All posts by Arshinov

Trans woman that uses she or they pronouns. Politics can be described as anarchist-communist platformist-especifista.

Coherency of Means and Ends: A Response to “The Lie of “Communist” Anarchism”

Having identified as a Marxist-Leninist for several years before turning to anarchism, my first serious engagement with anarchism as a movement and philosophy was, of course, a mishmash of misrepresentations from Marx and Engels as well as more modern strawmen and bad-faith arguments from modern Marxist-Leninist YouTubers and authors. After realizing that what I had read and heard about anarchism was incorrect by engaging with anarchist theory and history in good faith, it quickly became tiring to see, read, and hear the same tired arguments that don’t make any sense to someone who actually has a working knowledge of the theory and practice of anarchism.

            I recently came across an article written by a Marxist-Leninist that doesn’t seem like a poor attempt at recruiting anarchists, but rather a bad-faith attack on anarchism. Like most Marxist critiques, it neither quotes from nor makes mention to any major anarchist author or text. The only genuine quote that was taken from the author’s tuchus is, unsurprisingly, from Lenin’s State and Revolution.

Is anarchism based on spontaneity? Do anarchists think it’s possible to negate the state and capital overnight?

            One of the most tiring arguments against anarchists, having its roots in Engel’s essay “On Authority” is the idea that anarchists want to completely abolish the state or class society overnight. More specifically, the idea that anarchists think it is possible to do so. No anarchist author or movement has ever expressed this sentiment. In fact, what makes The Conquest of Bread and Factories, Fields, and Workshops by Peter Kropotkin so valuable for radicals to study is Kropotkin, knowing that revolution would be a drawn own struggle lasting for several years and face countless obstacles, sought to try to come up with tangible suggestions to how a revolution beginning in the city may feed itself and expand. Countless other authors, Bakunin, Rudolf Rocker, Berkman, Dielo Truda, among others, have also expressed this sentiment, but in typical Marxist fashion we never get to hear from any of them in this article. It boggles the mind how someone can sit down and write an entire essay about something they clearly have read no primary sources on, but it is nothing the anarchist movement hasn’t seen before.

            How do anarchists intend to produce this instantaneous, spontaneous change? For this the author tells us:

“This proposed method by anarchists of reaching this instantaneous change is, of course, instantaneous agitation. “Direct action”, “insurrection”, “praxis” … these are all terms used to describe an unorganized mess of chaotic incoherence that yields little more than charity efforts with class character, idealized in the mind of an anarchist as a brave, selfless act.”

There is a lot to go over here. Of course, there is no mention of tendencies within class struggle anarchism that are pro-organization. No mention is made of anarcho-syndicalism, or platformism, or especifismo. There is no mention of the anarchist internationals around the globe dedicated to building popular power and organizing as part of working class struggles. The author just repeats buzzwords which they incorrectly see as revealing the incoherence of the anarchist position. This is an attempt to make anarchism look bad by omitting crucial information about anarchist theory and history, so it appears anarchists not only have impossible goals, but do not even have any well-established ideas on how to reach these impossible goals. However, this is not the case. Anarchists of the type I named above want the oppressed and exploited to take society into their own hands by means of struggling to build social movements and popular power which gives the oppressed and exploited the knowledge and experience needed to transform society. This may be spontaneous in the sense that it is self-managed, and class struggle may hit high points causing drastic changes over a short amount of time, but it is most definitely not instantaneous. Nor could it be.

Do anarchist want to just “Do whatever I feel like”?

            The author continues:

“For as much as anarchists say, “Educate, agitate, organize!” they never really seem to grasp the importance of the final word in the slogan — without organization, you are nothing. Without organization, you can have no rallies, marches, mobs…  People’s liberation from oppressive structures like patriarchy and racism are vital, yes, but compressing everything into doing whatever I want good, hierarchy bad means that certification is oppressive. Needing to consult an expert is worse than queermisia.”

For those unaware, “queermisia” is meant to be an alternative way of saying “queerphobia” or homophobia, or transphobia. The argument is that the suffix “-phobia” conflates forms of bigotry and oppression like homophobia with genuine phobias and is therefore ableist. A silly argument, but one that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

            A common mistake that the author made in this quote is the implication that anarchists oppose organization. This argument, of course, comes from the reality that anarchists are critical of Marxist-Leninist forms of organization, and against democratic centralism. If there is no central committee that directs the struggle from above, then there is no struggle, according to the Marxist-Leninists. It makes no room for working class self-management nor for the reality that the liberation of the working class is the task of the working class alone. The history of the anarchist movement, especially the history of anarcho-syndicalism, platformism, and, more recently, the growing, living practice of especifismo found in Latin America. Anarchists do not oppose organization, what anarchists oppose is a class of professional revolutionaries taking state power and trying to govern over the working class. This historically has never led to a free society but instead a state capitalist society that slowly but surely capitulates to global capital.

            The idea that anarchists think expertise is oppressive, too, has no basis in anarchist theory or practice but nevertheless gets circulated in critiques of anarchism. In fact, one of the most famous quotes that gets passed around about anarchism from an anarchist is from Mikhail Bakunin. It is from a section from his God and the State known more famously as “What is Authority?”:

“Does it follow that I drive back every authority? The thought would never occur to me. When it is a question of boots, I refer the matter to the authority of the cobbler; when it is a question of houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For each special area of knowledge I speak to the appropriate expert. But I allow neither the cobbler nor the architect nor the scientist to impose upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and verification. I do not content myself with consulting a single specific authority, but consult several. I compare their opinions and choose that which seems to me most accurate. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in quite exceptional questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have absolute faith in no one. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave and an instrument of the will and interests of another.”

So, no, anarchists do not think certification is oppressive, nor do we think that consulting a doctor is in anyway the same thing as patriarchy or white supremacy. Historically, anarchists have differentiated between political authority, which is coercive and detrimental to human liberation, and “natural authority” or expertise, which is the result of different people developing their faculties differently and is not necessarily coercive. Anarchists want to abolish the former and replace it with a self-managed society, but anarchists do not necessarily want to abolish the latter. Anarchist-communists, like all communists, want to abolish the division of labor. However, this does not mean that there will not be people who have studied certain more in depth than most people, now does it mean that these experts should not be consulted for issues relating to their expertise. Anarchists have never claimed this.

Do anarchists want to disarm ourselves?

            The author goes on to claim that anarchists believe that the anarchist critique against taking state power means that anarchists want to simply disarm ourselves and allow the bourgeoisie to reestablish their power:

“Until every nation has made the transition from capitalism to socialism, and until counter-revolutionary tendencies in every nation have been thoroughly disbanded, it is impossible for the state apparatus, the domination of one class by another, to dissolve. Why? Because if a socialist nation lays down its arms, they will be instantaneously reacted against by the bourgeoisie of the same nation or another nation, where they will then proceed to establish a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

This, too, has a lot to be discussed. The idea that socialism is something that can exist within nation-states is, of course, what Marxist-Leninists claim in order to say that 20th century “AES” states are socialist. However, such a thing is not present even in Marx or Engels. It is an idea of “socialism in one country” theorized after the Russian revolution’s failure to abolish capitalism to claim the development of capitalism by the new Soviet government was not capitalism, but socialism. This argument can be addressed another time.

            The idea that anarchists just want to allow the bourgeoisie to reestablish itself comes from the idea that anarchists see revolution as an instantaneous event and not as a historic process that will take years and face countless obstacles. That is to say, it is the result of not seriously engaging with the theoretical underpinnings of anarchism.

Is anarchism idealist?

            Another common misrepresentation of anarchism is that anarchism is based on idealism. This is supposed to be contrasted with Marxism-Leninism, which, of course, attempts to portray itself as the materialist alternative. Marxism-Leninists do this in order to try to monopolize materialism, science, and, of course, revolutionary politics. To show that anarchism is based on materialism, we have a wealth of resources to pull from. Kropotkin’s Modern Science and Anarchy is perhaps my favorite. However, one well known work that sketches this out is, of course, Bakunin’s God and the State:

“Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history.

All branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The social world, properly speaking, the human world — in short, humanity — is nothing other than the last and supreme development — at least on our planet and as far as we know — the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural — at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world — that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions, ideas.”

To say that anarchism is idealist is a common smear, but it just that: a smear. It has no basis in anarchist theory and practice, but is the result of a group of people who try to monopolize the revolutionary struggle attempting to explain why anyone would possibly disagree with them.

Conclusion: A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Are anarchists privileged?

            A final point the author tries to make is actually one that is more modern. Afterall, classical Marxists could not in good faith claim that anarchists were privileged or disconnected from working class struggle. The opposite is true: both anarchism and Marxism evolved out of the same movements, and the same organizations. Nevertheless, modern Marxists, many of whom are privileged and western themselves, try to paint anarchism as a western movement full of out-of-touch, westerners.

            Not only is this incorrect, it’s offensive. Anarchism has a rich history in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The anarchist movement in Latin American is perhaps the largest in the world, and anarchism as a movement is gaining traction in Asia, particularly in Bangladesh and Indonesia. This is not to tokenize non-western people in their struggle against capital and empire. In fact, the claim that anarchism is solely or even majorly a western movement is an attempt by western Marxist-Leninists to tokenize non-western struggles and weaponize them against people who disagree with them.

            Anarchists, particularly anarchist-communists, are not the wolves in sheep’s clothing. We are a movement that seeks to create a free society. We want the oppressed and exploited people of the world to self-direct their own struggle, and to build the infrastructure that will allow them to take their own lives into their own hands. We want to abolish capital and the nation state, and replace these structures with different structures, based on solidarity and the common ownership of the means of production, and by extension, the common ownership of the products of social labor. Is this not communism?

If you would like to read the full article, it can be found here: https://medium.com/@gizes/the-lie-of-communist-anarchism-edd90e4de17f

What is Libertarian Communism?

Introduction

Anarchism wants to transform the present bourgeois capitalist society into a society which assures the workers the products of their labours, their liberty, independence, and social and political equality. This other society will be libertarian communism, in which social solidarity and free individuality find their full expression, and in which these two ideas develop in perfect harmony.

– Dielo Truda

To most people, the phrase “libertarian communism” would elicit laughter, and the phrase “anarchist-communism” would most likely elicit confusion. The militant anti-fascist movement, more commonly known as antifa, has been gaining more and more attention from the mainstream press. Though militant anti-fascists are mostly being portrayed negatively by the mainstream media, being portrayed as a bunch of young, mindless thugs who want to attack anyone they disagree with, this attention has brought with it an increased interest in the ideas that so many participants in antifa take influence from: anarchist-communism. Anarchist-communism is used more or less as a synonym for libertarian communism, or libertarian socialism. 

Though the phrase “libertarian” conjures up images of free markets, deregulation, and abject poverty, the fact of the matter is that the original libertarians were socialists. Libertarianism to libertarian communists and libertarian socialists, and has since it was coined BY a communist (Joseph Déjacque) to describe his politics, actually refers to the coherency of means and ends with respect to a socialist society. Before the term “socialism” came to refer to both bureaucratic regimes that centrally planned the economy, and welfare capitalist states in Europe, socialism referred to a classless, stateless, and self-managed society. Likewise, before the equation in many people’s minds of communism with state capitalist regimes like the USSR and China, communism referred to both a class, stateless, moneyless society, in which goods are produced in common, owned in common, and distributed based on need. Libertarian communists view such a society as desirable, and actively work to make it a reality. What sets libertarian communists apart from authoritarian communists is that libertarian communists understand that such a society has to be built from below by the people oppressed by capitalism, and not decreed from above by a government. This is where the coherency of means and ends comes in, libertarian communists want a self-managed and self-determining society, and we wish to build such a society by means of a self-managed social movement of the oppressed and exploited under capitalism that seeks self-determination for all.

What this means is that libertarian communists believe that communism, a classless, stateless, society based on common ownership, self-management, and distribution based on need can only be the result of a self-managed struggle of the oppressed and exploited under capitalism. What does this mean concretely? Is this practical? Even possible? Libertarian communists say yes. Libertarian communists say that the oppressed and exploited masses can take society into their own hands, can dismantle oppressive and exploitative social relations, and replace our current society with a self-managed and free society. The German Jewish anarchist Gustav Landauer said it best:

The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships.

The “Real Movement”

Like socialism in general, and like all other social movements, anarchy was born amongst the people, and it will maintain its vitality and creative force only as long as it remains a movement of the people.

-Peter Kropotkin

Anarchism is not a beautiful utopia, nor an abstract philosophical idea, it is a social movement of the labouring masses.

-Dielo Truda

Libertarian communists believe that the idea of an anarchist-communist society, a society based on the abolition of all oppressive and exploitative social relations, in which labor is done to uphold and enrich the community instead of a boss, and in which goods are distributed based on need, did not come about because of the realization from a group of social theorists, but instead came about because of the daily struggles of oppressed and exploited people! The Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause) group in France elaborated on this in their famous pamphlet, The Organization Platform of the Libertarian Communists

The class struggle created by the enslavement of workers and their aspirations to liberty gave birth, in the oppression, to the idea of anarchism: the idea of the total negation of a social system based on the principles of classes and the State, and its replacement by a free non-statist society of workers under self-management.

So anarchism does not derive from the abstract reflections of an intellectual or a philosopher, but from the direct struggle of workers against capitalism, from the needs and necessities of the workers, from their aspirations to liberty and equality, aspirations which become particularly alive in the best heroic period of the life and struggle of the working masses.

The outstanding anarchist thinkers, Bakunin, Kropotkin and others, did not invent the idea of anarchism, but, having discovered it in the masses, simply helped by the strength of their thought and knowledge to specify and spread it.

So anarchism, libertarian communism, or whatever you choose to call it, isn’t a rigid dogma that is blindly followed by its adherents, but is a social movement that seeks the abolition of oppressive structures like class society, the state, and capitalism. It is a social movement that doesn’t limit itself to these things, but also to the horrors that result from them, such as racism, colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and ableism. Libertarian communists view libertarian communism as being prefigured by struggles against oppression all throughout human history, from the French Revolution, to slave revolts in the American south, to the anti-colonial revolts in ancient Mesopotamia. 

Libertarian communists see these events, and similar events, and see a tendency within human history towards a free society, towards solidarity, freedom, and the creative desire of the oppressed and exploited to destroy whatever hinders the free development of these things. Libertarian communists believe that it is possible for these principles to move beyond being vague aspirations of a minority of oppressed and into being the guiding principles of movements of the oppressed, who, in realizing their creative and collective power, take their own lives and society into their own hands, and make them into the tangible foundations for social life.

Some more recent events and experiments that libertarian communists point to as being part of this tendency for a free society include but are certainly not limited to: the Makhnovist movement in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Revolution as part of the Spanish Civil War, the Shinmin commune during the Japanese occupation of Korea, the Zapatista uprising in the aftermath of the imposition of NAFTA on the indigenous communities in Mexico, and the Rojava revolution in northern Syria. These events, though localized and, in many cases, short-lived, show that the masses taking control of society is a possibility. With international organizing and international solidarity, far more is possible.

The Theoretical Basis

Revolutions cannot succeed if they have no guiding lights, no immediate objectives.

-Friends of Durruti

The relation of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice to libertarian communists is that these two things are inseparable. As a result of their struggle and their practice, the participants in the libertarian communist movement produce revolutionary theory based on their understanding of the world, and on their understanding of the effects that their practice has on the world. With this revolutionary theory, libertarian communists can better improve their practice, which will in turn lead to improved revolutionary theory. 

The theoretical tradition of libertarian communism begins with the codification of anarchism as a distinct social movement in the 19th century. Though they were not libertarian communists, thinkers like Proudhon, Bakunin, Guillaume, and others contributed greatly to libertarian communism and prefigured it before it emerged as a distinct tendency and social movement. The main classical theoreticians of libertarian communism include the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin and the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta. Besides these two, there is a large number of theorists, activists, and revolutionaries who also left their mark on the anarchist movement, a small number of which include Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, G.P. Maximoff, Sam Dolgoff, Murray Bookchin, Nestor Makhno, Kuwasi Balagoon, Lorenzo Ervin, and countless more.

Because of the different conditions that these revolutionaries found themselves in, as well as the changing conditions of social life, the theoretical basis of anarchism can’t be understood as a dogma, but as more of a collective pond of knowledge and experience, from which there’s as much to accept and learn from as there is to reject and criticize. A popular example is the tendency towards class reductionism and ignoring the struggles of women, colonized and racialized people, and LGBT people, verses the tendency towards a (correct) understanding of anarchism as a self managed struggle of all oppressed peoples against oppression. The natural extension of the latter tendency is an understanding that oppressed communities, especially racialized and colonized communities, need to produce their own leaders, need to take their own communities and their own lives into their own hands, and need to build a free society in solidarity with all other oppressed groups from the ground up.

When libertarian communists talk about freedom, or liberty, it is not meant to refer to some vague abstraction like these concepts are under capitalism. Freedom to libertarian communists is a very tangible thing: the ability to freely develop fully as a human being, as part of a community of equals with the same ability to freely develop. There would be no ghettos, occupied by the police. The open air prisons known as “reservations” would no longer exist. People would have access to the medical care that they need, and trans people would no longer have to suffer in poverty, unable to access the medical care that we need. People would no longer be forced to sell their ability to work to someone who couldn’t care less about them. Labor in such a society would be creative and constructive, it would be for the good of all, voluntary, and would otherwise be integrated into an individual’s daily routine. People would have genuine control over their communities, their work, their relationships, and every other aspect of their lives. 

Conclusion

…Only anarchy points the way along which they can find, by trial and error, that solution which best satisfies the dictates of science as well as the needs and wishes of everybody. How will children be educated? We don’t know. So what will happen? Parents, pedagogues and all who are concerned with the future of the young generation will come together, will discuss, will agree or divide according to the views they hold, and will put into practice the methods which they think are the best. And with practice that method which in fact is the best will in the end be adopted. And similarly with all problems which present themselves.

-Errico Malatesta

It doesn’t take much observation to know that we as oppressed and exploited people have dark days ahead. Climate change, rising far right nationalism, and an increasingly bleak economic situation have the potential to cause death and destruction unparalleled in human history. Anarchism and libertarian communism may not be perfect, or flawless, but it does give us the framework to properly understand our problems and to solve our problems. Capitalism and the state cannot solve our problems. They cannot free us or save us from what’s coming. All we can do to save ourselves is to organize together, and to build a better world together. 

Though the world has the potential to be destroyed in the coming decades, the Spanish anarchist and revolutionary Buenaventura Durruti said it best when he said:

For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.

Further Reading

Classical Introductions:

Anarchy, Errico Malatesta

What is Authority? Mikhail Bakunin

Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles, Peter Kropotkin

Modern Introductions:

An Anarchist View of the Class Theory of the State, Wayne Price

Who are the Anarchists and What do They Want?, Thomas Giovanni

Socialism Will Be Free, Or it Will Not Be at All, Arthur Pye

Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Daniel Guerin