Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

We mean it!

Socialist Resistance no14  |  page 14

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

I read your article "Marxism or Anarchism?" (SRI 3) with interest. I can only assume its author knows absolutely nothing about Anarchism.

The author asserts that we Anarchists cannot "answer one critical question," namely how to defend a revolution. against its "many enemies, at home and abroad."

Clearly he hasn't read any Anarchists. If he had he would know that we have answered that question repeatedly. For example Bakunin argued the "alliance of all labour associations" would "constitute the Commune" with a "Communal Council" of delegates "invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times."

These communes had to organise "to defend the revolution" and would "form a communal militia. But no commune can defend itself in isolation. So it will be necessary to federate with [other communes] for common defence" and so "organise a revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction."

This also answers the assertion that Anarchists do not see that "the local institutions of democracy need to co-ordinate themselves at regional and national level." Like all anarchists, Bakunin is arguing for a federation of give us a call. I want to join Socialist Resistance Youth Name.... Address. Mobile. Student rate £6 a term. Cheques payable to Resistance. If you use telephone banking, our Acc. No. is 7018629700 Sort code: 08 02 28 (to use the author's words) "workplaces and community councils." I should note that this was five decades before Lenin belatedly argued the same in 1917.

So if Anarchists have been arguing since the 1860s for (to quote the article) "workers taking power through their own organisations," then what are the real differences between Marxism and Anarchism?

In a nutshell, we mean it. Lenin was clear in 1917 that the Bolshevik party would seize power, not the masses. And to stay in power they undermined the workers organisation

For example, by the spring of 1918 (i.e. before the start of the civil war) they were gerrymandering soviets and disbanding any which were elected with nonBolshevik majorities. Less than a year later they had