An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) is now at version 15.11. This release is a revision of an appendix debunking a Leninist article attacking anarchism.
Reply to errors and distortions in the SWP's "Marxism and Anarchism"
A revision of an appendix debunking a (British) SWP article on "Anarchism".
This a supplement to section H (on Marxism) of the main AFAQ. It is a part of an appendix (Anarchism and Marxism) which was planned to be added to as an on-going debunking of Marxist attacks on anarchism but it quickly became clear that it would have been repetitive as such articles rarely say anything new (or accurate). The same old debunked assertions made time and time again -- whether repeated from Marx, Engels, Lenin or whoever (Stalin's pamphlet Anarchism or Socialism? is rarely quoted, for the obvious reason that the Bolshevik regime proved the anarchist critique of Marxism was right). Some articles are better than others, of course, but they generally follow the same lines of attack. As such, the original plan was abandoned to allow more interesting activities to be done.
It is strange though to see such articles given that the anarchist critique of Marxism -- both in terms of Social Democracy and Bolshevism -- has been proven correct time and time again. Social Democracy did become reformist and the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" did become the dictatorship over the proletariat. Marxist excuses and alleged explanations for these degenerations are all ex post -- and not convincing given awareness of the facts (as we discuss in section H.6 as regards the Russian Revolution). Suffice to say, these articles are not aimed at anarchists but rather party members and those close to them so that they will not investigate anarchist ideas -- they are a form of pre-emptive ideological defence. After all, if what is being said about anarchism is true then why would anyone sensible look into it?
Of course, Marxist has splintered into a whole range of schools, parties and sects. Some are better than others, some are close to anarchism (council communism, for example). Some seemingly refuse to disappear even in the face of the horrors committed (Stalinists and Maoists are still around). Within Leninist parties the same abuses of power by the members of the leadership keep appearing, dissidents appear denouncing the "bureaucratic centralism" that exists along with the same hopes of "real" democratic centralism is possible. Yet given the track record of Marxism, its multiple failures, some keep placing their hopes for a better world in it. Their initial good intentions get undermined. Which is why former members of these parties outnumber current members.
This happens, in part, because they cannot see an alternative -- and the regular, terrible, anti-anarchist articles published by these groups are undoubtedly aimed at ensuring the party membership do not investigate the obvious revolutionary (libertarian) socialist alternative, anarchism. In part, because of the illusion of success -- yes, social democracy did become a mass movement, yes, the Bolsheviks seized and held power -- but looking beyond the short-term, both social democracy and its radical off-spring Bolshevism undermined the genuine socialist movement and set the possibilities for real socialism back decades. Yes, the former reformed capitalism but did not abolish it (and reforms have been rolled back) while the latter replaced one form of capitalism with another, state-capitalism, which was worse. In part, because anarchists have been too small or too disorganised to provide an alternative -- although it is nice to report that there are many well-organised anarchist groups who are taking part in social movements which do provide that alternative.
Needless to say, the likes of the SWP stress the anti-state aspects of anarchism -- while often forgetting to mention anarchism is the anti-state wing of the socialist movement. As such, we share a common critique of capitalism -- indeed, anarchists from Bakunin onwards have praised Marx's economic analysis of the current system as one rooted in exploitation, inequality and instability (anarchists would add that much of this analysis can be found in Proudhon). After all, the first anarchist book was What is Property? rather than What is Government? and our critiques of State and Property are interwoven, interdependent and interrelated. To focus on just one aspect of our critique of hierarchy -- the State -- is to distort anarchism.
Still, no one has ever suffered reputational, academic or career damage from misrepresenting anarchism so we can expect inaccurate accounts of anarchism to continue, with Marxists at the fore. Indeed, Marxists have been doing so since Marxism has existed as an ideology, since Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy and its mix of invention, cherry-picking and the occasional valid point (more recent attacks almost always eschew the last, with valid points being even rarer than in Marx's diatribe). Suffice to say, it is always wise to check any references used in such attacks for usually the source material is at odds with what is being claimed (in this, they follow Marx's lead).
This is not to say that an accurate critique of anarchism is not possible. Leninists, for example, could argue that anarchists are naive and that a federation of workers' councils cannot achieve a successful social revolution and that the "dictatorship of the party" is essential. This was, of course, the actual Leninist position from 1919 onwards (even if Leninists today tend not to mention it, for obvious reasons). However, the flaws in such a position are too obvious to require debunking. Likewise with any critique which stressed the need for centralism rather than federalism, for such a position fails to understand the bureaucracy, inefficiencies and privileges such a system would -- and has! -- created. The need for "political action" also fails simply because it is repeating the mistakes of history rather than learning from them (see section J.2.6). Needless to say, any critique which rests on all organisation equals "authority" or is "authoritarian" just exposes the liberal basis of Marxism, confuses agreement with authority and lays the foundations for subsequent betrayals of the revolution (after all, if all organisation is "authoritarian" then it does not matter if a workplace is self-managed by its workers or run by state-appointed managers armed with "dictatorial" powers).
One potential critique is to acknowledge that anarchists recognise that a social revolution needs to be organised and defended but the our vision of federated communes and workers' associations is simply a workers' state. Yet qualifying the state by adding "workers" before it shows the problem with this, for it recognises that this new social organisation is not a state "in the normal sense of the word" (to paraphrase Lenin). Yet, in that case, why call it a state? If it is because it is a social organisation then this causes problems for Marxism for it logically means that the state can never "wither away" (as Lenin promised, using Engels' expression). For anarchists, the state is a social organisation but not all social organisations are states:
"Unable to imagine a social organisation otherwise than as a State, the Marxist school considered the social revolution as . . . the working class . . . conquer[ing] the power and the wealth in order to destroy the first and to socialise the latter. This is quite utopian. Never a whole class will wield the power; never will a class or a clique possessing the power abdicate it . . . It remains now for Anarchists to push forward the claims of the proletariat, to show the identity of economical and political privilege, of property and the state, and to open the way to the destruction of both through the social revolution." ["The Collapse of Marxism at the Two International Congresses of Paris", Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism, August 1889]
To be considered a state, a given social organisation must have certain features -- it must be centralised and hierarchical, and bureaucratic as a consequence ("The State is necessarily hierarchical, authoritarian -- or it ceases to be the State" [Kropotkin, Modern Science and Anarchy, p. 227]). These features have not arisen accidently, they are required to secure minority class rule. They are not neutral. Just as most Marxists acknowledge that the current State cannot be used to introduce socialism as it a capitalist machine, anarchists agree but add that the key features of this state likewise cannot be used for the same reason. The oppressed and exploited classes need to create a new social organisation, one which is forged to facilitate the mass participation which the state has evolved to exclude. Hence our arguments for bottom-up federations of workers councils and communes based on elected, mandated and recallable delegates. This, indeed, is a social organisation but it is not a state -- even if it conducts activities which have been monopolised by the state and its bureaucracy (after all, few would claim that if workers associations provide the products and services currently furnished by capitalist firms then these co-operatives are somehow capitalist in spite of ending the hierarchical -- dictatorial -- social relationships associated with wage-labour). As Kropotkin argued:
"the anarchists . . . maintain that if we want to one day achieve the abolition of capitalist exploitation we must, starting today, already direct our efforts towards its abolition. Starting today we must aim for the direct transfer of everything that is used in production -- mines, factories, means of communication, and above all the means of existence of the producer -- from the hands of individual Capital into those of communities of producers . . .
"Nor can we forget that the Church and the State were the political force to which the privileged classes, when they were just beginning to form, resorted to in order to become entrenched classes, armed by the law to have privileges and rights over other men; that the State is the institution that served to establish mutual insurance for the enjoyment of those rights. But, because of this very reason, neither the Church nor the State can today become the force which will be used to demolish these privileges . . . economic emancipation will be accomplished by smashing the old political forms represented by the State. Man will be forced to find new forms of organisation for the social functions that the State apportioned between its functionaries. And nothing will be done as long as this is not done.
"Anarchy works to facilitate the blossoming of these new forms of social life. And this blossoming will take place, as it always has in the past, during great upheavals of liberation by the constructive force of the masses . . .
"This is also why a great number of anarchists, since the beginnings of the International to the present, have taken an active part in the workers organisations formed for the direct struggle of Labour against Capital. This struggle, while serving far more powerfully than any indirect action to secure some improvements in the life of the worker and opening up the eyes of the workers to the evil done to society by capitalist organisation and by the State that upholds it, this struggle also awakes in the worker thoughts concerning the forms of consumption, production and direct exchange between those concerned, without the intervention of the capitalist and the State." [Op. Cit., pp. 168-9]
So while there are significant overlaps in the anarchist and Marxist theories of the state, they are not identical. Both argue that states are instruments of class rule but anarchists add that they are instruments of minority classes -- and have evolved its defining features to ensure that role. If a social structure has these features then it will mean a minority will rule rather than the many which the structure has been designed to exclude from social decision making. It also means that this ruling minority class can be the bureaucracy of the state itself -- as the practice of Marxism proved. To put it another way, anarchists have an empirical analysis of the state while Marxists have a metaphysical one which allows them to assert that the essence of the state is that it is an instrument of class rule and so there could be a "workers' state". The grim reality of Bolshevik rule shows which of these positions is the correct one. Sadly, being proven right seems to be considered a hindrance rather than an advantage in radical politics...
Ultimately, while Marxists like to note that Marx in Capital sought to penetrate the surface appearance of capitalism and examined the social relationships between humans that can actually explain the system, they singularly fail to do so with the state. The notion that it is irrelevant how a social organisation is structured is the kind of mystification they denounce the "vulgar" economists for. Yet Marxists are dimly aware of this, for they often point to Marx's comments on the Paris Commune on the need for mandates and recall -- but without, of course, mentioning its federalism which made these features relevant and living nor that anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin had previously advocated such ideas. As Bakunin suggested, the Commune's "general effect was so striking that the Marxists themselves, who saw their ideas upset by the uprising, found themselves compelled to take their hats off to it. They went further, and proclaimed that its programme and purpose where their own, in face of the simplest logic ... This was a truly farcical change of costume, but they were bound to make it, for fear of being overtaken and left behind in the wave of feeling which the rising produced throughout the world." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 261]
By confusing two radically different things, two radically different social organisations, under the general term "state" ensures the degeneration of the revolution into bureaucratic centralism -- as history shows. This, of course, does not mean that an anarchist-influenced social revolution will automatically succeed but it does mean that internal degeneration is combated for those involved would have no illusions in centralism that the Marxist confusion produces.
These and other issues are discussed in the appendix so we will leave it there.
As this appendix was written before section H was completed, we have taken the opportunity to link to its relevant sub-sections as well as referencing the editions of books used in the main AFAQ. We have also tried to track down published version of works we had previously referenced to webpages. In the quarter of a century since this appendix was published, the number of anarchist archives has increased significantly, so making this task easier.
This appendix also appeared in Freedom under the title "Marxism and 'Anarchism': a reply to the SWP" in issues Vol. 61 No. 19 (7th October 2000) to Vol. 61 No. 23 (2nd December 2000). These issues are available in the Sparrow Nest's Freedom Archive. Obviously, the article eschewed the FAQ format. Given that the SWP was seeking to combat anarchist influence in the developing anti-globalisation movement, it felt wise to submit a debunking to the anarchist press.
Finally, it should be noted that this year (2026) marks the 30th anniversary of the official launch of AFAQ. Given this, we aim to complete the revision of the various finished appendices by that date. Then we will work on the remaining unfinished appendix on the Russian Revolution (section H.6 does cover all the key issues). There is no date for that yet but we will aim to add to the AFAQ blog a bit more regularly than previously. It all very much depends on other projects and life -- AFAQ is not funded at all and is dependent on people volunteering to work on it in their spare time. So hopefully understanding and patience will be expressed at its incomplete status after so many years!