A few thoughts on centralism and federalism prompted by Covid-19 and other recent developments. This issue reflects the Marxist and Anarchist sides within socialism – the former are proudly centralists and the latter are proudly federalists. And it would be fair to say that the former understand neither while being very secure in the belief that centralism is the best and federalism a terrible idea and “petty-bourgeois” to boot. This belief in centralism, I must notes, is often combined with complaints that their party is “bureaucratic centralist” rather than “democratic centralist” – and the regularity of these complaints in every Leninist sect does not seem to dent the faith in centralism.
A few thoughts on centralism and federalism prompted by Covid-19 and other recent developments. This issue reflects the Marxist and Anarchist sides within socialism – the former are proudly centralists and the latter are proudly federalists. And it would be fair to say that the former understand neither while being very secure in the belief that centralism is the best and federalism a terrible idea and “petty-bourgeois” to boot. This belief in centralism, I must notes, is often combined with complaints that their party is “bureaucratic centralist” rather than “democratic centralist” – and the regularity of these complaints in every Leninist sect does not seem to dent the faith in centralism.
What of federalism? I should note that coordination or cooperation is not “centralism” – regardless of Lenin’s assertions. Anarchists advocate federalism because we consider it the best means of achieving coordination and cooperation. This means that a federal system will have its federal councils which are charged with managing specific activities at whatever level is needed based on considerations of efficiency, effectiveness, technology and a host of other factors. The difference between a federalist system and a centralist one is that the latter concentrates every decision at the centre (often in a single body) while the former coordinates at appropriate levels in appropriate bodies.
So the whole point of federalism is to coordinate activity and so when Marx and Engels point to the Paris Commune’s “Declaration to the French People” and its mention of a national body as an example of “centralism” they really do miss the point – federalism does not preclude a national body given with certain tasks to fulfil, the reverse in fact as that is the whole point of it. Similarly, Engels portrayed Bakunin’s federalism as being complete decentralisation with no coordination at all which is a travesty of his arguments.
The current Covid-19 crisis gives us some examples of the benefits of federalism over centralism which are worth noting.
In America, the situation is pretty bad – in terms of infections and deaths, it is the world number one. Obviously there are many factors at work there – lack of universal health care, massive inequalities, precarious and low-paid employment (which means people have little choice but to go to work even if possibly infected), fear of being fired and so on – but one thing which has ensured it is not worse is federalism. Imagine if the Federal Government controlled the States completely and could force them to reopen, ignore scientific advice, and so on. Paul Krugman reports on a local version at work:
New York isn’t the only such success story. At first, Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, did everything wrong; not only did he keep the bars open, but he refused to let the (mostly Democratic) mayors of the state’s biggest cities impose local face-mask mandates. The result was a huge spike in cases [. . .] But by then Ducey had reversed course, closing bars and gyms. He didn’t impose a statewide mask mandate, but he allowed cities to take action. And both cases and deaths plummeted, although not to New York levels.
In terms of state-wide mandates, it should be noted that local businesses took the initiative and insisted on masks and other precautionary measures from customers. As Krugman notes, the response by the right contradicts their usual fetishism of private property:
And bear in mind that as long as I can remember, many shops and restaurants have had signs on their doors proclaiming “no shirt, no shoes, no service.” How many of these establishments have been stormed by mobs of bare-chested protesters?
A libertarian socialist society facing a pandemic would see similar sensible actions by workers in distribution centres while every workplace would not be dependent on the bosses deciding to introduce Covid-19 safety measures (bosses being an example of centralism in the workplace). Workers would have little interest in exposing themselves and others, so there would be initiative from below which would be far faster, and spread by example far quicker, than waiting for Governors to decide on our behalf as now. Needless to say, in such a crisis the various federated workplaces and communities would reflect the actions of their member groupings and make wider recommendations. So there would be a coordinated response but one which built upon local initiatives rather than delay such activity due to people in centralised systems being accustomed to await orders from above.
In Europe, the UK has the most deaths and worse economic slump and as one commentator notes:
Britain is exposed to dysfunction at the centre precisely because the state has become so centralised over the past 40 years. The contrast with other countries is striking: in Britain, local lockdowns are imposed from Whitehall rather than determined by local leaders according to local circumstances, as they are elsewhere, such as France or Germany. Swingeing cuts to local government as a result of austerity have left administration at a local level almost completely hollowed out.
Others, as I have noted before, have made the same point on the weaker response of centralised UK verses decentralised Germany, say. Yet this particular article takes a strange – but all too common – turn by suggesting the following:
On both sides of the Atlantic, the state has been maligned and undermined by years of free-market ideology that has long held government to be an obstacle to progress, rather than an engine of it. We are all paying the price of this foolish ideology.
So the party which has more and more centralised power in the hands of the central State has also “undermined” the State because it was viewed as “an obstacle to progress”? An expansion of State power by the Tories has undermined the State due to their negative views on the State? How is that possible? Yes, they have eroded local government but this in favour of central government and this may be the product of a “foolish ideology” but it has not “undermined” the State.
Others – like Paul Krugman – have made the same contradictory remarks, presumably allowing the rhetoric of their opponents get the better of the actions they list. Yet we need to look at the actions not the words and the actions show that these “anti-State” politicians are nothing of the kind – they cut back on elements of the State they dislike but they expand its reach and powers in areas they approve of. Hence Thatcher’s centralising mania in the 1980s:
Remember 1986? With a scratch of her pen, Margaret Thatcher ended the democratically elected self-government of English cities. She did it because some of the six ‘metropolitan authorities’, London especially, were daring to pursue their own un-Thatcherite policies.
This may be followed again soon with the new English Nationalist Tories:
Abolishing district councils could help bolster Conservative MPs in former Labour strongholds by reducing local opposition, a leading Tory has suggested to the prime minister in a leaked letter. (The Guardian)
And the Tories do have their eyes on the devolved governments in Wales and Scotland – particularly as they have shown up the incompetence of the UK government (that England is above the UK in per capita deaths shows how much worse it would have been without the limited devolution we have). The Internal Market Bill is just a taster of what we can expect in the future.
It is ironic, but not surprising, that the so-called “anti-Government” ideologues have systematically undermined all the various intermediary institutions by which people can protect themselves against the central State and its machinery. Yes, the “free” individual within the market at the mercy of economic power is also the individual alone against political power – in this case, the full-might of the central State machine and its forces of repression. Little wonder the propertarian guru von Mises urged centralisation post-1945 (and in-line with his pre-war eulogies to fascism).
I should also not that the outsourced track-and-trace system (deliberately mislabelled “NHS Track and Trace” by the Tories) is also centralised and failing while locally developed systems seem to be doing a far better job.
Manchester’s mayor […] has pointed out that local government was actually proving to be better at testing and tracing than Westminster and Serco’s outsourced and centralised operation: “Greater Manchester’s team had a 98% success rate while the national call centres managed barely half.”
It might seem obvious that a government in a crisis would work closely with local authorities which, even after the reforms of the 80s and the cuts of austerity, tend to have superior local knowledge and expertise to Westminster. (The Guardian)
Which makes me recall Kropotkin in The Conquest of Bread “that to bring their enterprise to a successful issue they must have the co-operation, the enthusiasm, the local knowledge , and especially the self-sacrifice of sailors.” Likewise, centrally imposed measures will not reflect local conditions nor get as much local support as locally developed ones – -particularly when the central government is renown for its confusing announcements, hypocrisy (one rule for us, another for them) and tendency to delay and dither.
Yes, I know that using examples from the current events (or history for that matter) are problematic for anarchy does not exist. Yet it is of note that systems closer to Anarchy – federal States with stronger intermediate bodies (unions, local government, etc.) and more egalitarian civil society – are doing better than centralised States. I think that my comments are far more valid than propertarians pointing to Sweden as an example to follow while rejecting all the social welfare policies which makes their Covid strategy seem feasible:
You never hear the Telegraph or the >Mail say that we need Swedish levels of sickness benefit to ensure that carriers stay at home and quarantine. Or Swedish levels of housing benefit to ensure that they aren’t evicted from those same homes. The knights of the suburbs do not insist that the hundreds of thousands who will be thrown on the dole in the coming months need Swedish levels of unemployment benefit and an interventionist Scandinavian state to retrain them. (Welcome to libertarian Covid fantasy land – that’s Sweden to you and me)
Although, I should note, that while feasible it may not have been the best – givens its death rate is far higher than its Nordic neighbours.
Likewise, it is always funny to see pre-capitalist societies being pointed to as examples of “anarcho”-capitalism – yes, these societies had anarchic elements because they were pre-capitalist and as capitalistic elements increased so did the anarchic elements decrease.
(as an aside, the Covid-19 crisis seems to be securing in the UK the right-wing appropriation of “libertarian” by the right – and associating that good word with anti-science, anti-social notions within an utterly self-defeating “individualism”. Suffice to say, genuine libertarians have urged everyone to follow the science and, to take just one example, the science says wear a mask for your and others’ safety so wear a mask. Don’t be a prat as your stupidity will harm others directly via infections or indirectly by overwhelming the health service. Yes, there is a danger of governmental overreach just now, but you can resist government with a mask on! And, talking of which, the notion that this can be combated by getting Parliament to discuss the measures first when it has a majority of Tory nodding dogs in it is pathetic).
So the Covid-19 presents some evidence in favour of federalism and I still think an anarchy would handle a similar crisis better than a Statist-capitalist regime.
Another example of the joys of centralism can be seen from proposed changes in education in the UK. Lest we forget what Thatcher did:
The aim of her premiership was supposedly to take the state out of people’s lives. Yet, during the Thatcher years, central government established tighter control over schools, colleges and universities than ever before. (The Guardian)
This is the context these discussions are taking place in – the education system is centralised and run to a large decree by the central State. This, however, is not sufficient for our “freedom loving” Tory rulers. Now guidelines have been issues indicating who and what may be used in certain classes (this is a taster to see the resistance and we can be sure they will be expanded if they government thinks it can).
I’ve lost track of smug Marxists saying how terrible it was of Proudhon and his followers to refuse to advocate State education — yes, according to these class-conscious socialists, we can rely on the capitalist State to neutrally education our children. In fact, the best way to secure a class system is to get its righteousness into the heads of those oppressed and exploited by it: in the Middle Ages, this was the church; under capitalism the education system plays a key role. An awareness of this obvious fact is shown by the Tory party – who appear to be more class-conscious than the typical Marxist.
Of course, no education is 100% sure. No system can indoctrinate everyone – but, then, it does not need to – and it cannot stop them drawing unwanted conclusions from experience. Likewise, a working class which can read can also read subversive literature. Yet education can help make all this harder by placing an ideology into our heads and accustoming us to hierarchy. Which means State-organised education is, at best, a double-edged sword – and the Tories have been sharpening one edge of it for a long time.
As such, these new guidelines should come as no surprise and due to the centralised nature of the UK education system are to be applied in every school in England (thanks to devolution, Scotland and Wales are spared this). This means that Schools are now for indoctrination, not education, as teaching of non-capitalist ideology is forbidden and the former Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was right when he said:
“On this basis it will be illegal to refer to large tracts of British history and politics including the history of British socialism, the Labour Party and trade unionism, all of which have at different times advocated the abolition of capitalism.
“This is another step in the culture war and this drift towards extreme Conservative authoritarianism is gaining pace and should worry anyone who believes that democracy requires freedom of speech and an educated populace.”
And as others have noted, these guidelines reflect authoritarianism in Hungary and “[b]elieving that an economy whose organising principle is profit isn’t humanity’s endpoint is a legitimate opinion to be debated in a functioning democracy”. It is worth noting some of its contradictions.
The guidelines ban schools from using resources coming from organisations whose expressed belief in many things, including:
“the encouragement or endorsement of illegal activity”
Remember that the government unlawfully imposed the prorogation Parliament last year and happily admitted that it would break international law this year. Remember that the Internal Market Bill, which openly breaks international law, also includes a provision allowing the government to break absolutely any law, absolutely any time, as it pleases. Remember that the government is allowing the selling of arms to Saudi Arabia even after a court decided this was breaking the law. In short, the government guidelines would mean that schools cannot invite individuals from nor use any quotes, texts or materials from the government, the Tory party nor its MPs.
For some reason I doubt they will seek to apply it that way.
It also bans those with:
“a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections”
First, it should be stressed that creating “free and fair elections” (in the limited sense of bourgeois democracy) in the first place required “illegal activity” and often “violent” ones (i.e., property damage). Thus, to take an obvious example, the guidelines mean that the Suffragettes will be purged from schools (I remember that at an anti-austerity march back in 2010, Ed Miliband denounced those causing property damage and used the suffragettes as a better example to follow! Seriously). The same can be said for the American Civil Rights movement — good luck discussing that if you cannot quote Martin Luther King and other advocates of breaking the law and using civil disobedience.
Of course, it will be objected that they were right and we all see their importance – yet not at the time. They were the militant minority which the “quiet majority” often opposed (in part, due to black ops by the State and propaganda from the right-wing – and sometimes wider – media). The right tolerate any victories by the oppressed they cannot stop and, while trying to reverse them, try to use them to combat current struggles to increase liberty, equality or solidarity. The hypocrisy is clear but they cannot be faulted for not understanding the nature of social change!
As for “abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism”, what if you seek to abolish capitalism by introducing democracy into the workplace? Or overthrow the pathetic democracy of capitalism with the genuine democracy of libertarian, federated, socialism? So attempts to increase democracy – by applying it to the private governments of the capitalist workplace – are, ironically, banned in the name of democracy. This means that John Stuart Mill, writer of On Liberty, could not be quoted for he came to socialist conclusions and advocated a socialism based on democratically run workers’ cooperatives as recounted in chapter 7 of his Autobiography:
In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. […] In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot [last word] of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice — for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not — involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist […] our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. […]
In the Principles of Political Economy, these opinions were promulgated, less clearly and fully in the first edition, rather more so in the second, and quite unequivocally in the third. […]
Oh, the irony – a genuinely great British thinker expelled from British schools because he did not adhere to what the Tory’s have decided are “British values”… but as Mill said:
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives […] I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honourable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party [. . .] There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power.
(as an aside, I did consider including those extracts from Mill’s Autobiography in volume 1 of A Libertarian Reader but in the end considered him as a liberal socialist and the space better used for libertarians who are not as well known as they should be these days).
The Daily Mail (I won’t link) reported on the guidelines as follows:
In Department for Education training manuals, teachers are instructed to tell pupils that the ‘cancel culture’ which has taken root at many universities – where individuals call for a boycott of a person or company whose views they don’t agree with, in the hope they lose their job or clients – is not part of a ‘tolerant and free society’.
Freedom of association means the freedom not to associate – and freedom of speech means that you can inform others of why you think they should join you in not associating with a person or a company. Also, I should note, that capitalism is meant to be based on freedom of exchange – no one can force you to buy a product from a company – so it would appear that the new guidelines are seeking to “abolish or overthrow” capitalism as individuals should no longer boycott (i.e., stop being a client or customer) of a company.
To use an apt example from the UK on “illegal activity” and boycotts: Paul Stephenson walked into a pub and ordered a pint in 1964 and refused to leave when ordered to by its manager. Why? Because he was black and “it was legal in the UK to refuse service on the basis of someone’s skin colour”. His one-man sit-in followed on from “from leading a successful boycott of the city’s bus company” in Bristol because it did not employ black or Asian workers (a position shamefully backed by the trade union). His actions helped change the law and made it illegal to discriminate but according to the government and the Daily Mail, his actions are not part of a “tolerant and free society” and school pupils should not hear him speak.
This is unsurprising, for the Tories are well aware of the power of Direct Action and seek to make it illegal at every turn – see the anti-union laws which make it near impossible to strike and which means that education unions cannot even advise their members to teach on-line rather than face-to-face if their employer’s demand it (this would require being in a legal dispute and by the time the process was complete, everyone involved would have caught a life-threatening disease!). Yes, the unions should be supporting their members but that is the legal situation and so weighing heavy on decisions – and there is no rank-and-file movements around to raise an alternative.
So if we take this position seriously then the Department of Education is denying freedom of exchange (capitalism!), freedom of speech and freedom of association while also banning itself along with members of the governing party from schools. Moreover, it is the end of British – world! – history and its replacement with a government approved version which is hard to square with a “free society”.
I understand why they are doing it — they think young people not voting Tory is due to lefty teachers and academics brainwashing them. Ignoring that teachers are bound by the Tories own National Curriculum, the reason why young people do not vote Tory is because the Tories have used legislation to make things worse for them for the last decade (and longer!). Experience and thought can get through any curriculum.
As for anything “taking root” in universities, this is so much nonsense – a bugbear for the right so they can use the State to close down views they do not like (in the name of “freedom” of course). At best, it is a few isolated examples of stupidities. At worse, inventions on the level of “Winterval” and “the war on Christmas”. Sadly, repetition seems to ensure inventions become real in many people’s heads – and so many on the right (particularly readers of its press) are now arguing that to ensure “unbiased” education teachers should repeat without question what the government tells them to say… so the national curriculum is not enough, more State control is needed in, presumably, the name of “freedom”. Ultimately, as with the whole statue debate, the right don’t want an honest account of history for this would be considered “biased” in their eyes.
Talking of which, perhaps needless to say the right-wing “The Free Speech Union” did not feel this development was worth commenting upon (at least as far as I could see). The government banning the use of resources from groups it does not like appears to be fine by them as there was no unconditional condemnation of it – could it be that they are only flustered when it’s the right which appears to be under threat? And lest we forget, this “threat” is not by government decree but rather from other members of the public who do not want to offer a platform and other resources to those who seek to oppress others.
As far as “cancel culture” goes, well, employers have that power now – they simply fire anyone having an opinion (say on trade unions or workplace democracy) they don’t like (Stephenson lost his job as a supply teacher for being too “controversial”, for example). Likewise, the media barons have that power now, they simply refuse to let left-wing voices grace their pages – and soon, it appears, the BBC as well (and “left-wing” seems to mean anyone to the left of their brand of far-right dogma). This closing-down of dissident voices will, of course, be done under the name of “balance” and “traditional British values” (as defined by them, of course, so servility towards our betters will be at the top). So in terms of “cancel culture”, those with political and economic power practice it all the time – the objection seems to be when others object to the views power wishes to promote. So “freedom of speech” for the right, silence for the rest of us is the aim.
So the current educational guidelines show the danger of centralism well. The assumption in favour of centralism by many on the left is, I think, that progressive views will always predominate but that is rarely true – when the State is forced by public protest to act in a humane way, it takes constant vigilance to keep it so and centralism undermines the public engagement required to do this. So support for centralism based on fears that creationism, for example, could be taught in a few schools ignores the fact that due to the apathy centralism encourages it can come about that the central authority gets eventually taken over by reactionaries (who win just a big enough minority to gain a majority in government) who ensure evolution gets labelled “just a theory” and the “controversy” gets taught in every school in the land. Rocker was right:
The principle of political centralism is openly opposed to all laws of social progress and of natural evolution. It lies in the nature of things that every cultural advance is first achieved within a small group and only gradually finds adoption by society as a whole. Therefore, political decentralisation is the best guaranty for the unrestricted possibilities of new experiments. For such an environment each community is given the opportunity to carry through the things which it is capable of accomplishing itself without imposing them on others. Practical experimentation is the parent of every development in society. So long as each district is capable of effecting the changes within its own sphere which its citizens deem necessary, the example of each becomes a fructifying influence on the other parts of the community since they will have the chance to weigh the advantages accruing from them without being forced to adopt them if they are not convinced of their usefulness. The result is that progressive communities serve the others as models, a result justified by the natural evolution of things.
In a strongly centralised state, the situation is entirely reversed and the best system of representation can do nothing to change that. The representatives of a certain district may have the overwhelming majority of a certain district on his [or her] side, but in the legislative assembly of the central state, he [or she] will remain in the minority, for it lies in the nature of things that in such a body not the intellectually most active but the most backward districts represent the majority. Since the individual district has indeed the right to give expression of its opinion, but can effect no changes without the consent of the central government, the most progressive districts will be condemned to stagnate while the most backward districts will set the norm. (Pioneers of American Freedom, 16-7)
Likewise, Trotsky once suggested in an interview that the local control suggested by Kropotkin would result in, say, the miners of the Donbas considering the mines as their own and exploiting the rest of the nation. Fine, I agree, that is a possibility but Trotsky was completely oblivious that a centralised system would create bureaucrats who would view the whole nation as a resource to exploit – and be harder to combat than a group of fellow workers in a specific location. History shows how wrong Trotsky was and how right Kropotkin was:
The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and modern history (Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, modern European states grown up on the ruins of the autonomous cities), the instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economical life — the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on — as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions, defence of the territory, etc.), would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and
Talking of which, Engels pointed to certain bourgeois States to show “how we can manage without a bureaucracy” without ever noting that these States did not do very much (beyond defend property rights and power) and failed to wonder what would happen if these States expanded their activities into more and more fields of human activity (such as the economy). History provided an answer — an increase in bureaucracy in line with the increase in functions. This only comes as a surprise if they assume that adding to the State’s functions need not increase the number of State employees. The opposite is the case as Kropotkin also noted:
It is often thought that it would be easy for a revolution to economise in the administration by reducing the number of officials. This was certainly not the case during the Revolution of 1789–1793, which with each year extended the functions of the State, over instruction, judges paid by the State, the administration paid out of the taxes, an immense army, and so forth.
The Bolshevik Revolution confirmed that comment. And I should note that Engels made no mention of the Paris Commune in that text but that “the form of a democratic republic […] is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great French Revolution has already shown.” As I indicate elsewhere, this is a significant admission and exposes Lenin’s deliberate confusing of smashing the State and smashing the State machine.
So current affairs should cause centralists some pause of thought – although there is still the claim that with the right people in charge everything would be fine. Perhaps it would be better than the shambling, lying, lazy, incompetents we are currently lumbered with, but we should not be dependent on lady-luck smiling on us.
And, anyway, history shows us examples where having “the right people” in charge made little difference.
The Paris Commune happened in spite of Marx, as head of the International, previously warning against such revolts (and instead suggested the French workers prepare to take part in elections). If the International had been organised in a “democratic centralist” fashion then the Paris Commune would never have taken place and Lenin would have had nothing to suggest that the social democrats had mislead us all on what Marx “really” thought… by reprinting his texts.
The February Revolution in 1917 happened in spite of the Bolsheviks urging women workers not to strike. If the Russian labour movement had been organised in an ideal centralised fashion then the Tsar would have remained in place (at best the protests and strikes may have been allowed once the Bolshevik central committee had been contacted and a decision sent but the delay would have been significant and the moment lost).
The October Revolution in the form it took – the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in the name of the soviets – obviously would not have happened in that way without Lenin and Trotsky but without autonomous class struggle occurring outside party control, it would never have been in a position to seize power (although some kind of insurrection would have been likely, as shown by the July days). Trotsky, it should be noted, suggested on at least one occasion that without Lenin the Bolshevik seizure of power would not have been possible but Lenin spent a lot of time fighting the machine of his own party and, at crucial times, threatening to break party rules and discipline to get how own way.
So as evidence for centralism, 1917 is mixed (and best not discuss 1918 onwards…) and while this conflict is often mentioned by Leninists in their accounts of 1917, they rarely draw any conclusions from it and continue to advocate the same centralism which produces the same bureaucracy today as then. The notion that centralism is best is based on a whole-host of dubious assumptions, a point well made by syndicalist William Z Foster (before he became a Leninist and then Stalinist – see “The Tragedy of Fosterism”, Review essay by Jon Bekken, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, #31, Spring 2001):
They claim that if the workers were organized into strongly centralized unions and under the direct control of an all-powerful executive board, this union scabbery would cease. Their theory is that this beneficent executive board — which in some miraculous way is going to be revolutionary, no matter what the condition of the rank and file — would always force all the unions out in support of all strikers, however few they might be. This absurd remedy flows naturally from the Industrial Unionists shallow diagnosis of the cause of union scabbery. Even the most cursory examination of labor history will show that while occasionally organized workers, through pure ignorance, will scab on each other, by far the greater part of union scabbery is due not to the autonomy of the unions, but to the lack of it; to the dictatorial powers of the officials of the various national unions. These officials, either through the innate conservatism of officialdom, fear of jeopardizing the rich funds in their care or down-right treachery, ordinarily use their great powers to prevent strikes or to drive their unions’ members back to work after they have struck in concert with other workers.
Indeed it is almost the regular order of procedure for the rank and file of craft unions, during big strikes, to surge in revolt in support of the striking workers, and for the union officials to crush this revolt — often with the most unscrupulous means. Every big American strike produces instances of this repression of the rank and file. The present newspaper strike in Chicago furnishes a couple of typical ones. The stereotypers pooled their grievances with the pressmen and struck. For this their local union was immediately expelled from the national union by the general officers on the pretense that it had violated its contract. As a companion feat to this, Jim Lynch, the notorious head of the International Typographical Union, personally prevented the printers from also joining the strike.
The evil of centralized power in labor unions is by no means confined to the American labor movement. It is a world-wide phenomenon. For instance, the great English working-class revolt of the past couple of years has occurred in the face of the most determined opposition of the union leaders, who, instead of being in the van of the movement, as they should be according to the Industrial Unionist theory, are being dragged along, willy nilly, in its wake. The immense German labor unions also give abundant proofs of the evils of centralization. These unions are the nearest approach in form to the Industrial Unionist ideal of any unions in the world. They are all ruled by powerful executive boards — the local unions being destitute of the right to strike at will, raise strike funds, or even to elect their own local officers. The result is that they rarely go on strike, their union dictators simply refusing to allow them to do so. The type of ultra revolutionary executive board, dreamed of by the I. W. W., which will force the workers to strike together, has not developed in practice.
Syndicalists have noted this universal baneful influence of centralized power in labor unions and have learned that if the workers are ever to strike together they must first conquer the right to strike from their labor union officials. Therefore, it is a fundamental principle with them the world over that their unions be decentralized and that the workers alone have the power to decide on the strike.
All very true – and more than confirmed by the Bolshevik party and regime, incidentally. Which raises a question on whether to quote turncoats or not? After all, Foster’s later Bolshevism and Stalinism is simply embarrassing and makes it slightly shameful he ever were an anarchist and syndicalist (the same can be said of my fellow Glaswegian, Willie Gallacher who was in the pre-war Glasgow Anarchist Group and a leading syndicalist and then anti-parliamentarian communist). Emma Goldman showed how far he had fallen in Living My Life:
The Communist response to my volume on Russia [My Disillusionment in Russia] could have been foreseen, of course. William Z. Foster’s “review” was to the effect that everybody in Moscow was aware that Emma Goldman was receiving support from the American Secret Service Department. Mr. Foster knew that I should not have lasted a day in Russia if the Cheka had believed such a thing. Other Communists, who wrote as kindly as Mr. Foster, also knew that I had not been bought. There was only one who had the courage to say so: Rene Marchand, of the French group in Moscow, who stated in his review that, though he regretted my misguided judgment, he could not believe that my stand against Soviet Russia was motivated by material reasons.
He, like Gallacher, later wrote similar lies against the Trotskyists on orders from Moscow – yet both rejected anarchism and so presumably “the best of the anarchists” – but why Trotskyists should point to them as they became Stalinists is beyond me.
This is a question which I sometimes ponder: can we — should we — quote those who broke with anarchism? After all, if you quote Murray Bookchin (to use some who remained a libertarian) then someone may say “well, he saw through that nonsense, didn’t he?” So, if he was wrong later, why was he right before? Surely given all his years within the movement, that shows anarchism is wrong? Well, obviously, no to both – in Bookchin’s case, what he actually argued for did not change that much and his latter attacks are easily refuted by his earlier writings.
Some of the turn-coats we can do without – Victor Serge, for example, as being an elitist-individualist anarchist makes him unlikely to be turned to by modern activists who known anything about his actual ideas (rather than the myth he helped create and echoed by neo-Trotskyists ever since) and his being pointed to by Leninists today just shows their weak to inexistent grasp of anarchism. But people like Bookchin who wrote some anarchist excellent works. He, I must admit, is harder. I tend not to quote him much these days but I still recognise his contribution (even if flawed in parts). Shame that he destroyed his own legacy in the last decade of his life by not only breaking with anarchist by writing articles and books attacking it in ways he must have known were untrue.
Regardless of this, Foster was right then – centralisation is not the cure-all that its advocates assert. Bookchin’s comments on vanguard parties (as quoted in AFAQ) are applicable in the current crisis:
As the party expands, the distance between the leadership and the ranks invariably increases. Its leaders not only become “personages,” they lose contact with the living situation below. The local groups, which know their own immediate situation better than any remote leader, are obliged to subordinate their insights to directives from above. The leadership, lacking any direct knowledge of local problems, responds sluggishly and prudently. Although it stakes out a claim to the “larger view,” to greater “theoretical competence,” the competence of the leadership tends to diminish as one ascends the hierarchy of command. The more one approaches the level where the real decisions are made, the more conservative is the nature of the decision-making process, the more bureaucratic and extraneous are the factors which come into play, the more considerations of prestige and retrenchment supplant creativity, imagination, and a disinterested dedication to revolutionary goals.
The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of view the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres and centralization. Although everyone marches in step, the orders are usually wrong, especially when events begin to move rapidly and take unexpected turns — as they do in all revolutions. The party is efficient in only one respect — in molding society in its own hierarchical image if the revolution is successful. It recreates bureaucracy, centralization and the state. It fosters the bureaucracy, centralization and the state. It fosters the very social conditions which justify this kind of society. Hence, instead of “withering away,” the state controlled by the “glorious party” preserves the very conditions which “necessitate” the existence of a state — and a party to “guard” it.
This reflects developments in other centralised bodies, including the State itself. Hierarchical systems do not generate the participation and initiative needed across society as a whole and ensure that they can and do get taken over by lazy, incompetent and self-serving numpties — who are hard to recall and replace. A centralised – and so hierarchical – structure is a handicap in most situations, particularly when decisions need to be made quickly. As Rudolf Rocker argued:
It has often been charged against federalism that it divides the forces and cripples the strength of organised resistance, and, very significantly, it has been just the representative of the political labour parties and of the trade unions under their influence who have kept repeating this charge to the point of nausea. But here, too, the facts of life have spoken more clearly than any theory. There was no country in the world where the whole labour movement was so completely centralised and the technique of organisation developed to such extreme perfection as in Germany before Hitler’s accession to power. A powerful bureaucratic apparatus covered the whole country and determined every political and economic expression of the organised workers. In the very last elections the Social Democratic and Communist parties united over twelve million voters for their candidates. But after Hitler seized power six million organised workers did not raise a finger to avert the catastrophe which had plunged Germany into the abyss, and which in a few months beat their organisation completely to pieces.
But in Spain, where Anarcho-Syndicalism had maintained its hold upon organised labour from the days of the First International, and by untiring libertarian propaganda and sharp fighting had trained it to resistance, it was the powerful C.N.T. which by the boldness of its action frustrated the criminal plans of Franco and his numerous helpers at home and abroad, and by their heroic example spurred the Spanish workers and peasants to the battle against Fascism — a fact which Franco himself has been compelled to acknowledge. Without the heroic resistance of the Anarcho-Syndicalist labour unions the Fascist reactions would in a few weeks have dominated the whole country.
When one compares the technique of the federalist organisation of the C.N.T. with the centralistic machine which the German workers had built for themselves, one is surprised by the simplicity of the former. In the smaller syndicates every task for the organisation was performed voluntarily. In the larger alliances, where naturally established official representatives were necessary, these were elected for one year only and received the same pay as the workers in their trade. Even the General Secretary of the C.N.T. was no exception to this rule. this is an old tradition which has been kept up in Spain since the days of the International. This simple form of organisation not only sufficed the Spanish workers for turning the C.N.T. into a fighting unit of the first rank, it also safeguarded them against any bureaucratic regime in their own ranks and helped them to display that irresistible spirit of solidarity and tenaciousness which is so characteristic of this organisation, and which one encounters in no other country.
For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium. But for a movement whose very existence depends on prompt action at any favourable moment and on the independent thought and action of its supporters, centralism could but be a curse by weakening its power of decision and systematically repressing all immediate action. If, for example, as was the case in Germany, every local strike had first to be approved by the Central, which was often hundreds of mils away and was not usually not in a position to pass a correct judgement on the local conditions, one cannot wonder that the inertia of the apparatus of organisation renders a quick attack quite impossible, and there thus arises a state of affairs where the energetic and intellectually alert groups no longer serve as patterns for the less active, but are condemned by these to inactivity, inevitably bringing the whole movement to stagnation. Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the characteristic of all bureaucracies.
Anarcho-Syndicalists are, therefore, of the opinion that trade union organisation should be of such a character as to afford workers the possibility of achieving the utmost in their struggle against the employers, and at the same time provide them with a basis from which they will be able in a revolutionary position to proceed with reshaping of economic and social life.
Ultimately, every individual can make a difference. In hierarchical ones, that ability is alienated and monopolised by those at the top as well as being filtered by the bureaucracies such structures generate. An incompetent can have an impact on any organisation but particularly so – and much wider in impact – in a hierarchical one like a company or a State. This is compounded by the fact that these bodies are dictatorships, albeit elected ones in the case of republics and constitutional monarchies (like the UK).
The defenders of centralisation always assume the best case situation — good, competent people in charge, full access to the relevant information and knowledge, the ability to know what the relevant information and knowledge is, the ability and resources to gather, process and present that information and knowledge, the ability of those presented with these summaries to understand them, and, finally, to implement them efficiently and effectively. All of which are assumptions unlikely to be met in reality – we need to recognise that data, information and knowledge are fragmented, distributed unevenly and difficult to gather, process and understand – something made far harder if all this is focused into a single centre as under centralism.
At best, it can be argued that hierarchical, centralised organisations work best when the human cost is considered irrelevant — as in the armed forces, when it does not matter how many die or how much destruction is inflicted (on both sides) as long as you win. Thus the centralised State defeated the independent towns (federated or not) during the Middle Ages simply because the King’s subjects were considered as cannon fodder or a resource to be exploited and so the monarchy secured an advantage. The same with the bourgeois State where centralism was needed to secure minority rule:
To attack the central power, to strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralize, to dissolve authority, would have been to abandon to the people the control of its affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central government even more, to invest it with powers of which the king himself would never have dreamt, to concentrate everything in its hands, to subordinate to it the whole of France from one end to another — and then to make sure of it all through the National Assembly. This Jacobin idea is still, down to the present day, the ideal of the bourgeoisie of all European nations, and representative government is its arm. (Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel)
I can understand the appeal of such a system for the bourgeoisie (the masses are effectively removed from the decision-making processes) but for people calling themselves socialists? Reproducing centralism, this hierarchical structure, within the labour and socialist movements makes little sense as this structure reflects the interests and needs of the ruling classes of all time. Recreating them would, likewise, produce a ruling elite within our own ranks – as history shows time and time again. We would simply be fighting over which elite should rule rather than resisting the imposition of rulers. New structures need to be forged, federalist ones.
Until I blog again, be seeing you…