In chapter three of his pamphlet Socialism from Below, David McNally decides to expose (what he calls) "The Myth Of Anarchist Libertarianism." In reality, his account is so distorted and, indeed, dishonest that all it proves is that Marxists will go to extreme lengths to attack anarchist ideas. As Brain Morris points out, defending the Leninist tradition and ideology "implies . . . a compulsive need to rubbish anarchism." [Ecology & Anarchism, p. 128] McNally's pamphlet is a classic example of this. As we will prove, his "case" is a mishmash of illogical assertions, lies and, when facts do appear, their use is almost always a means of painting a false picture of reality.
It must be stressed that there is nothing new or original in McNally's pamphlet. It is simply an unthinking repetition of previous Marxists attacks on anarchism, starting with Marx's dishonest diatribe against Proudhon The Poverty of Philosophy, and is mostly based on Hal Draper's The Two Souls of Socialism (McNally states he "should also record here a debt of inspriation of [this] now-out-of-print pamphlet by Draper"). While McNally's errors are commonplace within what passes for Marxist scholarship, this does not excuse his repeating of them without first checking their accuracy (or, more correctly, their inaccuracy). If more Marxists took the time to validate their prejudices and assumptions against what Proudhon, Bakunin and other anarchists wrote then it would be possible to have a real discussion on what genuine socialism (one, as Proudhon and Bakunin stressed long before Marxists appropriated the term, "from below") entails.
It must be noted that since this appendix was first written in 2000, David McNally has distanced himself from his pamphlet's critique of anarchism. In an end-note in a book written in 2006 he described this welcome rethink:
"I dissent from Draper's one-sided critique of anarchism . . . Draper is not fair to some of the currents within social anarchism. I also reject my own restatement of Draper's interpretation in the first edition of my booklet Socialism from Below" [Another World Is Possible: Globalization & Anti-Capitalism, p. 393]
While it seems unlikely this was in response to reading our critique, it does show that it was correct. Unfortunately it took McNally over 20 years to acknowledge that his essay from 1984 gave a distinctly distorted account of anarchism (a distortion originally circulated in Marxist circles in the 1960s with Draper's pamphlet). Perhaps significantly, McNally no longer seems to be associated with the sister organisations of the British Socialist Workers Party (a group whose distortions of anarchism are many and infamous). Sadly, the damage has been done and his and Draper's flawed account of anarchism (and Marxism) has become all-too-commonplace within radical circles -- even in libertarian circles, some take these assertions on Proudhon and Bakunin at face value and do not seek to verify the claims made. This is unfortunate for, as we will see, while sometimes correct (for example, Proudhon's disgusting anti-feminism) most of the claims are false or, at best, half-truths turned into full-lies by ignoring context or other relevant facts.
We hope that this reply will ensure today's radicals will gain a fuller understanding of the ideas -- and limitations! -- of Proudhon and Bakunin and, more importantly, how they influenced subsequent anarchists and the development of libertarian ideas. It will also allow an informed discussion between Marxists and Anarchists on their areas of agreement and disagreement. McNally now argues that "it may be more helpful to try and defend a common political vision -- such as socialism from below or libertarian socialism -- as a point of reference" rather than fixate over labels like "Marxism" or "anarchism." [Op. Cit., p. 347] As we noted in our critique of his pamphlet, the term "socialism from below" has a distinctly anarchist feel to it, a feel distinctly at odds with Leninist ideology and practice. Moreover, as shown below, Lenin explicitly denounced "from below" as an anarchist idea -- and his practice once in power showed that "from above" is part and parcel of Leninism in action. Sadly, most Leninists are unaware of this.
Finally, many Marxists reject Leninism: some for the original ideas of Marxism, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its sister parties and some, like the council communists, for extension of them in the direction of revolutionary anarchist conclusions. As such, this critique should not be taken for a blanket rejection of all Marxists but rather a specific form of it, namely Leninism. Nor should it be taken for a blanket rejection of everything Marx or Marxists have argued. There any many forms of anarchism and many forms of Marxism, some of which are closer than others.
Many of the issues discussed in this appendix are also explored in section H of the FAQ and that should also be consulted.
McNally begins by noting that "Anarchism is often considered to represent [a] current of radical thought that is truly democratic and libertarian. It is hailed in some quarters as the only true political philosophy [of] freedom." Needless to say, he thinks that the "reality is quite different" and argues that "[f]rom its inception anarchism has been a profoundly anti-democratic doctrine. Indeed the two most important founders of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Michael Bakunin, developed theories that were elitist and authoritarian to the core." We will discover the truth of this assertion later.
First we must note that McNally uses the typical Marxist approach to attacking anarchism -- namely to attack anarchists rather than anarchism as such. British Anarchist Albert Meltzer summarised the flaws in this perspective well:
"Marxist-Leninists, faced with Anarchism, find that by its nature it undermines all the suppositions basic to Marxism. Marxism was held out to be the basic working class philosophy (a belief which has utterly ruined the working class movement everywhere). It holds that the industrial proletariat cannot owe its emancipation to anyone but themselves alone. It is hard to go back on that and say that the working class is not yet ready to dispense with authority placed over it . . . Marxism normally tries to refrain from criticising anarchism as such -- unless driven to doing so, when it exposes its own authoritarianism . . . and concentrates its attacks not on Anarchism, but on Anarchists." [Anarchism: Arguments for and Against, p. 62]
So when reading this or any critique of anarchism always remember that few people are completely consistent libertarians and determine whether the words written reflect a flaw in anarchism as such or whether they reflect a personal flaw of the thinker in question. Once this common-sense position is taken it quickly becomes clear that anything valid in McNally's critique highlights the flaws of individuals who did not consistently rise to the levels implied by their ideas. This, most obviously, is the case with Proudhon's sexism which is in contradiction with his support for liberty, equality and federalism. Unsurprisingly, his contemporary Joseph Déjacque wrote a critique of Proudhon's sexist views in 1857, urging him to renounce "this gender aristocracy that would bind us to the old regime" and "speak out against man's exploitation of woman.": "Do not describe yourself as an anarchist, or be an anarchist through and through" ["On Being Human", pp. 68-71, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vol. 1, Robert Graham (ed.), p. 71] Later anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin likewise applied anarchist principles consistently on this issue, a fact McNally cannot bring himself to admit.
Second, McNally lamely notes that "[w]hile later anarchists may have abandoned some of the excesses of their founding fathers their philosophy remains hostile to ideas of mass democracy and workers' power." Thus, we have the acknowledgement that not all anarchists share the same ideas and that anarchist theory has developed since 1876 (the year of Bakunin's death). This is to be expected as anarchists are not Proudhonists or Bakuninists -- we do not name ourselves after one person, rather we take what is useful from libertarian writers and ignore the rubbish. Malatesta's words are applicable here: "We follow ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a principle in a man." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 199] However, this is beside the point as McNally's account of the ideas of Proudhon and Bakunin is simply false -- indeed, so false as to make you wonder if he is simply incompetent as a scholar or seeks to present a patchwork of lies as fact and "theory."
Third, McNally's approach rests on selective quoting, lack of context and an unwillingness to research the assertions he is making. This is important as we are discussing thinkers who wrote over a period of many decades and whose works and letters reflected the highs and lows of a person's life as well as the social movement they were part of. This means that in the depths of personal crisis or the repression of popular movements even the most consistent thinker can write passages which are in contradiction to the thrust of the works they are best known for. To quote such words from, say, private letters and ignore the books and articles which reflect a thinker's ideas best and which influenced others presents a false picture, particularly if the context within which the letters were written are unmentioned. So it would be a distortion of the ideas of Marx and Engels to quote the numerous anti-Semitic insults against specific individuals from their private letters. As would be expected, they were men of their age and expressed themselves in ways which today are, rightly, considered unacceptable (for those interested in such matters, Peter Fryer's essay "Engels: A Man of his Time" should be consulted [John Lea and Geoff Pilling (eds.), The condition of Britain: Essays on Frederick Engels]). However, their few public racist comments could be considered worthy of note -- although, if so, then they should, like those of Proudhon and Bakunin, be placed in the context of their other ideas and the culture they lived in rather than being used as an excuse to ignore their contributions to socialism. Sadly, McNally -- like many Marxists -- fails to do this, preferring dismissive finger-pointing instead.
Lastly, McNally ignores the anti-democratic, authoritarian and elitist aspects of his own political tradition. Given that leading Bolsheviks like Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev publicly advocated party dictatorship and one-man management of production, it is a distortion to ignore this when discussing "Socialism from Below". Simply put, while anarchists have consistently advocated communal and industrial self-management since 1840 to today, the Marxist tradition has not.
McNally's pamphlet, as will become clear, does not present anything new. It simply repeats what is sadly all-to-often the received wisdom about anarchists and anarchism in Marxist circles. As such, it is worth the time and effort to reply to. Not only will it show the limitations of the Marxist position on anarchism, it will also afford us the opportunity to show that not only is anarchism a more genuine "Socialism from Below" than Leninism but also that many of the ideas Marxists consider as their own were first argued by Proudhon and Bakunin.
In short, we will show why "Anarchism is often considered to represent current of radical thought that is truly democratic and libertarian" by contrasting what McNally asserts about it and what anarchist thinkers actually advocated. This will, unfortunately, produce a reply longer than the initial claims but this is unavoidable. We need to provide extensive quotes and arguments simply in order to show the weakness of McNally's assertions and to indicate where his own tradition advocated notions he -- inaccurately -- attacks anarchism for.
McNally does start out by acknowledging that "anarchism developed in opposition to the growth of capitalist society. What's more, anarchist hostility to capitalism centred on defence of the liberty of the individual." However, he then distorts this actual historical development by arguing that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new society. Rather, anarchism defended the freedom of the small property owner -- the shopkeeper, artisan and tradesman -- against the encroachments of large-scale capitalist enterprise."
Such a statement is, to say the least, a total distortion of the facts of the situation. Nor is it original. McNally is simply repeating Marx's assertions against Proudhon who, Marx claimed, "wants to soar as the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians" but "is merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between capital and labour, political economy and communism." [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 178] It should be noted that Marx had not always thought this of the Frenchman:
"Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians he is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier [worker]. His work [What is Property?] is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat." [Op. Cit., vol. 4, p. 41]
The change in perspective is unsurprising given that Marx thought his own ideology was that of the proletariat (whether the proletariat knew it or not) and, given his disagreements with Proudhon, the Frenchman had to represent some other class. However, if we reject the assumption that classes only have one theory associated with them, then the weakness of the Marxist assertion becomes clear -- particularly given that today there are no mass Marxist parties in spite of the fact that now, unlike in Marx's day, the proletariat is the majority of the working class in most of the world's countries.
It is important to remember that at the end of the 1840s over 80% of the population of France and Germany were peasants or artisans -- what Marxists term the "petit-bourgeois". As Marx and Engels admitted in The Communist Manifesto, in "countries like France" the peasants "constitute far more than half of the population." This remained the case well after Proudhon's death in 1865, with Marx commenting in the early 1870s that "the peasant . . . forms a more of less considerable majority . . . in the countries of the West European continent." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 493 and p. 543] As Proudhon himself noted in 1851, in "a population of 36 millions, there are 24 millions occupied with agriculture" and of the remaining 12 million there where only 6 million "composing in part the wage-working class" [Property is Theft!, p. 558]
This social context is important and it is difficult to understand the positions thinkers took unless it taken into account. In the words of anarchist Gustav Landauer, Proudhon's socialism "of the years 1848 to 1851 was the socialism of the French people in the years 1848 to 1851. It was the socialism that was possible and necessary at that moment. Proudhon was not a Utopian and a prophet; not a Fourier and not a Marx. He was a man of action and realisation." [For Socialism, p. 108] Historian K. Steven Vincent makes the same point, arguing that Proudhon's "social theories may not be reduced to a socialism for only the peasant class, nor was it a socialism only for the petite bourgeois; it was a socialism of and for French workers. And in the mid-nineteenth century . . . most French workers were still artisans. . . French labour ideology largely resulted from the real social experiences and aspirations of skilled workers . . . Proudhon's thought was rooted in the same fundamental reality, and therefore understandably shared many of the same hopes and ideals." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, pp. 5-6] It is no coincidence, therefore, that when he was elected to the French Parliament in 1848 most of the votes cast for him were from "working class districts of Paris -- a fact which stands in contrast to the claims of some Marxists, who have said he was representative only of the petite bourgeoisie." [Robert L. Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice, p. 136]
Proudhon's position was a distinctly sensible and radical position to take:
"While Marx was correct in predicting the eventual predominance of the industrial proletariat vis-à-vis skilled workers, such predominance was neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion in France during the nineteenth century. The absolute number of small industries even increased during most of the century. . .
"Nor does Marx seem to have been correct concerning the revolutionary nature of the industrial proletariat. It has become a cliché of French labour history that during the nineteenth century artisans were much oftener radical than industrial workers. Some of the most militant action of workers in late nineteenth century France seems to have emerged from the co-operation of skilled, urbanised artisanal workers with less highly skilled and less urbanised industrial workers." [Vincent, Op. Cit., pp. 282-3]
The fruits of this union included the Paris Commune, an event in which the followers of Proudhon played an important role and which both McNally and Marx praise (see section 12 for more discussion on this).
In short, Marx's earlier summation of Proudhon was correct -- his ideas reflected the ideas and interests of the French working class. Proudhon addressed himself to both the peasant/artisan and the proletariat. This is to be expected from a libertarian form of socialism as, at the time of his writing, the majority of working people were peasants and artisans and, as noted above, this predominance of artisan/peasant workers in the French economy lasted well after his (and Marx's) death. Not to take into account the artisan/peasant would have meant the dictatorship of a minority of working people over the rest of them (as we discuss in section H.1.1 this was also a key reason for Bakunin's rejection of Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat"). Given that in chapter 4 of his pamphlet McNally states that Marxism aims for a "democratic and collective society . . . based upon the fullest possible political democracy" his attack on Proudhon's concern for the artisan and peasant is doubly strange. Either you support the "fullest possible political democracy" and so your theory must take into account artisans and peasants or you restrict political democracy and replace it with rule by the few.
Unsurprisingly, then, Proudhon argued in 1841 that he "preach[ed] emancipation to the proletarians; association to the workers." [Op. Cit., p. 157] However, as McNally notes, he "oppose[d] trade unions." and did not see them as the means of achieving this for it was "not by such methods that the workingmen will attain to wealth and -- what is a thousand times more precious than wealth -- liberty." [Proudhon, System of Economical Contradictions, p. 150] However, this did not mean that he was rejected the idea that the working class (in its three sections of wage-workers, artisan and peasants) would liberate itself. While fundamentally a reformist, Proudhon recognised that self-liberation was only genuine form of liberation and so had "always thought that the proletariat must emancipate itself without the help of the government." [Property is Theft!, 306] Given this, it is unsurprising that Proudhon saw social change as coming from "below" by the collective action of the working class:
"If you possess social science, you know that the problem of association consists in organising . . . the producers, and by this organisation subjecting capital and subordinating power. Such is the war that you have to sustain: a war of labour against capital; a war of liberty against authority; a war of the producer against the non-producer; a war of equality against privilege . . . to conduct the war to a successful conclusion . . . 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." [Op. Cit., p. 225]
During the 1848 revolution he urged "a provisional committee be set up to orchestrate exchange, credit and commerce between workers" which would "liaise with similar committees set up in the main cities of France" and "under the aegis of these committees, a body representative of the proletariat be formed in Paris . . . in opposition to the bourgeoisie's representation." This ensured that "a new society be founded in the heart of the old society". He later stressed the "organisation of popular societies was the pivot of democracy, the cornerstone of republican order" and these "clubs . . . assemblies, popular societies" would ensure "the organisation of universal suffrage in all its forms, of the very structure of Democracy itself." [Op. Cit., p. 321, p. 407 and p. 461] As Daniel Guérin summarised, "in the midst of the 1848 Revolution," Proudhon "sketched out a minimum libertarian program: progressive reduction in the power of the State, parallel development of the power of the people from below, through what he called clubs" which today we "would call councils." [Anarchism, pp. 152-3]
Clearly, even if he (wrongly) rejected trade unionism Proudhon did support, to quote McNally, the "the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new society." Indeed, as one historian notes, there was "close similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon . . . and the program of the Lyon Mutualists" and that there was "a remarkable convergence [between these ideas], and it is likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers." [Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 164] Proudhon simply rejected revolution, trade unions or state-backed reforms as the means of achieving socialism and instead argued for a reformist strategy based primarily on the creation of co-operative workplaces and banks. He linked his politics to workers self-activity and argued that "the proof" of his mutualist ideas was shown in the "current practice, revolutionary practice" of "those labour associations . . . which have spontaneously . . . been formed in Paris and Lyon" during the 1848 revolution which show that the "organisation of credit and organisation of labour amount to one and the same." If all workers "organise themselves along similar lines, it is obvious that, as masters of labour, constantly generating fresh capital through work, they would soon have wrested alienated capital back again, through their organisation and competition." This would apply to "small-scale" as well as "large-scale property and large industries". [Op. Cit., pp. 374-5] Thus Proudhon places his ideas firmly in the actions of working people resisting wage slavery (i.e. the proletariat) and not exclusively in the "small property owner" (i.e., artisans and peasants).
So regardless of McNally's claims, Proudhon was not fixated upon "small property". As we discuss in section 4, Proudhon's recognition of differences in the working class was reflected in his position on property. His proposals for a libertarian society included social ownership, workers' self-management of large scale workplaces as well as artisan and peasant production and explicitly and repeatedly argued for "the complete emancipation of the worker . . . the abolition of the wage worker." [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 222] Rather than being backward looking and aiming exclusively at the artisan/peasant, Proudhon's ideas looked to the present and the future by looking at both the artisan/peasant and proletariat (i.e. to the whole of the working class in France at the time). As Daniel Guérin summarised:
"Proudhon really moved with the times and realised that it is impossible to turn back the clock. He was realistic enough to understand that 'small industry is as stupid as petty culture" . . . With regard to large-scale modern industry requiring a large workforce, he was resolutely collectivist: 'In future, large-scale industry and wide culture must be the fruit of association.' 'We have no choice in the matter,' he concluded, and waxed indignant that anyone had dared to suggest that he was opposed to technical progress . . . Property must be abolished . . . The means of production and exchange must be controlled neither by capitalist companies nor by the State . . . they must be managed by associations of workers" [Anarchism, p. 45]
The notion that anarchism is the politics of the "small property owner" is even harder to maintain when we move from Proudhon's reformist anarchism to the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin. While there is a similar commitment to a decentralised, federal socialism "from below" rooted in social and economic self-management, the means are different: revolution is embraced, along with labour unions and direct action. Where Proudhon differs from later anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and Goldman is that this working class self-activity is reformist in nature, that is seeking alternatives to capitalism which can reform it away rather than alternatives that can fight and destroy it. However, this embrace of social revolution and class struggle by anarchists like Bakunin rests on the same principle of working class self-emancipation.
Hence we find Bakunin arguing that "revolution is only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses" and so socialism can be achieved "by the development and organisation, not of the political but of the social (and, by consequence, anti-political) power of the working masses" who must "organise and federate spontaneously, freely, from the bottom up, by their own momentum according to their real interest, but never according to any plan laid down in advance and imposed upon the ignorant masses by some superior intellects." Social change would be achieved only by "the complete solidarity of individuals, sections and federations in the economic struggle of the workers of all countries against their exploiters." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 237, pp. 197-8 and p. 177] Unlike Proudhon, he saw the means for achieving the social revolution in the labour movement as trade unions (organised from the bottom up, of course) were "the natural organisation of the masses" as "workers' solidarity in their struggle against the bosses" was the means by which workers could emancipate itself "through practical action." Thus the key to working-class self-liberation was "trades-unions, organisation, and the federation of resistance funds" [The Basic Bakunin, p. 139 and p. 103] In short, what became known as a syndicalist position (see section 9 for a discussion of McNally's false counterpoising of anarchism and syndicalism) as the "organisation of the trade sections and their representation by the Chambers of Labour . . . 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, p. 255] Moreover, as we show in the next section, like Proudhon, Bakunin argued that an anarchist society would be based on "the collective ownership of producers' associations, freely organised and federated in the communes, and by the equally spontaneous federation of these communes." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 197] As Kropotkin summarised:
"the chief aim of Anarchism is to awaken those constructive powers of the labouring masses . . . since the times of the International Working Men’s Association, the Anarchists have always advised taking an active part in those workers’ organisations which carry on the direct struggle of Labour against Capital and its protector, -- the State
"Such a struggle . . . better than any other indirect means, permits the worker to obtain some temporary improvements in the present conditions of work, while it opens his eyes to the evil that is done by Capitalism and the State that supports it, and wakes up his thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption, production, and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist and the State." [Direct Struggle Against Capital, p. 189]
And McNally asserts that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new society"! Only someone ignorant of anarchist theory or with a desire to deceive could make such an assertion. Needless to say, McNally's claim that anarchism is the politics of the "small property owner" would be even harder to justify if he mentioned Kropotkin's communist anarchism. However, like Proudhon's and Bakunin's support for collective ownership by workers associations it goes unmentioned -- for obvious reasons.
McNally asserts, regardless of the facts, that anarchism "represented the anguished cry of the small property owner against the inevitable advance of capitalism. For that reason, it glorified values from the past: individual property, the patriarchal family, racism." The reality is very different. We will take each issue in turn.
First, we should note that unlike Marx, anarchists did not think that capitalism was inevitable or an essential phase society had to go through before we could reach a free society. Neither Proudhon nor Bakunin shared Marx's viewpoint that socialism (and the struggle for socialism) had to be postponed until capitalism had developed sufficiently so that the "centralisation of the means of production and the socialisation [sic!] of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument." [Capital, vol. 1, p. 929] As McNally states, socialism was once the "banner under which millions of working people resisted the horrors of the factory system and demanded a new society of equality, justice, freedom and prosperity." Unfortunately, the Marxist tradition viewed such horrors as essential, unavoidable and inevitable and any form of working class struggle -- such as the Luddites -- which resisted the development of capitalism was denounced. So much for Marxism being in favour of working class "self-emancipation" -- if working class resistance to oppression and exploitation which does not fit into its scheme for "working class self-emancipation" then it is the product of ignorance or non-working class influences. This can be seen from McNally's position on anarchism.
Thus, rather than representing "the anguished cry of the small property owner against the inevitable advance of capitalism" anarchism is rather the cry of the oppressed against capitalism and the desire to create a free society in the here and now and not some time in the future once "the proletariat" was the majority of the working classes. To quote German Anarchist Gustav Landauer:
"Karl Marx and his successors thought they could make no worse accusation against the greatest of all socialists, Proudhon, than to call him a petit-bourgeois and petit-peasant socialist, which was neither incorrect nor insulting, since Proudhon showed splendidly to the people of his nation and his time, predominately small farmers and craftsmen, how they could achieve socialism immediately without waiting for the tidy process of big capitalism." [For Socialism, p. 61]
As noted in the previous section, Proudhon's theory reflected both artisan/peasant interests and those of wage workers -- as would be expected from a socialist aiming to transform his society to a free one. The disastrous results of Bolshevik rule in Russia should indicate the dangers of ignoring the vast bulk of a nation (i.e. the peasants) when trying to create a revolutionary change in society. McNally confuses a desire to achieve socialism now with backward looking opposition to capitalism. Proudhon looked at the current state of society, not backwards, as McNally suggests. Indeed, he lambasted those radicals during the 1848 who sought to repeat the glories of the Great French Revolution rather than look to the future:
"It is by '93 and all of its discord that we are being ruled . . . The democrats of '93, conjuring up a republic with their high school memories [of Ancient Rome], after devouring one another, set the revolution back by half a century . . . The democrats of 1848, building the republic on their parliamentary memories, have also set the revolution back by half a century . . . they are only imitators; they thought themselves statesmen because they were following the old models!
"So what is this queer preoccupation which, in time of revolution, bedazzles the most steadfast minds, and, when their burning aspirations carry them forward into the future, has them constantly harking back the past? How does it come about that the People, just when it is making the break with established institutions, takes another plunge and gets further immersed in tradition? Society does not repeat itself: but one would have thought it was walking backwards . . . Could it not turn its gaze in the direction in which it is going?
"[. . .]
"In order to organise the future, a general rule confirmed by experience, the reformers always start out with their gaze fixed upon the past. Hence the contradiction forever discovered in their actions: hence also the immeasurable danger of revolutions." [Property is Theft!, p. 308]
Secondly, it is not true that Proudhon or Bakunin "glorified" individual property. Proudhon, as is well know, argued that "property is theft" and that "property is despotism." He was well aware of the negative side effects of individual property and sought to end it: "instead of inferring . . . that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition." However, just as he was against capitalism, Proudhon was also against state socialism: "Either competition, -- that is, monopoly and what follows; or exploitation by the State, -- that is, dearness of labour and continuous impoverishment; or else, in short, a solution based upon equality, -- in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property." [Property is Theft!, p. 87, p. 133, p. 91 and p. 202]
He was well aware that replacing private property by state property would not liberate the working class for what he termed "Community" (usually, if not accurately, translated as "communism"), would enserf the worker to the state. Instead, Proudhon wanted to abolish property and replace it with possession. As he put it in 1840's What is Property?, while property had to be "collective and undivided" its use could be divided by means of "possession". [Op. Cit., p. 137] Thus workers would control the means of production they used as well as the goods they created:
"property in product . . . does not carry with it property in the means of production; that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests, and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are proprietors of their products -- not one is proprietor of the means of production. The right to product is exclusive . . . the right to means is common". [Op. Cit., p. 112]
As we discuss in the section 4, Proudhon repeatedly noted his position and refuted those who claimed he supported individual property. He also recognised that private property was not completely without merit as it gave its holder a measure of autonomy and protection against the state and other social forces. It was precisely this autonomy which he wished all to share rather than under capitalism where workers "sold their arms and parted with their liberty" to the capitalist or landlord. [Op. Cit., p. 212] However, recognising this -- and the dangers of state socialism -- hardly equates to glorification of private property.
It is true that Proudhon did oppose the forced socialisation of artisan workplaces and peasant land. He considered having control over the means of production, housing, etc. by those who use it as a key means of maintaining freedom and independence. Thus we find him arguing in 1851 that "it is evident that if the peasants think well to associate, they will associate". [Op. Cit., p. 584] However, the issue was different for modern industry:
"In such cases, it is one of two things; either the worker, necessarily a piece-worker, will be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-entrepreneur; or he will participate in the chances of loss or gain of the establishment, he will have a voice in the council, in a word, he will become an associate.
"In the first case the worker is subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience and poverty. In the second case he resumes his dignity as a man and citizen, he may aspire to comfort, he forms a part of the producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave; as, in the town, he forms a part of the sovereign power, of which he was before but the subject." [Op. Cit., p. 583]
Thus capitalism had to be replaced with associations "due to the immorality, tyranny and theft suffered". [Op. Cit., p. 584] This aspect of his ideas is continual throughout his political works and played a central role in his social theory. Thus to say that Proudhon "glorified" individual property distorts his position. As he argued in 1848:
"under universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labour is social ownership . . . We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers' associations . . . We want these associations to 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 and social Republic." [Op. Cit., pp. 377-8]
As the experience of workers under Lenin indicates (see section H.3.13), collective ownership by the state does not end wage labour, exploitation and oppression and so Proudhon's arguments in favour of socialisation and possession and against capitalist and state ownership were proven right. As the forced collectivisation of the peasantry under Stalin shows, Proudhon's respect for artisan/peasant possessions was a very sensible and humane position to take. Unless McNally supports the forced collectivisation of peasants and artisans, Proudhon's solution is the only position a socialist can take.
We doubt that McNally wants to socialise all "property" (including individual possessions and such like). We are sure that he, like Marx and Engels, wants to retain individual possessions in a socialist society. Thus they stated that the "distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property" and that "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation." Later Marx argued that the Paris Commune "wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the means of production, land and capital . . . into mere instruments of free and associated labour." [Selected Writings, p. 47, p. 49 and pp. 290-1] This echoes Proudhon's position that property "changed its nature" when it "the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the thing into the right to use it by his neighbour's labour". Thus support for "individual property" is not confined to Proudhon and, as noted, he desired to turn capital over to associated labour as well and this association he considered "the annihilation of property". [Op. Cit., p. 155 and p. 148] It should also be stressed, as we note in section A.5.1, the followers of Proudhon played a key role in the Paris Commune and its attempts to create co-operatives reflected his ideas. Moreover, initially Marx had nothing but praise for Proudhon's critique of property contained in his classic work What is Property?:
"Proudhon makes a critical investigation -- the first resolute, ruthless, and at the same time scientific investigation -- of the basis of political economy, private property. This is the great scientific advance he made, an advance which revolutionises political economy and for the first time makes a real science of political economy possible. Proudhon's treatise Qu'est-ce que la propriété? is as important for modern political economy as Sieyês' work Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? for modern politics." [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 32]
As Rocker argued, Marx changed his tune to "conceal from everyone just what he owed to Proudhon and any means to that end was admissible." [Marx and Anarchism] This can be seen from the comments we quote above which clearly show a Proudhonian influence in their recognition that possession replaces property in a socialist society and that associated labour is its economic basis. However, it is still significant that Proudhon's analysis initially provoked such praise by Marx -- an analysis which McNally obviously does not understand.
Moving on from Proudhon, we discover Bakunin also opposing individual property and arguing that "the land, the instruments of work and all other capital [will] become the collective property of society and by utilised only by the workers, in other words by the agricultural and industrial associations." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 174] With regards to peasants and artisans Bakunin also desired voluntary collectivisation. "In a free community," he argued, "collectivism can only come about through the pressure of circumstances, not by imposition from above but by a free spontaneous movement from below." Rather than being a defender of "individual property" as McNally implies, Bakunin was a clear and consistent supporter of collective property (as organised in workers' associations and communes) and supported peasant and artisan property only in the sense of being against forced collectivisation as this would result in "propelling [the peasants] into the camp of reaction." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 200 and p. 197] Expropriation of capital was considered a key aspect of social revolution:
"let us suppose . . . it is Paris that starts [the revolution] . . . Paris will naturally make haste to organise itself as best it can, in revolutionary style, after the workers have joined into associations and made a clean sweep of all the instruments of labour, every kind of capital and building; armed and organised by streets and quartiers, they will form the revolutionary federation of all the quartiers, the federative commune . . . All the French and foreign revolutionary communes will then send representatives to organise the necessary common services . . . and to organise common defence against the enemies of the Revolution, together with propaganda, the weapon of revolution, and practical revolutionary solidarity with friends in all countries against enemies in all countries." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 178-9]
Given how often Bakunin stressed the need for union struggles and collective labour property, it is easy to conclude that McNally did no research into anarchism before writing about it. So we discover him arguing that "resistance funds and trade unions" are "the only efficacious weapons" the workers have against the bourgeoisie and this needed "the organisation of the international strength of the workers of all countries." This movement aimed for a society "based on equality" where "all capital and every instrument of labour, including the soil, belong to the people, by right of collective property." States "must be abolished, for their only mission is to protect individual property, that is, to protect the exploitation by some privileged minority, of the collective labour of the masses of the people" and a "just human society" must be created, one "free of political domination and economic exploitation, founded only on collective labour which is guaranteed by collective property." He repeatedly proclaimed his support for "the great principle of collective property" and argued that "the collective property of capital" was one of "the absolutely necessary conditions for the emancipation of labour and of the workers". [The Basic Bakunin, p. 153, p. 196 and p. 85] The social revolution would see "the passing of all the land, capital and means of production into the hands of the international federation of free workers' associations." Land "belongs to those who have cultivated it with their own hands -- to the rural communes" while "capital and all tools of labour belong to the city workers -- to the workers' associations." Anarchism would be "nothing else but a free federation of workers -- agricultural workers as well as factory workers and associations of craftsmen." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 344 and p. 410]
Clearly neither Proudhon nor Bakunin "glorified" individual property. Hence Daniel Guérin's summary:
"Proudhon and Bakunin were 'collectivists,' which is to say they declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of private property . . . At the Bale congress [of the First International] in 1869, Bakunin . . . all[ied] himself with the statist Marxists . . . to ensure the triumph of the principle of collective property." ["From Proudhon to Bakunin", The Radical Papers, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), p. 32]
Thirdly, while it is true that Proudhon did glorify the patriarchal family, the same cannot be said of Bakunin. Unlike Proudhon, he argued that "[e]qual rights must belong to both men and women," that women must "become independent and free to forge their own way of life" and that "[o]nly when private property and the State will have been abolished will the authoritarian juridical family disappear." He opposed the "absolute domination of the man" in marriage, urged "the full sexual freedom of women" and argued that the cause of women's liberation was "indissolubly tied to the common cause of all the exploited workers -- men and women." An anarchist society's organisations would be populated by people elected "by the universal suffrage of both sexes" and so it would be based on "[e]qual political, social, and economic rights, as well as equal obligations, for women." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 396-7, p. 78 and p. 93] In short:
"Abolition of the patriarchal family law, based exclusively upon the right to inherit property and also upon the equalisation of man and women in point of political, economic, and social rights." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 343]
It should be redundant to note that Bakunin's position was shared by the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman, Chomsky and Ward but, clearly, it is not -- and best not ponder where such noted anarchists as Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre and Louise Michel "glorified . . . the patriarchal family"! André Léo, a feminist libertarian and future Communard, pointed out the obvious contradiction in Proudhon's position in 1869 which these anarchists also saw:
"These so-called lovers of liberty, if they are unable to take part in the direction of the state, at least they will be able to have a little monarchy for their personal use, each in his own home . . . Order in the family without hierarchy seems impossible to them -- well then, what about in the state?" [quoted by Carolyn J. Eichner, "'Vive La Commune!' Feminism, Socialism, and Revolutionary Revival in the Aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune", Journal of Women's History, vol. 15, No. 2, p. 75]
These anarchists, and many others, extended anarchist ideas to the one area of life where Proudhon excluded liberty: the family. Unsurprisingly, both during and after his lifetime, anarchists subjected it to an immanent critique (i.e., using Proudhon's own concepts against his own position) and so while repulsive, Proudhon's anti-feminism should not be used for a blanket rejection of all his ideas given the otherwise appealing nature of his vision of a federated self-managed society -- nor anarchism as such. So to state, as McNally does, that "anarchism" glorifies the patriarchal family simply staggers belief. Only someone ignorant of both logic and anarchist theory could make such an assertion.
Finally, we turn to the claim that anarchism "glorified . . . racism". While it is undoubtedly true that both Proudhon and Bakunin made a few racist comments, it does not follow that anarchism as a political theory is racist. Few would suggest that because Marx and Engels made racist comments that this makes Marxism inherently racist (see section 6 for a few examples of racist comments by the founders of Marxism). The same with anarchism -- particularly given that both Proudhon and Bakunin made anti-racist statements in their writings. Thus we find Proudhon arguing in 1851 that in an anarchist society there will "no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth. Whatever a man's race or colour, he is really a native of the universe; he has citizen's rights everywhere." [Property is Theft!, p. 567] Bakunin echoed this in 1867, arguing that "all collective and individual morality rests essentially upon respect for humanity" and this meant "the recognition of human right and human dignity in every man, of whatever race, colour, degree of intellectual development, or even morality." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 146] That these comments, and others like them, are the ones consistent with Anarchist principles is obvious.
So a few anti-Semitic and anti-German remarks, made in passing, does not equate to people who "glorified . . . racism" nor a theory which is inherently racist. Rather, it means someone who expressed personal bigotries which failed to live up to their stated ideals. Yet rather than admit the obvious, McNally exaggerates Proudhon's and Bakunin's flaws while remaining silent on similar ones in Marx and Engels as well as the lack of them in the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker, Goldman, and so on. Ultimately, the weakness of McNally's position can be seen from the very large Jewish anarchist movement in both Europe and America which placed Proudhon and Bakunin in their pantheon of influences.
McNally does attempt to provide some evidence for his remarks. He turns to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "widely proclaimed 'the father of anarchism.'" As he correctly notes, Proudhon was a "printer by vocation" and "strongly opposed the emergence of capitalism in France." However, McNally claims that Proudhon's "opposition to capitalism was largely backward-looking in character" as he "did not look forward to a new society founded upon communal property which would utilise the greatest inventions of the industrial revolution. Instead, Proudhon considered small, private property the basis of his utopia. His was a doctrine designed not for the emerging working class, but for the disappearing petit bourgeoisie of craftsmen, small traders and rich peasants." Unfortunately McNally has got his facts wrong.
To be fair to McNally, he is simply repeating what Marxists have been asserting about Proudhon since Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy. In that work, Marx claimed to be replying to Proudhon's System of Economic Contradictions but, in reality, the bulk of the work is inaccurate diatribe and its few valid points are swamped by selective quoting, false attribution and the repeation of points Proudhon made but in such a way as to suggest he argued the opposite. This last method of distortion can be seen when Marx implies that Proudhon wished to return to a pre-industrial economy based on small-scale private property:
"Those who, like Sismondi, wish to return to the correct proportions of production, while preserving the present basis of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent, they must also wish to bring back all the other conditions of industry of former times." [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 137]
Compare this to Proudhon's position expounded with similar words in System of Economic Contradictions:
"M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision, -- that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to retrograde; it is impossible." [Property is Theft!, p. 194]
As we will show, this was not an isolated statement: Proudhon consistently supported not only large-scale industry but also socialised ownership. Indeed, the Frenchman was critical of those socialists (whom he rightly labelled "utopian") who replaced analysis of capitalism and its tendencies with visions of an ideal system:
"It is important, then, that we should resume the study of economic facts and practices, discover their meaning, and formulate their philosophy. Until this is done, no knowledge of social progress can be acquired, no reform attempted. The error of socialism has consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious reverie by launching forward into a fantastic future instead of seizing the reality which is crushing it; as the wrong of the economists has been in regarding every accomplished fact as an injunction against any proposal of reform.
"For my own part, such is not my conception of economic science, the true social science. Instead of offering a priori arguments as solutions of the formidable problems of the organisation of labour and the distribution of wealth, I shall interrogate political economy as the depository of the secret thoughts of humanity" [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 128]
It worthwhile noting that the System of Economic Contradictions Proudhon was discussing was not some new utopian scheme, as Marx implied, but rather capitalism: "We will reserve this subject [the future organisation of labour] for the time when, the theory of economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their general equation the programme of association, which we shall then publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our predecessors". This analysis was essential in order to base ideas of social transformation on current tendencies. So rather than abstractly contrast a "utopia" to capitalism, Proudhon stressed the need to first analyse and understand the current system and so "to unfold the system of economical contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal association." [Op. Cit., p. 311 and p. 132]
While Marx asserted that Proudhon wished "to take us back to the journeymen or, at most, to the master craftsman of the Middle Ages" there is nothing in his work to support such claims. Unsurprisingly, then, rather than provide a quote from Proudhon confirming this aspiration Marx makes many an assertion such as that individual exchange "is consistent only with the small-scale industry of past centuries . . . or else with large-scale industry and all its train of misery and anarchy." [Op. Cit., p. 190, p. 138] Yet this forgets that under capitalism, workers do not own or control their work but in a mutualist society they would do both. As Proudhon argued, "the pace of mechanical progress" under capitalism has "no other effect" than to "make the chains of serfdom heavier, render life more and more expensive, and deepen the abyss which separates the class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers." This was because people "work under a master" and so "[u]nder the regime of property, the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely, like the revenue, to the proprietor". [Property is Theft!, p. 195, p. 248, p. 253] Would this "misery" happen if workers managed their own work? Of course not.
Marx ignored this, proclaiming that there is "no individual exchange without the antagonism of classes." Yet a system of worker-managed workplaces exchanging the product of their labour with peasant farmers would not be marked by classes for these "relations are not relations between individual and individual, but between worker and capitalist, between farmer and landlord, etc." Marx ignores the nature of Proudhon's ideas, favouring the assertion he "borrows from economists the necessity of eternal relations" and forgets that economic relations "are historical and transitory products." [Op. Cit., p. 144, p. 159, p. 178 and p. 166] Strangely, Marx forgot to quote Proudhon arguing that the "present form" of how labour was organised "is inadequate and transitory" and that "the radical vice of political economy, consists, in general terms, in affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition, -- namely, the division of society into patricians and proletarians". [Op. Cit., p. 170 and p. 174]
So McNally, like Marx, distorts Proudhon's position. While many later anarchists -- the communist-anarchists -- rejected Proudhon's market socialism in favour of libertarian communism, the notion that his "opposition to capitalism was largely backward-looking in character" and that "small, private property the basis of his utopia" is just nonsense. To quote Proudhon from 1841: "We must apply on a large scale the principle of collective production" [Op. Cit., p. 140] As K. Steven Vincent correctly summarises:
"On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the general image given on the secondary literature, Proudhon was not hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of what these large enterprises had introduced into society. For example, Proudhon strenuously opposed the degrading character of . . . work which required an individual to repeat one minor function continuously. But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result, according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers' associations. These associations would enable the workers to determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed and operated on a day-to-day basis." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 156]
So if you look at Proudhon's writings rather than what Marx and Engels claimed he wrote, it will soon be discovered that Proudhon in fact favoured collective ownership and for workers' associations to manage the means of production. Thus we find Proudhon arguing in 1840 that "the land is indispensable to our existence, -- consequently a common thing" and "all accumulated capital being social property" so "no one can be its exclusive proprietor". Property becomes "collective and undivided" and managers "must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves." [Property is Theft!, p. 105, p. 118, p. 137 and p. 119] Interestingly, Marx himself noted how the Frenchman in this work, What is Property?, "abolishes property in order to abolish poverty. Proudhon did even more. He proved in detail how the movement of capital produces poverty". [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 35]
Property would be owned collectively and so access would be free -- as we discuss in section I.3.3 there would be no more bosses and wage-workers but simply associates. However, unlike under Marxism, there would be no central planning and the associates would decide what to produce. So "the use of [workplaces], like that of the land, may be divided, but which as property remains undivided." This "non-appropriation of the instruments of production" would be "a destruction of property." Ten years later, in 1851, he argued that "[e]very industry, operation or enterprise which by its nature requires the employment of a large number of workers of different specialities, is destined to become a society or company of workers." Thus "every individual employed in the association . . . has an undivided share in the property of the company" as well as "the right to fill any position" for "all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to the approval of the members." This means that "the collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to a small number of managers and speculators: it becomes the property of all the workers." Thus there would be a new form of economic organisation based on "the co-operation of all who take part in the collective work" with "equal conditions for all members [Op. Cit., p. 153, p. 149, p. 583, pp. 585-6]
Public utilities would be under the "initiative of communes and departments" with "workers companies . . . carrying the works out." This decentralisation, this "direct, sovereign initiative of localities, in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a consequence of the democratic principle and the free contract." Land and housing would see rental payments being "carried over to the account of the purchase" of the resource used and once the property "has been entirely paid for, it shall revert immediately to the commune." In the case of housing, such payments would result in "a proportional undivided share in the house [the tenant] lives in, and in all buildings erected for rental, and serving as a habitation for citizens." The land and housing would become socialised as the property "thus paid for shall pass under the control of the communal administration" and for "repairs, management, and upkeep of buildings, as well as for new constructions, the communes shall deal with bricklayers companies or building workers associations." In short: "Capitalist and landlord exploitation stopped everywhere, wage labour abolished, equal and just exchange guaranteed." [Op. Cit., pp. 594-5, p. 576, p. 578, p. 576 and p. 596]
Proudhon termed this vision of a self-managed economy "an industrial democracy" or "the industrial republic" and argued that "Workers' Associations are the locus of a new principle and model of production that must replace present-day corporations". When "in an industry, all the workers, instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps their product, work for one another and thereby contribute to a common product from which they share the profit" then, when you "extend the principle of mutuality that unites the workers of each group to all the Workers' Associations as a unit, and you will have created a form of civilisation that, from all points of view -- political, economic, aesthetic -- differs completely from previous civilisations" [Op. Cit., p. 610 and p. 616] Compare this, the anarchist position, on industrial democracy with Lenin's who, in 1921 went so far as to suggest, somewhat disingenuously given the reality of party dictatorship at the time, that "Democracy is a category proper only to the political sphere". [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 26]
As can be seen, rather than base his "utopia" on "small, private property" Proudhon based it on the actual state of the French economy -- one marked by both artisan and large-scale production. The latter he desired to see transformed from the individual property of the few (capitalists) into the collective property of workers' associations and placed under workers' self-management. The former, as it did not involve wage-labour, was non-capitalist and was compatible with a system of undivided (collective) ownership and divided use (possession). While Proudhon's vision may be considered as (in part or in whole) undesirable, contradictory and unstable, it is not "backward-looking in character" nor based on "small, private property". That Proudhon himself publicly rejected the assertion he stood for private ownership is of note:
"You have me saying, and I really do not know where you could have found this, that ownership of the instruments of labour must forever stay vested in the individual and remain unorganised. These words are set in italics, as if you had lifted them from somewhere in my books. And then, on the back of this alleged quotation, you set about answering me that society, or the State that stands for it, has the right to buy back all property assets . . . But it does not follow at all from my speaking on the basis of socialism in order to reject the buy back of such assets as nonsensical, illegitimate and poisonous that I want to see individual ownership and non-organisation of the instruments of labour endure for all eternity. I have never penned nor uttered any such thing: and have argued the opposite a hundred times over. I make no distinction . . . between real ownership and phoney ownership . . . I deny all kinds of proprietary domain. I deny it, precisely because I believe in an order wherein the instruments of labour will cease to be appropriated and instead become shared; where the whole earth will be depersonalised . . ."
"There is a more straightforward, more effective and infinitely less onerous and less risky way of transferring ownership, of achieving Liberty, Equality and Fraternity . . .
"Capital having been divested of its power of usury, economic solidarity is gradually created, and with it, an equality of wealth.
"Next comes the spontaneous, popular formation of groups, workshops or workers’ associations;
"Finally, the last to be conjured and formed is the over-arching group, comprising the nation in its entirety, what you term the State because you invest it in a representative body outside of society, but which, to me, is no longer the State." [Property is Theft!, pp. 498-500]
Clearly McNally distorts Proudhon's ideas on the question of property. That he may have been aware of the actual facts in shown by his qualification that Proudhon's critique of capitalism was "largely backward-looking in character." The utility of which qualification is clear -- it allows him to ignore the substantial evidence against his assertion by muttering that he never said that Proudhon was always "backward-looking"...
McNally goes too far when he asserts that Proudhon "so feared the organised power of the developing working class that he went so far as to oppose trade unions and support police strike-breaking." There is, of course, a deep irony in McNally attacking Proudhon on this matter given that the Bolshevik regime he supports and considers as a "workers' state" repeatedly used not only its political police (the infamous Cheka) but also the Red Army to break strikes (see section H.6.3). This was done to secure Bolshevik power over the working class (see section 8).
It must also be stressed that while Proudhon did oppose trade unions (as we noted in section 2 he argued the working class would be better served using other means to liberate itself) it was not the case he supported police strike-breaking. As the editor of a collection of Marx's works had to admit that "[t]o give Proudhon his due, he was not so much justifying the actions of the French authorities as exposing the ‘contradictions' he saw as an inevitable evil of the present social order" [quoted by Iain McKay, "Introduction", Property is Theft!, p. 65] As Proudhon himself put it:
"workers' strikes are ILLEGAL. And it is not only the penal code which says this, but the economic system, the necessity of the established order. As long as labour is not sovereign, it must be a slave; society is possible only on this condition. That each worker individually should have the free disposition of his person and his arms may be tolerated; but that the workers should undertake, by combinations, to do violence to monopoly society cannot permit. Authority, in shooting down the miners, found itself in the position of Brutus placed between his paternal love and his consular duties: he had to sacrifice either his children or the republic. The alternative was horrible, I admit; but such is the spirit and letter of the social compact, such is the tenor of the charter . . . the police function, instituted for the defence of the proletariat, is directed entirely against the proletariat." [Property is Theft!, pp. 221-2]
The key words here are "[a]s long as labour is not sovereign" and, unsurprisingly, when Marx quoted this passage in Poverty of Philosophy he omitted it, so changing Proudhon's meaning completely. So while Proudhon opposed trade unions in favour of other forms of working class self-organisation (co-operatives) it does not follow that he supported the breaking of strikes when he reported when it happened. Rather he was noting that such things were inevitable under capitalism and that this system had to be replaced by one based on workers' self-management of production.
It is significant that the French syndicalists whom McNally is so keen to praise and differentiate from "classical anarchists" considered Proudhon (like Bakunin) one of their influences. Similarly, the French trade unionists who joined with their British counterparts to create the International Working Men's Association were followers of the French anarchist. Both groups of trade unionists saw the state repress their strikes so this would be a strange paradox indeed if McNally's account of Proudhon's position on police strike-breaking were correct. As it is not, there is no paradox.
McNally correctly states that Proudhon "oppose[d] trade unions" but rather than it being because he "feared the organised power of the developing working class" it was for the opposite reason: "As things are at present, which do you think will win [in a strike]? . . . [the bosses as] the match is clearly unequal". At best strikes would "lead to a general price increase". [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 182 and p. 181] Worse, as well as distorting Proudhon's position McNally fails to mention that Proudhon opposition to trade unions and strikes as counter-productive was not shared by subsequent anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Goldman, and so on (see section 9). Why should Proudhon (the odd man out in anarchist theory with regards to this issue) be taken as defining that theory? Such an argument is simply dishonest and presents a false picture of the facts.
Next McNally states that Proudhon "violently opposed democracy" and presents a series of non-referenced quotes to prove his case. Such a technique is useful for McNally as it allows him quote Proudhon without regard to when and where Proudhon made these comments and so their context. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to discover both. This is a deeply problematic technique, particularly given the seriousness of the charges being made. However, the reasons why he pursued this approach become understandable when the statements are tracked down as it becomes clear that McNally is quoting Proudhon completely out of context and so twisting his words into the opposite of what he meant.
He suggests that Proudhon's "notes for an ideal society involved the suppression of elections, of a free press, and of public meetings of more than 20 people." The word "notes" gives the game way, as he is not referring to any work produced in Proudhon's lifetime but rather his notebooks which were published a hundred years after his death, in the 1960s, and unknown until then. Private notebooks are hardly the best source for determining a person's ideas as they are the means by which a thinker explores ideas, some of which he may later conclude are deeply flawed. Moreover, as we note in section 6, neither Proudhon nor Bakunin were not anarchists throughout their lives nor consistently libertarian when they were. Nor was anarchism born complete and ready made in 1840 when Proudhon proclaimed himself an anarchist in What is Property?. He developed his libertarian ideas over time and, unsurprisingly, we would discover passages in his published works at odds with his subsequent, better developed, ideas. This applies even more to his private notebooks in which we would expect ideas to be sketched which he later rejected -- perhaps sketching ideas he disagreed with precisely to clarify his thoughts.
While difficult to be completely sure, it seems likely that McNally is selectively referring Proudhon's Notebooks from 1845 when he was clarifying his ideas on the idea of universal association. As one historian notes, Proudhon did envision some kind of national council at this time and the passages on how it would be selected "are not consistent. In some sections he suggested that the leaders of the association were to be chosen by the members, presumably by election . . . In yet other passages, Proudhon rather immodestly pictured himself in the director's role. One must be extremely cautious not to draw too many implications from these infrequent references to the council and its method of selection. Proudhon did not . . . have any designs for a small dictatorial elite" as this would "fly in the face of his sincere concern for individual liberty". So it is to his published works we must turn to see how the conclusions of these private notes and speculations. Interestingly, in a book published in 1843 Proudhon "referred to the important role that government was to perform" but in the introduction to a later edition he indicated that "he had changed his mind on this issue on the role of government" and "he insisted that reform should not -- could not -- come 'from above'; rather it could only 'from below, from the spontaneity of the masses, and not from the initiative of the government' . . . this change had already occurred by 1846" when he was "vehemently attacking other socialists such as Blanc for trumpeting reform initiated 'from above'". [Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 146 and pp. 143-4]
The same applies to when McNally suggested that Proudhon "looked forward to a 'general inquisition' and the condemnation of 'several million people' to forced labour". With no means to see whether this is selective quoting or not, McNally disarms his readers. However, we must note a certain irony here as he does not, of course, mention that Marx and Engels advocated "industrial armies, especially for agriculture" to ensure the "[e]qual liability of all to labour" in the Communist Manifesto. [Selected Writings, p. 53] Nor does McNally mention the Bolshevik's introduction of the "militarisation of labour" in 1919 and 1920 with Trotsky its leading advocate. The "very principle of compulsory labour service is for the Communist quite unquestionable . . . The only solution of economic difficulties from the point of view of both principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary labour power . . . and to introduce strict order into the work of its registration, mobilisation and utilisation." The "introduction of compulsory labour service is unthinkable without the application . . . of the methods of militarisation of labour". This is the "State compulsion without which the replacement of capitalist economy by the Socialist will for ever remain an empty sound." The "Labour State considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place his work is necessary" and had "the right to lay its hand upon the worker who refuses to execute his labour duty". This "presents the inevitable method of organisation and disciplining of labour-power during the period of transition from capitalism to Socialism." [Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, p. 135, p. 137, p. 141, p. 142 and p. 143] As can be seen Trotsky did not, as McNally would wish to suggest, think this was a result of the Civil War but rather a matter of principle.
McNally also fails to note that in December 1917 the Bolshevik regime created the Cheka, a political police force, to repress opposition to it from both the left and right as well as from reactionary forces and workers . At its worse, it even utilised torture and the shooting of unarmed prisoners. However, its main task was repression of opposition organisations -- including other socialists (the anarchists were its first victims in early 1918) -- and breaking strikes and other forms of labour protest in association with the Red Army.
If Proudhon's one-off, never repeated, scribbles in a private notebook mean anarchism is "elitist and authoritarian to the core" and "hostile to ideas of mass democracy and workers' power" what does it mean for Bolshevism which actually created a regime based on party dictatorship, political police and the militarisation of labour which its leading thinkers defended and justified at length in books and articles written to influence the international workers' movement? McNally, of course, does not mention these awkward facts so does not raise, never mind answer, the question.
However, reading the context of quotes McNally provides which can be tracked down, it is difficult to take his summary seriously. We turn to this now and will show that his readers would be justified in questioning his claims on Proudhon. Simply put, once the context of the quotes he provides is understood then it becomes clear McNally is quoting selectively in order to attribute ideas to Proudhon he did not, in fact, hold. The dishonesty is shocking.
This can be seen when McNally presents another unattributed quote: "The masses, he wrote are 'only savages . . . whom it is our duty to civilise, and without making them our sovereign.'" Let us provide both the source and the context McNally is keen to avoid. First, the quote is from a letter written by Proudhon on the 11th of December 1852 and it is quoted by J. Hampden Jackson who also helpfully presents the context which McNally strips, namely a few days after the plebiscite which saw an overwhelming majority of French men vote to end the Second Republic, create the Second Empire and convert the President into an Emperor. This was exactly one year on from the President's military coup which saw him impose a new constitution and extend his tenure by ten years, an act again endorsed by a vast majority in a plebiscite. As Hampden notes: "The people of France had spoken. It remained for Proudhon to point the moral". [Marx, Proudhon and European Socialism, p. 103]
This is the context for this quote -- a cry of despair at a people which so willingly voted to destroy a republic and their own freedom. These two plebiscites in favour of Louis-Napoleon's coup and autocratic rule resulted in "Proudhon's faith in the people" falling "to its lowest level" and "no epithet was too severe for the classes in whom he had seen the great hope of humanity." [George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 184] This becomes obvious when you read the full context of the words McNally quotes:
"You still worship the people . . . you should absolutely demolish this false religion. It is necessary to serve freedom and morals for themselves . . . without scorning the people, which is only uncivilised [sauvage] and that we have to civilise, do not make it your sovereign. I saw, on December 7th, 1851, when paving stones of the boulevard were still red with blood, these honest people rush to small theatres, content, merry, without regret nor remorse. That once I had surprised it, for five years, in red-handed indifference, immorality, imperialist plot, ingratitude for its initiators! Ah! admittedly, it did not mislead me; but cowardice, even when predicted, is always hideous to see. I will strike these people, I warn you, until I made them embarrassed of the alleged dogma of its sovereignty; because it is not enough for us to re-examine the incompetents of '48, we must re-examine their idol . . ." [Correspondance de P-J Proudhon, vol. V, p. 111]
Is McNally really suggesting that Proudhon's position was incorrect and that he should have proclaimed popular support of the military coup and its repression of those defending the Republic as an example of civilised behaviour and the people's sovereignty? As Proudhon lamented, "the truth" was that "the people have the government which it prefers, and the bourgeoisie the government that it deserves" and "Napoleon III is the legitimate, authentic expression of the middle-class and proletarian masses. If it is not precisely the product of the national will, it is undoubtedly that of the national permission." [Op. Cit., p. 110] McNally for all his talk of democracy does not tackle -- does not even raise! -- the question of what happens if the majority make authoritarian and repressive decisions, as it did in December 1851 and 1852. If, as the Republicans of Proudhon's time argued, the voice of the people is the voice of God did that make Louis-Napoleon's Presidency, coup and then Empire all legitimate? Proudhon argued no and, moreover, placed the underlying principle of democracy -- freedom -- above its expression within the (bourgeois) state. His writings explored how to secure mass participation in social life while minimising the possibility of tyranny. Thus the "federative system puts a stop to the agitation of the masses, to all the ambitions and incitements of demagogy" [Property is Theft!, p. 708]
By stripping away the context, McNally turns his lament for the destruction of political freedom into a demand for it. The dishonesty is striking. It also raises some problems for McNally's stated political position of being in favour of "democracy" -- if anarchists are to be denounced because they "reject any decision-making process in which the majority of people democratically determine the policies they will support" then McNally is in a bind. The French people democratically determined to create an Empire and destroy what was left of their Republic. Presumably it would be "elitism" for him, like Proudhon, to denounce the decision and despair at those who made it? As we discuss in section 7, the anarchist position on democracy is driven precisely by the obvious fact that majorities can be wrong and oppressive. This does not imply "elitism", quite the reverse.
We should also note that Marx dismissed the peasants as "a class of barbarians standing half outside of society" [Capital, vol. 3, p. 949] "In countries like France" the peasants "constitute far more than half of the population" but, he argued, they "cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power". Thus "the Bonaparte who dispersed [the National Assembly in 1851] is the chosen of peasantry." [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 493, p. 608 and pp. 607-8] Marx does not ponder the implications of these comments nor what they mean for democracy and the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat".
The second quote McNally provides as evidence for his case is "All this democracy disgusts me". Again, no reference is provided for obvious reasons for when it is tracked down it becomes clear that McNally is again quoting the Frenchman completely out-of-context in order to attribute to him ideas he did not hold, indeed was arguing against. This sentence comes from a private letter written in 1861 bemoaning how others on the left were attacking him as "a false democrat, a false friend of progress, a false republican" due to his critical position on Polish independence. Unlike most of the rest of the left (including Bakunin, it should be noted), Proudhon opposed the creation of a Polish state as it would be run by the "nobility [nobiliarie], [and so] catholic, aristocratic, [and] divided into castes". In other words, not a democracy. He then proclaims: "All this democracy disgusts me". [Correspondance de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, vol. XI, p. 196-7] Once this context is provided, it becomes clear that using his justly famous talent for irony against those on the left who violate their own stated democratic principles by supporting the creation of a feudal regime -- if this is democracy, Proudhon was saying, then it disgusts him ("All this [so-called] democracy disgusts me"). By quoting out-of-context McNally turns a letter by Proudhon in which he wished the left would be consistently in favour of democracy into an anti-democratic rant. His dishonesty is clear.
This, it must be noted, is also relevant to McNally's politics. While proclaiming that Leninism is the only consistently democratic socialist theory and that to "talk of a workers' state is necessarily to talk of workers' power and workers' democracy", he makes an exception to the party dictatorship ruled by Lenin and Trotsky from 1918 to 1923. Then it becomes the case that socialism no longer "depends upon the existence of democratic organisation that can control society from below" nor "presupposes that workers are running the state." If, in 1861, Proudhon expressed his frustration at those on the left who made exceptions to democracy for illogical reasons (the creation of a feudal Poland) what would have been his views of socialists who made exceptions for the Bolshevik regime?
Even without the context for the quotes McNally presents, anyone with a basic grasp of anarchist ideas would know that he fails to quote the many statements Proudhon made in favour of democracy. Why should the apparently anti-democratic quotes represent anarchism and not the pro-democratic ones? Which ones are more in line with anarchist theory and practice? Surely the pro-democratic ones. Hence we find Proudhon arguing that "[i]n democratising us, revolution has launched us on the path of industrial democracy" and that his People's Bank "embodies the financial and economic aspects of modern democracy, that is, the sovereignty of the People, and of the republican motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." We have already mentioned Proudhon's support for workers' self-management of production and his People's Bank was also democratic in nature: "A committee of thirty representatives shall be set up to see to the management of the Bank . . . They will be chosen by the General Meeting . . . [which] shall consist of not more than one thousand nominees of the general body of associates and subscribers . . . elected according to industrial categories and in proportion to the number of subscribers and representatives there are in each category." [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 63, p. 75 and p. 79] Thus, instead of bourgeois democracy Proudhon proposes industrial and communal democracy:
"every industry needs . . . leaders, instructors, superintendents, etc. . . . they must be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of administration or instruction." [Property is Theft!, p. 118]
"In order that association may be real, he who participates in it must do so . . . as an active factor; he must have a deliberative voice in the council . . . everything regarding him, in short, should be regulated in accordance with equality. But these conditions are precisely those of the organisation of labour." [Op. Cit., p. 2156]
"In the republic, everyone reigns and governs . . . Representatives are plenipotentiaries with the imperative mandate and are recallable at will . . . Here is the republic! Here is the People's sovereignty! [Op. Cit., p. 279]
"At present we are a quasi-democratic Republic: all the citizens are permitted, every third or fourth year, to elect, first, the Legislative Power, second, the Executive Power. The duration of this participation in the Government for the popular collectivity is brief; forty-eight hours at the most for each election. For this reason the correlative of the Government remains nearly the same as before, almost the whole Country. The President and the Representatives, once elected, are the masters; all the rest obey. They are subjects, to be governed . . ." [Op. Cit., p. 573]
"In place of laws, we will put contracts [i.e. free agreement]. -- No more laws voted by a majority, nor even unanimously; each citizen, each commune or corporation [i.e., self-managed industry], makes its own laws." [Op. Cit., p. 591]
"Unless democracy is a fraud, and the sovereignty of the People a joke, it must be admitted that each citizen in the sphere of his industry, each municipal, district or provincial council within its own territory, is the only natural and legitimate representative of the Sovereign, and that therefore each locality should act directly and by itself in administering the interests which it includes, and should exercise full sovereignty in relation to them." [Op. Cit., p. 595]
"Workers' Associations are the locus of a new principle and model of production that must replace present-day corporations . . . The principle that prevailed there, in place of that of employers and employees . . . is participation, that is, the MUTUALITY of services supplementing the force of division and the force of collectivity.
"There is mutuality, in fact, when in an industry, all the workers, instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps their product, work for one another . . . extend the principle of mutuality that unites the workers of each group to all the Workers' Associations as a unit, and you will have created a form of civilisation that, from all points of view -- political, economic, aesthetic -- differs completely from previous civilisations . . ." [Op. Cit., p. 616]
"groups that comprise the confederation. . . would be . . . self-governing, self-judging and self-administering in complete sovereignty. . . universal suffrage form its basis" [Op. Cit., p. 716]
"under the democratic constitution, insofar we can judge from its most salient ideas and most authentic aspirations, the political and the economic are one and the same, a sole and single system based upon a single principle, mutuality . . . no longer do we have the abstraction of people's sovereignty as in the '93 [French] Constitution and the others that followed it, and in Rousseau's Social Contract. Instead it becomes an effective sovereignty of the labouring masses . . . the labouring masses are actually, positively and effectively sovereign: how could they not be when the economic organism -- labour, capital, property and assets -- belongs to them entirely" [Op. Cit., pp. 760-1]
"If political right is inherent in man and citizen, consequently if suffrage ought to be direct, the same right is inherent as well, so much the more so, for each corporation [i.e. self-managed industry], for each commune or city, and the suffrage in each of these groups, ought to be equally direct." [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 219]
So, clearly, McNally is hardly presenting a fair summary of either Proudhon's private notebooks, letters or his published works. This can be seen from his justly famous manifesto issued during the 1848 revolution which presents a better notion of his "ideal society". It advocated "democratically organised workers' associations" along with "universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the imperative mandate" otherwise "the people, in electing representatives, does not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty!" This "is assuredly not socialism: it is not even democracy". He also demanded: "Freedom of association", "Freedom of assembly" and "Freedom of the press". [Property is Theft!, p. 377 and p. 379]
Do all these quotes suggest a man who "violently opposed democracy"? Of course not. Proudhon opposed certain types of democracy (centralised, hierarchical, top-down, statist democracy) and was in favour of another kind (decentralised, federal, bottom-up, libertarian democracy). So when looking at quotes by Proudhon ripped from their context it is important to ask whether he is attacking the centralised, hierarchical democracy of the state or the decentralised, participatory democracy of federated self-managed workplaces and communes? By taking of "democracy" in the abstract and not indicating that there are different forms of it (reflecting different class interests), McNally is confusing the issue. He fails to inform his readers that while Proudhon repeatedly attacked the former he advocated the latter. To use terms McNally should be familiar with, Proudhon attacked bourgeois democracy in favour of working-class democracy rooted in mandates, recall, decentralisation and federalism -- what would be better termed "self-management" but which Proudhon came to call "labour democracy" which would be "the IDEA of the new Democracy." In the state, "universal suffrage is the strangulation of the public conscience, the suicide of popular sovereignty, the apostasy of the Revolution" and to "make the vote for all intelligent, moral, democratic, it is necessary. . . to make the citizens vote by categories of functions, in accordance with the principle of the collective force". This federative democracy would be applied in the community (communes) and industry ("the agricultural-industrial federation"), indeed all areas including the military where it was necessary to "abolish military conscription, organise a citizens' army" based on "the right of the citizens to appoint the hierarchy of their military chiefs, the simple soldiers and national guards appointing the lower ranks of officers, the officers appointing their superiors." [Op. Cit., pp. 724-5, pp. 676-7, p. 711, p. 407 and p. 443]
As can be seen, Proudhon's position on democracy is not quite what McNally suggests. Under a centralised social system it simply meant the people "is confined to choosing its bosses and its charlatans every three or four years." The issue for Proudhon was to create a system which allowed the people to govern itself and not hand power over to a few leaders -- particularly when the majority often pass that power to demagogues like Louis-Napoleon. It was the case "that the only way to organise democratic government is to abolish government" for the State "is the external constitution of the social power. . . the people does not govern itself . . . We affirm . . . that the people, that society, that the mass, can and ought to govern itself by itself . . . We deny government and the State, because we affirm that which the founders of States have never believed in, the personality and autonomy of the masses." [Op. Cit., p. 437, p. 485 and pp. 482-483]
Thus McNally presents a distorted picture of Proudhon's ideas and thus leads the reader to conclusions about anarchism violently at odds with its real nature. It is somewhat ironic that McNally attacks Proudhon for being anti-democratic. After all, as we indicate in section 8 below, the Leninist tradition in which he places himself has a distinct contempt for democracy and, in practice, destroyed it in favour of party dictatorship.
There is an addition irony. McNally praises the Paris Commune and states that "to secure their rule, the Parisian workers took a series of popular democratic measures. They suppressed the standing army and replaced it with a popular militia; they established the right of the people to recall and replace their elected representatives" and "universal male suffrage". He does not mention that, as can be seen, all these were advocated by Proudhon nor that his followers played a key role in the 1871 revolt. Clearly it is simply not the case that Marx's "work signalled an entirely new direction in socialist thought and socialist politics" if he "insisted" that "the abolition of the standing army", "universal suffrage" and "the right to recall representatives" were "all essential elements of any workers' state." Proudhon advocated all these over a decade before his followers made Marx belatedly see their benefit in 1871. Where Proudhon differed from Marx was his awareness that a federated society organised from the bottom-up was no state and to confuse the two opened the door to centralisation and the creation of a new class system -- as happened in Russia under the Bolsheviks.
After distorting Proudhon's ideas on democracy and his desired society, McNally moves onto more secure ground, namely his sexism. He is correct to note that Proudhon "denounced women's liberation" and so right to quote Lichtheim that Proudhon had "a firmly patriarchal view of family life" and "regarded women as inferior beings." However, while correct to attack the Frenchman for this, it is incorrect to extend this to a rejection of anarchism as such -- particularly given the obvious contradiction of this position with the rest of his ideas. As noted in section 3, other anarchists rejected these reactionary ideas and consistently applied libertarian principles to within the family.
Lastly, McNally states that Proudhon "was a rabid racist reserving his greatest hatred for Jews, whose 'extermination' he advocated. He opposed emancipation for the American blacks and backed the cause of the southern slave owners during the American Civil War." To support his claims, he quotes George Lichtheim (whom he considers as having "written quite accurately") stating that Proudhon expressed "tolerance for slavery (he publicly sided with the South during the American civil war)" and "he believed in inherent inequalities among the races". It will come as no surprise that this is either completely false or not entirely true.
Let us take the question of Proudhon's anti-Semitism. It is true that Proudhon made the occasional anti-Semitic remark in his writings but as Robert Graham correctly summarises "anti-semitism formed no part of Proudhon's revolutionary programme." ["Introduction", General Idea of the Revolution, p. xxxvi] In terms of the claim that he advocated the "extermination" of the Jews what McNally does not mention is that this comes from a single entry in his private Notebooks and was unknown until a hundred years after his death. The intellectual dishonesty of this should be clear and, unsurprisingly, he does not prove that this was anything more than a passing rant nor that Proudhon held this view before 1847 or after, either publicly or privately. In terms of the former, it is the case that Proudhon's anti-Semitism is limited to a few passing Jewish stereotypes (which, sadly, reflected French culture at the time) in a few of his minor articles and books. A reader consulting his most important works would not come across a single anti-Semitic remark and many proclamations in favour of racial equality.
This does not mean that this private remark should not be condemned -- it should -- but it does not follow that we reject everything wrote before or after it. That this was a one-off rant suggests that when it was written something caused Proudhon's (culturally reflective, but still inexcusable) anti-Semitic feelings to intensify so resulting in this rant. Significantly, Proudhon's beloved mother died that very month (December 1847) which suggests that it reflected an outlet for the deep despair he must have been feeling. Given that he never expressed this view before 1847 nor afterwards it should be considered as a quickly forgotten aberration produced by the pressures of a family crisis rather than something indicative of his politics.
So quoting a single rant from his private notebook presents a false impression of Proudhon's ideas on race. To imply that a never repeated comment made in a private notebook and completely unknown until over a century later was part of his public work or a central aspect of Proudhon's ideas presents a completely false impression of both them and their influence -- particularly given his discussion of race in The Federative Principle, to which we now turn.
McNally and Lichtheim proclaim that Proudhon "publicly" expressed "tolerance for slavery", "opposed emancipation for the American blacks and backed the cause of the southern slave owners" because he was a racist. This is not the case, as can be seen from the extended discussion on slavery in the only major work written during the American Civil War, The Federative Principle. First, though, it must be stressed that the American Civil War had very little to do with slavery and far more to do with conflicts within the US ruling class. As Howard Zinn noted, the war "was not over slavery as a moral institution . . . It was not a clash of peoples . . . but of elites. The northern elite wanted economic expansion -- free land, free labour, a free [national] market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States. The slave interests opposed all that" [A People's History of the United States, pp. 188-9] Slavery was never the driver for the war, regardless of how this has retroactively become the main cause (because this fits into the self-image and rhetoric of America far better than the grim reality). Indeed, abolition of slavery was raised as a war aim only in 1862 as a way of boosting the North's chances of winning.
Proudhon recognised this obvious fact, arguing consistently applying the federal principle would mean "progressively raising the Black peoples' condition to the level of the Whites." However, the North "cares no more than the South about a true emancipation, which renders the difficulty insoluble even by war and threatens to destroy the confederation." Rather than express "tolerance" for slavery he wrote "the enslaving of one part of the nation is the very negation of the federative principle." [Property is Theft!, pp. 698-9f] Both sides were "fighting only over the type of servitude" and so both must "be declared equally guilty blasphemers and betrayers of the federative principle and banned from all nations." The union could only be saved if the North "grants the blacks their civil rights" and pursues radical economic reform by "providing possessions for the wage-workers and organising, alongside political guarantees, a system of economic guarantees." This last was key, for the slaves had "acquired the right of use and habitation on American soil." Justice demanded that both the freed slaves and wage workers must be given means of production (land, tools, workplaces) and other economic guarantees as "the conversion of black slaves to the proletariat" would mean that "black servitude will only change its form" rather than ended. Both "slavery and the proletariat are incompatible with republican values." [quoted by Iain McKay, "Neither Washington nor Richmond: Proudhon on Racism & the Civil War", Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, no. 60, pp. 25-6]
Proudhon stressed "with regard to black workers, that physiologists and ethnographers recognise them as part of the same species as whites; that religion declares them, along with the whites, the children of God and the church, redeemed by the blood of the same Christ and therefore spiritual brothers; that psychology sees no difference between the constitution of the Negro conscience and that of the white, no more than between the comprehension of one and the other." This meant that blacks should be "as free as the whites by nature and human dignity." Therefore "the principle of equality before the law must have as corollaries: 1) the principle of equality of races, 2) the principle of equal conditions and 3) the principle of increasingly similar, although never completely equal, fortunes." This meant that "[i]n a federal republic, the proletariat and slavery both seem unacceptable; the tendency must be to abolish them both". So, Proudhon argued, "grant equal political rights to both the emancipated blacks and those kept in servitude until now" and proclaim them "fellow citizens and equals". "The federative principle," he summarised, "here appears closely related to that of the social equality of races and the equilibrium of fortunes. The political problem, the economic problem and the problem of races are one and the same problem, and the same theory and jurisprudence can resolve that problem." [quoted by McKay, Op. Cit., p. 25]
As can be seen, McNally and Lichtheim completely distort Proudhon's actual position. A more accurate account of this is given by academic Ralph Nelson:
"But it would be naive to think that it is just the peculiar institution of slavery that Proudhon detests. He finds in the North also the principle of inequality and class distinction. If he is critical of both sides in the war, it is because the federative principle is incompatible with inequality, whether the agrarian variety of master and slave or the modern version of capital and labour . . .
"Proudhon didn't really believe that the Union side would emancipate the Negro, but would fix on deportation as the solution to the problem. The union could be saved only by the liberation of the Negroes, granting them full citizenship, and by a determination to stop the growth of the proletariat. For what is gained for the former slaves, if emancipation means that they will become members of the proletariat? He notes that the situation in Russia after the emancipation of the serfs (1861) is analogous. Liberated serfs without land would be helpless. Economic guarantees must be developed alongside political ones. The corollaries of equality before the law are racial equality, equality of condition, and an approach toward equality of fortunes." ["The Federal Idea in French Political Thought", Publius, vol. 5, No. 3, p. 41]
There is an obvious flaw in his position, namely that "Proudhon suggests that nothing will have been gained if the blacks were freed only to become wage earners, as if the condition of the wage-earner were not closer to the realisation of personal autonomy than the condition of a well-treated slave." [Nelson, Op. Cit., p. 43] Yet his fears should not be ignored as the Southern states "enacted 'black codes' which made the freed slaves like serfs" after the end of the Civil War. [Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 199] As one Black newspaper put it: "The slaves were made serfs and chained to the soil . . . Such was the boasted freedom acquired by the coloured man at the hands of the Yankees." [quoted by Zinn, Op. Cit., pp. 196-7] However, these reservations about Proudhon's arguments -- which did contain relevant concerns -- do not make McNally's comments any more accurate. That he repeats someone else's mistakes do not matter as he should have taken the time to verify the claims by consulting Proudhon's own works -- particularly given the serious nature of the assertions being made.
As can be seen, the notion that Proudhon was "a rabid racist" cannot be supported. While he undoubted made the occasion racist remark (usually anti-Jewish), this was not reflected in his political ideas. Similarly, if, as Lichtheim suggests "dislike of Germans, Italians, Poles" is considered important, then why are similar dislikes of other nationalities by Marx and Engels not worthy of note? Neither was free from anti-Semitic and other racist comments but anarchists consider these as relatively unimportant as they are understandable given the culture they lived in. In other words, Proudhon, Marx and Engels were people of their times and so it is unsurprising that certain of their opinions shock and disgust us. The question is, are these views at the core of their politics or do they reflect personal bigotries in contradiction with them? In all three cases, the answer is obvious and so such attacks on Proudhon fail to convince – particularly if they are generalised to all anarchists, as if Proudhon's opposition to strikes or his sexism were remotely applicable to the likes of Bakunin, Kropotkin or Goldman!
Also, it is somewhat ironic that McNally mentions Proudhon's alleged "support" for the South as the Leninist tradition he places his own politics is renown for supporting various dictatorships during wars. For example, during the Vietnam war the various Leninist groups called for victory to North Vietnam, a Stalinist dictatorship while during both Gulf Wars they called for victory to Iraq, another dictatorship. In other words, they "tolerated" and "supported" anti-working class regimes, dictatorships and repression of democracy. They stress that they do not politically support these regimes, rather they wish these states to win in order to defeat the greater evil of imperialism. In practice, of course, such a division is hard to defend -- for a state to win a war it must repress its own working class and so, in calling for a victory for a dictatorship, they must support the repression and actions that state requires to win the war (as an explosion of resistance, class struggle and revolt in the "lesser imperialist power" will undermine its war machine and so lead to its defeat). The notion that such calls do not mean support for the regime is false and so McNally's comments against Proudhon as well as being inaccurate also smack of hypocrisy -- his political tradition has sided with repressive dictatorships during wars in the name of wider political aims and theory. In contrast, anarchists have consistently raised the idea of "No war but the class war" in such conflicts (see section A.3.4). Proudhon's position of refusal to side with either the North or the South during the American Civil War is related to the revolutionary anarchist position.
To conclude, with the exception of his sexism McNally's account of Proudhon's ideas is either completely false (on small-scale property, democracy, racial equality) or, at best, half-truths turned into full-lies (his anti-Semitism and position of strikes). The scale of the distortion is simply staggering, suggesting he never consulted a single book by Proudhon. In terms of Proudhon's sexism and anti-Semitism, dismissing a theory based on the personal failings of those who advocate it only convinces the superficial. Proudhon rejected many of the assumptions of his times, yet he did not rise above all of them. As George Lichtheim suggests (in a passage McNally could not bring himself to quote), "[i]n all these respects Proudhon simply reflected the milieu from which he had sprung. His mental crudities were commonplace and not peculiar to him. Half peasant, half townsman, he was the embodiment of the average French workingman of his day". [The Origins of Socialism, p. 87] Subsequent anarchists (including Bakunin) overcame the limitations of Proudhon the man by using Proudhon the theorist. McNally, by personalising the matter, seeks to deny the significant contributions Proudhon made to socialism (as can be seen by the Paris Commune). If he were more confident in his own political tradition he would not have to do this as Leninism should be able to convince by presenting an accurate account of the ideas of others and showing their weaknesses. That McNally did not do this for Proudhon shows that, for all his flaws, his argument that socialism needs to be decentralised, federal and self-managed still rings true. The failure of the Bolshevik regime confirms this.
McNally then moves on to Bakunin whom he states "shared most of Proudhon's views." The truth is somewhat different. Unlike Proudhon, Bakunin supported trade unions and strikes, equality for women and revolution as well as being far more explicit in support for the collectivisation of property.
This can be seen from Bakunin's last book in which he argued that the International Working Men's Association "has shown the proletariat the objective it must achieve and at the same time has indicated to it the ways and means of organising a popular force", namely "a voluntary alliance of agricultural and factory worker associations, communes, provinces and nations" organised "from below upwards". Socialism would be created "only through concerted action by the proletariat of all countries, whose organisation first on an economic basis is precisely the object of the International", by means of "factory, artisan, and agrarian sections". A "federal organisation, from below upwards, of workers' associations, groups, communes, districts, and, ultimately, regions and nations" was needed "for real as opposed to fictitious freedom". This "popular federation" would be "based on emancipated labour and collective property" as the "mode of future production" would be "producers' cooperatives" and "all forms of land and capital must become collective property". He also "demand[ed], along with liberty, the equality of rights and obligations for men and women." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 32, p. 33, p. 49, p. 51, p. 13, p. 22, p. 201 and p. 219]
So Bakunin disagreed with Proudhon on many subjects. He did share Proudhon's support for industrial self-management, self-organisation in workers' associations, his hatred of capitalism and his vision of a decentralised, libertarian, federal, "from below" socialist society. It is true that, as McNally notes, "Bakunin shared [Proudhon's] anti-semitism" but he fails to mention Marx and Engels' many racist remarks against Slavs and other peoples. Also it is not true that Bakunin "was a Great Russian chauvinist convinced that the Russians were ordained to lead humanity into [the] anarchist utopia." Rather, Bakunin (being Russian) hoped Russia would have a libertarian revolution, but he also hoped the same for France, Spain, Italy and all countries in Europe (indeed, the world). He opposed the Russian Empire and he wished "the destruction of the Empire of All the Russias" and supported national liberation struggles of nationalities oppressed by Russia (and any other imperialist nation). [The Basic Bakunin, p. 162] Unlike Proudhon, he supported Polish National liberation although he recognised that "its leading parties, which are still drawn primarily from the gentry. have been unable to renounce their state-centred program" and hoped that the national movement would embrace economic change and seek the "liberation and renewal of their homeland in social revolution". [Statism and Anarchy, p. 40]
McNally moves on to "Bakunin's organisational methods", stating that they "were overwhelmingly elitist and authoritarian." This assertion completely misunderstands Bakunin's ideas on how revolutionaries should organise and influence working class organisations as well as the revolutionary process. Before turning to these, we must discuss Bakunin's views on social organisation as these indicate what his "utopia" (to use McNally's word) would be like and place his ideas on how anarchists should organise into context. If this is not done then Bakunin cannot be understood nor how later anarchists revised his ideas.
We must start by pointing out that Bakunin's viewpoints on the organisational methods of mass working class organisations and those of political groupings were somewhat different. As we show in section 9, Bakunin had what would now be termed a syndicalist position on the labour movement and so he rejected organising political parties and electioneering ("political action") in favour of "the development and organisation… of the social (and, by consequence, anti-political) power of the working masses as much in the towns as in the countryside." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 197-8] This was reflected in his ideas on social revolution as expressed in 1868:
"the federative Alliance of all working men's associations… will constitute the Commune . . . by the creation of a Revolutionary Communal Council composed of one or two delegates… vested with plenary but accountable and removable mandates . . . all provinces, communes and associations… [would send] their representatives to an agreed meeting place . . . vested with similar mandates to constitute the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces… to organise a revolutionary force capable of defeating reaction… it is the very fact of the expansion and organisation of the revolution for the purpose of self-defence among the insurgent areas that will bring about the triumph of the revolution . . . Since revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and supreme control must always belong to the people organised in a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary delegation" [Op. Cit., pp. 170-2]
How is this federation of workers councils based on elected, mandated and recallable delegates organised from the bottom-up "elitist and authoritarian"? Compare this to McNally's own words on the soviets of the Russian Revolution:
"The Russian revolution was based upon a wholly new kind of social organisation, the workers' council or soviet. These councils, based on elected delegates from the workplace and the neighbourhoods, became the new decision-making bodies of Russia. They were organs of direct democracy whose delegates, like those of the Paris Commune, could be recalled by the electors. The soviets represented a new form of mass democracy. It was for this reason that Lenin and Trotsky made the demand for 'All power to the soviets!' the central slogan of the Russian revolution."
As noted in section 4, Proudhon had already raised the idea of recallable delegates in the 1848 revolution and it was his followers who applied them in 1871. Given McNally's praise of the Paris Commune and the Russian soviets, it seems strange that Bakunin's comments with regards to revolutionary social organisation with its obvious parallels to both should not be mentioned. Perhaps because to do so would totally undermine his case? Thus rather than being "overwhelmingly elitist and authoritarian" Bakunin's ideas on a future society have marked similarities to the actual structures created by working people in struggle and are marked by libertarian and self-managed visions and concepts -- as anyone familiar with Bakunin's work would know.
The key difference between Bakunin and Lenin is that for the former turning the soviets into a state (even a so-called "workers' state") as desired by the latter would mean that power moved from the bottom to the top, empowering the few at the expense of the many. Given that Lenin's aim was the creation of a Bolshevik government it comes as no surprise that this "central slogan" of the revolution was quickly violated (see section H.1.7). As Bakunin once put it, there is the "Republic-State" and there is "the system of the Republic-Commune, the Republic-Federation, i.e. the system of Anarchism. This is the politics of the Social Revolution, which aims at the abolition of the State and establishment of the economic, entirely free organisation of the people -- organisation from bottom to top by means of federation." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 314] The difference is fundamental and not simply a question of words (see section H.2.1).
The question now arises of how Bakunin thought revolutionaries should influence both working class struggle and revolution. While not completely libertarian, Bakunin's ideas on this issue are different than McNally's summary would suggest.
The aim of the political grouping was to exercise a "natural influence" on the members of unions and associations, seeking to convince them of the validity of anarchist ideas. The political group did not aim to seize political power (unlike Marxists) and so it "rule[d] out any idea of dictatorship and custodial control." All it could do was to "assist the birth of the revolution by sowing ideas corresponding to the instincts of the masses" and act "as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea and the popular instinct." It "help[s] the people towards self-determination on the lines of the most complete equality and the fullest freedom in every direction, without the least interference from any sort of domination." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 172 and p. 191] The "sole aim of a secret society must be, not the creation of an artificial power outside the people, but the rousing, uniting and organising of the spontaneous power of the people". It "does not foist upon the people any new regulations, orders, styles of life, but merely unleashes its will and gives wide scope to its self-determination and social organisation, which must be created by itself from below and not above. The organisation must accept in all sincerity the idea that it is a servant and a helper, but never a commander, of the people, never under any pretext its manager, not even under the pretext of the people's welfare." The secret society "acts on the people only by the natural personal influence of its members who are not invested with any power" and so this "does not threaten the liberty of the people because it is free from all official character. It is not placed above the people like state power because its whole aim, defined by its programme, consists of the fullest realisation of the liberty of the people." [quoted by Michael Confino, Daughter of a Revolutionary, p. 250, pp. 258-9 and p. 261]
As we discuss in more detail in section J.3.7, the key to understanding the role of Bakunin's secret societies is to recognise that rather than seek to be elected into positions of power, they would work within popular organisations at the base and argue their ideas and win others over to them (i.e., their "natural personal influence"). This is why Bakunin considered such organisations as being no danger to popular liberty -- by not having power they could not force their ideas onto others, unlike a new state regime. All this is ignored by McNally.
McNally then quotes "one historian" on Bakunin. It should be noted that not even providing a name makes evaluating the accuracy of the historian's work impossible and so leaves the reader in the dark as to whether the historian does provide a valid account of Bakunin's ideas. However, after investigation the historian in question is George Lichtheim whom McNally feels provides "the most reliable guides to early socialist thought" presumably because his account chimes with all the standard Marxist prejudices, assumptions and errors about anarchism (significantly McNally ignores Lichtheim's statement that Bakunin's supported "anti-authoritarian collectivism"). A socialist, Lichtheim opposed Marxist-Leninism while presenting a sceptical but superficial account of anarchism. This can be seen from the words McNally quotes:
"The International Brotherhood he founded in Naples in 1865-66 was as conspiratorial and dictatorial as he could make it, for Bakunin's libertarianism stopped short of the notion of permitting anyone to contradict him. The Brotherhood was conceived on the Masonic model, with elaborate rituals, a hierarchy, and a self-appointed directory consisting of Bakunin and a few associates." [A Short History of Socialism, p. 126]
First, it should be noted that Bakunin considered secret societies as necessary because, at the time, most countries were monarchies and did not have basic civil liberties. Bakunin had been imprisoned by the Tsar for his activities during the 1848 revolution and so had personal experience of the fate of revolutionaries who were caught by these regimes. As Murray Bookchin argues, "Bakunin's emphasis on conspiracy and secrecy can be understood only against the social background of Italy, Spain, and Russia the three countries in Europe where conspiracy and secrecy were matters of sheer survival." [The Spanish Anarchists, p. 24] McNally ignores the historical context -- and the awkward fact that Marxists have also favoured secret groupings in the face of similar regimes.
Second, it should be noted that in 1865-6 Bakunin was just becoming an anarchist and this period "represents the transition from the revolutionary nationalism of his middle-years to the revolutionary anarchism of his last period." The "rituals" of the International Brotherhood were not reflected in later organisations because, as Bakunin admitted to a recruit, "they aren't necessary. We invented that for the Italians". In other words, they reflected the revolutionary traditions of the democratic conspiracies of that country rather than his own ideas, something confirmed by James Guillaume, his associate in the Alliance of Social Democracy, who recounted this, Bakunin's group in the First International, "had little resemblance to 'the classic type of secret society where one had to obey orders coming from above.' Bakunin's organisation was nothing more than a 'free association of men who were uniting for collective action, without formalities, without ceremonies or mysterious rites.'" As for the Brotherhood, "the constitution thus laid down was to be regarded as provisional; for when the Brotherhood attained a membership of seventy, a constituent assembly was to be convened which would determine the definite rules and programme of the organisation." [E.H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, p. 320, p. 316, p. 357 and p. 315]
Third, this summary is simply inaccurate. To show this, we shall quote from Bakunin's letter to the Russian Nihilist Sergy Nechayev in which he explains the differences in their ideas. He discusses the "principles and mutual conditions" for a "new society" of revolutionaries in Russia (noting that this was an "outline of a plan" which "must be developed, supplemented, and sometimes altered according to circumstances"):
"Equality among all members and the unconditional and absolute solidarity -- one for all and all for one -- with the obligation for each and everyone to help each other, support and save each other. . . Complete frankness among members and proscription of any Jesuitical methods in their relationships . . . When a member has to say anything against another member, this must be done at a general meeting and in his presence. General fraternal control of each other . . . Everyone's personal intelligence vanished like a river in the sea in the collective intelligence and all members obey unconditionally the decisions of the latter.
"All members are equal; they know all their comrades and discuss and decide with them all the most important and essential questions bearing on the programme of the society and the progress of the cause. The decision of the general meeting is absolute law. . . The society chooses an Executive Committee from among their number consisting of three or five members who should organise the branches of the society and manage its activities in all the regions of the [Russian] Empire on the basis of the programme and general plan of action adopted by the decision of the society as a whole. . . This Committee is elected for an indefinite term. If the society . . . the People's Fraternity is satisfied with the actions of the Committee, it will be left as such; and while it remains a Committee each member . . . and each regional group have to obey it unconditionally, except in such cases where the orders of the Committee contradict either the general programme of the principle rules, or the general revolutionary plan of action, which are known to everybody as all . . . have participated equally in the discussion of them. . . In such a case members of the group must halt the execution of the Committee's orders and call the Committee to judgement before the general meeting . . . If the general meeting is discontented with the Committee, it can always substitute another one for it. . . Any member or any group is subject to judgement by the general meeting . . . No new Brother can be accepted without the consent of all or at the very least three-quarters of all the members. . .
"The Committee divides the members . . . among the Regions and constitutes Regional groups of leaderships from them . . . Regional leadership is charged with organising the second tier of the society -- the Regional Fraternity, on the basis of the same programme, the same rules, and the same revolutionary plan . . . Each Regional Committee will set up District Committees from members of the Regional Fraternity . . . District Committees can, if necessary and only with the consent of the Regional Committee, set up a third tier of the organisation -- District Fraternity with a programme and regulations as near as possible to the general programme and regulations of the People's Fraternity. The programme and regulations of the District Fraternity will not come into force until they are discussed and passed by the general meeting of the Regional Fraternity and have been confirmed by the Regional Committee. . .
"Jesuitical control . . . are totally excluded from all three tiers of the secret organisation . . . The strength of the whole society, as well as the morality, loyalty, energy and dedication of each member, is based exclusively and totally on the shared truth, sincerity and trust, and on the open fraternal control of all over each one." [quoted by Confino, Op. Cit., pp. 264-6]
As can be seen, while there is much in Bakunin's ideas that few anarchists would agree with today, it cannot be said that it was "dictatorial" as McNally and Lichtheim wish to suggest. Ironically, as we note in section H.2.14, there are distinct similarities to Lenin's (and Marx's during the 1848 revolution) ideas on how revolutionaries should organise. Thus we find Lenin arguing in What is to be Done? for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation, which concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities, an organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation" because the revolutionary movement would "benefit by the fact that a 'dozen' experienced revolutionaries, no less professionally trained than the police, will centralise all the secret side of the work -- prepare leaflets, work out approximate plans and appoint bodies of leaders for each urban district, for each factory district and for each educational institution, etc." Under Tsarism, the "only serious organisational principle the active workers of our movement can accept is strict secrecy, strict selection of members, and the training of professional revolutionaries." [The Essential Lenin, p. 158, p. 149 and p. 162]
The parallels with Bakunin's system are clear and are predominately the result of the identical political conditions both revolutionaries experienced. While anarchists are happy to indicate and oppose the non-libertarian aspects of Bakunin's ideas, it is hard for the likes of the McNally to attack Bakunin while embracing Lenin's ideas on the party, justifying their more "undemocratic" aspects as a result of the objective conditions of Tsarism. Worse, in 1920 these principles were agreed by the Communist International, including the necessity of both legal and illegal structures within the party for "the Communist parties must learn to combine legal and illegal activity in a planned way. However, the legal work must be placed under the actual control of the illegal party at all times." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 198-9] Anarchists have, since Bakunin's death, rejected his ideas that anarchists should organise in a centralised fashion (see section J.3).
Therefore, McNally has a problem. On the one hand, he denounces Bakunin's ideas of a centralised, secret top-down organisation of revolutionaries. On the other, the party structure that Lenin recommends is also a tightly disciplined, centralised, top-down structure with a membership limited to those who are willing to be professional revolutionaries. So if he attacks Bakunin, he must also attack Lenin, not to do so is hypocrisy. And, unlike Bakunin, Lenin wished his party to seize state power -- which then used it to build a system in its own image (see section H.5.9).
At this point it will be objected that Lenin's party was more democratic and he allowed people to disagree with him. Yet Lichtheim's summation leaves a lot to be desired. To point to just three examples: the historian T.R. Ravindranathan indicates that "Bakunin wanted the Alliance to become a branch of the International [Working Men's Association] and at the same time preserve it as a secret society. The Italian and some French members wanted the Alliance to be totally independent of the IWA and objected to Bakunin's secrecy. Bakunin's view prevailed on the first question as he succeeded in convincing the majority of the harmful effects of a rivalry between the Alliance and the International. On the question of secrecy, he gave way to his opponents". [Bakunin and the Italians, p. 83]; while other Bakunin influenced sent delegates to the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872, the Italian sections decided not to; The Spanish section of the Alliance "survived Bakunin . . . yet with few exceptions it continued to function in much the same way as it had done during Bakunin's lifetime." [George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, p. 43] Hardly what you would expect if Lichtheim's comments were accurate.
The evidence suggests that the Alliance "was not a compulsory or authoritarian body." In Spain, it "acted independently and was prompted by purely local situations. The copious correspondence between Bakunin and his friends . . . was at all times motivated by the idea of offering advice, persuading, and clarifying. It was never written in a spirit of command, because that was not his style, nor would it have been accepted as such by his associates." Moreover, there "is no trace or shadow or hierarchical organisation in a letter from Bakunin to [Spanish anarchist] Mora . . . On the contrary, Bakunin advises 'direct' relations between Spanish and Italian Comrades." The Spanish comrades also wrote a pamphlet which "ridiculed the fable of orders from abroad." [Juan Gomez Casa, Anarchist Organisation, p. 25 and p. 40] This is confirmed by George R. Esenwein, who argues that "[w]hile it is true that Bakunin's direct intervention during the early days of the International's development in Spain had assured the pre-dominance of his influence in the various federations and sections" of the organisation, "it cannot be said that he manipulated it or otherwise used the Spanish Alliance as a tool for his own subversive designs." Thus, "though the Alliance did exist in Spain, the society did not bear any resemblance to the nefarious organisation that the Marxists depicted." [Op. Cit., p. 42] Indeed, as Max Nettlau points out, those Spaniards who did break with the Alliance were persuaded of its "hierarchical organisation . . . not by their own direct observation, but by what they had been told [by Marxists] about the conduct of the organisation" in other countries. [quoted by Casa, Op. Cit., pp. 39-40]
In summary, McNally's comments are a distortion of Bakunin's ideas and activities. He misrepresents one aspect of Bakunin's ideas while ignoring those aspects which support working class self-organisation and self-management. Ironically, he ignores the awkward fact that Bakunin's and Lenin's ideas on how revolutionaries should organise were similar (as to be expected given similar circumstances) but with the key difference that Lenin, unlike Bakunin, sought state power for the professional revolutionaries (see section H.3.11).
After chronicling the failings of, and distorting the facts about, two individuals, McNally tries to generalise. "These characteristics of Bakunin and Proudhon," he argues, "were not mere quirks of personality. Their elitism, authoritarianism and support for backward-looking and narrow-minded causes are rooted in the very nature of anarchist doctrine." Thus McNally claims that these failings of Proudhon and Bakunin are not personal failings but rather political. They, he suggests, represent the reactionary core of anarchist politics but makes no attempt to show that this is the case. Worse, many of his claims about "anarchist doctrine" are simply untrue and, once corrected, leave little left other than "quirks of personality".
Take, for example, Proudhon's position on the American Civil War. Let us assume that McNally's assertion is correct (as shown in section 4 it is not) and he supported the South. Bakunin "supported the Union in the struggle between the states". [Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, p. 20] What does this mean for "anarchist doctrine"? Which of the two represented the "real" anarchist position? So the question remains why Proudhon's refusal to support either side during the American Civil War (his actual position) is an example of "anarchist doctrine" while Bakunin's support of the North is not. Proudhon, to raise another obvious example, did not share Bakunin's interest in secret societies (nor did Kropotkin, Goldman, etc.). What does this tell us about "the very nature of anarchist doctrine"? Could Bakunin's position not be better explained by him being imprisoned in a Tsarist dungeon? Could it be that rather than attack anarchism, McNally simply attacks the failings of individual anarchists?
Unlike Proudhon, Bakunin and other revolutionary anarchists supported both unions and strikes and, as Kropotkin summarised, anarchists "do not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not to constitute, political parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation of the International Working Men's Association in 1864-1866, they have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation". How can Proudhon's position represent "the very nature of anarchist doctrine" when he was the only one to hold it? Similarly, Kropotkin simply (and rightly) dismissed Proudhon's position on women's equality as one "which most modern writers will, of course, not agree." [Direct Struggle Against Capital, p. 165 and p. 218] If McNally is right then we can only conclude that only Proudhon amongst all anarchist thinkers understood what anarchism stood for. That is, needless to say, unlikely and so we can only conclude that Proudhon's sexism and opposition to strikes were "quirks of personality" which later anarchists rejected in favour of a more consistent libertarian position (in the case of Proudhon's anti-feminism) or as inadequate (in the case of Proudhon's reformism). Neither, in short, is inherent to anarchist theory and it would be silly to suggest they were.
It should also be noted that Marx and Engels took positions which modern readers would consider strange at best. In the case of slavery, Marx suggested in his polemic against Proudhon that if you "[c]ause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations". [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 167] Engels, unsurprisingly, after the American Civil War added a note suggesting that this obvious tolerance of slavery was only valid in 1847. A few years later, in the early 1850s, Marx argued that slavery in Jamaica had been marked by "freshly imported BARBARIANS" in contrast to the United States where "the present generation of Negroes" was "a native product, more or less Yankeefied" and "hence capable of being emancipated." {Op. Cit., vol. 39, p. 346] The many comments by Marx and Engels on the progressive role of imperialism in replacing traditional societies by capitalist social relationships are also relevant in this context as are the many racists comments on Slavs and other peoples (including Jews). In other words, Proudhon and Bakunin were not the only major socialist thinkers to express racist views and if they are to be dismissed as a result then why not Marx and Engels as well?
We will draw upon Roman Rosdolsky's important work "Engels and the ‘Nonhistoric' Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of 1848." (Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, No. 18/19) to sketch the bigotries of Marx and Engels (unless otherwise indicated all quotes in this section come from Rosdolsky's work). As will be seen, on almost every issue McNally raises against Proudhon and Bakunin we find similar comments by Marx and Engels.
Unsurprisingly, given the times, Marx and Engels made numerous anti-Semitic remarks both in private and public. During the 1848 revolution, the paper Marx edited (Neue Rheinische Zeitung) published the reports of Müller-Tellering who expressed "an all too maniacal hatred" of Jews. Engels wrote "very unpleasant passages on the (Polish) Jews" [193, 116], describing them as "the very incarnation of haggling, avarice and sordidness" and "the meanest of all races" with "its lust for profit." The Austrian Jews had "exploited the revolution and are now being punished for it" while "anyone who knows how powerful" they were. He generalised by suggesting that "Jews are known to be cheated cheats everywhere" and, according to Marx, they had put themselves "at the head of the counter-revolution" and so the revolution had "to throw them back into their ghetto". [quoted 192, 203,196] Marx's paper "did not dissociate itself from the anti-Semitic 'popular opinion'" and its articles resulted in some of its backers who were Jewish demanding the return of their money as it preached "religious hatred." [201, 191]
Yet the despicable attitude expressed against Jews in Neue Rheinische Zeitung is the least of the issues of concern here given the opinions expressed over Slavs by the founders of Marxism. Thus we find Engels asserting that the Slavs have been "forced to attain the first stage of civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of independence" and that the conquered should be grateful to the Germans for "having given themselves the trouble of civilising the stubborn Czechs and Slovenes, and introducing among them trade, industry, a tolerable degree of agriculture, and culture!" [Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 8, p 238] Worse, Engels proclaimed that "one day we shall take a bloody revenge on the Slavs for this cowardly and base betrayal of the revolution" and "hatred of the Russians was, and still is, the first revolutionary passion of the Germans". The revolution could only be secured "against these Slavs peoples by the most decisive acts of terrorism" and "a war of annihilation and ruthless terrorism, not in the interests of Germany but in the interests of the revolution!" There would be "a bloody revenge in the Slav barbarians" and a war which will "annihilate all these small pig-headed nations even to their very names" and "will not only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples. And that too is an advance." [quoted, 85, 86]
In short, Engels advocated ethnic cleansing in the name of the revolution against those whom he considered "nonhistoric" peoples. This was recognised by leading Marxist Karl Kautsky who, rightly, denounced him for advocating that "they had to be exterminated" [quoted 90] Regardless of what drove these rants, as Rosdolsky rightly states "it no way nullifies the fact that they made entire peoples the object of this hatred and proclaimed a 'war of annihilation' against them." [87]
Ignoring the genocidal ethnic cleansing proclaimed against the Slavs (bar Poles) and other "nonhistoric" people, Engels wrote of the war which "broke out over Texas" between Mexico and the USA and how it was good that "that magnificent California was snatched from the lazy Mexicans, who did not know what to do with it" by "the energetic Yankees." [quoted, 159] He failed to mention that the revolt of 1836 over Texas which was the root of the 1846 war was conducted by "planters, owners of Negro slaves, and their main reason for revolting was that slavery had been abolished in Mexico in 1829." [160] In fact in 1845 a majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approved a proposed constitution that specifically endorsed slavery and the slave trade and was later accepted by the U.S. Congress. Unlike Engels, Northern abolitionists attacked this war as an attempt by slave-owners to strengthen the grip of slavery and ensure their influence in the federal government and publicly declared their wish for the defeat of the American forces. Henry David Thoreau was jailed for his refusal to pay taxes to support the war, penning his famous essay Civil Disobedience. [Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States, pp. 155-7] Rosdolsky rightly comments on how "inappropriate, in fact perverse, was Engels' illustration." [160]
So we find distinct parallels between McNally's attacks on Proudhon and the many racist and anti-Semitic remarks by Marx and Engels (as listed by Peter Fryer in his "Engels: A Man of his Time" [John Lea and Geoff Pilling (eds.), The condition of Britain: Essays on Frederick Engels]) as well as their siding with slave states against abolitionist ones. Nor did Marx, it must be noted, denounce Proudhon's racism or sexism (he also failed to comment on the Paris Commune being elected by male universal suffrage, thinking nothing of the exclusion of half the population while proclaiming its democratic nature). Strangely, most Marxists (rightly) condemning Proudhon for his bigotries are silent about this -- as silent as they are on the awkward facts that Proudhon did not actually support the Southern States in the American Civil War and that a one-off, never repeated, comment made in a private notebook simply cannot be taken as expressing his political ideas (see section 4 for details).
The fact is, once we correct McNally's errors, we discover that the vast majority of Proudhon's and Bakunin's positions are not "backward-looking and narrow-minded", quite the reverse. Where a position is so (Proudhon's position to trade unions and feminism being the most obvious examples) then we quickly discover that subsequent anarchists publicly rejected it. Most of the position's McNally paints as "anarchist doctrine" were not actually held by either Proudhon or Bakunin (such as, opposition to industry and collectively-owned and managed property). Rather than take examples which are common to most anarchist theorists -- and so actually reflective of "anarchist doctrine" -- McNally takes only a few positions held by one, at most two, major anarchist thinkers. Worse, these positions are tangential to the core of their ideas and, indeed, directly opposed to them (such as infrequently expressed bigotries against specific peoples being in obvious conflict to their other, more common, support for racial equality). From this minority of examples McNally generalises a theory -- and so violates the basic principles of the scientific method!
So McNally's position leaves something to be desired. Why is Proudhon's opposition to trade unions and strikes is an example "anarchist doctrine" while Bakunin's (and Kropotkin's, Malatesta's, Berkman's, Goldman's, etc.) support for both is not? Why is Proudhon's sexism "anarchist doctrine" but Bakunin's (and Kropotkin's, Goldman's, Malatesta's, etc.) support for women's liberty and equality is not? Why proclaim Bakunin "shared most of Proudhon's views" when anyone who did the most basic research would quickly conclude that in these two issues (and others!) Bakunin rightly rejected the positions McNally raises with regards to Frenchman's ideas? Worse, many of the positions McNally attacks Proudhon for are simply inaccurate -- he simply did not hold the ideas McNally so confidently asserts he did.
Moreover, as Daniel Guérin notes "[m]any of these masters were not anarchists throughout their lives and their complete works include passages which have nothing to do with anarchism." Bakunin, for example, was only an anarchist from around 1864 to his death in 1876 while "in the second part of his career Proudhon's thinking took a conservative turn". [Anarchism, p. 6] As such, the positions McNally, rightly, attacks (once his errors are corrected!) are clearly "quirks of personality" rather than somehow "rooted in the very nature of anarchist doctrine." This can be seen from the awkward fact that no later anarchists advocated them. Not to mention the awkward fact that Marx and Engels shared similar views as those McNally attacks Proudhon and Bakunin for having (even if, in reality, they did not hold the positions McNally claims they did).
These examples in themselves prove the weakness of McNally's claims and the low levels of scholarship which lay behind them. Indeed, it is amazing that the SWP/ISO printed this diatribe -- it obviously shows their contempt for facts, history and the intelligence of their desired audience.
McNally asserts the following:
"Originating in the revolt of small property owners against the centralising and collectivising trends in capitalist development (the tendency to concentrate production in fewer and fewer large workplaces), anarchism has always been rooted in a hostility to democratic and collectivist practices. The early anarchists feared the organised power of the modern working class. To this day, most anarchists defend the 'liberty' of the private individual against the democratically made decisions of collective groups."
As indicated in section 3, the notion that anarchists are against large-scale industry or collective property is simply an invention. Both Proudhon and Bakunin, for example, argued for collective management and ownership of the means of production by the workers themselves. Indeed, workers' self-management of production and collective ownership were raised in the very first anarchist book, Proudhon's What is Property? and both have remained an key aspect of anarchism ever since. Proudhon put it well: "Large industry and high culture come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in the future to make them rise from the association." [quoted by [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 156] So workers' associations running workplaces is at the heart of anarchism, an easy fact to discover if you bother to read Proudhon and Bakunin -- as is the fact that Bakunin supported revolutionary trade unionism as the means of producing a social revolution (see section 9). So much for "fear[ing] the organised power of the modern working class"!
So the premise of his assertion is factually incorrect. What of the conclusion, the idea that anarchists support the liberty to ignore "the democratically made decisions of collective groups"? Here McNally takes a grain of truth to create a lie.
First, however, we need to ask an obvious question: what does "democracy" mean? Or, more correctly, what kind of democracy are we talking about? If quoting Lenin is not too out of place, in a section of his pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky in section entitled "How Kautsky Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal", Lenin stated it was "natural for a liberal to speak of 'democracy' in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: 'for what class?'" [The Lenin Anthology, p. 465] So the question is not whether anarchists support "democracy" or not but what kind of democracy and for whom. For if McNally is right (and he is) and there are two kinds of socialism (one "from above" and one "from below") then there are multiple kinds of democracy: centralised and decentralised; unitarian and federal, top-down and bottom-up; bourgeois and workers. That is why Proudhon talked of the workers democracy ("Démocratie ouvrière") in his last work, contrasting it to the democracy (the left-Jacobin bourgeois-republican democracy which included the state socialists), but the elements of which he had been expounding upon since the 1840s.
A close reading of Proudhon shows that his main opposition to "democracy" was that it was, paradoxically, not democratic enough as it referred to the Jacobin notion that the whole nation as one body should elect a government. In such a regime "the People reigns and does not govern, which is to deny the Revolution." [Property is Theft!, p. 267] He sought a social organisation in which people had meaningful control over their own lives -- as individuals and as groups, collectives. This was not possible under a centralised democracy and so "universal suffrage provides us, . . . in an embryonic state, with the complete system of future society. If it is reduced to the people nominating a few hundred deputies who have no initiative . . . social sovereignty becomes a mere fiction and the Revolution is strangled at birth." [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 123] Nor was it possible as long as workers did not control their work and workplaces. This meant, as discussed in section 4, he argued for a decentralised, federal bottom-up system of communal and workplace associations based on elected, mandated and recallable delegates:
"we are all voters; we can choose the most worthy . . . we can follow them step-by-step in their legislative acts and their votes; we will make them transmit our arguments and our documents; we will suggest our will to them, and when we are discontented, we will recall and dismiss them.
"The choice of talents, the imperative mandate . . . and permanent revocability are the most immediate and incontestable consequences of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable program of all democracy. [Property is Theft!, p. 273]
As we noted in section 5, Bakunin had identical ideas on the need for a decentralised, federal, bottom-up social organisation based on elected, mandated and recallable delegates. Rather than express "hostility to democratic and collectivist practices", anarchists have always sought to discover which social forms allow genuine democratic and collectivist practices to flourish -- a "democracy" which reduces the masses to simply picking their masters every few years while workers were employed by bosses would not promote libertarian values. Hence the support for workers' self-management of production by democratic associations, communal self-government and social-economic federalism even the casual reader would find in the works of Proudhon and Bakunin but which McNally fails to mention.
Anarchists are well aware that support for democratic collectives in the workplace and community is a necessary but not sufficient condition for individual freedom (to quote McNally, the "challenge is to restore to socialism its democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom"). This is because collectives can make bad decisions, the majority can -- and does -- act oppressively towards the minority. For example, the United States has seen numerous votes on the issue of homosexual rights which saw the majority of voters or their representatives reject equality. That the majority are against equality for gays does not make it right -- anymore than previous majorities against equality for women and blacks were right. If a majority vote for a right-wing party which promises to make strikes illegal would McNally accept that decision and urge trade unionists to obey the democratic decisions of the collectivity? Would a referendum result make it any more just and worthy of respect? What if the majority vote to ban the teaching of evolution in all schools? And, finally, what if the majority vote in favour of authoritarian regimes? This is no idle question, it happened in, for example, France in 1851 and 1852 (much to Proudhon's disgust).
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the right often invoke the "silent majority" against the progressive minorities seeking change. The term was popularised (though not first used) by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1969 when he asked for the support of "the great silent majority of my fellow Americans", those who felt threatened by attacks on "traditional values" during the 1960s -- the civil rights, women's and peace movements as well as student rebellions, the counter-culture, wildcat strikes, and so on. Nixon, it should be noted, won a landslide victory in the 1972 Presidential election and took 49 of 50 states. The Thatcher government, likewise, invoked its democratic credentials (in spite of never receiving an actual majority of support) when launching state repression against strikes (particularly the 1984-85 miners' strike) and imposing the most draconian anti-union laws in the Western World. Their trade union "reforms" included forcing a paper ballot of members before taking strike action, so replacing the mass union meeting with the atomised democracy of the bourgeois state. Many Tory politicians wish to go further and impose yet more legislation which would outlaw strikes unless a majority of trade union members take part in the ballot as well as the majority voting for strike action (rather than just the majority of those voting in the ballot) -- in the interests of "democracy", of course, as it would stop "unrepresentative" minorities disrupting the (non-union) majority.
Needless to say, this is a condition they never suggest for the electing of politicians for good reason: "democratic" government usually means government by those elected by a minority of a population. For example, in the 2012 London Mayor election the successful candidate received just over 50% of a 38% turn-out, meaning that the successful candidate represented a mere 20% of the city's population. It should also be stressed that this minority of voters did not actually make decisions -- that rested in the hands of one person, the mayor. In other words, power over a city of ten million rested in the hands a person elected by 20% of those eligible to vote. The same can be said of U.S. elections, particularly Presidential ones. So democracy can easily mean government by the largest minority although, in practice, it means government of the few elected by the largest minority of the minority who bother to vote. None of which is very democratic and confirms Proudhon's critique that "nothing resembles a monarchy more than a république unitaire". [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 211]
So invoking "democracy" is problematic, given its wide number of uses. At its most basic, the majority can be wrong (as can be seen from the numerous crooks, incompetents, authoritarians and demagogues who have managed to win the popular vote). The aim, of course, is to change the views of the majority but that cannot be done by simply obeying its unjust opinions but rather challenging them by direct action -- or "ignoring" them to use McNally's term. As we note in section H.2.11, all progressive movements -- whether trade unionism, civil rights activism, feminism and gay rights -- started out as minorities (and sometimes remained so!) but managed, by direct action and protest (i.e., ignoring the wishes of the majority) to change perspectives and make society more freedom and just (see Kropotkin's essay "Revolutionary Minorities" in Words of a Rebel for further discussion). Malatesta put it well:
"We do not recognise the right of the majority to impose the law on the minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat complicated issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having the majority on one's side does not in any way prove that one must be right. Indeed, humanity has always advanced through the initiative and efforts of individuals and minorities . . . [W]e are even more opposed to domination of the majority by a minority. It would be absurd to maintain that one is right because one is in a minority . . . [I]t is not a question of being right or wrong; it is a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others . . . it is necessary that majority and minority should succeed in living together peacefully and profitably by mutual agreement and compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the practical necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of concessions which circumstances make necessary." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 72]
So, yes, anarchists do defend the liberty of individuals to rebel against the decisions of collective groups (we should point out that Marxists usually use such expressions as a euphemism for the state, but here we will take it at face value). This is for two very good reasons. Firstly, the majority is not always right. Secondly, simply because progress is guaranteed by individual liberty -- by dissent. That is what McNally is attacking here -- the right of individuals and groups to dissent, to express themselves and live their own lives. As we argue in section A.2.11, most anarchists are in favour of direct democracy in free associations. However, we agree with Carole Pateman when she argues:
"The essence of liberal social contract theory is that individuals ought to promise to, or enter an agreement to, obey representatives, to whom they have alienated their right to make political decisions . . . Promising . . . is an expression of individual freedom and equality, yet commits individuals for the future. Promising also implies that individuals are capable of independent judgement and rational deliberation, and of evaluating and changing their own actions and relationships; promises may sometimes justifiably be broken. However, to promise to obey is to deny or limit, to a greater or lesser degree, individuals' freedom and equality and their ability to exercise these capacities. To promise to obey is to state that, in certain areas, the person making the promise is no longer free to exercise her capacities and decide upon her own actions, and is no longer equal, but subordinate." [The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 19]
She indicates an obvious truth which McNally ignores:
"Even if it is impossible to be unjust to myself, I do not vote for myself alone, but along with everyone else. Questions about injustice are always appropriate in political life, for there is no guarantee that participatory voting will actually result in decisions in accord with the principles of political morality." [Op. Cit., p. 160]
Thus, for anarchists, a democracy which does not involve individual rights to dissent, to disagree and to practice civil disobedience would violate freedom and equality, the very values McNally claims to be at the heart of Marxism. He is essentially arguing that the minority becomes the slave of the majority -- with no right of dissent when the majority is wrong or being unjust and restricting the freedom democracy is meant to be based upon, reflect and defend. In effect, he wishes the minority to be subordinate, not equal, to the majority. Anarchists, in contrast, because we support self-management also recognise the importance of dissent and individuality -- in essence, because we are in favour of self-management ("democracy" does not do the concept justice) we also favour the individual freedom that is its rationale. We support the liberty of private individuals because we believe in self-management ("democracy") so passionately.
Then there is the question of which "collective groups" make the democratic decision. This is a key issue for anyone concerned about freedom for its answer determines what kind of democracy we are talking about -- a meaningful one which empowers all or a formal one which restricts what democracy is meant to be about?
For example, during debates on Scottish Independence some commentators suggest that limiting the vote on whether Scotland should withdraw from the UK to just those who lived there was "undemocratic" as the consequences impacted on those who lived in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, expanding the vote would have meant that the democratic decision of those in Scotland -- a small minority of the total population of the UK -- would have been irrelevant to the final decision. This can be generalised to all nation states which contain distinct cultural or ethic groupings within it. Can it be considered "democratic" to favour "collective groups" which ensure the marginalisation of minorities who wish to govern themselves?
This applies with equal force to the labour movement. In terms of strike action, which "collective groups" get to decide? Is it a sub-unit of a union branch (for example, IT staff within a University facing a restructuring), the branch (in which the IT staff may be a minority), the region or the national union. The strike decision would impact on all these levels but McNally's position gives no guidance for what is the correct level. Is it "democratic" if the sub-unit of the branch has to face redundancies because the majority of the branch does not support strike action? Is it "democratic" if the local branch cannot strike because the majority of the national union considers it harmful to the union as a whole?
This is no academic discussion as the answer has a significant impact on the evolution of the labour movement. In the Marxist-influenced German unions, the prejudice for centralisation meant that the whole union (in practice, a few leaders at the top) was considered the key collective group and so "every local strike had first to be approved by the Central, which was often hundreds of miles away and was not usually in a position to pass a correct judgement on the local conditions" which lead to "inertia of the apparatus of the organisation [and] renders a quick attack quite impossible". The unions were "condemned . . . to stagnation" and the structure "kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members." This "turned over the affairs of everybody in a lump to a small minority" and resulted in "barren official routine" which "crushed individual conviction, kills all personal initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification and permits no independent action." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 61 and p. 60]
The anarchist position is clear -- the appropriate group makes the decision. Thus federalism allows "free combination from below upward, putting the right of self-determination of every member above everything else and recognising only the organic agreement of all on the basis of like interests and common convictions." [Rocker, Op. Cit., p. 60] Unsurprisingly, then, we discover that the most militant British union was that of the miners which had, due to syndicalist influence, a decentralised, federal structure based on autonomous branches. And, as Rocker notes, while the German unions made no attempt to resist the Nazi seizure of power, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT rose in insurrection and stopped Franco across two-thirds of Spain in 1936.
Simply put, Marxism (as McNally presents it here) flies in the face of how societies change and develop. New ideas start with individuals and minorities and spread by argument and by force of example. McNally is urging the end of the free expression of individuality. For example, who would seriously defend a society that "democratically" decided that, say, homosexuals should not be allowed the freedom to associate? Or that inter-racial marriage was against "Natural Law"? Or that trade unions and strikes should be outlawed as the acts of "selfish" minorities? Or that socialists were dangerous subversives and should be banned? He would, we hope (like all sane people), recognise the rights of individuals to rebel against the majority when the majority violate the spirit of association, the spirit of freedom and equality which should give democracy its rationale. However, if he did then he would have to also admit the correctness of the anarchist position.
So McNally fails to understand the rationale for democratic decision making -- it is not based on the idea that the majority is always right but that individual freedom requires democracy to express and defend itself. By placing the collective above the individual, McNally undermines democracy and replaces it with little more than tyranny by the majority -- or, more likely, those who claim to represent the majority. It also, ironically, places him on the wrong side within his own political tradition.
If we take McNally's comments seriously then we must conclude that those members of the German Social Democratic Party who opposed their party's role in supporting the First World War were acting inappropriately. Rather than express their opposition to the war and act to stop it, according to McNally's "logic", they should have remained in their party (after all, leaving the party meant ignoring the democratic decision of a collective group), accepted the democratic decision of the collective and supported the Imperialist slaughter in the name of party democracy. Indeed, the minority of anti-war Social-Democratic representatives in the German Parliament did precisely that, refusing to vote against war credits in 1914 in the name of party discipline (presumably because, as good Marxists, they thought only "anarchists defend the 'liberty' of the private individual against the democratically made decisions of collective groups", to use McNally's words). It took until 1915 for Karl Liebknecht to do the right thing. If quoting Trotsky is not too out of place: "Do not fear to remain in a minority -- even a minority of one, like Liebknecht's one against a hundred and ten". [History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, p. 293] Common sense as well as political principle indicates that Liebknecht's (belated) defence of socialist internationalism against the democratically made decision of the Social-Democratic representatives (and wider party) was right -- and his principled dissent helped turn the tide against the jingoism of the majority.
Another obvious example is provided by Lenin who, just before the party's seizure of power in 1917, was so frustrated with the conservativism of his own party's central committee that he, "by way of protest resigns from the Central Committee" after his "furious criticism" had no effect. Rather than abide by the rules of his own party and the majority of its governing body "by announcing his resignation . . . Lenin obviously wanted to make it possible to free himself in case of need from internal discipline of the Central Committee". This meant the "withdrawing completely beyond the limits of party legality" and the threat of resigning gave him "greater freedom to develop his offensive along internal lines." [Op. Cit., vol. 3, p. 131] Perhaps McNally is of the opinion that a private individual should not ignore the democratically made decisions of collective bodies -- unless the individual in question is Lenin!
We are sure that McNally would reject the notion that Liebknecht and Lenin were wrong -- in these cases the rights of minorities (even of one) take precedence over the "democratic decisions of collectives." This is because the majority is not always right and it is only through the dissent of individuals and minorities that the opinion of the majority can be moved towards the right one. Thus his comments are fallacious.
Progress is determined by those who dissent and rebel against the status quo and the decisions of the majority. That is why anarchists support the right of dissent in self-managed groups -- in fact, dissent, refusal, revolt by individuals and minorities is a key aspect of self-management. Given that Leninists do not support self-management (rather they, at best, support the Lockean notion of electing a government as being "democracy") it is hardly surprising they, like Locke, view dissent as a danger and something to denounce. Anarchists, on the other hand, recognising that self-management's (i.e. direct democracy's) rationale and base is in individual freedom, recognise and support the rights of individuals to rebel against what they consider as unjust impositions (hence our recognition of the possibility of "the tyranny of the majority" -- see section I.5.6). As history shows, the anarchist position is the correct one -- without rebellion, numerous minorities would never have improved their position. Indeed, McNally's comments is just a reflection of the standard capitalist diatribe against strikers and protestors -- they do not need to protest, for they live in a "democracy."
So, yes, anarchists do support individual freedom to resist even democratically made decisions simply because democracy has to be based on individual liberty. Without the right of dissent, democracy becomes a joke and little more than a numerical justification for tyranny (usually of the few who make up the so-called "democratically elected" government). Thus McNally's latter claim that the "challenge is to restore to socialism its democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom" seems farcical -- after all, he has just admitted that Marxism aims to eliminate individual freedom in favour of "collective groups" (i.e. the government). Unless of course he means freedom for the abstraction "humanity" rather than concrete freedom of the individual to govern themselves as individuals and as part of freely joined self-managed associations? For those who really seek to restore to socialism its passionate concern for freedom the way it clear -- anarchism. Hence Murray Bookchin's comments:
"Here is the nub of the problem [with] . . . Marxism . . . its perspectives are orientated not towards concrete, existential freedom, but towards an abstract freedom -- freedom for 'Society', for the 'Proletariat', for categories rather than for people." [Post Scarcity Anarchism, p. 148]
Anarchism, on the other hand, favours freedom for people and that implies two things -- individual freedom and self-management (direct democracy) in free associations. Any form of "democracy" not based on individual freedom would be so contradictory as to be useless as a means to human freedom (and vice versa, any form of "individual freedom" -- such a liberalism -- which denies self-management would be little more than a justification for minority rule and a denial of human freedom). Ultimately, McNally's attack on anarchism fails simply because the majority is not always right and dissent a key to progress. That he forgets these basic facts of life indicates the depths to which Marxists will sink to distort the truth about anarchism.
Not that those in the Bolshevik tradition have any problem with individuals ignoring the democratic decisions of collective groups. The Bolsheviks were very happy to let individuals ignore and revoke the democratic decisions of collective groups -- as long as the individuals in question were the leaders of the Bolshevik Party. As the examples we provide later (in section 8) indicate, leading lights in the Leninist tradition happily placed the rights of the party before the rights of working people to decide their own fate. Thus McNally comments are strange in the extreme. Both anarchists and Leninists share a belief that individuals can and should have the right to ignore decisions made by groups. However, Leninists seem to think only the government and leadership of the Party should have that right while anarchists think all should. Unlike the egalitarian support for freedom and dissent for all anarchists favour, Leninists have an elitist support for the right of those in power to ignore the wishes of those they govern. Thus the history of Marxists parties in power expose McNally as a hypocrite and as we argue in section 14, Leninist ideology provides the rationale for such action. Thus his attempt to portray anarchism as "anti-democratic" is somewhat ironic.
McNally states that anarchists "oppose even the most democratic forms of collective organisation of social life. As the Canadian anarchist writer George Woodcock explains: 'Even were democracy possible, the anarchist would still not support it . . . Anarchists do not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics . . .' That is to say, anarchists reject any decision-making process in which the majority of people democratically determine the policies they will support."
It is perhaps understandable that McNally fails to provide a reference for Woodcock's quote given that the two parts come from different chapters of the pamphlet Anarchy or Chaos. The first part ("Even were democracy possible, the anarchist would still not support it") appears in chapter 3 on page 20 while the second ("Anarchists do not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics") comes from chapter 15, page 108. In other words, McNally skips most of the pamphlet and ignores such trivial discussions as anarchist support for organisation and so collective decision making, the links between anarchism and syndicalism (including a chapter explaining syndicalist ideas), revolutionary anarchist support for collective property in the means of production and products (libertarian communism) as well as what was meant by "political freedom" and "democracy".
It is useful, then, to present what Woodcock actually argued in order to understand what anarchism stands for. First, it should be stressed that Woodcock is very specific about what he meant by democracy: "for democracy puts forward the will of the majority as the supreme law, and declares that society must be governed, and the individual, whether he agrees or not, be coerced by that will." Thus he is not discussing democratic decision making within free associations but rather the majority passing laws which all must obey. As indicated above, this is not an unproblematic situation. Woodcock indicates this by noting the "laws against bigamy, abortion, homosexual practices, transvestism, and other [so-called] sexual deviations, as well as the semi-official persecution of the unmarried mother and the bastard child, protect the institution of the family". Thus "laws protecting the state [or the wishes of the majority] find their way into every sphere of life, and involve the prohibition of activities that, at first consideration, would appear to have no bearing on the social structure." [Op. Cit., p. 20 and p. 107]
So it is essential to remember that democracy and freedom need not go hand-in-hand -- majorities can, and do, restrict the freedom of individuals in repressive and unjust ways. So while democracy is a necessary condition for freedom it is not sufficient for, ultimately, the defining feature of democracy is not that the majority is always right but rather that a ruling minority cannot be trusted to not abuse its position and power. This is why Woodcock states "Anarchists seek neither the good of a minority, nor the good of the majority, but the good of all." He also notes that in so-called democracies it is usually the handful of people who make up the "democratically elected" government who make the decisions and so it is "not even of the majority [who rule] but of the privileged few who forms its ruling class". [Op. Cit., p. 20] This awareness informs his comments on political freedom which McNally shamefully ignores:
"Political freedom the right to vote, trial by jury, freedom of speech and press -- does not constitute real freedom. Indeed it masks the unfree nature of the society from which it springs. The right to vote means the right to choose whether one will have a brewer or a lawyer for a master. It does not mean the right to do without a master. Trial by jury means the right to be judged by a handful of petty tradesmen, in accordance with the laws of a society based on property and class . . . Political freedom in a class society is virtually meaningless . . . it is strictly limited in the interests of the controlling class, and its availability is in relation to the class and economic position of the man concerned . . . Democratic freedoms, then, are relative to wealth. But this is not the full measure of the relationship. In reality the rich enjoy a far greater freedom than that . . . In a class society the ruling class are always free owing to their control of the means of production, of the money that in an acquisitive society is the way to all enjoyment. The ruled are not free because lack of control of production, and the benefits of money, liberal education, etc., proceeding there from . . . Moreover, political freedom in a class society (and all political societies are by definition class societies), is relative to the security of that society. The ruling class give just so much political freedom as it is worthwhile and possible to give to keep the people out of mischief . . . Political freedom, at its best, can only be limited, as it maintains the power of property, which, by conferring the right of exploitation, limits the freedom of the exploited, who are the majority of the population . . .
"Political freedom is thus, in fact, an ingenious delusion, by which the governing classes give the people the comforting belief that they themselves have made the chains that bind them and that for this reason the chains are necessary and good. It gives men certain liberties that the ruling classes find it wise to concede as a cheap way of buying security, but its very retention of a political system, which means government, which means coercion, must in the end destroy political freedom itself.
"Anarchists do not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics, freedom from the institution of government, freedom from coercion, freedom from the law's interference in the lives of individual men and women, freedom from economic domination and inequality . . . Only a society based on control from above has need of coercion. A society based on co-operation can do without oppression and restriction because it is based on the voluntary agreement between its members." [Op. Cit. pp. 105-8]
Ultimately, if you define political freedom as the freedom to elect a government then, obviously, anarchists do not aim for it because we aim to end all governments! As is clear from the pamphlet McNally shamefully rips quotes from. The dishonesty is clear.
Given McNally's assertions about anarchism opposing collective property and being undemocratic, it is useful to also quote Woodcock's words on what anarchism is based on and what it logically implies. He stresses that "few anarchists contend that absolute individual freedom is possible, or, indeed, desirable . . . man is a social being, depending for his well-being on working and living together in society . . . The freedom anarchists seek, then, is a reciprocal freedom, a freedom of men and women recognising each other's rights, a freedom based on justice." [Op. Cit., p. 105] Therefore:
"Anarchism . . . is based on the concepts of freedom and justice, justice being that reciprocity of freedom without which no real individual freedom is possible. The social principles that follow from these concepts are mutual aid, or co-operation, and communism, or common ownership of the means of production . . . In the anarchist view these principles are expressed concretely in the administration of economic and functional affairs by voluntary associations of the workers for the purpose of running the factories and the farms and providing the necessary social services such as posts, drainage, roads, etc. Each industry would be administered by its own workers who are the most competent people for that purpose . . . who, having expert knowledge of their professions, are obviously better fitted to do this than politicians chosen according to the methods of parliamentary democracy." [Op. Cit., p. 91]
The means used to create such a society would be "prosecuting the economic struggle . . . an organisation on an economic basis which will embrace all the workers, according to their industries and workplaces . . . The syndicate [union], organised and governed by the workers themselves . . . [also] contain[s] the germ of the functional organisation upon which the new society can be built after the revolution.". Anarchists wish "that the people themselves take their destiny into their own hands and carry through the social revolution." [Op. Cit., p. 89]
All of which, to state the obvious, is at odds with McNally's claims about anarchism.
To summarise: Anarchists are not opposed to people in free associations democratically determining the policies they will support (see sections I.3.1 and I.5.1 for more details on this). The minority can then decide to abide by the decision, protest against it or, if all else fails, to leave the association if they cannot tolerate the decisions being made. What we do oppose is the assumption that the majority is always right and that (non-repressive or non-oppressive) minorities should submit to the decisions of the majority no matter how wrong they are. We feel that history is on our side on this one -- it is only by the freedom to dissent, by the direct action of minorities to defend and extent their freedoms that society progresses. We also feel that theory is on our side -- majority rule without individual and minority rights is a violation of the principle of freedom and equality which democracy is said to be built on. Democracy should be an expression of individual liberty but in McNally's hands it is turned into bourgeois liberalism. Little wonder Marxism has continually failed to produce a free society. It has no conception of the relationship of individual freedom to democracy and vice versa.
Finally, we must point out a slight irony in McNally's claim, namely that Marxists usually claim that they seek a society similar to that anarchists seek but have different means to achieve it. In the words of Marx:
"What all socialists understand by anarchy is this: once the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, has been attained, the power of the State . . . disappears, and the functions of government are transformed into simple administrative functions." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 76]
Or, as the Communist Manifesto put it, "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 491] So, Marxists and anarchists seek the same society, one of individual freedom which means that McNally's comments about anarchism also apply (once the state "withers away", which it never will) to Marxism. But, of course, McNally fails to mention this aspect of Marxism and its conflict with anarchism -- but, then, he fails to discuss what anarchism actually stands for nor does he present an accurate account of its views of democracy and democratic decision making.
McNally's attack on anarchism for being anti-democratic, authoritarian and elitist is somewhat ironic given that the Leninist tradition he places himself in did destroy democracy during the Russian Revolution -- whether in the soviet, the workplace, the union or the military -- and replaced it with party dictatorship. This means that his attack on anarchism can be turned back on his own politics, with much more justification and evidence.
We need to understand the importance of comparing the rhetoric of Bolshevism to its reality as we can have repeated pronouncements about "democracy" made while, at the same time, the necessity of party dictatorship is both being practised and advocated. Thus Lenin repeatedly contrasted the higher form of democracy expressed by the soviets to bourgeois democracy. In his in 1918 polemic against leading Social-Democrat Karl Kautsky who was accusing the Bolsheviks of being undemocratic, Lenin argued that the "only view that corresponds to Marxism" was expounded by Plekhanov (the father of Russian Marxism) at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903, namely "in the revolution the proletariat would, if necessary, disenfranchise the capitalists and disperse any parliament that was found to be counter-revolutionary." [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 280] Which raises the obvious question, found to be counter-revolutionary by whom? The proletariat? No, according to Plekhanov it was the party:
"Every democratic principle must be considered not by itself, abstractly, but in relation to . . . the success of the revolution [as this] is the highest law. And if the success of the revolution demands a temporary limitation on the working of this or that democratic principle, then it would be criminal to refrain from such a limitation . . . the principle of universal suffrage must be considered from the point of view of what I have designated the fundamental principle of democracy. It is hypothetically possible that we might . . . speak out against universal suffrage . . . If in a burst of revolutionary enthusiasm the people chose a very fine parliament then we would be bound to make it a long parliament; and if the elections turned out unsuccessfully, then we would have to try to disperse it. [quoted by Samuel H. Baron, Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism, p. 242]
As we will discover, the dispersing of elected bodies by the party was not limited to bourgeois Parliaments: soviets were also subject to this policy. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given that before seizing power Lenin had repeatedly equated the power of the Bolsheviks with that of the proletariat. Thus "Bolshevik power" was "one and the same thing" as "proletarian revolutionary power" and so the Second All-Russian Congress "gave a majority to the Bolshevik Party and put it in power." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 413 and p. 419] While problematic (it substitutes the party for the class), it could be argued that as the party was supported by the majority of workers (but not peasants) then the Bolshevik government was democratic. Which is true, in the limited bourgeois sense. The question is what would happen if the workers turned against the party -- would it give up its power as required by a movement committed to democracy? Unfortunately for McNally, the answer was: no.
Before discussing this, we must present some context and discuss the Bolshevik regime from the democratic perspective of one-person, one-vote. Before seizing power, Lenin protested that the Bolsheviks "must pass a resolution demanding equal suffrage (both in the Soviets and at trade union congresses), branding the slightest departure from equality as a fraud . . . We cannot tolerate a fraud of democracy if we call ourselves 'democrats'. We are not democrats but unprincipled people if we tolerate this!!" [Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 304] After winning around 25% of the votes in the elections to the Constituent Assembly he was happy with a Soviet Constitution which saw the All-Russian Congress of Soviets being composed of representatives of urban soviets (one delegate for 25,000 voters) and of representatives of the rural congresses of soviets (one delegate for 125,000 inhabitants). In other words, a worker's vote was 5 times more important than a peasant's vote. That this ensured a Bolshevik majority in the Third and Fourth All-Russian Congresses may explain this embrace of unequal suffrage in 1918 after the votes in the Constituent Assembly had been counted.
Given that the Bolsheviks disbanded the Constituent Assembly in spite of it being elected by universal suffrage (i.e., by democracy) McNally would, undoubtedly, argue -- as Lenin did -- that soviet democracy was much superior. Ignoring the awkward issue of unequal suffrage between workers and peasants, the fact is that the Bolsheviks also disbanded soviets which elected non-Bolshevik majorities. Martov, the leader of the left-Mensheviks, recounted in June 1918 how in those "places where we were in the majority, the soviets will be liquidated". When "workers demanded new elections" the demands were "stubbornly resisted" and the issue "escalated to workers' strikes and the suppression of workers' demonstrations by armed forces". If the protests succeeded, then elections resulted in "a majority to the Mensheviks and SRs" and in those cases Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Councils ensured "the soviets were disbanded by armed force or the opposition delegates were expelled as 'counter-revolutionaries' from the soviets" (although "Bolshevik investigators themselves could not succeed in implicating even one Menshevik in the conspiracy trials"). The disbanding of soviets was "applied to the uzed congresses of peasant soviets." ["Iulii Martov's Letter to A.N. Stein", pp. 78-82, The Structure of Soviet History, Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), p. 78] Martov gave amongst many the example of Tula and a leading Bolshevik there informed his Party's Central Committee in early 1918 about the means being used there:
"After the transfer of power to the soviet, a rapid about-face began in the mood of the workers. The Bolshevik deputies began to be recalled one after another, and soon the general situation took on a rather unhappy appearance. Despite the fact that there was a schism among the SRs, and the Left SRs were with us, our situation became shakier with each passing day. We were forced to block new elections to the soviet and even not to recognise them where they had taken place not in our favour." [quoted by Scott Smith, "The Socialists-Revolutionaries and the Dilemma of Civil War", pp. 83-104, The Bolsheviks In Russian Society, Vladimir N. Brovkin (ed.), p. 87]
"The sum of this evidence from around the country," summarises one historian, "makes clear that the majority of Russian workers were hostile to the Bolsheviks by the spring of 1918 . . . the Bolsheviks simply dissolved opposition-controlled soviets, disregarded workers' opinions, and cracked down brutally on such manifestations of discontent as strikes." [Smith, Op. Cit., p. 94] This meant disbanding soviets which were elected with the wrong majority and so in response to the "great Bolshevik losses in the soviet elections" during the spring and summer of 1918 "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the results of these provincial elections." For example, in the city of Izhevsk in "the May election [to the soviet] the Mensheviks and SRs won a majority" and the following month "these two parties also won a majority of the executive committee of the soviet. At this point, the local Bolshevik leadership refused to give up power" and by the use of the military "abrogated the results of the May and June elections and arrested the SR and Menshevik members of the soviet and its executive committee." [Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism, pp. 23-4]
As we summarise in section H.6.1, the Bolsheviks applied many tactics to secure their power: soviet elections were delayed, the soviets themselves were packed with their representatives to secure their majority (so making direct election from the workplace irrelevant) and, when all else failed, the soviets themselves were simply, as noted, disbanded. This applied at the national level as well, and "electoral fraud gave the Bolsheviks a huge majority of congress delegates" for the fifth All-Russian Soviet Congress in July 1918. The "number of legitimately elected Left SR delegates was roughly equal to that of the Bolsheviks." The Left-SRs expected a majority but did not include "roughly 399 Bolsheviks delegates whose right to be seated was challenged by the Left SR minority in the congress's credentials commission." Without these dubious delegates, the Left SRs and SR Maximalists would have outnumbered the Bolsheviks by around 30 delegates. This ensured "the Bolshevik's successful fabrication of a large majority in the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets." [Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power, p. 396, p. 288, p. 442 and p. 308]
This was reflected in Lenin's 1917 argument that the "Bolsheviks have no right to await the Congress of Soviets. They ought to seize the power right now" [quoted by Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 132-2] The important thing was party power and the soviets were seen as only a means to that end and so perhaps their fate once the Bolsheviks had reached their goal is unsurprising. Hence we see Lenin, in his polemic against Kautsky, pointing with no apparent concerns to the fact that "97 per cent of the total number of delegates [to the Sixth All-Russian Soviet Congress] were Bolsheviks" as an example of his party's popular support! [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 303] It should be noted that the delegates to the congress were elected not by workers and peasants but rather by the appropriate soviet body below it. In other words, Bolshevik gerrymandered and packed soviets elected Bolsheviks to the national congress.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the reality of their regime, Bolshevik rhetoric started to change. By the end of 1918 the necessity of party dictatorship started to appear in party material and, as Victor Serge noted in the 1930s, "the degeneration of Bolshevism" was apparent by that time "since at the start of 1919 I was horrified to read an article by Zinoviev . . . on the monopoly of the party in power". [The Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 188] It must be stressed that Serge's horror was well hidden and, as noted in section H.1.2 he joined the Bolsheviks and publicly defended this monopoly of power as a necessity of revolution. Lenin admitted the reality in 1919:
"When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and . . . . a united Socialist front is proposed, 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]
Not only did the Bolsheviks not shift from that position, they recommended this position to the world revolutionary movement at the Second Congress of the Second International in 1920. In the words of Zinoviev:
"Today, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do not have the dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship of the party. They think this is a reproach against us. Not in the least! We have a dictatorship of the working class and that is precisely why we also have a dictatorship of the Communist Party. The dictatorship of the Communist Party is only a function, an attribute, an expression of the dictatorship of the working class . . . the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the dictatorship of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, pp. 151-2]
"We must have a state organisation" he argued, "and only the party can direct it, because a state political organisation is one that encompasses the best working-class elements of the entire country." [Op. Cit., p. 154] Elsewhere that year he argued that "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] In short: "The chief conclusion of the proletarian revolution is the need for an iron, organised and monolithic Party." [Zinoviev, quoted by Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 144] Lenin dismissed the notion that workers could govern themselves:
"In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat is inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation which takes in all industrial workers . . . What happens is that the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . 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, pp. 20-1]
This, of course, did not stop the Bolsheviks also claiming their regime was far more democratic than any other. In 1920, Zinoviev as head of the Communist International wrote a letter to the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary labour union, which stated that the "Russian Soviet Republic . . . is the most highly centralised government that exists. It is also the most democratic government in history. For all the organs of government are in constant touch with the working masses, and constantly sensitive to their will." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 928] Lenin, in his diatribe against Left-Wing Communism made a similar claim and proclaimed the soviets "democratic institutions, the like of which even the best democratic republics of the bourgeois have never known" while also suggesting that it was "ridiculously absurd, and stupid" to make "a contrast, in general, between the dictatorship of the masses and the dictatorship of the leaders." He also pointed to "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences" as means by which the party secured its rule and so the Bolsheviks would have to "support, develop and extend" non-Party conferences "to be able to observe the temper of the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among them to state posts". [The Lenin Anthology, p. 573] Yet if the soviets were so democratic, then why were the non-Party Congresses needed at all? Perhaps because "the dictatorship of the leaders" is not the same as "dictatorship of the masses" and so the Soviets were irrelevant due to the party dictatorship?
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the fate of the soviets in 1918, the Bolsheviks disbanded these "non-Party" conferences because "[d]uring the disturbances" of late 1920, "they provided an effective platform for criticism of Bolshevik policies." Their frequency was decreased and they "were discontinued soon afterward." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p. 203] Lenin summarised the reasons for this policy:
"Non-Party conferences are not a fetish. They are valuable if they help us to come closer to the impassive masses -- the millions of working people still outside politics. They are harmful if they provide a platform for the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries masquerading as 'non-party' men. They are helping the mutinies, and the whiteguards. The place for Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, avowed or in non-party guise, is not at a non-Party conference but in prison . . . We can and must find other methods of testing the mood of the masses and coming closer to them. We suggest that those who want to play the parliamentary, constituent assembly and non-Party conference game, should go abroad . . . " [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 362]
In other words, the conferences were used by the proletariat to express its opinions and these were found to be lacking in the eyes of its vanguard. Like soviet democracy, they threatened the rule of the party and as Lenin suggested in 1920 "[w]hoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) is actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 570] So any conflict between the vanguard and the proletariat would, by this logic, necessitates the victory of the former over the latter -- in the latter's interests, of course. As Trotsky put it in 1921:
"The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans, making a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes. This awareness is for us the indispensable element. The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Farber, Op. Cit., p. 209]
So, politically, the Bolsheviks systematically disbanded democratic institutions -- whether bourgeois (the Constituent Assembly) or proletarian (the soviets and non-Party Conferences). They proclaimed to the world the necessity of party dictatorship and how mass working class organisations could not exercise the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat. In March 1923 the Central Committee of the Communist Party, in a statement issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Party, summarised the lessons gained from the Russian revolution: "the party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an unprecedented defeat for the proletariat." Vacillations, of course, are expressed by workers' democracy. Little wonder the statement rejects it: "The dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the dictatorship of the party." ["To the Workers of the USSR" in G. Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party, p. 213 and p. 214]
Bolshevik authoritarianism, needless to say, was not limited to the political regime. In the workplace, they replaced workers' economic democracy with "one-man management" selected from above, by the state. These "individual executives" would have "dictatorial powers (or 'unlimited' powers)" as there was "absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals." The applied also at the national level for "our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it." [Collected Works, vol. 27, p. 267, p. 268 and p. 340] He suggested dictatorial power was universal fact of all revolutions:
"in the history of revolutionary movements the dictatorship of individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes has been shown by the irrefutable experience of history." [Op. Cit., p. 267]
It is churlish, but essential, to note that previous revolutionary movements had transformed one form of class society into another and so we must note, as well as refuting McNally's claim that Leninism is a democratic tradition, Lenin's comments display a distinct confusion over the nature of a social revolution (rather than a political one). Yes, previous revolutions may have utilised the dictatorship of individuals but these revolutions have been revolutions from one class system to another. The "revolutionary" classes in question were minority classes and so elite rule would not in any way undermine their class nature. Not so with a socialist revolution which must be based on mass participation (in every aspect of society, economic, political, social) if it is too achieve its goals -- namely a classless society. Little wonder, with such theoretical confusion, that the Russian revolution ended in Stalinism -- the means used determined the ends. Unsurprisingly enough, the Bolshevik imposition of one-management simply transformed private-capitalism into state-capitalism, that is one form of class society into another (see section H.3.13). After the end of the Civil War Lenin summarised his position: "Industry is indispensable, democracy is not. Industrial democracy breeds some utterly false ideas." [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 27]
This system of state-appointed "one-man" managers armed with "dictatorial" powers was not considered as opposed to socialism, as McNally implies. Lenin stressed in 1919 that the "organisation of the communist activity of the proletariat and the entire policy of the Communists have new acquired a final, lasting form." [Op. Cit., vol. 30, p. 144] Moreover, after the end of the civil war he combated the idea of workers' control as (rightly!) a syndicalist and anarchist deviation within the party at odds with Marxism:
"Syndicalism hands over to the mass of non-Party workers . . . the management of their industries . . . thereby making the Party superfluous. . . Why have a Party, if industrial management is to be appointed . . . by trade unions nine-tenths of whose members are non-Party workers?" [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 50]
He went so far as to admit that he thought "the syndicalist deviation" (i.e., giving the proletariat economic democracy, the power to elect their own workplace managers and economic conferences) "leads to the collapse of the dictatorship of the proletariat". [Op. Cit., p. 86] This was a theme to which he repeatedly returned:
"Does every worker know how to run the state? . . . this is not true . . . If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic . . . It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We have it, and it is called the Party. All this syndicalist nonsense about mandatory nominations of producers must go into the wastepaper basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party aside and making the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia impossible." [Op. Cit., pp. 61-2]
In short, the economic relations favoured by the Bolsheviks were identical to that of capitalism except that the boss was replaced by a state-appointed bureaucrat, private-capitalism by state-capitalism (an awkward fact McNally cannot bring himself to mention, never mind admit to). "In the shops where one-man management (Lenin's own preference) replaced collegial management," notes Diane Koenker, "workers faced the same kinds of authoritarian management they thought existed only under capitalism." The "overall management of industry in 1921 was no more democratic than it had been in 1914; indeed, it was much more highly centralised, hierarchical, and bureaucratic." [Labour Relations in Socialist Russia, p. 177 and p. 190]
Needless to say, the Bolsheviks also combated independent trade unions with the same methods. As one historian summarises, "Soviets and trade unions with non-Bolshevik majorities, and there was a definite revival in the electoral fortunes of the opposition in the spring of 1918, were dispersed" and by the "beginning of 1920 non-Bolshevik controlled trade union organisations no longer existed at the national level". [Jonathan Aves, "The Demise of Non-Bolshevik Trade Unionism in Moscow: 1920-21", pp. 101-33, Revolutionary Russia, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 101-2 and p. 103] By the end of 1920, the Bolsheviks had broken the both Menshevik-influenced printers and anarchist-influenced bakers union, with the offices of the former "occupied by soldiers. Eleven members of the [union] board where arrested along with twenty-nine members of the Council of Representatives, factory committees and ordinary unionists . . . five were also members of the Moscow soviet. After being held without trial most were sentenced to terms between six months and two years in prison. The disbandment was approved by the plenum of the Moscow trade union council" which "also voted to disband the bakers' section. The leading anarchist members of the section . . . and . . . an SR Maximalist . . . and two other members . . . were barred from office and arrested to stand trial." [Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin, pp. 68-9] In May 1921, to present another example, the All-Russian Congress of the Metalworkers' Union met and the "Central Committee of the [Communist] Party handed down to the Party faction in the union a list of recommended candidates for union (sic!) leadership. The metalworkers' delegates voted down the list, as did the Party faction in the union . . . The Central Committee of the Party disregarded every one of the votes and appointed a Metalworkers' Committee of its own. So much for 'elected and revocable delegates.' Elected by the union rank and file and revocable by the Party leadership!" [M. Brinton, "The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control", For Workers' Power, , p. 375] The same year also saw the Bolshevik disperse provincial trade unions conferences in Vologda and Vitebsk "because they had anti-communist majorities." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 176]
A similar onslaught by the party against democracy also occurred in the armed forces. Trotsky simply abolished the soldier's committees and elected officers in early 1918, stating that "the principle of election is politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in practice, abolished by decree." This destruction of military democracy was compared to the concurrent push by the Bolsheviks to introduce "one-man" management in production, as workplace democracy "is not the last word in the economic constructive work of the proletariat". The "next step must consist in self-limitation of the collegiate principle" and its replacement by "[p]olitical collegiate control by the Soviets", i.e. the state control Lenin had repeatedly advocated in 1917. Moreover "for executive functions we must appoint technical specialists." He ironically called this the working class "throwing off the one-man management principles of its masters of yesterday" and failed to recognise it was imposing the one-man management principles of new masters. As with Lenin, the destruction of workers' power at the point of production was of little concern for what mattered was that "with power in our hands, we, the representatives of the working class" would introduce socialism. ["Work, Discipline, and Order to save the Socialist Soviet Republic", How the Revolution Armed, vol. 1, p. 47, p. 37 and p. 38]
Thus the Bolshevik tradition clearly placed the power of the party above the ability of working people to elect their own representatives, managers and officer. And McNally claims that his tradition aims at "workers' power" and a "direct and active democracy"!
Of course McNally tries to blame the destruction of democracy in Russia on the Civil War: "By 1920, the very face of Russia had changed. Workers' democracy, in the meaningful sense of the term, had disappeared -- as had most of the working class through death or retreat to the countryside." This meant the rise of Stalinism for "[a]s workers' democracy disintegrated, a new bureaucracy rose to power." However, this is hard to accept, given that the undermining of democracy began before the civil war started and continued after it had finished (for example, the onslaught on soviet democracy and attempts to impose one-man management in the workplace and armed forces predate the start of the civil war at the end of May 1918). Moreover, as we indicate in section 13, the Bolshevik state was marked by bureaucracy from the start.
Both these developments did not occur by accident, they were due to the nature of Bolshevik ideology and the kind of centralised structures it favoured. Trotsky is typical. In April 1918 he argued that once elected the government was to be given total power to make decisions and appoint people as required as it is "better able to judge in the matter than" the masses. The sovereign people were expected to simply obey their public servants until such time as they "dismiss that government and appoint another." Trotsky raised the question of whether it was possible for the government to act "against the interests of the labouring and peasant masses?" And answered no! Yet it is obvious that Trotsky's claim that "there can be no antagonism between the government and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the administration of the union and the general assembly of its members" is just nonsense. [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 113] The history of trade unionism is full of examples of committees betraying their membership. Needless to say, the subsequent history Lenin's government showed that there can be "antagonism" between rulers and ruled and that appointments are always a key way to further elite interests. Needless to say, the notion that the party leaders are "better able to judge in the matter than" has its roots in Lenin's vanguardism, as discussed in section 11.
McNally's claim that the working class had been destroyed by the civil war is equally flawed and cannot explain the fact that attempts by working class people to express themselves were systematically undermined by the Bolshevik party. Nor does the notion of a "disappeared" working class make much sense when "in the early part of 1921, a spontaneous strike movement . . . took place in the industrial centres of European Russia" and strikes involving around 43 000 per year took place between 1921 and 1925. [Samuel Farber, Op. Cit., p. 188 and p. 88] As we show in section H.6.3, while the number of workers did decrease from 1918 to 1921, there remained substantial numbers who were able to and did take collective action before, during and after the civil war. So rather than there being objective reasons for the lack of democracy under Lenin we can suggest political reasons -- the awareness that, given the choice, the Russian working class would have preferred someone else in power. Indeed, McNally's argument can be traced back to Lenin who formulated it "to justify a political clamp-down" in the face of rising working class protest rather than its lack: "As discontent amongst workers became more and more difficult to ignore, Lenin . . . began to argue that the consciousness of the working class had deteriorated . . . workers had become 'declassed.'" However, there "is little evidence to suggest that the demands that workers made at the end of 1920 . . . represented a fundamental change in aspirations since 1917." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 18, p. 90 and p. 91]
Also, we must point out a certain duplicity in McNally's comments that Stalinism can be explained purely by the terrible civil war Russia experienced. After all, Lenin himself before seizing power mocked those who opposed revolution because "the situation is exceptionally complicated" and argued that "the development of the revolution itself always creates an exceptionally complicated situation" and that it was an "incredibly complicated and painful process." In fact, it was "the most intense, furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a single great revolution in history has taken place without civil war. And only a 'man in a muffler' can think that civil war is conceivable without an 'exceptionally complicated situation.'" "If the situation were not exceptionally complicated there would be no revolution." [Op. Cit., vol. 26, pp. 118-9] Thus McNally's assertion that for "the germ cell of socialism to grow [in Russia], it required several essential ingredients. One was peace. The new workers' state could not establish a thriving democracy so long as it was forced to raise an army and wage war to defend itself" is simply incredible. It also raises an important question with regards Leninist ideas: if Bolshevik politics and its organisational form cannot survive during a period of disruption and complicated circumstances (i.e., a revolution) then it is clearly a theory to be avoided at all costs.
The leading Bolsheviks all argued that the specific problems their latter day followers blame for their authoritarianism were natural results of any revolution and, consequently, unavoidable. In addition, there is a slight irony in this standard but flawed excuse for Bolshevik authoritarianism as Leninists like to suggest that anarchists do not recognise the possibility of counter-revolution and so reject the idea of defending a revolution. As we discuss in section H.2.1, this is simply untrue -- the anarchist rejection of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" has nothing to do with defending revolution. As Bakunin stressed, "the sole means of opposing the reactionary forces of the state" was the "organising of the revolutionary force of the people." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 156] So given that Leninists mock anarchists for their supposed naivety over the dangers of counter-revolution, it seems ironic that McNally uses what he is supposed to consider an inevitable aspect of revolution to explain (excuse would be the better word) the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution. Long after 1917, Lenin repeated his earlier comments by stating "history teaches us that no big question has ever been settled and no revolution accomplished without a series of wars." [Op. Cit., vol. 31, p. 494] He was adamant that "were it not for this iron rule of the workers, of this workers' vanguard, we should not have been able to hold out for two months, let alone two years". [Op. Cit., vol. 30, p. 498]
Simply put, if counter-revolution is considered inevitable by your ideology then explaining Bolshevik authoritarianism by it is unconvincing -- particularly if that authoritarianism started before the start of the civil war at