Anarchism

Socialist Courier has had a couple of recent posts about the history of anarchism inn Aberdeen and Glasgow so before the blog is accused of being an anarchist one we should highlight the political differences between ourselves and anarchists.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain possess a clear definition of what we would describe socialism to be. The definition of "socialist" generally meant in the 1840s was anyone who wanted to reform society, in whatever way, so as to benefit Labour. That was indeed how it was used them and was of course one of the reasons why Marx and Engels called the manifesto they wrote for the Communist League of Germany in 1848 the "Communist Manifesto" and not the "Socialist Manifesto". Basically, it was much too broad a definition that included too many contradictory views that we suppose the more appropriate word (then as much as today) would be "social reformers". It is only on that basis that supporters of private property and the market such as Proudhon, could be called "socialist".



The Socialist Party accepts we do have something in common with the Kropotkin and other communist-anarchists such as Alexander Berkman  and Murray Bookchin (although he is no longer considered to be an anarchist by some) i.e. those anarchists that stand for a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society based on common ownership, but our differences with Proudhon (or Tucker and Warren), those who stand for the self-management of a market economy, remain. The problem that aggrieves many members of the SPGB is that the anarcho-communists seem to feel they have more in common with the Proudhonists, than with ourselves when after all we both agree on the ends (albeit not always on the means to attain the end)

The Socialist Party’s argument is that capitalism (property/class based societies) necessitates a state. Hence to bring about a stateless society which is what is meant by anarchism you need to get rid of capitalism and that logically entails getting rid of the need for money and the market as well.
Engels to Cuno in 1872:-
 “And since the state is the chief evil [for Bakunin], the state above all must be abolished; then capital will go to hell of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Abolish capital, the appropriation of all the means of production by the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one: the abolition of the state is nonsense without a social revolution beforehand; the abolition of capital is the social revolution and involves a change in the whole mode of production.”

Proudhon was an opponent of government and wanted a society without one. But being in favour of features of capitalism and wanting to retain the money-prices-wages-profit system (what Marx called "commodity production") the view of the SPGB (and many anarchists ) would not make him a socialist. He was against ground rent and interest but not against profit. In fact he was a bit of a currency crank with his ideas of credit bank and stood for a society of small-scale producers trading with each other without the interference of the state. His famous catchword "property is theft" was aimed not at small-scale property but essentially at landed property. He defended individual property against common ownership. Proudhon was also against workers organising it trade unions, was against workers going on strike for higher wages.

Some would uncharitably call him the first anarcho-capitalist rather than the mutualist that he was and the reformist he could also be accused of being. Proudhon possessed a popular programme which in essence involved a society of artisans. Proudhon was very concerned at the tendency of employers to exploit employees, and thought that if society was made up of artisans then no such exploitation would take place, each worker would own their own means of production, and would sell their products at the market rate, since the market is an unbiased process of checks and counters, this would tend to balance incomes and prices and provide an equitable system of commodity production and sale, but without the massive problems of class division and exploitation. There are people today who still believe this, Marx's efforts to debunk it notwithstanding.

We should be more demanding on labels we ascribe to people. The very words "socialism" and "communism" are connected with the idea that the means of production should be owned by society as a whole (or socially, hence "socialism") or by the whole community (or communally, hence "communism"). And it is far better that people who are opposed to it are not called "socialists" or “communists".

The difference between socialists and anarchists is not over the aim of abolishing the State but over how to do this. A difference between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and various anarchists/syndicalists is over which form of activity and organisation - political or industrial - is the more important. Our view is that it is the winning of political control which is more important and that is why we emphasise this. Anarchists say that the first objective of the workers' revolution against capitalism should be to abolish the State. Socialists say that, to abolish the State, the Socialist working class majority must first win control of it and, if necessary, retain it (in a suitably very modified form) but for a very short while just in case any pro-capitalist recalcitrant minority should try to resist the establishment of socialism. Once socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole people, has been established (which the SPGB has always claimed can be done almost immediately), the State is dismantled, dissolved completely We are not talking years or decades or generations here, but as a continuation of the immediate revolutionary phase of the over throw of capitalism.

What we do share in common with anarchism , however, is failure to convince the majority of workers of the strengths of both our respective positions , and that is worth debating sometime.

But to end with the Anarcho-Marxist case, some quotes from Marx and Engels about the abolition of the State:-

In 1844 Marx wrote that "the existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable" - "The King of Prussia and Social Reform"

Again, as Engels wrote in a letter to Bebel in March 1875, "Marx's book against Proudhon and later the Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will dissolve itself and disappear."
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Then, in a circular against the Bakunin prepared for the First International in 1875, Marx wrote: "To all socialists anarchy means this: the aim of the proletarian movement--that is to say the abolition of social classes--once achieved, the power of the state, which now serves only to keep the vast majority of producers under the yoke of a small minority of exploiters, will vanish, and the functions of government become purely administrative"

 Joseph Dietzgen (who greatly influenced the council communist Pannekoek). Dietzgen had this to say:-
"The terms anarchist, socialist, communist should be so "mixed" together, that no muddlehead could tell which is which. Language serves not onlythe purpose of distinguishing things but also of uniting them- for it is dialectic." June 9, 1886

And on anarchists and socialists generally, he said:
"For my part, I lay little stress on the distinction, whether a man is an anarchist or a socialist, because it seems to me that too much weight is attributed to this difference."....
..."While the anarchists may have mad and brainless individuals in their ranks, the socialists have an abundance of cowards. For this reason I care as much for one as the other...The majority in both camps are still in great need of education, and this will bring about a reconciliation in time"- April 20, 1886

The present purpose of the Socialist Party is to argue for socialism, and put up candidates to measure how many socialist voters there are. Anarchists have to envisage some other means of expressing the popular will and public demand than a parliament elected by and responsible to a socialist majority amongst the population. But what, exactly? It would have to be something like the Congress of Socialist Industrial Unions or a Central Council of Workers Councils or Federation of Communes. Possibly similar bodies such as these will exist at the time, the SPGB has stated that they probably will arise, but would any of these bodies be more efficient and more effective and even more democratic in controlling the State/central administrative machinery than a socialist majority elected to Parliament by universal suffrage in a secret ballot.

We await the necessary future mass socialist party as impatiently as others and do not claim for ourselves the mantle of being or becoming that organisation. The function of the SPGB is to make socialists, to propagate socialism, and to point out to the workers that they must achieve their own emancipation. It does not say: “Follow us! Trust us! We shall emancipate you.” No, Socialism must be achieved by the workers acting for themselves. We can concur wih Anton Pannekoek on the nature of revolutionary political parties when he said:-
'If...persons with the same fundamental conceptions (regarding Socialism) unite for the discussion of practical steps and seek clarification through discussion and propagandise their conclusions, such groups might be called parties, but they would be parties in an entirely different sense from those of to-day'.

We are unique among political parties in calling on people NOT to vote for them unless they agree with what they stand for. Contrary to rumour, the SPGB do not insist that the workers be convinced one by one by members of the party:
".... if we hoped to achieve Socialism ONLY by our propaganda, the outlook would indeed be bad. But it is capitalism itself, unable to solve crises, unemployment and poverty, engaging in horrifying wars, which is digging its own grave. Workers are learning by bitter experience and bloody sacrifice for interests not their own. They are learning very slowly. Our job is to shorten the time, to speed up the process." Socialism or Chaos pamphlet

This socialist majority will elect socialist delegates to whatever democratic institutions exist (and these may well be the equivalents of soviets or workers councils in some places), with the sole objective of legitimately abolishing capitalism. The Socialist Party are well aware that if such a majority existed it could do as it damn well pleased, but we consider that a democratic mandate would smooth the transition and we are also aware that the socialist majority might in certain circumstances have to use force to impose its will, but consider this an unlikely scenario. Contrary to claims that the Socialist Party are pure and simple parliamentarians, “capturing” Parliament is only a measure of acceptance of socialism and a coup de grace to capitalist rule. The real revolution in social relations will be made in our lives and by ourselves, not Parliament. What really matters is a conscious socialist majority outside parliament, ready and organised, to take over and run industry and society. Electing a socialist majority in parliament is essentially just a reflection of this. It is not parliament that establishes socialism, but the socialist working-class majority outside parliament and they do this, not by their votes, but by their active participating beyond this in the transformation of society.