              H.1 Have anarchists always opposed state socialism?

   Yes. Anarchists have always argued that real socialism cannot be
   created using a state. The basic core of the argument is simple.
   Socialism implies equality, yet the state signifies inequality -
   inequality in terms of power. As we argued in [1]section B.2,
   anarchists consider one of the defining aspects of the state is its
   hierarchical nature. In other words, the delegation of power into the
   hands of a few. As such, it violates a core idea of socialism, namely
   social equality. Those who make up the governing bodies in a state have
   more power than those who have elected them (see [2]section I.1).

   It is with this perspective that anarchists have combated the idea of
   state socialism and Marxism (although we should stress that libertarian
   forms of Marxism, such as council communism, have strong similarities
   to anarchism). In the case of the Russian Revolution, the anarchists
   were amongst the first on the left to be suppressed by the Bolsheviks.
   Indeed, the history of Marxism is, in part, a history of its struggles
   against anarchists just as the history of anarchism is also, in part, a
   history of its struggle against the various forms of Marxism and its
   offshoots.

   While both Stirner and Proudhon wrote many pages against the evils and
   contradictions of state socialism, anarchists have only really been
   fighting the Marxist form of state socialism since Bakunin. This is
   because, until the First International, Marx and Engels were relatively
   unknown socialist thinkers. Proudhon was aware of Marx (they had meant
   in France in the 1840s and had corresponded) but Marxism was unknown in
   France during his life time and so Proudhon did not directly argue
   against Marxism (he did, however, critique Louis Blanc and other French
   state socialists). Similarly, when Stirner wrote The Ego and Its Own
   Marxism did not exist bar a few works by Marx and Engels. Indeed, it
   could be argued that Marxism finally took shape after Marx and Engels
   had read Stirner's classic work and produced their notoriously
   inaccurate diatribe, The German Ideology, against him. However, like
   Proudhon, Stirner attacked other state socialists and communists.

   Before discussing Bakunin's opposition and critique of Marxism in the
   [3]next section, we should consider the thoughts of Stirner and
   Proudhon on state socialism. These critiques contain may important
   ideas and so are worth summarising. However, it is worth noting that
   when both Stirner and Proudhon were writing communist ideas were all
   authoritarian in nature. Libertarian communism only developed after
   Bakunin's death in 1876. This means that when Proudhon and Stirner were
   critiquing "communism" they were attacking a specific form of
   communism, the form which subordinated the individual to the community.
   Anarchist communists like Kropotkin and Malatesta also opposed such
   kinds of "communism" (as Kropotkin put it, "before and in 1848"
   communism "was put forward in such a shape as to fully account for
   Proudhon's distrust as to its effect upon liberty. The old idea of
   Communism was the idea of monastic communities . . . The last vestiges
   of liberty and of individual energy would be destroyed, if humanity
   ever had to go through such a communism." [Act for Yourselves, p. 98]).
   Of course, it may be likely that Stirner and Proudhon would have
   rejected libertarian communism as well, but bear in mind that not all
   forms of "communism" are identical.

   For Stirner, the key issue was that communism (or socialism), like
   liberalism, looked to the "human" rather than the unique. "To be looked
   upon as a mere part, part of society," asserted Stirner, "the
   individual cannot bear - because he is more; his uniqueness puts from
   it this limited conception." As such, his protest against socialism was
   similar to his protest against liberalism (indeed, he drew attention to
   their similarity by calling it "social liberalism"). Stirner was aware
   that capitalism was not the great defender of freedom it was claimed to
   be by its supporters. "Restless acquisition," he argued, "does not let
   us take breath, take a claim enjoyment: we do not get the comfort of
   our possessions." Communism, by the "organisation of labour," can "bear
   its fruit" so that "we come to an agreement about human labours, that
   they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil."
   However, communism "is silent" over "for whom is time to be gained."
   He, in contrast, stresses that it is for the individual, "To take
   comfort in himself as the unique." [The Ego and Its Own, p. 265 and pp.
   268-9] Thus state socialism does not recognise that the purpose of
   association is to free the individual and instead subjects the
   individual to a new tyranny:

     "it is not another State (such as a 'people's State') that men aim
     at, but their union, uniting, this ever-fluid uniting of everything
     standing - A State exists even without my co-operation . . . the
     independent establishment of the State founds my lack of
     independence; its condition as a 'natural growth,' its organism,
     demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it."
     [Op. Cit., p. 224]

   Similarly, Stirner argued that "Communism, by the abolition of all
   personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on
   another, to wit, on the generality or collectivity" which is "a
   condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me.
   Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from
   individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it
   puts in the hands of the collectivity." [Op. Cit., p. 257] History has
   definitely confirmed this fear. By nationalising property, the various
   state socialist regimes turned the worker from a servant of the
   capitalist into a serf of the state. In contrast, communist-anarchists
   argue for free association and workers' self-management as the means of
   ensuring that socialised property does not turn into the denial of
   freedom rather than as a means of ensuring it. As such, Stirner's
   attack on what Marx termed "vulgar communism" is still important and
   finds echoes in communist-anarchist writings as well as the best works
   of Marx and his more libertarian followers (see [4]section I.4 on how
   libertarian communism is not "silent" on these matters and incorporates
   Stirner's legitimate concerns and arguments).

   Similar arguments to Stirner's can be found in Proudhon's works against
   the various schemes of state socialism that existing in France in the
   middle of the nineteenth century. He particularly attacked the ideas of
   Louis Blanc. Blanc, whose most famous book was Organisation du Travail
   (Organisation of Work, first published in 1840) argued that social ills
   resulted from competition and they could be solved by means of
   eliminating it via government initiated and financed reforms. More
   specifically, Blanc argued that it was "necessary to use the whole
   power of the state" to ensure the creation and success of workers'
   associations (or "social workshops"). Since that "which the
   proletarians lack to free themselves are the tools of labour," the
   government "must furnish them" with these. "The state," in short,
   "should place itself resolutely at the head of industry." [quoted by K.
   Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French
   Republican Socialism, p. 139] Capitalists would be encouraged to invest
   money in these workshops, for which they would be guaranteed interest
   payments but the workers would keep the remaining profits generated by
   the workshops. Such state-initiated workshops would soon prove to be
   more efficient than privately owned industry and, by charging lower
   prices, force privately owned industry either out of business or to
   change into social workshops, so eliminating competition.

   Proudhon objected to this scheme on many levels. He argued that Blanc's
   scheme appealed "to the state for its silent partnership; that is, he
   gets down on his knees before the capitalists and recognises the
   sovereignty of monopoly." Given that Proudhon saw the state as an
   instrument of the capitalist class, asking that state to abolish
   capitalism was illogical and impossible. Moreover, by getting the funds
   for the "social workshop" from capitalists, Blanc's scheme was hardly
   undermining their power. "Capital and power," Proudhon argued,
   "secondary organs of society, are always the gods whom socialism
   adores; if capital and power did not exist, it would invent them."
   [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 157] He stressed the authoritarian
   nature of Blanc's scheme:

     "M. Blanc is never tired of appealing to authority, and socialism
     loudly declares itself anarchistic; M. Blanc places power above
     society, and socialism tends to subordinate it to society; M. Blanc
     makes social life descend from above, and socialism maintains that
     it springs up and grows from below; M. Blanc runs after politics,
     and socialism is in quest of science. No more hypocrisy, let me say
     to M. Blanc: you desire neither Catholicism nor monarchy nor
     nobility, but you must have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a
     censorship, a hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks. For my part, I
     deny your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial
     State, and all your representative mystifications." [System of
     Economical Contradictions, p. 263]

   Equally, Proudhon opposed the "top-down" nature of Blanc's ideas. As it
   was run by the state, the system of workshops would hardly be
   libertarian as "hierarchy would result from the elective principle . .
   . as in constitutional politics. But these social workshops again,
   regulated by law, - will they be anything but corporations? What is the
   bond of corporations? The law. Who will make the law? The government."
   Such a regime, Proudhon argued, would be unlikely to function well and
   the net result would be "all reforms ending, now in hierarchical
   corporation, now in State monopoly, or the tyranny of communism." [Op.
   Cit., p. 269 and p. 271] This was because of the perspective of state
   socialists:

     "As you cannot conceive of society without hierarchy, you have made
     yourselves the apostles of authority; worshippers of power, you
     think only of strengthening it and muzzling liberty; your favourite
     maxim is that the welfare of the people must be achieved in spite of
     the people; instead of proceeding to social reform by the
     extermination of power and politics, you insist on a reconstruction
     of power and politics." [Op. Cit., p. 397]

   Instead of reform from above, Proudhon stressed the need for working
   class people to organise themselves for their own liberation. As he put
   it, the "problem before the labouring classes . . . [is] 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." For, "to combat and reduce power, to put
   it in its proper place in society, 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." This was
   because the state "finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and
   directed against the proletariat." [Op. Cit., p. 398, p. 397 and p.
   399] Unsurprisingly, Proudhon stressed in 1848 that "the proletariat
   must emancipate itself without the help of the government." [quoted by
   George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 125] In addition, by
   guaranteeing interest payments, Blanc's scheme insured the continued
   exploitation of labour by capital and, of course, while opposing
   capitalist competition, Proudhon did not consider it wise to abolish
   all forms of the market.

   Proudhon argued for a two-way approach to undermining capitalism from
   below: the creation of workers associations and the organisation of
   credit. By creating mutual banks, which provided credit at cost,
   workers could create associations to compete with capitalist firms,
   drive them out of business and so eliminate exploitation once and for
   all by workers' self-management. In this way, the working class would
   emancipate itself from capitalism and build a socialist society from
   below upwards by their own efforts and activities. Proudhon, as Marxist
   Paul Thomas notes, "believed fervently . . . in the salvation of
   working men, by their own efforts, through economic and social action
   alone . . . Proudhon advocated, and to a considerable extent inspired,
   the undercutting of this terrain [of the state] from without by means
   of autonomous working-class associations." [Karl Marx and the
   Anarchists, pp. 177-8] Rejecting violent revolution (as well as strikes
   as counter-productive), Proudhon argued for economic means to end
   economic exploitation and, as such, he saw anarchism as coming about by
   reform (unlike later social anarchists, who were generally
   revolutionaries and argued that capitalism cannot be reformed away and
   so supported strikes and other forms of collective working class direct
   action, struggle and combative organisation).

   Unsurprisingly, Proudhon's ideas were shaped by the society in lived
   and agitated in. In the mid-nineteenth century, the bulk of the French
   working class were artisans and peasants and so such an approach
   reflected the social context in which it was proposed. With a
   predominance of small-scale industry, the notion of free credit
   provided by mutual banks as the means of securing working class people
   access to the means of production is theoretically feasible. It was
   this social context which informed Proudhon's ideas (see [5]section
   H.2.3). He never failed to stress that association would be tyranny if
   imposed upon peasants and artisans (rather, he thought that
   associations would be freely embraced by these workers if they thought
   it was in their interests to). However, he did not ignore the rise of
   large-scale industry and explicitly proposed workers' associations
   (i.e., co-operatives) for those industries which objectively needed it
   (i.e. capitalist industry) and for those other toilers who desired it.
   The net effect was the same, though, namely to abolish wage labour.

   It was this opposition to wage labour which drove Proudhon's critique
   of state socialism. He continually stressed that state ownership of the
   means of production was a danger to the liberty of the worker and
   simply the continuation of capitalism with the state as the new boss.
   As he put it in 1848, he "did not want to see the State confiscate the
   mines, canals and railways; that would add to monarchy, and more wage
   slavery. We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to
   democratically organised workers' associations . . . these associations
   [will] 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." He contrasted workers'
   associations run by and for their members to those "subsidised,
   commanded and directed by the State," which would crush "all liberty
   and all wealth, precisely as the great limited companies are doing."
   [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 62 and p. 105]

   Marx, of course, had replied to Proudhon's work System of Economic
   Contradictions with his Poverty of Philosophy. However, Marx's work
   aroused little interest when published although Proudhon did carefully
   read and annotate his copy of it, claiming it to be "a libel" and a
   "tissue of abuse, calumny, falsification and plagiarism" (he even
   called Marx "the tapeworm of Socialism.") [quoted by Woodcock, Op.
   Cit., p. 102] Sadly, Proudhon did not reply publicly to Marx's work due
   to an acute family crisis and then the start of the 1848 revolution in
   France. However, given his views of Louis Blanc and other socialists
   who saw socialism being introduced after the seizing of state power, he
   would hardly have been supportive of Marx's ideas.

   So while none of Proudhon's and Stirner's arguments were directly aimed
   at Marxism, their critiques are applicable to much of mainstream
   Marxism as this inherited many of the ideas of the state socialism they
   attacked. Much of their analysis was incorporated in the collectivist
   and communist ideas of the anarchists that followed them (some
   directly, as from Proudhon, some by co-incidence as Stirner's work was
   quickly forgotten and only had an impact on the anarchist movement when
   he was rediscovered in the 1890s). This can be seen from the fact that
   Proudhon's ideas on the management of production by workers'
   associations, opposition to nationalisation as state-capitalism and the
   need for action from below by working people themselves, all found
   their place in communist-anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism and in their
   critique of mainstream Marxism (such as social democracy) and Leninism.
   Echoes of these critiques can be found Bakunin's comments of 1868:

     "I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because
     for me humanity is unthinkable without liberty. I am not a
     Communist, because Communism concentrates and swallows up in itself
     for the benefit of the State all the forces of society, because it
     inevitably leads to the concentration of property in the hands of
     the State . . . I want to see society and collective or social
     property organised from below upwards, by way of free associations,
     not from above downwards, by means of any kind of authority
     whatsoever . . . That is the sense in which I am a Collectivist and
     not a Communist." [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl
     Marx, pp. 67-8]

   It is with Bakunin that Marxism and Anarchism came into direct conflict
   as it was Bakunin who lead the struggle against Marx in the
   International Workingmen's Association between 1868 and 1872. It was in
   these exchanges that the two schools of socialism (the libertarian and
   the authoritarian) clarified themselves. With Bakunin, the anarchist
   critique of Marxism (and state socialism in general) starts to reach
   its mature form. We discuss Bakunin's critique in the [6]next section.

H.1.1 What was Bakunin's critique of Marxism?

   Bakunin and Marx famously clashed in the first International Working
   Men's Association between 1868 and 1872. This conflict helped clarify
   the anarchist opposition to the ideas of Marxism and can be considered
   as the first major theoretical analysis and critique of Marxism by
   anarchists. Later critiques followed, of course, particularly after the
   degeneration of Social Democracy into reformism and the failure of the
   Russian Revolution (both of which allowed the theoretical critiques to
   be enriched by empirical evidence) but the Bakunin/Marx conflict laid
   the ground for what came after. As such, an overview of Bakunin's
   critique is essential as anarchists continued to develop and expand
   upon it (particularly after the experiences of actual Marxist movements
   and revolutions confirmed it).

   First, however, we must stress that Marx and Bakunin had many similar
   ideas. They both stressed the need for working people to organise
   themselves to overthrow capitalism by a social revolution. They argued
   for collective ownership of the means of production. They both
   constantly stressed that the emancipation of the workers must be the
   task of the workers themselves. They differed, of course, in exactly
   how these common points should be implemented in practice. Both,
   moreover, had a tendency to misrepresent the opinions of the other on
   certain issues (particularly as their struggle reached its climax).
   Anarchists, unsurprisingly, argue Bakunin has been proved right by
   history, so confirming the key aspects of his critique of Marx.

   So what was Bakunin's critique of Marxism? There are six main areas.
   Firstly, there is the question of current activity (i.e. whether the
   workers' movement should participate in "politics" and the nature of
   revolutionary working class organisation). Secondly, there is the issue
   of the form of the revolution (i.e. whether it should be a political
   then an economic one, or whether it should be both at the same time).
   Thirdly, there is the prediction that state socialism will be
   exploitative, replacing the capitalist class with the state
   bureaucracy. Fourthly, there is the issue of the "dictatorship of the
   proletariat." Fifthly, there is the question of whether political power
   can be seized by the working class as a whole or whether it can only be
   exercised by a small minority. Sixthly, there was the issue of whether
   the revolution be centralised or decentralised in nature. We shall
   discuss each in turn.

   On the issue of current struggle, the differences between Marx and
   Bakunin are clear. For Marx, the proletariat had to take part in
   bourgeois elections as an organised political party. As the resolution
   of the (gerrymandered) Hague Congress of First International put it:
   "In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes
   the proletariat cannot act as a class except by constituting itself a
   political party, distinct from and opposed to, all old parties formed
   by the propertied classes . . . The conquest of political power has
   therefore become the great duty of the working class." [Collected
   Works, vol. 23, p. 243]

   This political party must stand for elections and win votes. As Marx
   argued in the preamble of the French Workers' Party, the workers must
   turn the franchise "from a means of deception . . . into an instrument
   of emancipation." This can be considered as part of the process
   outlined in the Communist Manifesto, where it was argued that the
   "immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other
   proletarian parties," namely the "conquest of political power by the
   proletariat," the "first step in the revolution by the working class"
   being "to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
   the battle of democracy." Engels later stressed (in 1895) that the
   "Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the winning of universal
   suffrage, of democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of
   the militant proletariat" and that German Social Democracy had showed
   workers of all countries "how to make use of universal suffrage." [Marx
   and Engels Reader, p. 566, p. 484, p. 490 and p. 565]

   With this analysis in mind, Marxist influenced political parties have
   consistently argued for and taken part in election campaigns, seeking
   office as a means of spreading socialist ideas and as a means of
   pursuing the socialist revolution. The Social Democratic parties which
   were the first Marxist parties (and which developed under the watchful
   eyes of Marx and Engels) saw revolution in terms of winning a majority
   within Parliamentary elections and using this political power to
   abolish capitalism (once this was done, the state would "wither away"
   as classes would no longer exist). In effect, as we discuss in
   [7]section H.3.10, these parties aimed to reproduce Marx's account of
   the forming of the Paris Commune on the level of the national
   Parliament.

   Bakunin, in contrast, argued that while the communists "imagine they
   can attain their goal by the development and organisation of the
   political power of the working classes . . . aided by bourgeois
   radicalism" anarchists "believe they can succeed only through the
   development and organisation of the non-political or anti-political
   power of the working classes." The Communists "believe it necessary to
   organise the workers' forces in order to seize the political power of
   the State," while anarchists "organise for the purpose of destroying
   it." Bakunin saw this in terms of creating new organs of working class
   power in opposition to the state, organised "from the bottom up, by the
   free association or federation of workers, starting with the
   associations, then going on to the communes, the region, the nations,
   and, finally, culminating in a great international and universal
   federation." In other words, a system of workers' councils. As such, he
   constantly argued for workers, peasants and artisans to organise into
   unions and join the International Workingmen's Association, so becoming
   "a real force . . . which knows what to do and is therefore capable of
   guiding the revolution in the direction marked out by the aspirations
   of the people: a serious international organisation of workers'
   associations of all lands capable of replacing this departing world of
   states." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 262-3, p. 270 and p. 174] To Marx's
   argument that workers should organise politically (i.e., send their
   representations to Parliament) Bakunin realised that when "common
   workers" are sent "to Legislative Assemblies" the result is that the
   "worker-deputies, transplanted into a bourgeois environment, into an
   atmosphere of purely bourgeois ideas, will in fact cease to be workers
   and, becoming Statesmen, they will become bourgeois . . . For men do
   not make their situations; on the contrary, men are made by them." [The
   Basic Bakunin, p. 108]

   As far as history goes, the experience of Social Democracy confirmed
   Bakunin's analysis. A few years after Engels death in 1895, German
   Social Democracy was racked by the "revisionism" debate. This debate
   did not spring from the minds of a few leaders, isolated from the
   movement, but rather expressed developments within the movement itself.
   In effect, the revisionists wanted to adjust the party rhetoric to what
   the party was actually doing and so the battle against the revisionists
   basically represented a battle between what the party said it was doing
   and its actual practice. As one of the most distinguished historians of
   this period put it, the "distinction between the contenders remained
   largely a subjective one, a difference of ideas in the evaluation of
   reality rather than a difference in the realm of action." [C. Schorske,
   German Social Democracy, p. 38] By the start of the First World War,
   the Social Democrats had become so corrupted by its activities in
   bourgeois institutions they supported its state (and ruling class) and
   voted for war credits rather than denounce the war as Imperialist
   slaughter for profits. Clearly, Bakunin was proved right. (see also
   [8]section J.2.6 for more discussion on the effect of electioneering on
   radical parties).

   However, we must stress that because Bakunin rejected participating in
   bourgeois politics, it did not mean that he rejected "politics" or
   "political struggle" in general (see [9]section J.2.10). Bakunin
   clearly advocated what would later by termed a syndicalist strategy
   (see [10]section H.2.8). This union movement would be complemented by a
   specific anarchist organisation which would work within it to influence
   it towards anarchist aims by the "natural influence" of its members
   (see [11]section J.3.7).

   Comparing Bakunin and Marx, it is clear whom history has validated.
   Even that anti-anarchist Stalinist hack Eric Hobsbawn could not avoid
   admitting that "the remarkable achievement of Spanish anarchism which
   was to create a working-class movement that remained genuinely
   revolutionary. Social democratic and . . . even communist trade unions
   have rarely been able to escape either schizophrenia [i.e.,
   revolutionary rhetoric hiding reformist practice] or betrayal of their
   socialist convictions." [Revolutionaries, p. 104] This is probably the
   only accurate comment made in his various diatribes on anarchism but,
   of course, he did not allow the implications of his statement to bother
   his faith in Leninist ideology. So given the long history of reformism
   and betrayal of socialist principles by radicals utilising elections
   and political parties, it comes as no surprise that anarchists consider
   both Bakunin's critique and alternative to be confirmed by experience
   ([12]section J.2 discusses direct action and electioneering).

   Which brings us to the second issue, namely the nature of the
   revolution itself. For Bakunin, a revolution meant a social revolution
   from below. This involved both the abolition of the state and the
   expropriation of capital. In his words, "the revolution must set out
   from the first [to] radically and totally to destroy the State." The
   "natural and necessary consequences" of which will be the "confiscation
   of all productive capital and means of production on behalf of workers'
   associations, who are to put them to collective use . . . the
   federative Alliance of all working men's associations . . . will
   constitute the Commune." There "can no longer be any successful
   political . . . revolution unless the political revolution is
   transformed into social revolution." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
   Writings, p. 170 and p. 171]

   Which, incidentally, disproves Engels' claims that Bakunin "does not
   regard capital . . . but the state as the main evil to be abolished"
   after which "capitalism will go to blazes of itself." [The Marx-Engels
   Reader, p. 728] This misrepresents Bakunin's position, as he always
   stressed that economic and political transformation "must be
   accomplished together and simultaneously." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 106]
   Given that Bakunin thought the state was the protector of capitalism,
   no economic change could be achieved until such time as it was
   abolished. This also meant that Bakunin considered a political
   revolution before an economic one to mean the continued slavery of the
   workers. As he argued, "[t]o win political freedom first can signify no
   other thing but to win this freedom only, leaving for the first days at
   least economic and social relations in the same old state, - that is,
   leaving the proprietors and capitalists with their insolent wealth, and
   the workers with their poverty." With capitalists' economic power
   intact, could the workers' political power remain strong? As such,
   "every political revolution taking place prior to and consequently
   without a social revolution must necessarily be a bourgeois revolution,
   and a bourgeois revolution can only be instrumental in bringing about
   bourgeois Socialism - that is, it is bound to end in a new, more
   hypocritical and more skilful, but no less oppressive, exploitation of
   the proletariat by the bourgeois." [The Political Philosophy of
   Bakunin, p. 294 and p. 289]

   Did Marx and Engels hold this position? Apparently so. Discussing the
   Paris Commune, Marx noted that it was "the political form at last
   discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of
   labour," and as the "political rule of the producer cannot coexist with
   the perpetuation of his social slavery" the Commune was to "serve as a
   lever for uprooting the economic foundations upon which rests the
   existence of classes." Engels argued that the "proletariat seizes the
   public power, and by means of this transforms the . . . means of
   production . . . into public property." In the Communist Manifesto they
   argued that "the first step in the revolution by the working class" is
   the "rais[ing] the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
   the battle of democracy." The proletariat "will use its political
   supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeois, to
   centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,
   i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class." [Op. Cit., p.
   635, p. 717 and p. 490]

   This is made even clearer in Engels' "Principles of Communism" (often
   considered as a draft of the Manifesto). That document stressed that it
   was not possible for "private property to be abolished at one stroke",
   arguing that "the proletarian revolution will transform existing
   society gradually." The revolution "will establish a democratic
   constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the
   proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a
   majority of the people." "Democracy", Engels went on, "would be quite
   useless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means
   of carrying through further measures directly attacking private
   ownership." [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 350] Decades later, when Marx
   discussed what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" meant, he argued
   (in reply to Bakunin's question of "over whom will the proletariat
   rule?") that it simply meant "that so long as other classes continue to
   exist, the capitalist class in particular, the proletariat fights it
   (for with the coming of the proletariat to power, its enemies will not
   yet have disappeared), it must use measures of force, hence
   governmental measures; if it itself still remains a class and the
   economic conditions on which the class struggle and the existence of
   classes have not yet disappeared, they must be forcibly removed or
   transformed, and the process of their transformation must be forcibly
   accelerated." [The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 542-3] Note, "capitalists,"
   not "former capitalists," so implying that the members of the
   proletariat are, in fact, still proletarians after the "socialist"
   revolution and so still subject to wage slavery under economic masters.
   Which makes perfect sense, as otherwise the term "dictatorship of the
   proletariat" would be meaningless.

   Then there is the issue of when the working class could seize political
   power. As Engels put it, the struggle "between bourgeoisie and
   proletariat can only be fought out in a republic." This is "the form in
   which the struggle must be fought out" and in countries without a
   republic, such as Germany at the time, workers would "have to conquer
   it." [Marx and Engels, The Socialist Revolution, p. 264] Decades
   previously, Engels has argued that the "first, fundamental condition
   for the introduction of community of property is the political
   liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution."
   [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 102] Thus the bourgeois revolution would
   come first, then the proletarian one. The Communist Manifesto had
   raised the possibility of a bourgeois revolution in Germany being "but
   a prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution."
   [Selected Writings, p. 63] Within two years, Marx and Engels argued
   that this was wrong, that a socialist revolution was not possible in
   Continental Europe for some time. Even in the 1880s, Engels was still
   arguing that a proletarian revolution was not immediately possible in
   Germany and the first results of any revolution would be a bourgeois
   republic within which the task of social democracy was to build its
   forces and influence.

   Clearly, then, Marx and Engels considered the creation of a republic in
   a well developed capitalist economy as the basis for seizing of state
   power as the key event and, later, the expropriation of the
   expropriators would occur. Thus the economic power of the capitalists
   would remain, with the proletariat utilising political power to combat
   and reduce it. Anarchists argue that if the proletariat does not hold
   economic power, its political power would at best be insecure and would
   in fact degenerate. Would the capitalists just sit and wait while their
   economic power was gradually eliminated by political action? And what
   of the proletariat during this period? Will they patiently obey their
   bosses, continue to be oppressed and exploited by them until such time
   as the end of their "social slavery" has been worked out (and by whom)?
   Would they be happy to fight for a bourgeois republic first, then wait
   for an unspecified period of time before the party leadership
   proclaimed that the time was ripe to introduce socialism?

   As the experience of the Russian Revolution showed, the position of
   Marx and Engels proved to be untenable. Bakunin's perspective was
   repeated by a Russian worker in 1906 when he expressed his impatience
   with Menshevik strategy:

     "Here [the Mensheviks] . . . tells us that the workers' congress is
     the best means of assuring the independence of the proletariat in
     the bourgeois revolution; otherwise, we workers will play the role
     of cannon fodder in it. So I ask: what is the insurance for? Will we
     really make the bourgeois revolution? Is it possible that we will
     spill blood twice - once for the victory of the bourgeois
     revolution, and the time for the victory of our proletarian
     revolution? No, comrades, it is not to be found in the party
     programme [that this must be so]; but if we workers are to spill
     blood, then only once, for freedom and socialism." [quoted by
     Abraham Ascher, The Mensheviks in the Russian Revolution, p. 43]

   In 1917, this lesson was well learned and the Russian workers initially
   followed Bakunin's path (mostly spontaneously and without significant
   influence by anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists). The Mensheviks
   repeated their mistakes of 1905 as they "proved unable to harness this
   revolutionary potential to any practical purpose. They were blinded by
   their rigid marxist formula of 'bourgeois revolution first, socialist
   revolution later' and tired to restrain the masses. They preached
   self-abnegation to them, told them to stand aside until such times as
   the bourgeoisie had built a solid capitalist system. This made no sense
   to workers and peasants - why should they renounce the power that was
   in their hands already?" Leading Menshevik Fedor Dan "admitted in 1946
   that the Menshevik concept of the bourgeois revolution rested on
   'illusions'" [Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks, p 14 and p. 15]
   Once Lenin returned to Russia, the Bolsheviks broke with this
   previously shared perspective and started to support and encourage the
   radicalisation of the workers and so managed to gain popular support.
   However, they did so partially and incompletely and, as a consequence,
   finally held back and so fatally undermined the revolution.

   After the February revolution paralysed the state, the workers
   organised factory committees and raised the idea and practice of
   workers self-management of production. The Russian anarchists supported
   this movement whole-heartedly, arguing that it should be pushed as far
   as it would go. In contrast, Lenin argued for "workers' control over
   the capitalists." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 402] This was,
   unsurprisingly, the policy applied immediately after the Bolshevik
   seizure of power. However, as one Leninist writer admits, "[t]wo
   overwhelmingly powerful forces obliged the Bolsheviks to abandon this
   'reformist' course." One was the start of the civil war, the other "was
   the fact that the capitalists used their remaining power to make the
   system unworkable. At the end of 1917 the All Russian Congress of
   employers declared that those 'factories in which the control is
   exercised by means of active interference in the administration will be
   closed.' The workers' natural response to the wave of lockouts which
   followed was to demand that their [sic!] state nationalise the
   factories." [John Rees, "In Defence of October", pp. 3-82,
   International Socialism, no. 52, p. 42] By July 1918, only one-fifth of
   nationalised firms had been done so by the state, the rest by local
   committees from below (which, incidentally, shows the unresponsiveness
   of centralised power). Clearly, the idea that a social revolution can
   come after a political was shown to be a failure - the capitalist class
   used its powers to disrupt the economic life of Russia.

   Faced with the predictable opposition by capitalists to their system of
   "control" the Bolsheviks nationalised the means of production. Sadly,
   within the nationalised workplace the situation of the worker remained
   essentially unchanged. Lenin had been arguing for one-man management
   (appointed from above and armed with "dictatorial" powers) since late
   April 1918 (see [13]section H.3.14). This aimed at replacing the
   capitalists with state appointed managers, not workers self-management.
   In fact, as we discuss in [14]section H.6.2 the party leaders
   repeatedly overruled the factory committees' suggestions to build
   socialism based on their management of the economy in favour of
   centralised state control. Bakunin's fear of what would happen if a
   political revolution preceded a social one came true. The working class
   continued to be exploited and oppressed as before, first by the
   bourgeoisie and then by the new bourgeoisie of state appointed managers
   armed with all the powers of the old ones (plus a few more). Russia
   confirmed Bakunin's analysis that a revolution must immediately combine
   political and economic goals in order for it to be successful.

   The experience of Bolshevik Russia also confirms Bakunin's prediction
   that state socialism would simply be state capitalism. As Bakunin
   stressed, the state "is the government from above downwards of an
   immense number of men [and women], very different from the point of
   view of the degree of their culture, the nature of the countries or
   localities that they inhabit, the occupations they follow, the
   interests and aspirations directing them - the State is the government
   of all these by one or another minority." The state "has always been
   the patrimony of some privileged class" and "when all other classes
   have exhausted themselves" it "becomes the patrimony of the
   bureaucratic class." The Marxist state "will not content itself with
   administering and governing the masses politically" it will "also
   administer the masses economically, concentrating in the hands of the
   State the production and distribution of wealth." This will result in
   "a new class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and
   scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the
   name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto
   the mass of ignorant ones!" Thus exploitation by a new bureaucratic
   class would be the only result when the state becomes "the sole
   proprietor" and "the only banker, capitalist, organiser, and director
   of all national labour, and the distributor of all its products."
   [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 317-8, p. 318 and p. 217] Subsequent
   anarchists have tended to call such a regime state capitalism (see
   [15]section H.3.13).

   The Bolshevik leadership's rejection of the factory committees and
   their vision of socialism also confirmed Bakunin's fear that Marxism
   urges the people "not only not abolish the State, but, on the contrary,
   they must strengthen it and enlarge it, and turn it over to . . . the
   leaders of the Communist party . . . who will then liberate them in
   their own way." The economic regime imposed by the Bolsheviks,
   likewise, confirmed Bakunin critique as the state "control[led] all the
   commerce, industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the
   people will be divided into two armies, the agricultural and the
   industrial under the direct command of the state engineers, who will
   constitute the new privileged political-scientific class."
   Unsurprisingly, this new state-run economy was a disaster which, again,
   confirmed his warning that unless this minority "were endowed with
   omniscience, omnipresence, and the omnipotence which the theologians
   attribute to God, [it] could not possibly know and foresee the needs of
   its people, or satisfy with an even justice those needs which are most
   legitimate and pressing." [Op. Cit., p. 332, pp. 332-3 and p. 318]

   Which brings us to the "dictatorship of the proletariat." While many
   Marxists basically use this term to describe the defence of the
   revolution and so argue that anarchists do not see the for that, this
   is incorrect. Anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued that a
   revolution would have to defend itself from counter revolution and yet
   we reject the concept totally (see [16]section H.2.1 for a refutation
   of claims that anarchists think a revolution does not need defending).
   To understand why Bakunin rejected the concept, we must provide some
   historical context.

   Anarchists in the nineteenth century rejected the idea of the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat" in part because the proletariat was a
   minority of working class people at the time. To argue for a
   dictatorship of the proletariat meant to argue for the dictatorship of
   a minority class, a class which excluded the majority of toiling
   people. When Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, for
   example, over 80% of the population of France and Germany were peasants
   or artisans - what they termed the "petit-bourgeois". This meant that
   their claim that the "proletarian movement is the self-conscious,
   independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the
   immense majority" was simply not true. Rather, for Marx's life-time
   (and for many decades afterwards) the proletarian movement was like
   "[a]ll previous movements," namely "movements of minorities, or in the
   interests of minorities." Not that Marx and Engels were unaware of this
   for they also noted that "[i]n countries like France" the peasants
   "constitute far more than half of the population." In 1875 Marx
   commented that "the majority of the 'toiling people' in Germany
   consists of peasants, and not of proletarians." He stressed elsewhere
   around the same time that "the peasant . . . forms a more of less
   considerable majority . . . in the countries of the West European
   continent." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 482, p. 493, p. 536 and p. 543]

   Clearly, then, Marx and Engels vision of proletarian revolution was one
   which involved a minority dictating to the majority and so Bakunin
   rejected it. His opposition rested on the fact that a "dictatorship of
   the proletariat," at the time, actually meant a dictatorship by a
   minority of working people and so a "revolution" which excluded the
   majority of working people (i.e. artisans and peasants). As he argued
   in 1873:

     "If the proletariat is to be the ruling class . . . then whom will
     it rule? There must be yet another proletariat which will be subject
     to this new rule, this new state. It may be the peasant rabble . . .
     which, finding itself on a lower cultural level, will probably be
     governed by the urban and factory proletariat." [Statism and
     Anarchy, pp. 177-8]

   For Bakunin, to advocate the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in an
   environment where the vast majority of working people were peasants
   would be a disaster. It is only when we understand this social context
   that we can understand Bakunin's opposition to Marx's "dictatorship of
   the proletariat" - it would be a dictatorship of a minority class over
   the rest of the working population (he took it as a truism that the
   capitalist and landlord classes should be expropriated and stopped from
   destroying the revolution!). Bakunin continually stressed the need for
   a movement and revolution of all working class people (see [17]section
   H.2.7) and that the peasants "will join cause with the city workers as
   soon as they become convinced that the latter do not pretend to impose
   their will or some political or social order invented by the cities for
   the greater happiness of the villages; they will join cause as soon as
   they are assured that the industrial workers will not take their lands
   away." For an "uprising by the proletariat alone would not be enough;
   with that we would have only a political revolution which would
   necessarily produce a natural and legitimate reaction on the part of
   the peasants, and that reaction, or merely the indifference of the
   peasants, would strangle the revolution of the cities." [The Political
   Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 401 and p. 378]

   This explains why the anarchists at the St. Imier Congress argued that
   "every political state can be nothing but organised domination for the
   benefit of one class, to the detriment of the masses, and that should
   the proletariat itself seize power, it would in turn become a new
   dominating and exploiting class." As the proletariat was a minority
   class at the time, their concerns can be understood. For anarchists
   then, and now, a social revolution has to be truly popular and involve
   the majority of the population in order to succeed. Unsurprisingly, the
   congress stressed the role of the proletariat in the struggle for
   socialism, arguing that "the proletariat of all lands . . . must create
   the solidarity of revolutionary action . . . independently of and in
   opposition to all forms of bourgeois politics." Moreover, the aim of
   the workers' movement was "free organisations and federations . . .
   created by the spontaneous action of the proletariat itself, [that is,
   by] the trade bodies and the autonomous communes." [quoted in Bakunin
   on Anarchism, p. 438, p. 439 and p. 438]

   Hence Bakunin's comment that "the designation of the proletariat, the
   world of the workers, as class rather than as mass" was "deeply
   antipathetic to us revolutionary anarchists who unconditionally
   advocate full popular emancipation." To do so, he argued, meant
   "[n]othing more or less than a new aristocracy, that of the urban and
   industrial workers, to the exclusion of the millions who make up the
   rural proletariat and who . . . will in effect become subjects of this
   great so-called popular State." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
   pp. 253-4]

   Again, the experiences of the Russian Revolution confirm Bakunin's
   worries. The Bolsheviks implemented the dictatorship of the city over
   the countryside, with disastrous results (see [18]section H.6.2 for
   more details).

   One last point on this subject. While anarchists reject the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat" we clearly do not reject the key role
   the proletariat must play in any social revolution (see [19]section
   H.2.2 on why the Marxist assertion anarchists reject class struggle is
   false). We only reject the idea that the proletariat must dictate over
   other working people like peasants and artisans. We do not reject the
   need for working class people to defend a revolution, nor the need for
   them to expropriate the capitalist class nor for them to manage their
   own activities and so society.

   Then there is the issue of whether, even if the proletariat does seize
   political power, whether the whole class can actually exercise it.
   Bakunin raised the obvious questions:

     "For, even from the standpoint of that urban proletariat who are
     supposed to reap the sole reward of the seizure of political power,
     surely it is obvious that this power will never be anything but a
     sham? It is bound to be impossible for a few thousand, let alone
     tens or hundreds of thousands of men to wield that power
     effectively. It will have to be exercised by proxy, which means
     entrusting it to a group of men elected to represent and govern
     them, which in turn will unfailingly return them to all the deceit
     and subservience of representative or bourgeois rule. After a brief
     flash of liberty or orgiastic revolution, the citizens of the new
     State will wake up slaves, puppets and victims of a new group of
     ambitious men." [Op. Cit., pp. 254-5]

   He repeated this argument: "What does it mean, 'the proletariat raised
   to a governing class?' Will the entire proletariat head the government?
   The Germans number about 40 million. Will all 40 millions be members of
   the government? The entire nation will rule, but no one will be ruled.
   Then there will be no government, no state; but if there is a state,
   there will also be those who are ruled, there will be slaves." Bakunin
   argued that Marxism resolves this dilemma "in a simple fashion. By
   popular government they mean government of the people by a small number
   of representatives elected by the people. So-called popular
   representatives and rulers of the state elected by the entire nation on
   the basis of universal suffrage - the last word of the Marxists, as
   well as the democratic school - is a lie behind which lies the
   despotism of a ruling minority is concealed, a lie all the more
   dangerous in that it represents itself as the expression of a sham
   popular will." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 178]

   So where does Marx stand on this question. Clearly, the self-proclaimed
   followers of Marx support the idea of "socialist" governments (indeed,
   many, including Lenin and Trotsky, went so far as to argue that party
   dictatorship was essential for the success of a revolution - see
   [20]next section). Marx, however, is less clear. He argued, in reply to
   Bakunin's question if all Germans would be members of the government,
   that "[c]ertainly, because the thing starts with the self-government of
   the township." However, he also commented that "[c]an it really be that
   in a trade union, for example, the entire union forms its executive
   committee," suggesting that there will be a division of labour between
   those who govern and those who obey in the Marxist system of socialism.
   [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 545 and p. 544] Elsewhere he talks about "a
   socialist government" coming "to the helm in a country". [Collected
   Works, vol. 46, p. 66] As we discuss in [21]section H.3.10, both Marx
   and Engels saw universal suffrage in a republic as expressing the
   political power of the working class.

   So Bakunin's critique holds, as Marx clearly saw the "dictatorship of
   the proletariat" involving a socialist government having power. For
   Bakunin, like all anarchists, if a political party is the government,
   then clearly its leaders are in power, not the mass of working people
   they claim to represent. Anarchists have, from the beginning, argued
   that Marx made a grave mistake confusing working class power with the
   state. This is because the state is the means by which the management
   of people's affairs is taken from them and placed into the hands of a
   few. It signifies delegated power. As such, the so-called "workers'
   state" or "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a contradiction in
   terms. Instead of signifying the power of the working class to manage
   society it, in fact, signifies the opposite, namely the handing over of
   that power to a few party leaders at the top of a centralised
   structure. This is because "all State rule, all governments being by
   their very nature placed outside the people, must necessarily seek to
   subject it to customs and purposes entirely foreign to it. We therefore
   declare ourselves to be foes . . . of all State organisations as such,
   and believe that the people can be happy and free, when, organised from
   below upwards by means of its own autonomous and completely free
   associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create
   its own life." [Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State, p. 63] Hence
   Bakunin's constant arguments for a decentralised, federal system of
   workers councils organised from the bottom-up. Again, the
   transformation of the Bolshevik government into a dictatorship over the
   proletariat during the early stages of the Russian Revolution supports
   Bakunin's critique of Marxism.

   Related to this issue is Bakunin's argument that Marxism created a
   privileged position for socialist intellectuals in both the current
   social movement and in the social revolution. This was because Marx
   stressed that his theory was a "scientific socialism" and, Bakunin
   argued, that implied "because thought, theory and science, at least in
   our times, are in the possession of very few, these few ought to be the
   leaders of social life" and they, not the masses, should organise the
   revolution "by the dictatorial powers of this learned minority, which
   presumes to express the will of the people." This would be "nothing but
   a despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all numerous
   aristocracy of real and pseudoscientists" and so there would "be a new
   [ruling] class, a new hierarchy of real and counterfeit scientists and
   scholars, and the world will be divided into a minority ruling in the
   name of knowledge, and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe unto
   the mass of ignorant ones!" Thus "every state, even the pseudo-People's
   State concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only a machine ruling the
   masses from below, through a privileged minority of conceited
   intellectuals who imagine that they know what the people need and want
   better than do the people themselves." The Russian anarchist predicted
   that "the organisation and the rule of the new society by socialist
   savants" would be "the worse of all despotic governments!" [Bakunin on
   Anarchism, pp. 328-9, p. 331, p. 319, p. 338 and p. 295] History proved
   Bakunin right, with the Bolshevik regime being precisely that. As we
   discuss in [22]section H.5, Lenin's vanguardism did produce such a
   result, with the argument that the party leadership knew the objective
   needs of working class people better than they themselves did being
   used to justify party dictatorship and the strict centralisation of
   social life in the hands of its leadership.

   Which brings us to the last issue, namely whether the revolution will
   be decentralised or centralised. For Marx, the issue is somewhat
   confused by his support for the Paris Commune and its federalist
   programme (written, we must note, by a follower of Proudhon). However,
   in 1850, Marx stood for extreme centralisation of power, arguing that
   the workers "must not only strive for a single and indivisible German
   republic, but also within this republic for the most determined
   centralisation of power in the hands of the state authority." He argued
   that in a nation like Germany "where there is so many relics of the
   Middle Ages to be abolished" it "must under no circumstances be
   permitted that every village, every town and every province should put
   a new obstacle in the path of revolutionary activity, which can proceed
   with full force from the centre." He stressed that "[a]s in France in
   1793 so today in Germany it is the task of the really revolutionary
   party to carry through the strictest centralisation." [The Marx-Engels
   Reader, pp. 509-10] Lenin followed this aspect of Marx's ideas, arguing
   that "Marx was a centralist" and applying this perspective both in the
   party and once in power [The Essential Works of Lenin, p. 310]

   Obviously, this issue dove-tails into the question of whether the whole
   class exercises power under the "dictatorship of the proletariat." In a
   centralised system, obviously, power has to be exercised by a few (as
   Marx's argument in 1850 showed). Centralism, by its very nature
   excludes the possibility of extensive participation in the decision
   making process. Moreover, the decisions reached by such a body could
   not reflect the real needs of society. In the words of Bakunin:

     "What man, what group of individuals, no matter how great their
     genius, would dare to think themselves able to embrace and
     understand the plethora of interests, attitudes and activities so
     various in every country, every province, locality and profession."
     [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 240]

   He stressed that "the revolution should be and should everywhere remain
   independent of the central point, which must be its expression and
   product - not its source, guide and cause . . . the awakening of all
   local passions and the awakening of spontaneous life at all points,
   must be well developed in order for the revolution to remain alive,
   real and powerful." Anarchists reject centralisation because it
   destroys the mass participation a revolution requires in order to
   succeed. Therefore we do "not accept, even in the process of
   revolutionary transition, either constituent assemblies, provisional
   governments or so-called revolutionary dictatorships; because we are
   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."
   Rather, the revolution "everywhere must 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 the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegation." [Op.
   Cit., pp. 179-80, p. 237 and p. 172]

   This, we must stress, does not imply isolation. Bakunin always
   emphasised the importance of federal organisation to co-ordinate
   struggle and defence of the revolution. As he put it, all revolutionary
   communes would need to federate in order "to organise the necessary
   common services and arrangements for production and exchange, to
   establish the charter of equality, the basis of all liberty - a charter
   utterly negative in character, defining what has to be abolished for
   ever rather than the positive forms of local life which can be created
   only by the living practice of each locality - and to organise common
   defence against the enemies of the Revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 179]

   Ironically, it is a note by Engels to the 1885 edition of Marx's 1850
   article which shows the fallacy of the standard Marxist position on
   centralisation and the validity of Bakunin's position. As Engels put
   it, "this passage is based on a misunderstanding" and it was now "a
   well known fact that throughout the whole [Great French] revolution . .
   . the whole administration of the departments, arrondissements and
   communes consisted of authorities elected by the respective
   constituents themselves, and that these authorities acted with complete
   freedom within general state laws [and] that precisely this provincial
   and local self-government . . . became the most powerful lever of the
   revolution." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 510f] Marx's original comments
   imply the imposition of freedom by the centre on a population not
   desiring it (and how could the centre be representative of the majority
   in such a case?). Moreover, how could a revolution be truly social if
   it was not occurring in the grassroots across a country?
   Unsurprisingly, local autonomy has played a key role in every real
   revolution.

   As such, Bakunin has been proved right. Centralism has always killed a
   revolution and, as he always argued, real socialism can only be worked
   from below, by the people of every village, town, and city. The
   problems facing the world or a revolution cannot be solved by a few
   people at the top issuing decrees. They can only be solved by the
   active participation of the mass of working class people, the kind of
   participation centralism and government by their nature exclude.

   Given Marx's support for the federal ideas of the Paris Commune, it can
   be argued that Marxism is not committed to a policy of strict
   centralisation (although Lenin, of course, argued that Marx was a firm
   supporter of centralisation). What is true is, to quote Daniel Gurin,
   that Marx's comments on the Commune differ "noticeably from Marx's
   writings of before and after 1871" while Bakunin's were "in fact quite
   consistent with the lines he adopted in his earlier writings." [No
   Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 167] Indeed, as Bakunin himself noted,
   while the Marxists "saw all their ideas upset by the uprising" of the
   Commune, they "found themselves compelled to take their hats off to it.
   They went even further, and proclaimed that its programme and purpose
   were their own, in face of the simplest logic and their own true
   sentiments." This modification of ideas by Marx in the light of the
   Commune was not limited just to federalism, he also praised its system
   of mandating recallable delegates. This was a position which Bakunin
   had been arguing for a number of years previously but which Marx had
   never advocated. In 1868, for example, Bakunin was talking about a
   "Revolutionary Communal Council" composed of "delegates . . . vested
   with plenary but accountable and removable mandates." [Michael Bakunin:
   Selected Writings, p. 261 and pp. 170-1] As such, the Paris Commune was
   a striking confirmation of Bakunin's ideas on many levels, not Marx's
   (who adjusted his ideas to bring them in line with Bakunin's!).

   Since Bakunin, anarchists have deepen this critique of Marxism and,
   with the experience of both Social-Democracy and Bolshevism, argue that
   he predicted key failures in Marx's ideas. Given that his followers,
   particularly Lenin and Trotsky, have emphasised (although, in many
   ways, changed them) the centralisation and "socialist government"
   aspects of Marx's thoughts, anarchists argue that Bakunin's critique is
   as relevant as ever. Real socialism can only come from below.

   For more on Bakunin's critique of Marxism, Mark Leier's excellent
   biography of the Russian Anarchist (Bakunin: The Creative Passion) is
   worth consulting, as is Brian Morris's Bakunin: The Philosophy of
   Freedom. John Clark has two useful essays on this subject in his The
   Anarchist Moment while Richard B. Saltman's The Social and Political
   Thought of Michael Bakunin contains an excellent chapter on Bakunin and
   Marx. A good academic account can be found in Alvin W. Gouldner's
   "Marx's Last Battle: Bakunin and the First International" (Theory and
   Society, Vol. 11, No. 6) which is a revised and shortened version of a
   chapter of his Against Fragmentation: the Origins of Marxism and the
   Sociology of Intellectuals. Obviously, though, Bakunin's original
   writings should be the first starting point.

H.1.2 What are the key differences between Anarchists and Marxists?

   There are, of course, important similarities between anarchism and
   Marxism. Both are socialist, oppose capitalism and the current state,
   support and encourage working class organisation and action and see
   class struggle as the means of creating a social revolution which will
   transform society into a new one. However, the differences between
   these socialist theories are equally important. In the words of Errico
   Malatesta:

     "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;
     and instead of inspiring to take the place of the existing
     government anarchists seek to destroy every organism which empowers
     some to impose their own ideas and interests on others, for they
     want to free the way for development towards better forms of human
     fellowship which will emerge from experience, by everyone being free
     and, having, of course, the economic means to make freedom possible
     as well as a reality."
     [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 142]

   The other differences derive from this fundamental one. So while there
   are numerous ways in which anarchists and Marxists differ, their root
   lies in the question of power. Socialists seek power (in the name of
   the working class and usually hidden under rhetoric arguing that party
   and class power are the same). Anarchists seek to destroy hierarchical
   power in all its forms and ensure that everyone is free to manage their
   own affairs (both individually and collectively). From this comes the
   differences on the nature of a revolution, the way the working class
   movement should organise and the tactics it should apply and so on. A
   short list of these differences would include the question of the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat", the standing of revolutionaries in
   elections, centralisation versus federalism, the role and organisation
   of revolutionaries, whether socialism can only come "from below" or
   whether it is possible for it come "from below" and "from above" and a
   host of others (i.e. some of the differences we indicated in the
   [23]last section during our discussion of Bakunin's critique of
   Marxism). Indeed, there are so many it is difficult to address them all
   here. As such, we can only concentrate on a few in this and the
   following sections.

   One of the key issues is on the issue of confusing party power with
   popular power. The logic of the anarchist case is simple. In any system
   of hierarchical and centralised power (for example, in a state or
   governmental structure) then those at the top are in charge (i.e. are
   in positions of power). It is not "the people," nor "the proletariat,"
   nor "the masses," it is those who make up the government who have and
   exercise real power. As Malatesta argued, government means "the
   delegation of power, that is the abdication of initiative and
   sovereignty of all into the hands of a few" and "if . . . , as do the
   authoritarians, one means government action when one talks of social
   action, then this is still the resultant of individual forces, but only
   of those individuals who form the government." [Anarchy, p. 40 and p.
   36] Therefore, anarchists argue, the replacement of party power for
   working class power is inevitable because of the nature of the state.
   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 . . .

     "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", pp. 14-17, Black
     Flag, no. 226, pp. 16-7]

   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.

   Thus the real meaning of a workers state is simply that the party has
   the real power, not the workers. That is nature of a state. Marxist
   rhetoric tends to hide this reality. As an example, we can point to
   Lenin's comments in October, 1921. In an essay marking the fourth
   anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin stated that the Soviet
   system "provides the maximum of democracy for the workers and peasants;
   at the same time, it marks a break with bourgeois democracy and the
   rise of a new, epoch-making type of democracy, namely, proletarian
   democracy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat." [Collected Works,
   vol. 33, p. 55] Yet Lenin's comments came just a few months after
   factions within the Communist Party had been banned and after the
   Kronstadt rebellion and a wave of strikes calling for free soviet
   elections had been repressed. It was written years after Lenin had
   asserted that "[w]hen we are reproached with having established a
   dictatorship of one party . . . we say, 'Yes, it is a dictatorship of
   one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that
   position . . .'" [Op. Cit., vol. 29, p. 535] And, of course, they had
   not shifted from that position! Clearly, the term "proletarian
   democracy" had a drastically different meaning to Lenin than to most
   people!

   The identification of party power and working class power reaches its
   height (or, more correctly, depth) in the works of Lenin and Trotsky.
   Lenin, for example, argued that "the Communists' correct understanding
   of his tasks" lies in "correctly gauging the conditions and the moment
   when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power,
   when it will be able - during and after the seizure of power - to win
   adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class
   and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able
   thereafter to maintain, consolidate, and extend its rule by educating,
   training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people."
   Note, the vanguard (the party) seizes power, not the masses. Indeed, he
   stressed that the "mere presentation of the question - 'dictatorship of
   the party or dictatorship of the class: dictatorship (party) of the
   leaders or dictatorship (party) of the masses?' - testifies to most
   incredible and hopelessly muddled thinking" and "[t]o go so far . . .
   as to contrast, in general, the dictatorship of the masses with a
   dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid." [The
   Lenin Anthology, p. 575, p. 567 and p. 568]

   Lenin stressed this idea numerous times. For example, he argued that
   "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 proletariat, and the essentials of transition
   from capitalism to communism . . . for the dictatorship of the
   proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation."
   [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21] This position had became Communist
   orthodoxy both in Russia and internationally since early 1919. The
   American socialist John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World,
   was a defender of "the value of centralisation" and "the dictatorship
   of a revolutionary minority" (noting that "the Communist Party is
   supreme in Russia"). [Shaking the World, p. 238] Similarly with the
   likes of Amedeo Bordiga, the first leader of the Communist Party in
   Italy.

   Victor Serge, the ex-anarchist and enthusiastic convert to Bolshevism,
   argued this mainstream Bolshevik position until the mid-1930s. In 1919,
   it was a case that "dictatorship" was not some kind of "proletarian"
   dictatorship by the masses. He, like the leading Bolsheviks, explicitly
   argued against this. Yes, he wrote, "if we are looking at what should,
   that is at what ought to, be the case" but this "seems doubtful" in
   reality. "For it appears that by force of circumstances one group is
   obliged to impose itself on the others and to go ahead of them,
   breaking them if necessary, in order then to exercise exclusive
   dictatorship." The militants "leading the masses . . . cannot rely on
   the consciousness, the goodwill or the determination of those they have
   to deal with; for the masses who will follow them or surround them will
   be warped by the old regime, relatively uncultivated, often unaware,
   torn by feelings and instincts inherited from the past." So
   "revolutionaries will have to take on the dictatorship without delay."
   The experience of Russia "reveals an energetic and innovative minority
   which is compelled to make up for the deficiencies in the education of
   the backward masses by the use of compulsion." And so the party "is in
   a sense the nervous system of the class. Simultaneously the
   consciousness and the active, physical organisation of the dispersed
   forces of the proletariat, which are often ignorant of themselves and
   often remain latent or express themselves contradictorily." And what of
   the masses? What was their role? Serge was equally blunt. While the
   party is "supported by the entire working population," strangely
   enough, "it maintains its unique situation in dictatorial fashion"
   while the workers are "[b]ehind" the communists, "sympathising
   instinctively with the party and carrying out the menial tasks required
   by the revolution." [Revolution in Danger, p. 106, p. 92, p. 115, p.
   67, p. 66 and p. 6]

   Such are the joys of socialist liberation. The party thinks for the
   worker while they carry out the "menial tasks" of the revolution. Like
   doing the work and following the orders - as in any class system.

   Trotsky agreed with this lesson and in 1926 opined 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]

   He repeated this position on party dictatorship into the late 1930s,
   long after it had resulted in the horrors of Stalinism:

     "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." [Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936-37,
     pp. 513-4]

   Significantly, this was the year after his apparent (and much belated)
   embrace of soviet democracy in The Revolution Betrayed. Moreover, as we
   discuss in [24]section H.3.8, he was just repeating the same arguments
   he had made while in power during the Russian Revolution. Nor was he
   the only one. Zinoviev, another leading Bolshevik, argued in 1920 along
   the same lines:

     "soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three
     years - not even three weeks - without the iron dictatorship of the
     Communist Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the
     dictatorship of the working class can be achieved only by the
     dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All
     questions of economic reconstruction, military organisation,
     education, food supply - all these questions, on which the fate of
     the proletarian revolution depends absolutely, are decided in Russia
     before all other matters and mostly in the framework of the party
     organisations . . . Control by the party over soviet organs, over
     the trade unions, is the single durable guarantee that any measures
     taken will serve not special interests, but the interests of the
     entire proletariat." [quoted by Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, pp.
     239-40]

   Three years later, at the Communist Party's congress, he made light of
   "comrades who think that the dictatorship of the party is a thing to be
   realised in practice but not spoken about." He went on to argue that
   what was needed was "a single powerful central committee which is
   leader of everything . . . in this is expressed the dictatorship of the
   party." The Congress itself resolved that "the dictatorship of the
   working class cannot be assured otherwise than in the form of a
   dictatorship of its leading vanguard, i.e., the Communist Party."
   [quoted by E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, vol. 1, p.
   236, pp. 236-7 and p. 237]

   How these positions can be reconciled with workers' democracy, power or
   freedom is not explained. As such, the idea that Leninism (usually
   considered as mainstream Marxism) is inherently democratic or a
   supporter of power to the people is clearly flawed. Equally flawed are
   the attempts by Leninists to distance themselves from, and rationalise,
   these positions in terms of the "objective circumstances" (such as
   civil war) facing the Russian Revolution. As we discuss in [25]section
   H.6, Bolshevik authoritarianism started before these problems began and
   continued long after they ended (in part because the policies pursued
   by the Bolshevik leadership had roots in their ideology and, as a
   result, that ideology itself played a key role in the failure of the
   revolution).

   Ultimately, though, the leading lights of Bolshevism concluded from
   their experiences that the dictatorship of the proletariat could only
   be achieved by the dictatorship of the party and they generalised this
   position for all revolutions. 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]
   While few Leninists today would subscribe to this position, the fact is
   when faced with the test of revolution the founders of their ideology
   not only practised the dictatorship of the party, they raised it to an
   ideological truism. Sadly, most modern day Trotskyists ignore this
   awkward fact in favour of inaccurate claims that Trotsky's Left
   Opposition "framed a policy along [the] lines" of "returning to genuine
   workers' democracy". [Chris Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in
   Eastern Europe, p. 19] In reality, 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]

   Significantly, this position on party rule has its roots in the uneven
   political development within the working class (i.e. that the working
   class contains numerous political perspectives within it). As the party
   (according to Leninist theory) contains the most advanced ideas (and,
   again according to Leninist theory, the working class cannot reach
   beyond a trade union consciousness by its own efforts), the party must
   take power to ensure that the masses do not make "mistakes" or "waver"
   (show "vacillation") during a revolution. From such a perspective to
   the position of party dictatorship is not far (and a journey that all
   the leading Bolsheviks, including Lenin and Trotsky did in fact take).

   These arguments by leading Bolsheviks confirm Bakunin's fear that the
   Marxists aimed for "a tyranny of the minority over a majority in the
   name of the people - in the name of the stupidity of the many and the
   superior wisdom of the few." [Marxism, Freedom and the State, p. 63]

   In contrast, anarchists argue that precisely because of political
   differences we need the fullest possible democracy and freedom to
   discuss issues and reach agreements. Only by discussion and
   self-activity can the political perspectives of those in struggle
   develop and change. In other words, the fact Bolshevism uses to justify
   its support for party power is the strongest argument against it. For
   anarchists, the idea of a revolutionary government is a contradiction.
   As Malatesta put it, "if you consider these worthy electors as unable
   to look after their own interests themselves, how is it that they will
   know how to choose for themselves the shepherds who must guide them?
   And how will they be able to solve this problem of social alchemy, of
   producing a genius from the votes of a mass of fools?" [Anarchy, pp.
   53-4] As such, anarchists think that power should be in the hands of
   the masses themselves. Only freedom or the struggle for freedom can be
   the school of freedom. That means that, to quote Bakunin, "since it is
   the people which must make the revolution everywhere . . . the ultimate
   direction of it must at all times be vested in the people organised
   into a free federation of agricultural and industrial organisations . .
   . organised from the bottom up through revolutionary delegation." [No
   God, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 155-6]

   Clearly, then, the question of state/party power is one dividing
   anarchists and most Marxists. Again, though, we must stress that
   libertarian Marxists agree with anarchists on this subject and reject
   the whole idea that rule/dictatorship of a party equals the
   dictatorship of the working class. As such, the Marxist tradition as a
   whole does not confuse this issue, although the majority of it does. So
   not all Marxists are Leninists. A few (council communists,
   Situationists, and so on) are far closer to anarchism. They also reject
   the idea of party power/dictatorship, the use of elections, for direct
   action, argue for the abolition of wage slavery by workers'
   self-management of production and so on. They represent the best in
   Marx's work and should not be lumped with the followers of Bolshevism.
   Sadly, they are in the minority.

   Finally, we should indicate other important areas of difference as
   summarised by Lenin in his work The State and Revolution:

     "The difference between the Marxists and the anarchists is this: 1)
     the former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state,
     recognise that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been
     abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the
     establishment of socialism which leads to the withering away of the
     state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight,
     failing to understand the conditions under which the state can be
     abolished 2) the former recognise that after the proletariat has
     conquered political power it must utterly destroy the old state
     machine and substitute for it a new one consisting of the
     organisation of armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The
     latter, while advocating the destruction of the state machine, have
     absolutely no idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and
     how it will use its revolutionary power; the anarchists even deny
     that the revolutionary proletariat should utilise its state power,
     its revolutionary dictatorship; 3) the former demand that the
     proletariat be prepared for revolution by utilising the present
     state; the latter reject this." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 358]

   We will discuss each of these points in the next three sections. Point
   one will be discussed in [26]section H.1.3, the second in [27]section
   H.1.4 and the third and final one in [28]section H.1.5.

H.1.3 Why do anarchists wish to abolish the state "overnight"?

   As indicated at the end of the [29]last section, Lenin argued that
   while Marxists aimed "at the complete abolition of the state" they
   "recognise that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been
   abolished by the socialist revolution" while anarchists "want to
   abolish the state completely overnight." This issue is usually
   summarised by Marxists arguing that a new state is required to replace
   the destroyed bourgeois one. This new state is called by Marxists "the
   dictatorship of the proletariat" or a workers' state. Anarchists reject
   this transitional state while Marxists embrace it. Indeed, according to
   Lenin "a Marxist is one who extends the acceptance of the class
   struggle to the acceptance of the dictatorship of the proletariat."
   [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 358 and p. 294]

   So what does the "dictatorship of the proletariat" actually mean?
   Generally, Marxists seem to imply that this term simply means the
   defence of the revolution and so the anarchist rejection of the
   dictatorship of the proletariat means, for Marxists, the denial the
   need to defend a revolution. This particular straw man was used by
   Lenin in The State and Revolution when he quoted Marx's article
   "Indifference to Politics" to suggest that anarchists advocated workers
   "laying down their arms" after a successful revolution. Such a "laying
   down [of] their arms" would mean "abolishing the state" while keeping
   their arms "in order to crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie" would
   mean "giv[ing] the state a revolutionary and transitory form," so
   setting up "their revolutionary dictatorship in place of the
   dictatorship of the bourgeoisie." [Marx, quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit., p.
   315]

   That such an argument can be made, never mind repeated, suggests a lack
   of honesty. It assumes that the Marxist and Anarchist definitions of
   "the state" are identical. They are not. For anarchists the state,
   government, means "the delegation of power, that is the abdication of
   initiative and sovereignty of all into the hands of a few." [Malatesta,
   Anarchy, p. 41] For Marxists, the state is "an organ of class rule, an
   organ for the oppression of one class by another." [Lenin, Op. Cit., p.
   274] That these definitions are in conflict is clear and unless this
   difference is made explicit, anarchist opposition to the "dictatorship
   of the proletariat" cannot be clearly understood.

   Anarchists, of course, agree that the current state is the means by
   which the bourgeois class enforces its rule over society. In Bakunin's
   words, "the political state has no other mission but to protect the
   exploitation of the people by the economically privileged classes."
   [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 221] "Throughout history, just
   as in our time, government is either the brutal, violent, arbitrary
   rule of the few over the many or it is an organised instrument to
   ensure that domination and privilege will be in the hands of those who
   . . . have cornered all the means of life." Under capitalism, as
   Malatesta succulently put, the state is "the bourgeoisie's servant and
   gendarme." [Op. Cit., p. 21 and p. 23] The reason why the state is
   marked by centralised power is due to its role as the protector of
   (minority) class rule. As such, a state cannot be anything but a
   defender of minority power as its centralised and hierarchical
   structure is designed for that purpose. If the working class really
   were running society, as Marxists claim they would be in the
   "dictatorship of the proletariat," then it would not be a state. As
   Bakunin put it: "Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is
   no State." [Op. Cit., p. 223]

   The idea that anarchists, by rejecting the "dictatorship of the
   proletariat," also reject defending a revolution is false. We do not
   equate the "dictatorship of the proletariat" with the need to defend a
   revolution or expropriating the capitalist class, ending capitalism and
   building socialism. Anarchists from Bakunin onwards have taken both of
   these necessities for granted. As we discuss this particular Marxist
   straw man in [30]section H.2.1, we will leave our comments on anarchist
   awareness of the need to defend a revolution at this.

   Anarchists, then, do not reject defending a revolution and our
   opposition to the so-called "revolutionary" or "socialist" state is not
   based on this, regardless of what Marx and Lenin asserted. Rather, we
   argue that the state can and must be abolished "overnight" during a
   social revolution because any state, including the so-called
   "dictatorship of the proletariat", is marked by hierarchical power and
   can only empower the few at the expense of the many. The state will not
   "wither away" as Marxists claim simply because it excludes, by its very
   nature, the active participation of the bulk of the population and
   ensures a new class division in society: those in power (the party) and
   those subject to it (the working class). Georges Fontenis sums up
   anarchist concerns on this issue:

     "The formula 'dictatorship of the proletariat' has been used to mean
     many different things. If for no other reason it should be condemned
     as a cause of confusion. With Marx it can just as easily mean the
     centralised dictatorship of the party which claims to represent the
     proletariat as it can the federalist conception of the Commune.

     "Can it mean the exercise of political power by the victorious
     working class? No, because the exercise of political power in the
     recognised sense of the term can only take place through the agency
     of an exclusive group practising a monopoly of power, separating
     itself from the class and oppressing it. And this is how the attempt
     to use a State apparatus can reduce the dictatorship of the
     proletariat to the dictatorship of the party over the masses.

     "But if by dictatorship of the proletariat is understood collective
     and direct exercise of 'political power', this would mean the
     disappearance of 'political power' since its distinctive
     characteristics are supremacy, exclusivity and monopoly. It is no
     longer a question of exercising or seizing political power, it is
     about doing away with it all together!

     "If by dictatorship is meant the domination of the majority by a
     minority, then it is not a question of giving power to the
     proletariat but to a party, a distinct political group. If by
     dictatorship is meant the domination of a minority by the majority
     (domination by the victorious proletariat of the remnants of a
     bourgeoisie that has been defeated as a class) then the setting up
     of dictatorship means nothing but the need for the majority to
     efficiently arrange for its defence its own social Organisation.

     [...]

     "The terms 'domination', 'dictatorship' and 'state' are as little
     appropriate as the expression 'taking power' for the revolutionary
     act of the seizure of the factories by the workers.

     We reject then as inaccurate and causes of confusion the expressions
     'dictatorship of the proletariat', 'taking political power',
     'workers state', 'socialist state' and 'proletarian state'."
     [Manifesto of Libertarian Communism, pp. 22-3]

   So anarchists argue that the state has to be abolished "overnight"
   simply because a state is marked by hierarchical power and the
   exclusion of the bulk of the population from the decision making
   process. It cannot be used to implement socialism simply because it is
   not designed that way. To extend and defend a revolution a state is not
   required. Indeed, it is a hindrance:

     "The mistake of authoritarian communists in this connection is the
     belief that fighting and organising are impossible without
     submission to a government; and thus they regard anarchists . . . as
     the foes of all organisation and all co-ordinated struggle. We, on
     the other hand, maintain that not only are revolutionary struggle
     and revolutionary organisation possible outside and in spite of
     government interference but that, indeed, that is the only effective
     way to struggle and organise, for it has the active participation of
     all members of the collective unit, instead of their passively
     entrusting themselves to the authority of the supreme leaders.

     "Any governing body is an impediment to the real organisation of the
     broad masses, the majority. Where a government exists, then the only
     really organised people are the minority who make up the government;
     and . . . if the masses do organise, they do so against it, outside
     it, or at the very least, independently of it. In ossifying into a
     government, the revolution as such would fall apart, on account of
     its awarding that government the monopoly of organisation and of the
     means of struggle."
     [Luigi Fabbri, "Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism", pp. 13-49, The
     Poverty of Statism, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 27]

   This is because of the hierarchical nature of the state, its delegation
   of power into the hands of the few and so a so-called "revolutionary"
   government can have no other result than a substitution of the few (the
   government) for the many (the masses). This, in turn, undermines the
   mass participation and action from below that a revolution needs to
   succeed and flourish. "Instead of acting for themselves," Kropotkin
   argued, "instead of marching forward, instead of advancing in the
   direction of the new order of things, the people, confiding in their
   governors, entrusted to them the charge of taking the initiative."
   However, social change is the product of "the people in action" and
   "the brain of a few individuals [are] absolutely incapable of finding
   solutions" to the problems it will face "which can only spring from the
   life of the people." For anarchists, a revolution "is not a simple
   change of governors. It is the taking possession by the people of all
   social wealth" and this cannot be achieved "be decrees emanating from a
   government." This "economic change" will be "so immense and so
   profound" that it is "impossible for one or any individual to elaborate
   the different social forms which must spring up in the society of the
   future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the
   collective work of the masses" and "[a]ny authority external to it will
   only be an obstacle, a "drag on the action of the people." A
   revolutionary state, therefore, "becomes the greatest obstacle to the
   revolution" and to "dislodge it" requires the people "to take up arms,
   to make another revolution." [Anarchism, p. 240, p. 241, pp. 247-8, p.
   248, p. 249, p. 241 and p. 242] Which, we should stress, was exactly
   what happened in Russia, where anarchists and others (such as the
   Kronstadt rebels) called for a "Third Revolution" against the Bolshevik
   state and the party dictatorship and state capitalism it had created.

   For anarchists, the abolition of the state does not mean rejecting the
   need to extend or defend a revolution (quite the reverse!). It means
   rejecting a system of organisation designed by and for minorities to
   ensure their rule. To create a state (even a "workers' state") means to
   delegate power away from the working class and eliminate their power in
   favour of party power ("the principle error of the [Paris] Commune, an
   unavoidable error, since it derived from the very principle on which
   power was constituted, was precisely that of being a government, and of
   substituting itself for the people by force of circumstances." [Elise
   Reclus, quoted John P. Clark and Camille Martin, Anarchy, Geography,
   Modernity, p. 72]).

   In place of a state anarchists' argue for a free federation of workers'
   organisations as the means of conducting a revolution (and the
   framework for its defence). Most Marxists seem to confuse centralism
   and federalism, with Lenin stating that "if the proletariat and the
   poor peasants take state power into their own hands, organise
   themselves quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the
   communes in striking at capital . . . won't that be centralism? Won't
   that be the most consistent democratic centralism and, moreover,
   proletarian centralism?" No, it would be federalism, the most
   consistent federalism as advocated by Proudhon and Bakunin and, under
   the influence of the former, suggested by the Paris Commune. Lenin
   argued that some "simply cannot conceive of the possibility of
   voluntary centralism, of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian
   communes, for the sole purpose of destroying bourgeois rule and the
   bourgeois state machine." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 348] Yet "voluntary
   centralism" is, at best, just another why of describing federalism -
   assuming that "voluntary" really means that, of course. At worse, and
   in practice, such centralism simply places all the decision making at
   the centre, at the top, and all that is left is for the communes to
   obey the decisions of a few party leaders.

   As we discuss in the [31]next section, anarchists see this federation
   of workers' associations and communes (the framework of a free society)
   as being based on the organisations working class people create in
   their struggle against capitalism. These self-managed organisations, by
   refusing to become part of a centralised state, will ensure the success
   of a revolution.

H.1.4 Do anarchists have "absolutely no idea" of what to put in place of the
state?

   Lenin's second claim was that anarchists, "while advocating the
   destruction of the state machine, have absolutely no idea of what the
   proletariat will put in its place" and compared this to the Marxists
   who argued for a new state machine "consisting of armed workers, after
   the type of the [Paris] Commune." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 358]

   For anarchists, Lenin's assertion simply shows his unfamiliarity with
   anarchist literature and need not be taken seriously - anyone familiar
   with anarchist theory would simply laugh at such comments. Sadly, most
   Marxists are not familiar with that theory, so we need to explain two
   things. Firstly, anarchists have very clear ideas on what to "replace"
   the state with (namely a federation of communes based on working class
   associations). Secondly, that this idea is based on the idea of armed
   workers, inspired by the Paris Commune (although predicted by Bakunin).

   Moreover, for anarchists Lenin's comment seems somewhat incredulous. As
   George Barrett put it, in reply to the question "if you abolish
   government, what will you put it its place," this "seems to an
   Anarchist very much as if a patient asked the doctor, 'If you take away
   my illness, what will you give me in its place?' The Anarchist's
   argument is that government fulfils no useful purpose . . . It is the
   headquarters of the profit-makers, the rent-takers, and of all those
   who take from but who do not give to society. When this class is
   abolished by the people so organising themselves to run the factories
   and use the land for the benefit of their free communities, i.e. for
   their own benefit, then the Government must also be swept away, since
   its purpose will be gone. The only thing then that will be put in the
   place of government will be the free organisation of the workers. When
   Tyranny is abolished, Liberty remains, just as when disease is
   eradicated health remains." [Objections to Anarchism, p. 356]

   Barrett's answer contains the standard anarchist position on what will
   be the organisational basis of a revolutionary society, namely that the
   "only thing then that will be put in the place of government will be
   the free organisation of the workers." This is a concise summary of
   anarchist theory and cannot be bettered. This vision, as we discuss in
   [32]section I.2.3 in some detail, can be found in the work of Bakunin,
   Kropotkin, Malatesta and a host of other anarchist thinkers. Since
   anarchists from Bakunin onwards have stressed that a federation of
   workers' associations would constitute the framework of a free society,
   to assert otherwise (as Lenin did) is little more than a joke or a
   slander. To quote Bakunin:

     "The future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom
     up, 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]

   Similar ideas can easily be found in the works of other anarchists.
   While the actual names and specific details of these federations of
   workers' associations may change (for example, the factory committees
   and soviets in the Russian Revolution, the collectives in Spain, the
   section assemblies in the French Revolution are a few of them) the
   basic ideas are the same. Bakunin also pointed to the means of defence,
   a workers' militia (the people armed, as per the Paris Commune -
   [33]section H.2.1).

   A major difference between anarchism and Marxism which Lenin points to
   is, clearly, false. Anarchists are well aware of what should "replace"
   the bourgeois state and have always been so. The real difference is
   simply that anarchists say what they mean while Lenin's "new" state did
   not, in fact, mean working class power but rather party power.

   As for Lenin's comment that we have "absolutely no ideas" of how the
   working class "will use its revolutionary power" suggests more
   ignorance, as we have urged working people to expropriate the
   expropriators, reorganise production under workers' self-management and
   start to construct society from the bottom upwards (a quick glance at
   Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, for example, would soon convince any
   reader of the inaccuracy of Lenin's comment). This summary by the
   anarchist Jura Federation (written in 1880) gives a flavour of
   anarchist ideas on this subject:

     "The bourgeoisie's power over the popular masses springs from
     economic privileges, political domination and the enshrining of such
     privileges in the laws. So we must strike at the wellsprings of
     bourgeois power, as well as its various manifestations.

     "The following measures strike us as essential to the welfare of the
     revolution, every bit as much as armed struggle against its enemies:

     "The insurgents must confiscate social capital, landed estates,
     mines, housing, religious and public buildings, instruments of
     labour, raw materials, gems and precious stones and manufactured
     products:

     "All political, administrative and judicial authorities are to be
     deposed . . . What should the organisational measures of the
     revolution be?

     "Immediate and spontaneous establishment of trade bodies:
     provisional assumption by those of . . . social capital . . .: local
     federation of a trades bodies and labour organisation:

     "Establishment of neighbourhood groups and federations of same . . .

     "Organisation of the insurgent forces . . . the federation of all
     the revolutionary forces of the insurgent Communes . . . Federation
     of Communes and organisation of the masses, with an eye to the
     revolution's enduring until such time as all reactionary activity
     has been completely eradicated . . . Once trade bodies have been
     have been established, the next step is to organise local life. The
     organ of this life is to be the federation of trades bodies and it
     is this local federation which is to constitute the future Commune."
     [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 246-7]

   Clearly, anarchists do have some ideas on what the working class will
   "replace" the state with and how it will use its "revolutionary power"!

   Similarly, Lenin's statement that "the anarchists even deny that the
   revolutionary proletariat should utilise its state power, its
   revolutionary dictatorship" again distorts the anarchist position. As
   we argued in [34]the last section, our objection to the "state power"
   of the proletariat is precisely because it cannot, by its very nature
   as a state, actually allow the working class to manage society directly
   (and, of course, it automatically excludes other sections of the
   working masses, such as the peasantry and artisans). We argued that, in
   practice, it would simply mean the dictatorship of a few party leaders.
   This position, we must stress, was one Lenin himself was arguing in the
   year after completing State and Revolution and so the leading
   Bolsheviks confirmed the anarchist argument that the "dictatorship of
   the proletariat" would, in fact, become a dictatorship over the
   proletariat by the party.

   Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri summed up the differences well:

     "The Marxists . . . foresee the natural disappearance of the State
     as a consequence of the destruction of classes by the means of 'the
     dictatorship of the proletariat,' that is to say State Socialism,
     whereas the Anarchists desire the destruction of the classes by
     means of a social revolution which eliminates, with the classes, the
     State. The Marxists, moreover, do not propose the armed conquest of
     the Commune by the whole proletariat, but the propose the conquest
     of the State by the party which imagines that it represents the
     proletariat. The Anarchists allow the use of direct power by the
     proletariat, but they understand by the organ of this power to be
     formed by the entire corpus of systems of communist
     administration-corporate organisations [i.e. industrial unions],
     communal institutions, both regional and national-freely constituted
     outside and in opposition to all political monopoly by parties and
     endeavouring to a minimum administrational centralisation."
     ["Dictatorship of the Proletariat and State Socialism", pp. 51-2,
     Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 52]

   Clearly, Lenin's assertions are little more than straw men. Anarchists
   are not only well aware of the need for a federation of working class
   associations (workers' councils or soviets) to replace the state, they
   were advocating it long before Lenin took up this perspective in 1917
   (as we discuss in [35]section H.3.10). The key difference being, of
   course, anarchists meant it will Lenin saw it as a means of securing
   Bolshevik party power.

   Lastly, it should also be noted that Marxists, having taken so long to
   draw the same conclusions as anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin, have
   tended to make a fetish of workers councils. As an example, we find
   Chris Harman of the British SWP complaining that the Argentinean masses
   organised themselves in the wrong way as part of their revolt against
   neo-liberalism which started in December 2001. He states that the
   "neighbourhood committees and popular assemblies" created by the revolt
   "express the need of those who have overthrown presidents to organise
   themselves" and notes "they have certain similarities with the
   characteristic forms of mass self organisation that arose in the great
   working class struggles of the 20th century - the workers' councils or
   soviets." But, he stressed, "they also have very important differences
   from these." Yet Harman's complaints show his own confusions, seriously
   arguing that "the popular assemblies are not yet bodies of delegates.
   The people at them represent themselves, but do not have an organic
   connection with some group of people who they represent - and who can
   recall them if they do not carry out their will." ["Argentina:
   rebellion at the sharp end of the world crisis", pp. 3-48,
   International Socialism, vol. 94, p. 25] That, of course, is the whole
   point - they are popular assemblies! A popular assembly does not
   "represent" anyone because its members govern themselves, i.e. are
   directly democratic. They are the elemental bodies which recall any
   delegates who do not implement their mandate! But given that Leninism
   aims at party power, this concern for representation is perfectly
   understandable, if lamentable.

   So rather than celebrate this rise in mass self-management and
   self-organisation, Harman complains that these "popular assemblies are
   not anchored in the workplaces where millions of Argentineans are still
   drawn together on a daily basis to toil." Need it be said that such an
   SWP approved organisation will automatically exclude the unemployed,
   housewives, the elderly, children and other working class people who
   were taking part in the struggle? In addition, any capitalist crisis is
   marked by rising unemployment, firms closing and so on. While
   workplaces must and have been seized by their workers, it is a law of
   revolutions that the economic disruption they cause results in
   increased unemployment (in this Kropotkin's arguments in The Conquest
   of Bread have been confirmed time and time again). Significantly,
   Harman admits that they include "organisations of unemployed workers"
   as well as "that in some of the assemblies an important leading role is
   played by unemployed activists shaped by their role in past industrial
   struggles." He does not, however, note that creating workers' councils
   would end their active participation in the revolt. [Op. Cit., p. 25]

   That the Argentine working class formed organs of power which were not
   totally dependent on the workplace was, therefore, a good sign. Factory
   assemblies and federations must be formed but as a complement to,
   rather than as a replacement of, the community assemblies. Harman
   states that the assemblies were "closer to the sections - the nightly
   district mass meetings - of the French Revolution than to the workers'
   councils of 1905 and 1917 in Russia" and complains that a "21st century
   uprising was taking the form of the archetypal 18th century
   revolution!" [Op. Cit.. p. 25 and p. 22] Did the Argentineans not
   realise that a 21st century uprising should mimic "the great working
   class struggles of the 20th century", particularly that which took
   place in a mostly pre-capitalist Tsarist regime which was barely out of
   the 18th century itself? Did they not realise that the leaders of the
   vanguard party know better than themselves how they should organise and
   conduct their struggles? That the people of the 21st century knew best
   how to organise their own revolts is lost of Harman, who prefers to
   squeeze the realities of modern struggles into the forms which Marxists
   took so long to recognise in the first place. Given that anarchists
   have been discussing the possibilities of community assemblies for some
   time, perhaps we can expect Leninists to recognise their importance in
   a few decades? After all, the Bolsheviks in Russia were slow to realise
   the significance of the soviets in 1905 so Harman's position is hardly
   surprising.

   So, it is easy to see what anarchists think of Lenin's assertion that
   "Anarchism had failed to give anything even approaching a true solution
   of the concrete political problems, viz., must the old state machine be
   smashed? and what should supersede it?" [Op. Cit., p. 350] We simply
   point out that Lenin was utterly distorting the anarchist position on
   social revolution. Revolutionary anarchists had, since the 1860s,
   argued that workers' councils (soviets) could be both a weapon of class
   struggle against capitalism and the state as well as the framework of
   the future (libertarian) socialist society. Lenin only came to
   superficially similar conclusions in 1917. Which means that when he
   talked of workers' councils, Lenin was only repeating Bakunin - the
   difference being we anarchists mean it!

H.1.5 Why do anarchists reject "utilising the present state"?

   This is another key issue, the question of Marxists demanding (in the
   words of Lenin) "that the proletariat be prepared for revolution by
   utilising the present state" while anarchists "reject this." [Essential
   Works of Lenin, p. 358] By this, Lenin meant the taking part of
   socialists in bourgeois elections, standing candidates for office and
   having socialist representatives in Parliament and other local and
   national state bodies. In other words, what Marx termed "political
   action" and the Bolsheviks "revolutionary Parliamentarianism."

   For anarchists, the use of elections does not "prepare" the working
   class for revolution (i.e. managing their own affairs and society).
   Rather, it prepares them to follow leaders and let others act for them.
   In the words of Rudolf Rocker:

     "Participation in the politics of the bourgeois States has not
     brought the labour movement a hair's-breadth nearer to Socialism,
     but thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely
     crushed and condemned to insignificance . . . Participation in
     parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist Labour movement
     like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity
     of constructive Socialist activity, and, worse of all, the impulse
     to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that
     salvation always comes from above." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 54]

   While electoral ("political") activity ensures that the masses become
   accustomed to following leaders and letting them act on their behalf,
   anarchists' support direct action as "the best available means for
   preparing the masses to manage their own personal and collective
   interests; and besides, anarchists feel that even now the working
   people are fully capable of handling their own political and
   administrative interests." Political action, in contrast, needs
   centralised "authoritarian organisations" and results in "ceding power
   by all to someone, the delegate, the representative". "For direct
   pressure put against the ruling classes by the masses, the Socialist
   Party has substituted representation"
   and "instead of fostering the class struggle . . . it has adopted class
   collaboration in the legislative arena, without which all reforms would
   remain a vain hope." [Luigi Galleani, The End of Anarchism?, pp. 13-4,
   p. 14 and p. 12]

   Anarchists, therefore, argue that we need to reclaim the power which
   has been concentrated into the hands of the state. That is why we
   stress direct action. Direct action means action by the people
   themselves, that is action directly taken by those directly affected.
   Through direct action, we dominate our own struggles, it is we who
   conduct it, organise it, manage it. We do not hand over to others our
   own acts and task of self-liberation. That way, we become accustomed to
   managing our own affairs, creating alternative, libertarian, forms of
   social organisation which can become a force to resist the state, win
   reforms and, ultimately, become the framework of a free society. In
   other words, direct action creates organs of self-activity (such as
   community assemblies, factory committees, workers' councils, and so on)
   which, to use Bakunin's words, are "creating not only the ideas but
   also the facts of the future itself."

   The idea that socialists standing for elections somehow prepares
   working class people for revolution is simply wrong. Utilising the
   state, standing in elections, only prepares people for following
   leaders - it does not encourage the self-activity, self-organisation,
   direct action and mass struggle required for a social revolution.
   Moreover, as Bakunin predicted use of elections has a corrupting effect
   on those who use it. The history of radicals using elections has been a
   long one of betrayal and the transformation of revolutionary parties
   into reformist ones (see [36]section J.2.6 for more discussion). Using
   the existing state ensures that the division at the heart of existing
   society (namely a few who govern and the many who obey) is reproduced
   in the movements trying to abolish it. It boils down to handing
   effective leadership to special people, to "leaders," just when the
   situation requires working people to solve their own problems and take
   matters into their own hands:

     "The Social Question will be put . . . long before the Socialists
     have conquered a few seats in Parliament, and thus the solution of
     the question will be actually in the hands of the workmen [and
     women] themselves . . .

     "Under the influence of government worship, they may try to nominate
     a new government . . . and they may entrust it with the solution of
     all difficulties. It is so simple, so easy, to throw a vote into the
     ballot-box, and to return home! So gratifying to know that there is
     somebody who will arrange your own affairs for the best, while you
     are quietly smoking your pipe and waiting for orders which you have
     only to execute, not to reason about."
     [Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, p. 34]

   Only the struggle for freedom (or freedom itself) can be the school for
   freedom, and by placing power into the hands of leaders, utilising the
   existing state ensures that socialism is postponed rather than prepared
   for. As such, strikes and other forms of direct action "are of enormous
   value; they create, organise, and form a workers' army, an army which
   is bound to break down the power of the bourgeoisie and the State, and
   lay the ground for a new world." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of
   Bakunin, pp. 384-5] In contrast, utilising the present state only
   trains people in following leaders and so socialism "lost its creative
   initiative and became an ordinary reform movement . . . content with
   success at the polls, and no longer attributed any importance to social
   upbuilding." [Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 55]

   Which highlights another key problem with the notion of utilising the
   present state as Marxist support for electioneering is somewhat at odds
   with their claims of being in favour of collective, mass action. There
   is nothing more isolated, atomised and individualistic than voting. It
   is the act of one person in a box by themselves. It is the total
   opposite of collective struggle. The individual is alone before, during
   and after the act of voting. Indeed, unlike direct action, which, by
   its very nature, throws up new forms of organisation in order to manage
   and co-ordinate the struggle, voting creates no alternative social
   structures. Nor can it as it is not based on nor does it create
   collective action or organisation. It simply empowers an individual
   (the elected representative) to act on behalf of a collection of other
   individuals (the voters). Such delegation will hinder collective
   organisation and action as the voters expect their representative to
   act and fight for them - if they did not, they would not vote for them
   in the first place!

   Given that Marxists usually slander anarchists as "individualists" the
   irony is delicious!

   If we look at the anti-Poll-Tax campaign in the UK in the late 1980s
   and early 1990s, we can see what would happen to a mass movement which
   utilised electioneering. The various left-wing parties, particularly
   Militant (now the Socialist Party) spent a lot of time and effort
   lobbying Labour Councillors not to implement the tax (with no success).
   Let us assume they had succeeded and the Labour Councillors had refused
   to implement the tax (or "socialist" candidates had been elected to
   stop it). What would have happened? Simply that there would not have
   been a mass movement or mass organisation based on non-payment, nor
   self-organised direct action to resist warrant sales, nor community
   activism of any form. Rather, the campaign would have consisted to
   supporting the councillors in their actions, mass rallies in which the
   leaders would have informed us of their activities on our behalf and,
   perhaps, rallies and marches to protest any action the government had
   inflicted on them. The leaders may have called for some form of mass
   action but this action would not have come from below and so not a
   product of working class self-organisation, self-activity and
   self-reliance. Rather, it would have been purely re-active and a case
   of follow the leader, without the empowering and liberating aspects of
   taking action by yourself, as a conscious and organised group. It would
   have replaced the struggle of millions with the actions of a handful of
   leaders.

   Of course, even discussing this possibility indicates how remote it is
   from reality. The Labour Councillors were not going to act - they were
   far too "practical" for that. Years of working within the system, of
   using elections, had taken their toll decades ago. Anarchists, of
   course, saw the usefulness of picketing the council meetings, of
   protesting against the Councillors and showing them a small example of
   the power that existed to resist them if they implemented the tax. As
   such, the picket would have been an expression of direct action, as it
   was based on showing the power of our direct action and class
   organisations. Lobbying, however, was building illusions in "leaders"
   acting for us and based on pleading rather than defiance. But, then
   again, Militant desired to replace the current leaders with themselves
   and so had an interest in promoting such tactics and focusing the
   struggle on leaders and whether they would act for people or not.

   Unfortunately, the Socialists never really questioned why they had to
   lobby the councillors in the first place - if utilising the existing
   state was a valid radical or revolutionary tactic, why has it always
   resulted in a de-radicalising of those who use it? This would be the
   inevitable results of any movement which "complements" direct action
   with electioneering. The focus of the movement will change from the
   base to the top, from self-organisation and direct action from below to
   passively supporting the leaders. This may not happen instantly, but
   over time, just as the party degenerates by working within the system,
   the mass movement will be turned into an electoral machine for the
   party - even arguing against direct action in case it harms the
   election chances of the leaders. Just as the trade union leaders have
   done again and again in Britain and elsewhere.

   So anarchists point to the actual record of Marxists "utilising the
   present state". Murray Bookchin's comments about the German Social
   Democrats are appropriate here:

     "[T]he party's preoccupation with parliamentarism was taking it ever
     away from anything Marx had envisioned. Instead of working to
     overthrow the bourgeois state, the SPD, with its intense focus on
     elections, had virtually become an engine for getting votes and
     increasing its Reichstag representation within the bourgeois state .
     . . The more artful the SPD became in these realms, the more its
     membership and electorate increased and, with the growth of new
     pragmatic and opportunistic adherents, the more it came to resemble
     a bureaucratic machine for acquiring power under capitalism rather
     than a revolutionary organisation to eliminate it." [The Third
     Revolution, vol. 2, p. 300]

   The reality of working within the state soon transformed the party and
   its leadership, as Bakunin predicted. If we look at Leninism, we
   discover a similar failure to consider the evidence:

     "From the early 1920s on, the Leninist attachment to pre-WWI social
     democratic tactics such as electoral politics and political activity
     within pro-capitalist labour unions dominated the perspectives of
     the so-called Communist. But if these tactics were correct ones, why
     didn't they lead to a less dismal set of results? We must be
     materialists, not idealists. What was the actual outcome of the
     Leninist strategies? Did Leninist strategies result in successful
     proletarian revolutions, giving rise to societies worthy of the
     human beings that live in them? The revolutionary movement in the
     inter-war period was defeated." [Max Anger, "The Spartacist School
     of Falsification", pp. 50-2, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no.
     43, pp. 51-2]

   As Scottish Anarchist Ethel McDonald argued in 1937, the tactics urged
   by Lenin were a disaster in practice:

     "At the Second Congress of the Third International, Moscow, a
     comrade who is with us now in Spain, answering Zinoviev, urged faith
     in the syndicalist movement in Germany and the end of parliamentary
     communism. He was ridiculed. Parliamentarianism, communist
     parliamentarianism, but still parliamentarianism would save Germany.
     And it did . . . Saved it from Socialism. Saved it for Fascism.
     Parliamentary social democracy and parliamentary communism have
     destroyed the socialist hope of Europe, has made a carnage of human
     liberty. In Britain, parliamentarianism saved the workers from
     Socialism . . . Have you not had enough of this huge deception? Are
     you still prepared to continue in the same old way, along the same
     old lines, talking and talking and doing nothing?" ["The Volunteer
     Ban", pp. 72-5, Workers City, Farquhar McLay (ed.), p. 74]

   When the Nazis took power in 1933 in Germany the 12 million Socialist
   and Communist voters and 6 million organised workers took no action. In
   Spain, it was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT which lead the battle against
   fascism on the streets and helped create one of the most important
   social revolutions the world has seen. The contrast could not be more
   clear. And many Marxists urge us to follow Lenin's advice today!

   All in all, the history of socialists actually using elections has been
   a dismal failure and was obviously a failure long before 1917.
   Subsequent experience has only confirmed that conclusion. Rather than
   prepare the masses for revolution, it has done the opposite. As we
   argue in [37]section J.2, this is to be expected. That Lenin could
   still argue along these lines even after the rise of reformism
   ("revisionism") in the 1890s and the betrayal of social democracy in
   1914 indicates a lack of desire to learn the lessons of history.

   The negative effects of "utilising" the present state are, sometimes,
   acknowledged by Marxists although this rarely interferes with their
   support for standing in elections. Thus we find that advocate of
   "revolutionary" parliamentarianism, Trotsky, noting that [i]f
   parliamentarianism served the proletariat to a certain extent as a
   training school for revolution, then it also served the bourgeoisie to
   a far greater extent as the school of counter-revolutionary strategy.
   Suffice it to say that by means of parliamentarianism the bourgeoisie
   was able so to educate the Social Democracy that it is today [1924] the
   main prop of private property." [Lessons of October, pp. 170-1] Of
   course, the followers of Lenin and Trotsky are made of sterner stuff
   than those of Marx and Engels and so utilising the same tactics will
   have a different outcome. As one-time syndicalist William Gallacher put
   it in reply to Lenin's question "[i]f the workers sent you to represent
   them in Parliament, would you become corrupt?": "No, I'm sure that
   under no circumstances could the bourgeoisie corrupt me." [quoted by
   Mark Shipway, Anti-Parliamentary Communism, p. 21] Mere will-power,
   apparently, is sufficient to counteract the pressures and influences of
   parliamentarianism which Marx and Engels, unlike Bakunin, failed to
   predict but whose legacy still haunts the minds of those who claim to
   be "scientific socialists" and so, presumably, base their politics on
   facts and experience rather than wishful thinking.

   This is why anarchists reject the notion of radicals utilising the
   existing state and instead urge direct action and solidarity outside of
   bourgeois institutions. Only this kind of struggle creates the spirit
   of revolt and new popular forms of organisation which can fight and
   replace the hierarchical structures of capitalist society. Hence
   anarchists stress the need of working class people to "rely on
   themselves to get rid of the oppression of Capital, without expecting
   that the same thing can be done for them by anybody else. The
   emancipation of the workmen [and women] must be the act of the workmen
   [and women] themselves." [Kropotkin, Op. Cit., p. 32] Only this kind of
   movement and struggle can maximise the revolutionary potential of
   struggles for reforms within capitalism. As history shows, the
   alternative has repeatedly failed.

   It should be noted, however, that not all Marxists have refused to
   recognise the lessons of history. Libertarian Marxists, such as council
   communists, also reject "utilising the present state" to train the
   proletariat for revolution (i.e. for socialists to stand for
   elections). Lenin attacked these Marxists who had drawn similar
   conclusions as the anarchists (after the failure of social-democracy)
   in his 1920 diatribe Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. In
   that pamphlet he used the experiences of the Bolsheviks in semi-Feudal
   Tsarist Russia to combat the conclusions drawn by socialists in the
   advanced capitalist countries with sizeable social democratic parties.
   Lenin's arguments for revolutionary Parliamentarianism did not convince
   the anti-Parliamentarians who argued that its "significance lies not in
   its content, but in the person of the author, for the arguments are
   scarcely original and have for the most part already been used by
   others . . . their fallacy resides mainly in the equation of the
   conditions, parties, organisations and parliamentary practice of
   Western Europe with their Russian counterparts." [Anton Pannekoek,
   Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism, p. 143] While anarchists would disagree
   with the underlying assumption that Marx was right in considering
   parliamentarianism as essential and it only became problematic later,
   we would agree whole-heartedly with the critique presented
   (unsurprisingly, as we made it first).

   Pannekoek's article along with Herman Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade
   Lenin are essential reading for those who are taken in with Lenin's
   arguments, along with the chapter on "Socialism" in Alexander Berkman's
   What is Anarchism?. Interestingly, the Comintern asked Berkman to
   translate Lenin's Left-Wing Communism and he agreed until he read its
   contents. He then said he would continue if he could write a rebuttal,
   a request which was rejected. For anarchists, placing the word
   "revolutionary" in front of "parliamentarianism" does not provide a
   shield against the negative influences and pressures which naturally
   arise by utilising that tactic. Given the sorry history of radicals
   doing so, this is unsurprising. What is surprising is how so many
   Marxists are willing to ignore that history in favour of Lenin's
   pamphlet.

H.1.6 Why do anarchists try to "build the new world in the shell of the old"?

   Another key difference between anarchists and Marxists is on how the
   movement against capitalism should organise in the here and now.
   Anarchists argue that it should prefigure the society we desire -
   namely it should be self-managed, decentralised, built and organised
   from the bottom-up in a federal structure. This perspective can be seen
   from the justly famous "Circular of the Sixteen" issued at the
   Sonvillier congress by the libertarian wing of the First International:

     "The future society must be nothing else than the universalisation
     of the organisation that the International has formed for itself. We
     must therefore take care to make this organisation as close as
     possible to our ideal. How could one want an equalitarian and free
     society to issue from an authoritarian organisation? It is
     impossible. The International, the embryo of the future human
     society is held to be henceforward, the faithful image of our
     principles of liberty and of federation, and is considered to reject
     any principle tending to authority and dictatorship." [quoted by
     K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, pp. 262-3]

   Anarchists apply this insight to all organisations they take part in,
   stressing that the only way we can create a self-managed society is by
   self-managing our own struggles and organisations today. It is an
   essential part of our politics that we encourage people to "learn how
   to participate in the life of the organisation and to do without
   leaders and permanent officials" and "practice direct action,
   decentralisation, autonomy and free initiative." This flows logically
   from our politics, as it is "obvious that anarchists should seek to
   apply to their personal and political lives this same principle upon
   which, they believe, the whole of human society should be based."
   [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, p. 94] In this way we turn our
   class organisations (indeed, the class struggle itself) into practical
   and effective "schools of anarchism" in which we learn to manage our
   own affairs without hierarchy and bosses and so popular organisations
   become the cells of the new society:

     "Libertarian forms of organisation have the enormous responsibility
     of trying to resemble the society they are seeking to develop. They
     can tolerate no disjunction between ends and means. Direct action,
     so integral to the management of a future society, has its parallel
     in the use of direct action to change society. Communal forms, so
     integral to the structure of a future society, have their parallel
     in the use of communal forms - collectives, affinity groups, and the
     like - to change society. The ecological ethics, confederal
     relationships, and decentralised structures we would expect to find
     in a future society, are fostered by the values and networks we try
     to use in achieving an ecological society." [Murray Bookchin, The
     Ecology of Freedom, pp. 446-7]

   Marxists reject this argument. Instead they stress the importance of
   centralisation and consider the anarchist argument as utopian. For
   effective struggle, strict centralisation is required as the capitalist
   class and state is also centralised. In other words, to fight for
   socialism there is a need to organise in a way which the capitalists
   have utilised - to fight fire with fire. Unfortunately they forget to
   extinguish a fire you have to use water. Adding more flame will only
   increase the combustion, not put it out!

   Of course, Marx and Engels misrepresented the anarchist position. They
   asserted that the anarchist position implied that the Paris Communards
   "would not have failed if they had understood that the Commune was 'the
   embryo of the future human society' and had cast away all discipline
   and all arms, that is, the things which must disappear when there are
   no more wars!" [Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 115] Needless to say this
   is simply a slander on the anarchist position particularly as
   anarchists are well aware of the need to defend a revolution (see
   [38]section H.2.1) and the need for self-discipline (see [39]section
   H.4). Anarchists, as the Circular makes clear, recognise that we cannot
   totally reflect the future and so the current movement can only be "as
   near as possible to our ideal." Thus we have to do things, such as
   fighting the bosses, rising in insurrection, smashing the state or
   defending a revolution, which we would not have to do in a socialist
   society. However, we can do these things in a manner which is
   consistent with our values and our aims. For example, a strike can be
   run in two ways. Either it can be managed via assemblies of strikers
   and co-ordinated by councils of elected, mandated and recallable
   delegates or it can be run from the top-down by a few trade union
   leaders. The former, of course, is the anarchist way and it reflects
   "the future human society" (and, ironically, is paid lip-service to by
   Marxists).

   Such common sense, unfortunately, was lacking in Marx and Engels, who
   instead decided to utter nonsense for a cheap polemical point. Neither
   answered the basic point - how do people become able to manage society
   if they do not directly manage their own organisations and struggles
   today? How can a self-managed society come about unless people practice
   it in the here and now? Can people create a socialist society if they
   do not implement its basic ideas in their current struggles and
   organisations? Equally, it would be churlish to note that the Commune's
   system of federalism by mandated delegates had been advocated by
   Bakunin for a number of years before 1871 and, unsurprisingly, he took
   the revolt as a striking, if incomplete, confirmation of anarchism (see
   [40]section A.5.1).

   The Paris Commune, it must be stressed, brought the contradictions of
   the Marxist attacks on anarchism to the surface. It is deeply sad to
   read, say, Engels attacking anarchists for holding certain position yet
   praising the 1871 revolution when it implement exactly the same ideas.
   For example, in his deeply inaccurate diatribe "The Bakuninists at
   Work", Engels was keen to distort the federalist ideas of anarchism,
   dismissing "the so-called principles of anarchy, free federation of
   independent groups." [Collected Works, vol. 23, p. 297] Compare this to
   his praise for the Paris Commune which, he gushed, refuted the
   Blanquist notion of a revolution sprung by a vanguard which would
   create "the strictest, dictatorial centralisation of all power in the
   hands of the new revolutionary government." Instead the Commune
   "appealed to [the provinces] to form a free federation of all French
   Communes . . . a national organisation which for the first time was
   really created by the nation itself. It was precisely the oppressing
   power of the former centralised government . . . which was to fall
   everywhere, just as it had fallen in Paris." [Selected Writings, pp.
   256-7]

   Likewise, Engels praised the fact that, to combat the independence of
   the state from society, the Commune introduced wages for officials the
   same as that "received by other workers" and the use of "the binding
   mandate to delegates to representative bodies." [Op. Cit., p. 258]
   Compare this to Engels attack on anarchist support for binding mandates
   (which, like our support for free federation, pre-dated the Commune).
   Then it was a case of this being part of Bakunin's plans to control the
   international "for a secret society . . . there is nothing more
   convenient than the imperative mandate" as all its members vote one
   way, while the others will "contradict one another." Without these
   binding mandates, "the common sense of the independent delegates will
   swiftly unite them in a common party against the party of the secret
   society." Obviously the notion that delegates from a group should
   reflect the wishes of that group was lost on Engels. He even questioned
   the utility of this system for "if all electors gave their delegates
   imperative mandates concerning all points in the agenda, meetings and
   debates of the delegates would be superfluous." [Collected Works, vol.
   22, p. 281 and p. 277] It should be noted that Trotsky shared Engels
   dislike of "representatives" being forced to actually represent the
   views of their constituents within the party. [In Defense of Marxism,
   pp. 80-1]

   Clearly a "free federation" of Communes and binding mandates are bad
   when anarchists advocate them but excellent when workers in revolt
   implement them! Why this was the case Engels failed to explain.
   However, it does suggest that anarchist ideas that we must reflect the
   future in how we organise today is no hindrance to revolutionary change
   and, in fact, reflects what is required to turn a revolt into a genuine
   social revolution.

   Engels asserted that the anarchist position meant that "the proletariat
   is told to organise not in accordance with the requirements of the
   struggle . . . but according to the vague notions of a future society
   entertained by some dreamers." [Op. Cit., vol. 23, p. 66] In this he
   was wrong, as he failed to understand that the anarchist position was
   produced by the class struggle itself. He failed to understand how that
   struggle reflects our aspirations for a better world, how we see what
   is wrong with modern society and seek to organise to end such abuses
   rather than perpetuate them in new forms. Thus the trade unions which
   Bakunin argued would be the basis of a free society are organised from
   the bottom-up and based upon the direct participation of the workers.
   This form of organisation was not forced upon the workers by some
   intellectuals thinking they were a good idea. Rather they were created
   to fight the bosses and reflected the fact that workers were sick of
   being treating as servants and did not wish to see that repeated in
   their own organisations.

   As Bakunin argued, when a union delegates authority to its officials it
   may be "very good for the committees, but [it is] not at all favourable
   for the social, intellectual, and moral progress of the collective
   power of the International." The committees "substituted their own will
   and their own ideas for that of the membership" while the membership
   expressed "indifference to general problems" and left "all problems to
   the decisions of committees." This could only be solved by "call[ing]
   general membership meetings," that is "popular assemblies." Bakunin
   goes on to argue that the "organisation of the International, having as
   its objective not the creation of new despotism but the uprooting of
   all domination, will take on an essentially different character than
   the organisation of the State." This must be the "organisation of the
   trade sections and their representation by the Chambers of Labour" and
   these "bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society which is
   to replace the old world. They are creating not only the ideas, but
   also the facts of the future itself." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 246-7
   and p. 255]

   Ou Shengbai, a Chinese anarchist, argued that libertarians "deeply feel
   that the causes of popular misery are these: (1) Because of the present
   political system power is concentrated in a few hands with the result
   that the majority of the people do not have the opportunity for free
   participation. (2) Because of the capitalist system all means of
   production are concentrated in the hands of the capitalists with the
   results that the benefits that ought to accrue to labourers are usurped
   by capitalists. [quoted by Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese
   Revolution, p. 235] Does it make much sense to organise in ways which
   reflect these problems? Surely the reason why people become socialists
   is because they seek to change society, to give the mass of the
   population an opportunity for free participation and to manage their
   own affairs. Why destroy those hopes and dreams by organising in a way
   which reflects the society we oppose rather than the one we desire?

   Ultimately, Engels dismissed the practical experiences of working class
   people, dismissed our ability to create a better world and our ability
   to dream. In fact, he seems to think there is some division of labour
   between "the proletariat" who do the struggling and "some dreamers" who
   provide the ideas. The notion that working class people can both
   struggle and dream was lost on him, as was the notion that our dreams
   shape our struggles and our struggles shape our dreams. People resist
   oppression and exploitation because we want to determine what goes on
   in our lives and to manage our own affairs. In that process, we create
   new forms of organisation which allows that to happen, ones that
   reflect our dreams of a better world. This is not in opposition to the
   needs of the struggle, as Engels asserted, but are rather an expression
   of it. To dismiss this process, to advocate organisational methods
   which are the very antithesis of what working class people have shown,
   repeatedly, what they want, is the height of arrogance and, ultimately,
   little more than a dismissal of the hopes, dreams and creative
   self-activity of working class people. As libertarian socialist
   Cornelius Castoriadis put it:

     "the organisation's inspiration can come only from the socialist
     structures created by the working class in the course of its own
     history. It must let itself be guided by the principles on which the
     soviet and the factory council were founded . . . the principles of
     workers' management must govern the operation and structure of the
     organisation. Apart from them, there are only capitalist principles,
     which, as we have seen, can only result in the establishment of
     capitalist relationships." [Political and Social Writings, vol. 2,
     pp. 217-8]

   Ironically enough, given their own and their followers claims of
   Marxism's proletarian core, it was Marx and Engels who were at odds
   with the early labour movement, not Bakunin and the anarchists.
   Historian Gwyn A. Williams notes in the early British labour movement
   there were "to be no leaders" and the organisations were "consciously
   modelled on the civil society they wished to create." [Artisans and
   Sans-Culottes, p. 72] Lenin, unsurprisingly, dismissed the fact that
   the British workers "thought it was an indispensable sign of democracy
   for all the members to do all the work of managing the unions" as
   "primitive democracy" and "absurd." He also complained about "how
   widespread is the 'primitive' conception of democracy among the masses
   of the students and workers" in Russia. [Essential Works of Lenin, pp.
   162-3] Clearly, the anarchist perspective reflects the ideas the
   workers' movement before it degenerates into reformism and bureaucracy
   while Marxism reflects it during this process of degeneration. Needless
   to say, the revolutionary nature of the early union movement clearly
   shows who was correct!

   Anarchists, in other words, simply generalised the experiences of the
   workers in struggle and Bakunin and his followers were expressing a
   common position held by many in the International. Even Marx paid
   lip-service to this when he stated "in contrast to old society . . . a
   new society is springing up" and the "Pioneer of that new society is
   the International Working Men's Association." [Selected Works, p. 263]
   Clearly, considering the International as the embryo of the future
   society is worthy only of scorn as the correct position is to consider
   it merely as a pioneer!

   As such, libertarians "lay no claims to originality in proposing this
   [kind of prefigurative organisation]. In every revolution, during most
   strikes and daily at the level of workshop organisation, the working
   class resorts to this type of direct democracy." [Maurice Brinton, For
   Workers' Power, p. 48] Given how Marxists pay lip-service to such forms
   of working class self-organisation, it seems amusing to hear them argue
   that this is correct for everyone else but not themselves and their own
   organisations! Apparently, the same workers who are expected to have
   the determination and consciousness necessary to overthrow capitalism
   and create a new world in the future are unable to organise themselves
   in a socialist manner today. Instead, we have to tolerate so-called
   "revolutionary" organisations which are just as hierarchical, top-down
   and centralised as the system which provoked our anger at its injustice
   in the first and which we are trying to end!

   Related to this is the fact that Marxists (particularly Leninists)
   favour centralisation while anarchists favour decentralisation within a
   federal organisation. Anarchists do not think that decentralisation
   implies isolation or narrow localism. We have always stressed the
   importance of federalism to co-ordinate decisions. Power would be
   decentralised, but federalism ensures collective decisions and action.
   Under centralised systems, anarchists argue, power is placed into the
   hands of a few leaders. Rather than the real interests and needs of the
   people being co-ordinated, centralism simply means the imposition of
   the will of a handful of leaders, who claim to "represent" the masses.
   Co-ordination from below, in other words, is replaced by coercion from
   above in the centralised system and the needs and interests of all are
   replaced by those of a few leaders at the centre.

   Such a centralised, inevitably top-down, system can only be
   counter-productive, both practically and in terms of generating
   socialist consciousness:

     "Bolsheviks argue that to fight the highly centralised forces of
     modern capitalism requires an equally centralised type of party.
     This ignores the fact that capitalist centralisation is based on
     coercion and force and the exclusion of the overwhelming majority of
     the population from participating in any of its decisions . . .

     "The very structure of these organisations ensures that their
     personnel do not think for themselves, but unquestioningly carry out
     the instructions of their superiors . . .

     "Advocates of 'democratic centralism' insist that it is the only
     type of organisations which can function effectively under
     conditions of illegality. This is nonsense. The 'democratic
     centralist' organisation particularly vulnerable to police
     persecution. When all power is concentrated in the hands of the
     leaders, their arrest immediately paralyses the whole organisation.
     Members trained to accept unquestioningly the instruction of an
     all-wise Central Committee will find it very difficult to think and
     act for themselves. The experiences of the German Communist Party
     [under the Nazis] confirm this. With their usual inconsistency, the
     Trotskyists even explain the demise of their Western European
     sections during World War II by telling people how their leaders
     were murdered by the Gestapo!"
     [Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 43]

   As we discuss in depth in [41]section H.5 the Leninist vanguard party
   does, ironically, create in embryo a new world simply because once in
   power it refashions society in its image. However, no anarchist would
   consider such a centralised, hierarchical top-down class system rooted
   in bureaucratic power as being remotely desirable or remotely
   socialist.

   Therefore anarchists "recognised neither the state nor pyramidal
   organisation" Kropotkin argued, while Marxists "recognised the state
   and pyramidal methods of organisation" which "stifled the revolutionary
   spirit of the rank-and-file workers." [Conquest of Bread and Other
   Writings, p. 212] The Marxist perspective inevitably places power into
   the hands of a few leaders, who then decree which movements to support
   and encourage based on what is best for the long term benefit of the
   party itself rather than the working class. Thus we find Engels arguing
   while Marxists were "obliged to support every real popular movement"
   they also had to ensure "that the scarcely formed nucleus of our
   proletarian Party is not sacrificed in vain and that the proletariat is
   not decimated in futile local revolts," for example "a blood-letting
   like that of 1871 in Paris." [Marx and Engels, The Socialist
   Revolution, p. 294 and p. 320] This produces a conservative approach to
   social struggle, with mass actions and revolutionary situations ignored
   or warned against because of the potential harm it could inflict on the
   party. Unsurprisingly, every popular revolution has occurred against
   the advice of the so-called "revolutionary" Marxist leadership
   including the Paris Commune and the 1917 February revolution in Russia
   (even the October seize of power was done in the face of resistance
   from the Bolshevik party machine).

   It is for these reasons that anarchists "[a]s much as is humanly
   possible . . . try to reflect the liberated society they seek to
   achieve" and "not slavishly duplicate the prevailing system of
   hierarchy, class and authority." Rather than being the abstract dreams
   of isolated thinkers, these "conclusions . . . emerge from an exacting
   study of past revolutions, of the impact centralised parties have had
   on the revolutionary process" and history has more than confirmed the
   anarchist warning that the "revolutionary party, by duplicating these
   centralistic, hierarchical features would reproduce hierarchy and
   centralism in the post revolutionary society." [Murray Bookchin,
   Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 138, p. 139 and p. 137] Moreover, we base
   our arguments on how social movements should organise on the
   experiences of past struggles, of the forms of organisation
   spontaneously produced by those struggles and which, therefore, reflect
   the needs of those struggles and the desire for a better way of life
   which produced them. Ultimately, no one knows when a revolution turns
   the hopes and aspirations of today into tomorrow's reality and it would
   be wise to have some experience of managing our own affairs before
   hand.

   By failing to understand the importance of applying a vision of a free
   society to the current class struggle, Marxists help ensure that
   society never is created. By copying bourgeois methods within their
   "revolutionary" organisations (parties and unions) they ensure
   bourgeois ends (inequality and oppression).

H.1.7 Haven't you read Lenin's "State and Revolution"?

   This question is often asked of people who critique Marxism,
   particularly its Leninist form. Lenin's State and Revolution is often
   considered his most democratic work and Leninists are quick to point to
   it as proof that Lenin and those who follow his ideas are not
   authoritarian. As such, it is an important question. So how do
   anarchists reply when people point them to Lenin's work as evidence of
   the democratic (even libertarian) nature of Marxism? Anarchists reply
   in two ways.

   Firstly, we argue many of the essential features of Lenin's ideas are
   to be found in anarchist theory and, in fact, had been aspects of
   anarchism for decades before Lenin put pen to paper. Bakunin, for
   example, talked about mandated delegates from workplaces federating
   into workers' councils as the framework of a (libertarian) socialist
   society in the 1860s as well as popular militias to defend a
   revolution. Moreover, he was well aware that revolution was a process
   rather than an event and so would take time to develop and flourish.
   Hence Murray Bookchin:

     "Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta were not so naive as to believe
     that anarchism could be established over night. In imputing this
     notion to Bakunin, Marx and Engels wilfully distorted the Russian
     anarchist's views. Nor did the anarchists . . . believe that
     abolition of the state involved 'laying down of arms' immediately
     after the revolution, to use Marx's obscurantist choice of terms,
     thoughtlessly repeated by Lenin in State and Revolution. Indeed,
     much that passes for 'Marxism' in State and Revolution is pure
     anarchism - for example, the substitution of revolutionary militias
     for professional armed bodies and the substitution of organs of
     self-management for parliamentary bodies. What is authentically
     Marxist in Lenin's pamphlet is the demand for 'strict centralism,'
     the acceptance of a 'new' bureaucracy, and the identification of
     soviets with a state." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 137]

   That this is the case is hidden in Lenin's work as he deliberately
   distorts anarchist ideas in it (see sections [42]H.1.3 and [43]H.1.4
   for example). Therefore, when Marxists ask whether anarchist have read
   Lenin's State and Revolution we reply by arguing that most of Lenin's
   ideas were first expressed by anarchists and his work just strikes
   anarchists as little more than a re-hash of many of our own ideas but
   placed in a statist context which totally and utterly undermines them
   in favour of party rule.

   Secondly, anarchists argue that regardless of what Lenin argued for in
   State and Revolution, he did not apply those ideas in practice (indeed,
   he did the exact opposite). Therefore, the question of whether we have
   read Lenin's work simply drives home how the ideological nature and
   theoretical bankruptcy of Leninism. This is because the person is
   asking you to evaluate their politics based on what they say rather
   than on what they do, like any politician.

   To use an analogy, what would you say to a politician who has cut
   welfare spending by 50% and increased spending on the military and who
   argues that this act is irrelevant and that you should look at their
   manifesto which states that they were going to do the opposite? You
   would dismiss this argument as laughable and them as liars as you would
   evaluate them by their actions, not by what they say. Leninists, by
   urging you to read Lenin's State and Revolution are asking you to
   evaluate them by what their manifesto says and ignore what they did.
   Anarchists, on the other hand, ask you to evaluate the Leninist
   manifesto by comparing it to what they actually did in power. Such an
   evaluation is the only means by which we can judge the validity of
   Leninist claims and politics.

   As we discuss the role of Leninist ideology in the fate of the Russian
   Revolution in [44]section H.6 we will provide a summary of Lenin's
   claims in his famous work State and Revolution and what he did in
   practice here. Suffice to say the difference between reality and
   rhetoric was extremely large and, therefore, it is a damning indictment
   of Bolshevism. Post-October, the Bolsheviks not only failed to
   introduce the ideas of Lenin's book, they in fact introduced the exact
   opposite. As one historian puts it:

     "To consider 'State and Revolution' as the basic statement of
     Lenin's political philosophy - which non-Communists as well as
     Communists usually do - is a serious error. Its argument for a
     utopian anarchism never actually became official policy. The
     Leninism of 1917 . . . came to grief in a few short years; it was
     the revived Leninism of 1902 which prevailed as the basis for the
     political development of the USSR." [Robert V. Daniels, The
     Conscience of the Revolution, pp. 51-2]

   Daniels is being far too lenient with the Bolsheviks. It was not, in
   fact, "a few short years" before the promises of 1917 were broken. In
   some cases, it was a few short hours. In others, a few short months.
   However, in a sense Daniels is right. It did take until 1921 before all
   hope for saving the Russian Revolution finally ended.

   Simply put, if the State and Revolution is the manifesto of Bolshevism,
   then not a single promise in that work was kept by the Bolsheviks when
   they got into power. As such, Lenin's work cannot be used to evaluate
   Bolshevik ideology as Bolshevism paid no attention to it once it had
   taken state power. While Lenin and his followers chant rhapsodies about
   the Soviet State (this 'highest and most perfect system of democracy")
   they quickly turned its democratic ideas into a fairy-tale, and an ugly
   fairy-tale at that, by simply ignoring it in favour of party power (and
   party dictatorship). To state the obvious, to quote theory and not
   relate it to the practice of those who claim to follow it is a joke. If
   you look at the actions of the Bolsheviks after the October Russian
   Revolution you cannot help draw the conclusion that Lenin's State and
   Revolution has nothing to do with Bolshevik policy and presents a false
   image of what Leninists desire. As such, we must present a comparison
   between rhetoric and realty.

   In order to show that this is the case, we need to summarise the main
   ideas contained in Lenin's work. Moreover, we need to indicate what the
   Bolsheviks did, in fact, do. Finally, we need to see if the various
   rationales justifying these actions hold water.

   So what did Lenin argue for in State and Revolution? Writing in the
   mid-1930s, anarchist Camillo Berneri summarised the main ideas of that
   work as follows:

     "The Leninist programme of 1917 included these points: the
     discontinuance of the police and standing army, abolition of the
     professional bureaucracy, elections for all public positions and
     offices, revocability of all officials, equality of bureaucratic
     wages with workers' wages, the maximum of democracy, peaceful
     competition among the parties within the soviets, abolition of the
     death penalty." ["The Abolition and Extinction of the State," pp.
     50-1, Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review, no. 4, p. 50]

   As he noted, "[n]ot a single one of the points of this programme has
   been achieved." This was, of course, under Stalinism and most Leninists
   will concur with Berneri. However what Leninists tend not to mention is
   that by the end of the 7 month period of Bolshevik rule before the
   start of the civil war (i.e., from November 1917 to May 1918) none of
   these points existed. So, as an example of what Bolshevism "really"
   stands for it seems strange to harp on about a work which was never
   really implemented when the its author was in a position to do so (i.e.
   before the onslaught of a civil war Lenin thought was inevitable
   anyway!). Similarly, if State and Revolution indicates the features a
   "workers' state" must have then, by May 1918, Russia did not have such
   a state and so, logically, it can only be considered as such only if we
   assume that the good intentions of its rulers somehow overcome its
   political and economic structure (which, sadly, is the basic Trotskyist
   defence of Leninism against Stalinism!).

   To see that Berneri's summary is correct, we need to quote Lenin
   directly. Obviously the work is a wide ranging defence of Lenin's
   interpretation of Marxist theory on the state. As it is an attempt to
   overturn decades of Marxist orthodoxy, much of the work is quotes from
   Marx and Engels and Lenin's attempts to enlist them for his case (we
   discuss this issue in [45]section H.3.10). Equally, we need to ignore
   the numerous straw men arguments about anarchism Lenin inflicts on his
   reader. Here we simply list the key points as regards Lenin's arguments
   about his "workers' state" and how the workers would maintain control
   of it:

     1) Using the Paris Commune as a prototype, Lenin argued for the
     abolition of "parliamentarianism" by turning "representative
     institutions from mere 'talking shops' into working bodies." This
     would be done by removing "the division of labour between the
     legislative and the executive." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 304
     and p. 306]

     2) "All officials, without exception, to be elected and subject to
     recall at any time" and so "directly responsible to their
     constituents." [Op. Cit., p. 302 and p. 306]

     3) The "immediate introduction of control and superintendence by
     all, so that all shall become 'bureaucrats' for a time and so that,
     therefore, no one can become a 'bureaucrat'." Proletarian democracy
     would "take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy down to the roots . .
     . to the complete abolition of bureaucracy" as the "essence of
     bureaucracy" is officials becoming transformed" into privileged
     persons divorced from the masses and superior to the masses." [Op.
     Cit., p. 355 and p. 360]

     4) There should be no "special bodies of armed men" standing apart
     from the people "since the majority of the people itself suppresses
     its oppressors, a 'special force' is no longer necessary." Using the
     example of the Paris Commune, Lenin suggested this meant "abolition
     of the standing army" by the "armed masses." [Op. Cit., p. 275, p.
     301 and p. 339]

     5) The new (workers) state would be "the organisation of violence
     for the suppression of . . . the exploiting class, i.e. the
     bourgeoisie. The toilers need a state only to overcome the
     resistance of the exploiters" who are "an insignificant minority,"
     that is "the landlords and the capitalists." This would see "an
     immense expansion of democracy . . . for the poor, democracy for the
     people" while, simultaneously, imposing "a series of restrictions on
     the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists . . .
     their resistance must be broken by force: it is clear that where
     there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no
     democracy." [Op. Cit., p. 287 and pp. 337-8]

   This would be implemented after the current, bourgeois, state had been
   smashed. This would be the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and be
   "the introduction of complete democracy for the people." [Op. Cit., p.
   355] However, the key practical ideas on what the new "semi-state"
   would be are contained in these five points. He generalised these
   points, considering them valid for all countries.

   The first point as the creation of "working bodies", the combining of
   legislative and executive bodies. The first body to be created by the
   Bolshevik revolution was the "Council of People's Commissars" (CPC)
   This was a government separate from and above the Central Executive
   Committee (CEC) of the soviets congress which, in turn, was separate
   from and above the national soviet congress. It was an executive body
   elected by the soviet congress, but the soviets themselves were not
   turned into "working bodies." The promises of Lenin's State and
   Revolution did not last the night.

   The Bolsheviks, it must be stressed, clearly recognised that the
   Soviets had alienated their power to this body with the party's Central
   Committee arguing in November 1917 that "it is impossible to refuse a
   purely Bolshevik government without treason to the slogan of the power
   of the Soviets, since a majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of
   Soviets . . . handed power over to this government." [contained in
   Robert V. Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1,
   pp. 128-9] However, it could be argued that Lenin's promises were kept
   as the new government simply gave itself legislative powers four days
   later. Sadly, this is not the case. In the Paris Commune the delegates
   of the people took executive power into their own hands. Lenin reversed
   this and his executive took legislative power from the hands of the
   people's delegates. As we discuss in [46]section H.6.1, this
   concentration of power into executive committees occurred at all levels
   of the soviet hierarchy.

   What of the next principle, namely the election and recall of all
   officials? This lasted slightly longer, namely around 5 months. By
   March of 1918, the Bolsheviks started a systematic campaign against the
   elective principle in the workplace, in the military and even in the
   soviets. In the workplace, Lenin was arguing for appointed one-man
   managers "vested with dictatorial powers" by April 1918 (see
   [47]section H.3.14). In the military, Trotsky simply decreed the end of
   elected officers in favour of appointed officers. As far as the soviets
   go, the Bolsheviks were refusing to hold elections because they "feared
   that the opposition parties would show gains." When elections were
   held, "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results" in
   provincial towns. Moreover, the Bolsheviks "pack[ed] local soviets"
   with representatives of organisations they controlled "once they could
   not longer count on an electoral majority." [Samuel Farber, Before
   Stalinism, p. 22, p. 24 and p. 33] This kind of packing was even
   practised at the national level when the Bolsheviks gerrymandered a
   Bolshevik majority at the Fifth Congress of Soviets. So much for
   competition among the parties within the soviets! And as far as the
   right of recall went, the Bolsheviks only supported this when the
   workers were recalling the opponents of the Bolsheviks, not when the
   workers were recalling them.

   Then there was the elimination of bureaucracy. The new state soon had a
   new bureaucratic and centralised system quickly emerge around it.
   Rather than immediately cutting the size and power of the bureaucracy,
   it "grew by leaps and bounds. Control over the new bureaucracy
   constantly diminished, partly because no genuine opposition existed.
   The alienation between 'people' and 'officials,' which the soviet
   system was supposed to remove, was back again. Beginning in 1918,
   complaints about 'bureaucratic excesses,' lack of contact with voters,
   and new proletarian bureaucrats grew louder and louder." [Oskar
   Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 242] So the rise of a state bureaucracy
   started immediately with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks,
   particularly as the state's functions grew to include economic
   decisions as well as political ones. Instead of the state starting to
   "wither away" it grew:

     "The old state's political apparatus was 'smashed,' but in its place
     a new bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary
     rapidity. After the transfer of government to Moscow in March 1918
     it continued to expand . . . As the functions of the state expanded
     so did the bureaucracy, and by August 1918 nearly a third of
     Moscow's working population were employed in offices. The great
     increase in the number of employees . . . took place in early to
     mid-1918 and, thereafter, despite many campaigns to reduce their
     number, they remained a steady proportion of the falling population"
     [Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918," pp. 429-449,
     Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8]

   This, anarchists would stress, is an inherent feature of centralised
   system. As such, this rise of bureaucracy confirmed anarchist
   predictions that centralisation will recreate bureaucracy. After all,
   some means were required to gather, collate and provide information by
   which the central bodies made their decisions. Overtime, this permanent
   collection of bodies would become the real power in the state, with the
   party members nominally in charge really under the control of an
   unelected and uncontrolled officialdom. Thus a necessary side-effect of
   Bolshevik centralism was bureaucracy and it soon became the real power
   in the state (and, ultimately, in the 1920s became the social base for
   the rise of Stalin). This is to be expected as any state "is already a
   privileged class and cut off from the people" and would "seek to extend
   its powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and
   to give priority to special interests." Moreover, "what an
   all-powerful, oppressive, all-absorbing oligarchy must be one which has
   at its services, that is at its disposal, all social wealth, all public
   services." [Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 36 and p. 37]

   Then there is the fourth point, namely the elimination of the standing
   army, the suppression of "special bodies of armed men" by the "armed
   masses." This promise did not last two months. On the 20th of December,
   1917, the Council of People's Commissars decreed the formation of a
   political (secret) police force, the "Extraordinary Commission to Fight
   Counter-Revolution." This was more commonly known by the Russian
   initials of the first two terms of its official name: The Cheka.

   While it was initially a small organisation, as 1918 progressed it grew
   in size and activity. The Cheka soon became a key instrument of
   Bolshevik rule and it was most definitely a "special body of armed men"
   and not the same as the "armed workers." In other words, Lenin's claims
   in State and Revolution did not last two months and in under six months
   the Bolshevik state had a mighty group of "armed men" to impose its
   will. This is not all. The Bolsheviks also conducted a sweeping
   transformation of the military within the first six months of taking
   power. During 1917, the soldiers and sailors (encouraged by the
   Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries) had formed their own committees
   and elected officers. In March 1918, Trotsky simply abolished all this
   by decree and replaced it with appointed officers (usually ex-Tsarist
   ones). In this way, the Red Army was turned from a workers' militia
   (i.e. an armed people) into a "special body" separate from the general
   population.

   So instead of eliminating a "special force" above the people, the
   Bolsheviks did the opposite by creating a political police force (the
   Cheka) and a standing army (in which elections were a set aside by
   decree). These were special, professional, armed forces standing apart
   from the people and unaccountable to them. Indeed, they were used to
   repress strikes and working class unrest which refutes the idea that
   Lenin's "workers' state" would simply be an instrument of violence
   directed at the exploiters. As the Bolsheviks lost popular support,
   they turned the violence of the "worker's state" against the workers
   (and, of course, the peasants). When the Bolsheviks lost soviet
   elections, force was used to disband them. Faced with strikes and
   working class protest during this period, the Bolsheviks responded with
   state violence (see [48]section H.6.3). So, as regards the claim that
   the new ("workers") state would repress only the exploiters, the truth
   was that it was used to repress whoever opposed Bolshevik power,
   including workers and peasants. If, as Lenin stressed, "where there is
   suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy"
   then there cannot be working class freedom or democracy if the
   "workers' state" is suppressing that class.

   As can be seen, after the first six months of Bolshevik rule not a
   single measure advocated by Lenin in State and Revolution existed in
   "revolutionary" Russia. Some of the promises were broken quite quickly
   (overnight, in one case). Most took longer. Yet Leninists may object by
   noting that many Bolshevik degrees did, in fact, reflect State and
   Revolution. For example, the democratisation of the armed forces was
   decreed in late December 1917. However, this was simply acknowledging
   the existing revolutionary gains of the military personnel. Similarly,
   the Bolsheviks passed a decree on workers' control which, again, simply
   acknowledged the actual gains by the grassroots (and, in fact, limited
   them for further development).

   Yet this cannot be taken as evidence of the democratic nature of
   Bolshevism as most governments faced with a revolutionary movement will
   acknowledge and "legalise" the facts on the ground (until such time as
   they can neutralise or destroy them). For example, the Provisional
   Government created after the February Revolution also legalised the
   revolutionary gains of the workers (for example, legalising the
   soviets, factory committees, unions, strikes and so forth). The real
   question is whether Bolshevism continued to encourage these
   revolutionary gains once it had consolidated its power. It did not.
   Indeed, it can be argued that the Bolsheviks simply managed to do what
   the Provisional Government it replaced had failed to do, namely destroy
   the various organs of popular self-management created by the
   revolutionary masses. So the significant fact is not that the
   Bolsheviks recognised the gains of the masses but that their toleration
   of the application of what their followers say were their real
   principles did not last long and, significantly, the leading Bolsheviks
   did not consider the abolition of such principles as harming the
   "communist" nature of the regime.

   We have stressed this period for a reason. This was the period before
   the out-break of major Civil War and thus the policies applied show the
   actual nature of Bolshevism, it's essence if you like. This is a
   significant period as most Leninists blame the failure of Lenin to live
   up to his promises on this even. In reality, the civil war was not the
   reason for these betrayals - simply because it had not started yet.
   Each of the promises were broken in turn months before the civil war
   happened. "All Power to the Soviets" became, very quickly, "All Power
   to the Bolsheviks." Unsurprisingly, as this was Lenin's aim all along
   and so we find him in 1917 continually repeating this basic idea (see
   [49]section H.3.3).

   Given this, the almost utter non-mention of the party and its role in
   State and Revolution is deeply significant. Given the emphasis that
   Lenin had always placed on the party, it's absence is worrying. When
   the party is mentioned in that work, it is done so in an ambiguous
   manner. For example, Lenin noted that "[b]y educating the workers'
   party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat which is
   capable of assuming power and of leading the whole people to socialism,
   of directing and organising the new order." It is not clear whether it
   is the vanguard or the proletariat as a whole which assumes power.
   Later, he stated that "the dictatorship of the proletariat" was "the
   organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for
   the purpose of crushing the oppressors." [Essential Works of Lenin, p.
   288 and p. 337] Based on subsequent Bolshevik practice after the party
   seized power, it seems clear that it is the vanguard which assumes
   power rather than the whole class.

   As such, given this clear and unambiguous position throughout 1917 by
   Lenin, it seems incredulous, to say the least, for Leninist Tony Cliff
   to assert that "[t]o start with Lenin spoke of the proletariat, the
   class - not the Bolshevik Party - assuming state power." [Lenin, vol.
   3, p. 161] Surely the title of one of Lenin's most famous pre-October
   essays, usually translated as "Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?",
   should have given the game away? As would, surely, quoting numerous
   calls by Lenin for the Bolsheviks to seize power? Apparently not.

   Where does that leave Lenin's State and Revolution? Well, modern-day
   Leninists still urge us to read it, considering it his greatest work
   and the best introduction to what Leninism really stands for. For
   example, we find Leninist Tony Cliff calling that book "Lenin's real
   testament" while, at the same time, acknowledging that its "message . .
   . which was the guide for the first victorious proletarian revolution,
   was violated again and again during the civil war." Not a very good
   "guide" or that convincing a "message" if it was not applicable in the
   very circumstances it was designed to be applied in (a bit like saying
   you have an excellent umbrella but it only works when it is not
   raining). Moreover, Cliff is factually incorrect. As we discuss in
   [50]section H.6, the Bolsheviks "violated" that "guide" before the
   civil war started (i.e. when "the victories of the Czechoslovak troops
   over the Red Army in June 1918, that threatened the greatest danger to
   the Soviet republic," to quote Cliff). [Op. Cit., p. 161 and p. 18]
   Similarly, much of the economic policies implemented by the Bolsheviks
   had their roots in that book and the other writings by Lenin from 1917.

   The conclusions of dissent Marxist Samuel Farber seem appropriate here.
   As he puts it, "the very fact that a Sovnarkom had been created as a
   separate body from the CEC [Central Executive Committee] of the soviets
   clearly indicates that, Lenin's State and Revolution notwithstanding,
   the separation of at least the top bodies of the executive and the
   legislative wings of the government remained in effect in the new
   Soviet system." This suggests "that State and Revolution did not play a
   decisive role as a source of policy guidelines for 'Leninism in
   power.'" After all, "immediately after the Revolution the Bolsheviks
   established an executive power . . . as a clearly separate body from
   the leading body of the legislature . . . Therefore, some sections of
   the contemporary Left appear to have greatly overestimated the
   importance that State and Revolution had for Lenin's government. I
   would suggest that this document . . . can be better understood as a
   distant, although doubtless sincere [!], socio-political vision . . .
   as opposed to its having been a programmatic political statement, let
   alone a guide to action, for the period immediately after the
   successful seizure of power." [Op. Cit., pp. 20-1 and p. 38]

   That is one way of looking at it. Another would be to draw the
   conclusion that a "distant . . . socio-political vision" drawn up to
   sound like a "guide to action" which was then immediately ignored is,
   at worse, little more than a deception, or, at best, a theoretical
   justification for seizing power in the face of orthodox Marxist dogma.
   Whatever the rationale for Lenin writing his book, one thing is true -
   it was never implemented. Strange, then, that Leninists today urge use
   to read it to see what "Lenin really wanted." Particularly given that
   so few of its promises were actually implemented (those that were just
   recognised the facts on the ground) and all of were no longer applied
   in less than six months after the seize of power.

   It will be objected in defence of Leninism that it is unfair to hold
   Lenin responsible for the failure to apply his ideas in practice. The
   terrible Civil War, in which Soviet Russia was attacked by numerous
   armies, and the resulting economic chaos meant that the objective
   circumstances made it impossible to implement his democratic ideas.
   This argument contains flaws. Firstly, as we indicated above, the
   undemocratic policies of the Bolsheviks started before the start of the
   Civil War (so suggesting that the hardships of the Civil War were not
   to blame). Secondly, Lenin himself mocked those who argued that
   revolution was out of the question because of difficult circumstances
   and so to blame these for the failure of the Bolsheviks to apply the
   ideas in State and Revolution means to argue that those ideas are
   inappropriate for a revolution (which, we must stress, is what the
   leading Bolsheviks actually did end up arguing by their support for
   party dictatorship). You cannot have it both ways.

   Lenin at no time indicated in State and Revolution that it was
   impossible or inapplicable to apply those ideas during a revolution in
   Russia (quite the reverse!). Given that Marxists, including Lenin,
   argue that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" is required to defend
   the revolution against capitalist resistance it seems incredulous to
   argue that Lenin's major theoretical work on that regime was impossible
   to apply in precisely the circumstances it was designed for.

   All in all, discussing Lenin's State and Revolution without indicating
   that the Bolsheviks failed to implement its ideas (indeed, did the
   exact opposite) suggests a lack of honesty. It also suggests that the
   libertarian ideas Lenin appropriated in that work could not survive
   being grafted onto the statist ideas of mainstream Marxism. In the
   words of historian Marc Ferro:

     "In a way, The State and Revolution even laid the foundations and
     sketched out the essential features of an alternative to Bolshevik
     power, and only the pro-Leninist tradition has used it, almost to
     quieten its conscience, because Lenin, once in power, ignored its
     conclusions. The Bolsheviks, far from causing the state to wither
     away, found endless reasons for justifying its enforcement."
     [October 1917, pp. 213-4]

   Anarchists would suggest that this alternative was anarchism. The
   Russian Revolution shows that a workers state, as anarchists have long
   argued, means minority power, not working class self-management of
   society. As such, Lenin's work indicates the contradictory nature of
   Marxism - while claiming to support democratic/libertarian ideals they
   promote structures (such as centralised states) which undermine those
   values in favour of party rule. The lesson is clear, only libertarian
   means can ensure libertarian ends and they have to be applied
   consistently within libertarian structures to work. To apply them to
   statist ones will simply fail.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secB2.html
   2. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI1.html
   3. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech11
   4. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI4.html
   5. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech23
   6. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech11
   7. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech310
   8. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html#secj26
   9. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html#secj210
  10. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech28
  11. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ3.html#secj37
  12. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html
  13. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech314
  14. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62
  15. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech313
  16. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21
  17. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech27
  18. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech62
  19. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech22
  20. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech12
  21. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech310
  22. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH5.html
  23. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech11
  24. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech38
  25. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html
  26. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech13
  27. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech14
  28. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech15
  29. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech12
  30. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21
  31. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech14
  32. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secI2.html#seci23
  33. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21
  34. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech13
  35. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech310
  36. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html#secj26
  37. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secJ2.html
  38. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH2.html#sech21
  39. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH4.html
  40. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secA5.html#seca51
  41. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH5.html
  42. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech13
  43. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH1.html#sech14
  44. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html
  45. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech310
  46. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech61
  47. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech314
  48. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html#sech63
  49. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH3.html#sech33
  50. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secH6.html
