Well, we are now a few months into the “new” Tory government and it is as bad as was expected. Brexit is not done and it would appear that rather than send £350 million a week to Brussels (a lie) we will instead be spending it on bureaucracy. While the Coronavirus is the major crisis going on currently, we should not forget that the Labour Party has just went through a leadership contest – produced by an election result widely portrayed as a disaster and so a crisis for Labour. This will be discussed anon, followed by a rare but old translation of a Peter Kropotkin article entitled “The Crisis of Socialism.” I hope this will help pass some time will self-isolating.
Well, we are now a few months into the “new” Tory government and it is as bad as was expected. Brexit is not done and it would appear that rather than send £350 million a week to Brussels (a lie) we will instead be spending it on bureaucracy. While the Coronavirus is the major crisis going on currently, we should not forget that the Labour Party has just went through a leadership contest – produced by an election result widely portrayed as a disaster and so a crisis for Labour. This will be discussed anon, followed by a rare but old translation of a Peter Kropotkin article entitled “The Crisis of Socialism.” I hope this will help pass some time will self-isolating.
Before starting on this, two comments on the current Coronavirus.
First, Boris Johnson is in hospital – probably as a direct result of his own dithering and contradictory messaging of a few weeks back. The concern about the impact on this is somewhat amusing – people seem to think that one person can somehow handle all the information and decision making required for a nation of over 60 million people! Johnson is at the best of times a lazy and incompetent chancer so having in hospital will make little difference – in fact, it may make things better (although looking at the rest of the jokers and ideologues in the Cabinet that is unlikely). I guess in a hierarchical perspective lacking someone “in charge” is a cause for concern but if you understand the limitations of hierarchies then it is far less so. At my previous work we did not have a head of department for well over a year but somehow we managed to muddle through – needless to say, when it came to cuts a few years later the new head did not consider his post as unnecessary regardless of the clear evidence it was.
Second, Tories have announced the writing off of £13.4 billion of NHS debt – which simply showed that they had underfunded it for ten years and imposed unnecessary and ideologically driven costs. The debt burden of PFI remains. The impact of Tory austerity (hidden as regards to the NHS by misleading rhetoric about “ring fencing”) and its top-down restructuring in 2012 (after election promises not to) has harmed the medical professions ability to respond to the crisis which has been impacted by the incompetence of the current government – hidden, as usual, by misleading rhetoric about being “guided by the science.”
So far the response of the state has been one of catch-up (indeed, the coffee shop around the corner displayed more leadership and initiative that Boris Johnson) and a self-managed society would undoubtedly respond better than what we have seen so far – although, to be fair, we do have more narcissistic incompetents in office now than usual. As the writer of the movie Contagion put it:
‘I would have never imagined that the movie needed a “bad guy” beyond the virus itself. It seems pretty basic that the plot should be humans united against the virus. If you were writing it now, you would have to take into account the blunders of a dishonest president and the political party that supports him. But any good studio executive would have probably told us that such a character was unbelievable and made the script more of a dark comedy than a thriller.’
Quite. Now, to “socialism” in crisis. This being in crisis is hardly new but as the current one in the UK reflects problems within the socialist movement – considered in its widest sense – and which really need to be resolved before it progresses. I have also posted my introduction to Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology and I would recommend reading that if you have not done so before as it puts the discussion below into context.
Still, we should not forget that it is not just socialism which is in crisis. Capitalism itself has not fully recovered from the 2008 crisis – in thanks due to the austerity policies imposed by various “pro-business” parties (at their head being the British Tories). For example:
“Putting shareholders first means less cash for workers and other stakeholders, hampering efforts to tackle in-work poverty and climate change. While the UK’s largest listed companies have doubled in a decade the amount paid out to shareholders (a record £110bn last year), the average wage in November 2019, measured as weekly real pay, was lower than in February 2008. If the £110bn was divided up between the 5 million people employed by the FTSE 100 companies, each worker would receive £22,000 each. . . . UK taxpayers earning more than £150,000 (barely 1% of all taxpayers) captured around 22% of income from company dividends” (Guardian)
Which means income is skewed to the few and so the lack of (effective) demand from the many is making capitalism itself fragile – shocks have a bigger impact. This is just one of many – indeed, the problems are so bad that even Tory PMs pay lip-service to mending the obvious issues (and they are so lacking in ideas they end up taking up policies they had previously denounced Labour for advocating). So, the many problems society face which are being exploited by the right – by the very people who helped create them – and the left (in the widest sense) has not risen to the challenge.
Before starting, I should note that there seems to be some anarchists (particularly in, of course, the USA) who take umbrage at being reminded – for example, by Wayne Price – that anarchists are socialists. Some of the comments related to this (provoked by Wayne’s article) are frankly embarrassing and hardly worth commenting upon. Others are more worthwhile, such as whether we want to continue to call ourselves socialists as that term come to be inextricably identified with state socialism. This I have some sympathy with – do we want to be still associated with something which had simply proven the predictions of Bakunin correct?
Still, the same can be said of almost every word we have used – communist, collectivist, libertarian, even anarchist (the only exception seems to be mutualist but, then, few of us subscribe to the idea of a market socialism). So where do we stop? No longer calling ourselves libertarians? (that has already happened to some degree) No longer call ourselves anarchists? (thanks to Rothbard and attacks by “the left” which dishonestly seek to associate us with them) Reject words like federalism, democracy, etc. because they are used by others in different ways? At least by calling ourselves socialists we stop the right from gaining ground by suggesting anarchism is just against the state – but, of course, we need to qualify it — libertarian socialism, federalist self-managed socialism, socialism from below, etc.
And, of course, it helps people understand when (if?) they read the classics why Bakunin, etc. talks about socialism as a granted, Kropotkin talks about communism, etc. If we do refuse to use these words, I guess we need to stop recommending people to read the greats – and be prepared to start using yet new words when others start to appropriate the terms we finally decide upon. All in all, I’m not sure how a constant retreat makes for good tactics!
Living in Britain socialism does not have the same public perception as in America – it is not completely demonised as it is associated with the Labour Party (which, on a good day, reaches to reformist social-democratic position). But, yes, we still need to explain we are libertarian socialists – which can cause some people to be confused as “libertarian” has been appropriated to some degree by the right here, too.
So should we just call ourselves anarchists and leave it at that? But then we need to stress anarchism is anti-capitalist as well otherwise you can accidentally seem to limit it to just being against the State. This was the outcome of the post-war period when many called themselves anarchists as it was initially taken for granted we were anti-capitalist but this, over time, saw what was taken for granted forgotten and then before we knew it “anarcho”-capitalism was linked to us by academics and others.
Overall, I think we need to reclaim socialist from people who are in no way socialists and those who are ignorant of reality of Marxism in power (under Lenin rather than just under Stalin). Let us be honest, our ideas will appeal far more to those who are already questioning the economy than those who think the only real issue is that billionaires are being taxed too much. You can have discussions on whether it is wise to empower the capitalist state or whether it would be better to seek reforms which empower workers by means of unions and co-operatives, whether we can really wait until President Bernie acts for us or whether we need to fight our own struggles directly. The Scottish Anarchist Tom Bell once made this comment:
“I have often quoted him in connection with Marxism and Anarchism. He explained to me: ‘When you meet a man who has not been a Marxist and who calls himself an Anarchist, well, he may be, he may be. But if you meet a man who has been a Marxist and now calls himself an Anarchist, then you know positively that he is one all right!’”
There is a large element of truth in that – not least that we can have those discussions far more easily if we remain true to our roots and history and recall that anarchism is part of the wider socialist and labour movements – even if we must criticise both. For the record, I’ve never considered myself a Marxist – although, for my sins, I’ve read a lot of Marxists in my time (and Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and a host of other deplorables – still, the occasion laughter provoked by a particularly terrible unintended stupidity makes up for some of the pain).
Below is a rare translation of an 1895 article by Kropotkin entitled “The Crisis of Socialism” and it seems as relevant now as then. It covers two main topics – the rise of reformism within Marxism and the undesirability of the original Marxist vision of “Socialism.” I will discuss the current “crisis” of “socialism,” namely the failure of the Labour Party to win the last election but we should not ignore the second crisis Kropotkin indicated, namely the undesirability of the original (“revolutionary”) Marxist vision of “socialism” as centralised, nationalised planning – which the Bolsheviks were so keen to proclaim they had kept true to during the Russian Civil War period. If we reduce “socialism” to that, this state-capitalism will hardly inspire many – which explains why many anarchist post-war just called themselves anarchists. Likewise, I cannot help thinking Leninists subscribe to this vision of socialism because they are really ignorant of the reality of Bolshevism in power – they just assume that centralism is “more efficient” and do not bother to investigate whether it was or not. From my research on the subject, the answer is no it was not – the evidence confirms the eye-witness account of Emma Goldman, namely that it was marked by bureaucratic inefficiency, waste and privilege produced by the power centralism placed into a few hands.
However, here I will look at the tactics issue – electioneering – and in terms of a “crisis in socialism,” we have the fall-out of the election result and the resulting Labour Party leadership campaign. In this Kropotkin’s piece is somewhat redundant in sense that no mainstream “socialist” party actually is revolutionary – in this, Bakunin’s predictions were prophetic. The word socialist is bandied about, but as Kropotkin noted in “Tous socialistes!” (originally from September 1881 and included in Words of a Rebel) this is used to hide the move away from socialism. The Labour Party is, indeed, the party of the “radical petty bourgeois” in terms of ideas and leading members, if not the general membership and voters.
There is not much to say, as a libertarian socialist, about the leadership campaign beyond noting that Corbyn should have let the candidates have a go at Prime Minsters’ Questions. So I will talk about the various pressures the campaign is showing on any radical party or movement tied to electioneering, not least the pressures on the party to “move to the centre” – as if that remains stable and has not been continually shifted by the Tories rightward in the past 40-odd years – as shown by the series of policies raised in the last election dismissed as “hard-left” when they were mainstream in the 1960s and 1970s and elsewhere in Western Europe today.
Somewhat ironically, the Labour manifesto would have been a boost to capitalism as it would have helped bolster elements of the system in need of support. Which says a lot about the mind-set of the ruling-class (or at least its public face) that they are so set against any change that they reject needed medicine for the diseases they are subject to. Ideology really does rot the brain. I should also note that many of its ideas dismissed in the election campaign have shown their validity now during the Coronavirus crisis – indeed, the Tories nationalised the railways at a stroke of the pen (although we should not forget that is socialising lost so that future profit is privatised). Then there was the need for a nationalised broadband and basic income, both of which would have helped immensely now if they had been put in place a few years back (and, of course, nationalised broadband could have been flogged off by a future Tory government on the cheap to their mates…). Anyway, that is beside the point – back to the matter in hand.
The arguments underlying the crisis are clear enough – the key is to “win power” (i.e., office) as you cannot make a difference in opposition – but if you have to mutate into Tory-lite to win an election, the good you will do is limited. Still, we have come a long way from Marx urging electioneering to produce a revolution… now it is vote for a less terrible alternative! Progress indeed… and in the long-term counter-productive, as can be seen from the last 10 years of lost elections. Marxism, all in all, seems the best way to make a labour movement reformist – you can build the structures, tactics and politics needed will still talking radical for a while (and so hiding the damage being done until it is too late).
What is driving this is the demonisation of Labour and Corbyn by the media. Given that the Labour Party does not seem to want its own media, it is dependent on how the mainstream media presents it – which is, in the main, in a poor light. As can be seen by Corbyn, it will latch onto anything (no matter how trivial or minor) to paint the party in an evil light. So it needs to minimise the negative headlines, which explains why the leadership candidates signed-up to the “10 Pledges” of the “Board of Deputies” on anti-Semitism, to use an obvious example.
I must stress that the response by Jewish Voice for Labour is spot-on (although perhaps I’m anti-Semitic because I’m agreeing with the wrong kind of Jews?) but I can understand why the candidates did it – to avoid a new “anti-Semitism crisis” being on the front pages. Yes, rejecting the “pledges” (demands!) would be the right thing to do given their nature (its bad faith can be seen from the demand to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “Working Definition of Antisemitism” and its examples, when it knows full-well that the Labour Party has already done so). Yet to do the right thing would have contributed to a false narrative (albeit one rooted in an element of truth, insofar as there are undoubtedly a few Labour Party members – as a party of hundreds of thousands – who have made anti-Semitic remarks). As shown by Jewish Voice for Labour, explaining why rejecting it was right would never have made it into today’s mass media (assuming that it was going to be “fair and balanced” in the real meaning of the term, which the bulk of it was not).
So this is the kind of pressure which shifts the party to the right, along with the daily pressures associated with parliamentarian politics (as ably summarised by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, for example). In the long term, it was not a wise but in the short term it was. It can only be combated by developing alternative media and, more importantly, encouraging anti-parliamentarian struggles and movements which challenge not only social hierarchies but also the assumptions in the minds of the general public, particularly those who take part in such struggles.
The problem will not be solved by simply a better, more charismatic leader – without a social movement, the party will constantly be under pressure to adjust to “normality” rather than help change it. It is to Corbyn’s credit that he did that – albeit in a limited manner (at best social-democratic rather than socialist) and one which did not have the base needed to combat all the institutional and media pressures it was facing. The big mistake was in 2017 when the Labour leadership proclaimed themselves a government in waiting… then sat on their arses waiting for the next election to be called (by the Tories who were never going to call on while they were scared they would lose under May!). But this is to be expected, as the whole point of voting is to elect someone who will act for you… a different perspective was needed, one which looked at things from below and this is precisely what electioneering does not encourage.
In her own way, left-liberal Polly Toynbee in the Guardian shows most of the problems we face:
“The frightening question is whether most voters don’t much care about everything that makes Labour party members of every faction keep on keeping on. Championing the underdog is in Labour’s DNA. The party itself is mostly middle class – even if they deny it – and inspired to do good for others, not themselves. That is a very different proposition from Labour’s foundation as a party of a mass working class rising up to fight for its own rights.”
The working class has changed over the years, if anything the proletarianization of society has increased with more and more “middle class” jobs becoming more and more obviously wage-labour: so, for example, we see university strikes over pay, conditions and pensions. While this is portrayed as being “Academics” on strike in the media (so, presumably, to get readers muttering about “ivory towers”) in fact it involves a far wider range of workers than that and shows that previously “middle class” positions are wage-labour now (and I should note that in terms of pay, every worker from the bottom to the top of the single pay spine benefits if such strikes are successful).
So talking of class in terms of income rather than in terms of position in the social hierarchy gets us nowhere. Similarly, we need to argue not in terms of helping “the underdog” but recognising “an injury to one is an injury to all.” That attacks on the weakness will, eventually, be attacks on everyone. Rising inequality, for example, lowers everyone’s social mobility – so individualised aspiration can lead to collective stagnation and crushing of dreams. In other words, solidarity rather than charity or pity. We must work to help everyone to help themselves – rather than seeing it a case of an enlightened government paternalistically helping the deserving poor who cannot help themselves. And we should be working to break down the barriers the State has erected to stop precisely that, which Toynbee ignores:
“The change came gradually: the party of Harold Wilson was divided on the question of the poor, as powerful unions mostly represented well-paid workers, and were often reluctant to champion the genuinely poor and low paid. It remains the case that most unions representing better paid workers spend little time on the hard grind of recruiting those in greatest need of collective action – fast-food workers, care workers or van drivers. Meanwhile, latest figures show that some 84% of people work in the private sector, these days barely knowing what a union is.”
Yet workers were well-paid because of the powerful unions – or, more correctly, the willingness of union members to take direct action, often “unofficial,” when it was needed. The mass unemployment of the 1980s and a series of draconian anti-union laws have changed this situation. So those who are in “the greatest need of collective action” find it extremely difficult to organise and take it legally. As I’ve noted before, the Tories place more hurdles on voting to go on strike than to leave the EU – which, I would suggest, shows they at least understand the importance of direct action and solidarity in changing perspectives and the world.
This is not to say that the unions themselves are blameless – they are hierarchical, bureaucratic and dependent on full-time officials. Even basic solidarity within the law seems too much for them – with unions advising their members that they should cross other union’s picket lines while the law stands non-members will be treated the same as members in a legal strike. The law is clear, although sadly some employer’s had more accurate information than some union webpages (and am I sure quite a few trade union officials were happy to see yet more anti-union laws as it gives them yet more excuses not to do anything). Yes, I know, laws mean little and are fluted by bosses everyday (which is why you need unions regardless of the legal protections) but if trade unions cannot even reach a trade union consciousness then we have a long way to go.
Worse, at a recent EGM of my local union branch someone actually suggested that because conditions had changed since 2008 (the last time we won an above inflation pay rise) because we now had a Tory government rather than a Labour one, striking may not be the best way. I still remember walking into Hyde Park as part of an anti-Austerity march to hear the then General Secretary of my union proclaim we would march next year and the following year until we get a government which would listen to us – ten years later, we are still waiting. Yes, indeed, we have a government elected of the party which introduced and continually built up the “hostile environment” against trade unions – presumably, we cannot take action until a future election returns a Labour government (so at least four years, probably longer). Then I am sure the same person will say we should not take strike action as this would harm the new government…
Kropotkin’s account in his Memoirs of the same kind of arguments in Switzerland spring to mind:
‘Then came a great meeting, hastily convoked, to protest, as it was said, against “the calumnies” of the “Journal de Genève.” This organ of the moneyed classes of Geneva had ventured to suggest that mischief was brewing at the Temple Unique, and that the building trades were going once more to make a general strike, such as they had made in 1869. The leaders at the Temple Unique called the meeting. Thousands of workers filled the hall, and Ootin asked them to pass a resolution, the wording of which seemed to me very strange, — an indignant protest was expressed in it against the inoffensive suggestion that the workers were going to strike. “Why should this suggestion be described as a calumny?” I asked myself. “Is it then a crime to strike?” Ootin concluded a hurried speech with the words, “If you agree, citizens, to this resolution, I will send it at once to the press.” He was going to leave the platform, when somebody in the hall suggested that discussion would not be out of place, and then the representatives of all branches of the building trades stood up in succession, saying that the wages had lately been so low that they could hardly live upon them; that with the opening of the spring there was plenty of work in view, of which they intended to take advantage to increase their wages; and that if an increase were refused they intended to begin a general strike.
‘I was furious, and next day hotly reproached Ootin for his behavior. “As a leader,” I told him, “you were bound to know that a strike had really been spoken of.” In my innocence I did not suspect the real motives of the leaders, and it was Ootin himself who made me understand that a strike at that time would be disastrous for the election of the lawyer, Monsieur A.’
This, recall, were the people Marx sided with against Bakunin… with this Utin providing Marx with whatever slander and misinformation he could. So some things never change – there are still those who will always place infrequent electoral campaigns above the struggles that can be – must be – waged all the time. More, the one aim of the electoral campaign is to get people used to others acting for them rather than encouraging people to act for themselves. Little wonder socialism is in such a bad state.
Sometimes I wish they would be honest and just say the following: “The right to strike is such a precious thing that we must never, ever go on strike as this will give the authorities the excuse to restrict it. As with all rights, the best way to protect them is never to use them.” And, of course, it would be churlish to note that the Labour Government of that time did not support calls to remove the Tory anti-union laws…
Likewise, even the collective action unions do these days are often individualised – the numbers of picket-lines are smaller than even the limits of the law allow. There is often no attempt to involve members in organising strikes or producing leaflets, posters, etc. Just getting them to vote (due to the 50% turn-out barrier) takes up a lot of energy and seems to be considered enough. And best not to mention the focus on individual case work, which eats up limited resources and energy on issues which are often best dealt with collectively as they at root due to pressures of overwork and bullying caused by managers having too much power.
Toynbee goes on:
“But in Corbyn’s formulation it sounded like an old fashioned notion of the masses against a small cadre of bosses. The shape of society has changed: it’s more of a diamond shape – the majority (voters) in a fat middling with the poor a (non-voting) minority at the bottom, and a top soaring away from the rest. This election posed the question: how much does that middle care about the poor? Johnson seems confident that they don’t care very much at all.”
Quite – neo-liberalism has hallowed out society to such a degree that capitalism itself is fragile and the assumptions of the system are no longer being challenged by the struggles of the labour movement. Yet Toynbee’s schema is flawed in-so-far as the “middle” is affected by what happens at the “bottom” (which seems to be slowly rising). We need to remind people that while there are differences there is just two classes – and most in “the middle” are workers. Toynbee again:
“Voters in four elections have allowed the plight of the poor to worsen. Visit any food bank, stand in line at any Citizens Advice centre and you hear heartbreaking stories of cruel treatment from a wrecked welfare state.”
They also let their own conditions to worsen! Austerity impacted on more than just “the poor” (and given how unequal Britain is, that is a large and growing number). Cruel treatment is everywhere – but many seem to think “equality” means spreading the pain across and below (never above). Everyone suffers from privatised railways and government mismanagement (how many billions did Failing Grayling waste?). The Labour Party failed to make this point strongly enough – and when they suggested the State should help the many rather than just the elite, enough voters rejected it in the right seats to secure a majority for the party which had run-down the country for the previous nine years! Ultimately, the fixation on voting is part of the problem. Politicians acting for working-class people may be considered – but working-class people helping themselves? Not an option – Toynbee seems to view us like pets in need of kind masters.
The crisis in socialism has existed for a long time. Kropotkin notes below the stagnation in Marxism, something Rosa Luxemburg admitted eight years later – and blamed activists like herself rather than the holy texts:
“If, then, today we detect a stagnation in our movement as far as these theoretical matters are concerned, this is not because the Marxist theory upon which we are nourished is incapable of development or has become out-of-date. On the contrary, it is because we have not yet learned how to make an adequate use of the most important mental weapons which we had taken out of the Marxist arsenal on account of our urgent need for them in the early stages of our struggle. It is not true that, as far as practical struggle is concerned, Marx is out-of-date, that we had superseded Marx. On the contrary, Marx, in his scientific creation, has outstripped us as a party of practical fighters. It is not true that Marx no longer suffices for our needs. On the contrary, our needs are not yet adequate for the utilization of Marx’s ideas.”
This ignores how “the practical struggle” pushed the socialist movement into the dead-end of electioneering and the stagnation in ideas reflected the stagnation of its activity – which became as reformist as Bakunin predicted. That is why so many turned to syndicalism – as bemoaned by Luxemburg and Lenin who both sought a path between opportunism and anarchism/syndicalism. Yet this path was precisely the one Social Democracy has walked down to get to… Opportunism.
It should go without saying that being between two extremes does not mean you are right – so the Leninist notion that its “revolutionary” parliamentarianism is right because it avoids “the extreme deviations of anarchism and opportunism” (to use Rosa Luxemburg’s words – I know, she was not a Leninist but close enough on this issue) is false. Yes, sometimes it is right – Malatesta’s critiques of both syndicalism and anti-syndicalism as well as anti-organisationalism and Platformism are valid examples of this – but as regards electioneering, the judgement of history is clear: it is the path to reformism. For lest we forget, even Rosa Luxemburg admitted that “the final goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the Social-Democratic movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism”. Marx’s genius, if you like, was managing to convince most socialists that reformist tactics – “political action” – was revolutionary. Indeed, history shows that Marxism is usually the transitional ideology from revolutionary politics to reformism (at best) for both individuals and movements.
We need to recognise that the movement rather than the goal matters. This does not mean the goal is irrelevant simply that it cannot be invoked to avoid looking at the reality of the movement. Does the movement then become the goal? Not as such, rather the goal inspires and infuses the movement – the struggle for socialism requires the applying of socialism within that struggle. And this cannot be done when we are utilising bourgeois institutions – so, for example, during the poll-tax campaign of the late 1980s, Militant called upon labour councils to not implement the tax but if they did then there would be no need for the anti-poll tax groups in our communities nor their federations! Of course, the councillors were never going to do that – thanks to the results of the electioneering Militant itself promoted as essential.
True, the anarchist movement is small both absolutely and relatively in relation to the Labour Party but the Labour Party is not socialist. Some of its membership may consider themselves to be, but I doubt this relates to anything other than reformed capitalism or, perhaps, nationalisation (state-capitalism). The few Leninists who have re-joined the party (even disbanding their own little groups in the process) aim for some variation of Trotsky’s ideas and, as I indicated in the Serge review, this is not socialist – although a few may have confused ideas and aspirations towards some genuine form of socialism. So size does not necessarily matter – more people being wrong does not make something become right. The question is whether you view purity as best and seek to remain tiny or whether you want to make anarchism have a part of the social movement which cannot be ignored, which can have an impact in developments.
So with the election of Keir Starmer the right of the party may seek its revenge and push the party rightwards and purge it of radicals – many radicals may decide to leave (I wonder if hundreds of thousands leaving will be considered as the “crisis” that hundreds of thousands joining was?). The anarchist critique of electioneering may now fall on more appreciative ears? However, we do need to present a real alternative and the following is needed I think:
We need to stress that even if you subscribe to the usefulness of “political action” – in spite of the evidence – then you still need to support, indeed prioritise, anti-parliamentary organising and struggle. The notion that we need politicians to act for us is very much part of the problem – and the Tories at least are well aware of the power of working-class organisation and action as shown by their anti-union laws. Without this struggle at the grassroots there simply won’t be the change in awareness which can be reflected in votes – ironically, in this the Tories are better socialists than Lenin or the Labour-right as they at least understand that workers learn through struggle and can reach beyond a trade union consciousness as a result.
There is a need for labour movement media. We cannot rely on the bourgeois press – even those on “the left” – to combat the poison spewed by the right-wing media. The CNT, CGT, etc. all had their newspapers while the British syndicalist revolt of the 1910s, for example, benefited from the Daily Herald which open its pages to the industrial militants – along with Tom Mann’s papers and the Voice of Labour launched by the Freedom group (and edited by George Barrett).
Then there is a better, more appealing vision. As just shown, the Tories are happy to nationalise industries when needed – ownership really matters little, control is what counts. So we need to raise the obvious idea that socialism means workers’ control. Likewise, calling for more council housing is all fine and well but hardly the end of it (the current National Conservative government may decide to steal that too, given it has found the magic money tree). So we need tenants control as home ownership is appealing simply because means having a home you can control – rather than pay a landlord. Replacing the landlord with the local State is no massive change. Growing up in council housing, I saw my mother and granny call the council offices “the factors”, that is the landlord – the actual social relationship had not fundamentally changed even if the rent was lower and the conditions better. Colin Ward discussed this in Anarchy in Action (pdf) – and elsewhere. As Kropotkin put it in 1895, socialism must become communist again – libertarian communist.
We also need to raise the issue of future proofing reforms. As the post-1979 period shows beyond doubt, what the State giveth (under popular pressure, for significant changes), the State can taketh away (when it feels able to ignore popular pressure). Which means stressing that even the so-called democratic state is still a machine to protect the capitalist system. It cannot be captured by the people for it is not structured in a way to allow that (otherwise it would not be a state!).
And, above all, we need to reject abstract revolutionary rhetoric and seek concrete activities which can draw people into social struggles and start to question their assumptions and conditioning, start to see alternatives. In this we need to work with people who are not anarchists rather than withdraw to our own ghettos. Which means, when sensible, working in trade unions to encourage mass meetings, direct action, etc. as just one example. As Kropotkin said, anarchism is a movement of the people – and it needs to be within the people to develop.
To end.
Shawn Wilbur put this Kropotkin article on-line first (“The New Era” and “The Crisis of Socialism”) and I have corrected a couple of typos. This was a subject Kropotkin returned to on many occasions and his comments are still relevant. I mentioned in a previous blog that very little has been published in English by Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. I have come across Part I and Part II of Socialism in Danger (1895), although on JSTOR (so access may be limited). As it stands, while it always useful to recall that we anarchists have been proven right time-and-time again, it does not mean that we are immune to the legacy of these predicted failures in the wider left – they are still around and we need to work out how to combat these legacies by building a movement which challenges them while building an alternative to them (an alternative which will include many of the rank-and-file of these parties while they still have illusions in them). So we need to recognise our numbers and consider how best to apply our limited resources, not least recognising how far we are from where we would like to be – and not even in terms of social transformation but rather in terms of a social movement rooted in direct action, solidarity and self-organisation these require and produce.
Until I blog again, be seeing you…
The Crisis of Socialism
Peter Kropotkin
The Rebel, November 1895
“Le Crise du socialisme,” Les Temps Nouveaux, 26 October 1895
Our friend Domela Nieuwenhuis published in the Societe Nouvelle of Brussels (March and May 1894), two remarkable studies of German Social Democracy: “The Divers Courses of the German Social Democracy,” and “Socialism in Danger;” and he follows these two studies by a third “Libertarian Socialism and Authoritarian Socialism,” published in the September and October numbers of the same review.
In these articles, based entirely on what has been said and published by the chiefs of the party themselves, and entirely divested of the element of polemics, Nieuwenhuis has demonstrated how the party, by its very essence, is forcibly brought to become bourgeoisist [the mere representative of the well-to-do middle class] to abandon its socialistic program and to become more and more the password, not of the proletarians, but of the radical petty bourgeois. Formerly when the Anarchists said this to their social-democratic friends they were treated as calumniators. Today it is admitted in the official organ of the party, by one of its most esteemed chiefs, Bebel.
In these articles Nieuwenhuis shows clearly that – to use the words of Bebel—“this defilement and this debilitation (Verwaesserung) of the party” necessarily results from diverse causes: the principles themselves, enunciated in their program of Erfurt; authoritarian organization and authoritarian principles, and finally, the economic basis of the life of the party, – the emolument of the editors and agitators, and the “little socialist trade” practised on a big scale, which greatly increases numbers, but finishes by causing the petty bourgeois to dominate. It follows that when Vollmar, the chief of the “right” of the party, went so far as to turn completely over to bourgeoisism, even to voting in the Bavarian diet the budget of the government, and that an important faction of the democracy, with Bebel at the head, wished to censure him for it, the Congress passed a sponge over it by saying that his conduct was absolutely in conformity with the principles enunciated at Erfurt, at that time the constitution of the party; that it conformed in every point with all preceding parliamentary practices.
In other words: the development into bourgeoisism was foreseen; it was willed by the very enunciation of the principles. The moral “considerations” were only a far-off ideal, an ornament. Let us add here the absolute absence of the critical spirit. For fear of destroying the unity of the party, all criticism is eliminated in advance. Whoever dares to criticise, be it the principles or the theoretic ideas in vogue, the tactics, or the acts of any of the “men of trust” who constitute what has been called “the future dictatorship of the proletariat,” is immediately torn to pieces, thrown as prey to the journalists and orators whose capacities and degree of advancement are measured very often (according to the just remark of Richard Calwer) by their “venomous tongues;” (they do not discuss; they preach or they insult; again one of the distinctive features of the party.) Also, while economic ideas are gaining in depth, even in the bourgeois science, under the whip of socialistic criticism, and new questions and new perceptions are surging forward – as it always happens with science under the official seal, the science of the party is motionless. It is arrested at the “Communist Manifesto,” which dates fifty years back, and at Marx’s “Capital”, which, whatever may be said of it, has had its day. Whether there be dissensions in the German Social-Democracy or not, whether there be divisions with outbreaks or no, scarcely interests us. The governmental socialist party is already divided into so many warring factions in France and England, that a division more or less would not make any difference. The German Social-Democracy is also divided – we are well aware of it: there are the Vollmar, Bebel, and Liebknecht factions, and still others. Exterior unity only is maintained – above all by the ever-renewed persecutions – and if this show of unity disappeared also, hardly anything would be changed. The essential thing for us, is this. This is, undoubtedly, a time of arrest in the development of Socialism. The time has arrived when the socialistic workers, after having been blindly ranged under this or that flag, put to themselves the question as to the essence of socialism. And this question, once put, they will be forced to treat it, to elucidate their ideas, to become exact. And we are persuaded, that if political events do not precipitate us too suddenly into the fiery furnace of wars and revolutions – which is very possible – governmental socialism, split everywhere into parties and divers factions, will be forced to change its tactics completely.
We see this renovation and rejuvenation coming, and we hail it with joy. We see, betrayed by a thousand various indications, the need of revising throughout the fundamental principles of governmental socialism penetrating further every day. And we are persuaded, by the thousand little facts which we observe in the movement, by the change of language even and the new ideas which permeate the socialist writings and discourses, that this need is making itself felt more and more. It only seeks its constructive formula to affirm itself in broad daylight.
Hence can we believe, can the workers believe, in this “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat,” which formerly inspired so many millions of workers? Vague formulas, which constituted the “Communist Manifesto,” which they accepted in its poetic generalization without fathoming it, and which we have seen translated in Germany by the “men of trust,” in France by blanquisme – government, in a word, by the secret society. Does anyone believe in it now? Incapable of bringing to a safe harbour a single party, is this lie of a dictatorship of the proletariat capable of inspiring the masses? No, assuredly no.
Again, do they, in Germany itself, believe in the popular parliament – in the Volkstaat or popular State – represented by a parliament of electors, who will seize all lands, mines, machines, railways (leaving the inhabited houses and stores to their owners, according to the formula, or perhaps taking possession of them also) and regulating from Berlin the laws and customs concerning the possession of land, the price of the possession of machines, their supply of raw materials and their manufacture, the carrying of merchandise, exportation and foreign commerce, sending out “armies of agricultural workers” to tear down hedges and make the steam engine go under orders from Berlin, etc., etc.? Do they believe in this, as Marx and Engels believed in it in 1848, and as it was believed in in Germany after the success of the armies of Moltke, when men new nothing of the war but what the lying bulletins said of it? No, they believe it no longer, even in Germany. Certainly not in the Vollmar faction, not among those who have addressed the peasants and who have taken good care to mirror to them the ideal formerly preached by the authoritarian communists. And certainly they no longer believe it in Berlin where they have had a close view of what a parliament is, what it must be from its very essence, what it would be again after a revolution. As to France and England, the people do not believe too much in even municipal socialism; and at Paris they are suspicious even of the socialism of a revolutionary Commune.
***
And in the constructive economic ideal, a revolution almost as profound has, for twenty years, been taking place among the thinkers. Twenty years ago, not understanding any too well the terminology of Marx, one might still speak naively of the grand discovery of “surplus value,” and win applause by saying: “Surplus value to the worker!” But to-day he who hazards this tirade is speedily engaged in recollecting that surplus value means the exploitation of some one by another; that the worker will have none of it, and that the question is to know “what to do in order that all things may be produced in such quantities, that each may have his necessities gratified at his discretion and luxuries to satisfaction – that which is luxury today becoming the necessity of tomorrow!”
Finally, in Germany itself, the belief in the popular and socialistic state is greatly shaken. Not only is the impossibility of it perceived, but the people commence to understand that since they have parted with the idea of “the conquest of power” in the actual State, they will be forced to work for the maintenance of the State in general – that is to say, for the maintenance of the phase of civilisation which, throughout all history, (the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire, and the modern empires) has corresponded to the destruction of all liberties, to the enslavement of the producer, to the formation of industrial and land monopolies – a phase which leads, inevitably, either to Caesarism or to the destruction of the State from top to bottom by the social revolution; and that, in the actual conditions, the chase after power must lead, has led, to the abandonment of socialism, to any and every accommodation with industrial exploitation, and to political and military servitude.
***
Well, these ideas, we say, have penetrated the masses. And this is why it is no longer a question of one simple division more, in the womb of the great governmental-socialist party.
Complete revision of fundamental principles is demanded. Socialism, such as has been propagated up to our days, must change its plan entirely, under pain of disappearing.
It must become communistic again. And since, in becoming communistic, it cannot remain authoritarian without falling into absurdity, it must become anarchistic.