An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) is now at version 15.9. This release is a revision of an appendix debunking an anti-anarchist article by a Marxist.
Reply to errors and distortions in John Fisher's "Why we must further Marxism and not Anarchism"
A revision of an appendix on an anti-anarchist article written by a Marxist
This appendix debunks a particularly poor Trotskyist attack on anarchism prompted by the activism of Reclaim the Streets (RTS) and others in the early 2000s. The original article has little to recommend it beyond repeating commonplace Marxist myths about anarchism -- as such, it warranted a reply as it reflected wider claims being made at the time (and before and since). It becomes clear that the author of the attack article really did not understand -- or, at best, did not take the time -- the ideas and actions he was attempting to critique. As well as ignorant of the issues, it is not even internally consistent. Sadly, it is hardly the only example of such a work.
The initial aim was to add regularly to this appendix, debunking any Marxist anti-anarchist article which appeared. However, this proved to be too optimistic -- for these articles repeated the same nonsense (perhaps not in the same order) and much of it was debunked in section H. Rather than repeat the same evidence and arguments, this time was used for more productive activities -- some of these (such as anthologies of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin and Camillo Berneri as well as new translations of Kropotkin's books) have been utilised in this revision as well as previous and future ones.
This article, as so many others, repeats the same baseless claims against anarchism -- claims which are easily checked by consulting anarchists texts. So the same assertions are made, not least the notion that anarchists either assume there is no need to defend a revolution or that if we do then this defence equates to a "worker' state" or the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Here, the claim is made that the armed proletariat is a workers state which, if true, would also mean that the Bolshevik regime -- which is defended -- was not a workers' state. This highlights a central contradiction within the various types of Leninism, namely many words are written on how Marxism is democratic (indeed, often proclaimed to be inherently so) while also defending the Bolshevik party dictatorship and its crushing of various working class revolts for soviet democracy (most infamously, at Kronstadt in 1921). For some strange reason, they get annoyed when this contradiction is pointed out -- and the obvious conclusion, namely that they will do the same as the Bolsheviks and destroy workers democracy to secure party power (in the interests, of course, the revolution).
The smugness of this proclaimation -- that defending a revolution equates to a workers' state -- does indicate a common problem with Marxist attacks on anarchism, namely how superficial they are. The author of this piece clearly has done no research on anarchist views of a social revolution. If they had, then they would have seen every revolutionary anarchist indicate the need to defend a revolution from attempts to destroy it and have argued that this defence is best done via the people armed, including the use of federated workers' militias. Now, clearly, anarchists do not reject the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" (otherwise known as "the workers' state") because they fail to realise a revolution needs to be defended. Why we do would involve engaging with, say, Bakunin's critique of Marx (see section H.1.1) and that is something Marxists rarely do, instead repeating what other Marxists assert about anarchism (as is the case here). As Malatesta put it:
"But perhaps the truth is simply this: . . . [some] take the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labour, and trying to build a society and organise a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers.
"Thus constructed, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everyone, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.
"But the real supporters of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one party's leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and above all its armed forces, which are at present [1919] also deployed in the defence of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictator's will upon the workers, to apply a break on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses." [Malatesta, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 38-9]
Malatesta had become an anarchist in the early 1870s after joining the (First) International and meeting Bakunin. He would obviously have taken umbrage at Fisher's notion that he knew nothing of anarchism and was, in reality, a Marxist. Yet this is Fisher's position, so confirming his ignorance of anarchism -- not least its critique of Marxism and its notion of the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Now, as noted, Fisher asserted that "an armed proletariat in reality, is a proletarian 'state'!" Now, as argued in the appendix, if that definition is used (and, it must be stressed, that is not a definition anarchists would agree to as it completely fails to understand how structure and function are interwoven) then the Bolshevik regime was not a proletarian "state". It was a regime with specialised armed forces -- a secret police and traditionally organised armed forces -- which were used to impose the will of the government onto society, including the proletariat. As indicated in section H.6.3, the so-called proletarian state used force against the proletariat from the start and, within months, to impose and protect the dictatorship of the party.
One problem with the notion of "a proletarian 'state'" is that it covers a wide-range of notions -- from the ultra-democratic armed proletariat (the theory) to the dictatorship of the party armed with specialised forces (the practice), with the former used to excuse the latter. Given this, along with the other issues and contradictions inherent in the notion, it is a concept -- and practice! -- which is best rejected by all genuine socialists.
Of course, the Trotskyist has a response to this position -- namely that the Bolsheviks had to do what they had to do because of the pressures of the civil war. This position would not be taken seriously if it were not used so much -- asfter all, why do Trotskyists proclaim the need for the "dictatorship of the proletariat"? Why, to defend the revolution against the counter-revolution -- which they consider as inevitable. In other words, the regime could not withstand the very thing it is required for...
Of course, it would be churlish -- but neccesary -- to note that all these are post-hoc rationalisations to explain something which, according to Leninist ideology, should not have happened. In contrast, anarchists note that the degeneration of the Bolshevik regime provided empricial evidence for our long-standing critique of Marxism. It would appear that for those who proclaim themselves "scientific socialists" being proven correct matters little and, indeed, appears to be considered a reason to dismiss a theory out of hand...
This is the political critique. Looking at it economically, the notion of "an armed proletariat" raises the obvious question of what happened to the social revolution? After all, anarchists see the revolution (as noted in section J.7.4) as the elimination of the State and the expropriation of capital and land. So the whole notion of a "proletarian" State implies that the workers remain wage-workers and that their "political power" does not rest on their economic power, that the capitalists and landlords retain their economic power. Trotskyist's generally argue that the new regime would start to nationalise property but, from an anarchist perspective, this means that workers remain wage-workers but now the boss has been replaced by the State bureaucrat. They would still lack economic power and a new class -- the bureaucracy -- would control their labour, product and the surplus they produce.
This can be seen from the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism. Given that the article quotes Ted Grant, it is fair to say this is from an orthodox Trotskyist perspective rather than a neo-Trotskyist one (like the British SWP which rejected the notion that Stalinist Russia was a "degenerated workers state" and so should be defended). Writing in 1949 against Tony Cliff's (flawed) account of Stalinism being state-capitalism, Grant argued:
"The most significant thing about all tendencies who seek to revise Trotsky’s position on the Russian question is that they always deal with the problem in the abstract and never concretely explain the laws of the transitional society between capitalism and socialism and how such a society would operate. This is not accidental. A concrete consideration would impel them to the conclusion that the fundamental economy in Russia is the same as it was under Lenin and that it could not be otherwise." ["Against the Theory of State Capitalism: Reply to Comrade Cliff", The Unbroken Thread: The Development of Trotskyism Over 40 Years, p. 214]
Indeed -- and anarchists had been warning State-socialism would be nothing more than state-capitalism for decades before Lenin and Trotsky proved them prophetic. Now, if the "fundamental economy in Russia [under Stalin] is the same as it was under Lenin" then that would mean that the social relations under both regimes were identical. If the bureaucracy controlled labour and monopolised its product under Stalin then it did so under Lenin and so, logically, both regimes had to be rejected as non-socialist. Grant rejects this obvious conclusion:
"If comrade Cliff's thesis is correct, that state capitalism exists in Russia today, then he cannot avoid the conclusion that state capitalism has been in existence since the Russian Revolution and the function of the Revolution itself was to introduce this state capitalist system of society. For despite his tortuous efforts to draw a line between the economic basis of Russian society before the year 1928 and after, the economic basis of Russian society has in fact remained unchanged." [Op. Cit., p. 199]
Which is true -- the social relations under Lenin did not differ from those under Stalin. Yet rather than conclude that the former should be opposed as state capitalism, Grant draws the conclusion that Stalinism should be defended as a degenerated workers state. Yet it was the bureaucracy's social position, its economic power, which was the source of the privileges which Trotsky pointed to and opposed -- he simply attacked the symptoms rather than the root cause. Perhaps these privileges were fewer, the corruption less, the surplus smaller and less brutually extracted under Lenin than Stalin, but it is not the degree of exploitation which matters -- it is the social relations within production and the wider society which matter and which define a system (capitalism is, after all, not less capitalist if the rate of profit is 10% rather than 20%).
Ironically, by exposing the weakness of Cliff's analysis (as we note in section H.3.13, it is weak), Grant also exposes the weakness of his own Trotskyist position and its limitations. Yes, the neo-Trotskyist position of Cliff was politically better regardless of the dubious nature of the analysis used to come to the conclusion that Stalinist Russia was state-capitalist. Yet, factually, Grant's critique was correct -- nothing had changed in the social relations in the USSR and so Cliff's attempts to make 1928 the point when Russia ceased being a so-called degenerated workers state and became "state capitalism" were unconvincing. In short, if Russia under Stalin was state-capitalist then Russia under Lenin (and Trotsky) was also state-capitalist -- a conclusion Cliff could not accept as a good Leninist but one anarchists had recognised as Lenin and Trotsky built their economic regime. As Italian Anarchist Camillo Berneri suggested:
"This phenomenon of the reconstitution of classes 'by means of the State' was foreseen by us and virulently denounced by us. The Leninist opposition did not succeed in deepening their aetiological examination of the phenomenon, and it is because of this that they did not come to revise the Leninist position in the face of the problems of the State and revolution." ["The State and Classes", The State - Or Revolution, p. 93]
Both Grant and Cliff utiltised the notion of contradictions to justify supporting the Bolshevik dictatorship. Yet drawing attention to contradictions does not make them go away or resolve them. Invoking "dialectics" does not change the fact that by whatever criteria picked, the Bolshevik regime was not the "workers' state" as portrayed in Leninist propaganda and rhetoric. The conclusion that there can be no such thing as a "workers' state" or "semi-state" (a contradiction in terms, given the anarchist analysis of the state) is the obvious one given the evidence.
Of course, much more could be written (and has been) on this -- excuses based on "backwardness", "isolation", and so on, promoting strategies (such as electioneering) which have have continually failed -- but time and resources are limited. Suffice to say, a revolutionary ideology which assumes that everything will be fine if the best of circumstances apply and which does not seem willing to learn the lessons of the past is not one to be taken seriously. Anarchists are anarchists not because we think a social revolution would be easy but rather because we are aware of how difficult it will be and, as a consequence, we need social organisations which allow the many to participate in running their own lives -- and revolution. Hence the pressing need for a federalist, decentralised and decentred social organisation rather than a State -- and social movements today which apply these ideas so that we get used to taking direct action, showing solidarity, expressing our initiative, managing our own struggles and organisations directly, and so on. Precisely the kind of things which Leninist ideology, organisation and strategy strangle.
Finally, it should be noted that next 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 its 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!