First Published: in Kommunist. Ezenedel'nyi zurnal ekonomiki, politiki i obsenstvennosti. Organ Moskovskago Oblastnogo Byuro RKP (bol'sevikov) [The Communist. Weekly Magazine for Economics, Politics and Social Questions. Organ of the Moscow District Office of the RCP(B)], No. 2, April 1918.
Source: Internationalist Communist Tendency
Translation: Klasbatalo (Canada)
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski
IF DISORGANISATION OF PRODUCTION and the decomposition of a genuine proletarian mentality give rise to a deviation such as a dissolution of proletarian demands into general aspirations of "the people", meaning mainly peasants, and if these same conditions render the proletariat lumpen and whole groups of industrial workers into declassed "individuals" not connected with the proletariat as a whole through relations of work and common mass struggle - all of this creates fertile ground for the anarchist state of mind. Some high-sounding interventions by anarchists and bourgeois newspapers in their furor (see the young newspaper Vperyod)[2] around the famous liquidation of known Muscovite groups (such as The Trumpet, Hurricane, etc., whose names are all the more poetic as their "politics" is not), lead us to draw the line between Marx's scientific communism and anarchist theories. This is all the more necessary as the social democrats have radically disfigured and "trivialized" Marx's ideas; they betrayed them to make them bourgeois, just as they betrayed the proletariat in practice and failed to deal with the problem of anarchism, so that we will have to examine it in addition to the opinions of the social-traitors on anarchism to clear Marx's thought of the muck thrown there by Messieurs Plekhanov, Renner,[3] Guesde[4] and other advocates of the "state concept" the names of whom God only knows.
LET US BEGIN WITH THE "FINAL GOAL", ours and that of the anarchists. On this point, the usual position is simply that communism and socialism are favorable to maintaining the state, whereas "anarchy" abolishes it. "Statists" and "anti-statists" - this is how the vulgum profanum emphasizes "the difference" between Marxists and anarchists.
One must bear in mind that not only anarchists, but social democrats themselves have contributed to this different characterization. All the talk about the "future state", the "people's state" (Volkstaat) has taken a prominent place in the ideological construct of social democracy.[5] Some social democratic parties have always stressed their "state" character. "We are the real bearers of the idea of State" ("die wahren Träger des Staatsidee") - the Austrian Social Democrats have declared verbatim. These opinions were widespread, beyond the Austrian party; in a way, they were internationally (and still are in part because the old social democracy is not yet definitively rotten).
Unfortunately, this "state wisdom" has nothing to do with Marx's revolutionary communist ideas.
Scientific communism considers the state as the organization of the ruling classes, an instrument of oppression and violence. It is only natural that it cannot then speak of a future state. In this future, there will be no classes, no class oppression, therefore no instrument of this oppression and no state power. The "classless state" in which the social democrats are getting lost is a contradiction in itself, an absurdity, baloney, "dry water".[6] And the fact that the ideological seepage from this '"dry water" constitutes the intellectual nectar of social democracy is by no means the fault of the great revolutionaries Marx and Engels.
Communist society is stateless. But if true - and most certainly it is - what really is the difference between anarchists and Marxist communists? Does this difference no longer exist, at least on the question of the future society and the "ultimate goal"?
Of course it exists, but is altogether different. It can be briefly defined as the difference between large centralized production and small decentralized production.
We communists on the other hand believe that the future society must not only rid us of the exploitation of man by man, but also allow man more independence from nature by reducing "necessary working time" and maximizing socialized productive forces and the productivity of socialized labor. That is why our ideal is large-scale centralized, organized and planned production, tending towards the organization of the entire world economy. Anarchists, on the other hand, prefer a wholly different type of organization: their ideal is small communes - unsuited to large-scale production by the very nature of their structure - which conclude "agreements" between themselves and are connected in a network of voluntary contractual relationships. Clearly such a production scheme is reactionary from an economic standpoint. It will not and cannot give space to the development of productive forces; from an economic standpoint, it is more like the communes of the Middle Ages than the society that will replace capitalism. This scheme is not only reactionary but utopian par excellence. Future society will not be born of "nothing", will not be delivered from the sky by a stork. It grows within the old world and the relationships created by the giant machinery of financial capital. It is clear that the future development of productive forces (any future society is only viable and possible if it develops the productive forces of the already outdated society) can only be achieved by continuing the tendency towards the centralization of the production process, and the improved organization of the "direction of things" replacing the former "direction of men".
But anarchists will reply that the essence of the state is precisely centralization; "By maintaining centralization of production, you will thus maintain the state apparatus, its power, violence", and "authoritarian relations".
This fallacious argument is based on a purely childish and unscientific notion of the state. As with capital, the state is not "a thing", but a relationship between individuals - between classes to be more precise. It is a relationship of class, domination and oppression - that's the essence of the state. Otherwise the state does not exist. To consider centralization as the characteristic and main feature of the state is like considering capital as a means of production. The means of production becomes capital only when monopolized by one class and used for the wage exploitation of another, i.e. when these means of production express the social relations of class oppression and class economic exploitation. On the other hand, they are a good thing in themselves - the instrument of man's struggle against nature. That is why they will not disappear in future society and will have a deserved a place there.
There was a period in the history of the working class when the latter did not know how to distinguish between the machine as a means of production and the machine as a means of oppression. Back then, the worker did not seek to abolish private ownership of machines, but sought to destroy the machines themselves, to return to primitive manual devices.[7]
So it is for "conscious" anarchists with regard to centralization of production. They see that in capitalist society this centralization serves as an instrument of oppression, and naively protest against centralization in general, in childish confusion between the essence of the question with its social and historical envelope.
So as far as the future society is concerned, the differences between us, communists and anarchists, is not whether we are for or against the State, but that we are for centralized production towards the maximum development of productive forces, while they are for small decentralized production that, rather than develop the level of productive forces, reduces it.
THE SECOND MAIN DISTINCTION between communists and anarchists is in their attitude towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Between capitalism and "future society" lies a whole period of class struggle, of fending off the attacks of a battered, but still insurgent, bourgeoisie on the class. Experience of the October Revolution shows that the bourgeoisie, though "beaten to the ground", still retains the remnants of its forces for the struggle, armed or not, against the workers, and that it all ultimately depends on international reaction - as permanent victory will only be possible when the proletariat clears all the capitalist muck and "eventually stifles" the bourgeoisie everywhere.
It is natural therefore that the proletariat needs an organization to lead this struggle. The wider, stronger and firmer this organization is, the swifter the final victory. This provisional organization is the proletarian State, the power of the workers, their dictatorship.
Like all power, proletarian power participates in the organization of violence. Like any state, the proletarian state is an instrument of oppression. But the problem of violence must not be raised in such a formal way. That would be the standpoint of a good Christian, a Tolstoyan, not a revolutionary. The problem of violence can be solved in a positive or negative sense, depending on who the violence is used against. Revolution and counter-revolution are also acts of violence. But it would be absurd to renounce the revolution for that reason.
Likewise, there is the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This power is an instrument of oppression, but directed against the bourgeoisie. It provides for a system of repression directed essentially against the bourgeoisie. In the class struggle, at times of extreme tensions in the civil war, we must not speak of individual freedoms, but about the need to put an end to the various exploiting classes.
We have two choices: either the proletariat finishes off the defeated bourgeoisie and defends itself against its international allies, or it doesn't. If it does, it must do so in an organized and coherent way, by spreading its struggle wherever its forces are able. And, in this case, it needs an organized power, whatever the cost. This power is the power of the proletarian state.
Class differences cannot be crossed out with a stroke of a pen. The bourgeoisie does not disappear as a class after losing political power. The proletariat itself remains as such after its victory. But it became the ruling class. Should it persist as such, or dissolve immediately into the surrounding enemy mass? This is how the question is historically posed. And there are no two answers. There is only one: the proletariat as the motor-force of the revolution must absolutely remain master of the situation until it transforms the other classes through its example. Then, and only then, will the proletariat dissolve its state organization and the state "die".
With regard to this transitional period, the anarchists have another viewpoint and here our divergence is confirmed: for or against the proletarian commune-state, for or against the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Any power, whatever the circumstances, is unacceptable to anarchists because it oppresses. For this reason, workers' power is unacceptable to them in that it oppresses the bourgeoisie. Thus, at this phase of the revolution, anarchists thunder against proletarian power in unison with the bourgeoisie and the conciliating parties. In protesting against workers' power, anarchists are no longer "left", no longer "extreme" as they usually claim. They are just bad revolutionaries, since they do not want to declare organized, consistent and mass war against the bourgeoisie. By renouncing the dictatorship of the proletariat, they abandon the strongest instrument of the struggle; by opposing the dictatorship, they disorganize the forces of the proletariat and by lowering the rifle of the proletariat, they objectively help the bourgeoisie and its social-traitors.
It is not hard to follow the general idea expressed in the anarchist position on the future society and on the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is their aversion in principle to organized, coherent and mass methods of action.
In our situation, the way anarchists ask the question is extremely dangerous. A coherent anarchist must oppose Soviet power and aspire to destroy it. However, given the obvious absurdity of this point of view for workers and peasants, few dare to draw this conclusion from their own premises; some anarchists sit well in the highest legislative and executive body of state power of the proletariat, and therefore of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets. This is an obvious inconsistency and the renunciation of a pure anarchist position. And yet of course, the anarchist must not overly appreciate the soviets and at best only "use" them while always being ready to disorganize them. Quite naturally then, we should expect here an extremely strong practical divergence because at present we see our main task in the enlargement, strengthening and organization of the power of mass proletarian unions (the councils of workers' deputies) while the anarchists must consciously hinder this construction.
Similarly, our paths strongly diverge in the field of economic practice in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The main condition for the economic elimination of capitalism is not to allow "the expropriation of the expropriators" to degenerate into sharing, even into egalitarian sharing. Any sharing gives rise to small landowners, and from small property flows great capitalist property. This is why sharing the wealth of the rich leads inevitably and once again to the formation of the same class of "rich" people The task of the working class is not petty-bourgeois and lumpen-proletarian sharing, but the social and fraternal, coherent and organized use of the expropriated means of production.
However, this is only possible if the very act of expropriation is exercised in an organized manner, under the control of the workers' institutions. Otherwise "expropriation" takes on an overtly disorganizing character and easily degenerates into mere "appropriation" by individuals of socialized property.
The Russian economy in general, industry and agriculture, is deteriorating and disintegrating terribly. The cause of these terrible difficulties is not only the immediate destruction of productive forces, but also the colossal disorganization of the entire economic system. This is why, more than ever, workers must be concerned about the inventory and strict control of all means of production, expropriated houses, requisitioned consumer products, and so on. Such control is possible only when expropriation is exercised by the organs of workers' power and not by individuals and private groups.
We have CONSCIOUSLY made a point not to criticize anarchists as criminals, bandits, etc. For the workers, it is important to understand the dangerous aspects of their theory that give rise to such an equally dangerous practice.
The argument should not be centered on a superficial polemic. But after what we said above, we can understand why it is mainly anarchist groups that degrade themselves by carrying out their "expropriation", why the underworld "creeps in" among anarchists. Everywhere and always there are elements that use the revolution for their own personal benefit. But it is more difficult to "fish in troubled waters" where the expropriation of expropriators is put under control of mass organizations.
On the other hand, the refusal in principle of organized mass actions to favour "demonstrations" of "free", "self-determined", "autonomous" and "independent" groups, serves as a perfect cover for such "expropriations" which are not distinguished from the exploits of underworld heroes.
The dangerous aspect of expropriations, individual requisitions, etc. is that not only do such acts prevent the construction of a coherent apparatus of production, distribution and leadership, but they also demoralize and disorganize those who commit them and divert them from a common and fraternal cause, from the constitution of a collective will, and replace them with the arbitrariness of an isolated group or even of a "free individual".
Workers' revolution has two sides: destructive and constructive. The destructive side is expressed primarily by the disappearance of the bourgeois state, although social democratic opportunists claim that the proletariat's conquest of power does not mean the destruction of the capitalist state at all. But such a "conquest" exists only in the minds of these individuals. In reality, the workers' conquest of power is exercised through the destruction of the power of the bourgeoisie.
And in this destruction of the bourgeois state, anarchists can play a positive role. But they are absolutely incapable of building a "new world". Also, after the conquest of power by the proletariat, when the construction of socialism becomes the most important cause, they play an almost negative role in obstructing its construction with their wild and disorganizing diatribes. Communism and the communist revolution are the proletarian cause of the productive class united by the mechanism of great production. All other poor strata can act as agents of the communist revolution as long as they follow the proletariat.
Anarchism is not the ideology of the proletariat, but that of declassed, unproductive groups, uprooted from all productive work, from the lumpen-proletariat recruited from the proletariat, of ruined petty bourgeois, declassed intellectuals, peasants fallen into ruin, in a word, beggars who cannot and are no longer even able to create something new, to produce new value and who are only able to consume the objects stolen during the "requisitions" - that's the social base of anarchism. Anarchism is the product of the decomposition of capitalist society. The characteristic feature of this decomposition is the disintegration of social relations, the transformation of the former members of certain classes into atomized "individuals", independent of all existing classes "by themselves", not working for or obeying any organization in the name of their own existence - human dust generated by the barbarism of capital.
This is why a healthy working class cannot be poisoned by anarchism. Only under conditions of the decomposition of the working class, itself, does anarchism appear at one of its poles as a symptom of the disease. The working class must struggle not only against its economic decomposition, but also against its ideological decomposition of which anarchism is the product.
Notes
[1] The following translation comes from Kommunist #2 and was written in March/April 1918. There are two existing versions on marxists.org and libcom.org but looking at the original we realised that these are incomplete. They both appear to have been translated from an Italian version which was put out as a twelve page pamphlet by the Communist Party of Italy in the early 1920s. It seems that some of the more difficult Italian passages were avoided in that translation. As previously, our translation is taken from La Revue Kommuniste (Smolny Press) which was based on the Russian original.
[2] Vyperod (Forward) was actually a Menshevik newspaper at this point.
[3] Karl Renner (1879-1950): Austrian social democrat, member of the SDAP (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei) since 1896, he was elected deputy in 1907 and remained very much on the right in the social democracy before 1914. After the collapse of the Austrian Empire, he became chancellor (1918-1920) and then a member of parliament, eventually holding the presidency (1931-1933). After the defeat of the Nazis, he was elected President of the Republic of Austria.
[4] Jules Guesde (1845-1922): French socialist, founder of the Workers' Party in 1882, he joined the ranks of the Sacred Union in support of the imperialist war in 1914.
[5] This idea of a "people's state" or "free state", particularly supported by the Lasalleans, is reflected in the programme adopted at the Gotha Unification Congress between the SDAP (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei) and the ADAV (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein) in 1875. Marx refutes this notion in his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875).
[6] Idiomatic expression to show the absurdity of something. (Editor's note)
[7] This a reference to the Luddite movement which was a revolt of artisanal workers against mechanisation but Bukharin could have made this point better. Such mechanisation reduced the wages of those workers by at least 75% thus giving them a profound material reason for resisting mechanisation and the prospect of entering the factory to be at the beck and call of an overseer was equally daunting. Under capitalism mechanisation is always at the expense of the workers in some way or another (unemployment, increased exploitation etc). Only under a mode of production where production is for need and not profit can new technology be part of the process of setting humanity free from drudgery.