Marxism and Anarchism

international | the left | other libertarian press Friday June 27, 2008 15:42 by Jack Grancharoff (Australia)

Article by Jack Grancharoff

State and the capturing of political power, as the means of ‘workers' or, for that matter, any emancipation. It also has to strip socialism of its Marxist mystifications.

There is a tendency to hyphenate marxism to anarchism. There are even cases, claiming that the founder of anarchism is Marx. The fact that both movements developed from a common root is no indication that they are compatible. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian while Marxists are authoritarian. The first remain consistent to the First International position that the "emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves" and have adopted a federalist decentralized method of action, shunning political action, that is, capturing the state and using it as a tool of workers emancipation. The latter are centralists, advocating the necessity of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is also a fact that for the Marxists socialism has become an ideology, a Trojan Horse, to introduce into it concepts and ideas borrowed from the bourgeoisie they purported to fight.

All socialists from the 18th to the middle of the 19th century repudiated theology and metaphysics since for the workers to be free they need neither masters nor gods. The majority of them were Utopian because they were looking for horizons to expand thought and action and to change society in socialistic direction. Their utopianism was not to be found in the structure of their thought but they were declared such by the greatest authoritarian Utopian - Marxism-which tried to achieve the political emancipation of the proletariat not through intellectual growth of the workers and through a creative socialist vision but through a revolutionary dictatorship of a group of leaders and dictators proclaiming themselves as necessary avant-garde, who presented the absolute revolutionary proletarian State as a tool of the proletarian emancipation -the State an institution foreign to socialism.

To do that Marx and Engels borrowed conceptual structures from Hegel and tried to class socialism in it. But its calamitous impact on socialism was not due so much to a reasoned argument but to force. The triumph of Prussian militarism has a lot to do with it. Marx was correct when, in a letter to Engels, he stated: "The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians are victorious the centralization of state power will be helpful for the centralization of the German working class; furthermore,.German predominance will shift the center of gravity of West European labor movements from France to Germany. And one has but to compare the movement from 1866 till today to see that the German working class is in theory and organization superior to the French. Its dominance over the French on the world stage would mean likewise the dominance of our theory over that of Proudhon, etc"(1).

By virtue of adopting Hegelianism, Marxism became a science and socialism turned from Utopian into scientific socialism, or rather socialism was married to the reaction.

Hegel was the philosopher of the reaction; an apologist of Prussian absolutism, of state absolutism. His dialectic was theological since it is the manifestation of the absolute spirit in history.Hegel incorporated the Heraclitian concept of the permanent flux into his theory of dialectics to corroborate his metaphysics of historicity of the absolute spirit. But for Heraclitus the fact that one does "not stop twice into the same river" is an expression of everything as flowing, as becoming. Nothing is static. Hegel took this as progressive developments since it fits his accent on the necessity of progress. To give his theory more consistency he also posited teleological dialectical developments. In this frame of reference every stage of development is higher than the previous one. And since it is a manifestation of the absolute spirit it is also rational, because "What is real is rational and what is rational is real".

To explain the rationality of history, he then endowed every people with a spirit which executes the will of God and in progressive stages realizes the universal Spirit. He introduced categories in thinking to justify the absolute German State: "World history, in fact, has advanced through the categories from Pure Being in China to the Absolute Idea, which seems to have been nearly, if not quite, realized in the Prussian State".(2)

Marxism, on the other side, invented "the law of social physics" according to which "every social phenomenon must be regarded as a deterministic manifestation of the naturally necessary course of events"(3).

What made Hegel popular was that his dialectical method incorporated eternal change as opposed to a static concept of existence. And he did that by a particular dialectic: thesis -the affirmation- and anti-thesis -the negation, and both by some magical combination into the synthesis. Thus the idea becomes a reality, as a quality, which later on turns into its negation, quantity, and then into another quality in a permanent teleological movement. Nonetheless in these processes the individual has no place. The "speculative thought which knew how to work only with thesis, and anti-thesis has no connection whatsoever with the actual phenomena of life.(4)

The philosopher of the "Absolute", "historical necessities" and "his torical mission"had a great impact on Marx whose "law of social physics", manifesting itself through economic determinism relegates people to be a subject of this mechanistic concept. Those who fight for human well-being, according to Hegel, are possessed by "a rage of insane arrogance", while Marx believed anyone who disagreed with his theory of socialism was either Utopian or petty bourgeois, or something else, since real socialism can only eventuate if all forces of production are fully developed: "No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society".(5)

To Marxists immediate desires and attempts to establish a socialist society are useless Utopian exercises since socialism, as an existential import, does not depend on human will, understanding and fighting but on the imperative of the forces of production and exchange.

Another important factor for Hegel and Marx, is the State. Hegel's "What is real is rational and what is rational is real" is the leitmotif of the dialectical movement of history. The State is not only rational but something more: "the divine Idea as it exists on earth". This Idea "endows people with life" and thus the State is above people. The State is "the Ethical whole", "the Ethics itself", "the realized moral life", "reality of moral idea" and "Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws". This being the case, anybody who dares to rebel against the State is a traitor and rebellion an abysmal crime.

But anyone who nourishes feelings related to desires or consciousness to make jurisprudence dependent on subjective will, excluding that of a Master, is the enemy of the State. This is valid for Hegel as well as for Marx since the State is objective spirit while the individual is absolutely subjected to it. And when Haymen called Hegelian invectives in defence of the State "scientific justification of the Carlsbad police system and persecution of the demagogues"(6) Hegel did not answer. Had the State reached its totalitarian absolute form, as under the Bosheviks, Haymen could easily have been hung.

My lengthly reference to Hegel is to show the identity between Hegel and Marxism. Imbued with metaphysics, Marxism over-estimated the natural influence a product may have on its creator. Instead it made of the product the creator of the consciousness of the creator. Here again the creator is subservient to his creation, as man is to God. Historical materialistic theosophy sees in technology and the development of the productive forces a hidden secret force to which humans are involuntarily subjected. The human being, the real force of history, is reduced to an appearance, to a ghost or an illusion.

Nobody in his right frame of mind will dispute the importance of economic interests, but to present them as a class struggle is a far fetched hypothesis. The concept of "class" implies a clearly demarcated social group in which awareness and consciousness are equally distributed among its members- Despite certain proximations this has never happened to be the case with "class" as an economic relation -otherwise the bourgeoisie would long ago be buried in its grave. What happened, in fact, is what Hegel divined: "the possibility for future brotherhood among people who have common ownership of the goods and where private property is absent is for those who know the nature of the spiritual freedom and the laws". (7) Clearly these are the leaders who know the laws of dialectics and who by virtue of knowing historical materialism were entitled to benefit by the labour of those who know not. In other words the know hows govern and exploit the know nots. Engels wrote in "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" that capitalism "forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialized, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property". (8) What follows then is that the know hows become the new bosess, new historical individuals, the actual being, the only beneficiaries of the Socialist State.

The Communist Manifesto is an eulogy to the bourgeoisie for its contribution to the proletariat. Thanks to the bourgeoisie the proletariat opened its eyes because the bourgeoisie, by digging its own grave yard, attacked all bourgeois sanctuaries: "all that is holy is profaned and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind".(9) Marxist illusion or idealization of the bourgeoisie? Despite all these bourgeois excellent contributions towards awakening of the proletarian consciousnes there are no signs now a days that the proletariat "faces with sober senses his real conditions of life". While many conquests of the workers are being dismantled in front of their eyes, the workers, a few exceptions granted, are basically passive recipients as the objects of history, their reaction is docile and fatal resignation reigns among them. It cannot be otherwise given Marxian socialistic impact on the workers struggle itself. First the workers have to help to fully develop the productive forces and help "their" political parties to capture political power and then build the classless society which is left, in the final analysis, at the end of history. Bernstein is correct when he said that "the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the (reformist) movement is everything".(10).

If one is to believe the Communist Manifesto, the progressive role of the bourgeoisie is in the fact that it is "subjecting the country to the rules of the town" and, therefore, is rescuing "a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life". In fact it is transfering the idiocy to the city since a new more rational stage for the proletarian consciousness has not occurred, instead the proletariat is pauperized, brutalized, physically subjugated and, what is more important, its only rational tool of struggle and critical examination -reason-has been expropriated by those who claim to represent it. All critique on its behalf is done by academia, union bureaucrats, lawyers and party's apparatchiks.

The bourgeoisie who forced "the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate" (11) are in fact the real barbarians who not only expropriate the primitive ownership of the land but decapitate barbarians to civilize them and exploit the land by virtually raping it.

The bourgeoisie itself is "civilization" and its mission is to civilize: "it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own mage". (12) An image which we carry in our brain which facilitates the bourgeoisie to milk the common wealth, to "energize" competition by monopolizing all aspects of human activities and colonizing our mental and emotional world and finally make the rich richer and poor poorer. Yet the class stuggle is withering away while the synthesis is not even a vision.

By emphasizing the Hegelian impact on Marxism I want to argue that Marxism, if it is a science, is definitely a bourgeois science which uses socialism as an ideology to advance the bourgeois hypothesis of "socialism" as a new managerial class of bourgeois relations. Thus in the name of science socialism was bourgeoisified.

Anarchism, on the other side, has continued the anti-authoritarian socialist tradition which is distinguished by compatability of means and ends; a tradition which upholds human values and does not sacrifice human beings to any, be it socialist, capitalist or religious, deity. While anarchism recognizes the importance of economic factors it in no way accepts its superiority. Superiority and inferiority are defective descriptions of social, individual and natural phenomena. In reality they are bourgeois concepts rationalizing social and class divisions, hierarchies and exploitations.

On the other hand class struggle was adopted by Anarcho-syndicalists as one of the means to bring forward the materialization of the social revolution. But their acceptance of class struggle has nothing to do with the mechanistic historicism that claims that class struggle advances inevitably towards a classless society. For anarchists the class struggle was a tool of the workers movement to regain its own consciousness and to add its strength to the movement for social liberation, a prerequisite for a Social Revolution. Anarchism attacks "archy" as a hindrance to the social revoluion and trys to dismantle all their armours at all possible levels. Against the family anarchists propose free love as a psychological liberating agent. They attack economic privileges, political power, more specifically, the State, as the most hierarchical institutions that have to be overcome if freedom is to have a genuine existential import.

For the anarchists the State is a bourgeois institution which has its own logic of development and has no interest in human emancipation whatsoever. It is an institution, to discipline the "uncontrollable" elements amoiH) workers and people and force everybody to be subservient to it, to obey, excute and follow its orders. Thus the State is a substantial individuality to which the real individual is sacrificed. It is the utmost expression of hierarchy and reproduces hierarchies at all socio-political levels and unless we get rid of all hierarchies our liberation is only an illusion. After years of Marxist eulogy of hierarchies and living and operating within hierarchical relations it is rather difficult to shake off their psychological chains that paralyse our thinking, actions and behaviour. Hierarchy is so deeply embeded into our psyche that even small groups go to pieces because abstract bourgeois individualists are searching for situations that give signification to their egocentric existence.

Anarchism does not accept categorical dialectics. It does not consider Nature as an anti-thesis, as an object to be subordinated to our will. We are part and parcel of Nature. To undermine nature is to undermine ourselves. This is an act of suicide perpetuated upon us by instrumental understanding. The obsessive bourgeois and socialist policies to subjugate Nature iLs to corroborate the economic expeditions to abuse, exploit, destroy and rape nature as if it is a being, an enemy to be dealt with. If this- mentality is not bourgeois what the hell is it?

In conclusion, perhaps there is a possibility to hyphenate Marxism with Anarchism but the former has to bury the core of its own ideology, the Hegelian dialectic baptized as histoircal materialism, it has to efute the State and the capturing of political power, as the means of ‘workers' or, for that matter, any emancipation. It also has to strip socialism of its Marxist mystifications. Whether it can be done is a difficult gjiestion to answer even if there are attempts in this direction. One of the most briliant examples is the case of Daniel Guerin.

REFERENCES

1. Rocker, R. Socialism and State. Sydney, Monty Miller Press, 1987. p. 9

2. Russel. B. History of Western Philosopy. London, Allen and Unwin, 1946. p.762.

3. Rocker, R. Nationalism and Culure. St. Paul, M.E. Coughlin, 1978. p.23-24.

4. ibid p.193

5. Feuer, L (ed). Marx and Engels. New York, Archer Books, 1959, P. 44.

6. Rocker, R. Nationalism and Culture. St. Paul, M.E. Coughlin, 1978. p.196.

7. Ramus, P. The deception of Marxism. Sofiya, Artizdat, 1992. p.40. (In Bulgarian)

8. Feuer, L. (ed) Op. cit. p.105-106.

9. Marx, K. and Engels, F. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1970. p.35.

10. Salvadore, M. (ed) Modern Socialism. New York, Harper and Row, 1968. p.275.

11. Marx, K. and Engels, F. Op. cit. p.36.

12. ibid. p.36.