  Reply to errors and distortions in David McNally's pamphlet "Socialism from
                                     Below"

   Since this appendix was first written, David McNally has distanced
   himself from his pamphlet's critique of anarchism. In an end-note in
   his book Another World Is Possible: Globalization & Anti-Capitalism he
   wrote:

     "I dissent from Draper's one-sided critique of anarchism . . .
     Draper is not fair to some of the currents within social anarchism.
     I also reject my own restatement of Draper's interpretation in the
     first edition of my booklet Socialism from Below" [David McNally,
     Another World Is Possible, p. 393]

   While it seems unlikely this was in response to reading our critique,
   it does show that it was correct. Unfortunately it took McNally over 20
   years to acknowledge that his 1980 essay gave a distinctly distorted
   account of anarchism. Perhaps significantly, McNally no longer seems to
   be associated with the sister organisations of the British Socialist
   Workers Party (a group whose distortions of anarchism are infamous).

   McNally now argues that "it may be more helpful to try and defend a
   common political vision -- such as socialism from below or libertarian
   socialism -- as a point of reference" rather than fixate over labels
   like "Marxism" or "anarchism." [Op. Cit., p. 347] As we noted in our
   critique of his 1980 pamphlet, the term "socialism from below" has a
   distinctly anarchist feel to it, a feel distinctly at odds with
   Leninist ideology and practice. Moreover, as shown below, Lenin
   explicitly denounced "from below" as an anarchist idea -- and his
   practice once in power showed that "from above" is part and parcel of
   Leninism in action.

   [1]AFAQ Blog has a posting on this issue. In addition, many of the
   issues discussed in this appendix are also explored in [2]section H of
   the FAQ and that should also be consulted. This is particularly the
   case as that section has been completed and revised after this appendix
   was completed.

1. Introduction

   In chapter three of his pamphlet [3]Socialism from Below, David McNally
   decides to expose (what he calls) "The Myth Of Anarchist
   Libertarianism." In reality, his account is so distorted and, indeed,
   dishonest that all it proves is that Marxists will go to extreme
   lengths to attack anarchist ideas. As Brain Morris points out,
   defending the Leninist tradition and ideology "implies . . . a
   compulsive need to rubbish anarchism." [Ecology & Anarchism, p. 128]
   McNally's pamphlet is a classic example of this. As we will prove, his
   "case" is a mish-mash of illogical assertions, lies and, when facts do
   appear, their use is simply a means of painting a false picture of
   reality.

   He begins by noting that "Anarchism is often considered to represent
   [a] current of radical thought that is truly democratic and
   libertarian. It is hailed in some quarters as the only true political
   philosophy [of] freedom." Needless to say, he thinks that the "reality
   is quite different." He argues that "[f]rom its inception anarchism has
   been a profoundly anti-democratic doctrine. Indeed the two most
   important founders of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Michael
   Bakunin, developed theories that were elitist and authoritarian to the
   core." We will discover the truth of this assertion later. However, we
   must note that McNally uses the typical Marxist approach to attacking
   anarchism -- namely to attack anarchists rather than anarchism as such.
   Indeed, he lamely notes that "[w]hile later anarchists may have
   abandoned some of the excesses' of their founding fathers their
   philosophy remains hostile to ideas of mass democracy and workers'
   power." Thus, we have the acknowledgement that not all anarchists share
   the same ideas and that anarchist theory has developed since 1876 (the
   year of Bakunin's death). This is to be expected as anarchists are not
   Proudhonists or Bakuninists -- we do not name ourselves after one
   person, rather we take what is useful from libertarian writers and
   ignore the rubbish. In Malatesta's words, "[w]e follow ideas and not
   men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man."
   [Life and Ideas, p. 199] However, this is beside the point as McNally's
   account of the anarchism of Proudhon and Bakunin is simply false --
   indeed, so false as to make you wonder if he is simply incompetent as a
   scholar or seeks to present a patchwork of lies as fact and "theory."

2. Is anarchism the politics of the "small property owner"?

   McNally does start out by acknowledging that "anarchism developed in
   opposition to the growth of capitalist society. What's more, anarchist
   hostility to capitalism centred on defence of the liberty of the
   individual." However, he then distorts this actual historical
   development by arguing that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was
   not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new
   society. Rather, anarchism defended the freedom of the small property
   owner -- the shopkeeper, artisan and tradesman -- against the
   encroachments of large-scale capitalist enterprise."

   Such a position is, to say the least, a total distortion of the facts
   of the situation. Proudhon, for example, addressed himself to both the
   peasant/artisan and the proletariat. He argued in What is Property?
   that he "preach[ed] emancipation to the proletaires; association to the
   labourers." [p. 137] Thus Proudhon addressed himself to both the
   peasant/artisan and the "working class" (i.e. wage slaves). This is to
   be expected from a libertarian form of socialism as, at the time of his
   writing, the majority of working people were peasants and artisans .
   Indeed, this predominance of artisan/peasant workers in the French
   economy lasted until the turn of the century. Not to take into account
   the artisan/peasant would have meant the dictatorship of a minority of
   working people over the rest of them. Given that in chapter 4 of his
   pamphlet McNally states that Marxism aims for a "democratic and
   collective society . . . based upon the fullest possible political
   democracy" his attack on Proudhon's concern for the artisan and peasant
   is doubly strange. Either you support the "fullest possible political
   democracy" (and so your theory must take into account artisans and
   peasants) or you restrict political democracy and replace it with rule
   by the few.

   Thus Proudhon did support the "the freedom of the working class to make
   collectively a new society." His ideas were aimed at both
   artisan/peasant and proletarian. Moreover, this position was a
   distinctly sensible and radical position to take:

     "While Marx was correct in predicting the eventual predominance of
     the industrial proletariat vis--vis skilled workers, such
     predominance was neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion in France
     during the nineteenth century. The absolute number of small
     industries even increased during most of the century. . .

     Nor does Marx seem to have been correct concerning the revolutionary
     nature of the industrial proletariat. It has become a clich of
     French labour history that during the nineteenth century artisans
     were much oftener radical than industrial workers. Some of the most
     militant action of workers in late nineteenth century France seems
     to have emerged from the co-operation of skilled, urbanised
     artisanal workers with less highly skilled and less urbanised
     industrial workers."
     [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French
     Republican Socialism, pp. 282-3]

   The fruits of this union included the Paris Commune (an event both
   McNally and Marx praise -- see [4]section 12 for more discussion on
   this). In addition, as we will see, Proudhon's proposals for a
   mutualist society included workers self-management and collective
   ownership of large scale workplaces as well as artisan and peasant
   production. This proposal existed explicitly for the proletariat, for
   wage slaves, and explicitly aimed to end wage labour and replace it by
   association and self-management (Proudhon stated that he aimed for "the
   complete emancipation of the worker . . . the abolition of the wage
   worker." [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 222]). Thus, rather than
   being backward looking and aimed at the artisan/peasant, Proudhon's
   ideas looked to the present (and so the future) and to both the
   artisan/peasant and proletariat (i.e. to the whole of the working class
   in France at the time).

   In the words of Gustav Landauer, Proudhon's "socialism . . . of the
   years 1848 to 1851 was the socialism of the French people in the years
   1848 to 1851. It was the socialism that was possible and necessary at
   that moment. Proudhon was not a Utopian and a prophet; not a Fourier
   and not a Marx. He was a man of action and realisation." [For
   Socialism, p. 108] Vincent makes the same point, arguing that
   Proudhon's "social theories may not be reduced to a socialism for only
   the peasant class, nor was it a socialism only for the petite
   bourgeois; it was a socialism of and for French workers. And in the
   mid-nineteenth century . . . most French workers were still artisans. .
   . French labour ideology largely resulted from the real social
   experiences and aspirations of skilled workers . . . Proudhon's thought
   was rooted in the same fundamental reality, and therefore
   understandably shared many of the same hopes and ideals." [Op. Cit.,
   pp. 5-6] It is no coincidence, therefore, that when he was elected to
   the French Parliament in 1848 most of the votes cast for him were from
   "working class districts of Paris -- a fact which stands in contrast to
   the claims of some Marxists, who have said he was representative only
   of the petite bourgeoisie." [Robert L. Hoffman, quoted by Robert
   Graham, "Introduction", P-J Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution,
   p. xv]

   Given that his proposals were aimed at the whole working class, it is
   unsurprising that Proudhon saw social change as coming from "below" by
   the collective action of the working class:

     "If you possess social science, you know that the problem of
     association consists in organising . . . the producers, and by this
     organisation subjecting capital and subordinating power. Such is the
     war that you have to sustain: a war of labour against capital; a war
     of liberty against authority; a war of the producer against the
     non-producer; a war of equality against privilege . . . to conduct
     the war to a successful conclusion, . . . it is of no use to change
     the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings:
     an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of
     which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave."
     [System of Economical Contradictions, pp. 397-8]

   In the same work he continues his discussion of proletarian
   self-organisation as the means of social change:

     "Thus power [i.e. the state] . . . finds itself inevitably enchained
     to capital and directed against the proletariat. . . The problem
     before the labouring classes, then, consists, not in capturing, but
     in subduing both power and monopoly, -- that is, in generating from
     the bowels of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater
     authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the
     State and subjugate them. Every proposition of reform which does not
     satisfy this condition is simply one scourge more . . . which
     threatens the proletariat." [Op. Cit., p. 399]

   Little wonder Proudhon saw the validity of his mutualist vision from
   the self-activity of French workers (see [5]section A.1.5 for details).
   Where Proudhon differs from later anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin,
   Malatesta and Goldman is that this self-activity is reformist in
   nature, that is seeking alternatives to capitalism which can reform it
   away rather than alternatives that can fight and destroy it. Thus
   Proudhon places his ideas firmly in the actions of working people
   resisting wage slavery (i.e. the proletariat, not the "small property
   owner").

   Similarly with Bakunin. He argued that "revolution is only sincere,
   honest and real in the hands of the masses" and so socialism can be
   achieved "by the development and organisation, not of the political but
   of the social (and, by consequence, anti-political) power of the
   working masses . . . . organise[d] and federate[d] spontaneously,
   freely, from the bottom up, by their own momentum according to their
   real interest, but never according to any plan laid down in advance and
   imposed upon the ignorant masses by some superior intellects." Such a
   socialist society would be based on "the collective ownership of
   producers' associations, freely organised and federated in the
   communes, and by the equally spontaneous federation of these communes."
   Thus "the land, the instruments of work and all other capital [will]
   become the collective property of the whole of society and be utilised
   only by the workers, in other words by the agricultural and industrial
   associations." And the means to this socialist society? Trade unionism
   ("the complete solidarity of individuals, sections and federations in
   the economic struggle of the workers of all countries against their
   exploiters.") [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 237, pp. 197-8,
   p. 197, p. 174 and p. 177] Indeed, he considered trade unions
   (organised from the bottom up, of course) as "the natural organisation
   of the masses" and thought that "workers' solidarity in their struggle
   against the bosses . . . [by] trades-unions, organisation, and the
   federation of resistance funds" was the means by which workers could
   emancipate itself "through practical action." [The Basic Bakunin, p.
   139 and p. 103]

   And McNally asserts that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was
   not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new
   society"! Only someone ignorant of anarchist theory or with a desire to
   deceive could make such an assertion.

   Needless to say, McNally's claim that anarchism is the politics of the
   "small property owner" would be even harder to justify if he mentioned
   Kropotkin's communist anarchism. However, like Proudhon's and Bakunin's
   support for collective ownership by workers associations it goes
   unmentioned -- for obvious reasons.

3. Does anarchism "glorify values from the past"?

   McNally continues. He asserts, regardless of the facts, that anarchism
   "represented the anguished cry of the small property owner against the
   inevitable advance of capitalism. For that reason, it glorified values
   from the past: individual property, the patriarchal family, racism."

   Firstly, we should note that unlike Marx, anarchists did not think that
   capitalism was inevitable or an essential phase society had to go
   through before we could reach a free society. They did not share Marx's
   viewpoint that socialism (and the struggle for socialism) had to be
   postponed until capitalism had developed sufficiently so that the
   "centralisation of the means of production and the socialisation [sic!]
   of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their
   capitalist integument." [Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 929] As McNally
   states, socialism was once the "banner under which millions of working
   people resisted the horrors of the factory system and demanded a new
   society of equality, justice, freedom and prosperity." Unfortunately,
   the Marxist tradition viewed such horrors as essential, unavoidable and
   inevitable and any form of working class struggle -- such as the
   Luddites -- which resisted the development of capitalism was denounced.
   So much for Marxism being in favour of working class
   "self-emancipation" -- if working class resistance to oppression and
   exploitation which does not fit into its scheme for "working class
   self-emancipation" then it is the product of ignorance or non-working
   class influences.

   Thus, rather than representing "the anguished cry of the small property
   owner against the inevitable advance of capitalism" anarchism is rather
   the cry of the oppressed against capitalism and the desire to create a
   free society in the here and now and not some time in the future. To
   quote Landauer again:

     "Karl Marx and his successors thought they could make no worse
     accusation against the greatest of all socialists, Proudhon, than to
     call him a petit-bourgeois and petit-peasant socialist, which was
     neither incorrect nor insulting, since Proudhon showed splendidly to
     the people of his nation and his time, predominately small farmers
     and craftsmen, how they could achieve socialism immediately without
     waiting for the tidy process of big capitalism." [Op. Cit., p. 61]

   Thus McNally confuses a desire to achieve socialism with backward
   looking opposition to capitalism. As we will see, Proudhon looked at
   the current state of society, not backwards, as McNally suggests, and
   his theory reflected both artisan/peasant interests and those of wage
   slaves -- as would be expected from a socialist aiming to transform his
   society to a free one. The disastrous results of Bolshevik rule in
   Russia should indicate the dangers of ignoring the vast bulk of a
   nation (i.e. the peasants) when trying to create a revolutionary change
   in society.

   Secondly, it is not really true that Proudhon or Bakunin "glorified"
   "individual property" as such. Proudhon argued that "property is theft"
   and that "property is despotism." He was well aware of the negative
   side effects of individual property. Rather he wanted to abolish
   property and replace it with possession. We doubt that McNally wants to
   socialise all "property" (including individual possessions and such
   like). We are sure that he, like Marx and Engels, wants to retain
   individual possessions in a socialist society. Thus they state that the
   "distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property
   generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property" and that "Communism
   deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society;
   all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour
   of others by means of such appropriation." [The Manifesto of the
   Communist Party, p.47 and p. 49] Later Marx argued that the Paris
   Commune "wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the
   means of production, land and capital . . . into mere instruments of
   free and associated labour." [Selected Writings, pp. 290-1]

   Thus support for "individual property" is not confined to Proudhon (and
   we must note that Proudhon desired to turn capital over to associated
   labour as well -- see [6]section A.5.1 for Proudhon's influence in the
   economic measures made during the Commune to create co-operatives).

   Indeed, initially Marx had nothing but praise for Proudhon's critique
   of Property contained in his classic work What is Property?:

     "Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians he
     is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier. His work is a scientific
     manifesto of the French proletariat." [quoted by Rudolf Rocker, Marx
     and Anarchism]

   As Rocker argues, Marx changed his tune simply to "conceal from
   everyone just what he owed to Proudhon and any means to that end was
   admissible." This can be seen from the comments we quote above which
   clearly show a Proudhonian influence in their recognition that
   possession replaces property in a socialist society and that associated
   labour is its economic basis. However, it is still significant that
   Proudhon's analysis initially provoked such praise by Marx -- an
   analysis which McNally obviously does not understand.

   It is true that Proudhon did oppose the socialisation of artisan and
   peasant workplaces. He considered having control over the means of
   production, housing, etc. by those who use it as a key means of
   maintaining freedom and independence. However, Proudhon also called for
   "democratically organised workers' associations" to run large-scale
   industry in his 1848 Election Manifesto. [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1,
   p. 62] This aspect of his ideas is continual throughout his political
   works and played a central role in his social theory. Thus to say that
   Proudhon "glorified" "individual property" distorts his position. And
   as the experience of workers under Lenin indicates, collective
   ownership by the state does not end wage labour, exploitation and
   oppression. Proudhon's arguments in favour of possession and against
   capitalist and state ownership were proven right by Bolshevik Russia
   --state ownership did lead to "more wage slavery." [Ibid.] As the
   forced collectivisation of the peasantry under Stalin shows, Proudhon's
   respect for artisan/peasant possessions was a very sensible and humane
   position to take. Unless McNally supports the forced collectivisation
   of peasants and artisans, Proudhon's solution is one of the few
   positions a socialist can take.

   Moving on from Proudhon, we discover even less support for "individual
   property." Bakunin, for example, was totally in favour of collective
   property and opposed individual property in the means of life. As he
   put it, "the land, the instruments of work and all other capital [will]
   become the collective property of society and by utilised only by the
   workers, in other words by the agricultural and industrial
   associations." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 174] With
   regards to peasants and artisans Bakunin desired voluntary
   collectivisation. "In a free community," he argued, "collectivism can
   only come about through the pressure of circumstances, not by
   imposition from above but by a free spontaneous movement from below."
   [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 200]). Thus, rather than being a defender of
   "individual property" Bakunin was in fact a supporter of collective
   property (as organised in workers' associations and communes) and
   supported peasant and artisan property only in the sense of being
   against forced collectivisation (which would result in "propelling [the
   peasants] into the camp of reaction." [Op. Cit., p. 197]).

   Hence Daniel Guerin's comments:

     "Proudhon and Bakunin were 'collectivists,' which is to say they
     declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common
     exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the
     large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon
     has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of
     private property. . . At the Bale congress [of the First
     International] in 1869, Bakunin . . . all[ied] himself with the
     statist Marxists . . . to ensure the triumph of the principle of
     collective property." ["From Proudhon to Bakunin", The Radical
     Papers, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), p.32]

   Similarly, while it is true that Proudhon did glorify the patriarchal
   family, the same cannot be said of Bakunin. Unlike Proudhon, Bakunin
   argued that "[e]qual rights must belong to both men and women," that
   women must "become independent and free to forge their own way of life"
   and that "[o]nly when private property and the State will have been
   abolished will the authoritarian juridical family disappear." He
   opposed the "absolute domination of the man" in marriage, urged "the
   full sexual freedom of women" and argued that the cause of women's
   liberation was "indissolubly tied to the common cause of all the
   exploited workers -- men and women." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 396-7]
   Hardly what would be considered as the glorification of the patriarchal
   family -- and a position shared by Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman,
   Goldman, Chomsky and Ward. Thus to state that "anarchism" glorifies the
   patriarchal family simply staggers belief. Only someone ignorant of
   both logic and anarchist theory could make such an assertion. We could
   make similar remarks with regards to the glorification of racism (as
   Robert Graham points out "anti-semitism formed no part of Proudhon's
   revolutionary programme." [Op. Cit., p. xxxvi] The same can be said of
   Bakunin).

4. Why are McNally's comments on Proudhon a distortion of his ideas?

   McNally now attempts to provide some evidence for his remarks. He turns
   to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "widely proclaimed 'the father of
   anarchism.'" As he correctly notes, he was a "printer by vocation" and
   that he "strongly opposed the emergence of capitalism in France."
   However, McNally claims that Proudhon's "opposition to capitalism was
   largely backward-looking in character" as he "did not look forward to a
   new society founded upon communal property which would utilise the
   greatest inventions of the industrial revolution. Instead, Proudhon
   considered small, private property the basis of his utopia. His was a
   doctrine designed not for the emerging working class, but for the
   disappearing petit bourgeoisie of craftsmen, small traders and rich
   peasants." Unfortunately McNally has got his facts wrong. It is well
   known that this was not the case (which is why McNally used the words
   "largely backward-looking" -- he is aware of facts but instead
   downplays them).

   If you look at Proudhon's writings, rather than what Marx and Engels
   claimed he wrote, it will soon be discovered that Proudhon in fact
   favoured collective ownership of large scale industry by workers'
   associations. He argued for "the mines, canals, railways handed over to
   democratically organised workers' associations . . . We want these
   associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the
   pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies
   woven into the common cloth of the democratic social Republic." [No
   Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62] Three years later he stressed that
   "[e]very industry, operation or enterprise which by its nature requires
   the employment of a large number of workmen of different specialities,
   is destined to become a society or company of workers." [The General
   Idea of the Revolution, p. 216] This argument for workers'
   self-management and collective ownership follows on from his earlier
   comment in 1840 that "leaders" within industry "must be chosen from the
   labourers by the labourers themselves." [What is Property?, p. 414]

   Rather than base his utopia on "small, private property" Proudhon based
   it on the actual state of the French economy -- one marked by both
   artisan and large-scale production. The later he desired to see
   transformed into the collective property of workers' associations and
   placed under workers' self-management. The former, as it did not
   involve wage-labour, he supported as being non-capitalist. Thus his
   ideas were aimed at both the artisan and the appearing class of wage
   slaves. Moreover, rather than dismiss the idea of large-scale industry
   in favour of "small, private property" Proudhon argued that "[l]arge
   industry . . . come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is
   necessary in the future to make them rise from the [labour]
   association." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Proudhon and the Rise of
   French Republican Socialism, p. 156] As Vincent correctly summarises:

     "On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the
     general image given on the secondary literature, Proudhon was not
     hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of
     what these large enterprises had introduced into society. For
     example, Proudhon strenuously opposed the degrading character of . .
     . work which required an individual to repeat one minor function
     continuously. But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale
     production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to
     socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a
     machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result,
     according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers'
     associations. These associations would enable the workers to
     determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed
     and operated on a day-to-day basis." [Op. Cit., p. 156]

   As can be seen, McNally distorts Proudhon's ideas on this question.

   McNally correctly states that Proudhon "oppose[d] trade unions." While
   it is true that Proudhon opposed strikes as counter-productive as well
   as trade unions, this cannot be said of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman,
   and so on. Bakunin, for example, considered trade unions as truest
   means of expressing the power of the working class and strikes as a
   sign of their "collective strength." [The Basic Bakunin, pp. 149-50]
   Why should Proudhon (the odd man out in anarchist theory with regards
   to this issue) be taken as defining that theory? Such an argument is
   simply dishonest and presents a false picture of anarchist theory.

   Next McNally states that Proudhon "violently opposed democracy" and
   presents a series of non-referenced quotes to prove his case. Such a
   technique is useful for McNally as it allows him quote Proudhon without
   regard to when and where Proudhon made these comments and the context
   in which they were made. It is well known, for example, that Proudhon
   went through a reactionary phrase roughly between 1852 and 1862 and so
   any quotes from this period would be at odds with his anarchist works.
   As Daniel Guerin notes:

     "Many of these masters were not anarchists throughout their lives
     and their complete works include passages which have nothing to do
     with anarchism.

     "To take an example: in the second part of his career Proudhon's
     thinking took a conservative turn."
     [Anarchism, p. 6]

   Similarly, McNally fails to quote the many statements Proudhon made in
   favour of democracy. Why should the anti-democratic quotes represent
   anarchism and not the pro-democratic ones? Which ones are more in line
   with anarchist theory and practice? Surely the pro-democratic ones.
   Hence we find Proudhon arguing that "[i]n democratising us, revolution
   has launched us on the path of industrial democracy" and that his
   People's Bank "embodies the financial and economic aspects of modern
   democracy, that is, the sovereignty of the People, and of the
   republican motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." We have already
   mentioned Proudhon's support for workers' self-management of production
   and his People's Bank was also democratic in nature -- "A committee of
   thirty representatives shall be set up to see to the management of the
   Bank . . . They will be chosen by the General Meeting . . . [which]
   shall consist of not more than one thousand nominees of the general
   body of associates and subscribers . . . elected according to
   industrial categories and in proportion to the number of subscribers
   and representatives there are in each category." [Selected Writings of
   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 63, p. 75 and p. 79] Thus, instead of
   bourgeois democracy Proudhon proposes industrial and communal
   democracy:

     "In place of laws, we will put contracts [i.e. free agreement]. --
     No more laws voted by a majority, nor even unanimously; each
     citizen, each town, each industrial union, makes its own laws." [The
     General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 245-6]

     "If political right is inherent in man and citizen, consequently if
     suffrage ought to be direct, the same right is inherent as well, so
     much the more so, for each corporation [i.e. self-managed industry],
     for each commune or city, and the suffrage in each of these groups,
     ought to be equally direct." [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Op. Cit.,
     p. 219]

     "In order that the association may be real, he who participates in
     it must do so . . . as an active factor; he must have a deliberative
     voice in the council . . . everything regarding him, in short,
     should be regulated in accordance with equality. But these
     conditions are precisely those of the organisation of labour."
     [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Op. Cit., pp. 155-6]

   Do these quotes suggest a man "violently opposed [to] democracy"? Of
   course not. Nor does McNally quote Proudhon when he stated that
   "[b]esides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal
   suffrage, we want implementation of the binding mandate. Politicians
   bulk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, in electing
   representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their
   sovereignty! That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even
   democracy." He also supported freedom of association, assembly,
   religion, of the press and of thought and speech. [No Gods, No Masters,
   vol. 1, p. 63] Nor does McNally note Proudhon's aim of (and use of the
   term) "industrial democracy" which would be "a reorganisation of
   industry, under the jurisdiction of all those who compose it." [quoted
   by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 225] As can be seen, Proudhon's position on
   democracy is not quite what McNally suggests.

   Thus McNally presents a distorted picture of Proudhon's ideas and thus
   leads the reader to conclusions about anarchism violently at odds with
   its real nature. It is somewhat ironic that McNally attacks Proudhon
   for being anti-democratic. After all, as we indicate in [7]section 8
   below, the Leninist tradition in which he places himself has a distinct
   contempt for democracy and, in practice, destroyed it in favour of
   party dictatorship.

   Lastly, McNally states that Proudhon "opposed emancipation for the
   American blacks and backed the cause of the southern slave owners
   during the American Civil War." In fact, the American Civil War had
   very little to do with slavery and far more to do with conflicts within
   the US ruling class. Proudhon opposed the North simply because he
   feared the centralisation that such a victory would create. He did not
   "tolerate" slavery. As he wrote in The Principle of Federation "the
   enslavement of part of a nation denies the federal principle itself."
   [p. 42f] Moreover, what are we to draw from Proudhon's position with
   regards the American Civil War about anarchism? Bakunin supported the
   North (a fact unmentioned by McNally). Why is Proudhon's position an
   example of anarchism in practice and not Bakunin's? Could it be that
   rather than attack anarchism, McNally attacks anarchists?

   Also, it is somewhat ironic that McNally mentions Proudhon's "support"
   for the South as the Leninist tradition he places his own politics is
   renown for supporting various dictatorships during wars. For example,
   during the Vietnam war the various Leninist groups called for victory
   to North Vietnam, a Stalinist dictatorship. During the Gulf War, they
   called for victory to Iraq, another dictatorship. In other words, they
   "tolerated" and "supported" anti-working class regimes, dictatorships
   and repression of democracy. They stress that they do not politically
   support these regimes, rather they wish these states to win in order to
   defeat the greater evil of imperialism. In practice, of course, such a
   division is hard to defend -- for a state to win a war it must repress
   its own working class and so, in calling for a victory for a
   dictatorship, they must support the repression and actions that state
   requires to win the war. After all, an explosion of resistance, class
   struggle and revolt in the "lesser imperialist power" will undermine
   its war machine and so lead to its defeat. Hence the notion that such
   calls do not mean support for the regime is false. Hence McNally's
   comments against Proudhon smack of hypocrisy -- his political tradition
   have done similar things and sided with repressive dictatorships during
   wars in the name of political aims and theory. In contrast, anarchists
   have consistently raised the idea of "No war but the class war"
   in such conflicts (see [8]section A.3.4).

5. Why are McNally's comments on Bakunin a distortion of his ideas?

   McNally then moves on to Bakunin whom he states "shared most of
   Proudhon's views." The truth is somewhat different. Unlike Proudhon,
   Bakunin supported trade unions and strikes, equality for women,
   revolution and far more extensive collectivisation of property. In
   fact, rather than share most of his views, Bakunin disagreed with
   Proudhon on many subjects. He did share Proudhon's support for
   industrial self-management, self-organisation in self-managed workers'
   associations from below, his hatred of capitalism and his vision of a
   decentralised, libertarian socialist society. It is true that, as
   McNally notes, "Bakunin shared [Proudhon's] anti-semitism" but he fails
   to mention Marx and Engels' many racist remarks against Slavs and other
   peoples. Also it is not true that Bakunin "was a Great Russian
   chauvinist convinced that the Russians were ordained to lead humanity
   into anarchist utopia." Rather, Bakunin (being Russian) hoped Russia
   would have a libertarian revolution, but he also hoped the same for
   France, Spain, Italy and all countries in Europe (indeed, the world).
   Rather than being a "Great Russian chauvinist" Bakunin opposed the
   Russian Empire (he wished "the destruction of the Empire of All the
   Russias" [The Basic Bakunin, p. 162]) and supported national liberation
   struggles of nationalities oppressed by Russia (and any other
   imperialist nation).

   McNally moves on to Bakunin's on revolutionary organisation methods,
   stating that they "were overwhelmingly elitist and authoritarian." We
   have discussed this question in some detail in section J.3.7
   ([9]Doesn't Bakunin's "Invisible Dictatorship" prove that anarchists
   are secret authoritarians?) and so will not do so here. However, we
   should point out that Bakunin's viewpoints on the organisational
   methods of mass working class organisations and those of political
   groupings were somewhat different.

   The aim of the political grouping was to exercise a "natural influence"
   on the members of working class unions and associations, seeking to
   convince them of the validity of anarchist ideas. The political group
   did not aim to seize political power (unlike Marxists) and so it
   "rule[d] out any idea of dictatorship and custodial control." Rather
   the "revolution would be created by the people, and supreme control
   must always belong to the people organised into a free federation of
   agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from below
   upwards by means of revolutionary delegation." All the political group
   could do was to "assist the birth of the revolution by sowing ideas
   corresponding to the instincts of the masses . . . [and act] as
   intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular
   instinct." The political group thus "help[s] the people towards
   self-determination on the lines of the most complete equality and the
   fullest freedom in every direction, without the least interference from
   any sort of domination." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 172
   and p. 191]

   As regards the forms of popular organisations Bakunin favoured, he was
   clear it would be based on "factory, artisan, and agrarian sections"
   and their federations [Statism and Anarchy, p. 51]. In other words,
   trade unions organised from the bottom up and based upon
   self-management in "general membership meetings . . . [i.e.] popular
   assembles . . . [where] the items on the agenda were amply discussed
   and the most progressive opinion prevailed." The "federative alliance
   of all the workers' associations . . . will constitute the commune . .
   . [with] deputies invested with imperative, always responsible, and
   always revocable mandates." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 247 and p. 153]

   Given McNally's praise of the Paris Commune and the Russian soviets, it
   seems strange that Bakunin's comments with regards to revolutionary
   social organisation with its obvious parallels to both should not be
   mentioned by McNally. Perhaps because to do so would totally undermine
   his case? Thus rather than being "overwhelmingly elitist and
   authoritarian" Bakunin's ideas on a future society bar marked
   similarities to the actual structures created by working people in
   struggle and are marked by libertarian and self-managed visions and
   concepts -- as anyone familiar with Bakunin's work would know.

   McNally then quotes "one historian" on Bakunin (not even providing a
   name makes evaluating the accuracy of the historian's work impossible
   and so leaves the reader in the dark as to whether the historian does
   provide a valid account of Bakunin's ideas). The unnamed author states
   that:

     "The International Brotherhood he founded in Naples in 1865-66 was
     as conspiratorial and dictatorial as he could make it, for Bakunin's
     libertarianism stopped short of the notion of permitting anyone to
     contradict him. The Brotherhood was conceived on the Masonic model,
     with elaborate rituals, a hierarchy, and a self-appointed directory
     consisting of Bakunin and a few associates."

   However, as we argue in [10]section J.3.7, this description of
   Bakunin's secret societies is so distorted as to be useless. To point
   to just two examples, the historian T.R. Ravindranathan indicates that
   after the Alliance was founded "Bakunin wanted the Alliance to become a
   branch of the International [Worker's Association] and at the same time
   preserve it as a secret society. The Italian and some French members
   wanted the Alliance to be totally independent of the IWA and objected
   to Bakunin's secrecy. Bakunin's view prevailed on the first question as
   he succeeded in convincing the majority of the harmful effects of a
   rivalry between the Alliance and the International. On the question of
   secrecy, he gave way to his opponents. . ." [Bakunin and the Italians,
   p. 83] Moreover, the Spanish section of the Alliance "survived Bakunin
   . . . yet with few exceptions it continued to function in much the same
   way as it had done during Bakunin's lifetime." [George R. Esenwein,
   Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, p. 43]
   Hardly what you would expect if McNally's vision was accurate.

   In summary, McNally's comments are a distortion of Bakunin's ideas and
   activities. McNally represents a distorted picture of one aspect of
   Bakunin's ideas while ignoring those aspects which support working
   class self-organisation and self-management.

6. Are the "quirks of personality" of Proudhon and Bakunin listed by McNally
actually rooted "in the very nature of anarchist doctrine"?

   After chronicling the failings and distorting the facts of two
   individuals, McNally tries to generalise. "These characteristics of
   Bakunin and Proudhon," he argues, "were not mere quirks of personality.
   Their elitism, authoritarianism and support for backward-looking and
   narrow-minded causes are rooted in the very nature of anarchist
   doctrine." Thus McNally claims that these failings of Proudhon and
   Bakunin are not personal failings but rather political. They represent
   the reactionary core of anarchist politics. However, his position
   leaves something to be desired. For example, the question remains,
   however, why, say, Proudhon's support of the South during the American
   Civil War is an example of "anarchist doctrine" while Bakunin's support
   of the North is not. Or why Proudhon's opposition to trade unions and
   strikes is an example of "anarchist doctrine" while Bakunin's (and
   Kropotkin's, Malatesta's, Berkman's, Goldman's, etc) support for
   strikes and union organisation is not. Or why Proudhon's sexism is
   another example but Bakunin's, Kropotkin's, Goldman's, Malatesta's, et
   al support for women's equality is not. Indeed, rather than take
   examples which are common to anarchist theorists McNally takes only
   those positions held by one, at most two, major anarchist thinkers
   (positions tangential to the core of their ideas and, indeed, directly
   opposed to them). From this minority of examples he generalises a
   theory -- and so violates the basic principles of the scientific
   method!

   These examples in themselves prove the weakness of McNally's claims and
   the low levels of scholarship which lay behind them. Indeed, it is
   amazing that the SWP/ISO printed this diatribe -- it obviously shows
   their contempt for facts, history and the intelligence of their desired
   audience.

7. Are anarchists against democracy?

   McNally goes onto assert the following:

     "Originating in the revolt of small property owners against the
     centralising and collectivising trends in capitalist development
     (the tendency to concentrate production in fewer and fewer large
     workplaces), anarchism has always been rooted in a hostility to
     democratic and collectivist practices. The early anarchists feared
     the organised power of the modern working class."

   We have already refuted the claim that the "early anarchists feared the
   organised power of the modern working class." We will now indicate why
   McNally is wrong to claim that anarchists express "hostility to
   democratic and collectivist practices."

   As indicated above Proudhon supported collective ownership and
   management of large-scale workplaces (i.e. those which employ
   wage-slaves under capitalism). Thus he clearly was in favour of
   economic direct democracy and collective decision making by groups of
   workers. Similarly, Bakunin also supported workers' productive
   associations like co-operatives and envisioned a free society as being
   based on workers' collective ownership and the self-management of
   production by the workers themselves. In addition, he supported trade
   unions and saw the future society as being based on federations of
   workers' associations. To claim that anarchists are hostile to
   democratic and collectivist practices is simply not true. As would be
   clear to anyone reading their works.

   McNally then asserts that "[t]o this day, most anarchists defend the
   'liberty' of the private individual against the democratically made
   decisions of collective groups." Here McNally takes a grain of truth to
   create a lie. Yes, anarchists do defend the liberty of individuals to
   rebel against the decisions of collective groups (we should point out
   that Marxists usually use such expressions as a euphemism for the
   state, but here we will take it at face value). Why? For two reasons.
   Firstly, the majority is not always right. Secondly, simply because
   progress is guaranteed by individual liberty -- by dissent. That is
   what McNally is attacking here -- the right of individuals and groups
   to dissent, to express themselves and live their own lives.

   As we argue in [11]section A.2.11, most anarchists are in favour of
   direct democracy in free associations. However, we agree with Carole
   Pateman when she argues:

     "The essence of liberal social contract theory is that individuals
     ought to promise to, or enter an agreement to, obey representatives,
     to whom they have alienated their right to make political decisions
     . . . Promising . . . is an expression of individual freedom and
     equality, yet commits individuals for the future. Promising also
     implies that individuals are capable of independent judgement and
     rational deliberation, and of evaluating and changing their own
     actions and relationships; promises may sometimes justifiably be
     broken. However, to promise to obey is to deny or limit, to a
     greater or lesser degree, individuals' freedom and equality and
     their ability to exercise these capacities. To promise to obey is to
     state that, in certain areas, the person making the promise is no
     longer free to exercise her capacities and decide upon her own
     actions, and is no longer equal, but subordinate." [The Problem of
     Political Obligation, p. 19]

   Thus, for anarchists, a democracy which does not involve individual
   rights to dissent, to disagree and to practice civil disobedience would
   violate freedom and equality, the very values McNally claims to be at
   the heart of Marxism. He is essentially arguing that the minority
   becomes the slave of the majority -- with no right of dissent when the
   majority is wrong. In effect, he wishes the minority to be subordinate,
   not equal, to the majority. Anarchists, in contrast, because they
   support self-management also recognise the importance of dissent and
   individuality -- in essence, because they are in favour of
   self-management ("democracy" does not do the concept justice) they also
   favour the individual freedom that is its rationale. We support the
   liberty of private individuals because we believe in self-management
   ("democracy") so passionately.

   Simply put, Marxism (as McNally presents it here) flies in the face of
   how societies change and develop. New ideas start with individuals and
   minorities and spread by argument and by force of example. McNally is
   urging the end of free expression of individuality. For example, who
   would seriously defend a society that "democratically" decided that,
   say, homosexuals should not be allowed the freedom to associate freely?
   Or that inter-racial marriage was against "Natural Law"? Or that
   socialists were dangerous subversives and should be banned? He would,
   we hope (like all sane people), recognise the rights of individuals to
   rebel against the majority when the majority violate the spirit of
   association, the spirit of freedom and equality which should give
   democracy its rationale.

   Indeed, McNally fails to understand the rationale for democratic
   decision making -- it is not based on the idea that the majority is
   always right but that individual freedom requires democracy to express
   and defend itself. By placing the collective above the individual,
   McNally undermines democracy and replaces it with little more than
   tyranny by the majority (or, more likely, those who claim to represent
   the majority).

   If we take McNally's comments seriously then we must conclude that
   those members of the German (and other) Social Democratic Party who
   opposed their party's role in supporting the First World War were
   acting in inappropriately. Rather than express their opposition to the
   war and act to stop it, according to McNally's "logic" they should have
   remained in their party (after all, leaving the party meant ignoring
   the democratic decision of a collective group!), accepted the
   democratic decision of collective groups and supported the Imperialist
   slaughter in the name of democracy. Of course, McNally would reject
   such a position -- in this case the rights of minorities take
   precedence over the "democratic decisions of collectives." This is
   because the majority is not always right and it is only through the
   dissent of individuals and minorities that the opinion of the majority
   can be moved towards the right one. Thus his comments are fallacious.

   Progress is determined by those who dissent and rebel against the
   status quo and the decisions of the majority. That is why anarchists
   support the right of dissent in self-managed groups -- in fact, as we
   argue in [12]section A.2.11, dissent, refusal, revolt by individuals
   and minorities is a key aspect of self-management. Given that Leninists
   do not support self-management (rather they, at best, support the
   Lockean notion of electing a government as being "democracy") it is
   hardly surprising they, like Locke, views dissent as a danger and
   something to denounce. Anarchists, on the other hand, recognising that
   self-management's (i.e. direct democracy) rationale and base is in
   individual freedom, recognise and support the rights of individuals to
   rebel against what they consider as unjust impositions. As history
   shows, the anarchist position is the correct one -- without rebellion,
   numerous minorities would never have improved their position. Indeed,
   McNally's comments is just a reflection of the standard capitalist
   diatribe against strikers and protestors -- they don't need to protest,
   for they live in a "democracy."

   So, yes, anarchists do support individual freedom to resist even
   democratically made decisions simply because democracy has to be based
   on individual liberty. Without the right of dissent, democracy becomes
   a joke and little more than a numerical justification for tyranny. Thus
   McNally's latter claim that the "challenge is to restore to socialism
   its democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom"
   seems farcical -- after all, he has just admitted that Marxism aims to
   eliminate individual freedom in favour of "collective groups" (i.e. the
   government). Unless of course he means freedom for the abstraction
   "humanity" rather than concrete freedom of the individual to govern
   themselves as individuals and as part of freely joined self-managed
   associations? For those who really seek to restore to socialism its
   passionate concern for freedom the way it clear -- anarchism. Hence
   Murray Bookchin's comments:

     "Marxism['s] . . . perspectives are orientated not towards concrete,
     existential freedom, but towards an abstract freedom -- freedom for
     'Society', for the 'Proletariat', for categories rather than for
     people." [Post Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 225-6]

   Anarchism, on the other hand, favours freedom for people and that
   implies two things -- individual freedom and self-management (direct
   democracy) in free associations. Any form of "democracy" not based on
   individual freedom would be so contradictory as to be useless as a
   means to human freedom (and vice versa, any form of "individual
   freedom" -- such a liberalism -- which denies self-management would be
   little more than a justification for minority rule and a denial of
   human freedom).

   Ultimately, McNally's attack on anarchism fails simply because the
   majority is not always right and dissent a key to progress. That he
   forgets these basic facts of life indicates the depths to which
   Marxists will sink to distort the truth about anarchism.

   Not that those in the Bolshevik tradition have any problem with
   individuals ignoring the democratic decisions of collective groups. The
   Bolsheviks were very happy to let individuals ignore and revoke the
   democratic decisions of collective groups -- as long as the individuals
   in question were the leaders of the Bolshevik Party. As the examples we
   provide later (in [13]section 8) indicate, leading lights in the
   Leninist tradition happily placed the rights of the party before the
   rights of working people to decide their own fate.

   Thus McNally comments are strange in the extreme. Both anarchists and
   Leninists share a belief that individuals can and should have the right
   to ignore decisions made by groups. However, Leninists seem to think
   only the government and leadership of the Party should have that right
   while anarchists think all should. Unlike the egalitarian support for
   freedom and dissent for all anarchists favour, Leninists have an
   elitist support for the right of those in power to ignore the wishes of
   those they govern. Thus the history of Marxists parties in power expose
   McNally as a hypocrite. As we argue in [14]section 14, Marxist ideology
   provides the rationale for such action.

   Moreover, in spite of McNally's claim that the Leninist tradition is
   democratic we find Lenin arguing that the "irrefutable experience of
   history has shown that . . . the dictatorship of individual persons was
   often the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary
   classes." [quoted by Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers
   Control, p. 40] Such a comment is not an isolated one, as we indicate
   in [15]section 8 and indicates well the anti-democratic nature of the
   tradition McNally places himself in. Thus McNally's attempt to portray
   anarchism as "anti-democratic" is somewhat ironic.

   And we must note, as well as refuting McNally's claim that Leninism is
   a democratic tradition, Lenin's comments display a distinct confusion
   over the nature of a social revolution (rather than a political one).
   Yes, previous revolutions may have utilised the dictatorship of
   individuals but these revolutions have been revolutions from one class
   system to another. The "revolutionary" classes in question were
   minority classes and so elite rule would not in any way undermine their
   class nature. Not so with a socialist revolution which must be based on
   mass participation (in every aspect of society, economic, political,
   social) if it is too achieve its goals -- namely a classless society.
   Little wonder, with such theoretical confusion, that the Russian
   revolution ended in Stalinism -- the means uses determined the ends
   (see sections [16]13 and [17]14 for more discussion of this point).

   McNally then states that anarchists "oppose even the most democratic
   forms of collective organisation of social life. As the Canadian
   anarchist writer George Woodcock explains: 'Even were democracy
   possible, the anarchist would still not support it . . . Anarchists do
   not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from
   politics . . .' That is to say, anarchists reject any decision-making
   process in which the majority of people democratically determine the
   policies they will support."

   First, we must point out a slight irony in McNally's claim. The irony
   is that Marxists usually claim that they seek a society similar to that
   anarchists seek. In the words of Marx:

     "What all socialists understand by anarchy is this: once the aim of
     the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, has been
     attained, the power of the State . . . disappears, and the functions
     of government are transformed into simple administrative functions."
     [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 76]

   So, Marxists and anarchists seek the same society, one of individual
   freedom. Hence McNally's comments about anarchism also apply (once the
   state "withers away", which it never will) to Marxism. But, of course,
   McNally fails to mention this aspect of Marxism and its conflict with
   anarchism.

   However, our comments above equally apply here. Anarchists are not
   opposed to people in free associations democratically determining the
   policies they will support (see [18]section A.2.11 for more details on
   this). What we do oppose is the assumption that the majority is always
   right and that minorities should submit to the decisions of the
   majority no matter how wrong they are. We feel that history is on our
   side on this one -- it is only by the freedom to dissent, by the direct
   action of minorities to defend and extent their freedoms that society
   progresses. Moreover, we feel that theory is on our side -- majority
   rule without individual and minority rights is a violation of the
   principle of freedom and equality which democracy is said to be built
   on.

   Democracy should be an expression of individual liberty but in
   McNally's hands it is turned into bourgeois liberalism. Little wonder
   Marxism has continually failed to produce a free society. It has no
   conception of the relationship of individual freedom to democracy and
   vice versa.

8. Are Leninists in favour of democracy?

   McNally's attack on Proudhon (and anarchism in general) for being
   "anti-democratic" is somewhat ironic. After all, the Leninist tradition
   he places himself in did destroy democracy in the workers' soviets and
   replaced it with party dictatorship. Thus his attack on anarchism can
   be turned back on his politics, with much more justification and
   evidence.

   For example, in response to the "great Bolshevik losses in the soviet
   elections" during the spring and summer of 1918 "Bolshevik armed force
   usually overthrew the results of these provincial elections . . . [In]
   the city of Izhevsk [for example] . . . in the May election [to the
   soviet] the Mensheviks and SRs won a majority . . . In June, these two
   parties also won a majority of the executive committee of the soviet.
   At this point, the local Bolshevik leadership refused to give up power
   . . . [and by use of the military] abrogated the results of the May and
   June elections and arrested the SR and Menshevik members of the soviet
   and its executive committee." In addition, "the government continually
   postponed the new general elections to the Petrograd Soviet, the term
   of which had ended in March 1918. Apparently, the government feared
   that the opposition parties would show gains." [Samuel Farber, Before
   Stalinism, pp. 23-4 and p. 22]

   In the workplace, the Bolsheviks replaced workers' economic democracy
   with "one-man management" selected from above, by the state ("The
   elective principle must now be replaced by the principle of selection"
   -- Lenin). Trotsky did not consider this a result of the Civil War --
   "I consider if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of
   all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative,
   we should undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in
   the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less
   painfully." [quoted by M. Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control,
   p. 63 and pp. 66-7] He pushed the ideas of "militarisation of labour"
   as well as abolishing democratic forms of organisation in the military
   (this later policy occurred before the start of the Civil War -- as
   Trotsky put it, the "elective basis is politically pointless and
   technically inexpedient and has already been set aside by decree"
   [quoted by Brinton, Op. Cit., pp.37-8]).

   In May 1921, the All-Russian Congress of the Metalworkers' Union met.
   The "Central Committee of the [Communist] Party handed down to the
   Party faction in the union a list of recommended candidates for union
   (sic!) leadership. The metalworkers' delegates voted down the list, as
   did the Party faction in the union . . . The Central Committee of the
   Party disregarded every one of the votes and appointed a Metalworkers'
   Committee of its own. So much for 'elected and revocable delegates.'
   Elected by the union rank and file and revocable by the Party
   leadership!" [M. Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 83]

   These are a few examples of Trotsky's argument that you cannot place
   "the workers' right to elect representatives above the party. As if the
   Party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that
   dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy!"
   He continued by stating the "Party is obliged to maintain its
   dictatorship . . . regardless of temporary vacillations even in the
   working class . . . The dictatorship does not base itself at every
   moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by
   Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78]

   Thus, when in power, Trotsky did not "insist against all odds that
   socialism was rooted in the struggle for human freedom" as McNally
   claims he did in the 1920s and 1930s (as we discuss in [19]section 15,
   Trotsky did not do it then either). Rather, he thought that the "very
   principle of compulsory labour is for the Communist quite
   unquestionable . . . the only solution to economic difficulties from
   the point of view of both principle and of practice is to treat the
   population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary
   labour power . . . and to introduce strict order into the work of its
   registration, mobilisation and utilisation." Can human freedom be
   compatible with the "introduction of compulsory labour service [which]
   is unthinkable without the application . . . of the methods of
   militarisation of labour"? Or when the "working class cannot be left
   wandering round all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there,
   appointed, commanded, just like soldiers." [Op. Cit., p. 66 and p. 61]

   Of course McNally tries to blame the destruction of democracy in Russia
   on the Civil War but, as indicated above, the undermining of democracy
   started before the civil war started and continued after it had
   finished. The claim that the "working class" had been destroyed by the
   war cannot justify the fact that attempts by working class people to
   express themselves were systematically undermined by the Bolshevik
   party. Nor does the notion of an "exhausted" or "disappeared" working
   class make much sense when "in the early part of 1921, a spontaneous
   strike movement . . . took place in the industrial centres of European
   Russia" and strikes involving around 43 000 per year took place between
   1921 and 1925. [Samuel Farber, Op. Cit., p. 188 and p. 88] While it is
   undeniable that the working class was reduced in numbers because of the
   civil war, it cannot be said to have been totally "exhausted" and,
   obviously, did survive the war and was more than capable of collective
   action and decision making. Strikes, as Bakunin argued, "indicate a
   certain collective strength" and so rather than there being objective
   reasons for the lack of democracy under Lenin we can suggest political
   reasons -- the awareness that, given the choice, the Russian working
   class would have preferred someone else in power!

   Also, we must point out a certain ingenuity in McNally's comments that
   Stalinism can be explained purely by the terrible civil war Russia
   experienced. After all, Lenin himself stated that every "revolution . .
   ., in its development, would give rise to exceptionally complicated
   circumstances" and "[r]evolution is the sharpest, most furious,
   desperate class war and civil war. Not a single great revolution in
   history has escaped civil war. No one who does not live in a shell
   could imagine that civil war is conceivable without exceptionally
   complicated circumstances." [Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p. 80
   and p. 81] Thus McNally's assertion that for "the germ cell of
   socialism to grow [in Russia], it required several essential
   ingredients. One was peace. The new workers' state could not establish
   a thriving democracy so long as it was forced to raise an army and wage
   war to defend itself" is simply incredible. It also raises an important
   question with regards Leninist ideas. If the Bolshevik political and
   organisational form cannot survive during a period of disruption and
   complicated circumstances then it is clearly a theory to be avoided at
   all costs.

   Therefore, in practice, Leninism has proven to be profoundly
   anti-democratic. As we argue in sections [20]13 and [21]14 this is due
   to their politics -- the creation of a "strong government and
   centralism" will inevitably lead to a new class system being created
   [Lenin, Will the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p. 75] This is not
   necessarily because Leninists seek dictatorship for themselves. Rather
   it is because of the nature of the state machine. In the words of
   Murray Bookchin:

     "Anarchist critics of Marx pointed out with considerable effect that
     any system of representation would become a statist interest in its
     own right, one that at best would work against the interests of the
     working classes (including the peasantry), and that at worst would
     be a dictatorial power as vicious as the worst bourgeois state
     machines. Indeed, with political power reinforced by economic power
     in the form of a nationalised economy, a 'workers' republic' might
     well prove to be a despotism (to use one of Bakunin's more favourite
     terms) of unparalleled oppression."

   He continues:

     "Republican institutions, however much they are intended to express
     the interests of the workers, necessarily place policy-making in the
     hands of deputies and categorically do not constitute a 'proletariat
     organised as a ruling class.' If public policy, as distinguished
     from administrative activities, is not made by the people mobilised
     into assemblies and confederally co-ordinated by agents on a local,
     regional, and national basis, then a democracy in the precise sense
     of the term does not exist. The powers that people enjoy under such
     circumstances can be usurped without difficulty. . . [I]f the people
     are to acquire real power over their lives and society, they must
     establish -- and in the past they have, for brief periods of time
     established -- well-ordered institutions in which they themselves
     directly formulate the policies of their communities and, in the
     case of their regions, elect confederal functionaries, revocable and
     strictly controllable, who will execute them. Only in this sense can
     a class, especially one committed to the abolition of classes, be
     mobilised as a class to manage society." [The Communist Manifesto:
     Insights and Problems]

   This is why anarchists stress direct democracy (self-management) in
   free federations of free associations. It is the only way to ensure
   that power remains in the hands of the people and is not turned into an
   alien power above them. Thus Marxist support for statist forms of
   organisation will inevitably undermine the liberatory nature of the
   revolution. Moreover, as indicated in [22]section 14, their idea of the
   party being the "vanguard" of the working class, combined with its
   desire for centralised power, makes the dictatorship of the party over
   the proletariat inevitable.

9. Why is McNally wrong on the relation of syndicalism to anarchism?

   After slandering anarchism, McNally turns towards another form of
   libertarian socialism, namely syndicalism. It is worth quoting him in
   full as his comments are truly ridiculous. He states that there is
   "another trend which is sometimes associated with anarchism. This is
   syndicalism. The syndicalist outlook does believe in collective working
   class action to change society. Syndicalists look to trade union action
   -- such as general strikes -- to overthrow capitalism. Although some
   syndicalist viewpoints share a superficial similarity with anarchism --
   particularly with its hostility to politics and political action --
   syndicalism is not truly a form of anarchism. By accepting the need for
   mass, collective action and decision-making, syndicalism is much
   superior to classical anarchism."

   What is ridiculous about McNally's comments is that all serious
   historians who study the links between anarchism and syndicalism agree
   that Bakunin (for want of a better expression) is the father of
   syndicalism (see [23]section J.3.8 -- indeed, many writers point to
   syndicalist aspects in Proudhon's ideas as well but here we concentrate
   on Bakunin)! Bakunin looked to trade union action (including the
   general strike) as the means of overthrowing capitalism and the state.
   Thus Arthur Lehning's comment that "Bakunin's collectivist anarchism .
   . . ultimately formed the ideological and theoretical basis of
   anarcho-syndicalism" is totally true and indicative. ["Introduction",
   Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 29] As is Rudolf Rocker's:

     "Modern Anarcho-syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social
     aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International
     and which were best understood and most strongly held by the
     libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance."
     [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 49]

   Little wonder, then, we discover Caroline Cahm pointing out "the basic
   syndicalist ideas of Bakunin" and that he "argued that trade union
   organisation and activity in the International [Working Men's
   Association] were important in the building of working-class power in
   the struggle against capital . . . He also declared that trade union
   based organisation of the International would not only guide the
   revolution but also provide the basis for the organisation of the
   society of the future." Indeed, he "believed that trade unions had an
   essential part to play in the developing of revolutionary capacities of
   the workers as well as building up the organisation of the masses for
   revolution." [Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, p.
   219, p. 215 and p. 216] Cahm quotes Bakunin on the role of the general
   strike:

     "When strikes spread by contagion, it is because they are close to
     becoming a general strike, and a general strike in view of the ideas
     of emancipation which hold sway over the proletariat, can only lead
     to a cataclysm which would make society start a new life after
     shedding its old skin." [Op. Cit., p. 217]

   Or George R. Esenwein's comment that syndicalism "had deep roots in the
   Spanish libertarian tradition. It can be traced to Bakunin's
   revolutionary collectivism." He also notes that the class struggle was
   "central to Bakunin's theory." [Op. Cit., p. 209 and p. 20]

   Perhaps, in the face of such evidence (and the writings of Bakunin
   himself), Marxists like McNally could claim that the sources we quote
   are either anarchists or "sympathetic" to anarchism. To counter this we
   will quote Marx and Engels. According to Marx Bakunin's theory
   consisted of urging the working class to "only organise themselves by
   trades-unions" and "not occupy itself with politics." Engels asserted
   that in the "Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever
   employed by which the social revolution is started" and that they
   admitted "this required a well-formed organisation of the working
   class" (i.e. a trade union federation). [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
   Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 48, p. 132 and p. 133] Ignoring
   the misrepresentations of Marx and Engels about the theories of their
   enemies, we can state that they got the basic point of Bakunin's ideas
   -- the centrality of trade union organisation and struggle as well as
   the use of strikes and the general strike.

   (As an aside, ironically enough, Engels distorted diatribe against
   Bakunin and the general strike was later used against more radical
   Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg -- usually claimed by Leninists as part of
   their tradition -- by the reformists in Social Democratic Parties. For
   orthodox Marxists, the mass strike was linked to anarchism and Engels
   had proven that only political action -- i.e. electioneering -- could
   lead to working class emancipation.)

   Thus, according to McNally, "syndicalism" (i.e. Bakunin's ideas) is
   "much superior to classical anarchism" (i.e. Bakunin's ideas)! How
   spurious McNally's argument actually is can be seen from his comments
   about syndicalism and its relation to anarchism.

10. Do syndicalists reject working class political action?

   His last argument against syndicalism is equally flawed. He states that
   "by rejecting the idea of working class political action, syndicalism
   has never been able to give real direction to attempts by workers to
   change society." However, syndicalists (like all anarchists) are clear
   what kind of politics they reject -- bourgeois politics (i.e. the
   running of candidates in elections). It is worth quoting Rudolf Rocker
   at length on McNally's claim:

     "It has often been charged against Anarcho-Syndicalism that it has
     no interest in the political structure of the different countries,
     and consequently no interest in the political struggles of the time,
     and confines its activities to the fight for purely economic
     demands. This idea is altogether erroneous and springs either from
     outright ignorance or wilful distortion of the facts. It is not the
     political struggle as such which distinguishes the
     Anarcho-Syndicalists from the modern labour parties, both in
     principle and in tactics, but the form of this struggle and the aims
     which it has in view. . .

     "The attitude of Anarcho-Syndicalism toward the political power of
     the present-day state is exactly the same as it takes toward the
     system of capitalist exploitation. . . [and so] Anarcho-Syndicalists
     pursue the same tactics in their fight against that political power
     which finds its expression in the state. . .

     "For just as the worker cannot be indifferent to the economic
     conditions of his life in existing society, so he cannot remain
     indifferent to the political structure of his country. . . It is,
     therefore, utterly absurd to assert that the Anarcho-Syndicalists
     take no interest in the political struggles of the time. . . But the
     point of attack in the political struggle lies, not in the
     legislative bodies, but in the people. . . If they, nevertheless,
     reject any participation in the work of bourgeois parliaments, it is
     not because they have no sympathy with political struggles in
     general, but because they are firmly convinced that parliamentary
     activity is for the workers the very weakest and the most hopeless
     form of the political struggle. . .

     "But, most important of all, practical experience has shown that the
     participation of the workers in parliamentary activity cripples
     their power of resistance and dooms to futility their warfare
     against the existing system. . .

     "Anarcho-Syndicalists, then, are not in any way opposed to the
     political struggle, but in their opinion this struggle, too, must
     take the form of direct action, in which the instruments of economic
     power which the working class has at its command are the most
     effective. . .

     "The focal point of the political struggle lies, then, not in the
     political parties, but in the economic fighting organisations of the
     workers. It as the recognition of this which impelled the
     Anarcho-Syndicalists to centre all their activity on the Socialist
     education of the masses and on the utilisation of their economic and
     social power. Their method is that of direct action in both the
     economic and the political struggles of the time. That is the only
     method which has been able to achieve anything at all in every
     decisive moment in history."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 63-66]

   Rocker's work, Anarcho-Syndicalism, was written in 1938 and is
   considered the standard introduction to that theory. McNally wrote his
   pamphlet in the 1980s and did not bother to consult the classic
   introduction to the ideas he claims to be refuting. That in itself
   indicates the worth of his pamphlet and any claims it has for being
   remotely accurate with respect to anarchism and syndicalism.

   Thus syndicalists do reject working class "political action" only if
   you think "political action" means simply bourgeois politics -- that
   is, electioneering, standing candidates for Parliament, local town
   councils and so on. It does not reject "political action" in the sense
   of direct action to effect political changes and reforms. As
   syndicalists Ford and Foster argue, syndicalists use "the term
   'political action' . . . in its ordinary and correct sense.
   Parliamentary action resulting from the exercise of the franchise is
   political action. Parliamentary action caused by the influence of
   direct action tactics . . . is not political action. It is simply a
   registration of direct action." They also note that syndicalists "have
   proven time and again that they can solve the many so-called political
   questions by direct action." [Earl C. Ford and William Z. Foster,
   Syndicalism, p. 19f and p. 23]

   A historian of the British syndicalist movement reiterates this point:

     "Nor did syndicalists neglect politics and the state. Revolutionary
     industrial movements were on the contrary highly 'political' in that
     they sought to understand, challenge and destroy the structure of
     capitalist power in society. They quite clearly perceived the
     oppressive role of the state whose periodic intervention in
     industrial unrest could hardly have been missed." [Bob Holton,
     British Syndicalism: 1900-1914, pp. 21-2]

   As we argued in [24]section J.2.10, anarchist support for direct action
   and opposition to taking part in elections does not mean we are
   "apolitical" or reject political action. Anarchists have always been
   clear -- we reject "political action" which is bourgeois in nature in
   favour of "political action" based on the organisations, action and
   solidarity of working class people. This is because electioneering
   corrupts those who take part, watering down their radical ideas and
   making them part of the system they were meant to change.

   And history has proven the validity of our anti-electioneering ideas.
   For example, as we argue in [25]section J.2.6, the net result of the
   Marxists use of electioneering ("political action") was the
   de-radicalising of their movement and theory and its becoming yet
   another barrier to working class self-liberation. Rather than
   syndicalism not giving "real direction to attempts by workers to change
   society" it was Marxism in the shape of Social Democracy which did
   that. Indeed, at the turn of twentieth century more and more radicals
   turned to Syndicalism and Industrial Unionism as the means of
   by-passing the dead-weight of Social Democracy (i.e. orthodox Marxism),
   its reformism, opportunism and its bureaucracy. As Lenin once put it,
   anarchism "was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist
   sins of the working-class movement." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism
   and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 305]

   Lenin's claim that anarchist and syndicalist support in the working
   class is the result of the opportunist nature of the Social Democratic
   Parties has an element of truth. Obviously militants sick to death of
   the reformist, corrupt and bureaucratic "working class" parties will
   seek a revolutionary alternative and find libertarian socialism.

   However, Lenin seeks to explain the symptoms (opportunism) and not the
   disease itself (Parliamentarianism) . Nowhere does Lenin see the rise
   of "opportunist" tendencies in the Marxist parties as the result of the
   tactics and organisational struggles they used. Indeed, Lenin desired
   the new Communist Parties to practice electioneering ("political
   action") and work within the trade unions to capture their leadership
   positions. Anarchists rather point out that given the nature of the
   means, the ends surely follow. Working in a bourgeois environment
   (Parliament) will result in bourgeoisifying and de-radicalising the
   party. Working in a centralised environment will empower the leaders of
   the party over the members and lead to bureaucratic tendencies.

   In other words, as Bakunin predicted, using bourgeois institutions will
   corrupt "revolutionary" and radical parties and tie the working class
   to the current system. Lenin's analysis of anarchist influence as being
   the off-spring of opportunist tendencies in mainstream parties may be
   right, but if so its a natural development as the tactics supported by
   Marxists inevitably lead to opportunist tendencies developing. Thus,
   what Lenin could not comprehend was that opportunism was the symptom
   and electioneering was the disease -- using the same means
   (electioneering) with different parties/individuals ("Communists"
   instead of "Social Democrats") and thinking that opportunism would not
   return was idealistic nonsense in the extreme.

11. Why is McNally's claim that Leninism supports working class
self-emancipation wrong?

   McNally claims that Marx "was the first major socialist thinker to make
   the principle of self-emancipation -- the principle that socialism
   could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and
   self-organisation of the working class -- a fundamental aspect of the
   socialist project." This is not entirely true. Proudhon in 1848 had
   argued that "the proletariat must emancipate itself without the help of
   the government." [quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A
   Biography, p. 125] This was because the state "finds itself inevitably
   enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat." [Proudhon,
   System of Economical Contradictions, p. 399] Thus, working class people
   must organise themselves for their own liberation:

     "it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some
     variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial
     combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler
     of society, shall become its slave." [Op. Cit., p. 398]

   While Proudhon placed his hopes in reformist tendencies (such as
   workers' co-operatives and mutual banks) he clearly argued that "the
   proletariat must emancipate itself." Marx's use of the famous
   expression -- "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the
   working class itself" -- dates from 1865, 17 years after Proudhon's
   comment that "the proletariat must emancipate itself." As K. Steven
   Vincent correctly summarises:

     "Proudhon insisted that the revolution could only come from below,
     through the action of the workers themselves." [Pierre-Joseph
     Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 157]

   Indeed, as Libertarian Marxist Paul Mattick points out, Marx was not
   even the first person to use the expression "the emancipation of the
   working class is the task of the working class itself." Flora Tristan
   used it in 1843. [Marx and Keynes, p. 333] Thus a case could be made
   that Marx was, in fact, the third "major socialist thinker to make the
   principle of self-emancipation -- the principle that socialism could
   only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and
   self-organisation of the working class -- a fundamental aspect of the
   socialist project."

   Similarly, Bakunin continually quoted Marx's (and so Tristan's) words
   from the Preamble to the General Rules of the First International --
   "That the emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the
   workers themselves." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 92] Far more than Marx,
   Bakunin argued that workers' can only free themselves by a "single
   path, that of emancipation through practical action" namely "workers'
   solidarity in their struggle against the bosses" by trades unions and
   solidarity. The "collective experience" workers gain in the
   International combined with the "collective struggle of the workers
   against the bosses" will ensure workers "will necessarily come to
   realise that there is an irreconcilable antagonism between the henchmen
   of reaction and [their] own dearest human concerns. Having reached this
   point, [they] will recognise [themselves] to be a revolutionary
   socialist." [Op. Cit., p. 103] In contrast Marx placed his hopes for
   working class self-emancipation on a political party which would
   conquer "political power." As history soon proved, Marx was mistaken --
   "political power" can only be seized by a minority (i.e. the party, not
   the class it claims to represent) and if the few have the power, the
   rest are no longer free (i.e. they no longer govern themselves). That
   the many elect the few who issue them orders does not signify
   emancipation!

   However, this is beside the point. McNally proudly places his ideas in
   the Leninist tradition. It is thus somewhat ironic that McNally claims
   that Marxism is based on self-emancipation of the working class while
   claiming Leninism as a form of Marxism. This it because Lenin
   explicitly stated the opposite, namely that the working class could not
   liberate itself by its own actions. In What is to be Done? Lenin argued
   that "the working class, exclusively by their own effort, is able to
   develop only trade union consciousness . . . The theory of socialism
   [i.e. Marxism], however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and
   economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives
   of the propertied classes, the intellectuals . . . the theoretical
   doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the
   spontaneous growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural and
   inevitable outcome of ideas among the revolutionary socialist
   intelligentsia." This meant that "Social Democratic [i.e. socialist]
   consciousness . . . could only be brought to them from without."
   [Essential Works of Lenin, pp. 74-5]

   Thus, rather than believe in working class self-emancipation, Lenin
   thought the opposite. Without the radical bourgeois to provide the
   working class with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let along
   society, was impossible. Hardly what you would consider
   self-emancipation. Nor is this notion of working class passivity
   confined to the "early" Lenin of What is to Be Done? infamy. It can be
   found in his apparently more "libertarian" work The State and
   Revolution.

   In that work he argues "we do not indulge in 'dreams' of dispensing at
   once . . . with all subordination; these anarchist dreams . . . are
   totally alien to Marxism . . . we want the socialist revolution with
   human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with
   subordination, control and 'managers'" [Op. Cit., p. 307] No where is
   the notion that working class people, during the process of mass
   struggle, direct action and revolution, revolutionises themselves (see
   sections [26]A.2.7 and [27]J.7.2, for example). Instead, we find a
   vision of people as they are under capitalism ("human nature as it is
   now") and no vision of self-emancipation of the working class and the
   resulting changes that implies for those who are transforming society
   by their own action.

   Perhaps it will be argued that Lenin sees "subordination" as being "to
   the armed vanguard of all the exploited . . . i.e., to the proletariat"
   [Ibid.] and so there is no contradiction. However, this is not the case
   as he confuses the rule of the party with the rule of the class. As he
   states "[w]e cannot imagine democracy, not even proletarian democracy,
   without representative institutions." [Op. Cit., p. 306] Thus
   "subordination" is not to the working class itself (i.e. direct
   democracy or self-management). Rather it is the "subordination" of the
   majority to the minority, of the working class to "its"
   representatives. Thus we have a vision of a "socialist" society in
   which the majority have not revolutionised themselves and are
   subordinated to their representatives. Such a subordination, however,
   ensures that a socialist consciousness cannot develop as only the
   process of self-management generates the abilities required for
   self-management (as Malatesta put it, "[o]nly freedom or the struggle
   for freedom can be the school for freedom." [Life and Ideas, p. 59]).

   Therefore McNally's comments that Leninism is a valid expression of
   Marx's idea of proletarian self-emancipation is false. In reality,
   Lenin rejected the idea that working class people can emancipate
   themselves and, therefore, any claim that this tradition stands for
   proletarian self-emancipation is false. Rather Leninism, for all its
   rhetoric, has no vision of working class self-activity leading to
   self-liberation -- it denies it can happen and that is why it stresses
   the role of the party and its need to take centralised power into its
   own hands (of course, it never entered Lenin's mind that if bourgeois
   ideology imposes itself onto the working class it also imposes itself
   on the party as well -- more so as they are bourgeois intellectuals in
   the first place).

   While anarchists are aware of the need for groups of like minded
   individuals to influence the class struggle and spread anarchist ideas,
   we reject the idea that such ideas have to be "injected" into the
   working class from outside. Rather, as we argued in [28]section J.3,
   anarchist ideas are developed within the class struggle by working
   people themselves. Anarchist groups exist because we are aware that
   there is an uneven development of ideas within our class and to aid the
   spreading of libertarian ideas it is useful for those with those ideas
   to work together. However, being aware that our ideas are the product
   of working class life and struggle we are also aware that we have to
   learn from that struggle. It is because of this that anarchists stress
   self-management of working class struggle and organisation from below.
   Anarchists are (to use Bakunin's words) "convinced that revolution is
   only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that when
   it is concentrated in those of a few ruling individuals it inevitably
   and immediately becomes reaction." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
   p. 237] Only when this happens can new ways of life be created and
   truly develop freely. It also explains anarchist opposition to
   political groups seizing power -- that will only result in old dogmas
   crushing the initiative of people in struggle and the new forms of life
   they create. That is way anarchists stress the importance of
   revolutionaries using "natural influence" (i.e. arguing their ideas in
   popular organisations and convincing by reason) -- doing so allows new
   developments and ideas to be expressed and enriched by existing ones
   and vice versa.

   One last point. It could be argued that Lenin's arguments were predated
   by Marx and Engels and so Marxism as such rather than just Leninism
   does not believe in proletarian self-emancipation. This is because they
   wrote in The Communist Manifesto that "a portion of the bourgeois goes
   over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois
   ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending
   theoretically the historical movement as a whole." They also note that
   the Communists are "the most advanced and resolute section of the
   working-class parties . . . [and] they have over the great mass of the
   proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march,
   the conditions, and the general results of the proletarian movement."
   [Selected Works, p. 44 and p. 46] Thus a portion of the bourgeois
   comprehend "the historical movement as a whole" and this is also the
   "advantage" of the Communist Party over "the great mass of the
   proletariat." Perhaps Lenin's comments are not so alien to the Marxist
   tradition after all.

12. Why is Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism contradictory?

   Another ironic aspect of McNally's pamphlet is his praise for the Paris
   Commune and the Russian Soviets. This is because key aspects of both
   revolutionary forms were predicted by Proudhon and Bakunin.

   For example, McNally's and Marx's praise for revocable mandates in the
   Commune was advocated by Proudhon in 1840s and Bakunin in 1860s (see
   sections [29]4 and [30]5). Similarly, the Russian Soviets (a federation
   of delegates from workplaces) showed a marked similarity with Bakunin's
   discussions of revolutionary change and the importance of industrial
   associations being the basis of the future socialist commune (as he put
   it, the "future organisation must be made solely from the bottom
   upwards, by free association or free federation of workers, firstly in
   their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a
   great federation, international and universal." [Michael Bakunin:
   Selected Writings, p. 206]).

   Indeed, the Paris Commune (in both its economic and political aspects)
   showed a clear inspiration from Proudhon's works. In the words of
   George Woodcock, there are "demands in the Commune's Manifesto to the
   French People of the 19th April, 1871, that might have been written by
   Proudhon himself." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography, p. 276] K.
   Steven Vincent also points out that the declaration "is strongly
   federalist in tone [one of Proudhon's favourite ideas], and it has a
   marked proudhonian flavour." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of
   French Republican Socialism, p. 232] Moreover, the desire to replace
   wage labour with associated labour by the creation of co-operatives
   expressed during the Commune clearly showed the influence of Proudhon
   (see [31]section A.5.1 for more details). As Marx mentions the "rough
   sketch of national organisation" produced by the Commune it is useful
   to quote the Commune's declaration in order to show clearly its
   anarchist roots and tendencies:

     "The absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all districts of
     France . . . to every Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties
     and aptitudes, as man, citizen, and worker.

     "The autonomy of the Commune shall have no limits other than the
     right of autonomy equally enjoyed by all other communes adhering to
     the contract, and by whose association together French Unity will be
     preserved. . . Selection by ballot . . . with the responsibility and
     permanent right of control and dismissal of magistrates and all
     communal civil servants of all grades . . . Permanent intervention
     of citizens in communal affairs by the free expression of their
     ideas. Organisation of urban defence and of the National Guard,
     which elects its leaders . . .the large central administration
     delegated by the federation of communes shall adopt and put into
     practice these same principles.

     "The Unity which has been imposed on us up to now . . . is nothing
     but despotic centralisation . . . The Political Unity which Paris
     desires is the voluntary association of all local initiatives . . .

     "The Communal Revolution . . . spells the end of the old world with
     its governments and its clerics, militarism, officialdom,
     exploitation, stock-jobbing, monopolies, and privileges, to which
     the proletariat owes its servitude, the country its ills and its
     disasters."
     ["Declaration to the French People", contained in David Thomson
     (ed.), France: Empire and Republic, 1850-1940, pp. 186-7]

   The links with Proudhon's ideas cannot be clearer. Both Proudhon and
   the Commune stressed the importance of decentralisation of power,
   federalism, the end of both government and exploitation and so on.
   Moreover, in his letter to Albert Richard, Bakunin predicted many
   aspects of the Paris Commune and its declaration (see Bakunin on
   Anarchism, pp. 177-182).

   Little wonder few Marxists (nor Marx himself) directly quote from this
   declaration. It would be difficult to attack anarchism (as
   "petty-bourgeois") while proclaiming the Paris Commune as the first
   example of "the dictatorship of the Proletariat." The decentralised,
   federalist nature of the Commune cannot be squared with the usual
   Marxist instance on centralisation and the claim that federalism "as a
   principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of
   anarchism. Marx was a centralist." [Lenin, "The State and Revolution",
   Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 273]

   Given that Marx described the Commune as "essentially a working-class
   government" and as "the political form, at last discovered, under which
   to work out the economic emancipation of labour," it is strange that
   McNally terms Proudhon's and Bakunin's ideas as those of the past.
   [Selected Writings, p. 290] In actually, as can be seen from the Paris
   Commune and the soviets, they were the ideas of the future -- and of
   working class self-liberation and self-organisation. And ones that Marx
   and his followers paid lip service to.

   (We say lip service for Lenin quoted Marx's statement that the future
   proletarian state, like the Paris Commune, would abolish the
   distinction between executive and administrative powers but did not
   honour it. Immediately after the October Revolution the Bolsheviks
   established an executive power above the soviets, namely the Council of
   People's Commissars. Those who quote Lenin's State and Revolution as
   proof of his democratic nature usually fail to mention this little
   fact. In practice that work was little more than an election manifesto
   to be broken as required.)

   Perhaps it could be argued that, in fact, the Paris Commune was the
   work of artisans. This does have an element of truth in it. Marx stated
   in 1866 that the French workers were "corrupted" by "Proudhonist"
   ideas, "particularly those of Paris, who as workers in luxury trades
   are strongly attached, without knowing it [!], to the old rubbish."
   [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, pp. 45-6]
   Five years later, these workers (still obviously influenced by "the old
   rubbish") created "the political form" of "the economic emancipation of
   labour." How can the Paris Commune be the "Dictatorship of the
   Proletariat" (as Engels claimed [Selected Writings, p. 259]) when 35
   members of the Commune's council were artisans and only 4 or 5 were
   industrial workers (i.e. proletarians)?

   Can the fact that artisans were, according to McNally and Marx, social
   strata of the past, were backward looking, etc. be reconciled with the
   claim that the Paris Commune was the political form of proletarian
   emancipation? No, not from a Marxist class analysis. Hence Marxists
   ignoring the real nature of the Parisian working class when discussing
   the commune. However, from an anarchist perspective -- which sees the
   artisan, peasant and proletariat forming a common class of working
   people -- the development of the Paris Commune is no surprise. It is
   the work of people seeking to end wage labour and the threat of wage
   labour now rather than sometime in the future once capitalism has fully
   developed. Thus McNally's (and Marx's) support for the Commune makes a
   mockery of his attacks on anarchism as the theory of the artisans and
   peasants for it was the artisans who created the first model of their
   "proletarian" state!

   As indicated, McNally's arguments do not hold water. Ironically, if
   anarchism was the death-cry of the artisan and peasant then it is
   strange, to say the least, that this theory so influenced the Paris
   Commune which McNally praises so much. We therefore suggest that rather
   than being a backward-looking cry of despair for those disappearing
   under the wheels of rising capitalism, anarchism was in fact a theory
   developed from the struggles and self-activity of those currently
   suffering capitalist and state oppression -- namely the artisans,
   peasants and industrial proletariat (i.e. the working class as a
   whole). In other words, it is a philosophy and theory for the future,
   not of the past. This can be seen from the libertarian aspects of the
   Paris Commune, aspects Marx immediately tried to appropriate for his
   own theories (which, unfortunately, were swamped by the authoritarian
   elements that existing already).

   And one last point, McNally claims that Marx "immediately rallied to
   the cause of the Paris Commune." This is not true. As John Zerzan
   points out "[d]ays after the successful insurrection began he failed to
   applaud its audacity, and satisfied himself with grumbling that 'it had
   no chance of success.' Though he finally recognised the fact of the
   Commune (and was thereby forced to revise his reformist ideas regarding
   proletarian use of existing state machinery), his lack of sympathy is
   amply reflected by the fact that throughout the Commune's two-month
   existence, the General Council of the International spoke not a single
   word about it . . . his Civil War in France constitutes an obituary."
   [Elements of Refusal, p. 126] Perhaps the delay was due to Marx
   wondering how Parisian artisans had became the vanguard of the
   proletariat overnight and how he could support a Commune created by the
   forces of the past?

   In addition the "old rubbish" the Parisian workers supported was very
   much ahead of its time. In 1869 the delegate of the Parisian
   Construction Workers' Trade Union argued that "[a]ssociation of the
   different corporations [labour unions] on the basis of town or country
   . . . leads to the commune of the future . . . Government is replaced
   by the assembled councils of the trade bodies, and by a committee of
   their respective delegates." In addition, "a local grouping which
   allows the workers in the same area to liaise on a day to day basis"
   and "a linking up of the various localities, fields, regions, etc."
   (i.e. international trade or industrial union federations) would ensure
   that "labour organises for present and future by doing away with wage
   slavery." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 184] Such a vision of
   workers' councils and associated labour has obvious similarities with
   the spontaneously created soviets of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
   These, too, were based on assembled councils of workers' delegates. Of
   course they were differences but the basic idea and vision are
   identical.

   Therefore to claim that anarchism represents the past presents Marxists
   with a few problems given the nature of the Paris Commune and its
   obvious libertarian nature. If it is claimed that the Parisian artisans
   defended "not their present, but their future interests" and so
   "desert[ed] their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the
   proletariat" (the class they are being "tranfer[ed]" into by the rise
   of capitalism) then, clearly, anarchist ideas are "future,"
   proletarian, ideas as it is that class interest artisans serve "[i]f by
   chance they are revolutionary." [Marx and Engels, The Communist
   Manifesto, p. 44]

   Whichever way you look at it, McNally's claims on the class nature of
   anarchism do not stand up to close analysis. Proudhon addressed both
   artisan/peasant and wage slave in his works. He addressed both the past
   and the present working class. Bakunin did likewise (although with a
   stronger emphasis on wage slaves). Therefore it is not surprising that
   Proudhon and Bakunin predicted aspects of the Paris Commune -- they
   were expressing the politics of the future. As is clear from their
   writings, which still remain fresh today.

   This confusion associated with Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism
   was also present in Lenin. Given that anarchism is apparently
   associated with the petty-bourgeois we find a strange contradiction in
   Lenin's work. On the one hand Lenin argued that Russia "despite the
   more petty-bourgeois composition of her population as compared with the
   other European countries" had, in fact, "negligible" anarchist
   influence during the two revolutions of 1905 and 1917. He claimed that
   this was due to Bolshevism's having "waged a most ruthless and
   uncompromising struggle against opportunism." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
   Op. Cit., p. 305]

   On the other he admitted that, in the developed capitalist nations,
   anarchists and syndicalists were "quite revolutionary and connected
   with the masses" and that it is "the duty of all Communists to do
   everything to help all proletarian mass elements to abandon anarchism .
   . . the measure in which genuinely Communist parties succeed in winning
   mass proletarian elements . . . away from anarchism, is a criterion of
   the success of those Parties." [Op. Cit., pp. 317-8]

   Thus, in the most capitalist nations, ones with a more widespread and
   developed proletariat, the anarchist and syndicalist movements were
   more firmly developed and had closer connections with the masses than
   in Russia. Moreover, these movements were also quite revolutionary as
   well and should be won to Bolshevism. But anarchism is the politics of
   the petit-bourgeois and so should have been non-existent in Western
   countries but widespread in Russia. The opposite was the case, thus
   suggesting that Lenin's analysis is wrong.

   We can point to another explanation of these facts. Rather than the
   Bolsheviks "struggle against opportunism" being the reason why
   anarchism was "negligible" in 1917-18 in Russia (it was not, in fact)
   but had mass appeal in Western Europe perhaps it was the fact that
   anarchism was a product of working class struggle in advanced
   capitalist countries while Bolshevism was a product of bourgeois
   struggle (for Parliament, a liberal republic, etc.) in Tsarist Russia?

   Similarly, perhaps the reason why Bolshevism did not develop
   opportunist tendencies was because it did not work in an environment
   which encouraged them. After all, unlike the German Social Democrats,
   the Bolsheviks were illegal for long periods of time and worked in an
   absolutist monarchy. The influences that corrupted the German SPD were
   not at work in the Tsarist regime. Thus, Bolshevism, perhaps at best,
   was applicable to Tsarist conditions and anarchism to Western ones.

   However, as noted and contrary to Lenin, Russian anarchism was far from
   "negligible" during 1917-18 and was growing which was why the
   Bolsheviks suppressed them before the start of the civil war. As Emma
   Goldman noted, a claim such as Lenin's "does not tally with the
   incessant persecution of Anarchists which began in [April] 1918, when
   Leon Trotsky liquidated the Anarchist headquarters in Moscow with
   machine guns. At that time the process of elimination of the Anarchists
   began." [Trotsky Protests Too Much] This fact of anarchist influence
   during the revolution does not contradict our earlier analysis. This is
   because the Russian anarchists, rather than appealing to the
   petit-bourgeois, were influencing exactly the same workers, sailors and
   soldiers the Bolsheviks were. Indeed, the Bolsheviks often had to
   radicalise their activities and rhetoric to counter anarchist
   influence. As Alexander Rabinowitch (in his study of the July uprising
   of 1917) notes:

     "At the rank-and-file level, particularly within the [Petrograd]
     garrison and at the Kronstadt naval base, there was in fact very
     little to distinguish Bolshevik from Anarchist. . . The
     Anarchist-Communists and the Bolsheviks competed for the support of
     the same uneducated, depressed. and dissatisfied elements of the
     population, and the fact is that in the summer of 1917, the
     Anarchist-Communists, with the support they enjoyed in a few
     important factories and regiments, possessed an undeniable capacity
     to influence the course of events. Indeed, the Anarchist appeal was
     great enough in some factories and military units to influence the
     actions of the Bolsheviks themselves." [Prelude to Revolution, p.
     64]

   This is hardly what would be expected if anarchism was
   "petit-bourgeois" as Marxists assert.

   It could, in fact, be argued that the Bolsheviks gained the support of
   so many working class people (wage slaves) during the summer of 1917
   because they sounded and acted like anarchists and not like Marxists.
   At the time many considered the Bolsheviks as anarchists and one fellow
   Marxist (an ex-Bolshevik turned Menshevik) thought Lenin had "made
   himself a candidate for one European throne that has been vacant for
   thirty years -- the throne of Bakunin!" [quoted by Alexander
   Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 40] As Alexander Berkman argues, the
   "Anarchist mottoes proclaimed by the Bolsheviks did not fail to bring
   results. The masses relied to their flag." [What is Communist
   Anarchism, p. 101]

   Moreover, this stealing of anarchist slogans and tactics was forced
   upon the Bolsheviks by the working class. On Lenin's own admission, the
   masses of peasants and workers were "a hundred times further to the
   left" than the Bolsheviks. Trotsky himself notes that the Bolsheviks
   "lagged behind the revolutionary dynamic . . . The masses at the
   turning point were a hundred times to the left of the extreme left
   party." [History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, p. 403f] Indeed,
   one leading Bolshevik stated in June, 1917 (in response to a rise in
   anarchist influence), "[b]y fencing ourselves off from the Anarchists,
   we may fence ourselves off from the masses." [quoted by Alexander
   Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 102] That, in itself, indicates the weakness
   of Lenin's class analysis of anarchism.

   Rather than seeing the Russian experience refute the claim that
   anarchism is a working class theory, it reinforces it -- the Bolsheviks
   would not have succeeded if they had used traditional Marxist slogans
   and tactics. Instead, much to the dismay of their more orthodox
   comrades, the Bolsheviks embraced traditional anarchist ideas and
   tactics and thereby gained increased influence in the working class.
   After the Bolshevik seizure of power in the name of the soviets,
   anarchist influence increased (see [32]section A.5.4) as more working
   people recognised that what the Bolsheviks meant by their slogans was
   different than what working people thought they meant!

   Thus the experience of the Russian Revolution re-enforces the fact that
   Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism fails to convince. Far from
   proving that libertarian socialism is non-proletariat, that Revolution
   proved that it was (just as confirmed the prophetic correctness of the
   views of the founders of anarchism and, in particular, their critique
   of Marxism).

   The usual Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism is somewhat confused.
   On the one hand, it claims that anarchism is backward looking and the
   politics of the petit-bourgeois being destroyed by the rise and
   development of capitalism. On the other hand Marxists point to events
   and organisations created in working class struggle which were
   predicted and/or influenced by anarchist ideas and ideals, not Marxist
   ones. That indicates better than any other argument that Marxists are
   wrong about anarchism and their "class analysis" nothing more than
   distortions and bigotry.

   Based on the evidence and the contradictions it provokes in Marxist
   ideology, we have to argue that McNally is simply wrong. Rather than
   being an ideology of the petit-bourgeois anarchism is, in fact, a
   political theory of the working class (both artisans and proletariat).
   Rather than a backward looking theory, anarchism is a theory of the
   present and future -- it has a concrete and radical critique of current
   society and a vision of the future and a theory how to get there which
   appeals to working people in struggle. Such is obviously the case when
   reading anarchist theory.

13. If Marxism is "socialism from below," why do anarchists reject it?

   McNally claims that Marxism is "socialism from below." In his text he
   indicates support for the Paris Commune and the soviets of the Russian
   Revolution. He states that the "democratic and socialist restructuring
   of society remains . . . the most pressing task confronting humanity.
   And such a reordering of society can only take place on the basis of
   the principles of socialism from below. Now more than ever, the
   liberation of humanity depends upon the self-emancipation of the world
   working class. . . The challenge is to restore to socialism its
   democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom."

   So, if this is the case, why the hostility between anarchists and
   Marxists? Surely it is a question of semantics? No, for while Marxists
   pay lip-service to such developments of working class self-activity and
   self-organisation as workers' councils (soviets), factory committees,
   workers' control, revocable and mandated delegates they do so in order
   to ensure the election of their party into positions of power (i.e. the
   government). Rather than see such developments as working people's
   direct management of their own destinies (as anarchists do) and as a
   means of creating a self-managed (i.e. free) society, Marxists see them
   as a means for their party to take over state power. Nor do they see
   them as a framework by which working class people can take back control
   of their own lives. Rather, they see them, at best, as typical
   bourgeois forms -- namely the means by which working people can
   delegate their power to a new group of leaders, i.e. as a means to
   elect a socialist government into power.

   This attitude can be seen from Lenin's perspectives on the Russian
   soviets. Rather than seeing them as a means of working class
   self-government, he saw them purely as a means of gaining influence for
   his party. In his own words:

     "the Party . . . has never renounced its intention of utilising
     certain non-party organisations, such as the Soviets of Workers'
     Deputies . . . to extend Social-Democratic influence among the
     working class and to strengthen the Social-Democratic labour
     movement . . . the incipient revival creates the opportunity to
     organise or utilise non-party working-class institutions, such as
     Soviets . . . for the purpose of developing the Social-Democratic
     movement; at the same time the Social-Democratic Party organisations
     must bear in mind if Social-Democratic activities among the
     proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised,
     such institutions may actually become superfluous." [Marx, Engels
     and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 209-10]

   Such a perspective indicates well the difference between anarchism and
   Leninism. Anarchists do not seek power for their own organisations.
   Rather they see self-managed organisation created by working class
   people in struggle as a means of eliminating hierarchy within society,
   of directly involving the mass of people in the decisions that affect
   them. In other words, as a means of creating the organisations through
   which people can change both themselves and the world by their own
   direct action and the managing of their own struggles, lives,
   communities and workplaces. For Leninists, view working class
   self-organisation as a means of gaining power for their own party
   (which they identify with the power of the working class). Mass
   organisations, which could be schools for self-management and freedom,
   are instead subjected to an elitist leadership of intellectual
   ideologues. The party soon substitutes itself for the mass movement,
   and the party leadership substitutes itself the party.

   Despite its radical language, Leninism is totally opposed to the nature
   of revolt, rebellion and revolution. It seeks to undermine what makes
   these organisations and activities revolutionary (their tendencies
   towards self-management, decentralisation, solidarity, direct action,
   free activity and co-operation) by using them to build their party and,
   ultimately, a centralised, hierarchical state structure on the corpse
   of these once revolutionary forms of working class self-organisation
   and self-activity.

   Lenin's view of the soviets was instrumental: he regarded them merely
   as a means for educating the working class (i.e. of getting them to
   support the Bolshevik Party) and enlisting them in the service of his
   party. Indeed, he constantly confused soviet power with party power,
   seeing the former as the means to the latter and the latter as the key
   to creating socialism. What is missing from his vision is the idea of
   socialism as being based on working class self-activity,
   self-management and self-government ("Lenin believed that the
   transition to socialism was guaranteed ultimately, not by the
   self-activity of workers, but by the 'proletarian' character of state
   power." [A. S. Smith, Red Petrograd, pp. 261-2] And the 'proletarian'
   character of the state was determined by the party in government). And
   this gap in his politics, this confusion of party with class, which
   helped undermine the revolution and create the dictatorship of the
   bureaucracy. Little wonder that by the end of 1918, the Bolsheviks
   ruled the newly established soviet state entirely alone and had turned
   the soviets into docile instruments of their party apparatus rather
   than forms of working class self-government.

   For Lenin and other Bolsheviks the party of the proletariat, that is,
   their party, must strive to monopolise political power, if only to
   safeguard the proletarian character of the revolution. This follows
   naturally from Lenin's vanguardist politics (see [33]section 11). As
   the working class people cannot achieve anything bar a trade union
   consciousness by their own efforts, it would be insane for the Party to
   let them govern directly. In the words of Lenin:

     "Syndicalism hands over to the mass of non-Party workers . . . the
     management of their industries . . . thereby making the Party
     superfluous. . . Why have a Party, if industrial management is to be
     appointed . . . by trade unions nine-tenths of whose members are
     non-Party workers?" [Op. Cit., pp. 319-20]

     "Does every worker know how to run the state? . . . this is not true
     . . . If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that
     put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic
     . . . It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat."
     [Op. Cit. p. 322]

     "To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We
     have it, and it is called the Party. All this syndicalist nonsense
     about mandatory nominations of producers must go into the wastepaper
     basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party
     aside and making the dictatorship of the proletariat . . .
     impossible." [Op. Cit., p. 323]

   In other words, giving the proletariat the power to elect their own
   managers means to destroy the "dictatorship" of the proletariat! Lenin
   clearly places the power of the party above the ability of working
   people to elect their own representatives and managers. And McNally
   claims that his tradition aims at "workers' power" and a "direct and
   active democracy"!

   Lenin's belief that working class people could not liberate themselves
   (see [34]section 11) explains his continual emphasis on representative
   democracy and centralism -- simply put, the party must have power over
   the working class as that class could not be trusted to make the right
   decisions (i.e. know what its "real" interests were). At best they
   would be allowed to vote for the government, but even this right could
   be removed if they voted for the wrong people (see [35]section 8). For
   Leninists, revolutionary consciousness is not generated by working
   class self-activity in the class struggle, but is embodied in the party
   ("Since there can there can be no talk of an independent ideology being
   developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement
   the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology" [Lenin, The
   Essential Works of Lenin, 82]). The important issues facing the working
   class are to be determined not by the workers ourselves, but by the
   leadership of the party, who are the (self appointed) "vanguard of the
   proletariat". The nature of the relationship between the party and the
   working class is clear, however, we remain incapable of achieving
   revolutionary consciousness and have to be led by the vanguard.

   Russia, Lenin once said, "was accustomed to being ruled by 150 000 land
   owners. Why can 240 000 Bolsheviks not take over the task?" [Collected
   Works, Vol. 21, p. 336] The idea of socialism as working class
   self-management and self-government was lost on him -- and the
   possibility real socialism was soon lost to the Russian working class
   when the Tsar was replaced by the autocratic the rule of the Bolshevik
   Party. "Workers' power" cannot be identified or equated with the power
   of the Party -- as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks (and Social
   Democrats before them).

   Thus Malatesta's comments:

     "The important, fundamental dissension [between anarchists and
     Marxists] is [that] . . . [Marxist] socialists are authoritarians,
     anarchists are libertarians.

     "Socialists want power . . . and once in power wish to impose their
     programme on the people. . . Anarchists instead maintain, that
     government cannot be other than harmful, and by its very nature it
     defends either an existing privileged class or creates a new one."
     [Life and Ideas, p. 142]

   Anarchists seek to influence people by the power of our ideas within
   popular organisations. We see such organisations as the means by which
   working people can take control of their own lives and start to create
   a free, libertarian socialist society. A self-managed society can only
   be created by self-management, in short, and any tendencies to
   undermine popular self-management in favour of hierarchical power of a
   party will subvert a revolution and create an end drastically at odds
   with the ideals of those who take part in it.

   Similarly, anarchists reject the Leninist idea of highly centralised
   "vanguard" parties. As the anarchists of Trotwatch explain, such a
   party leaves much to be desired:

     "In reality, a Leninist Party simply reproduces and
     institutionalises existing capitalist power relations inside a
     supposedly 'revolutionary' organisation: between leaders and led;
     order givers and order takers; between specialists and the
     acquiescent and largely powerless party workers. And that elitist
     power relation is extended to include the relationship between the
     party and class." [Carry on Recruiting!, p. 41]

   Such an organisation can never create a socialist society. In contrast,
   anarchists argue that socialist organisations should reflect as much as
   possible the future society we are aiming to create. To build
   organisations which are statist/capitalistic in structure cannot do
   other than reproduce the very problems of capitalism/statism into them
   and so undermine their liberatory potential. As Murray Bookchin puts
   it:

     "The 'glorious party,' when there is one, almost invariably lags
     behind the events . . . In the beginning . . . it tends to have an
     inhibitory function, not a 'vanguard' role. Where it exercises
     influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not
     'co-ordinate' the revolutionary forced. This is not accidental. The
     party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
     society it professes to oppose . . . Its membership is schooled in
     obedience . . . The party's leadership, in turn, is schooled in
     habits born of command, authority, manipulation . . . Its leaders .
     . . lose contact with the living situation below. The local groups,
     which know their own immediate situation better than any remote
     leaders, are obliged to subordinate their insights to directives
     from above. The leadership, lacking any direct knowledge of local
     problems, responds sluggishly and prudently. . .

     "The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of view
     the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres and
     centralisation. Although everyone marches in step, the orders are
     usually wrong, especially when events begin to move rapidly and take
     unexpected turns -- as they do in all revolutions. The party is
     efficient in only one respect -- in moulding society in its own
     hierarchical imagine if the revolution is successful. It recreates
     bureaucracy, centralisation and the state. It fosters the
     bureaucracy, centralisation and the state. It fosters the very
     social conditions which justify this kind of society. Hence, instead
     of 'withering away,' the state controlled by the 'glorious party'
     preserves the very conditions which 'necessitate' the existence of a
     state -- and a party to 'guard' it."
     [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 194-198]

   As we argue in [36]section J.3, anarchists do not reject the need for
   political organisations (anarchist groups, federations and so on) to
   work in mass movements and in revolutionary situations. However, we do
   reject the Leninist idea of a vanguard party as being totally
   inappropriate for the needs of a social revolution -- a revolution that
   aims to create a free society.

   In addition to this difference in the political nature of a socialist
   society, the role of organisations created in, by and for the class
   struggle and the nature of socialist organisation, anarchists and
   Marxists disagree with the economic nature of the future society.

   McNally claims that in Russia "[c]ontrol of the factories was taken
   over by the workers" but this is a total distortion of what actually
   happened. Throughout 1917, it was the workers themselves, not the
   Bolshevik Party, which raised the issue of workers' self-management and
   control. As S.A. Smith puts it, the "factory committees launched the
   slogan of workers' control of production quite independently of the
   Bolshevik party. It was not until May that the party began to take it
   up." [Red Petrograd, p. 154] Given that the defining aspect of
   capitalism is wage labour, the Russian workers' raised a clearly
   socialist demand that entailed its abolition. It was the Bolshevik
   party, we must note, who failed to raise above a "trade union
   conscious" in this and so many other cases.

   In reality, the Bolsheviks themselves hindered the movement of workers
   trying to control, and then manage, the factories they worked in. As
   Maurice Brinton correctly argued, "it is ridiculous to claim -- as so
   many do today -- that in 1917 the Bolsheviks really stood for the full,
   total and direct control by working people of the factories, mines,
   building sites or other enterprises in which they worked, i.e. that
   they stood for workers' self-management." [The Bolsheviks and Workers'
   Control, p. 27] Rather, Lenin identified "workers' control" as
   something totally different:

     "When we speak of 'workers control,' always placing this cry side by
     side with the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . we make clear
     thereby what State we have in mind . . . if we have in mind a
     proletarian State -- that is, the dictatorship of the proletariat --
     then the workers' control can become a national, all-embracing,
     universally realisable, most exact and most conscientious regulating
     of the production and distribution of goods." [Can the Bolsheviks
     Maintain State Power?, pp. 46-7]

   By "regulation" Lenin meant the "power" to oversee the books, to check
   the implementation of decisions made by others, rather than fundamental
   decision making. As he argued, "the economists, engineers, agricultural
   experts and so on . . . [will] work out plans under the control of the
   workers' organisations . . . We are in favour of centralisation." [Op.
   Cit., pp. 78-9] Thus others would determine the plans, not the workers
   themselves. As Brinton states, "[n]owhere in Lenin's writings is
   workers' control ever equated with fundamental decision-taking (i.e.
   with the initiation of decisions) relating to production . . . He
   envisioned a period during which, in a workers state, the bourgeois
   would still retain the formal ownership and effective management of
   most of the productive apparatus . . . capitalists would be coerced
   into co-operation. 'Workers' control' was seen as the instrument of
   this coercion." [Op. Cit., pp. 12-13] In Lenin's own words, "[t]here is
   no other way . . . than . . . organisation of really democratic
   control, i.e. control 'from below,' of the workers and poorest peasants
   over the capitalists." [The Threatening Catastrophe and how to avoid
   it, p. 33]

   Thus the capitalists would remain and wage slavery would continue but
   workers could "control" those who had the real power and gave the
   orders (the capitalists were later replaced by state bureaucrats though
   the lack of effective control remained). In other words, no vision of
   workers' self-management in production (and so real socialism) and the
   reduction of "socialism" to a warmed up variation of state capitalism
   with (in theory, but not in practice) a dash of liberal democracy in
   the form of "control" of those with the real power by those under them
   in the hierarchy.

   S.A. Smith correctly argues that Lenin's "proposals . . . [were]
   thoroughly statist and centralist in character" and that he used "the
   term ['workers' control'] in a very different sense from that of the
   factory committees." [Op. Cit., p. 154] That is, he used the same
   slogans as many workers' but meant something radically different by it.
   Leninists follow this tradition today, as can be seen from McNally's
   use of the words "[c]ontrol of the factories was taken over by the
   workers" to refer to situation drastically different from the workers'
   self-management it implies to most readers.

   Given Lenin's lack of concern about the revolutionising of the
   relations of production (a lack not shared by the Russian workers, we
   must note) it is hardly surprising that Lenin considered the first task
   of the Bolshevik revolution was to build state capitalism. "State
   capitalism," he wrote, "is a complete material preparation for
   socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history
   between which and the rung called socialism there are no gaps."
   [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 259] Hence his support for centralisation
   and his full support for "one-man management" -- working class power in
   production is never mentioned as a necessary condition for socialism.

   Little wonder Soviet Russia never progressed beyond state capitalism --
   it could not as the fundamental aspect of capitalism, wage labour, was
   never replaced by workers' self-management of production.

   Lenin took the viewpoint that socialism "is nothing but the next step
   forward from state capitalist monopoly. In other words, Socialism is
   merely state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people; by
   this token it ceases to be capitalist monopoly." [The Threatening
   Catastrophe and how to avoid it, p. 37] He had no real notion of
   workers' self-management of production nor of the impossibilities of
   combining the centralised state capitalist system with its big banks,
   monopolies, big business with genuine rank and file control, never mind
   self-management. As Alexander Berkman correctly argued:

     "The role of industrial decentralisation in the revolution is
     unfortunately too little appreciated. . . Most people are still in
     the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that centralisation is 'more
     efficient and economical.' They close their eyes to the fact that
     the alleged 'economy' is achieved at the cost of the workers' limb
     and life, that the 'efficiency' degrades him to a mere industrial
     cog, deadens his soul, kills his body. Furthermore, in a system of
     centralisation the administration of industry becomes constantly
     merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful bureaucracy of
     industrial overlords. It would indeed be the sheerest irony if the
     revolution were to aim at such a result. It would mean the creation
     of a new master class." [The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 80-1]

   However, this is what Lenin aimed at. The Leninist "vision" of the
   future socialist economy is one of a highly centralised organisation,
   modelled on capitalism, in which, at best, workers can supervise the
   decisions made by others and "control" those in power. It is a vision
   of a more democratic corporate structure, with the workers replacing
   the shareholders. In practice, it would be a new bureaucracy exploiting
   and oppressing those who do the actual work -- as in private capitalism
   -- simply because capitalist economic structures are designed to
   empower the few over the many. Like the capitalist state, they cannot
   be used by the working class to achieve their liberation (they are not
   created for the mass participation that real socialism requires, quite
   the reverse in fact!).

   In contrast, anarchists view the socialist economy as being based on
   workers' self-management of production and the workplace turned into an
   association of equals. Above the individual workplace, federations of
   factory committees would co-ordinate activities and ensure wide scale
   co-operation is achieved. Thus anarchists see a new form of economic
   structure developing, one based on workers' organisations created in
   the process of struggle against capitalism.

   In other words, rather than embrace bourgeois notions of "democracy"
   (i.e. the election of leaders into positions of power) like Marxists
   do, anarchists dissolve hierarchical power by promoting workers'
   self-management and association. While Marxism ends up as state
   capitalism pure and simple (as can be seen by the experience of Russia
   under Lenin and then Stalin) anarchism destroys the fundamental social
   relation of capitalism -- wage labour -- via association and workers'
   self-management of production.

   Thus while both Leninists and anarchists claim to support factory
   committees and "workers' control" we have decidedly different notions
   of what we mean by this. The Leninists see them as a means of workers'
   to supervise those who have the real power in the economy (and so
   perpetuate wage slavery with the state replacing the boss). Anarchists,
   in contrast, see them as a means of expressing workers
   self-organisation, self-management and self-government -- as a means of
   abolishing wage slavery and so capitalism by eliminating hierarchical
   authority, in other words. The difference could not be more striking.
   Indeed, it would be correct to state that the Leninist tradition is
   not, in fact, socialist as it identifies socialism as the natural
   development of capitalism and not as a new form of economy which will
   develop away from capitalism by means of associated labour and workers'
   self-management of production.

   In short, anarchists reject both the means and the ends Leninists aim
   for and so our disagreements with that tradition is far more than
   semantics.

   This does not mean that all members of Leninist parties do not support
   workers' self-management in society and production, favour workers'
   democracy, actually do believe in working class self-emancipation and
   so on. Many do, unaware that the tradition they have joined does not
   actually share those values. It could, therefore, be argued that such
   values can be "added" to the core Leninist ideas. However, such a
   viewpoint is optimistic in the extreme. Leninist positions on workers'
   self-management, etc., do not "just happen" nor are they the product of
   ignorance. Rather they are the natural result of those "core" ideas. To
   add other values to Leninism would be like adding extensions to a house
   built on sand -- the foundations are unsuitable and any additions would
   soon fall down. This was what happened during the Russian Revolution --
   movements from below which had a different vision of socialism came to
   grief on the rocks of Bolshevik power.

   The issue is clear -- either you aim for a socialist society and use
   socialist methods to get there or you do not. Those who do seek a real
   socialism (as opposed to warmed up state capitalism) would be advised
   to consider anarchism which is truly "socialism from below" (see
   [37]next section).

14. Why is McNally's use of the term "socialism from below" dishonest?

   McNally argues that Marxism can be considered as "socialism from
   below." Indeed, that is the name of his pamphlet. However, his use of
   the term is somewhat ironic for two reasons.

   Firstly, this is because the expression "from below" was constantly on
   the lips of Bakunin and Proudhon. For example, in 1848, Proudhon was
   talking about being a "revolutionary from below" and that every
   "serious and lasting Revolution" was "made from below, by the people."
   A "Revolution from above" was "pure governmentalism," "the negation of
   collective activity, of popular spontaneity" and is "the oppression of
   the wills of those below." [quoted by George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon, p. 143] Similarly, Bakunin saw an anarchist revolution as
   coming "from below." As he put it, "liberty can be created only by
   liberty, by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary
   organisation of the workers from below upward." [Statism and Anarchy,
   p. 179] Elsewhere he writes that "future social organisation must be
   made solely from the bottom upwards, by the free association or
   federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes,
   regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and
   universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 206]

   No such idea is present in Marx. Rather, he saw a revolution as
   consisting of the election of a socialist party into government.
   Therefore, the idea of "socialism from below" is a distinctly anarchist
   notion, one found in the works of Proudhon and Bakunin, not Marx. It is
   ironic, given his distorted account of Proudhon and Bakunin that
   McNally uses their words to describe Marxism!

   Secondly, and far more serious for McNally, Lenin dismissed the idea of
   "from below" as not Marxist. As he wrote in 1905 (and using Engels as
   an authority to back him up) "the principle, 'only from below' is an
   anarchist principle." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and
   Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 192] In this he followed Marx, who commented
   that Bakunin's expression "the free organisation of the working masses
   from below upwards" was "nonsense." [Op. Cit., p. 153] For Lenin,
   Marxists must be in favour of "From above as well as from below" and
   "renunciation of pressure also from above is anarchism" [Op. Cit., p.
   196, p. 189] McNally does not mention "from above" in his pamphlet and
   so gives his account of Marxism a distinctly anarchist feel (while
   denouncing it in a most deceitful way). Why is this? Because, according
   to Lenin, "[p]ressure from below is pressure by the citizens on the
   revolutionary government. Pressure from above is pressure by the
   revolutionary government on the citizens." [Op. Cit., pp. 189-90]

   In other words, Marxism is based on idea that the government pressuring
   the citizens is acceptable. Given that Marx and Engels had argued in
   The Holy Family that the "question is not what this or that
   proletarian, or even the whole of the proletariat at the moment
   considers as its aim. The question is what the proletariat is, and
   what, consequent on that being, it will be compelled to do" the idea of
   "from above" takes on frightening overtones. [quoted by Murray
   Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, p. 280] As Murray Bookchin argues:

     "These lines and others like them in Marx's writings were to provide
     the rationale for asserting the authority of Marxist parties and
     their armed detachments over and even against the proletariat.
     Claiming a deeper and more informed comprehension of the situation
     then 'even the whole of the proletariat at the given moment,'
     Marxist parties went on to dissolve such revolutionary forms of
     proletarian organisation as factory committees and ultimately to
     totally regiment the proletariat according to lines established by
     the party leadership." [Op. Cit., p. 289]

   A given ideological premise will led to certain conclusions in practice
   -- conclusions Lenin and Trotsky were not shy in explicitly stating.

   Little wonder McNally fails to mention Lenin's support for
   revolutionary action "from above." As we proved above (in [38]section
   8), in practice Leninism substitutes the dictatorship of the party for
   that of the working class as a whole. This is unsurprising, given its
   confusion of working class power and party power. For example, Lenin
   once wrote "the power of the Bolsheviks -- that is, the power of the
   proletariat" while, obviously, these two things are different. [Will
   the Bolsheviks Maintain Power?, p. 102] Trotsky makes the same
   identification of party dictatorship with popular self-government:

     "We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
     dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it
     can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the
     Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the
     party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its
     strong revolutionary organisation that the party has afforded to the
     Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless
     parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour.
     In this 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of
     the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there
     is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental
     interests of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the
     period in which history brings up those interests . . . the
     Communists have become the recognised representatives of the working
     class as a whole." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 109]

   In this confusion, we must note, they follow Engels who argued that
   "each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state, so
   the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is striving to establish
   its rule, the rule of the working class." [Marx, Engels and Lenin,
   Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism, p. 94]

   Such confusion is deadly to a true "revolution from below" and
   justifies the use of repression against the working class -- they do
   not understand their own "fundamental interests," only the party does.
   Anarchists recognise that parties and classes are different and only
   self-management in popular organisations from below upwards can ensure
   that a social revolution remains in the hands of all and not a source
   of power for the few. Thus "All Power to the Soviets," for anarchists,
   means exactly that -- not a euphemism for "All Power to the Party." As
   Voline made clear:

     "[F]or, the anarchists declared, if 'power' really should belong to
     the soviets, it could not belong to the Bolshevik Party, and if it
     should belong to that Party, as the Bolsheviks envisaged, it could
     not belong to the soviets." [The Unknown Revolution, p. 213]

   Marxist confusion of the difference between working class power and
   party power, combined with the nature of centralised power and an
   ideology which claims to "comprehend" the "real" interests of the
   people cannot help but lead to the rise of a ruling bureaucracy,
   pursuing "from above" their own power and privileges.

   "All political power inevitably creates a privileged situation for the
   men who exercise it," argued Voline. "Thus is violates, from the
   beginning, the equalitarian principle and strikes at the heart of the
   Social Revolution . . . [and] becomes the source of other privileges .
   . . power is compelled to create a bureaucratic and coercive apparatus
   indispensable to all authority . . . Thus it forms a new privileged
   caste, at first politically and later economically." [Op. Cit., p. 249]

   Thus the concept of revolution "from above" is one that inevitably
   leads to a new form of class rule -- rule by bureaucracy. This is not
   because the Bolsheviks were "bad people" -- rather it is to do with the
   nature of centralised power (which by its very nature can only be
   exercised by the few). As the anarchist Sergven argued in 1918:

     "The proletariat is being gradually enserfed by the state. The
     people are being transformed into servants over whom there has
     arisen a new class of administrators -- a new class born mainly form
     the womb of the so-called intelligentsia . . . We do not mean to say
     . . . that the Bolshevik party set out to create a new class system.
     But we do say that even the best intentions and aspirations must
     inevitably be smashed against the evils inherent in any system of
     centralised power. The separation of management from labour, the
     division between administrators and workers flows logically from
     centralisation. It cannot be otherwise." [The Anarchists in the
     Russian Revolution, pp. 123-4]

   Thus McNally's use of the term "from below" is dishonest on two levels.
   Firstly, it is of anarchist origin and, secondly, it was repudiated by
   Lenin himself (who urged revolution "from below" and "from above", thus
   laying the groundwork for a new class system based around the Party).
   It goes without saying that either McNally is ignorant of his subject
   (and if so, why write a pamphlet on it) or he knew these facts and
   decided to suppress them.

   Either way it shows the bankruptcy of Marxism -- it uses libertarian
   rhetoric for non-libertarian ends while distorting the real source of
   those ideas. That Lenin dismissed this rhetoric and the ideas behind
   them as "anarchist" says it all. McNally's (and the SWP/ISO's) use of
   this rhetoric and imagery is therefore deeply dishonest.

15. Did Trotsky keep alive Leninism's "democratic essence"?

   McNally argues that "[d]uring the terrible decades of the 1920s and
   1940s . . . the lone voice of Leon Trotsky kept alive some of the basic
   elements of socialism from below." He suggests that it "was Trotsky's
   great virtue to insist against all odds that socialism was rooted in
   the struggle for human freedom."

   There is one slight flaw with this argument, namely that it is not
   actually true. All through the 1920s and 1930s Trotsky, rather than
   argue for "socialism's democratic essence", continually argued for
   party dictatorship. That McNally asserts the exact opposite suggests
   that the ideas of anarchism are not the only ones he is ignorant of. To
   prove our argument, we simply need to provide a chronological account
   of Trotsky's actual ideas.

   We shall begin in 1920 when we discover Trotsky arguing that:

     "We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
     dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of the party. Yet it
     can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the
     Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the
     party. It is thanks to the . . . party . . . [that] the Soviets . .
     . [became] transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the
     apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the
     power of the party for the power of the working class there is
     nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all.
     The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working
     class." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 109]

   Of course, this was written during the Civil War and may be excused in
   terms of the circumstances in which it was written. Sadly for this kind
   of argument, Trotsky continued to argue for party dictatorship after
   its end. In 1921, he argued again for Party dictatorship at the Tenth
   Party Congress. His comments made there against the Workers' Opposition
   within the Communist Party make his position clear:

     "The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans, making
     a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to
     elect representatives - above the Party, as if the party were not
     entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship
     temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers'
     democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the
     revolutionary birthright of the party. which is obliged to maintain
     its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the
     working classes. This awareness is for us the indispensable element.
     The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the
     formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Samuel Farber,
     Before Stalinism, p. 209]

   He repeated this call again. In 1922 he stated plainly that "we
   maintain the dictatorship of our party!" [The First Five Years of the
   Communist International, vol. 2, p. 255] Writing in 1923, he argued
   that "[i]f there is one question which basically not only does not
   require revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision,
   it is the question of the dictatorship of the Party, and its leadership
   in all spheres of our work." He stressed that "[o]ur party is the
   ruling party . . . To allow any changes whatever in this field, to
   allow the idea of a partial . . . curtailment of the leading role of
   our party would mean to bring into question all the achievements of the
   revolution and its future." He indicated the fate of those who did
   question the party's "leading role": "Whoever makes an attempt on the
   party's leading role will, I hope, be unanimously dumped by all of us
   on the other side of the barricade." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158 and
   p. 160]

   Which, of course, was exactly what the Bolsheviks had done to other
   socialists (anarchists and others) and working class militants and
   strikers after they had taken power.

   At this point, it will be argued that this was before the rise of
   Stalinism and the defeat of the Left Opposition. With the rise of
   Stalin, many will argue that Trotsky finally rejected the idea of party
   dictatorship and re-embraced what McNally terms the "democratic
   essence" of socialism. Unfortunately, yet again, this argument suffers
   from the flaw that it is totally untrue.

   Let us start with the so-called "New Course" of December 1923, in which
   Trotsky stated that "[w]e are the only party in the country and, in the
   period of the dictatorship, it could not be otherwise" and the Party
   was "obliged to monopolise the direction of political life." Although,
   of course, it was "incontestable that fractions are a scourge in the
   present situation" and not to be tolerated. Of course, there was talk
   of "workers' democracy" but the "New Course Resolution" was clear that
   that term in fact meant only internal party democracy: "Workers'
   democracy means the liberty of frank discussion of the most important
   questions of party life by all members, and the election of all leading
   party functionaries and commissions". To confirm this, it explicitly
   stated that "there can be no toleration of the formation of groupings
   whose ideological content is directed . . . against the dictatorship of
   the proletariat, as for instance the Workers' Truth and Workers'
   Group." [The challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), p. 87, p. 89
   and p. 460] Both these groups explicitly aimed for genuine workers'
   democracy and opposed party dictatorship.

   Moving on to Left Opposition proper, we see Trotsky opining in 1926
   that the "dictatorship of the party does not contradict the
   dictatorship of the class either theoretically or practically; but is
   the expression of it, if the regime of workers' democracy is constantly
   developed more and more." [The Challenge of the Left Opposition
   (1926-27), p. 76] The obvious contradictions and absurdities of this
   assertion are all too plain. Needless to say, when defending the
   concept of "the dictatorship of the party" he linked it to Lenin (and
   so to Leninist orthodoxy):

     "Of course, the foundation of our regime is the dictatorship of a
     class. But this in turn assumes . . . it is class that has come to
     self-consciousness through its vanguard, which is to say, through
     the party. Without this, the dictatorship could not exist . . .
     Dictatorship is the most highly concentrated function of function of
     a class, and therefore the basic instrument of a dictatorship is a
     party. In the most fundamental aspects a class realises its
     dictatorship through a party. That is why Lenin spoke not only of
     the dictatorship of the class but also the dictatorship of the party
     and, in a certain sense, made them identical." [Op. Cit., pp. 75-6]

   1927 saw Trotsky state that "[w]ith us the dictatorship of the party
   (quite falsely disputed theoretically by Stalin) is the expression of
   the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat . . . The dictatorship of
   a party is a part of the socialist revolution"? [Leon Trotsky on China,
   p. 251]

   The same year saw the publication of the Platform of the Opposition, in
   which it will soon be discovered that Trotsky still did not question
   the issue of Party dictatorship. Indeed, it is actually stressed in
   that document. While it urged a "consistent development of a workers'
   democracy in the party, the trade unions, and the soviets" and to
   "convert the urban soviets into real institutions of proletarian power"
   it contradicted itself by, ironically, attacking Stalin for weakening
   the party's dictatorship. In its words, the "growing replacement of the
   party by its own apparatus is promoted by a 'theory' of Stalin's which
   denies the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the
   dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
   dictatorship of the party." Of course it did not bother to explain how
   workers' democracy could develop within a party dictatorship nor how
   soviets could become institutions of power when real power would,
   obviously, lie with the party. But, then, it did not have to as by
   "workers' democracy" the Platform meant inter-party democracy, as can
   be seen when its authors "affirm" the "New Course Resolution"
   definition quoted above. [The Challenge of the Left Opposition
   (1926-7), p. 384, p. 395 and p. 402]

   It repeated this "principle" by arguing that "the dictatorship of the
   proletariat demands a single and united proletarian party as the leader
   of the working masses and the poor peasantry." It stressed that
   "[n]obody who sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the
   idea of 'two parties' or play with the suggestion of a split. Only
   those who desire to replace Lenin's course with some other can advocate
   a split or a movement along the two-party road." As such: "We will
   fight with all our power against the idea of two parties, because the
   dictatorship of the proletariat demands as its very core a single
   proletarian party. It demands a single party." [Op. Cit., p. 439 and p.
   441]

   Trotsky did not change from this perspective even after the horrors of
   Stalinism which McNally correctly documents. Writing in 1937, ten years
   after the Platform was published, this point is reiterated in his
   essay, "Bolshevism and Stalinism" (written in 1937) when argued quite
   explicitly that "the proletariat can take power only through its
   vanguard" and that "the necessity for state power arises from an
   insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity."
   Only with "support of the vanguard by the class" can there be the
   "conquest of power" and it was in "this sense the proletarian
   revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only
   under the leadership of the vanguard." Thus, rather than the working
   class as a whole seizing power, it is the "vanguard" which takes power
   - "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still by no
   means the sovereign ruler of society." Note, the party is "the
   sovereign ruler of society," not the working class. Nor can it be said
   that he was not clear who held power in his system: state power is
   required to govern the masses, who cannot exercise power themselves. As
   Trotsky put it, "[t]hose who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the
   party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the Bolshevik
   leadership were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of
   reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Writings
   1936-37, p. 490, p. 488 and p. 495] Later that same year he repeated
   this position:

     "The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not
     a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective
     necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class
     struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the
     necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory.
     The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as
     does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which
     can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history. . . The
     revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship
     surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly
     speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be
     replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without
     any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political
     development among the masses that it can never be achieved under
     capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the
     circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the
     moral development of the masses." [Op. Cit., pp. 513-4]

   Which was, let us not forget, his argument in 1920! Such remarkable
   consistency on this point over a 17 year period and one which cannot be
   overlooked if you seek to present an accurate account of Trotsky's
   ideas during this period. Significantly, this was the year after his
   apparent (and much belated) embrace of soviet democracy in The
   Revolution Betrayed. His advice on what to do during the Spanish
   Revolution followed this pattern: "Because the leaders of the CNT
   renounced dictatorship for themselves they left the place open for the
   Stalinist dictatorship." [our emphasis, Op. Cit., p. 514] So much for
   workers' power!

   Two years later, Trotsky repeats the same dictatorial ideas. Writing in
   1939, he indicates yet again that he viewed democracy as a threat to
   the revolution and saw the need for party power over workers' freedom
   (a position, incidentally, which echoes his comments from 1921):

     "The very same masses are at different times inspired by different
     moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised
     organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party,
     wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the
     vacillation of the masses themselves . . . if the dictatorship of
     the proletariat means anything at all, then it means that the
     vanguard of the proletariat is armed with the resources of the state
     in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from the
     backward layers of the proletariat itself." ["The Moralists and
     Sycophants against Marxism", pp. 53-66, Their Morals and Ours, p.
     59]

   Needless to say, by definition everyone is "backward" when compared to
   the "vanguard of the proletariat." Moreover, as it is this "vanguard"
   which is "armed with the resources of the state" and not the
   proletariat as a whole we are left with one obvious conclusion, namely
   party dictatorship rather than working class freedom. This is because
   such a position means denying exactly what workers' democracy is meant
   to be all about -- namely that working people can recall and replace
   their delegates when those delegates do not follow the wishes and
   mandates of the electors. If the governors determine what is and what
   is not in the "real" interests of the masses and "overcome" (i.e.
   repress) the governed, then we have dictatorship, not democracy.
   Clearly Trotsky is, yet again, arguing for party dictatorship and his
   comments are hardly in the spirit of individual/social freedom or
   democracy. Rather they mean the promotion of party power over workers'
   power -- a position which Trotsky had argued consistently throughout
   the 1920s and 1930s.

   As "Left Oppositionist" Victor Serge pointed out, "the greatest reach
   of boldness of the Left Opposition in the Bolshevik Party was to demand
   the restoration of inner-Party democracy, and it never dared dispute
   the theory of single-party government - by this time, it was too late."
   [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 181] Even in the prison camps in the late
   1920s and early 1930s, "almost all the Trotskyists continued to
   consider that 'freedom of party' would be 'the end of the revolution.'
   'Freedom to choose one's party - that is Menshevism,' was the
   Trotskyists' final verdict." [Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, p. 280]
   As can be seen, they were simply following their leader -- and
   Bolshevik orthodoxy!

   As can be seen, McNally does not present a remotely accurate account of
   Trotsky's ideas. All of which makes McNally's comments deeply ironic.
   McNally argues that "Stalin had returned to an ideology resembling
   authoritarian pre-Marxian socialism. Gone was socialism's democratic
   essence. Stalin's 'Marxism' was a variant of socialism from above"
   Clearly, Trotsky's "Marxism" was also a variant of "socialism from
   above" and without "socialism's democratic essence" (unless you think
   that party dictatorship can somehow be reconciled with democracy or
   expresses one of the "basic elements of socialism from below"). For
   Trotsky, as for Stalin, the dictatorship of the party was a fundamental
   principle of Bolshevism and one which was above democracy (which, by
   its very nature, expresses the "vacillation of the masses").

   Ironically, McNally argues that "[t]hroughout the 1920s and until his
   death . . . Trotsky fought desperately to build a revolutionary
   socialist movement based on the principles of Marx and Lenin." Leaving
   Marx to one side for the moment, McNally's comments are correct. In his
   support for party power and dictatorship (for a "socialism from above,"
   to use McNally's term) Trotsky was indeed following Lenin's principles.
   As noted in the [39]last section, Lenin had been arguing from a
   "socialism" based on "above" and "below" since at least 1905. The
   reality of Bolshevik rule (as indicated in [40]section 8) showed,
   pressure "from above" by a "revolutionary" government easily crushes
   pressure "from below." Nor was Lenin shy in arguing for Party
   dictatorship. As he put it in 1920:

     "the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an
     organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all
     capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most
     backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so
     corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking in the whole
     proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It
     can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the basic
     mechanism of the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the
     proletariat, and the essentials of transitions from capitalism to
     communism . . . for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be
     exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." [Collected Works,
     vol. 32, p. 21]

   To stress the point, Lenin is clearly arguing for party power, not
   workers' power, and that party dictatorship is inevitable in every
   revolution. This position is not put in terms of the extreme problems
   facing the Russian Revolution but rather is expressed in universal
   terms. As such, in this sense, McNally is right -- by defending the
   dictatorship of the party Trotsky was following the "principles" laid
   down by Lenin.

   Despite Lenin and Trotsky's dismissal of democracy, McNally argues that
   democracy is the core need of socialism:

     "A workers' state, according to Marx and Lenin, is a state based
     upon workers' control of society. It depends upon the existence of
     democratic organisation that can control society from below. A
     workers' state presupposes that workers are running the state. To
     talk of a workers' state is necessarily to talk of workers' power
     and workers' democracy."

   Which, as far as it goes, is correct (for anarchists, of course, the
   idea that a state can be run from below is utopian -- it is not
   designed for that and no state has ever been). Sadly for his argument,
   both Lenin and Trotsky argued against the idea of workers' democracy
   and, in stark contrast, argued that the dictatorship of the party was
   essential for a successful revolution. Indeed, they both explicitly
   argued against the idea that a mass, democratic organisation could run
   society during a revolution. The need for party power was raised
   explicitly to combat the fact that the workers' could change their
   minds and vote against the vanguard party. As such, the founding
   fathers of the SWP/ISO political tradition explicitly argued that a
   workers' state had to reject workers power and democracy in order to
   ensure the victory of the revolution. Clearly, according to McNally's
   own argument, Bolshevism cannot be considered as "socialism from below"
   as it explicitly argued that a workers' state did not "necessarily"
   mean workers' power or democracy.

   As indicated above, for the period McNally himself selects (the 1920s
   and 1930s), Trotsky consistently argued that the Bolshevik tradition
   the SWP/ISO places itself was based on the "principle" of party
   dictatorship. For McNally to talk about Trotsky keeping "socialism from
   below" alive is, therefore, truly amazing. It either indicates a lack
   of awareness of Trotsky's ideas or a desire to deceive.

   For anarchists, we stress, the Bolshevik substitution of party power
   for workers power did not come as a surprise. The state is the
   delegation of power -- as such, it means that the idea of a "workers'
   state" expressing "workers' power" is a logical impossibility. If
   workers are running society then power rests in their hands. If a state
   exists then power rests in the hands of the handful of people at the
   top, not in the hands of all. The state was designed for minority rule.
   No state can be an organ of working class (i.e. majority)
   self-management due to its basic nature, structure and design.

   For this reason anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued for a
   bottom-up federation of workers' councils as the agent of revolution
   and the means of managing society after capitalism and the state have
   been abolished. If these organs of workers' self-management are
   co-opted into a state structure (as happened in Russia) then their
   power will be handed over to the real power in any state -- the
   government (in this case, the Council of People's Commissars). They
   will quickly become mere rubberstamps of the organisation which holds
   the reigns of power, the vanguard party and its central committee.

   McNally rewrites history by arguing that it was "Stalin's
   counter-revolution" which saw "communist militants . . . executed,
   peasants slaughtered, the last vestiges of democracy eliminated." The
   SWP/ISO usually date this "counter-revolution" to around 1927/8.
   However, by this date there was no "vestiges" of meaningful democracy
   left -- as Trotsky himself made clear in his comments in favour of
   party dictatorship in 1921 and 1923. Indeed, Trotsky had supported the
   repression of the Kronstadt revolt which had called for soviet
   democracy (see the appendix on [41]"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"
   for details). He argues that Trotsky "acknowledged that the soviets had
   been destroyed, that union democracy had disappeared, that the
   Bolshevik party had been stripped of its revolutionary character" under
   Stalinism. Yet, as we noted in [42]section 8, the Bolsheviks had
   already destroyed soviet democracy, undermined union democracy and
   repressed all revolutionary elements outside of the party (the
   anarchists being first in April 1918). Moreover, as we discussed in
   [43]section 13, Lenin had argued for the introduction of state
   capitalism in April 1918 and the appointment of "one-man management."
   Clearly, by the start of the Russian Civil War in late May 1918, the
   Bolsheviks had introduced much of which McNally denounces as
   "Stalinism." By 1921, the repression of the Kronstadt revolt and the
   major strike wave that inspired it had made Stalinism inevitable (see
   the appendix on [44]"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?"). Clearly, to
   draw a sharp distinction between Stalinism and Bolshevism under Lenin
   is difficult, if not impossible, to make based on McNally's own
   criteria.

   During his analysis of the Trotskyist movements, McNally states that
   after the second world war "the Trotskyist movement greeted" the
   various new Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere "as
   workers' states" in spite of being "brutally undemocratic state
   capitalist tyrannies." Given that the SWP/ISO and a host of other
   Leninist groups still argue that Lenin's brutally undemocratic state
   capitalist tyranny was some kind of "workers' state" McNally's comments
   seem deeply ironic given the history of Leninism in power. As such,
   Trotsky's defence of Stalinism as a "degenerated workers' state" is not
   as surprising as McNally tries to claim. If, as he argues, "[t]o talk
   of a workers' state is necessarily to talk of workers' power and
   workers' democracy" then Lenin's regime had ceased to be a "workers'
   state" (if such a thing could exist) by the spring of 1918 at the
   latest. For anarchists (and libertarian Marxists) the similarities are
   all too clear between the regime under Lenin and that under Stalin.
   That McNally cannot see the obvious similarities suggests a lack of
   objectivity.

   He sums up his account of the post-Second War World Trotskyists by
   arguing that "the movement Trotsky had created fell victim to the
   ideology of socialism from above." Unfortunately for his claims, this
   is not the case. As proven above, Trotsky had consistently argued for
   the dictatorship of the party for 20 years and so Trotskyism had always
   been based on "the ideology of socialism from above." Trotsky had
   argued for party dictatorship simply because democratic mass
   organisations would allow the working class to express their "wavering"
   and "vacillations." Given that, according to those who follow Bolshevik
   ideas, the working class is meant to run the so-called "workers' state"
   Trotsky's arguments are extremely significant. He explicitly
   acknowledged that under Bolshevism the working class does not actually
   manage their own fates but rather the vanguard party does. This is
   cannot be anything but "socialism from above." If, as McNally argues,
   Trotsky's "fatal error" in not recognising that Stalinism was state
   capitalism came from "violating the principles of socialism from
   below," then this "fatal error" is at the heart of the Leninist
   tradition.

   As such, its roots can be traced further back than the rise of Stalin.
   Its real roots lie with the idea of a "workers' state" and so with the
   ideas of Marx and Engels. As Bakunin argued at the time (and anarchists
   have repeated since) the state is, by its nature, a centralised and
   top-down machine. By creating a "revolutionary" government, power is
   automatically transferred from the working class into the hands of a
   few people at the top. As they have the real, de facto, power in the
   state, it is inevitable that they will implement "socialism from above"
   as that is how the state is structured. As Bakunin argued, "every state
   . . . are in essence only machines governing the masses from above" by
   a "privileged minority, allegedly knowing the genuine interests of the
   people better than the people themselves." The idea of a state being
   run "from below" makes as much sense as "dry rain." Little wonder
   Bakunin argued for a "federal organisation, from the bottom upward, of
   workers' associations, groups, city and village communes, and finally
   of regions and peoples" as "the sole condition of a real and not
   fictitious liberty." In other words, "[w]here all rule, there are no
   more ruled, and there is no State." [The Political Philosophy of
   Bakunin, p. 211, p. 210 and p. 223] Only this, the destruction of every
   state and its replacement by a system of workers' councils, can ensure
   a real "socialism from below."

   Therefore, rather than signifying the working class running society
   directly, the "workers' state" actually signifies the opposite --
   namely, that the working class has delegated that power and
   responsibility to others, namely the government. As Leninism supports
   the idea of a "workers' state" then it is inevitably and logically tied
   to the idea of "socialism from below." Given that Lenin himself argued
   that "only from below" was an anarchist principle (see [45]last
   section), we can easily see what the "fatal error" of Trotsky actually
   was. By rejecting anarchism he automatically rejected real "socialism
   from below."

   Sadly for McNally, Trotsky did not, as he asserts, embrace the
   "democratic essence" of socialism in the 1920s or 30s. Rather, as is
   clear from Trotsky's writings, he embraced party dictatorship (i.e.
   "socialism from above") and considered this as quite compatible
   (indeed, an essential aspect) of his Leninist ideology. That McNally
   fails to indicate this and, indeed, asserts the exact opposite of the
   facts shows that it is not only anarchism he is ignorant about.

References

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