b. The Marxist critique of left-anarchism

Posted on: February 9, 2021 at 17:00:16 CT

One of the most famous attacks on anarchism was launched by Karl Marx during his battles with Proudhon and Bakunin. The ultimate result of this protracted battle of words was to split the 19th-century workers' movement into two distinct factions. In the 20th century, the war of words ended in blows: while Marxist-Leninists sometimes cooperated with anarchists during the early stages of the Russian and Spanish revolutions, violent struggle between them was the rule rather than the exception.

There were at least three distinct arguments that Marx aimed at his anarchist opponents.

First: the development of socialism had to follow a particular historical course, whereas the anarchists mistakenly believed that it could be created by force of will alone. "A radical social revolution is connected with certain historical conditions of economic development; the latter are its presupposition. Therefore it is possible only where the industrial proletariat, together with capitalist production, occupies at least a substantial place in the mass of the people." Marx continues: "He [Bakunin] understands absolutely nothing about social revolution ... For him economic requisites do not exist...He wants a European social revolution, resting on the economic foundation of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples ... Will power and not economic conditions is the basis for his social revolution." Proudhon, according to Marx, suffered from the same ignorance of history and its laws: "M. Proudhon, incapable of following the real movement of history, produces a phantasmagoria which presumptuously claims to be dialectical ... From his point of view man is only the instrument of which the idea or the eternal reason makes use in order to unfold itself." This particular argument is probably of historical interest only, in light of the gross inaccuracy of Marx's prediction of the path of future civilization; although perhaps the general claim that social progression has material presuppositions retains some merit.

Second, Marx ridiculed Bakunin's claim that a socialist government would become a new despotism by socialist intellectuals. In light of the prophetic accuracy of Bakunin's prediction in this area, Marx's reply is almost ironic: "Under collective ownership the so-called people's will disappears to make way for the real will of the cooperative." It is on this point that most left-anarchists reasonably claim complete vindication; just as Bakunin predicted, the Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" swiftly became a ruthless "dictatorship over the proletariat."

Finally, Marx stated that the anarchists erroneously believed that the government supported the capitalist system rather than the other way around. In consequence, they were attacking the wrong target and diverting the workers' movement from its proper course. Engels delineated the Marxist and left-anarchist positions quite well: "Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself." The left-anarchist would probably accept this as a fair assessment of their disagreement with the Marxists, but point out how in many historical cases since (and before) Marx's time governments have steered their countries towards very different aims and policies, whereas capitalists are often fairly adaptive and passive.