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Anarchists were not surprised. We have long argued that the state was designed for minority class rule, to exclude the majority from social decision making. Only in this way can class society be maintained. For this reason we are opposed to the state, which exists to protect the interests of a privileged minority (today, the capitalist class). Blair's actions expose the hypocrisy of capitalist democracy - claiming to represent the people while disempowering them in favour of the rule of capital.
For Marxists, the issue of the state is different. While agreeing with anarchism that the current state is an instrument of capitalist rule, they argue that a new kind of state (a "workers' state") can be created in which working class people can run society. This state exists to defend the revolution and would "wither away" over time.
Anarchists disagree. As the state is based on the delegation and centralisation of power, real democracy is only possible once it is destroyed. Turning the organisations created by the working class during the revolution into a state would destroy them, making them little more than rubber stamps for the party leaders. A new ruling class would develop and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would become the dictatorship over the proletariat. The revolution, anarchists argued, can defend itself without a state.
Rhetoric or Reality?
Until October 1917, these discussions were limited to theory. Then, with the Russian Revolution, there was a chance to see who was right. Ironically, both Leninists and anarchists say it confirms their ideas.
The former argue that it shows that Leninism stands for real democracy and socialism, that it confirms the validity of Marxism and its ideas on changing society. The latter argue that it shows the utter bankruptcy of Marxism. For anarchists, the Russian revolution was destroyed by Leninist practice and ideas. Economically, the Bolshevik version of socialism was simply state capitalism. Politically, the soviets became a thin veneer for party dictatorship.
So how can one event have such diverse interpretations? Quite easily. Marxists concentrate on what the Bolsheviks said before they seized power while anarchists look at what they said and did afterwards. As Marx said, we can only judge a person by what they do, not what they say.
Sadly, most Leninists seem strangely adverse to Marx's comments. When confronted with the reality of Lenin's Russia we are told to read his "State and Revolution." Which is as unconvincing as Tony Blair asking us to forget the invasion of Iraq by pointing out that it was not in the New Labour election manifesto.
State and Revolution
No one can deny that Lenin's "State and Revolution" is a classic, if flawed, work. Much that passes for "Marxism" in it is pure anarchism. For example, the substitution of revolutionary militias for professional armed bodies and the substitution of organs of self-management for parliamentary bodies can all be found in Bakunin. This explains its numerous straw man arguments against anarchism. What is authentically Marxist in Lenin's work is the call for "strict centralism" and the equation of soviets with a "new" state.
This was its downfall. Lenin's "workers' state" just became the same as the old state. So to discuss "State and Revolution" without indicating this suggests a lack of honesty. We cannot look at Bolshevik theory and not its practice.
Lenin in power
For Bolshevism, "workers' power" was identified with party power. Throughout 1917, Lenin argued for the Bolsheviks to seize power, by means of the soviets. And in October, it was the Bolsheviks who seized power, not the working class or its soviets. Soon, from bottom to top, the soviets became marginalised, with effective power relentlessly gravitating to the party.
The Bolsheviks originally did have working class support, but this does not equal working class people running society. This became clear once the workers turned away from them - the Bolsheviks simply refused to be held accountable to the soviets whose power they had usurped.
Faced with loosing soviet elections across Russia in the spring and summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks simply disbanded, by force, any soviet elected with a non-Bolshevik majority. In Petrograd and Moscow, elections were postponed until the Bolsheviks gerrymandered the soviets to ensure their majority, making the results of the workplace elections irrelevant.
This attack on workers' freedom occurred everywhere. The Bolsheviks abolished the election of officers in the Red Army and replaced workers' self-management in production with one-man management. The workers' factory committees were overruled by the party leadership, who preferred state control over workers' control. By April, 1918, Lenin was arguing for "obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers." What counted was not workplace democracy, but state property and Bolshevik power. Capitalism was simply replaced with state capitalism.
Lenin reneged on his promise to replace the army and police by "the armed masses of workers." Instead he created a political police force (the Cheka) and a normal army -- special, professional, armed forces standing apart from the people and unaccountable to them. They had to be, as they repressed working class unrest under Lenin.
Thus, by the summer of 1918, Russia was under the de facto dictatorship of the Bolshevik party. Instead of "all power to the soviets" we got "all power to the party."
Leninists try to distance themselves from Stalinism, correctly arguing that it was a brutal and undemocratic system. The problem is that it was Lenin and Trotsky rather then Stalin who first shot strikers, banned left papers, radical organisations and party factions, sent workers and revolutionaries to the gulags, advocated and introduced one-man management and piece-work in the workplace, eliminated democracy in the military and shut down soviets who elected the 'wrong' delegates.
International Capitalism made me do it!
Faced with these facts, Leninists argue that "objective" factors account for this failure of Bolshevism, not its ideology.
Foremost of these is the Civil War. Yet this is easily refuted as the elimination of soviet, workplace and military democracy, the attacks on opposition groups as well as basic civil liberties occurred before it began. And it is illogical. Leninists argue for a "workers' state" because, to quote Lenin, they know that no revolution "has escaped civil war." So if civil war is inevitable, then how can it be blamed for the failure of Bolshevism? Even if this excuse was factually correct (and it is not) then it is a damning indictment of Leninism.
Another excuse is that the working class was so decimated that the replacement of class power by party power was inevitable. Yet this substitution occurred from day one, when the Bolsheviks took state power. Moreover, the Russian workers were capable of collective action throughout this period. Every year saw massive strike waves periodically sweeping across Russia, waves which the Bolsheviks meet with state repression. A "decimated" and "atomised" working class does not require martial law and lockouts to control!
Yet it did not have to be like that. There was an alternative which shows that Bolshevik ideology played a key role in the failure of the revolution and the rise of Stalinism. The anarchist influenced Makhnovist movement showed that soviet democracy and workers' control were possible in Russia at this time. They promoted workers' and peasants' control. They practised freedom of speech and assembly. They called democratic soviet congresses. The army was democratic. They did everything Lenin promised but failed to deliver. Unsurprisingly, the Bolsheviks betrayed them
Keeping the rabble in line
Anarchists argue that the state is structured like it is, with the centralisation of power at the top, to ensure that the masses are disempowered and cannot influence decisions, never mind run society itself. Once in power, the Bolshevik leaders soon became converts to this aspect of the state. For them, a public power distinct from the masses was a good thing precisely because it deterred democracy. Even worse, for all the leading Bolsheviks party dictatorship became an essential aspect of any revolution.
By 1921 Trotsky was arguing that the party was "obliged to maintain its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the working classes" for it was " entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy." This was no temporary aberration. Sixteen years later, he repeated the same argument:"the revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution." It was the "revolutionary party... seizing power," rather than the whole working class, for "those who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat."
His defence of party power over people power was based not on defence of the revolution. Rather "the necessity for state power arises from an insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity." The state was required because the masses could not govern themselves. As he put it two years later, "the very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses themselves . . . if the dictatorship of the proletariat means anything at all, then it means that the vanguard of the proletariat is armed with the resources of the state in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from the backward layers of the proletariat itself."
Of course, everyone is "backward" compared to the vanguard, so party dictatorship is the logical conclusion. A conclusion that neither Trotsky nor Lenin was shy in drawing or applying. Yet modern day Leninists ask us to forget this and the period he and Lenin held state power in favour of a glorified election manifesto!
For Lenin in power, "revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable elements among the masses themselves." Ironically, "State and Revolution" comes back to haunt him. There he had argued it was "clear that where there is suppression there is also violence, there is no freedom, no democracy." If the working class itself is being subject to "revolutionary" suppression by the vanguard then, clearly, there is "no freedom, no democracy" for our class. Nor was there under Bolshevism.
State or Revolution?
Thus anarchism was confirmed by Bolshevism in power. No state can represent the interests of the working classes due to its centralised and hierarchical nature - all it can do is represent the interests of the elite in power, its own bureaucratic needs and privileges and slowly, but surely, remove itself from popular control. Bolshevism was no exception.
The state implies the delegation of power and initiative into the hands of a few leaders who form the "revolutionary government." Yet the power of any revolution derives from the decentralisation of power, from the active participation of the masses in the collective social movement and the direct action it generates. As soon as this power passes out of the hands of the working class, the revolution is doomed: the counter-revolution has begun and it matters little that it is draped in a red flag. Hence anarchist opposition to the state.
But does it matter? Yes, because modern day Leninists think we should follow the Bolshevik model. They argue for a centralised vanguard party and the creation of a "workers' state." This shapes their attitude to current movements as well as socialism, shaping both in their own image. Yet these hierarchical, centralised, top-down structures hinder participation and initiative, alienating the many and turning them into spectators in their own struggles. As in capitalism, a formal democracy (sometimes not even that!) hides the domination of a few leaders. Rather than build the new world in the struggle against the old, Leninism reproduces all the problems of class society in "revolutionary" movements. Ultimately, they deter not only socialism but the struggle to make things better today.
The issue is simple. Either you have a participatory federation of directly democratic workplace and community assemblies (anarchism) or you have a state with party power in the name of the masses (Bolshevism). The fundamental flaw in Leninism is that it confuses the two and ensures the result anarchists predicted so accurately.
Think all these quotes are out of context? Then visit these webpages on the anarchist critique of Marxism to get references and context:
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The State or Revolution
An anarchist answer to Lenin, written for Marxism 2003
The SWP versus Anarchism
Here are a few quotes from Pat Stack's Socialist Review
article "Anarchy in the UK?" which formed the basis of his
talk at Marxism 2001. Ask yourself why the SWP leadership
systematically lies about anarchism.
Lenin, History's "Hidden Democrat,"
speaks!
Stright form the horses mouth
Anarcho-Quiz on the SWP
Test your knowledge
What is Anarchism?
There is an alternative to Leninism's state capitalism and party
power. It is called anarchism, a socialism which places freedom and
working class management of society at the core of its vision of
struggle, revolution and socialism.
Another world is possible?
Under capitalism, 8 people make life and death decisions for
millions. Under Bolshevism, 19 people made them