimal, partial, and democratic demands to socialist revolution.

“This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.” (p. 114)

For example, to deal with the effects of inflation on wages, he proposed “a sliding scale of wages.” All wages, salaries, and public benefits should be attached to the level of prices. Wages would automatically rise when prices rose (judged by committees of working class consumers).

Unemployment should be dealt with through a “sliding scale of hours.” The more unemployment, the shorter hours should be overall, without losses in pay—as in “Thirty Hours Work for Forty Hours Pay.” These are essentially socialist principles: the total amount of wealth produced should be divided among those working and dependents; the total amount of work that needed to be done should be divided among those able to work. The title of one section in the Transitional Program pretty much summarizes the method: “The picket line/defense guards/workers’ militia/the arming of the proletariat”.

Unlike the minimal program of liberal union bureaucrats or of social democratic politicians, transitional demands are not limited to what the capitalists can afford—or say they can afford. The transitional demands start with what people need. If the capitalists are able to pay this (in wages or public services), then they must be forced to do so. If they cannot pay what people need, then they should no longer be allowed to run society for their private benefit. Let the working people take over and run the economy to satisfy everyone’s needs. “‘Realizability’ or ‘unrealizability’ is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle.” (p. 116)

The revolutionary implications of this method were clearer in a period of severe economic crisis, when basic needs could not be met for most working people. This was the case in the depths of the Great Depression. But in a period such as the 1950s post-war boom, there was an even greater gap between immediate, limited, demands and the need for revolution. A large proportion of white workers and newly middle class people were living better than ever before (in the U.S., and then in other imperialist countries). The underlying threats (of nuclear extermination or ecological destruction) could be downplayed. The transitional method had less usefulness.

Now the post-war prosperity is over. With periodic ups and downs, world capitalism has overall been stagnating and declining. Wars are continuing and ownership of nuclear bombs is spreading. Despite efforts by climate reformists to find ways of limiting the damage, global warming is crashing through the veneer of capitalist stability. Something like the Transitional Program—or at least the method of transitional demands—is needed more than ever.

Along with Trotsky’s demands, there needs to be a program of ecological transitional demands: democratic ecological-economic planning; worker’s control/management of industry to transition to non-polluting, green, useful production; expropriation of the oil-gas-coal corporations; socialization of the energy industry under workers’ and community control; public subsidizing of ecologically-balanced consumer coops and producer coops; support for organic farms in the country and in towns and cities; etc., etc.

Revolutionary Organizations

The “Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International” was written as a program for a specific organization, intended to be an international revolutionary party. It was hoped that this body, beginning small, would replace the Second (Socialist) International and the Third (Communist) International (or “Comintern”). And thereby save the world.

It begins: “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” (pp. 111)

The fundamental crisis of decaying capitalism periodically inspires the mass of the working class to rebel. This shows the possibility of successful revolutions. But, during the preceding non-revolutionary periods, the leaderships of the main workers’ parties and unions have “developed powerful tendencies toward compromise with the bourgeois-democratic regime.” (p. 117-8) The anarcho-syndicalist unions were included in this. As a result, the unions and parties (which the workers had previously come to trust) hold back the revolution. They lead the people to defeat.

“In all countries…the multimillioned masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own conservative bureaucratic machines.” (p. 112)

This generalization was most observable during the revolutionary years after World War I, up to the rebellions following World War II. During the post-war prosperity, there was less likelihood of the “multimillioned masses” becoming revolutionary. Therefore, even the best revolutionary party (or federation) would have had difficulty overcoming bureaucratic “tendencies toward compromise.”

Yet there were revolutions and almost-revolutions. As mentioned, there were upheavals in poorer Southern countries, including the Vietnam war of national liberation, the Cuban revolution, and the South African struggle against apartheid. In eastern Europe there were attempted revolutions, such as the 1953 East Berlin workers’ revolt and the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Western Europe had the almost-revolution of France’s May-June 1968, among others. In all these cases, a revolutionary leadership might have made a difference (perhaps preventing the victory of Stalinism in Vietnam and Cuba).

Among anarchists, many have also advocated revolutionary organization. This includes Bakunin’s Brotherhood, the St. Imier anarchist continuation of the First International, the syndicalists’ “militant minority,” the views of Errico Malatesta, the Platform of Makhno, Arshinov, and others, the Spanish FAI, and Latin American especifismo.

These conceptions agree only somewhat with Trotsky’s perspective of a political organization, composed of revolutionaries who are in general agreement. An anarchist grouping does seek to coordinate activity, to develop theories and practice, and to influence bigger organizations and movements (such as unions, community associations, anti-war movements, etc.). They try to win the workers and others from the influence of their political opponents, including reformists and Stalinists.

Trotsky sought to build a centralized (“democratic centralist”) Leninist party internationally. While supposedly democratic, the International and the national parties would be managed from the top down. Anarchists have proposed organizations which are internally democratic and organized in a federal fashion. And, unlike political parties, no matter how radical, their aim would not be to take power, to rule over the councils and committees. They want to inspire, organize, and urge the oppressed and exploited to free themselves.

Anarchism and Trotskyism

In the Transitional Program, Trotsky mentions anarchism (or anarcho-syndicalism) only a few times. In France, he points out that the union federation once organized by anarcho-syndicalists had turned into a business union (and had supported World War I). During the 1936-9 Spanish Civil War, the leaders of the anarchist federation—and the union federation they led—had betrayed the revolution by joining the capitalist government. From the viewpoint of revolutionary anarchism, his criticisms in these situations are legitimate.

Trotsky lumps the anarchists overall with the social democrats and Stalinists as “parties of petty-bourgeois democracy…incapable of creating a government of workers and farmers, that is, a government independent of the bourgeoisie.” (p. 134)

If the term “government” is used as a synonym for “state,” then anarchists have had no interest in creating any kind of “government.” However, the word could be used to mean democratic coordination of popular councils and workers’ organizations. This is what the Friends of Durruti Group advocated during the Spanish Civil War. In that sense, the question is whether anarchists can lead in organizing society “independent[ly] of the bourgeoisie.”

Trotsky ignores the revolutionary anarchists who denounced the French and Spanish union officials for betraying the program and principles of libertarian socialism. It is such anarchists, eco-socialists, syndicalists, internationalists, anti-state communists, and true revolutionaries on whom an up-to-date revolutionary program depends.

The Transitional Program has virtues and insights, which have been pointed out here. The “method of transitional demands” remains valuable—even more valuable now than in the recent past. The vision of a federation of councils, committees, and assemblies is important, if we leave out Trotsky’s conception of a centralized “workers’ state.” To anarchists, the Transitional Program remains as an important document in the history of socialism, but one which still has serious flaws.

References

Hobson, Christopher Z., & Tabor, Ronald D. (1988). Trotskyism and the Dilemma of Socialism. NY: Greenwood Press.
Price, Wayne (2022). “Malatesta on War and National Self-Determination” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32666 search_text=Wayne+Price

Price, Wayne (2023). “Anarchists Support Self-Determination for Ukraine; What Did Bakunin Say?” https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32774
Trotsky, Leon (1977). The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution. (Eds.: George Breitman & Fred Stanton.) NY: Pathfinder Press.
Includes: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International. Pp. 109—152.
Discussions with Trotsky. Pp. 73—108.
Preconference Discussions. Pp. 153—199.

*written for Black Flag: Anarchist Review (UK virtual journal)

international / miscellaneous / review Tuesday November 21, 2023 17:47 byWayne Price

In many ways Comfort reminds me of another anarchist-pacifist, as well as poet and novelist, Paul Goodman (although Goodman seems to have been one of the few influential anarchists whose path did not cross with Comfort). Goodman wrote that he had been criticized for “spread[ing] himself thin on a wide variety of subjects, on sociology and psychology, urbanism and technology, education, literature, esthetics, and ethics….It is false that I write about many subjects. I have only one, the human beings I know in their [human]-made scene.” (1962; p. xiii) As this book shows, the same could be said of Alex Comfort.

The Joy of Alex Comfort: A Review of Eric Laursen’s Polymath; the Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort Author of The Joy of Sex.

Wayne Price

Alex Comfort (1920—2000) is best remembered as the author of the bestselling The Joy of Sex. Not as many recall him as an anarchist and pacifist, who was also a significant poet and novelist, a medical doctor, an authority on mollusks, a founding figure in gerontology (the study of aging) as well as sexology, and a writer on humanistic views of religion. Even one of these activities would have been enough to mark a significant life. All together, they do indeed make him a “polymath,” as his biographer labels him. To Comfort himself, he regarded these “professions” as aspects of his overall process of living. They reflected his anarchist philosophy of individual responsibility and communal sharing.

To cover each of Comfort’s life-activities requires a lot of space which accounts for the size of this book. The book might have been better trimmed by an editor; for example, there is really too much about the ins and outs of British book publishing. And readers will have varying interests in Comfort’s activities. A good deal is properly taken up about Comfort’s place in British poetry, but personally it is a topic I am not concerned about. I was most interested in Comfort’s radical politics and in The Joy of Sex as a cultural phenomenon, as well as his personal life story. But that’s me.

Comfort called himself a pacifist. “Sometimes, however, he found that the pacifist community was more committed than he to absolute nonviolence.” (p. 148) He admired the guerrilla methods of the French resistance and of Michael Collins’ IRA. It was mass regular armies to which he objected. During World War II, he was not draftable due to a crippled hand. He was part of a campaign against Allied bombings of civilian areas. The campaign was ineffective, but some who supported the war, such as the U.S. bioregionalist Lewis Mumford, also condemned the British and U.S. civilian bombings. These culminated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After World War II, Comfort became more active in the British anarchist movement, including writing pamphlets and books. The movement tended to be divided into two factions. One was mostly anarcho-syndicalists, who focused on union and working class organizing. Their goal was a working class revolution. The other did not deny that the class struggle remained real, but focused on apparently cross-class issues such as disarmament, civil liberties, and culture. They tended to see social conflicts as not so much between classes as between the individual and a repressive society. (These perspectives are not necessarily exclusive.) Rather than an eventual revolution, they looked toward a gradualist, reformist, series of changes. (See Price 2015.)

The slant away from the more traditional working class orientation reflected post-war conditions. While strikes and union struggles continued, overall Britain followed the U.S. into the post-war prosperity (which lasted until about 1970). Meanwhile the Soviet Union solidified into Stalinist totalitarianism. Many interpreted this as disproving the value of revolution.

The advantage of this turn was its relevance to a non-revolutionary situation. It led to exploration of issues, such as sexuality and aging, which overlapped with class but were not based in it. Nor did this have to lead to isolated individualism. The anarchists and radical pacifists became leaders of major anti-war and disarmament movements, which shook British politics. (In the U.S., radical pacifists played important roles in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, even after most leftists had been driven out of the unions.) Comfort was one of the prominent leaders of the UK disarmament movement. With other activists, he went to jail for civil disobedience.

There were also disadvantages in this turn away from class struggle. It meant losing contact with workers when class-based mass strike waves did break out. It meant a lack of strategic power and perspective. Only the working class, due to its role in production and the economy, has the potential power to shut down society and to start it up in a different way. Even the large nuclear disarmament demonstrations did not have the power to force a change in government policies. Rejecting revolution, they underestimated the danger that the capitalist class and its state would violently resist peaceful and democratic attempts at fundamental change.

We are in a much more crisis-ridden situation then in Comfort’s time. The catastrophe of climate change (and other ecological disasters), economic stagnation, the spread of wars (with the danger of nuclear war), as well as other difficulties, are increasing even while governments are stalled and incompetent. In this period, anarchist reformism has less use.

In his personal life, Alex Comfort was fairly conventional, leaving aside his having two wives in two households for some years. The author does not think that this worked out to anyone’s satisfaction. Eventually Comfort divorced wife number one and married wife number two.

His biggest success was The Joy of Sex, which was a runaway international bestseller. Comfort, his publisher, and the illustrators, had worked to create a book which was clearly not pornographic yet not an academic-medical tome. Artfully done, with Comfort’s friendly commentary, the book struck at just the right moment. The idea of sex as a mutually cooperative and respectful pleasurable activity became widely accepted. The book was such a success that Comfort eventually came to describe it as an “albatross” around his neck; attempts to become known for his championing of issues related to aging were overwhelmed by his reputation as the “sex guru.”

In later years Comfort focused most on problems of aging. While in the U.S., he collaborated with Maggie Kuhn of the “Gray Panthers,” to build a movement of militant elders. Somewhat to my surprise, he is not reported to have been involved in the movement to end the U.S.-Vietnam war, either in the U.S. or Britain (although when living in the U.S. he was a resident and had to be careful in opposing the government).

In many ways Comfort reminds me of another anarchist-pacifist, as well as poet and novelist, Paul Goodman (although Goodman seems to have been one of the few influential anarchists whose path did not cross with Comfort). Goodman wrote that he had been criticized for “spread[ing] himself thin on a wide variety of subjects, on sociology and psychology, urbanism and technology, education, literature, esthetics, and ethics….It is false that I write about many subjects. I have only one, the human beings I know in their [human]-made scene.” (1962; p. xiii) As this book shows, the same could be said of Alex Comfort.

References

Goodman, Paul (1962). Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals. NY: Random House.
Laursen, Eric (2023). Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort Author of The Joy of Sex. Chico CA: AK Press.
Price, Wayne (2015). “Colin Ward’s Anarchism.”
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wayne-price-colin-ward-s-anarchism

*written for www.Anarkismo.net

international / anarchist movement / review Tuesday October 03, 2023 07:13 byWayne Price

Review of "Revolutionary Affinities: Toward a Marxist-Anarchist Solidarity," by Michael Lowy & Oliver Besancenot. Two writers from Trotskyist backgrounds discuss the overlap and interaction between anarchism and Marxism.

Michael Lowy and Oliver Besancenot, two Marxists from the Trotskyist tradition, have made an effort to discuss possible convergences and interactions between Marxism and anarchism. (The little book has been well translated from the French by David Campbell, an anarchist who did most of the work while in jail in New York City.)

At first it might seem absurd to seek overlaps between these two schools of socialism. Anarchism stands for freedom and self-management, but in spite of some achievements its movement has failed to successfully create anarchism in any country. Meanwhile whatever Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels originally intended, Marxism became the ideology of repressive, mass-murdering, state-capitalisms (that is, Stalinism). Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarian Marxist governments persist in North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and especially in the great nation of China. Marxism and anarchism would seem to have little in common. Yet we live in the looming catastrophes of industrial capitalism. People are drawn to its radical alternatives. In this context, it is the failures of each which has drawn some anarchists and Marxists to dialogue, to learn the strengths of the alternate trend. (Although, for all their failures, anarchists never murdered tens of millions of workers, peasants, and others.)

Along with anarchism’s vision of freedom, there is a rising interest in Marxism, particularly in its analysis of how capitalism works and what might be done to end it. Some radicals focus on the humanistic, working class, and ecological aspects of Marx’s Marxism, rather than its statist, centralist, and determinist aspects. This looks to libertarian-democratic and “ultra-left” trends in Marxism, such as William Morris, the council communists, Luxemburgists, autonomists, the Johnson-Forrest Tendency, Socialisme ou Barbarie, and unorthodox and dissident Trotskyists. Unlike Stalinism, these trends in Marxism might be partners in a dialogue with revolutionary anarchists. (See Price 2017.)

Che

The authors claim to be libertarian Marxists, in opposition to both Stalinism and to social democracy (reformist “democratic socialism”). They want to see what they can learn from anarchism—and what revolutionary anarchism can learn from their view of Marxism. I am all for a Marxist-anarchist dialogue and have written some material seeking to advance it (e.g., Price 2022).

A lot depends on what one means by “Marxism” (as well as “anarchism”). The authors are admirers of Che Guevara. They have written books about him and his “revolutionary legacy” (Lowy 2007; Besancenot & Lowy 2009). In the text, they claim that the struggle of the Mexican Zapatistas show “traces of the revolutionary ethic that lead directly back to Che.” (p. 76) They do not note that the founders of the Zapatistas had abandoned the elitist guerrilla strategy of Che. They further declare that “Marx’s writings…form the political basis of the revolutionary humanism of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.” (p. 124)

Actually Che Guevara was an admirer of Joseph Stalin. Che played a major role in turning the Cuban revolution into a one-party, one-man, dictatorship, with a state-capitalist economy, allied with Soviet Russian imperialism. Within the upper circles of the Castroite regime, Che was a strong proponent of increasing centralization and of repression of the workers. He sincerely sought to spread the revolution (as he understood the revolution), but his efforts were failures both in Africa and in Bolivia. While he wrote some high-falutin’ philosophical language about socialism, his actual conception was of a totalitarian society. (See Price 2016.)

It may seem unfair to point to the authors’ admiration of Guevara, which is only briefly referred to twice in the text. Yet it is difficult to integrate anarchism with advocacy of a Stalinist-type dictatorship, however well-meaning you might be. (Of course, many of the Trotskyist groupings have been admirers of Fidel Castro and Che; but these don’t advocate “solidarity” with anarchism.) Besancenot and Lowy may misinterpret Che as a “revolutionary humanist,” but how can they ignore his support of the Cuban dictatorship? And then seek a dialogue with anarchism?

Positive Aspects of the Book

And yet, despite this confusing contradiction, some of this book is worthwhile. Besancenot and Lowy are concerned to show “another side of history…that of the alliances and active solidarity between anarchists and Marxists.” (p. 1)

They have brief sections on events in revolutionary history when anarchists and Marxists worked together. This includes the First International, in which anarchists cooperated with Marx for years—until Marx organized the expulsion of Michael Bakunin and forced a split with the anarchists. They cover the U.S. Haymarket Martyrs of 1886. These were anarchists who came out of a Marxist background and who still used the Marxist analysis of capitalism.

They briefly cover the development of anarcho-syndicalism, which shared a revolutionary working class orientation with Marxism. They discuss the Spanish Revolution of the thirties. That revolution was betrayed by most of the Marxist and anarchist leaders, both of which joined the capitalist government together with liberal parties. Their partner, the Communist Party, tried to set up a totalitarian state. A minority of revolutionary anarchists and Marxists did try to advance the revolution, but were overwhelmed. There are brief sections (they can hardly be called “chapters”) on the May-June ’68 almost-revolution in France, on the international demonstrations against “globalization,” and on the Occupy movement.

The little book also has nine brief biographical sections on significant revolutionaries. This includes the Marxist Rosa Luxemburg. She had little use for anarchism, but her vision of revolutionary socialist democracy-from-below was compatible with anarchism. Similarly, they discuss Buenaventura Durruti. As an anarchist, he played an important role in the Spanish Revolution. He had little use for Marxism but has been respected by Marxists. The same may be said of the famous anarchist Emma Goldman. In Russia, she originally supported the Revolution and was willing to work with the Leninists—until their authoritarianism drove her into opposition.

Their little biographies include “A Few Libertarian Marxist Thinkers.” Of the three they cite, the most interesting may be Daniel Guerin. His books on anarchism are widely read. In France during World War II, he cooperated with the Trotskyist underground. Working with syndicalists, anarchists, and Trotskyists, he was a prominent opponent of French imperialism in Algeria and an early Gay liberationist. Admiring J.P. Proudhon and Bakunin, but also Luxemburg, he sought a “synthesis” of revolutionary anarchism and libertarian Marxism. (See Guerin 2017)

The Russian Revolution

The part covering the 1917 Russian Revolution is titled, “Points of Conflict,” including a section, “The Split Between Red and Black.” This is where the book’s difficulties show most clearly.

“Initially, there was a convergence between many anarchists—not only Russian but also from around the world—and the Marxist revolutionaries. Soon after, the convergence had become a dramatic clash between the two.…” (p. 80)

The “October” (Soviet) Revolution was organized by the Communists in alliance with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (peasant-populists) and with anarchists. The initial government was a coalition of the Communists and Left SRs, generally supported by anarchists in the soviets. (“Soviet” means “council.” It originally referred to the popularly elected councils which were rooted in factory committees, village assemblies, and military units.)

But by 1920, the Leninists had banned all alternate parties, including those which had fought on their side in the Russian Civil War. These included the Left SRs and the Left Mensheviks. Anarchists were arrested, jailed, and shot. Not long after, even opposition caucuses in the one legal party were outlawed.

Essentially, the writers favor the rule of the soviets, supported by the revolutionary parties including the Communists—but criticize what happened instead: the rule of the Communist Party, with supposed support by the soviets. This went together with economic changes, “prioritizing centralized nationalization over the local collectivization of the means of production….” (p. 87) They mildly comment, “This choice, like so many others, is questionable.” (same) This is quite the understatement.

Despite this (soft) criticism of the Leninists, Besancenot and Lowy insist that the problem does not lie with Marx. “It is pointless, however, to seek a manufacturing defect in Marxism…on the question of whether to abolish the state immediately or not.” (p. 87) Similarly, they oppose “…drawing a connection between the Lenin years and the Stalin years.” (p. 89) Granted that Marx would have been horrified by what Stalin made out of Marxism—and that V.I. Lenin was no Stalin. Lenin did not aim for a totalitarian state, nor want one. This was unlike Mao Tse-tung, say, who already had Stalinist Russia as a model and goal—as did Che and Fidel.

Yet it is a bit much to deny that Marx’s strategy of working through the state was not a cause of Lenin’s building a party-state, one which laid the basis for Stalinist state-capitalism. And, like Marx, Lenin believed that he and his party knew the truth better than anyone else. This justified the one-party party-state. Believing that his party—and only his party—knew the full truth—and since only his party spoke for the proletariat—Lenin felt justified in suppressing all other points of view, including the anarchists.

In 1921, the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base rebelled. The Kronstadt fortress overlooked the capitol at Petrograd. Influenced by anarchists, the rebels demanded an end to the political monopoly of the Communists, recognition of other left political tendencies, and free elections to the soviets, as well as economic reforms. Emma Goldman urged negotiation with the rebels. Instead, the Communists crushed them militarily, and then shot the captured sailors in batches. To anarchists this was a counterrevolutionary crime. It was comparable to the 1956 crushing of the Hungarian revolution.

The two authors regard this opinion as “one-sided.” “In our view, the conflict between Kronstadt and the Bolshevik government was…a tragic and fraternal confrontation between two revolutionary currents. The responsibility for this tragedy is shared, but falls primarily on those who held power.” (p. 95) “The crushing of the sailors of Kronstadt was not a ‘tragic necessity,’ but an error and a wrong.” (p. 97)

In other words, the anarchist-influenced rebel sailors are partially to blame (they dared to demand socialist democracy) even if the “primary” fault lies with the Communist regime (which chose to massacre the sailors). This choice was a bad mistake, not a counterrevolutionary crime (no one is perfect). Still, both sides were “revolutionary currents.”

It has been argued that the Russian Communists dared not permit several political tendencies to compete in free elections. Given the poverty and destruction which followed World War I and the Civil War, the workers and peasants were unhappy with the Communists. They would likely have voted them out, supposedly with disastrous consequences. The authors quote the Trotskyist (and ex-anarchist) Victor Serge: “If the Bolshevik dictatorship fell, it was only a short step to chaos, and through chaos to a peasant uprising, the massacre of the Communists…and, in the end…another dictatorship, this time anti-proletarian.” (p. 97) They agree with this view. “A Bolshevik defeat would have opened the path to counterrevolution.” (same)

Whether this is true or not, the Bolshevik victory opened the path to (internal) counterrevolution. The one-party Communist dictatorship (assuming it ever was a “proletarian dictatorship”) led to the “anti-proletarian” dictatorship of Stalin and the Stalinist bureaucracy. Along with the super-exploitation of the workers and peasants, it engaged in “the massacre of the Communists” in the purge trials of the ‘thirties—not to mention the massacre of millions of workers and peasants. Somewhat contradicting themselves, Lowy and Besancenot agree. For “the apparatchiks in the Kremlin…the crushing of the marines at Kronstadt was a service…to their ascension to power, a power that from then on could not be contested.” (p. 100) A somewhat similar view is given of the Ukrainian independent revolutionary army organized by the anarchist Nestor Makhno—allied with, and then betrayed by, the Communists.

Policy Issues

The final part of the book is titled “Policy Issues.” It covers more theoretical, strategic, and programmatic topics. Its first section is on the “Individual and [the] Collective.” The authors declare, “the anarchist movement has held the flag of individual emancipation much higher than the Marxist family.” (p. 122)

They then go on to criticize the anarchists for being too much individualistic. They cite Max Stirner, the early-19th century German philosopher of extreme egoist-individualism. Actually Stirner had no influence in the development of anarchist theory or movement, so citing him is irrelevant. Even so, the authors admit, “he foresaw the threat that the specter of the state could potentially hang over the project of individual rights in Germany.” (p. 123) They note that Guerin referred positively to Stirner. As a gay man, Guerin liked Stirner’s opposition to moralism and puritanism, without accepting his extreme individualism.

Similarly, the writers claim that “the old tenets of anarchism [are] poorly suited to such a level of overarching political organization” as was needed in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution. (p. 103) Actually the anarchist-led Makhnovist movement did a good job of organizing in the Ukraine, in the brief time allowed it. This was despite the need to fight off the Austrian, Polish, Ukrainian nationalist, White counterrevolutionary, and Russian Communist armies.

In any case, Michael Bakunin, among the first revolutionary anarchist-socialists, had a view of liberated individuality as social, productive, and interactive. (So did Marx, especially expressed in his earliest writings.) They summarize, “If it is essential to ‘re-individualize’ the communist project, it is just as necessary to ‘collectivize’ anarchist ideas.” (p. 125) They believe “a revolutionary humanist path remains open,” which they think (bizarrely) is exemplified by “Che Guevara”! (same)

Besancenot and Lowy have a section titled “Making Revolution without Taking Power?” In effect they argue that it is wrong for a revolution to establish a new state (to take state power) but necessary to establish the self-organization of the workers and oppressed (to empower the people). Their examples are the 1871 Paris Commune and the early soviets. They call the Commune “a new form of power that was no longer a state, in the conventional sense, but was nonetheless a government, democratically elected….” (p. 131) Without quibbling over terms (Kropotkin sometimes made the same distinction between “state” and “government”), anarchists can mostly agree, I think.

In a section on “Autonomy and Federalism,” the writers say that their vision of “Communism…intends to entrust as many powers as possible to the base and foster local initiatives.” (p. 132) This is the anarchist conception of decentralized federalism. “From the idea of federalism developed by the anarchists, we can retain the focus on power to the base and voluntary solidarity between collectives.” (p. 135)

There is a section on “Democratic Economic Planning and Self-Management.” Their proposal ”does not correspond in the least to what is often described as ‘central economic planning,’ for the economic and social decisions are not made by any kind of ‘center,’ but determined democratically by the populations concerned.” (p. 139) Like Michael Albert’s “participatory economy” or “Parecon,” their “democratic socialist economic planning…[includes] opposition to the capitalist market and to bureaucratic economic planning, confidence in workers’ self-organization, and anti-authoritarianism.” (p. 140) However, they have some valid criticisms of the Parecon program. They also give credit to Anton Pannekoek of the “council communists”/ libertarian Marxists “for opting for the socialization of the means of production under the control of the producers themselves, rather than for their nationalization from above.” (p. 150)

The theme of decentralist federalism is continued in “Direct and Representative Democracy.” In this section, the authors recognize that anarchists and Marxists have had important differences on these topics. But they claim that “some significant convergences can still be found. For example, both are favorable to forms of direct democracy in social struggles: general assemblies, self-organized strikes and pickets, etc.” (p. 142)

This may be true. But it covers-over an important difference. Anarchists can accept election of delegates to higher federal councils, but they insist that the base assemblies must have face-to-face direct democracy. Marx and Engels, even in their most radically democratic writings (for example, on the Paris Commune) advocated an extremely democratic form of representative democracy. They had no conception of basing this in face-to-face direct democracy. This is the anarchist tradition.

There is also a very brief discussion of whether revolutionary socialists should run and/or vote in bourgeois elections. They accept the view of both traditions that socialism cannot be achieved through elections. However, they still believe that it may be useful to run and vote, for various reasons. “Our point of view in this debate is closer to the Marxist tradition” than to the anarchist tradition of anti-electoralism. (p. 143) They do not mention that council communists and other “ultra-left” libertarian Marxists have been opposed to participation in elections. Anarchists would argue that history has demonstrated the failures of an electoralist/parliamentary strategy.

In “Union and Party,” Besancenot and Lowy summarize the lessons of the Russian Revolution and other revolutions and near-revolutions. They argue that the struggle needs radical parties and organizations (including anarchist federations) as well as mass organizations, such as labor unions and also popular councils. Parties are formed on agreements about particular programs. They are necessary to fight for a revolutionary program against reformists, liberals, conservatives, and fascists (for these will certainly have their parties). There is a historical tendency among anarchists of revolutionary federations. This includes Bakunin’s “Brotherhoods,” Makhno and others’ advocacy of the “Platform,” the Spanish FAI, and the current especifismo of Latin Americans.

The mass organizations provide “the framework of regular and sovereign general assemblies, open to all workers who want to mobilize…[in] the natural organ of the struggle….They can also…elect delegates, also dismissible, to participate in a coordination where the delegates from different assemblies meet to unify their activities….The power to make decisions belongs to the base…. This democratic option for organization prefigures today the way society could function tomorrow.” (p. 151)

A number of important topics are not covered in this book. These include feminism and the dominance of straight males. Also issues of white supremacy and racism, colonialism, imperialism, and national self-determination. Economic developments of world capitalism are not discussed. The writers themselves mention that they have not covered education of children, nor the vital issue of opposing fascism.

But there is consideration of the very important topic of environmentalism. This is in the section, “Ecosocialism and Anarchist Ecology.” The authors base much of their ecosocialism on the anarchist writings of Murray Bookchin, although they note that Bookchin also used concepts from Marx. Bookchin analyzed capitalist commodification, competition, and, above all, its drive to accumulate, as destroying the ecology. Bookchin wrote about the need for a new, noncapitalist, society, decentralized and directly democratic, with a liberatory transformation of technology. “…We can only admire Murray Bookchin’s coherence and clear-sightedness.” (p. 154)

They make some criticisms of Bookchin. They deny his view that there is a “post-scarcity” world. While agreeing with Bookchin on the need for economic, technological, and political decentralization, they insist on federalist coordination and planning on regional, continental, and world levels. Considering their proletarian perspective, it is odd that they do not express disagreement with Bookchin’s rejection of the major role of the working class in a revolution. Also, surprisingly, there is no reference to research about ecological themes in Marx’s works by ecological Marxist theorists. This includes John Bellamy Foster and others. (See Foster 2009.)

Revolutionary Conclusion

Besancenot and Lowy conclude with “Toward a Libertarian Marxism.” They state that “Our point of departure…is Marxism.” (p. 158) That is where they come from. They do not believe that there can be a final definition of “libertarian Marxism.” They do believe that “Marxists have much to learn from…the anarchists.” (p. 158)

Their aim, they declare, is not to create a better Marxism, with tips from anarchism. (Similarly, my goal is not to replace anarchism with a nicer version of Marxism.) Instead, “The future emancipatory battles of our century will also see this convergence, in both action and thought, of the two great revolutionary currents of the past, of the present, and of the future—Marxism and anarchism, the red flag and the black flag.” (p. 159)

The basis of this convergence is that both revolutionary class-struggle anarchism and libertarian (autonomist) Marxism share a goal. This is an international revolution by the working class and its allies among all oppressed—to overthrow the state, capitalism, and all oppressions, and to replace them with the self-organization of the workers and oppressed.

The issue is not an immediate merger of anarchism and Marxism. This is especially true when there is so much variation within each school. As I pointed out in the beginning, Lowy and Besancenot and many others see an authoritarian such as Che Guevara as within their “libertarian” version of Marxism. They may find the Communist suppression of the Kronstadt rebels as justifiable, or perhaps a tragic if understandable error. Such views must limit their dialogue with anarchism. As a revolutionary anarchist, I still find matters of interest in this book. But its limitations are also real.

References

Besancenot, Oliver, & Lowy, Michael (2009). Che Guevara: His Revolutionary Legacy. NY: Monthly Review Press.

Foster, John Bellamy (2009). The Ecological Revolution; Making Peace with the Planet. NY: Monthly Review Press.

Guerin, Daniel (2017). For a Libertarian Communism. (Ed.: David Berry; Trans.: Mitchell Abidor) Oakland CA: PM Press.

Lowy, Michael (2007). The Marxism of Che Guevara: Philosophy, Economics, Revolutionary Warfare. Rowman and Littlefield.

Lowy, Michael, & Besancenot, Oliver (2023; originally in French, 2014). Revolutionary Affinities: Toward a Marxist-Anarchist Solidarity. (Trans.: David Campbell). Oakland CA: PM Press.

Price, Wayne (2016). “The Authoritarian Vision of Che Guevara; Review of Samuel Farber, The Politics of Che Guevara”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/29795
search_text=Wayne+Price

Price, Wayne (2017). “What is Libertarian Socialism? An Anarchist-Marxist Dialogue; Review of A. Prichard, R. Kinna, S. Pinta, & D. Berry (Eds.). Libertarian Socialism; Politics in Black and Red”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30411?search_text=Wayne

Price, Wayne (2022). “An Anarchist Guide to The Communist Manifesto of Marx & Engels.”
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/32578?search_text=Wayne

*written for www.Anarkismo.net

international / anarchist movement / review Thursday August 03, 2023 19:17 byWayne Price

Tom Wetzel advocates an approach to achieve syndicalist libertarian ecosocialism. He is not necessarily opposed to individuals voting in elections or building food cooperatives, but he does not think either is a strategy for overcoming capitalism. He proposes a strategy of non- electoral independent movements and organizations, democratically organized from below, with popular participation and active engagement. The axis of these movements must be labor, because of its centrality in production and the economy. But every sector of the population which is oppressed and exploited has to be included and mobilized. A militant minority, political organizations of revolutionary libertarian socialists, committed to this strategy, needs to be organized as part of the popular mobilization. This is a strategy for revolution. Without using the label, Wetzel has produced a major work of anarchism.

A Guide to Anarcho-Syndicalism and Libertarian Socialism

Review of Tom Wetzel, Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century

This is an important book. Tom Wetzel presents a vision of a free, equal, and cooperative society, without classes, states, or other forms of oppression. It would be directly managed from below in all areas, including the economy and community. He refers to this program, alternately, as “revolutionary syndicalism” or “libertarian socialism.”

Traditionally “libertarian socialism” is a synonym for “anarchist-socialism” and other views similar to anarchism, such as council-communist Marxism or guild socialism. Yet, although Wetzel occasionally refers to anarchism, he does not identify his program as “anarchist” or “anarcho-syndicalist.” He had done so previously—see his essays in the Anarchist Library—but not now, for reasons he does not explain. In my opinion, this book is an exposition of revolutionary class-struggle anarchism and an expansion of anarcho-syndicalism.

The book covers many topics, mainly divided into three sections. The first analyzes how our society works (chapters 1 through 5). The second, which is the heart of the work, covers strategies for “overcoming capitalism” (chapters 6 to 10). The last considers what a new society (“libertarian ecosocialism”) could be like (chapter 11).

Class Conflict

His view of present day society is based on a class analysis. Capitalist society is divided into layers related to the production and accumulation of profit. Holding up society is primarily the working class. It produces society’s goods and services through its labor “by hand and brain.” The capitalist class owns the means of production—capital—and is therefore able to squeeze a surplus—profits—out of the workers’ labor. The key evil of capitalism is not so much poverty (although there is plenty of poverty) but domination. People do not get to control the social forces which rule their lives. Capitalism is an immoral system to be “overcome” and replaced.

This class analysis is influenced, at least, by classical Marxism. While I am a revolutionary anarchist-socialist, I mostly agree with Karl Marx’s analysis of how capitalism works, as does Wetzel, to a certain degree. “A major contribution of Marx to the socialist movement was his analysis of the structure and dynamics of the capitalist regime….The whole capital accumulation process is built on a framework of oppression and exploitation. Thus far, libertarian socialists generally agree with these aspects of Marx’s analysis.” (pp. 312–314)

However, Wetzel criticizes Marxism for what he regards as an overly simplistic view, its main division of society into capitalists and workers. Wetzel agrees with this, but adds a middle layer of minions which directly serves the capitalists: supervisors, managers, overseers, bureaucrats, lawyers, and other better-off professionals, in both private enterprises and public services. (This does not include “white collar” workers, such as teachers or clerks, who are part of the working class.) Others have called this the “professional-managerial class” or the “coordinator class,” but Wetzel prefers “bureaucratic control class.”

The charge, repeated by Wetzel, that Marx did not expect the rise of middle management bureaucrats under capitalism is often stated but is factually untrue. (For example, see Capital, vol. 3, chapter XXIII, or Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.) Wetzel uses the concept to argue that it is not enough to oppose the capitalist owning class. It is also necessary to oppose the bureaucratic control class. It is necessary to organize so that working people can directly control their own lives without a bureaucratic elite over them, telling them what to do, and exploiting them as much as do the capitalist owners. (This continues the historical insight of anarchism at least since Michael Bakunin.)

Wetzel is well aware that class conflict is not the only social division. He feels that capitalism promotes other conflicts—such as race or gender. They overlap with—and interact with—class. For example, he sees the oppression of African-Americans as having two class functions. First, most of them are in a super-exploited, impoverished, section of the working class. Capitalists make superprofits from paying them very low wages. Secondly, racism serves to divide the working class as a whole. White workers can feel superior to workers of color and refuse to work together with them for common goals—even goals which would be to their mutual benefit. (This is a major reason the U.S. does not have universal health care unlike every other industrialized/imperialist country). Therefore racism hurts white workers, even if not as much as it does People of Color.

He explains ecological disaster as being caused by capital’s drive for accumulation of profits, as expressed by “cost shifting.” The capitalists do not pay the whole cost of what they make. Side “costs” of pollution, or disturbing the world’s climate, are “paid” by the whole of society, or just by the workers—or no one at all. They are not taken out of the profits of the specific businesses and their owners.

The author discusses specific problems of U.S. and world capitalism, including its decline in the last decades. But he does not lay out the fundamental systemic weaknesses of capitalism: its instability, its business cycles, the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, its trend toward monopolization, and its trend toward stagnation. This limited analysis weakens his overall presentation.

Revolutionary Unionism and Anti-Electoralism

The basis of Wetzel’s strategy is to build a mass movement—or alliance of movements—which is organized on the same principles of the society we want to see (“prefiguration”). It needs to be actively managed by the people involved in it, horizontally associated, and committed to the concept that an injury to one is an injury to all (solidarity). Central to this strategy are radically democratic and militant unions, moving in a revolutionary direction. They may be formed by organizing new unions in the majority of (unorganized) workplaces in the U.S. Workers may also organize themselves within the existing unions, in radically democratic groupings, counter to the unions’ ruling bureaucrats.

This is distinct from a strategy of seeking to get a group of militants elected to take over the unions and run them better than the bureaucrats did, but still top down. He refers to “the two souls of unionism,” the bureaucratic, centralized, top-down organization, and the solidarity-based, democratic, self-organization of the workers who really make up the union.

While emphasizing the strategic power workers have in the economy, he does not limit his approach to radical unionism. Wetzel advocates community organizing, tenant organizing, associations of African Americans, of women, of LGBTQ people, and so on. Their methods would include mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, rent strikes, general strikes, and occupations of schools and of workplaces. As such hell-raising advances, and popular struggles win gains, he hopes that people will become more enthusiastic, they will improve their class consciousness, they will be more open to ideas from revolutionaries, and they will become ready for a revolution to replace capitalism with libertarian socialism.

This approach puts him in opposition to the strategies which dominate on the left. The main left strategy is electoralism, seeking to change society through votes. (This goes back to the electoral party-building advocated by Marx.) This is the dominant approach of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organization in the U.S.A.

Most “electoral socialists” are for working within the Democratic Party, despite its history as the graveyard of popular movements—and despite Marx’s opposition to building capitalist parties. Unlike left parties in Europe, the Democrats have never claimed to be “socialist” of any sort, but have always been pro-capitalist (and, in their earliest history, pro-slavery).

Some “democratic socialists” are critical of the Democrats—for good reasons—but advocate the formation of a new, “third,” party of the left, possibly based in the labor unions and other progressive forces. However, such a new party is only likely to be formed (by union bureaucrats, liberal Democrats, and various opportunists) if there are massive upheavals in society—formed in order to misdirect the popular upheavals back into electoral reformism.

Wetzel argues that the state is made to serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class and cannot be used to serve the working class and oppressed. Reforms may be won, for a time through elections, but not the transformation of society. And the state is likely to give reforms and benefits to the people only if pressured from below by mass struggles. New Deal benefits were won through large-scale union struggles, and civil rights legislation was won through massive African-American “civil disobedience” demonstrations as well as “riots.” Now the unions have been beaten back to a small minority of the work force, and African-American rights are under attack. Elections did not win lasting solutions.

He gives a history and analysis of the U.S. government machinery, demonstrating the severe limits built into its “democracy.” Of course, it is easier for working people and radicals to live under liberal democracy than under fascist or Stalinist totalitarianism. But even the most “democratic” of bourgeois representative democracies cannot be anything but top-down, capitalist-dominated, machines. They exist so that factions of the capitalist class can settle their differences without much bloodshed, and for keeping the people passive while believing they are “free”.

He writes, “A strategy for change that is focused on elections and political parties tends to focus on electing leaders to gain power in the State, to make gains for us….An electoralist strategy leads to the development of political machines in which mass organizations look to professional politicians and party operatives.” (p. 231)

Electoralist socialists may also engage in other activities, such as strike support work or community organizing. Wetzel is for working with them in such activities, forming united fronts where it is possible.

Two Forms of Prefigurative Politics

Wetzel also criticizes the program advocated by many anarchists which is sometimes called “dual power” or “counter institutions”and which he calls “evolutionary anarchism.” The idea is to build communities, small businesses, and local associations which are non-capitalist and non-statist. They could be consumer cooperatives, worker-managed enterprises (producer cooperatives), farmer-consumer associations, land trusts, credit unions, cooperative housing, independent progressive schools, and so on. These would expand until they overwhelmed capitalism and the state. (I call this the “kudzu strategy.”) There is nothing new about this. P.J. Proudhon, the first person to call himself an “anarchist,” proposed just such an approach. Today it is advocated, Wetzel notes, by the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the DSA, among others.

He is not against forming food coops or worker-run companies. These can be good in themselves. But he rejects this as a strategy for overcoming capitalism. The market is even more of a capitalist institution than the state! Various sorts of cooperatives have been built and thrived under capitalism, mainly at the periphery of the economy. They are no threat to capitalism as a whole.

Coops rarely have the capital necessary to compete with the giant corporations at the heart of the system. They are dominated by the cycles of the market. And if they did become a threat, the government would step in. You may ignore the state, but it will not ignore you. If coops became dangerous to the system, they would be outlawed and crushed by the government.

Wetzel makes “a distinction between two different kinds of organizations: (a) mass organizations of struggle (such as worker unions, tenant organizations, etc. (b) organizations that manage a social resource (such as a worker cooperative, social center, child care cooperative, land trust, and so on).” (p. 214) In his view, “the syndicalist strategy of building worker-controlled unions (and other grassroots democratic organizations) that operate through rank-and-file participation and direct collective action is indeed a strategy to build counter-power.” (pp. 218-219) And to prepare for revolution.

Anti-Leninism and the Militant Minority

The heirs of Lenin have many variations of Leninism. They range from advocates of Stalinist and Maoist totalitarianism to the many varieties of Trotskyism to the libertarian-autonomous Marxism of C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayeskaya.

Wetzel focuses on Leninism as the strategy of building a top-down centralized homogeneous party, one which aims at overthrowing the capitalist state in a revolution. It would replace it with a new state, ruled by the party. The centralized party would rule the centralized state which would control the centralized economy—eventually on a world scale. That such a party, whatever its original working class democratic ideals, would end up completely authoritarian, should not be surprising.

Wetzel is aware that the population does not spontaneously become revolutionary all at once in a homogenous wave. Instead, individuals, groups, layers, become radicalized, separately over time, as radicalization spreads through the mass of people. Syndicalists have long recognized the existence of a “militant minority” among the working class. Wetzel seeks to organize networks of militant workers (and militant community organizers, militant African-American activists, etc.). And among these to build revolutionary libertarian socialist political organizations, to be active in broader mass organizations. This has been called (awkwardly) “dual-organizationalism.”

Like the Leninist vanguard party, the libertarian socialist organization is formed to advance a program, develop its ideas, and coordinate the activities of its militants. Unlike the Leninist vanguard party, it does not aim to take power for itself, to take over mass organizations, or to rule a new state. It exists only to encourage the workers and oppressed people to organize themselves and fight for their own liberation. Naturally its internal organization must be democratic and federated, rather than the “democratic centralism” of Leninism.

Besides giving an excellent brief history of the Russian Revolution, Wetzel provides an analysis of the Stalinist social system which existed in the USSR, Eastern Europe, Maoist China, and elsewhere. He sees the “bureaucratic control class” as taking over and collectively establishing a system of exploitation of the workers and peasants. It needed an extremely authoritarian state. In my opinion this is accurate. Unfortunately he regards this as a new system of exploitation, as unlike capitalism as it is unlike feudalism. He does not name the system, but various theorists have called it “bureaucratic collectivism” or “coordinatorism.”

In my opinion, Stalinist Russia was a variant of capitalism, best called “state capitalism.” The state (composed of the bureaucratic ruling class) was an instrument of capital accumulation, the “personified agent of capital” as Marx called the bourgeoisie. It was pressured by competition on the world market with other national states and international corporations, as well as internal competition among internal agencies. The workers are bought on the labor market (selling their commodity of labor power), hired to work for money wages or salaries, produce goods for sale (commodities) which are worth more than their pay, and buy back consumer goods with their money. This realizes a surplus (profit) for the rulers. Officially it had a “planned economy,” but it never fulfilled its plans! And finally, after years of stagnation, it broke down and devolved into traditional capitalism. A similar process happened in China, but it kept its Communist Party dictatorship and state domination of the now openly capitalist market.

However, in practice there is little political difference between new system theories and state capitalist theories (although “state capitalism” gives a better explanation of how Soviet Russia could transform into traditional capitalism). The basic point is that Leninist-type parties in power create authoritarian, exploitative, systems.

The New Society

Wetzel’s presents a program for a post-revolutionary, post-capitalist, society, after the capitalists have been expropriated and their state dismantled. He believes in a new system composed of self-managed associations and communities, organized into directly democratic councils and assemblies. They would be associated horizontally through chosen delegates. These would be from the ranks of the people, for limited periods, and recallable at any time.

A stateless society would need means for settling disputes, coordinating activities (“planning”), as well as protecting people from antisocial actors (protection is not the same as seeking revenge or punishment). But this must not be a socially-alienated bureaucratic institution which stands over the rest of society, enforcing the interests of an exploiting minority—that is, a state. A workers’ or popular militia could replace the established police and army—so long as is necessary. A federation of communes and self-managed industries might be called a “polity” or even, he says, a “government” but it is not a state. (I would not use “government.” although Peter Kropotkin did at times.)

The “economy” of a free society would not be distinct from other aspects of society. In particular, Wetzel rejects the notion of centralized top-down economic planning. He cites the bad example of the Soviet Union, but would oppose it even under planners appointed by an elected government. Society is too complicated to be understood and managed by a small central group, no matter how brilliant they may be. A few top planners would tend to be corrupted by the power accumulated by their position. A centrally planned economy must have a centrally organized state. Instead, it is necessary for everyone to be involved in organizing, planning and decision making, at every level and in every way.

Similarly Wetzel rejects “market socialism.” This originally meant using central planning to imitate the market. By now it usually means worker-managed enterprises competing on the market. Democratically run by the workers, they would compete just like capitalist businesses except that there are no capitalists. (A system like this existed in Yugoslavia under Tito’s reign, with competing companies, socially owned, directed by their workers’ councils. For decades, it worked as well as traditional capitalism or the Stalinist system.)

Such an economy cannot be regarded as democratic, despite the workers councils in each enterprise. The overall system is “managed” by the uncontrolled marketplace, not the working people. The business cycle of booms and busts would dominate the worker’s cooperatives. Some would do well and others would do poorly, as businesses do in the U.S.A. The poorer enterprises would have to fire workers in bad times. In order to regulate the market, there would have to be a centralized state (Yugoslavia had a dictatorship). The workers’ councils of each enterprise might hire professional managers, as they did in Yugoslavia. These would crystallize into a “bureaucratic control” class. Over time, the system would devolve toward traditional capitalism.

For a positive program, Wetzel has been influenced by several sources, especially Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel’s program of Parecon (“Participatory Economics”). Factories, offices, and other workplaces would be managed by the workers’ involved. If the workers do not govern themselves, then some other class will govern them. Work would be reorganized so there would be an end to order-givers standing over order-takers. An ecological technology would be created. But there would not be independent, competing, enterprises. They would be federated and networked—coordinated by recallable delegates and group decisions.

In turn, communities, neighborhoods, and consumer groups would also be organized into assemblies, federated together. The two federations, community and producer, are composed of the same people but organized differently, in a “dual governance” or “bi-cameral” system. By dialogue and negotiation they would coordinate economic and political decisions. There would be many “distributive” centers of initiative and cooperation.

I will not go into detail about Wetzel’s proposed libertarian socialist economy. He does not support Kropotkin’s communist-anarchist approach, which was similar to Marx’s vision of the “final stage” of full communism, governed by “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” Rather he proposes to motivate workers by “paying” them, usually according to the time they work—plus “allowances” for those not able yet to work. He proposes a “non-market pricing system” so goods and services may be produced according to need and availability.

I will not evaluate Wetzel’s proposals. I am not against them but neither would I endorse them—beyond the general conception of a decentralized federation of self-governing, collectivized, industries and communities. In the tradition of Errico Malatesta, I expect that different communities, regions, and countries will experiment. They will likely try out various methods of social production, distribution of goods, ways of self-government, education, social defense, techniques of federating, types of technology, and so on. They will choose what they think is best. While it is good to speculate, it is too soon to propose a specific system.

Conclusion: The Revolutionary Strategy

Tom Wetzel advocates an approach to achieve syndicalist libertarian ecosocialism. He is not necessarily opposed to individuals voting in elections or building food cooperatives, but he does not think either is a strategy for overcoming capitalism. He proposes a strategy of non- electoral independent movements and organizations, democratically organized from below, with popular participation and active engagement. The axis of these movements must be labor, because of its centrality in production and the economy. But every sector of the population which is oppressed and exploited has to be included and mobilized. A militant minority, political organizations of revolutionary libertarian socialists, committed to this strategy, needs to be organized as part of the popular mobilization. This is a strategy for revolution. Without using the label, Wetzel has produced a major work of anarchism.

References

Wetzel, Tom (2022). Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century. Chico CA: AK Press.

*Firstly written for Black Flag: Anarchist Review (UK) virtual journal

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