Socialist Resistance Marxism or Anarchism? Mark Brown (J18) debates Phil Hearse (SR) Tuesday 18 May, 7.30pm University of London Union, Malet St, London WC2. All welcome. Introduction : In the February issue we published an article criticising anarchism, which can be found on our front page - Marxism versus Anarchism. Three anarchist comrades replied, and their contributions can be found on page 4 of the March Youth supplement, again accessed from our front page. Herewith we publish a further reply from Socialist Resistance (available in the April issue) and a rejoinder from the anarchist viewpoint by Iain McKay which will be published in the May issue. In the next few days this whole debate will be reorganised to make it consecutive, and to include a detailed critique, by an Irish anarchist comrade, of Ernest Mandel's famous text on the Leninist party. Reply to Anarchist Comrades
The three anarchist comrades whose letters were published in the last issue argue essentially the same points, centering on the question of whether the Leninist Party, and a post-revolutionary state, are necessarily authoritarian and (as Iain McKay puts it) "concentrates power in the hands of the few". These issues are very important, and I deal with them below. But the comrades refrained from more general discussion of the question of the political party and elections, and these issues - of great contemporary relevance - show there is a gulf between us on the whole issue of what constitutes revolutionary politics. I will show how these issues are directly linked with those the comrades raise.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. At this very moment thousands of comrades in the LCR and Lutte Ouvriere are running a tremendous, dynamic election campaign for the French regional elections, with small towns seeing meetings of hundreds of people to discuss the revolutionary alternative. If the French far left is way ahead of its English and Welsh equivalents (Scotland is different because of the SSP), unfortunately the French far right is way ahead as well. As the bankrupt French bourgeois parties and official CP-SP 'left' collapse, there is a tremendous race between the socialist left and the fascist-led Front National.
In this long-term battle, elections play an enormous role. The anarchist slogan "don't vote, it only encourages them" is abstention from politics, from intervening in what is in advanced capitalism a central arena in which the political relationship of forces is determined. This is not "electoralism", but hard-headed calculation about how mass politics works in contemporary capitalism, and how radical, socialist and revolutionary politics can get a hearing. It is no accident that the bourgeois parties in the oldest capitalist state, and one of the most cunning, the United Kingdom, fight shy of any proportional representation - to exclude the radicals. In Scotland however socialists have got into the Scottish parliament and are doing a brilliant job - a point the comrades did not reply to.
This is not a secondary issue, or a diversion, it is absolutely symptomatic of what is wrong with anarchism; as Engels put it in his latter to Cuno in 1872, "..the mass of the workers will never allow itself to be persuaded that the public affairs of any country are not also their own affairs; they are by nature politically-minded and whoever tries to make them believe they should leave politics alone will in the end be dropped by them."
Of course, the issue of elections is directly linked to the issue of the party (Leninist or otherwise), because electoral intervention without party or proto-party organisation is barely credible - you need national organisation and a national (and international) programme commonly accepted. Respect today is not a party, but it has party organisation as its backbone (mainly in the form of the SWP) and it is, as it were, a party in embryo.
Alan Woodward says that "most anarchists believe in organisation" - of course, but what type of organisation? Revolutionary marxists think a national political party implies an elected leadership, with the right to make decisions for the whole organisation between conferences. This is much more than the "federation" to which the comrades allude.
Why do we think that? For us all democracy is representative, outside of very small organisations in which everyone can directly participate in all decision making. It means the delegation of decision making powers, over specifically limited timescales and in delineated political areas. By contrast, a constant rotation, meeting by meeting, of delegates to leadership bodies is chaotic and impractical, and fails to generate the continuity in discussion necessary for coherent decision-making. That's why the Scottish Socialist Party, Respect, the French LCR etc all have national committees and executives.
Are there dangers in this form of party organisation? Indeed there are. The only guarantees are the formal rights of expression of and organisation for minority viewpoints(which happen in the above-mentioned organisations to be extensive) and the level of political consciousness of the membership as a whole. Representative democracy and elected leadership bodies are also of course guarantees of the rights of majorities; and in our book majority rule is part of the central definition of workers democracy.
Let me turn now directly to the points the comrades made. Iain McKay says that "Lenin was clear in 1917 that the Bolshevik party would seize power, not the masses". Iain is presumably referring to Lenin's insistence that the Bolsheviks, as the dominant revolutionary party in the soviets, take the initiative for the insurrection of October 1917. But why didn't the soviets seize power without the initiative of the Bolsheviks? Why did it take the decision of the Bolshevik Party to seize the historic opportunity? In the concrete circumstances of Petrograd in 1917 a prolonged discussion within the very public meetings of the soviets about an insurrection would have prevented it ever happening.
Workers councils and other organisations of mass struggle for power will always give rise to different groupings and trends, and the more workers support they have, the more politically diverse they will be. There will always be the need for the organisation and leadership role of the most consistent revolutionaries. Of course, to take the historic responsibility for an insurrection without a prior agreement by the self-organised workers bodies is an enormous step, but in Russia it was justified. In the immediate aftermath of October 1917, with the bourgeois state overthrown, where were the revolutionary forces who opposed it?
Revolutionary marxists see workers power being exercised through the self-rule of the workers themselves in modern equivalents of soviets, workers and community councils - and not through the dictatorship of a particular party. All three comrades see Russia as being the proof positive that this is impossible if a revolutionary political party is involved in the process.
As is well known, between 1917 and 1921 all non-Bolshevik parties were banned, and in 1921 the fateful decision to ban factions in the Bolshevik party was taken. These decisions were taken in conditions of civil war. Decisive action was taken against the anarchists after some of their number bombed a meeting of the Moscow party committee, killing 10 delegates and injuring many more (including Bukharin). The repression of the Social Revolutionaries followed the shooting of Lenin by a member of that party. Nonetheless, understandable circumstances don't make these decisions right. Why is it necessary to agree with everything Lenin and Trotsky did in the post-revolutionary situation to be a revolutionary marxist?
Repression however was not the central reason for the decline of soviet democracy and the eventual degeneration of the revolution. Behind this gigantic social process was the decline and even near-disappearance of the proletariat, the most conscious and determined elements of which died in the struggle against foreign invasion and counter-revolution (of which Makhno, to whom Zoë Barton refers positively, was part).
There is nothing in the history of the Russian revolution, which constitutes proof that a revolutionary party disables revolution and workers power. Do the critics of Lenin and Trotsky think there would have been a revolution to criticise without the Bolshevik party?
Zoë Barton says I am "wrong to assert anarchists do not believe in defending a revolution". I didn't say they don't believe in defending the revolution, I said they can't. The reason I said that is because the defense of any revolution against international imperialism requires a (democratically) centralised state, a national government elected through the organisations of workers power. According to Zoë "every state is based on the delegation of power into the hands of a minority, and so cannot be used to defend the rule of the majority against the minority." In fact delegation, including the delegation of some decision-making, is a precondition for all democratic politics; it does not imply a delegation of overall social and political power by the working class.
Both Ian and Alan see the source of the alleged authoritarianism of Marxism as being Marx himself, which is a let off for poor old Lenin, the most democratic of the Bolsheviks, who has latterly tended to get the blame! But their indictment of Marx himself is, from an anarchist point of view, perfectly logical and coherent. For there is no doubt that while Marx and Engels fought for the 'commune state', a state which was based on the self-organised power of the workers, they did not see this as necessitating immediately the abolition of all state institutions - notably a government and government ministries. While refusing to draw up blueprints for post-revolutionary society, the balance of their writing suggests they saw a lengthy transition period; that's why they utilised the notion of the of the withering away of the state, rather than its immediate abolition.
Anarchists will throw their hands up at all this. For them parties, elections, governments have to be avoided at all costs. Through this they can keep their hands forever clean and run no risk of contamination; and through this they can never have any effect on anything important politically.
Phil Hearse's attempt to reply to anarchist criticism was wonderfully self-contradictory. He wants a government, dismissing direct democracy as impossible, yet he also argues that this "does not imply a delegation of overall social and political power by the working class"! He maintains that "majority rule is part of the central definition of workers democracy" while also arguing that "for us all democracy is representative." In other words, minority rule by the handful of leaders elected by the majority. Rather than the actual "self-organised power of the workers" we get a government only "based" on it.
Anarchists reject this sophistry. The key issue is, as I said, one of power. When I said the Bolsheviks aimed at party power, Hearst asserts that I am "presumably referring to Lenin's insentience that the Bolsheviks . . . take the initiative for the insurrection of October 1917." No, I was referring to Lenin's constant refrain that they "can and must take state power into their own hands." Hearst claims that workers and community councils would rule, yet Lenin argued 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." "All power to party leadership via the soviets" is a more accurate description of Leninist ideology.
But, Hearse asserts, "revolutionary marxists see workers' power being exercised through the self-rule of the workers . . . not through dictatorship of a particular party." Does this mean that Lenin and Trotsky were not "revolutionary marxists"? According to Lenin, "when 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 . . .'" He, like Hearse, dismissed the idea that the whole working class could rule for "in all capitalist countries . . . the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." Trotsky agreed, arguing (in 1936!) that the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party" was "an objective necessity" and that the "revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution."
Perhaps Hearse will argue that this was due to the "conditions of civil war." Yet he significantly ignores the fact that the Bolsheviks had been disbanding soviets and imposing one-man management before it started. They had also been repressing the left. He asserts that "decisive action was taken against the anarchists" after some bombed a Bolshevik meeting. That was in September 1919. A year and a half before, the Cheka had taken "decisive action" and attacked the anarchists all across Russia -- before the civil war started. The repression continued from them on. The bomb was in response to state repression, not its cause.
Ignoring the awkward fact that Bolshevik authoritarianism started before (and continued after) the civil war, Hearse argues that "decline of soviet democracy" was due to "the decline and near-disappearance of the proletariat." Yet massive strike waves against the Bolsheviks were a common feature of Lenin's Russia. A non-existent proletariat hardly needs martial law and lock-outs to tame it. Rather than express workers' power, the Bolsheviks were suppressing it to remain in power. As Trotsky explained, the party was "entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy."
Hearse asserts that "there is nothing in the history of the Russian Revolution which constitutes proof that a revolutionary party disables revolution and workers power." He is wrong. Something does: the Makhnovist movement. Fighting the same civil war, the Bolsheviks were putting the "dictatorship of the party" at the core of their politics while the anarchists called democratic soviet congresses and protected freedom of speech and association. Hearse claims that Makhno "was part" of the "counter-revolution." This is a lie. Makhno fought the Whites and the Bolsheviks for soviet democracy, but that since when was that "counter-revolution"? Significantly, the Bolsheviks worked with Makhno, betraying him once the Whites were defeated. The Makhnovists also refutes his assertion that we anarchists "can't" defend a revolution.
Hearst wonders if there "would have been a Russian revolution without the Bolshevik party?" If the striking women in February 1917 had listened to the Bolsheviks, the answer would have been no! However, Hearst makes the common Leninist assumption that opposition to vanguardism means rejecting "the need for the organisation and leadership role of the most consistent revolutionaries." Anarchist disagree. That is why we form anarchist groups to influence the class struggle. However, unlike Leninism, we do not see these groups as seizing power on behalf of the masses.
Equally, anarchists are well aware that an ideal socialist society will not be created immediately after a revolution. The task of working class organs like federations of factory committees and neighbourhood assemblies is to built it. However, all state institutions (like capitalist ones) do need to be destroyed. To keep them would be to retain inequality of power between a few leaders and the masses. As Lenin's regime showed, they will soon come into conflict, a conflict Leninism always resolves in favour of party power.
Finally, there is the question of "politics." Anarchists do not ignore political issues ("public affairs"). Rather we argue that they be fought for on our class terrain, by direct action and solidarity. We do reject electionism for the obvious reason it does not work. Hearst points to SSP doing a "brilliant job" in the Scottish Parliament. One hundred years ago the Marxist Social Democrats were doing a "brilliant job" in the German Parliament. That soon changed. As in so many things, Bakunin, not Marx, was proven correct. The Marxists became reformist, watering down their principles to get more votes. The means used became an end in itself. Come 1914, the chickens came home to roost and the "socialists" voted for war credits.
Hearse wants us to forget all that. But I'm not surprised. Marxists seem intent on repeating history, not making it. Anarchists, on the other hand, can point to the fact that our critique of Marxism has been confirmed by events. So has our theory of revolution. Whether it is defending the revolution against the Whites and Reds in the Ukraine, or occupying the factories and fighting fascism in Italy, or the collectives and militias of the Spanish revolution, anarchism has done pretty good for a movement Hearst claims can "never have any effect on anything important politically." But, then again, if that were true Hearst would not have written his essay to begin with.
If you are interested in anarchist ideas and want to see the references for the facts and quotes I present, please visit "An Anarchist FAQ" at www.anarchistfaq.org