An article attempting to explain Kropotkin’s decision to support the Allies in 1914. It shows how isolated he was within the anarchist movement as a result (the vast majority of anarchists taking a clear Internationalist position, unlike the Marxist movement). It also discusses how anarchists should approach wars between States. It first appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 4 No. 3 (Autumn 2024)
1914: World War or Class War
“we were informed that Kropotkin had taken sides with the Allies… But our devotion to our teacher and our affection for him could not alter our convictions nor change our attitude to the war as a struggle of financial and economic interests foreign to the worker… We determined to repudiate Peter’s stand, and fortunately we were not alone in this. Many others felt as we did… Our first step was the publication in Mother Earth of Peter Kropotkin’s pamphlet on ‘Capitalism and War,’ embodying a logical and convincing refutation of his new position.”
– Emma Goldman[1]
Anarchist opposition to capitalist war is well-known and consistent. Seeing the root cause of war in the exploitative nature of the capitalist economy and the interests of the ruling class, anarchists have argued that working class people have no interest in it and should oppose international class solidarity to it. In short, no war but the class war.
Yet sometimes this is denied and the basis for such claims is the First World War when a few leading anarchists – Kropotkin at their head – sided with their governments while the anti-militarism of the revolutionary syndicalist CGT in France evaporated in the face of German invasion. These exceptions are used to tarnish the whole anarchist movement. Lenin talked of “the few anarchists” who “preserved a sense of honour and a conscience” by opposing the Imperialist War.[2] Yet it is not just those with an ideological axe to grind. Historian James Joll suggested that Malatesta “quarrelled with Kropotkin over Kropotkin’s support for the war; and he remained a voice of the anarchist conscience constantly declaring that – to quote the title of one of his English articles of 1914 – ‘The anarchists have forgotten their principles.’”[3] Yet this article was entitled “Anarchists have forgotten their principles” and Malatesta made clear in its first paragraph he was talking of those who were “not numerous, it is true, but having amongst them comrades we love and respect most”.[4] Others talk of a “split” in the anarchist movement which obscures the numbers on each side and so exaggerates the pro-war position.
In reality, the pro-war anarchists were quickly – and rightly – marginalised by the movement. Kropotkin, like his supporters, had the ignominy of seeing his earlier writings used against him.[5] Here we try to account for the Kropotkin’s position, indicate its contradictions and why, while Kropotkin and his supporters clearly considered their position as reflective of their anarchist principles, the majority of the movement rejected it.
Before 1914: Proudhon, Bakunin and the Franco-Prussian War
The first significant libertarian analysis of war and its causes was Proudhon’s War and Peace (1861). A wide-ranging and much misrepresented book, it argued that whatever benefits war may have had in the distant past, today – and for many centuries – its causes were in economic factors. Whatever the words used to justify a conflict, its reality lay in exploitative and class-ridden economies and, ultimately, plunder. It could only be abolished by being transcended by means of economic transformation: “The establishment of right in humanity is the very abolition of war; it is the organisation of peace… We need PEACE today; the world no longer understands nor wants anything else… Only working humanity is capable of putting an end to war, by creating economic balance”. In short, “the end of militarism and the constitution of economic right” were interwoven.[6]
Proudhon applied this analysis to the American Civil War. War and Peace had been written before the war broke out, but in it he argued that the North would not go to war over slavery[7] while its progressive opinion aimed simply to turn the slaves into proletarians. After the war started, he was against both sides, discussing in The Federative Principle (1863) how the conflict was one over how working people were to be exploited – as slaves or proletarians. While obviously aware that the South was fighting for slavery, the North in his eyes had no interest in genuinely freeing the slaves and was simply – when not advocating their expulsion to Africa – seeking to push them into the proletariat. True emancipation required granting full civil rights to former slaves as well as economic reforms to abolish the proletariat, something that the Northern capitalists would never agree to – as shown by the lack of economic reform post-war.[8]
Elements of Proudhon’s analysis would reappear in later anarchist writings on war – that they were the product of economic inequalities and exploitation, were fought over securing control over wealth and that they could only be ended once and for all by a socialist economic and political transformation.
In his pre-anarchist days, Bakunin was a Slav Nationalist and some of his earliest writings were in favour of self-determination during the 1848 Revolutions. He also tried to ferment or join various uprisings for Polish Independence but their failure convinced him that any struggle for national independence had to be a popular one and, as such, had to embrace social reform. Simply put, he understood that the Polish peasants were hardly enthusiastic to kill or be killed to ensure the independence of their Polish lords from the Russian yolk. As his ideas evolved towards anarchism, he turned towards the labour movement although he continued to consider it a basic right that peoples should have self-determination and that federalism was the best way to secure it. In contrast to Proudhon, he supported the North in the American Civil War due to the specific horrors of slavery which Proudhon’s position downplayed.[9]
Bakunin’s writings on national liberation date from before and after him becoming an anarchist but all are consistent.[10] Like Proudhon, he recognised the economic roots of war:
“And what do we find beneath… all the hypocritical phrases used in order to give these wars the appearance of humanity and right? Always the same economic phenomenon: the tendency on the part of some to live and prosper at the expense of others. All the rest is mere humbug. The ignorant, the naive, and the fools are entrapped by it, but the strong men who direct the destinies of the State know only too well that underlying all those wars there is only one motive: pillage, the seizing of someone elses wealth and the enslavement of someone else’s labor.”[11]
Bakunin viewed himself as “always the patriot of all oppressed fatherlands.” Nationality (which was not equated to Statehood) “is not a principle; it is a legitimate fact, just as individuality is. Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principle of freedom.”[12] Federalism was the principle of the future as it ensured the free development of every people:
“the absolute abandonment of all that is called the historic rights of the States… Recognition of the absolute right of every nation, small or large, of every people, weak or strong, and of every province, of every commune, to a complete autonomy… Because a certain country constitutes a part of some State, even if it joined that State of its own free will, it does not follow that it is under obligation to remain forever attached to that State. No perpetual obligation can be admitted by human justice, the only justice which we recognize as having authority with us, and we will never recognize any duties that are not founded upon freedom. The right of free reunion, as well as the right of secession, is the first and most important of all political rights; lacking that right, a confederation would simply be disguised centralization”[13]
The major conflict of his anarchist days was the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1. With the defeat of the French Imperial forces by Prussia at Sedan in September 1870, he argued that the only way France could avoid conquest was to “give the French people the means to save themselves… through popular uprising. Indeed, the popular uprising is the social revolution, it is the fall of privileged France.”[14] In short, turn the imperialist war into a civil war, a revolution, by “break[ing] this governmental machine, without even trying to replace it with another, and to restore the most complete freedom of initiative to all the provinces, to all the communes of France, which is equivalent to the dissolution of the current State.”[15] While “patriotism commands the provinces to rise up and organise themselves spontaneously and independently of Paris”[16] this could only be effective if organised on a class rather than national basis:
“Do you perhaps believe in an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in the name of national salvation?… No, [such] hopes are illusions. What duty should the bourgeoisie ask the people to have confidence in it? It was they who unleashed war on France, through their cowardly indulgence in power; and the people, who understand this, also understand that it is up to them to now take in hand the affairs of the homeland… there are only two classes capable of this supreme movement which the salvation of the homeland requires: these are the workers and the peasants.”[17]
A key focus for revolutionaries was “the peasants, their organisation, and their reconciliation with the workers.”[18] Given that the bulk of the population were peasants, such a perspective was sensible. This involved expropriation of the land by those who worked it:
“Instead of trying to take from the peasants the land they own today, let them follow their natural instinct, and do you know what will happen then? The peasant wants to have all the land for himself; he regards the great lord and the rich bourgeois, whose vast domains encroach his field, as a foreigner and a usurper. The revolution of 1789 gave the peasants the lands of the Church; he will want to take advantage of another revolution to gain the lands of the bourgeoisie.” [19]
In short, “there is only one means of salvation: the general and revolutionary uprising of the people.” This would be “to return the initiative of action to all the revolutionary communes of France, freed from any centralising government and any tutelage, and therefore called to form a new organisation by federating among themselves for defence.”[20] There was no alternative:
“France as a State is lost. It can no longer save itself by regular and administrative means. It is up to natural France, to the France of the people to now enter the stage of history, to save its freedom and that of the whole of Europe, through an immense, spontaneous, all-popular uprising, beyond all official organization, of any governmental centralisation. And France, by sweeping from its territory the armies of the King of Prussia, will have at the same time liberated all the peoples of Europe and accomplished the social emancipation of the proletariat.” [21]
Thus when Kropotkin joined the movement, anarchists recognised war as being driven by exploitation, supported national libertarian and self-determination as well as meeting interstate conflicts with social revolution.
Before 1914: Kropotkin and War
Kropotkin addressed the issue of war continually and, unsurprisingly, reflected the arguments of earlier anarchists but also added his own perspectives which came to fruition in 1914.[22]
He penned two pamphlets entitled La Guerre (War), one in 1882 and the second in 1912, which expounded that the roots of war were in the capitalist economy.[23] As he put it in second of these: “The cause of modern wars is always competition for markets and the right to exploit nations backward in industry… for commercial interests, rights of exploitation.”[24] As well as his articles specifically on war[25], opposition to war and the recognition of its roots in capitalism can be found in most of his general introductions to Anarchism:
“wars for Oriental and African markets have become the order of the day since several years; it is now twenty-five years that the sword of war has been suspended over European states. And if war has not burst forth, it is especially due to influential financiers who find it advantageous that States should become more and more indebted. But the day on which Money will find its interest in fomenting war, human flocks will be driven against other human flocks, and will butcher one another to settle the affairs of the world’s master-financiers.”[26]
This was reflected in Kropotkin (rightly) refusing to take sides in the Boer war and the Russo-Japanese war as he saw them as imperialist conflicts.[27]
Kropotkin was not a pacifist and as a revolutionary anarchist, he recognised that the ruling class would not just disappear. Like Bakunin, he argued that arming the people would be the best means of achieving, defending and securing a revolution:
“Is the State even necessary for the defence of a territory? If armed brigands attack a people, is not that same people, armed with good weapons, the surest rampart to oppose to the foreign aggressor? Standing armies are always beaten by invaders, and history teaches that the latter are to be repulsed by a popular rising alone.”[28]
He reiterated this position a decade later: “Making national defence a national [i.e., peoples] issue, and not an official secret [secret des bureaux] – that is what was needed above all… It is up to us to indicate here what France could have done, and can still do, if the question of territorial defence becomes a national question. The inventive genius of the French people will certainly find a thousand ways to paralyse any enemy who dares to set foot on French soil.”[29] A popular response was essential:
“Understand that when a nation is threatened in its existence by a powerful military neighbour, it is the nation itself, not generals, nor a General Staff – of god-botherers, bonapartists, orleanists or just plain rascals – that is responsible for defence.
“Defence, in this case, must be the business of the nation – not the business of a clique.”[30]
Yet this was not all. Politics and economics were interwoven and empowering the people politically is impossible without empowering them economically. Capitalism caused war and ending was essential:
“French or German – the bourgeois is the enemy… The bourgeois – that is the enemy. And it is by overthrowing it, by removing its wealth and its power – by expropriating it – that we will overcome the German bayonets… It is by driving the lord from the land and the bourgeois from the factory and administration; by restoring the land to the peasant, the factory to the worker and freedom for all; by raising the banner of the Social Revolution, that we will overcome the foreign invasion.”[31]
He reiterated this position in 1905 when he corrected reports in a newspaper that he would take up arms to defend France against German invasion. Yes, he noted, he had said that but what the paper had failed to report was that he thought the best way to resist would be to “[m]ake the Revolution and race to the frontiers” and so he would defend France “[n]ot as a soldier of the bourgeoisie, of course, but as a soldier of the Revolution, in the free legions of revolutionaries, similar to those of the Garibaldians and the guerrillas of 1871.” The “only effective barrier to oppose a German invasion will be the people’s war, the Revolution.”[32] In short:
“Needless to say, I consider propaganda and action against militarism and war in general an absolute necessity. We must make this propaganda and action internationally as much as possible, and within every nation separately… we would be on the wrong track… saying that, since the worker has no country, he should be uninterested in the defence of France… If France is invaded by some military power, the duty of revolutionaries is not to fold their arms and allow the invader free rein. It is to begin the social revolution, and to defend the territory of the revolution, to continue it.”[33]
However, there was another aspect to this question – namely, the approach to take for colonies or countries otherwise subject to foreign domination. Here, he took a different, stages, perspective. His argument from 1885 can be considered as indicative of his position:
“we know now that ‘national problems’ are not identical with the ‘people’s problems’; that the acquisition of political independence still leaves unachieved the economical independence of the labouring and wealth-producing classes. We can even say that a national movement, which does not include in its platform the demand for an economical change advantageous to the masses has no chance of success unless supported by foreign aid. But both these problems are so closely connected with one another that we are bound to recognise that no serious economical progress can be won, nor is any progressive development possible, until the awakened aspirations for autonomy have been satisfied.”[34]
Thus national liberation came first, then once foreign oppression and exploitation was ended then the struggle against home-grown oppression and exploitation could begin.
Kropotkin also expressed concerns over the dangers of German militarism which grew steadily in the years before 1914. He repeatedly pointed to the negative outcome of the defeat of France in 1870 by Prussia:
“We are convinced that the triumph of Germany in 1870 has retarded the social revolution for many years.
“In two ways. The triumph of Germany was the triumph of militarism in Europe, of military and political despotism; and at time same time the worship of the State, of authority and of State Socialism, which is in reality nothing but State capitalism, triumphed in the ideas of a whole generation. If these ideas crib and confine the European mind at present, and even the minds of revolutionists, we owe it in a great measure to the triumph of the military German Empire. On the other hand, if France is inclined to slide down the slope of Caesarism instead of being the vanguard of the Communist-Communalist movement towards which her evolution tended, it is also in consequence of the disaster of 1870.”[35]
In the 1904 preface to the Italian translation of Words of a Rebel, he blamed the delay of the social revolution he had thought imminent in the early 1880s on this defeat.[36] These themes influenced his analysis and recommendations:
“Make national defence a national work, and for that to call upon all intellects, to [conduct] the great debate in broad daylight, instead of relying upon little secrets, always sold to the enemy.
“Reorganise the army, not on the Prussian system, but on the system of the armed people, borrowed from Switzerland and modified according to the needs of the country;
“Enwrap Metz in forts and mines, and do the same for all roads leading from Germany and Belgium to France;
“Awaken the confidence of the country in itself and seek strength within, but not in [the shape of] Caesar saviours, nor from outside;
“Finally, keep a little dignity in political agreements and contracted alliances….
“That, we said, was how we would have understood the ‘patriots’. Otherwise, their patriotism becomes either childishness or simply a matter of the circulation of their Panamist newspapers.”[37]
So here we have a mishmash of libertarian positions – the armed people as a means of defending a county or a revolution – with the fixation on the Prussian danger. With the outbreak of war in 1914 the tensions and contradictions in these positions came to the fore – and were resolved but not in anarchism’s favour.
1914: The betrayal of anarchism
When war was proclaimed in July 1914, anarchist papers responded as would have been expected, namely being anti-war. Rudolf Rocker, for example, published an editorial in the Arbeter Fraint on 7th August 1914:
“The workers were the only class who could have prevented the horrible lapse into barbaric bloodshed. A tremendous demonstration by the international working class before the outbreak of the war, and their firm, unshakeable determination to use all the methods in the power of the working class to prevent the sinister plans of the imperialist blood-politicians could have saved the world from this tragedy. It is now too late. Europe is in the grip of the red madness, and the working classes of the nations at war will be scourged with whips and scorpions for their heedlessness, for their cowardly vacillation at the right moment, when everything could still have been saved.
“Let no one try to console himself with the illusion that this will be a short war. Its ramifications are too wide. There is too much at stake. This is a struggle for supremacy in Europe and in the world. It will have to be fought out to the end.
“We have entered a period of mass-murder such as the world has never known before. All the wars of the past will pale before this, will look like child’s play against it. No one knows what awaits us. Those of us who will live to see the end of it will tell of experiences such as no human tongue has told of before.”[38]
Similar articles appeared in Freedom, Mother Earth and other papers. It therefore came as a surprise to almost everyone when the October issue of Freedom appeared with a letter from Kropotkin in it indicating his support for the Allies. After all, as one German Marxist had noted, in France “Anarchist and semi-anarchist anti-militarism was supported chiefly by the weekly journal Les Temps Nouveaux… and its numerous and often clever publications. These, like the paper itself, are for the most part based on a proletarian standpoint. They contain valuable material contributed not only by men like Kropotkin but by syndicalists, especially P. Delesalle.”[39] This letter produced a short exchange of articles on the subject with Errico Malatesta taking the lead in refuting Kropotkin’s arguments.[40] In spite of attempts by Kropotkin and his followers to close the paper rather than let it publish anti-war articles and letters, by its January 1915 issue Freedom was resolutely anti-war – a position confirmed at an anarchist conference held in Easter.[41] Other journals saw a similar exchange and outcome.[42]
Kropotkin did not deny that the roots of the war lay in the State and Capital, simply that the victory of Germany would destroy progress in Europe for decades. This was not a new position for he had suggested before 1914 the same thing as regards the defeat of France in 1870. Yet, as his own analysis of war had indicated, a defeat of Germany would not have ended militarism or war as both were systemic to class society. He downplayed his earlier awareness that the war was not being fought over “progress” or “rights” or “liberty” (or any other fine words) but rather markets, resources and influence.
This indicates the weakness of his argument that “[t]rue internationalism will never be attained except by the independence of each nationality, little or large, compact or disunited – just as [the essence of] anarchy is in the independence of each individual. If we say no government of man over man, how can [we] permit the government of conquered nationalities by the conquering nationalities?”[43] Yet nationalities, unlike individuals, are divided by classes and hierarchies and so the war he supported was being waged by the ruling class and Kropotkin did not envision a transformation of either the nation or the military. Nor were the various nations under threat of German occupation seeking to free their colonies making Kropotkin’s distinction of conquering and conquering nations meaningless in an era of imperialism. “Equality,” he wrote in 1916, “cannot exist without an aggressive defense of it.”[44] This is, of course, true (which is why anarchists have recognised the need to defend a revolution) but there was no equality in the capitalist States waging war – internally or externally.
Likewise, his earlier recognition that the enemy was the bourgeois class and that they could not be trusted or relied upon to defend France well disappeared. Rather than a popular war, he argued that bourgeois politicians, functionaries and officers should be supported and followed. He blinded himself to the military elite and the politicians being indifferent to the fate of the rank-and-file troops who were considered cannon-fodder. Similarly, his earlier recognition that workers’ control would secure more and better products to meet individual and social needs was forgotten and no calls were made to transform production. He limited himself to the hope that a change in the relations of production would develop after the end of the war[45] – if these were, as hoped, to result in increased numbers of improved products, surely the war effort would benefit from its application now? Yet that, again, brings us back to revolution.
Perhaps it could be argued – although Kropotkin did not appear to raise the possibility – that pursuing a revolution would weaken the resistance to the invading army and that, therefore, it was best to wait until the country was secure? Yet Kropotkin dismissed this idea when discussing the lessons of the Paris Commune.[46] Likewise, a people’s war in defence of the gains of a revolution would enhance resistance against foreign invasion as Kropotkin himself stressed in The Great French Revolution.
Kropotkin’s position in 1914 was that the State, its bureaucracy and army was best placed to defend a people from aggressors, capitalists and speculators were best placed to provide the materiel required and the role of workers was, as usual, to follow orders whether in the workplace or in the army. The class struggle was forgotten, which came to a head when he returned to Russia in 1917 and urged workers and peasants to continue the slaughter in spite of revolution he had long awaited having started.
Kropotkin’s fears of a repeat of the reaction after the Franco-Prussian war, his love of France as home of the revolution and a stages perspective on national liberation all played their part in his decision to support the Allies – and overwhelmed the anarchist positions he had advocated for decades. As Luigi Fabbri recalled, “the interventionists of 1914-1915 used to call us traditionalists and worshippers of words, and argued… that one had to revise one’s own ideas in the light of the reality of the facts, etc., But… they were unable to offer anything in place of anarchist ideas other than the empty, deceitful verbiage suitable for bourgeois democrats”.[47]
This has wider ramifications than just this particular war. It harms the anarchist case in general for it suggests that there are certain real needs for which State and Capital are better suited than free association. Likewise, if resistance to German Imperialism was best done by a regular army, why be against the Red Army? If capitalist industrial relations are needed to secure victory in 1914, then why oppose the Bolshevik regime’s imposition of “one-man management”? If it is because it strangles the revolution and so helps the counter-revolution, then why would it benefit the struggle against Imperialism? As such, Kropotkin’s views in 1914 strike at the heart of his anarchism.
Kropotkin, of course, viewed his position as being consistent with anarchism, a position – rightly – not shared by most within the movement. He also sought to link his position with that of Bakunin in 1870. Bakunin, wrote Kropotkin, “understood that the [French] federated republic was unable to establish itself immediately, and proposed defending the territory of the French nation against German invasion by utilizing local forces which would complete the desired transition from the centralized state to the federation of commune.”[48] Yet he was being disingenuous for Bakunin had argued that the State could not defend France from German conquest, only a popular uprising and revolution could. Kropotkin was advocating no such thing.
Kropotkin’s assumption before 1914 was that any German invasion would be met with a social revolution. This allowed him to avoid thinking about the issue, for defence of the nation would be subsumed into defence of the revolution. He did not consider the possibility that the revolution would not break out and, in those circumstances, what anarchists should do. In 1914 no revolution took place and he could not avoid the issue any longer: what was more important – national or class liberation. He wrongly decided upon the former. His placing of national liberation before social liberation placed him on a path which repudiated all his previous positions. That this national liberation was in respect of States which had empires and denied this to their subject peoples compounded a poor decision.
1914: Reaffirmation (for the many) and Isolation (for the few)
Many have sought to explain Kropotkin’s position in 1914, anarchists and academics alike. Malatesta many years later placed the blame on his love of France:
“Kropotkin’s old preferences for all that which is Russian and French were reawakened and exacerbated in him, and he declared himself an enthusiastic supporter of the Entente. He seemed to forget that he was an Internationalist, a socialist and an anarchist; he forgot what he himself had written only a short time before about the war that the Capitalists were preparing, and began expressing admiration for the worst Allied statesmen and Generals, and at the same time treated as cowards the anarchists who refused to join the Union Sacré, regretting that his age and his poor health prevented him from taking up rifle and marching against the Germans. It was impossible therefore to see eye to eye: for me he was a truly pathological case.”[49]
While this undoubtedly played a part, this is too simplistic. The reasons for Kropotkin’s position in 1914 are manifold. His position on national liberation (it has to come before social liberation), his explanation of why the long hoped for revolution had not broken out (the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War), his tendency to ascribe characteristics to nationalities (and so downplay their class divisions), his negative views of German influence (including on the labour and socialist movements) and his love of France (as the home of the revolution) all played their part. These overcame his own analysis of why wars occur under capitalism and the limitations of the State in defending against foreign invasion.
Kropotkin’s position was simply not tenable. It meant that he had to conclude that the State machine and its army were best placed to wage and win the war, that a capitalist economy was best able to supply the required materiel, that workers should do nothing to weaken the war effort and so simply follow the orders of politicians, capitalists and officers:
“Malatesta… said this war like every other war was being fought for the interests of the ruling classes, not of the nations. It would be different if the workers of France and Britain had fought for their countries, and had won, to introduce a new social order. Then it would be right to fight to repel a foreign invasion. But now it was different, and whichever side the workers fought on they were only cannon-fodder.”[50]
That the pro-war position and its contradictions flow from personal perspectives rather than anarchism can be seen from the rejection of such arguments by the movement and Kropotkin’s subsequent marginalisation. It is also significant that his position of 1914 was responded to by using his previous writings: “No better answer can be made to Kropotkin’s changed attitude than his own argument against war written in 1913”[51]
As Malatesta. Rocker and Goldman all made clear, the numbers of pro-war anarchists and syndicalists were small. In terms of syndicalist unions, it was the CGT alone which embraced the war (although an anti-war minority soon developed within it, true to its pre-war anti-militarism). In Italy, pro-interventionists could only secure a minority of the USI for their position and were expelled or left. Significantly, these were Marxist-syndicalists (many, although not all, later became fascists) while the anti-war majority was led by anarchists.[52]
Reading the anarchist press of the time, what becomes obvious is that there was no “split” in the movement. His pro-war writings were tolerated for three issues of Freedom and he then lost access to that journal as it reflected the Internationalist ideas of anarchism. From then on, he was reduced to being published in non-anarchist newspapers.
Finally, for the few who claim that Malatesta, Goldman and so on were unrealistic, lest we forget the war was indeed ended by revolution – the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918. Without these, the slaughter would have dragged on for who knows how many more years. Likewise, in all the belligerent States there were mass revolts and strikes initially provoked by the economic difficulties produced by the war: many of which reached near-revolutionary intensity (most obviously, but hardly alone, the Biennio Rosso in Italy). That it took years of slaughter and suffering to break the fever of war does not change the fact that revolution was, indeed, the only way for the war to be ended.
1914: The betrayal of Marxism?
Marxist attempts to portray Kropotkin’s position as typical of the anarchist movement flows from the fact that 1914 saw the vast majority of Marxist parties side with their ruling classes. At the forefront of these was the German Social-Democratic Party, considered as the jewel in the crown of the Second International and which the others across the globe pointed to as vindication of their strategy of electioneering in the face of anarchist criticism.
Yet the problem the minority of anti-war Marxists had was that those in charge of their parties and unions could draw upon a multitude of quotes by Marx and Engels to support their position. Rather than taking a clear Internationalist position, both never saw a conflict which they did not take sides in. When wars did not exist, they often publicly urged conflicts to be started (for example, during the 1848 German Revolution they raised two main points, “a single, indivisible, democratic German republic, and War with Russia, including the restoration of Poland” as Engels later recalled[53]). They also mocked the notion of self-determination and glorified the “civilising” role of Germany in response to Bakunin’s arguments for a Slav revolution.[54] Indeed, annexation was acceptable:
“The Danish war is the first revolutionary war waged by Germany. We therefore advocated a resolute conduct of the Danish war, from the very beginning… By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium – by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability… this right carries more weight than all the agreements, for it is the right of historical evolution.”[55]
Engels indicated in the 1890s his support for a defensive war if Germany were attacked:
“Now, if the victory of the Russians over Germany means the crushing of socialism in this country, what will be the duty of the German socialists with regard to this eventuality?… In the interest of the European revolution, they are obliged to defend all the positions that have been won, not to capitulate to the enemy from without any more than to the enemy within; and they cannot accomplish that except by fighting Russia and its allies, whoever they may be, to the bitter end. If the French republic placed itself at the service of His Majesty the Tsar, Autocrat of all the Russias, the German socialists would fight it with regret, but they would fight it all the same.”[56]
Engels extended this to France which, like Germany, had substantial colonies and so, like Germany, an obvious imperialist power:
“If the French socialists are not expressly discussing the case of a defensive war in which they would be willing to repel an attack by the Emperor William, this is because it is well known, recognised and accepted that there is no need to talk about it. There is not a single socialist in Germany who doubts that in such a case the French socialists would only be doing their duty in defending their national independence; there is not one who would hold it against them; on the contrary, they would applaud them. That is precisely the point of view in my article. If I were not proceeding from the view that, should there be a foreign attack, the French socialists would take up arms to defend their homes, the whole of my article would be absurd.”[57]
Given this, while the actions of the Second International was a betrayal of Socialism, can it be said to be a betrayal of Marxism? Marxism, in the sense of the ideas of Marx and Engels rather than their epigones of course. These positions, perhaps needless to say, were very much at odds with various resolutions of the Second International on war and the right to self-determination.[58] Still, the Marxist anti-war minority had a problem as these were the ones who had combated the rising opportunism within Social Democracy by quoting Marx and Engels.[59]
Ironically, they took a leaf from arch opportunist Eduard Bernstein’s book and argued that times had changed and so Marx and Engels could not be mechanically quoted (at least on the issue of war). Lenin – after some initial uncertainty on the specific date – came to the conclusion that a new epoch had developed, that of Imperialism.[60] This meant that Marx and Engels could be both right (in their era of “progressive” capitalism) and wrong (in the new era of imperialism). Thus bandying quotes around was false for “to ‘establish’ for all time the point of view Marx had held in a different epoch was an attempt to use the letter of Marxism against the spirit of Marxism.”[61] The utility of this position should not be underestimated for it allows the same position to be praised and denounced depending upon the needs of the moment as well as allowing Marxism to be absolved for the outcomes of it application[62] – outcomes predicted by anarchists.
A difference between anarchists and Marxists is their respective willingness support sides in specific (capitalist) wars. For Lenin, Marxists “have always condemned war between nations as barbarous and brutal” but then dilutes – contradicts – this strong statement by immediately adding exceptions[63], stating that Marxists differ from anarchists “in that [they] deem it necessary historically (from the standpoint of Marx’s dialectical materialism) to study each war separately. In history there have been numerous wars which, in spite of all the horrors, atrocities, distress and suffering that inevitably accompany all wars, were progressive, i.e., benefited the development of mankind by helping to destroy the exceptionally harmful and reactionary institutions (for example, autocracy or serfdom), the most barbarous despotisms in Europe (Turkish and Russian). Therefore, it is necessary to examine the historically specific features of precisely the present war.”[64] Luckily for Lenin he determined that “the historically specific features” of the First World War happened to confirm his anti-war position in spite of all of them existing while Marx and Engels lived (big business, colonies and imperial conquest, etc.).
This is the key issue. For anarchists, Marx and Engels were still advocating that workers support their ruling class in wars, that they fight each other for their masters rather than unite against their common class enemy. That they were killing or being killed for a “progressive” cause does not change this.[65] Yet Lenin’s caveat is driven by the need to show that Marx and Engels were right rather than logic or consistency as shown here:
“Whoever refers today to Marx’s attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie and forgets Man’s statement that ‘the workers have no fatherland,’ a statement that applies precisely to the epoch of the reactionary, obsolete bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, shamelessly distorts Marx and substitutes the bourgeois for the socialist point of view.”[66]
So what Marx and Engels proclaimed in The Communist Manifesto was not applicable then but only became so over half a century later with the rise of an epoch (that of imperialism) they never anticipated? Strangely Lenin did not conclude that, if his argument were correct, then “the workers have no fatherland” was a statement which precisely did not apply whilst Marx and Engels were alive.
There is, of course, an element of truth in Lenin’s position. No analysis should be applied mechanically. Individual situations differ and what may be applicable in certain times or places may not be so elsewhere or elsewhen. However, to discover a whole new historical epoch – which only became visible when the Second International collapsed[67] – takes this truism to ridiculous levels. This is not to suggest Lenin was wrong to oppose the war, far from it, simply that he took a very indirect path to justify an obvious conclusion simply to avoid suggesting Marx and Engels were wrong.
While Marxists had to invent a whole new “stage” of capitalism to allow them to ignore the pro-war utterings of Marx and Engels, anarchists simply said Kropotkin was wrong – and quoted his earlier writings to debunk his pro-war position. While it may be suggested that this shows the bankruptcy of anarchism as it does not need to revise its position in the shape of changing circumstances, in reality such claims simply show that being proved right appears to be considered as a handicap by Marxists. Moreover, the anarchist analysis had noticed that colonialism and capitalism had been interlinked for some time before 1914 and so had already taken it into account.[68]
In short, capitalism has always been marked by imperialism, militarism and colonialism and this informed the anarchist anti-war position from the start. The irony is that the anti-Marxist Kropotkin had embraced the position of Marx and Engels while the anti-Anarchist Lenin had embraced Bakunin’s position – and Kropotkin’s own before 1914. Kropotkin, like Marx and Engels, looked at each conflict and its context. In 1914 he analysed both sides and picked what he considered to be the “progressive side”, just as Marx and Engels had in the past and as many Marxists did then, before and after.
Anarchism and War
Most anarchists, like most Marxists, are not pacifists. We recognise that there is a difference between violence used to end oppression and exploitation and violence used to maintain these. We recognise that war cannot be viewed in isolation from the rest of the capitalist system, that it is the product of that system and the economic and political interests it generates and that it will continue until its causes are abolished. In other words, when class society is ended and a free socialist society created.
As Malatesta argued, “revolution must of necessity be violent, even though violence is in itself an evil. It must be violent because it would be folly to hope that the privileged classes will recognise the injustice of, and harm caused by, their privileged status, and voluntarily renounce it. It must be violent because a transitional, revolutionary, violence is the only way to put an end to the far greater, and permanent, violence which keeps the majority of mankind in servitude.” Violence “is justifiable only when it is necessary to defend oneself and others from violence.” Yet anarchists “are on principle opposed to violence and for this reason wish that the social struggle should be conducted as humanely as possible.” [69]
This informs our analysis and response to specific wars under capitalism. There are many different types of wars – for example, wars of imperialist conquest by the “advanced” nations on “backward” ones, wars between imperialist powers, wars between States, wars against invasion or colonisation. Added to this is the class and hierarchical nature of societies. So given all this, what should the position of anarchists be to war?
As regards to wars of conquest, for those in a neutral, colonial or invading State, the position is simple enough – opposition to the invasion or occupation and support for the right of peoples to self-determination. Class solidarity should also be raised and the combatants on both sides urged to unite against their real enemies, the ruling classes. However, it would be wrong to deny the right to self-determination just because the colonised or invaded country is not organised on libertarian principles:
“Colonization is a school of corruption, of robbery, of savagery; it is harmful to the colonizers as well as the colonized, and only benefits those who live off the sweat and pain of others. And true socialism consists of hoping for and provoking, when possible, the subjected people to drive away the invaders, whoever they are… The regime they will probably establish will certainly not have our sympathies; their social, political, religious ideas are the antipodes of our own.”[70]
Needless to say, people in the invaded or colonised nations will not be too bothered by what anarchists in other countries say. They will resist as they see fit and this is their right. That they may be fighting simply for the independence of a capitalist State rather than a free society does not change that. Anarchists should be careful not to let their recognition of the class nature of such societies unwittingly mutate into indifference to, or apologetics for, the imperialist power. Likewise, other States (imperialist or not) will seek to take advantage of any conflict to pursue their own interests – including national liberation struggles. America, for example, utilised the Cuban struggle against Spain for its own ends, occupying it before allowing a nominally independent client regime to be established. As such, it is unsurprising that America (through NATO) is taking a keen interest in the war in Ukraine. This does not nullify the fact of Russian invasion and the right of Ukraine to defend itself or seek the means of doing so. That any support from other States is for cynical reasons and subject to betrayal the moment its interests change (as shown by American support for the Kurds) does not change the fact of invasion or colonialisation.
This does not mean that the nature of the invaded or subjugated nation is irrelevant. Calls for the victory of, say, brutal dictatorships hardly reflect an internationalist, socialist perspective as it ignores the fate of working class people subject to these regimes. All that can be argued is that the war must stop and such regimes need to be overthrown from within, not from without (indeed, foreign intervention can generate support for a regime in its subjects). Otherwise contradictions arise, as shown by this Leninist:
“During the Vietnam War, we were not ‘pro-peace,’ for ‘nonviolent conflict resolution’ or for negotiations on the differences between the two sides. We were against the war of the U.S. and for U.S. defeat. We were for the victory of the NLF, the movement leading the Vietnamese struggle, despite its Stalinist leadership whose politics we did not support. We had no illusions in that leadership, unlike much of the left which apologized for it, or the Maoists and orthodox Trotskyists who considered the NLF to be socialist because it was led by Stalinists. We knew the NLF would set up a state capitalist regime that would deny all democratic rights and powers to workers and peasants in order to better exploit them. The Vietnamese nation had the right to determine its fate, no matter the outcome, or the undemocratic nature of its leadership. To overthrow that leadership is the task of the Vietnamese working class, not a task outsourced to U.S. imperialism, whose democratic signature is the millions of civilians it has bombed to death.”[71]
To state the obvious, the “Vietnamese nation” – understood as those who live there rather than a metaphysical concept – was not going “to determine its fate” because it was “a state capitalist regime” that did “deny all democratic rights and powers to workers and peasants in order to better exploit them”. While it is right that overthrowing the NLF was “the task of the Vietnamese working class” rather than U.S. Imperialism, it was not the task of socialists to be “for [its] victory” as this, regardless of assertions otherwise, expresses illusions in it. If the aim is “victory” for the NLF what would happen if the Vietnamese peasants and workers took direct action in their own interests which threatened that victory? So the task of socialists was to aim for the ending of American intervention and encourage the Vietnamese and American working class to overthrow its masters.
So in a conflict of imperialist States, opposition to the war and both sides. For anarchists in a non-imperialist invaded State, the position becomes more complex due to the fact that these regimes are ridden by classes and hierarchies. Fighting in a cross-class movement to achieve national self-determination will mean, in effect, maintaining those structures and simply ensuring that the indigenous ruling class does not need to share its power and wealth with others.
Malatesta, in spite of his general support of anti-colonialist struggles, recognised the importance of anarchists being in a position to pursue their own agenda. Thus he opposed Italian volunteering to fight for Greek independence in 1897 because they would be simply cannon-fodder fighting for the King of Greece.[72] In “defensive” wars, the obvious question is whether anarchists or workers can participate in the conflict as independent forces or whether they will be instruments of the existing ruling class – or future ones.
Thus a key factor for anarchists in national liberation movements is whether they – and the workers’ movement in general – can play an independent role which reflects their ideas and interests. The Makhnovists in the Ukraine resisted invasion by German and Austro-Hungarian forces in 1918 because they were also defending the revolution. As they put it later: “Whenever we Makhnovist insurgents speak of independence of the Ukraine, we ground it in the social and economic plane of the toilers. We proclaim the right of the Ukrainian people (and every other nation) to self-determination, not in the narrow, nationalist sense… but in the sense of the toilers’ right to self-determination.”[73] So it is not a question of resistance or non-resistance as George Orwell suggested:
“There is no real alternative between resisting Hitler and surrendering to him, and from a Socialist point of view I should say that it is better to resist; in any case I can see no argument for surrender that does not make nonsense of the Republican resistance in Spain, the Chinese resistance to Japan, etc., etc.”[74]
Orwell forgot that there had been a social revolution in Spain and resisting fascism was also defending that revolution. Likewise, he forgot that the issue was how best to resist fascism, that a revolutionary war would produce more enthusiasm than a war in defence of the status quo (while the “people in arms” won the revolution and stopped the fascist coup in its tracks, the Statist “People’s Army” lost the war in Spain). The anarchists around War Commentary were opposed to fascism far more than the British ruling class and argued for an independent class position as being the best means of defeating it.
Anarchists, in short, “refuse to participate in national liberation fronts; they participate in class fronts which may or may not be involved in national liberation struggles. The struggle must spread to establish economic, political and social structures in the liberated territories, based on federalist and libertarian organisations.”[75]
A class analysis rooted in internationalism lies at the root of the anarchist position on war regardless of how it expresses itself in specific conflicts. Anarchists should oppose policies such as conscription which limit freedom or bolster the powers of the State, encourage or support any expressions of class struggle which appear (such as strikes by workers and troops) and call for international class solidarity (expressed in, for example, fraternisation, defections, desertions, refusals to fight or repress protests at home) in addition to mass demonstrations, protests and action to put pressure on the States involved to end the slaughter.
In short, the right of self-defence and self-determination applies within a nation as well as between nations.
Conclusions
Given what Kropotkin had argued before the outbreak of war in 1914, it is hard not to disagree with Trotsky when he wrote:
“The superannuated anarchist Kropotkin, who had had a weakness ever since youth for the Narodniks made use of the war to disavow everything he had been teaching for almost half a century. This denouncer of the state supported the Entente, and if he denounced the dual power in Russia, it was not in the name of anarchy, but in the name of a single power of the bourgeoisie.”[76]
Trotsky, of course, sought to discredit anarchism as such by highlighting Kropotkin’s position as he opined that “Anarchism is an attempt to cleanse liberalism of the police” and “a shadow-caricature of liberalism”. That this shows nothing more than an ignorance of anarchism goes without saying, as does the claim that Anarchism was “represented by Kropotkin” at the State Conference after his return to Russia in 1917 when he said that “[w]e need a federation such as they have in the United States” – in spite of adding: “That is what Bakunin’s federation of free communes had come down to!” [77]
In reality, Kropotkin had left anarchism in August 1914 when he misused Internationalist arguments to support one side in the imperialist war, as shown by his disappearance from the anarchist press. His comments at the State Conference represented the logic of his non-anarchist position, advocating a political solution far from the federation of free communes he had argued from 1872. Those who actually “represented” Anarchism at the time were the vast majority of anarchists in Russia and across the world who were opposing the war and who go unmentioned by Trotsky: “Only a small minority of the anarchists had followed [Kropotkin] in this strange evolution.”[78]
For it remains a fact that the vast majority of anarchists took an internationalist position while the vast majority of Marxists took an interventionist one. It could be argued that these Marxists were not, in fact Marxists, but it is a strange argument that the minority of Marxists who took an Internationalist position represents its true nature while the majority of anarchists who did likewise represents the aberration. Unlike Marxists, anarchists had no need to discover a new “stage” of capitalism by which to repudiate the few who supported the war. The vast majority anarchists – including leading ones like Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and Rudolf Rocker – were anti-war and held to an Internationalist perspective precisely because of the anarchism which Trotsky is so dismissive of.
Kropotkin, it should be noted, came to his senses once the war ended and with it the threat to his beloved France. He critiqued the Bolshevik regime, explaining how it was harming the revolution, but at the same time opposed Allied intervention and support for the White counter-revolution – both in letters[79] and to the numerous anarchists and syndicalists who visited him to ask his opinion on the revolution. Like those libertarians, we today should not let Kropotkin’s error in 1914 be used to dismiss his contributions to anarchism nor anarchism itself. As Freedom suggested when he left Britain for Russia in the summer of 1917, Kropotkin’s “numerous Anarchist books and pamphlets will be read and remembered long after his patriotic backsliding in this war has been forgotten.”[80]
End Notes
[1] Living My Life (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 564-5
[2] “State and Revolution”, The Lenin Anthology (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1975), 380.
[3] James Joll, The Anarchists (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1969), 179. Joll includes The Anarchist Prince amongst his references and that makes the actual situation clear, namely that Malatesta reflected the vast majority of anarchist opinion and it was Kropotkin who was the isolated voice (George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumović, The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin [London: Boardman, 1950], 379-387).
[4] “Anarchists have forgotten their principles”, Freedom, November 1914.
[5] Mother Earth serialised Kropotkin’s pamphlet Wars and Capitalism (1914) while Freedom published “The Patriotism of the Governing Classes” in July 1915, an extract from Jean Grave’s Moribund Society and Anarchy.
[6] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, War and Peace: On the Principle and Constitution of the Right of Peoples (AK Press, 2022), 491, 508.
[7] In that Proudhon was right, for the issue for the North – if not the South – was initially secession and Lincoln repeatedly asserted that he would tolerate slavery to maintain the union. The abolition of slavery was only embraced later as a means of winning the war.
[8] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Slavery and the Proletariat”, A Libertarian Reader: Fighting for Freedom, 1857 to 1896 (Active Distribution, 2023) 1: 93-100.
[9] Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 20.
[10] Jean Caroline Cahm, “Bakunin”, Eric Cahm and Vladimir Claude Fisera (eds.), Socialism and Nationalism (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1978) 1: 22-49.
[11] The Political Philosophy of Bakunin (New York: The Free Press, 1953), 170.
[12] Bakunin, 324, 325.
[13] Bakunin, 274-5.
[14] Michel Bakounine, “Lettres à un Français”, Œuvres (Paris: P.-V. Stock, 1895) II: 82-3.
[15] Bakounine, 86.
[16] Bakounine, 87.
[17] Bakounine, 88-91.
[18] Bakounine, 114.
[19] Bakounine, 110.
[20] Bakounine, 133, 85-4. This, incidentally, refutes the assertion by Engels that Bakunin “in his Lettres à un Français… had declared that the only way to drive the Prussians out of France by a revolutionary struggle was… to leave each town, each village, each parish to wage war on its own” as the “important thing was not co-operation” so “precluding any possibility of a combined attack.” (“The Bakuninists at work”, Marx-Engels Collected Works 23: 592)
[21] Bakounine, 134.
[22] Jean Caroline Cahm, “Kropotkin and the Anarchist Movement”, Socialism and Nationalism 1: 50-68.
[23] The 1882 pamphlet was included in Words of a Rebel (1885) while the 1912 one appeared in Modern Science and Anarchy (1913). Both were translated into English, with the latter one being serialised in both Freedom (as “Modern Wars and Capitalism” in 1913 before being issued as a pamphlet) and Mother Earth (in 1914-5).
[24] Modern Science and Anarchy (Chico: AK Press, 2018), 329.
[25] A selection of these can be found in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 2 No. 3 (Autumn 2022).
[26] “Anarchy: Its Philosophy, Its Ideal”, Modern Science and Anarchy, 463.
[27] Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 222.
[28] “The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution”, Direct Struggle Against Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology (Oakland: AK Press, 2014) 121-2.
[29] “Le Césarisme” V, Les Temps nouveaux, 21 January 1899.
[30] “Le Césarisme” IV, Les Temps nouveaux, 14 January 1899.
[31] “Qüe Faire?”, Le Révolté, 8 January 1887.
[32] “Anti-Militarisme et Révolution”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 4 November 1905.
[33] “Anti-Militarisme et Révolution”, Les Temps Nouveaux, 28 October 1905.
[34] “Finland: A Rising Nationality”, The Nineteenth Century (March 1885), 527-8.
[35] “Caesarism “III, Freedom, June 1899.
[36] Included in Words of a Rebel (Oakland: PM Press, 2022) and Direct Struggle Against Capital.
[37] “L’Alliance Franco-Russe,” Les Temps Nouveaux, 11 February 1899
[38] Quoted by Rudolf Rocker, The London Years (Nottingham/Oakland: Five Leaves Publications/AK Press, 2005), 143.
[39] Karl Liebknecht, Militarism & Anti-Militarism (New York: Dover, 1972), 102-3.
[40] See Davide Turcato’s and Carl Levy’s chapters in Anarchism, 1914-18: Internationalism, anti-militarism and war (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), edited by Matthew S. Adams and Ruth Kinna.
[41] John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchism (London: Freedom Press, 2017), 315-6. This, incidentally, should be remembered when reading Peter Ryley’s lament (in his defence of Kropotkin) that when the Manifesto of the Sixteen was published “there was to be no open discussion in Freedom.” (Anarchism, 1914-18, 62). If the pro-war anarchists had had their way, there would have been no discussion either – and probably no Freedom at all. Rather than reflecting intolerance of the anti-war anarchists, it simply shows an unwillingness of an anarchist journal to publish non-anarchist views.
[42] Notable exceptions are Les Temps Nouveaux (which ceased publication) and the CGT’s previously anti-militarist La Bataille syndicaliste which became pro-war and continued to publish Kropotkin (including The Manifesto of the Sixteen).
[43] Quoted in Miller, 231.
[44] Quoted in Miller, 229.
[45] “An Open Letter of Peter Kropotkin to the Western Workingmen”, The Railway Review, 29 June 1917.
[46] “The Paris Commune”, Words of a Rebel, 80.
[47] “Revolution and Dictatorship: On one anarchist who has forgotten his principles”, A Libertarian Reader: Fighting for Freedom, 1897 to 1936 (Active Press, 2022) 2: 249-250.
[48] Quoted in Miller, 229.
[49] “Peter Kropotkin – Recollections and Criticisms of an Old Friend”, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas (London: Freedom Press, 1993) 260. This is echoed by syndicalist-turned-Bolshevik Alfred Rosmer (Lenin’s Moscow [London: Pluto Press, 1971], 100).
[50] Rocker, 147.
[51] Mother Earth, November 1914, 283.
[52] “In Italy, the syndicalist doctrine was more clearly the product of a group of intellectuals, operating within the Socialist party and seeking an alternative to reformism.” They “explicitly denounced anarchism” and “insisted on a variety of Marxist orthodoxy.” The “syndicalists genuinely desired – and tried – to work within the Marxist tradition.” While these “leading syndicalists came out for intervention quickly and almost unanimously”, the “vast majority of the organised workers failed to respond to the syndicalists’ appeals and continued to oppose [Italian] intervention [in the First World War], shunning what seemed to be a futile capitalist war. The syndicalists failed to convince even a majority within the USI… the majority opted for the neutralism of Armando Borghi, leader of the anarchists within the USI. Schism followed as De Ambris led the interventionist minority out of the confederation.” (David D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979], 66, 72, 57, 79, 106, 113).
[53] “Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49)”, Marx-Engels Collected Works 26: 120.
[54] See Marxist 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). That Engels mocked Bakunin’s defence of national self-determination does not stop Leninists talking of the “Marxist” notion of “the right of nations to self-determination”!
[55] “The Danish-Prussian Armistice”, Marx-Engels Collected Works 7:421, 423.
[56] “Socialism in Germany”, Marx-Engels Collected Works 27: 244.
[57] “Engels to Charles Bonnier mid-October [1892]”, Marx-Engels Collected Works 50: 15-6.
[58] It should be noted that before 1914, the Second International limited itself to resolutions denouncing war but never passed one on specific anti-war action. Libertarians such as Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis had tried and failed to convince it to back up its words with action by proclaiming a general strike if war broke out. German Social-Democracy took the lead in rejected such proposals while their trade union officials rebuffed the CGT and its attempts to gain support for an anti-war general strike (needless to say, CGT officials pointed to this to justify their pro-war position in 1914).
[59] Needless to say, rhetoric could not overcome the reality of Social Democratic practice – which the revolutionary minority, following Marx and Engels, supported – which produced reformism in its ranks.
[60] Lenin eventually decided that this new epoch – by a wonderful coincidence – arrived a few years after Engels died. Presumably timing it to the precise second Engels drew his last breath would have been a bit too obvious.
[61] Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”, 168.
[62] Thus, for example, the growth of reformism in Social Democracy was not the product of “political action” but rather the super-profits of imperialism allowing the bribing of the proletariat.
[63] Such exceptions are all too common: proclaiming Marxism as being inherently democratic while also supporting the Bolshevik Party dictatorship, being opposed to Stalin’s regime as state-capitalism while defending Lenin’s as socialist in spite of both having the same social relation in production (“one-man management”) and so on. Not all Marxists do this but the majority – the Leninists – do.
[64] Lenin, “Socialism and War”, 183-4.
[65] It is also hard not to notice how all too often the “progressive” side also happened to be that of their (Marx and Engels) own nation State or race.
[66] Lenin, “Socialism and War”, 192.
[67] Lenin, for example, did not notice this new epoch when he (like Jules Guesde and Henry Hyndman) supported “progressive” Japan during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War.
[68] Just as they had noticed the degeneration of social-democracy into reformism and explained it without recourse to something – imperialism – which had went unnoticed until that degeneration could no longer be downplayed or denied in 1914 with the outbreak of war and its siding with its ruling class.
[69] Malatesta, 55, 53, 57.
[70] Errico Malatesta, “The Anglo-Boer War”, The Complete Works of Malatesta (AK Press, 2024) V: 58-9.
[71] Joel Geier, “Marxism and War”, International Socialist Review Issue 8 (Summer 1999).
[72] “The Anarchists and the Eastern Question”, The Complete Works of Malatesta (Chico: AK Press, 2016) III: 60-3.
[73] Quoted by Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno Anarchy’s Cossack: The struggle for freesoviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921 (Oakland: AK Press, 2004), 377-8. The movement’s opposition to Ukrainian Nationalism has not stopped its modern-day adherents seeking to recruit Makhno to their cause, ignoring what he was actually fighting for.
[74] Quoted by Colin Ward, “Orwell and Anarchism”, George Orwell at Home (and among the Anarchists): Essays and Photographs (London: Freedom Press, 1998) 35.
[75] Alfredo M. Bonanno, Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle (Catania: Bratach Dubh Editions, 1981), 12.
[76] History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1980), 246-7.
[77] Trotsky, 676.
[78] Rosmer, 99.
[79] For example, “Message to the Workers of the Western World”, Labour Leader, 22 July 1920 (included in Direct Struggle Against Capital) and “Kropotkin’s S.O.S. for Russia”, The Daily Herald, 14 October 1919.
[80] “Kropotkin’s Farewell”, Freedom, July 1917.