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 In my opinion, it is an important historical document of socialism, but remains deeply flawed.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)

Critical reflections on identity politics and separatism, acknowledging intersectionality and getting inspiration from the revolutionary struggles in Turkey and Kurdistan.
Aiming to reflect common strategies to move forward in our revolutionary organizing.

Pride is not an event widely celebrated in Rojava, but for us it is an important date and a reason to reflect on the current state of the queer struggle and the situation of the LGBT+ movement. On this occasion, we want to share something more than just a solidarity picture. A comrade wrote this text reflecting on their experience in Rojava. These are some lessons we can draw inspiration from.

The text doesn’t represent the position of our organization, but it aims to contribute to the discussions on these topics.

For a wild Pride!
Down with rainbow capitalism!

- Tekosina Anarsist

Reflections on Identity Politics and Revolutionary Organizing

When I was first being politicized, a world opened up for me. I felt like I finally found words to describe the experiences I had been having. I thought I had been alone with those experiences, but through my journey into politics, I began to understand the systemic nature of them, identity based politics were a big part of this for me. This also ignited a fire and anger in me. In those early days, I directed this anger towards individuals of those groups who oppressed me. I blamed the individuals and thought it just to demonize them. I organized in separatist groups and was dismissive and without hope for those individuals that were part of oppressing groups.

I have moved from being on the extra-parliamentary left, an “activist” one might say, to becoming a more ideologically motivated and educated revolutionary, for who the struggle is not just something to do in my free time, but struggle is the basis of my daily life. During this transition I realized that the way I was directing my anger was not constructive in progressing the struggle against oppression and for a free life. Not that I think my anger was unjust, simply that I now think that I can do better things with my anger than release it on the nearest man. I was with my own hands creating division and conflict among comrades who I was supposed to struggle alongside with. I needed to overcome the framework of identity politics, because it splits us up, and weakens the revolutionary struggle. I went looking for perspectives with more nuance and wanted to aim toward unity of oppressed peoples, at the same time I searched for ways to incorporate some of the valuable lessons that identity politics had taught me. Here are some of the things I learned along the way so far.

What is Identity Politics?

Identity politics is when people organize mainly according their identities of gender, race ethnicity, sexuality, religion, etc. The logic of identity politics is often used to organize as single-issue activism or separatists, this means that a group of people organizes along the lines of a common identity. For example women separatists (a group of only women), or people of colour separatists (a group of only people of colour). These days there are many groups organized with this method. Many of those group use the rhetoric of revolution but are very liberal in the praxis, focusing almost exclusively on right and reform, though there are a few that also have more revolutionary praxis. This text aims to address some of the short comings of identity politics and separatist organizing. It will also consider some of the strengths and lessons we could and should take from separatist organizing. Moreover it will offer one possible alternative that strives to incorporate the contributions coming from separatist spaces while working to unite rather than split revolutionary organizing.

Coming together with those who experience the same or similar oppressions as oneself can be a very validating experience. It can help to contextualize personal experiences and hardships within capitalism, thereby coming to understand the events in one’s personal life through a wider lens. In turn understanding experiences of oppression through an anti-capitalist framework can combat isolation that some people feel in their experiences. In gathering with others with similar identity some people can find a space and calm to heal from oppression related traumas or problems, as well as gathering the strength to continue to live and take part in struggle. Moreover, it is often times from such “safe spaces”, in which one is temporarily somewhat shielded from people of the oppressive dynamic,that there is room to reflect. From this reflection new analysis and theory are conceptualized, therefore it can have an important function in developing analysis and theory that brings us forward. For these reasons groups or spaces based on identity, in which oppressed identities are cared for, explored and celebrated, are very valuable to oppressed individuals, and can make great contributions in our fight against patriarchy and capitalism.

Causes and Shortcoming of Identity Politics

I think separatist spaces do also have downsides that we should be careful of if our aim is the overthrow of capitalism, classless society and the genuine change of social relations in society. When identity politics become the main approach to organizing, this results in oppressed people being pitted against each other and pitting themselves against each other. One way this happens is by identity based organizing more and more niche, for example a women’s group becoming a queer women’s group, becoming a neurodivergent queer women’s group, etc. There is of course nothing wrong with those individuals wanting to seek connections with others that have similar experiences, like was outline in the previous paragraph, but taking that identity as the basis of organizing ultimately weakens our power. It distances us for other people that we could and should ally ourselves with.

An other unfortunate outcome of identity based politics can be that experiences that contain multitudes and nuance are erased in favour of black and white narratives, this contributes to issues of intersectionality (such as misogynoir, transmisogyny, transmisogynoit, etc.) to be overlooked. An example of where we can see this is in class reductionism. Class reductionism creates a mentality of “we are all working class, so we do not need to talk about race or gender or ability”. It poses that the working class background makes all the other differences among people irrelevant. This of course is not the case, those difference are very much relevant and important.

Why does this happen? Because we live in a capitalist society, and it is in the interest of the rich and powerful (capitalist class) to keep the working class divided. If working and other oppressed people consist of many small groups that fight among themselves, rather than unite to fight against the capitalists, this is an obvious advantage to them. Therefor those voices and actions that are in favour of the status quo are supported and those that threaten the status quo are side-lined or demonized by liberals and conservatives. Any discussion of the root causes, the capitalist system, are avoided, dismissed or silenced. A very obvious example of this is the parts of the white working class in western and northern Europe blaming immigrants from poorer countries for “stealing their jobs/changing the culture/destroying the country/taking over the country”. The immigrants are not the problem, they are the scapegoats. The problem is the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class that results in harsh working and living conditions.

How does this happen? Through the ideology of liberalism, by which we are absolutely surrounded, the focus is laid on the differences in identity and how individuals oppress other individuals in daily life. It manifests in the creation of increasingly specific in-groups, and their respective out-groups. The out-group is often seen as an inconsolable aggressor. For example, LGBTI+ people as the in-group and cis-hetero people as the out-group, cis-hets being seen as unchangeably oppressive towards LGBTI+ people, and a dismissive attitude towards cis-het people is taken on. Or women as the in-group and men as the out-group, with the hope of men changing being little to none, dismissing them as a group.

Coming Together

I understand this desire to organize or even live in a separatist manner, because living in this world as an oppressed person is exhausting and separatist spaces can be a safe haven from that. However, if we call ourselves revolutionaries and want to earn that title, we need to organize with the whole working class and all oppressed peoples, not just those most similar to ourselves. I said it before, but I think it bears repeating since this is such a crucial point: a result of this identity driven politics is that the working class and oppressed people are split into small, easily governable groups, divided rather than united by their different identities. The focus lies on the difference. We cannot meaningfully liberate ourselves if oppressed peoples cannot see and understand the common roots of their problem, namely the capitalist system.

Identity politics are a response to legitimate issues. In order to unify the working class and all oppressed peoples, we must take these issues seriously in our approach to class struggle. To do this a move needs to be made from using identity-based politics to divide, to valuing our differences. We need to be open to learn from each other. We also have a duty to teach each other. We do not need to teach every random person about (our) oppression and help them understand it, but for those who we consider our comrades and friends, those we are organized with, we should. Yes there is google, but googling things as complex as oppression, how oppressions intersect, how to dismantle and overcome them, is often not the most fruitful strategy if we want to grow stronger together. We will have to discuss, explain, teach, listen, fight and change. Frustration at oneself and one’s comrades is a part of coming together. We will also disappoint each other, because we will make mistakes. In the face of those mistakes and shortcomings we cannot just throw out the comrades that messed up, because we all make mistakes from time to time, so this is not a strategy that will get us very far. We need to give a serious effort to correct the mistakes of our comrades, not just try one method, but try all the ways we can think of. Do not give up on each other so easily.

Ideas from Turkey and Kurdistan

All this is of course no easy task. To overcome these challenges we will need willingness, commitment, and a plan. One way to achieve this is by looking at the methods and approaches of the revolutionary movement from Turkey, which has currently also grown its reach to areas outside of the borders of the Turkish state, and Kurdistan. The revolutionary movement in those places has been predominantly communist, communard and apoist (following the ideology of Abdullah Öcalan), though anarchist groups have also been present. The Turkish and Kurdish revolutionary movements have been fighting in its current form for over 50 years against the fascist Turkish state and oppression all over Kurdistan. It has faced many challenges and learned a lot of valuable lessons over that time. Since the ‘90’s great progress has been made in the involvement and position of women comrades in this struggle. A big pioneer in the creation of these structures was, and is, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who in their 1987 established a women’s structure, the YJWK, inside the PKK. I doubt a copy paste of their methods will suit organizing in Europe and North America, but I absolutely think it is worth our time of day to consider how we can learn from them and how to apply that.

In these movements, in many collectives, groups, organizations and parties, there are women’s sub-organizations that function semi-autonomously. These women’s groups/organizations are connected to the overall collective/organization, and the vast majority of all work and actions are carried out through the overall collective/organization. However on issues specifically related to women, these women’s groups have decision making power.

What exactly women’s issues includes is decided by the women’s and overall organization together through discussion. The women’s groups can work autonomously in giving education about patriarchy and all topics connected to it, and reach out to other groups or collectives to collaborate, they can make zines, events, talks to comrades, friends, and whoever wants to listen, etc. Moreover the women’s group is responsible for supporting the women in the collective/organization/network on issues of health, patriarchal violence, and can address women’s internalized patriarchy. It is also a space for women to discuss their experiences, analyze and theorize them.

This way they incorporate many of the functions I mentioned before as being very important of separatist spaces, like space for recovery and healing, building up of strength, discussion and analysis. But unlike separatist groups/organizations they remain connected with people of other identities as well, they engage, discuss, educate the comrades of the overall collective/organization. This connection comes about through that the women comrades are first and foremost organized in the overall collective/organization and secondly in the women’s group. The women’s group is ultimately accountable to the general collective/organization. Its aim should always be to strengthen the overall collective/organization, not undermine it. The women’s group should engage, or at least inform, the overall collective/organization as much as possible in the works and discussions it is having. The basic assumption necessary for any of this to work is of course that our enemy is patriarchy. Individual male comrades will make mistake and have patriarchal behaviors, but they are not our enemy. They are our comrades, and we are struggling together.

This hybrid that includes an overall collective/organization that welcomes people of all identities as well as some aspects of separatism can provide us with a good way forward in which the organizational structure will be better equipped to take on the issues related to specific identities and simultaneously remain focused on uniting oppressed peoples rather than dividing them. We can learn and take inspiration from the method of organizing and incorporate it into our own organizing in ways we think relevant and current. In the revolutionary movements from Turkey and Kurdistan this method is only used to set up women’s organizations (until now), as far as I am aware, but I imagine that this method can be used more broadly, for example through LGBTI+, PoC and other oppressed groups.

This is just one proposal, but even if this is not something that fits within your collective/organization, I urge everyone to think about how to solve the problems brought up by identity politics. These are some central questions of our time, we can look to revolutionary struggles around the world, past and present for inspiration on how we can solve them. I am confident we will solve them, together. We have to, because the current state of our society is unacceptable.

Marx & Engels Communist Manifesto from the perspective of an anarchist. Most of its class analysis is still valuable, but anarchists reject much of its political and economic program.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party—or Communist Manifesto (CM)—was written in 1848, by Karl Marx, using material from Frederick Engels. It was written for the Communist League, composed of revolutionary Germans, mostly emigre workers living in London. (In those days, “party” usually meant what we would today call a “tendency” or “movement.”) It has since become a classic for socialists and communists, translated into virtually all the languages of earth. Huge movements of hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, and others have regarded it as a foundational text, a call for human emancipation. Mass-murdering dictatorships have treated it as a holy text, while in Western capitalist democracies, it has been regarded as a Satanic tract.

The mainstream of anarchism is also socialist and communist (libertarian socialist or communist). What should anarchists make of this Manifesto? The revolutionary anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin and his allies developed about two decades later, in the late 1860s and early 1870s, culminating in a split in the First International. There could be no discussion of not-yet-existing revolutionary anarchism in the CM. It has one sentence referring to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to identify as an anarchist (to be discussed below). Anarchists published their own translations of the CM in the U.S., Britain, and Russia. (Draper 1998) It might be useful to review the CM from an anarchist's viewpoint. Revolutionary anarchists tend to agree with most of its class analysis, while rejecting much of its political and economic program. (The only other review of the CM by an anarchist I have found is Bookchin 1998.)

While the Manifesto outlines basic concepts of Marx’s world view, which he maintained for the rest of his life, it was written early in his career. Engels and he had not yet gone through the 1848 European-wide revolution and its defeat, nor closely observed the 1871 Paris Commune uprising, nor participated in the First International, among various experiences. Especially, Marx had not begun his massive studies of political economy, which culminated in Capital and other writings. Therefore we must be careful in interpreting the CM, since Marx and Engels modified specific opinions over their lifetimes.

(There are many republications and translations of the Communist Manifesto and a great many books interpreting it. I am relying especially on annotated versions by Hal Draper [1998] and Phil Gasper [Marx & Engels 2005]. Rather than citing page numbers, I will cite the CM’s sections and its numbered paragraphs, using Marx & Engels 2005.)

The Main Concept

The basic theme of the Manifesto is working class revolution. There have been many who called themselves “Marxists” but did not believe in either the importance of the working class nor in revolution, yet that was the central idea of the Marxism of Marx and Engels. (Similarly the mainstream of anarchism, as it later developed, believed in working class revolution. See van der Walt & Schmidt 2009.)

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (section I; paragraph 1) In a footnote to this passage, Engels added later that this only applied to societies after the end of “primitive communistic societies” (hunter-gatherers). There were various minority ruling classes, supported by their states, which forced a majority to toil. They squeezed a surplus from the laboring and oppressed majority. Lords and aristocrats lived off the work of slaves, serfs, artisans, tenant farmers, heavily-taxed villages, etc., who survived on the minimum their masters left them. (Such a class analysis of social development, basing itself in relations of production and exploitation associated with different types of society, has been called “historical materialism.”)

We live under the latest form of class society: capitalism (the CM called it “bourgeois society”). Whatever there is of middle sectors, overall society is polarized “into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.” (I; 5)

Once broken out of feudal constraints, capitalism was driven by competition and class conflict to expand and grow, to accumulate ever more profits, to concentrate and centralize its enterprises. It created the industrial revolution, more productive than ever in human history. It developed an integrated world market, connecting international humanity. Marx became positively lyrical in describing the marvels of capitalist development. “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.…Machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture,…whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?” (I; 24)

Bourgeois commentators like such passages in the CM. They are pleased that Marx recognized the productive, industrializing, and once progressive nature of capitalism. They point out that these trends have not ceased, as we know in our globalized world of smart phones, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.

However, they do not accept Marx’s view that the further development of mass production overwhelms the limitations of private property and competitive markets. “The history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces…against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return, put on its trial…the existence of the entire bourgeois society.” (I; 27) In the repeated recessions and depressions, large amounts of commodities as well as means of production are destroyed, while workers are faced with unemployment and poverty. All this due to overproduction: too many goods have been produced to be sold; excessive wealth turns capitalist society into a pool of poverty and destitution. (There are other ways in which the capitalist drive toward accumulation threatens “the existence of the entire bourgeois society,” such as wars or ecological catastrophes. These are only implied in the CM, but raised elsewhere in Marx’s work.) A fuller analysis of why capitalism overproduces, including the tendency toward a falling rate of profit, would not be made by Marx until later.

Of all the productive forces created by the bourgeoisie, the greatest in the working class. These proletarians are not defined by the type of work they do nor by the machines they use. They are defined by their need to sell to capital their ability to labor. “A class of laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, as a commodity like every other article of commerce.” (I; 30) (This was written before Marx made a distinction between the labor process and workers’ “labor power,” the commodity of their ability to do work.)

“The bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men [and women—WP] who are to wield those weapons—the modern working class—the proletarians.” (I; 28) “With the development of industry, the proletariat not only increase in number, it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more….The workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois….” (I; 38)

This class is different from all other laboring populations in history. Unlike peasants or artisans, its men and women have no private property nor likelihood of getting any. In its working conditions it is collective and cooperative. The goal of individual workers is not to own three feet of an assembly line or five square feet of an office. Due to the nature of modern production, any proletarian goal must be cooperative, social, and democratic. Their existence is part of a level of technology which could—for the first time in human existence—produce enough for a comfortable life for all, distributed equally, with plenty of leisure, and with toil replaced by creative labor.

Passages of the Manifesto indicate that capitalism will drive down the standard of living of the workers to that of biological subsistence. This is taken to support the idea that Marx had a “theory of immiseration.” Actually he was repeating the then-current orthodoxy of the political economy of David Ricardo and others. This stated that the competitive labor market must drive down the price of the workers’ labor to that of bare subsistence. Later, Marx was to modify this concept. In times of prosperity (between the depressions) wages tended to go up. Most of all, the standard price (value) of workers’ labor power depends on historical and cultural,conditions. It depends on the standard of living which a nation’s working class has won through past struggle. It is a constant conflict between capital and labor.

The class conflict is reflected in the bourgeois state, which is not a neutral institution between classes. “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (I; 12) “This sentence is doubtless the most succinctly aphoristic statement by Marx of his theory of the state.” (Draper 1998; 207) It does not say that the state is a passive puppet of the bourgeoisie; it says that its executive branch manages the bourgeoisie’s affairs. It does not deny that the state may have its own relatively autonomous interests as an institution, within its overall task of supporting capitalism. In his later political writings, Marx was to expand on these issues. As a condensed statement of the class theory of the state, anarchists may also accept the sentence. (Price 2018)

The End of the Middle Class?

Because the CM describes a society dividing essentially into two poles, Marx is often interpreted as predicting the end of the middle class. (This is aside from his use of “middle class” to mean the bourgeoisie. This was done then because businesspeople were historically between the feudal aristocracy and the working people.) This supposed prediction of Marx has been held as “disproved” by the huge growth of management and bureaucracy in business and government, as well as by the temporary rise to a ruling class of the bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union and other Stalinist states.

Marx did predict that “small tradespeople, shopkeepers,…handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on….” (I; 35) He saw this as a tendency, not as something about to be completed immediately. “In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletarian and bourgeoisie….” (II13)

He expected that the growth of large scale production would require ever more middle level employees—a new middle class. “Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants…” (I; 32) The old petty bourgeoisie tends “to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture, and commerce by labor overseers and stewards.” (II. 13)

In later works, Marx wrote more about the increased role of management and bureaucracy in expanding capitalist enterprises and of the increasingly autonomous bureaucracy of the national state. However, unlike Proudhon, Bakunin, and other anarchists, he never foresaw the danger of a collective bureaucracy taking state power as an agent of capital accumulation (state capitalism).

The CM expects that part of the bourgeoisie and those associated with it will be forced down into the proletariat, where it will “supply the proletarians with educational elements.” (II; 142) Politically, “a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.” (II; 143) Karl Kautsky and Vladimir Lenin later claimed that intellectuals from the upper classes were essential to bring socialism to the working class—although Marx and Engels made it clear that communist revolution came from the proletariat. Probably this passage was just acknowledging the reality that a few revolutionary intellectuals from upper classes had split from their backgrounds and enriched the mass movement theoretically and practically. Marx and Engels themselves came from the bourgeoisie. (Of the “founders” of anarchism, Proudhon was originally a poor artisan, but Bakunin and Kropotkin had been Russian aristocrats.) Even so, the Manifesto does not recognize the danger of these ruling class “educational elements” dominating the workers’ movement and riding it to power.

The Proletariat Alone?

The Manifesto of the Communist Party may be read as saying that only the working class matters in making a revolution. “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class.” (I; 44) Marx lists “the shopkeeper, the artisan” and even “the peasant” as “not revolutionary, but conservative,” even “reactionary.” (I; 45) This view was undemocratic, not to say strategically unwise, considering that at that time peasants were the majority of every European country and every other country in the world, except for Britain. Even today, peasants are a large proposition of the world’s population.

“One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Manifesto was its almost complete neglect of the peasantry….The view is wholly negative….The Manifesto reached the very end of Marx’s inattention to the peasant class. The picture changed immediately after the outbreak of the revolution in 1848….” (Draper 1998; 211)

However, there are passages which point in another direction, that the interests of the working class overlap with every other oppressed group and every other progressive issue. “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.” (I; 49) For such reasons, “the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” (IV; 8) In any case, the working class itself, as a class, includes members of every oppressed grouping (half being women, of all “races,” many from peasant families, immigrants from all nations, LGBT people, etc.).

Of issues which are not simply proletarian-socialist, the Manifesto raises the need to fight for bourgeois-democracy (liberal democracy), against the then-dominant aristocratic-bureaucratic-feudal states of Europe. Communists “labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.” (IV; 10) It proposes that the working class align with other classes, including the bourgeoisie, in democratic revolutions—while maintaining its political independence.

By the end of the 1848 revolution, Marx and Engels had modified their views from the CM. They had learned that the bourgeoisie could not be relied on even to fight for its own historical democratic program. The bourgeoisie feared what Marx had hoped for, that the bourgeois-democratic revolution might be followed by a working class revolution. Therefore it pulled back from its democratic cause and capitulated to the aristocratic-bureaucratic regimes. The proletariat itself would have to lead the struggle for democracy as part of the struggle for socialism (which Marx and Engels were to call “permanent revolution”). This required alliances with all the oppressed and exploited of every section of society.

Aside from this, the CM refers to the oppression of women—who are treated as commodities in the bourgeois family and as super-exploited workers in the proletarian families. It speaks of the need for children to have an integral, progressive, education, integrating appropriate labor with education.

Advocating world revolution, the CM opposed nationalism as an ideology or program But the Manifesto advocated national liberation: “The exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.” (II; 56) The CM supported the national movement of Poland, linking the class interests of the peasants with the national issue. “Among the Poles, [communists] support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation ….” (IV; 4) (Similarly the internationalist Bakunin asserted his “strong sympathy for any national uprising against any form of oppression…”—in van der Walt & Schmidt 2009; 309)

The CM proposes, “The bringing into cultivation of waste lands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.” (II; 72; no. 7) “Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country.” (II; 72; no. 9) This is a program of radical ecology and ecosocialism.

Rather than only calling for a working class revolution, many Marxists and anarchists advocate a revolution “by the working class and its allies among all the oppressed” or some such expression. This is not counterposed to the major importance of the working class. Unlike all other oppressed groups, even the peasants, proletarians are immediately central to the workings of the capitalist economy. Their exploited labor directly produces surplus value. This becomes the profits which maintain the capitalist class, its state, and all its other institutions. The working class is central to a socialist revolution, but this includes supporting and working with every oppressed group and on every progressive issue.

The CM indicates that communists should participate in all the struggles of the working class. At the time this meant particularly the struggle for democracy, in which the proletariat should support petty-bourgeois forces against the aristocratic-bureaucratic states. It included the fight for labor unions, in which communists were allied with reformist workers. The communists should not hide their views but advocate them as the fulfillment of the limited struggles.

The Manifesto considers the relationship between the revolutionary minority and the (as yet) non-revolutionary majority (in section II). This is a necessary topic. But if the minority believes that it has all the answers and knows the final truth, it will be authoritarian—and Marxism tends in that direction. Instead, a libertarian socialist approach requires dialogues between the revolutionary minority and the various views of the majority, where each learns from the other.

A basic problem of the CM is its telescoping of its predictions. Marx and Engels wrote as if every European country already had a proletarian majority, as if the peasants and artisans of Germany and France had already dissolved into the working class. They were sure that bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe would immediately be followed by working class revolutions. They saw European capitalism as dominated completely by huge enterprises. They pictured the world economy as already being closely tied together by international trade. All these were real tendencies, but by no means as near to completion as they thought.

Fifteen years after the CM, Marx wrote to Engels, “The easygoing delusions and the almost childish enthusiasm with which, before February 1848, we greeted the era of revolution have gone to the devil.” (in Draper 1998; 321) Compared to Marx’s time, today the proletariat is a much larger proportion of the world population and the global market is much more integrated. In many ways the CM is more relevant today than it was when written.

The Marxist Program

The goal is communism (or the broader term, socialism). “The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” (II: 13) “Capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society.” (II; 20) (But the common ownership of the means of production will not effect “personal property.”) (II; 20) “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” (II: 74)

So far, there is nothing here with which an anarchist-communist would disagree—or with which a liberal could agree! But Marx never went much beyond such generalities. He rejected developing “the best possible plan of the best possible state of society” (III; 51) or drawing “fanciful pictures of future society.” (III; 53) These were merely “castles in the air” (III; 55) rather than based in “the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.” (III; 48) All very well, but when the “material conditions” of the historical process present us with mass-murdering totalitarian states, calling themselves “socialist,” ruled by “Communist” Parties, with collectivized economies without bourgeois private property—most Marxists accepted them as being “socialist.” They did not have a clear vision of what socialism was supposed to be.

What Marx focused on was not a new society but the working class taking state power. Once the proletariat replaced the bourgeoisie in state power, it would work out its political and economic program. “The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class.” (II: 68) For Marx, this meant the workers taking over the state, which he called “to win the battle for democracy.” (II: 68) This worker-controlled government he called “the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class.” (II: 69) (The CM does not use the phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat.”) This sounds very democratic, but at the time he wrote it he meant that the working class would democratize the authoritarian bureaucratic-aristocratic governments that dominated Europe (thus winning “the battle for democracy”). And it would take over these democratically-modified states, by election or revolution.

(To clarify the issue, revolutionary anarchists might also say that they are for the working class—and its allies—taking power. This is in the sense of overturning the capitalist class and its states, and replacing them with other institutions—such as federations of workplace councils, popular committees, and voluntary associations. But they are not for taking state power, that is, not for setting up a new bureaucratic-military elite agency over the rest of society. They are for the self-organization of the proletariat and all oppressed people.)

At the end of section II, the CM lays out a ten point transitional program to be carried out by the proletariat once it takes state power. Twenty five years later, Engels wrote in a preface that “the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct as ever…[but] no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed….” (Marx & Engels 2005; 118-9) Despite this caveat, the basic approach of the Manifesto’s program would continue to dominate Marxism: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state….” (II: 69)

This includes: “5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state….6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state….8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies….” (II; 72)

The CM predicts that this centralized state economy will lead to the end of the state! “When…class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power…is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” (II; 73) This is also described as “the conversion of the functions of the state into a mere superintendence of production….” (II: 54) The repressive, class-dominated, state will supposedly evolve into a benevolent “public power” which is a centralized “vast association” in whose hands “all production has been concentrated.”

It should be clear what is being proposed here. The democratic, worker-controlled, state, supposedly “the proletariat organized as the ruling class”, will take over the whole economy and concentrate it all. On the way to becoming a classless “public power,” it will include forced labor for everyone in its industrial armies. How long could it be expected to remain democratic? How much will it promote “the free development of each”? How would the conscripted workers democratically control the state organizers and effect the overall plans? Suppose workers went on strike; would they be forced back to work by some recreated police force? Wouldn’t the managers become the new state-capitalist masters, with a drive to accumulate profits and power?

In later prefaces, Marx and Engels made only one important change in the Manifesto. Referring to the experience of the 1871 Paris Commune, Engels quoted Marx’s The Civil War in France as saying that the existing states cannot be democratized and taken over by the working class. They were developed to serve a minority ruling class and, in essence, that is all they can do. The bourgeois states must be overturned and replaced by other institutions, such as the ultra-democratic Commune. “One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.’ “ (Marx & Engels 2005; 119)

In principle, revolutionary anarchists agree with this (without further examination of the Paris Commune). However, it is somewhat difficult to know what Marx and Engels meant by it. Immediately after the defeat of the Commune, they fought to make every national branch of the First International support a workers’ electoral party. They demanded that all branches support parties that sought to get elected to state power. It was this policy (which seems to contradict the above “one thing” that was “proved by the Commune”) which led to the split in the International between Marx and the anarchists. (Price 2017) Marx and Engels even stated, repeatedly, that in a few countries it was possible for the workers to take power peacefully through elections; they named Britain, the U.S., and France. (Although they added that this would provoke counterrevolutionary rebellions and civil wars; so even this was not likely to be a peaceful revolution).

In any case, even having an ultra-democratic commune at the top of a centralized and nationalized (and inevitably bureaucratic) economy would not prevent the rise of authoritarianism, class division, and state capitalism.

Years later, Peter Kropotkin wrote that in the anarchist program, “voluntary associations…would…substitute themselves for the State in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network…for all possible purposes: production, consumption, and exchange,…mutual protection, defense of the territory, and so on.” (Kropotkin 2002; 284) These would include federated worker-managed industries, consumer cooperatives, agri-industrial communes, as well as democratic popular militias (an armed people) so long as deemed necessary for “mutual protection [and] defense of the territory.”

“The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the State all the main sources of economic life—the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on—as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands…would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism.” (same; 286) This was written in 1905, after the Communist Manifesto but before the experience of state-capitalism in the Soviet Union.

Determinism and Morality

Marx is often accused of advocating a mechanical, stagist, view of history, a rigid teleological determinism: first slavery, then feudalism, then capitalism, then the lower stage of communism (socialism), and finally, automatically, full communism—like a slinky toy going down stairs. While the CM indicates that human development, since early classless society, has been a series of exploitative class systems, it does not lay out any such inevitable pattern. In their preface to an 1882 Russian edition of the CM, Marx and Engels discussed whether Russia would have to go through the same stages as Western Europe. Could its “primeval common ownership of land pass directly to the higher form of communist common ownership” without going through a capitalist stage? (Marx & Engels 2005; 120). They declared that if a Russian revolution were to ignite a European proletarian revolution, then this was possible—a non-determinist answer.

Near the beginning of the Manifesto, it declares that class conflicts in every society “each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” (I; 2) (They were referring to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.) Draper interprets this as meaning that bourgeois “society is faced with the alternatives later tagged [by Rosa Luxemburg—WP] ‘socialism or barbarism’—either a revolution that remakes society or the collapse of the old order to a lower level.” (Draper 1998; 200) He also quotes Engels as later writing that capitalism faced “ruin or revolution.” (same) (The same basic idea was expressed by Murray Bookchin as “anarchism or annihilation.”)

Yet the last line of section I declares of the bourgeoisie, “Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (I; 53) In their preface to the Russian edition, Marx and Engels summarized, “The Communist Manifesto had as its object the proclamation of the inevitably impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property.” (Marx & Engels 2005; 120)

So which is it? A possible choice between two very different outcomes (“revolutionary reconstruction” or “common ruin;” “socialism or barbarism”) or an “inevitable” outcome of proletarian revolution? Draper denied that 
“Marx believed in some sort of metaphysical ‘inevitability of socialism,’ according to which socialist victory is…fatefully predestined….” (Draper 1998; 200) Gasper calls the CM’s final declaration “a rhetorical flourish” to cheer on the workers. (Marx & Engels 2005; 57) But the sentence in the preface to the Russian edition seems to rule that out.

Before World War I, the mainstream of social-democratic orthodox Marxism interpreted Marxism in a mechanically deterministic fashion. So did the later Stalinist version of Marxism. Today most Marxists take a more flexible view. It would be hard to insist that a proletarian revolution will definitely, inevitably, happen before capitalism destroys industrial civilization with a nuclear war or with climate collapse. While this is what revolutionaries work for, it simply cannot be known. At best we can say that there are tendencies pushing toward a socialist revolution, identified in great part by Marx, as well as tendencies resisting it. As for what Marx “really meant,” perhaps he was confused and contradicted himself. (Peter Kropotkin also believed in the inevitability of anarchist-communist revolution.)

If revolution is inevitable, then it is something which happens to people, not which they do. But if there are alternative possible outcomes, then people have to make a choice. The issue is not only a socio-economic analysis but one of moral choice. This insight is lacking in the Communist Manifesto. Undoubtedly, Marx and Engels were driven by ideals and values, but this does not appear in their system. Nowhere in the CM (nor anywhere else in their writings over the years) did they say that people should, morally, be for socialism or that communism is a good goal. Instead they sneered at those socialists who raised moral values as the basis for socialism (in section III). Undoubtedly they were right to reject those whose socialism was rooted solely in abstract morality without an objective, materialistic, analysis of how capitalism develops. They also countered the bourgeois critics of communism, who often raised ethical objections (in section II). Here they were correct in exposing the hypocrisy behind the moralism of the bourgeoisie—as amoral and cynical a class as has ever existed. Yet that did not require a silence on ethics.

Their case for communism could have been much stronger. They could have clearly rooted it in the interaction between humanistic values and objective developments, as expressed in the revolutionary movements among the working class and all oppressed. (Kropotkin sought to demonstrate an evolutionary base for a naturalistic ethics.) Instead, their nonmoral perspective only laid the basis for accepting Stalinist authoritarianism. The Russian dictatorship had its flaws, many said, but it had to be accepted as “really existing socialism,” after all.

Anarchism and Marxism

As mentioned, the Manifesto of the Communist Party does refer to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. He was the first to declare himself an “anarchist,” although the CM does not refer to this. Section III, “Socialist and Communist Literature,” has a subsection on what it calls “Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism.” Here it says, “We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misere [Philosophy of Poverty] as an example of this form.” (III; 37)

Apparently, “bourgeois socialism” seeks “to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.” (III; 36) “The socialistic bourgeoisie … wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat….Bourgeois socialism develops…into various more or less complete systems….It but requires that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.” (III; 39)

This is an extremely distorted view of Proudhon’s opinions. (For a balanced and insightful summary of his views, including a criticism of Marx’s portrayal of them, see McKay 2011.) Proudhon’s “more or less complete system” (called “mutualism”) proposed a stateless version of what today we would call “market socialism.” There would continue to be small workshops and artisans, competing on the market. Larger enterprises would be democratically run by those working in them. Peasants would “possess” the land they farmed. Overall coordination would be through a nonprofit association, essentially a national credit union. There would be neither a profit-making bourgeoisie nor a wage-earning proletariat.

While not capitalist, this program had elements of capitalism: a market, competition, and a sort-of private property. Proudhon proposed to achieve it by gradual and peaceful growth within capitalist society. He was a reformist, opposing revolution or even strikes. These elements were abandoned by revolutionary anarchists, including Bakunin and Kropotkin, who further developed the ideas of Proudhon. They favored a collective, cooperative, and communal vision (possibly influenced by Marxism). But they continued important ideas raised by Proudhon: decentralization, federalism, direct democracy, anti-statism, anti-electoralism, and, above all, workers’ self-management of industry. These concepts were and remain central to revolutionary anarchist-socialism. They do not appear in the Manifesto.

Conclusion

In the twenty-first century, many ideas are still true and even valuable in the Communist Manifesto. These include the class analysis of capitalist society and understanding it as polarized between two fundamental classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Even as the bourgeoisie has created great technological and scientific wonders, it has led the world toward terrible disasters: economic decline, increased inequality, wars (including the threat of nuclear war), ecological catastrophes (including virulent plagues and looming climate collapse)—along with many forms of oppression and suffering. “The bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society.” (I; 52)

Instead, the proletariat, the modern working class in all its variegated aspects, needs to overturn and replace the capitalist class, its state, and its other institutions. It has the necessary potential power and strategic location at the heart of capitalism. But to do this, it must ally with all the oppressed in society and raise every issue possible, something on which the Manifesto is ambiguous.

The CM was written early in the political careers and studies of Marx and Engels. They underestimated the resilience of capitalism and overestimated the nearness of revolution. This especially comes out in an apparent certainty in the imminent coming of proletarian revolution. But just as they were wrong then, in the short term, so we today would be wrong to believe in the inevitability of the failure of socialism or of the survivability of capitalist society.

Yet Marx’s positive program has to be rejected. While meant to create a socialist democracy, it is a program for state capitalism. Socialism/communism should be an “association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” That cannot be built by using a bureaucratic-military socially-alienated institution standing over the rest of society—that is, a state. This is true whether it is a bourgeois-democratic state mastered through elections or a new state replacing the old one through revolution. A centralized and nationalized economy, even in the hands of the most democratic state (let alone a one-party dictatorship) can only result in further oppression, suffering, inefficiency, rebellion, and repression. As Kropotkin (among other anarchists) warned, “State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism.”

Marx and Engels wrote in their 1872 preface, “The Manifesto has become a historical document.” (Marx & Engels 2005; 119) The Manifesto of the Communist Party remains a classical statement of revolutionary proletarian socialism. As such it is still well worth reading by anarchists and others, and thinking about, but never uncritically.

References

Bookchin, Murray (1998). “The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems.” New Politics, vol. 6, no. 4 (new series), whole no. 24, Winter.
https://archive.newpol.org/issue24/bookch24.htm

Draper, Hal (1998). The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto. Berkeley CA: Center for Socialist History. Includes Karl Marx & Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. (Ed.: Hal Draper).

Kropotkin, Peter (2002). “Anarchism.” In Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings. (Ed.: Roger Baldwin). Mineola NY: Dover. Pp. 284—300.

Marx, Karl, & Engels, Frederick (2005). The Communist Manifesto; A Road Map to History’s Most Important Political Document. (Ed.: Phil Gasper.) Chicago: Haymarket Books.

McKay, Iain (2011). “Introduction.” In Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology. (Iain McKay. Ed.) Oakland CA: AK Press. Pp. 1—53.

Price, Wayne (2018). “An Anarchist View of the Class Theory of the State.” Anarkismo.
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/31082?search_text=Way...Price

Price, Wayne (2017). “The First International and the Development of Anarchism and Marxism.” Anarkismo.
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30330

van der Walt, Lucien, & Schmidt, Michael (2009). Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism. Oakland CA: Ak Press.

*written for Black Flag Anarchist Review (UK)

An anarchist review of Mark R. Levin's far-right best-seller, American Marxism (2021) NY: Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster

This book is popular on the right. Its thesis is that there is a Marxist movement (or set of movements) which is taking over much of U.S. society. Marxists supposedly dominate public schools, universities, the media, teacher unions and other unions, the anti-racist movement, the ecological movement, business boardrooms (!), and the Democratic Party—and therefore the presidency and Congress. This is mad on the face of it, yet American Marxism has been a best seller for weeks. Its author is a Fox tv performer, a former part of the Reagan administration, and the author of a series of books. Personally I find the book poorly written and illogical, stuffed with lengthy quotations from friends and foes, yet obviously many people like it. Therefore it is worth looking at.

There are some things which Mark Levin gets right. Marx’s theories have been used as rationalizations and ideologies justifying “the enslavement, impoverishment, torture, and death of untold millions” (p. 243). It may be argued that this was not Marx’s intention, and that his world view was originally based in radical democracy and the emancipation of the working class—and that there has always been a minority of Marxists who have held to this vision. It may be claimed that his analysis of how capitalism works is highly useful (I agree but Levin strongly dissents). However this may be, Marxism has repeatedly led to bureaucratic-totalitarian states which oppressed and murdered millions of workers, peasants, and others.

Many on the Left have admired and even worshipped these repressive regimes and their Marxist leaders. For example, recently, on July 11th, thousands of Cubans nationwide demonstrated and the Communist state repressed their protests. Yet part of the Left offered its support to the Cuban state (as did the leadership of Black Lives Matter). Some Leftists, such as Bernie Sanders, opposed that state’s crackdown, but many others were silent at best. They “changed the topic” to the evils of the U.S. quarantine. This is an important issue, but the reason Cuba was in the news was the popular demonstrations.To focus solely on the crimes of U.S. imperialism, and not offer solidarity to the Cuban protestors, was shameful. However, this does not justify Levin lumping all oppositional movements together as “Marxist” and authoritarian.

I am not a Marxist, nor a liberal nor a “progressive,” and certainly not a Democrat. I identify as a revolutionary anarchist-socialist. I believe that the consistent devolution of Marxism into state-capitalist dictatorships is rooted in certain weaknesses—its program of taking state power, its centralism, and its determinism. These were pointed out by anarchists when Marx first developed his views.

However, it is unclear just what Levin means by “Marxism.” He cites the theories of Karl Marx, which makes sense: “Marxists” are followers of Marx. But even for Levin it would be a stretch to claim that all these institutions and movements are led by conscious followers of Marx, students of The Communist Manifesto and Capital. So he also refers to various social forces as “Marxist-like,” “progressive/Marxist-oriented,” “Marxist-based,” “Marxist-type,” “neo-Marxist,” “Marxist-racist,” “Marxist-anarchist,” “Marxist-centric,” “eco-Marxist,” “Marxist-associated,” and, in general, “Marxist-inspired and related social movements” (p. 135). He summarizes, “Even if one does not accept a direct link or parallel to classical Marxism …it need not be. The movements are said [by Levin!—WP] to be developed from or tailored after Marxist ideology” (pp. 135-6).

He even notes that Marxist theory, in what he sees as its wide-spread influence, has splintered into a wide variety of ideological and political viewpoints, often contradictory to each other. He mentions that there are “purist” Marxists who complain about Critical Race Theory’s lack of class analysis. He cites radical ecologists who criticize Marxism for what they see as its pro-growth orientation. “Of course, all of Marxism’s incarnations, as practiced and where imposed, need not be identical in every respect and, in fact, differ” (p. 55). But he claims that “American progressives” share the “same core beliefs” (p. 55). As usual he merges “progressives” with “Marxists.”

In the fifties I read a book similar in aim to this, by J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the FBI. It was Masters of Deceit, about the dire influence of the Communist Party. Similar books opposed to Marxism, written during the sixties and seventies, focused on the Communist Party, as well as on various parties and organizations of Trotskyists and Maoists and others. Today Mark Levin writes about U.S. Marxism but says nothing whatever about the Communist Party nor other Marxist-Leninist parties. Instead he focuses on broad movements, such as Black Lives Matter (a loose association of groupings), and Antifa (more of a movement than an organization). He traces chains of influence rather than organizational ties.

The decline of Marxist-Leninist radical parties is partially due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and of its satellites in 1989-91, and the turn of China to an openly market-oriented economy—even if it is still ruled by a “Communist” Party. (That confuses Levin who still refers to “Communist China.”) The continued influence of Marxism, which is Levin’s main concern, is due however to the observable decline in the capitalist society: its economic stagnation, its growing climate catastrophe, its pandemic, its political polarization including the growth of semi-fascism. Levin denies all these factors and claims that there is a radicalization growing without any real objective causes. In fact, there is a growth of a new socialist movement, but rather than being Marxist-Leninist it identifies as “democratic socialist.” There has been an increase in people regarding themselves as anarchists, rather than Marxists. (Levin creates a strange amalgam of “Marxist-anarchists”, pointing to Antifa, BLM, and the Weather Underground of the sixties, of which only Antifa has anarchist influences.)

Central Beliefs of Marxism and Anarchism

What is striking about the movements of opposition today, and even the spread of “Marxist-oriented” ideas, is the extent to which they reject two central tenets of classical Marxism—concepts which were shared with revolutionary anarchism. These are (1) the potential central role of the working class in fighting capitalism. Most current radicals do not see the working class as even one of three or five main forces in changing society. For example, the anti-racist movement (which Levin claims is just an extension of Critical Race Theory) focuses on the oppression of Black people and other People of Color by white people. Class issues are pretty much ignored. So is the concept that the exploitation of white working people by the capitalist class is supported by the use of racism and white supremacy. Similarly, Levin spends some time on the theories of Herbert Marcuse, without focusing on Marcuse’s central view that the modern working class has been totally absorbed into capitalist society.

(2) Also rejected is the eventual goal of a revolution by the working class and all oppressed. This aims to take away the wealth of the capitalists, to socialize their industries, to dismantle their state, and replace these institutions with new ones based on self-management, freedom, and cooperation. Levin refers to the work of Professor Frances Fox Piven as revolutionary. She advocated a militant “poor people’s movement” which would demonstrate and commit mass civil disobedience. But her goal was to shake up the government, to pressure the Democratic Party, and to get more benefits from the government. She was a militant reformist, not a revolutionary.

Levin interprets these rejections of central concepts of Marxism (and of anarchism) as being assertions of Marxism! He interprets any division of society into oppressor and oppressed as essentially the same as a class analysis. However, there is a large difference between seeing that some people are oppressed, mistreated, and discriminated against—and understanding that society runs on squeezing surplus labor from those who are employed to work for bosses. The first insight may be important, but it remains limited.

Levin interprets any attempt to make society better, to decrease racism, to improve people’s lives, to mitigate climate change, as advocating revolution. He sees electing Democrats as the equivalent to overthrowing the state. He cannot distinguish among liberals, authoritarian revolutionaries, and libertarian-democratic revolutionaries. They are all one to him, enemies of everything he holds good.

Some of his arguments, however, are simply bizarre. He claims that the Democrats want to make it easier to go to higher education (cancelling debts and supporting state colleges) because they want more young people to be exposed to Marxist indoctrination! He claims that progressives want to let more immigrants into the country so that the Democrats would have more voters.

It is difficult to know how much of Mark Levin’s misstatements are due to his misunderstanding, or to ignorance, or to deliberate obfuscation. Some of his errors are small, such as referring to Marx’s ideology of “material historicism” instead of the correct “historical materialism” (58). Or referring to the Marxist Frankfurt School as the “Franklin School” (82). Or reprinting long passages from the philosopher Hannah Arendt about totalitarianism, without realizing that she was not only denouncing Stalinist Communism but also right-wing fascism.

Another example is his discussion of the great liberal John Dewey (1859—1952). Today Dewey has little influence outside of philosophy and education departments. But to Levin, “the social activist journalists who now populate the vast majority of U.S. newsrooms are John Dewey followers” (p. 204). No evidence is cited for this remarkable statement. Levin refers to “Dewey’s call for a public, top-down, government-managed ‘socialism’…” (p. 49). Any reading of Dewey’s works or a biography of Dewey would show that he championed decentralized, bottom-up federalism, and neighborly communities [1]. Dewey opposed state socialism in favor of worker-managed cooperative industries, as was advocated at the time by British “guild socialists” (reformist anarcho-syndicalists). He was an advocate of participatory democracy in the community, in schools, and at work.

To make Dewey sound like a Marxist, Levin quotes him agreeing with Marx about the importance of economic factors. He refers to Dewey’s positive (and naive) report on the Russian schools in 1928 (before the full force of the Stalinist counterrevolution settled in). But again, any biography of Dewey would discuss his lifelong rejection of Marxism, and his increasingly vehement opposition to the Communism of the Soviet Union and its supporters. The truth is exactly the opposite of Mark Levin’s account.

It is hardly worth reviewing Levin’s climate-change denialism. He baldly denies that there is a consensus of scientists that the climate is heating up, creating all sorts of extreme weather events and catastrophes even now. “The ‘climate-change’ movement…is a broad-based war on your property rights, liberty , and way of life” (p. 271). Unfortunately no ones’ property rights or liberty will be worth much in a drought-ridden, burned-out, and/or flooded world. Levin’s opposition to doing something about climate change is no joke. It threatens the future of civilization, and the survival of humanity and our fellow creatures.

Oddly enough, although his book was published in 2021, he says nothing about the pandemic, except for one phrase denouncing “the coronavirus pandemic authoritarians” (p. 249). Nor does he raise the issue of women’s right to abortions, although it is a major topic on the right. This issue is an authoritarian demand that legislatures, police, and courts have control over the most personal aspects of women’s lives.

Projection

Much of Levin’s work demonstrates the psychological concept of “projection.” This is a defense mechanism where people imagine that the traits they dislike about themselves are really embodied in their opponents, who can be denounced for their own proclivities. Levin denounces the Democratic Party (which he sees as indistinguishable from liberalism and Marxism) as “an autocratic, power-hungry, ideological movement that rejects political and traditional comity and seeks to permanently crush its opposition—and emerge as the sole political and governmental power” (p. 6). Could there be a better summary of the “movement conservatism” of the right-wing Republican Party?

He denounces the Democrats for waging a campaign of lies and distortions about its opponents—as if Trump were not a pathological liar who ended his presidential tenure by pushing the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. He attacks the Democrats for stacking the courts—when Mitch McConnell stonewalled Democratic court nominations and then pushed forward dozens of reactionary, pro-business and anti-choice, federal judges. He claims that the Democrats are trying to distort the voting process when Republican state governments have raised hundreds of bills to limit the popular vote, especially in Black districts. (I am not trying to defend the Democrats; unlike Levin I can distinguish among the Democrats, various types of Marxists, and anarchists.)

He is a fanatical supporter of capitalism, while simultaneously denouncing the U.S. capitalist class. For many, he claims, “their boardrooms, management, and workforce are ‘down for the revolution’….Many corporatists have simply abandoned capitalism for statism….Today’s ruling class or elites disdain our country” (p. 10). He cites a quotation that “America has a bad elite….inspired by…a deracinated globalist perspective…” (p. 10). Levin charges that “there are too many corporations committed to the various Marxist-Critical Theory movements….” (p. 248). Worst of all, “companies have now openly partnered with the Democratic Party against the Republican Party” (p. 263). Thus he manages the neat trick of opposing the U.S. ruling class while fiercely supporting their system and opposing their radical enemies.

The use of projection is made explicit in Levin’s chapter on his proposed program of action. He advocates using the very methods which he claims are being used by the evil Marxists. “We must use the Marxist’s strategy and tactics against him” (p. 252). What is evil in the hands of the Marxists smells of perfume when done by right-wingers.

He proposes to use the methods of “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” as developed by the “extremist enemies” of Israel (p. 252). While claiming to be all for freedom, he proposes a massive attack on the left, a revival of the McCarthyite hysterical anti-communist witch hunt. Remember, he does not distinguish among Marxists, progressives, and Democrats. To him, all are essentially the same and need to be rooted out.

He proposes boycotting and withdrawing from corporations and banks, as well as sports events, universities, and entertainment, which, in his opinion “are engaged in promoting American Marxism and its various movements” (p. 252). He calls for pressure on local and state governments to stop subsidizing “Marxism.” This freedom-loving patriot demands that governments “ban the teaching and indoctrination of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Critical Gender Theory, etc., from taxpayer-financed public schools” (p. 252-3). “Patriots” should organize in every school district, overwhelm the school board at open meetings, and take over the school boards. They should re-write teacher union contracts to prevent teachers from supposedly proselytizing for Marxism or Critical Race Theory (this would have to be enforced by right-wing parents and students). They should aim for de-establishing public schools and replace them with charter schools and “vouchers for private and parochial schools” (p. 257). Colleges and universities should face anti-fund raising campaigns, pressure on state legislatures in the case of subsidized state universities. Students should denounce their professors for “propagandizing” (p. 263).

Dealing with supposedly traitorous corporations, he proposes boycotts, protests, and overwhelming shareholder meetings. He wants to “lobby state legislators to investigate those corporations…and pressure them to divest all state pensions and other funds from these companies” (p. 265). He calls for antitrust policies to be used agains Big Tech and similar companies which are not sufficiently supportive of far-right politics. Another expression of how freedom-loving he is.

He wants to fight the anti-climate change movement through lawsuits and cutting off tax-exemptions. He hopes to fight Black Lives Matter by increasing legal penalties against rioting and violence. His model is Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida. Police officers should be able to bring civil suits against anyone who attacks them, as well as against organizations whose programs led to riots and violence, “such as Antifa and BLM” (p. 276).

After this call for increased surveillance and repression, of acting like the very authoritarians he claims to oppose, Mark Levin closes with the cry, “We chose liberty! Patriots of America unite!” (p. 276). There is a cute final picture of his late family dog.

The psychologist Erich Fromm wrote Escape from Freedom [2] to explain the attraction which Nazism had for so many ordinary Germans. He believed that large numbers of people, mostly from the lower middle classes, had felt adrift, alienated from society, threatened by both those below them and the elite above them, overwhelmed by modern times, lost and confused. They wanted a strong leader who would tell them what to think, feel, and do. The worldview of the Nazis was nonsense, but it gave so many Germans a sense of community, solidarity, and meaning, someone to hate (the Jews) and someone to adore (Adolph Hitler). (This analysis fits well with that of Hannah Arendt, in the extensive quotations Levin provides.)

Levin is not a Nazi although he is trending towards fascism. He is correct on the authoritarianism of most Marxists and some liberals. Otherwise he presents a total fantasy, an image of the country being taken over by Marxists and sort-of Marxists, an extreme danger (while denying real extreme dangers, such as climate catastrophe). He offers the discontented an explanation of their problems, a community of the like-minded, an enemy to hate, and a leader to love. As the Nazis (National Socialists) claimed to be “socialists” to fit in with the political culture of Germany at the time, so Levin and his fellow “conservatives” claim to “love liberty.” However, he is no more a lover of liberty than the Nazis were socialists. He is an extreme authoritarian and nationalist, as comes clear in his program. The popularity of this book should worry those who do love freedom.

References

[1] Westbrook, Robert B. (1991). John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

[2] Fromm, Erich (1941). Escape from Freedom. NY: Farrar & Rinehart.

Citation: Wayne Price. Review of Levin, Mark R. American Marxism. H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews. December, 2021.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=57226

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
H-Net Reviews

A rant about the 105th anniversary of the NZ Labour Party.

The NZ Labour Party was 105 years old yesterday. Being old in itself is not always a bad thing of course. It is an achievement that can sometimes be commended. However, in this case, we in Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) don’t wish that organisation a Happy Birthday. We would prefer this political dinosaur to practice voluntary euthanasia or be organisationally made extinct.

When the NZLP started it made a big noise about wishing to replace the current economic system of capitalism with socialism. In its constitution in 1916, it said it wanted “The socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange”. An admirable goal. How well has it done? Capitalism is still here and Labour has been instrumental in ensuring its survival as the B-team for the establishment. They spent ages trying to gain access to the existing machinery of government during their early days. When they finally did, they proved just as capable of demonstrating they could operate business-as-usual, as their right-wing frenemies have.

The list of actions committed by the NZLP that took them away from the direction of fundamental change to the system are numerous and began early. There isn’t space to go into them all in this short piece, but as a sample…in the 1920s’ they downplayed and attacked militant unionists who were trying to do stuff Labour had paid lip service to. They stood by and offered no support during the 1951 watersiders dispute and by the 1980s’ were actively attacking workers’ rights in new legislation and privatising everything that wasn’t nailed down. With twists and turns along the way and strengthening by National and ACT, this has lead to today’s landscape of temporary contracts, long and split shifts, lack of union coverage, and poor wages. More recently they have made minor tweaks to some of that legislation but have otherwise done nothing. Meanwhile, house prices skyrocket and kids suffer from diseases linked to poverty. And that’s just in the economic sphere. In other regards, Labour has adopted a hostile approach to anyone who genuinely desires freedom. This has taken the form of jailing conscientious objectors during World War 2, through to current plans to censor the internet and control freedom of speech and they have never substantially cut the military or curtailed the activities of the SAS or SIS.

As for the personnel in parliament, we generally just have a collection of careerists from educated middle-class backgrounds and a leader who values spin and grin above substance. Can anyone recall the last time you heard ANYONE in the contemporary Labour Party use the word “socialism”? As anarchists, we have never advocated the methods of achieving socialism the way the original Labour Party did. We don’t see slowly working within the existing system, voting every 3 years and having state ownership of stuff as the real deal. The reality now is that even judged against their own shoddy, pathetic methods, the Labour Party is far from where they rhetorically began over 100 years ago.

If you are happy with an organisation that just wants to manage this system of inequality and control, then put on your party hat (in both senses) and sing along to the birthday song the government wants you to. If you are interested in exploring a genuine alternative and a fresh way of doing stuff, we suggest leaving the misnamed ‘Labour’ Party behind and trying a new approach.