Reply to errors and distortions in David McNally's pamphlet "Socialism from
Below"

   In chapter three of his pamphlet [1]Socialism from Below, David McNally
   decides to expose (what he calls) "The Myth Of Anarchist
   Libertarianism." In reality, his account is so distorted and, indeed,
   dishonest that all it proves is that Marxists will go to extreme
   lengths to attack anarchist ideas. As Brain Morris points out,
   defending the Leninist tradition and ideology "implies . . . a
   compulsive need to rubbish anarchism." [Ecology & Anarchism, p. 128]
   McNally's pamphlet is a classic example of this. As we will prove, his
   "case" is a mishmash of illogical assertions, lies and, when facts do
   appear, their use is almost always a means of painting a false picture
   of reality.

   It must be stressed that there is nothing new or original in McNally's
   pamphlet. It is simply an unthinking repetition of previous Marxists
   attacks on anarchism, starting with Marx's dishonest diatribe against
   Proudhon The Poverty of Philosophy, and is mostly based on Hal Draper's
   The Two Souls of Socialism (McNally states he "should also record here
   a debt of inspriation of [this] now-out-of-print pamphlet by Draper").
   While McNally's errors are commonplace within what passes for Marxist
   scholarship, this does not excuse his repeating of them without first
   checking their accuracy (or, more correctly, their inaccuracy). If more
   Marxists took the time to validate their prejudices and assumptions
   against what Proudhon, Bakunin and other anarchists wrote then it would
   be possible to have a real discussion on what genuine socialism (one,
   as Proudhon and Bakunin stressed long before Marxists appropriated the
   term, "from below") entails.

   It must be noted that since this appendix was first written in 2000,
   David McNally has distanced himself from his pamphlet's critique of
   anarchism. In an end-note in a book written in 2006 he described this
   welcome rethink:

     "I dissent from Draper's one-sided critique of anarchism . . .
     Draper is not fair to some of the currents within social anarchism.
     I also reject my own restatement of Draper's interpretation in the
     first edition of my booklet Socialism from Below" [Another World Is
     Possible: Globalization & Anti-Capitalism, p. 393]

   While it seems unlikely this was in response to reading our critique,
   it does show that it was correct. Unfortunately it took McNally over 20
   years to acknowledge that his essay from 1984 gave a distinctly
   distorted account of anarchism (a distortion originally circulated in
   Marxist circles in the 1960s with Draper's pamphlet). Perhaps
   significantly, McNally no longer seems to be associated with the sister
   organisations of the British Socialist Workers Party (a group whose
   distortions of anarchism are many and infamous). Sadly, the damage has
   been done and his and Draper's flawed account of anarchism (and
   Marxism) has become all-too-commonplace within radical circles -- even
   in libertarian circles, some take these assertions on Proudhon and
   Bakunin at face value and do not seek to verify the claims made. This
   is unfortunate for, as we will see, while sometimes correct (for
   example, Proudhon's disgusting anti-feminism) most of the claims are
   false or, at best, half-truths turned into full-lies by ignoring
   context or other relevant facts.

   We hope that this reply will ensure today's radicals will gain a fuller
   understanding of the ideas -- and limitations! -- of Proudhon and
   Bakunin and, more importantly, how they influenced subsequent
   anarchists and the development of libertarian ideas. It will also allow
   an informed discussion between Marxists and Anarchists on their areas
   of agreement and disagreement. McNally now argues that "it may be more
   helpful to try and defend a common political vision -- such as
   socialism from below or libertarian socialism -- as a point of
   reference" rather than fixate over labels like "Marxism" or
   "anarchism." [Op. Cit., p. 347] As we noted in our critique of his
   pamphlet, the term "socialism from below" has a distinctly anarchist
   feel to it, a feel distinctly at odds with Leninist ideology and
   practice. Moreover, as shown below, Lenin explicitly denounced "from
   below" as an anarchist idea -- and his practice once in power showed
   that "from above" is part and parcel of Leninism in action. Sadly, most
   Leninists are unaware of this.

   Finally, many Marxists reject Leninism: some for the original ideas of
   Marxism, such as the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its sister
   parties and some, like the council communists, for extension of them in
   the direction of revolutionary anarchist conclusions. As such, this
   critique should not be taken for a blanket rejection of all Marxists
   but rather a specific form of it, namely Leninism. Nor should it be
   taken for a blanket rejection of everything Marx or Marxists have
   argued. There any many forms of anarchism and many forms of Marxism,
   some of which are closer than others.

   Many of the issues discussed in this appendix are also explored in
   [2]section H of the FAQ and that should also be consulted.

1. Introduction

   McNally begins by noting that "Anarchism is often considered to
   represent [a] current of radical thought that is truly democratic and
   libertarian. It is hailed in some quarters as the only true political
   philosophy [of] freedom." Needless to say, he thinks that the "reality
   is quite different" and argues that "[f]rom its inception anarchism has
   been a profoundly anti-democratic doctrine. Indeed the two most
   important founders of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Michael
   Bakunin, developed theories that were elitist and authoritarian to the
   core." We will discover the truth of this assertion later.

   First we must note that McNally uses the typical Marxist approach to
   attacking anarchism -- namely to attack anarchists rather than
   anarchism as such. British Anarchist Albert Meltzer summarised the
   flaws in this perspective well:

     "Marxist-Leninists, faced with Anarchism, find that by its nature it
     undermines all the suppositions basic to Marxism. Marxism was held
     out to be the basic working class philosophy (a belief which has
     utterly ruined the working class movement everywhere). It holds that
     the industrial proletariat cannot owe its emancipation to anyone but
     themselves alone. It is hard to go back on that and say that the
     working class is not yet ready to dispense with authority placed
     over it . . . Marxism normally tries to refrain from criticising
     anarchism as such -- unless driven to doing so, when it exposes its
     own authoritarianism . . . and concentrates its attacks not on
     Anarchism, but on Anarchists." [Anarchism: Arguments for and
     Against, p. 62]

   So when reading this or any critique of anarchism always remember that
   few people are completely consistent libertarians and determine whether
   the words written reflect a flaw in anarchism as such or whether they
   reflect a personal flaw of the thinker in question. Once this
   common-sense position is taken it quickly becomes clear that anything
   valid in McNally's critique highlights the flaws of individuals who did
   not consistently rise to the levels implied by their ideas. This, most
   obviously, is the case with Proudhon's sexism which is in contradiction
   with his support for liberty, equality and federalism. Unsurprisingly,
   his contemporary Joseph Déjacque wrote a critique of Proudhon's sexist
   views in 1857, urging him to renounce "this gender aristocracy that
   would bind us to the old regime" and "speak out against man's
   exploitation of woman.": "Do not describe yourself as an anarchist, or
   be an anarchist through and through" ["On Being Human", pp. 68-71,
   Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Vol. 1, Robert
   Graham (ed.), p. 71] Later anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin
   likewise applied anarchist principles consistently on this issue, a
   fact McNally cannot bring himself to admit.

   Second, McNally lamely notes that "[w]hile later anarchists may have
   abandoned some of the excesses of their founding fathers their
   philosophy remains hostile to ideas of mass democracy and workers'
   power." Thus, we have the acknowledgement that not all anarchists share
   the same ideas and that anarchist theory has developed since 1876 (the
   year of Bakunin's death). This is to be expected as anarchists are not
   Proudhonists or Bakuninists -- we do not name ourselves after one
   person, rather we take what is useful from libertarian writers and
   ignore the rubbish. Malatesta's words are applicable here: "We follow
   ideas and not men, and rebel against this habit of embodying a
   principle in a man." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 199]
   However, this is beside the point as McNally's account of the ideas of
   Proudhon and Bakunin is simply false -- indeed, so false as to make you
   wonder if he is simply incompetent as a scholar or seeks to present a
   patchwork of lies as fact and "theory."

   Third, McNally's approach rests on selective quoting, lack of context
   and an unwillingness to research the assertions he is making. This is
   important as we are discussing thinkers who wrote over a period of many
   decades and whose works and letters reflected the highs and lows of a
   person's life as well as the social movement they were part of. This
   means that in the depths of personal crisis or the repression of
   popular movements even the most consistent thinker can write passages
   which are in contradiction to the thrust of the works they are best
   known for. To quote such words from, say, private letters and ignore
   the books and articles which reflect a thinker's ideas best and which
   influenced others presents a false picture, particularly if the context
   within which the letters were written are unmentioned. So it would be a
   distortion of the ideas of Marx and Engels to quote the numerous
   anti-Semitic insults against specific individuals from their private
   letters. As would be expected, they were men of their age and expressed
   themselves in ways which today are, rightly, considered unacceptable
   (for those interested in such matters, Peter Fryer's essay "Engels: A
   Man of his Time" should be consulted [John Lea and Geoff Pilling
   (eds.), The condition of Britain: Essays on Frederick Engels]).
   However, their few public racist comments could be considered worthy of
   note -- although, if so, then they should, like those of Proudhon and
   Bakunin, be placed in the context of their other ideas and the culture
   they lived in rather than being used as an excuse to ignore their
   contributions to socialism. Sadly, McNally -- like many Marxists --
   fails to do this, preferring dismissive finger-pointing instead.

   Lastly, McNally ignores the anti-democratic, authoritarian and elitist
   aspects of his own political tradition. Given that leading Bolsheviks
   like Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev publicly advocated party dictatorship
   and one-man management of production, it is a distortion to ignore this
   when discussing "Socialism from Below". Simply put, while anarchists
   have consistently advocated communal and industrial self-management
   since 1840 to today, the Marxist tradition has not.

   McNally's pamphlet, as will become clear, does not present anything
   new. It simply repeats what is sadly all-to-often the received wisdom
   about anarchists and anarchism in Marxist circles. As such, it is worth
   the time and effort to reply to. Not only will it show the limitations
   of the Marxist position on anarchism, it will also afford us the
   opportunity to show that not only is anarchism a more genuine
   "Socialism from Below" than Leninism but also that many of the ideas
   Marxists consider as their own were first argued by Proudhon and
   Bakunin.

   In short, we will show why "Anarchism is often considered to represent
   current of radical thought that is truly democratic and libertarian" by
   contrasting what McNally asserts about it and what anarchist thinkers
   actually advocated. This will, unfortunately, produce a reply longer
   than the initial claims but this is unavoidable. We need to provide
   extensive quotes and arguments simply in order to show the weakness of
   McNally's assertions and to indicate where his own tradition advocated
   notions he -- inaccurately -- attacks anarchism for.

2. Is anarchism the politics of the "small property owner"?

   McNally does start out by acknowledging that "anarchism developed in
   opposition to the growth of capitalist society. What's more, anarchist
   hostility to capitalism centred on defence of the liberty of the
   individual." However, he then distorts this actual historical
   development by arguing that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was
   not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new
   society. Rather, anarchism defended the freedom of the small property
   owner -- the shopkeeper, artisan and tradesman -- against the
   encroachments of large-scale capitalist enterprise."

   Such a statement is, to say the least, a total distortion of the facts
   of the situation. Nor is it original. McNally is simply repeating
   Marx's assertions against Proudhon who, Marx claimed, "wants to soar as
   the man of science above the bourgeois and the proletarians" but "is
   merely the petty bourgeois, continually tossed back and forth between
   capital and labour, political economy and communism." [Collected Works,
   vol. 6, p. 178] It should be noted that Marx had not always thought
   this of the Frenchman:

   

     "Not only does Proudhon write in the interest of the proletarians he
     is himself a proletarian, an ouvrier [worker]. His work [What is
     Property?] is a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat."
     [Op. Cit., vol. 4, p. 41]

   The change in perspective is unsurprising given that Marx thought his
   own ideology was that of the proletariat (whether the proletariat knew
   it or not) and, given his disagreements with Proudhon, the Frenchman
   had to represent some other class. However, if we reject the assumption
   that classes only have one theory associated with them, then the
   weakness of the Marxist assertion becomes clear -- particularly given
   that today there are no mass Marxist parties in spite of the fact that
   now, unlike in Marx's day, the proletariat is the majority of the
   working class in most of the world's countries.

   It is important to remember that at the end of the 1840s over 80% of
   the population of France and Germany were peasants or artisans -- what
   Marxists term the "petit-bourgeois". As Marx and Engels admitted in The
   Communist Manifesto, in "countries like France" the peasants
   "constitute far more than half of the population." This remained the
   case well after Proudhon's death in 1865, with Marx commenting in the
   early 1870s that "the peasant . . . forms a more of less considerable
   majority . . . in the countries of the West European continent." [The
   Marx-Engels Reader, p. 493 and p. 543] As Proudhon himself noted in
   1851, in "a population of 36 millions, there are 24 millions occupied
   with agriculture" and of the remaining 12 million there where only 6
   million "composing in part the wage-working class" [Property is Theft!,
   p. 558]

   This social context is important and it is difficult to understand the
   positions thinkers took unless it taken into account. In the words of
   anarchist Gustav Landauer, Proudhon's socialism "of the years 1848 to
   1851 was the socialism of the French people in the years 1848 to 1851.
   It was the socialism that was possible and necessary at that moment.
   Proudhon was not a Utopian and a prophet; not a Fourier and not a Marx.
   He was a man of action and realisation." [For Socialism, p. 108]
   Historian K. Steven Vincent makes the same point, arguing that
   Proudhon's "social theories may not be reduced to a socialism for only
   the peasant class, nor was it a socialism only for the petite
   bourgeois; it was a socialism of and for French workers. And in the
   mid-nineteenth century . . . most French workers were still artisans. .
   . French labour ideology largely resulted from the real social
   experiences and aspirations of skilled workers . . . Proudhon's thought
   was rooted in the same fundamental reality, and therefore
   understandably shared many of the same hopes and ideals."
   [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism,
   pp. 5-6] It is no coincidence, therefore, that when he was elected to
   the French Parliament in 1848 most of the votes cast for him were from
   "working class districts of Paris -- a fact which stands in contrast to
   the claims of some Marxists, who have said he was representative only
   of the petite bourgeoisie." [Robert L. Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice,
   p. 136]

   Proudhon's position was a distinctly sensible and radical position to
   take:

     "While Marx was correct in predicting the eventual predominance of
     the industrial proletariat vis- -vis skilled workers, such
     predominance was neither obvious nor a foregone conclusion in France
     during the nineteenth century. The absolute number of small
     industries even increased during most of the century. . .

     "Nor does Marx seem to have been correct concerning the
     revolutionary nature of the industrial proletariat. It has become a
     cliché of French labour history that during the nineteenth century
     artisans were much oftener radical than industrial workers. Some of
     the most militant action of workers in late nineteenth century
     France seems to have emerged from the co-operation of skilled,
     urbanised artisanal workers with less highly skilled and less
     urbanised industrial workers." [Vincent, Op. Cit., pp. 282-3]

   The fruits of this union included the Paris Commune, an event in which
   the followers of Proudhon played an important role and which both
   McNally and Marx praise (see [3]section 12 for more discussion on
   this).

   In short, Marx's earlier summation of Proudhon was correct -- his ideas
   reflected the ideas and interests of the French working class. Proudhon
   addressed himself to both the peasant/artisan and the proletariat. This
   is to be expected from a libertarian form of socialism as, at the time
   of his writing, the majority of working people were peasants and
   artisans and, as noted above, this predominance of artisan/peasant
   workers in the French economy lasted well after his (and Marx's) death.
   Not to take into account the artisan/peasant would have meant the
   dictatorship of a minority of working people over the rest of them (as
   we discuss in [4]section H.1.1 this was also a key reason for Bakunin's
   rejection of Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat"). Given that in
   chapter 4 of his pamphlet McNally states that Marxism aims for a
   "democratic and collective society . . . based upon the fullest
   possible political democracy" his attack on Proudhon's concern for the
   artisan and peasant is doubly strange. Either you support the "fullest
   possible political democracy" and so your theory must take into account
   artisans and peasants or you restrict political democracy and replace
   it with rule by the few.

   Unsurprisingly, then, Proudhon argued in 1841 that he "preach[ed]
   emancipation to the proletarians; association to the workers." [Op.
   Cit., p. 157] However, as McNally notes, he "oppose[d] trade unions."
   and did not see them as the means of achieving this for it was "not by
   such methods that the workingmen will attain to wealth and -- what is a
   thousand times more precious than wealth -- liberty." [Proudhon, System
   of Economical Contradictions, p. 150] However, this did not mean that
   he was rejected the idea that the working class (in its three sections
   of wage-workers, artisan and peasants) would liberate itself. While
   fundamentally a reformist, Proudhon recognised that self-liberation was
   only genuine form of liberation and so had "always thought that the
   proletariat must emancipate itself without the help of the government."
   [Property is Theft!, 306] Given this, it is unsurprising that Proudhon
   saw social change as coming from "below" by the collective action of
   the working class:

     "If you possess social science, you know that the problem of
     association consists in organising . . . the producers, and by this
     organisation subjecting capital and subordinating power. Such is the
     war that you have to sustain: a war of labour against capital; a war
     of liberty against authority; a war of the producer against the
     non-producer; a war of equality against privilege . . . to conduct
     the war to a successful conclusion . . . it is of no use to change
     the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings:
     an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of
     which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave."
     [Op. Cit., p. 225]

   During the 1848 revolution he urged "a provisional committee be set up
   to orchestrate exchange, credit and commerce between workers" which
   would "liaise with similar committees set up in the main cities of
   France" and "under the aegis of these committees, a body representative
   of the proletariat be formed in Paris . . . in opposition to the
   bourgeoisie's representation." This ensured that "a new society be
   founded in the heart of the old society". He later stressed the
   "organisation of popular societies was the pivot of democracy, the
   cornerstone of republican order" and these "clubs . . . assemblies,
   popular societies" would ensure "the organisation of universal suffrage
   in all its forms, of the very structure of Democracy itself." [Op.
   Cit., p. 321, p. 407 and p. 461] As Daniel Guérin summarised, "in the
   midst of the 1848 Revolution," Proudhon "sketched out a minimum
   libertarian program: progressive reduction in the power of the State,
   parallel development of the power of the people from below, through
   what he called clubs" which today we "would call councils." [Anarchism,
   pp. 152-3]

   Clearly, even if he (wrongly) rejected trade unionism Proudhon did
   support, to quote McNally, the "the freedom of the working class to
   make collectively a new society." Indeed, as one historian notes, there
   was "close similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon . . .
   and the program of the Lyon Mutualists" and that there was "a
   remarkable convergence [between these ideas], and it is likely that
   Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently
   because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal
   that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by
   such workers." [Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 164] Proudhon simply rejected
   revolution, trade unions or state-backed reforms as the means of
   achieving socialism and instead argued for a reformist strategy based
   primarily on the creation of co-operative workplaces and banks. He
   linked his politics to workers self-activity and argued that "the
   proof" of his mutualist ideas was shown in the "current practice,
   revolutionary practice" of "those labour associations . . . which have
   spontaneously . . . been formed in Paris and Lyon" during the 1848
   revolution which show that the "organisation of credit and organisation
   of labour amount to one and the same." If all workers "organise
   themselves along similar lines, it is obvious that, as masters of
   labour, constantly generating fresh capital through work, they would
   soon have wrested alienated capital back again, through their
   organisation and competition." This would apply to "small-scale" as
   well as "large-scale property and large industries". [Op. Cit., pp.
   374-5] Thus Proudhon places his ideas firmly in the actions of working
   people resisting wage slavery (i.e. the proletariat) and not
   exclusively in the "small property owner" (i.e., artisans and
   peasants).

   So regardless of McNally's claims, Proudhon was not fixated upon "small
   property". As we discuss in [5]section 4, Proudhon's recognition of
   differences in the working class was reflected in his position on
   property. His proposals for a libertarian society included social
   ownership, workers' self-management of large scale workplaces as well
   as artisan and peasant production and explicitly and repeatedly argued
   for "the complete emancipation of the worker . . . the abolition of the
   wage worker." [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 222] Rather than being
   backward looking and aiming exclusively at the artisan/peasant,
   Proudhon's ideas looked to the present and the future by looking at
   both the artisan/peasant and proletariat (i.e. to the whole of the
   working class in France at the time). As Daniel Guérin summarised:

     "Proudhon really moved with the times and realised that it is
     impossible to turn back the clock. He was realistic enough to
     understand that 'small industry is as stupid as petty culture" . . .
     With regard to large-scale modern industry requiring a large
     workforce, he was resolutely collectivist: 'In future, large-scale
     industry and wide culture must be the fruit of association.' 'We
     have no choice in the matter,' he concluded, and waxed indignant
     that anyone had dared to suggest that he was opposed to technical
     progress . . . Property must be abolished . . . The means of
     production and exchange must be controlled neither by capitalist
     companies nor by the State . . . they must be managed by
     associations of workers" [Anarchism, p. 45]

   The notion that anarchism is the politics of the "small property owner"
   is even harder to maintain when we move from Proudhon's reformist
   anarchism to the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin and Kropotkin.
   While there is a similar commitment to a decentralised, federal
   socialism "from below" rooted in social and economic self-management,
   the means are different: revolution is embraced, along with labour
   unions and direct action. Where Proudhon differs from later anarchists
   like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta and Goldman is that this working
   class self-activity is reformist in nature, that is seeking
   alternatives to capitalism which can reform it away rather than
   alternatives that can fight and destroy it. However, this embrace of
   social revolution and class struggle by anarchists like Bakunin rests
   on the same principle of working class self-emancipation.

   Hence we find Bakunin arguing that "revolution is only sincere, honest
   and real in the hands of the masses" and so socialism can be achieved
   "by the development and organisation, not of the political but of the
   social (and, by consequence, anti-political) power of the working
   masses" who must "organise and federate spontaneously, freely, from the
   bottom up, by their own momentum according to their real interest, but
   never according to any plan laid down in advance and imposed upon the
   ignorant masses by some superior intellects." Social change would be
   achieved only by "the complete solidarity of individuals, sections and
   federations in the economic struggle of the workers of all countries
   against their exploiters." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 237,
   pp. 197-8 and p. 177] Unlike Proudhon, he saw the means for achieving
   the social revolution in the labour movement as trade unions (organised
   from the bottom up, of course) were "the natural organisation of the
   masses" as "workers' solidarity in their struggle against the bosses"
   was the means by which workers could emancipate itself "through
   practical action." Thus the key to working-class self-liberation was
   "trades-unions, organisation, and the federation of resistance funds"
   [The Basic Bakunin, p. 139 and p. 103] In short, what became known as a
   syndicalist position (see [6]section 9 for a discussion of McNally's
   false counterpoising of anarchism and syndicalism) as the "organisation
   of the trade sections and their representation by the Chambers of
   Labour . . . bear in themselves the living seeds of the new society
   which is to replace the old world. They are creating not only the
   ideas, but also the facts of the future itself." [Bakunin on Anarchism,
   p. 255] Moreover, as we show in the [7]next section, like Proudhon,
   Bakunin argued that an anarchist society would be based on "the
   collective ownership of producers' associations, freely organised and
   federated in the communes, and by the equally spontaneous federation of
   these communes." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 197] As
   Kropotkin summarised:

     "the chief aim of Anarchism is to awaken those constructive powers
     of the labouring masses . . . since the times of the International
     Working Mens Association, the Anarchists have always advised taking
     an active part in those workers organisations which carry on the
     direct struggle of Labour against Capital and its protector, -- the
     State

     "Such a struggle . . . better than any other indirect means, permits
     the worker to obtain some temporary improvements in the present
     conditions of work, while it opens his eyes to the evil that is done
     by Capitalism and the State that supports it, and wakes up his
     thoughts concerning the possibility of organising consumption,
     production, and exchange without the intervention of the capitalist
     and the State." [Direct Struggle Against Capital, p. 189]

   And McNally asserts that "the liberty defended by the anarchists was
   not the freedom of the working class to make collectively a new
   society"! Only someone ignorant of anarchist theory or with a desire to
   deceive could make such an assertion. Needless to say, McNally's claim
   that anarchism is the politics of the "small property owner" would be
   even harder to justify if he mentioned Kropotkin's communist anarchism.
   However, like Proudhon's and Bakunin's support for collective ownership
   by workers associations it goes unmentioned -- for obvious reasons.

3. Does anarchism "glorify values from the past"?

   McNally asserts, regardless of the facts, that anarchism "represented
   the anguished cry of the small property owner against the inevitable
   advance of capitalism. For that reason, it glorified values from the
   past: individual property, the patriarchal family, racism." The reality
   is very different. We will take each issue in turn.

   First, we should note that unlike Marx, anarchists did not think that
   capitalism was inevitable or an essential phase society had to go
   through before we could reach a free society. Neither Proudhon nor
   Bakunin shared Marx's viewpoint that socialism (and the struggle for
   socialism) had to be postponed until capitalism had developed
   sufficiently so that the "centralisation of the means of production and
   the socialisation [sic!] of labour reach a point at which they become
   incompatible with their capitalist integument." [Capital, vol. 1, p.
   929] As McNally states, socialism was once the "banner under which
   millions of working people resisted the horrors of the factory system
   and demanded a new society of equality, justice, freedom and
   prosperity." Unfortunately, the Marxist tradition viewed such horrors
   as essential, unavoidable and inevitable and any form of working class
   struggle -- such as the Luddites -- which resisted the development of
   capitalism was denounced. So much for Marxism being in favour of
   working class "self-emancipation" -- if working class resistance to
   oppression and exploitation which does not fit into its scheme for
   "working class self-emancipation" then it is the product of ignorance
   or non-working class influences. This can be seen from McNally's
   position on anarchism.

   Thus, rather than representing "the anguished cry of the small property
   owner against the inevitable advance of capitalism" anarchism is rather
   the cry of the oppressed against capitalism and the desire to create a
   free society in the here and now and not some time in the future once
   "the proletariat" was the majority of the working classes. To quote
   German Anarchist Gustav Landauer:

     "Karl Marx and his successors thought they could make no worse
     accusation against the greatest of all socialists, Proudhon, than to
     call him a petit-bourgeois and petit-peasant socialist, which was
     neither incorrect nor insulting, since Proudhon showed splendidly to
     the people of his nation and his time, predominately small farmers
     and craftsmen, how they could achieve socialism immediately without
     waiting for the tidy process of big capitalism." [For Socialism, p.
     61]

   As noted in the [8]previous section, Proudhon's theory reflected both
   artisan/peasant interests and those of wage workers -- as would be
   expected from a socialist aiming to transform his society to a free
   one. The disastrous results of Bolshevik rule in Russia should indicate
   the dangers of ignoring the vast bulk of a nation (i.e. the peasants)
   when trying to create a revolutionary change in society. McNally
   confuses a desire to achieve socialism now with backward looking
   opposition to capitalism. Proudhon looked at the current state of
   society, not backwards, as McNally suggests. Indeed, he lambasted those
   radicals during the 1848 who sought to repeat the glories of the Great
   French Revolution rather than look to the future:

     "It is by '93 and all of its discord that we are being ruled . . .
     The democrats of '93, conjuring up a republic with their high school
     memories [of Ancient Rome], after devouring one another, set the
     revolution back by half a century . . . The democrats of 1848,
     building the republic on their parliamentary memories, have also set
     the revolution back by half a century . . . they are only imitators;
     they thought themselves statesmen because they were following the
     old models!

     "So what is this queer preoccupation which, in time of revolution,
     bedazzles the most steadfast minds, and, when their burning
     aspirations carry them forward into the future, has them constantly
     harking back the past? How does it come about that the People, just
     when it is making the break with established institutions, takes
     another plunge and gets further immersed in tradition? Society does
     not repeat itself: but one would have thought it was walking
     backwards . . . Could it not turn its gaze in the direction in which
     it is going?

     "[. . .]

     "In order to organise the future, a general rule confirmed by
     experience, the reformers always start out with their gaze fixed
     upon the past. Hence the contradiction forever discovered in their
     actions: hence also the immeasurable danger of revolutions."
     [Property is Theft!, p. 308]

   Secondly, it is not true that Proudhon or Bakunin "glorified"
   individual property. Proudhon, as is well know, argued that "property
   is theft" and that "property is despotism." He was well aware of the
   negative side effects of individual property and sought to end it:
   "instead of inferring . . . that property should be shared by all, I
   demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition."
   However, just as he was against capitalism, Proudhon was also against
   state socialism: "Either competition, -- that is, monopoly and what
   follows; or exploitation by the State, -- that is, dearness of labour
   and continuous impoverishment; or else, in short, a solution based upon
   equality, -- in other words, the organisation of labour, which involves
   the negation of political economy and the end of property." [Property
   is Theft!, p. 87, p. 133, p. 91 and p. 202]

   He was well aware that replacing private property by state property
   would not liberate the working class for what he termed "Community"
   (usually, if not accurately, translated as "communism"), would enserf
   the worker to the state. Instead, Proudhon wanted to abolish property
   and replace it with possession. As he put it in 1840's What is
   Property?, while property had to be "collective and undivided" its use
   could be divided by means of "possession". [Op. Cit., p. 137] Thus
   workers would control the means of production they used as well as the
   goods they created:

     "property in product . . . does not carry with it property in the
     means of production; that seems to me to need no further
     demonstration. There is no difference between the soldier who
     possesses his arms, the mason who possesses the materials committed
     to his care, the fisherman who possesses the water, the hunter who
     possesses the fields and forests, and the cultivator who possesses
     the lands: all, if you say so, are proprietors of their products --
     not one is proprietor of the means of production. The right to
     product is exclusive . . . the right to means is common". [Op. Cit.,
     p. 112]

   As we discuss in the [9]section 4, Proudhon repeatedly noted his
   position and refuted those who claimed he supported individual
   property. He also recognised that private property was not completely
   without merit as it gave its holder a measure of autonomy and
   protection against the state and other social forces. It was precisely
   this autonomy which he wished all to share rather than under capitalism
   where workers "sold their arms and parted with their liberty" to the
   capitalist or landlord. [Op. Cit., p. 212] However, recognising this --
   and the dangers of state socialism -- hardly equates to glorification
   of private property.

   It is true that Proudhon did oppose the forced socialisation of artisan
   workplaces and peasant land. He considered having control over the
   means of production, housing, etc. by those who use it as a key means
   of maintaining freedom and independence. Thus we find him arguing in
   1851 that "it is evident that if the peasants think well to associate,
   they will associate". [Op. Cit., p. 584] However, the issue was
   different for modern industry:

     "In such cases, it is one of two things; either the worker,
     necessarily a piece-worker, will be simply the employee of the
     proprietor-capitalist-entrepreneur; or he will participate in the
     chances of loss or gain of the establishment, he will have a voice
     in the council, in a word, he will become an associate.

     "In the first case the worker is subordinated, exploited: his
     permanent condition is one of obedience and poverty. In the second
     case he resumes his dignity as a man and citizen, he may aspire to
     comfort, he forms a part of the producing organisation, of which he
     was before but the slave; as, in the town, he forms a part of the
     sovereign power, of which he was before but the subject." [Op. Cit.,
     p. 583]

   Thus capitalism had to be replaced with associations "due to the
   immorality, tyranny and theft suffered". [Op. Cit., p. 584] This aspect
   of his ideas is continual throughout his political works and played a
   central role in his social theory. Thus to say that Proudhon
   "glorified" individual property distorts his position. As he argued in
   1848:

     "under universal association, ownership of the land and of the
     instruments of labour is social ownership . . . We want the mines,
     canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers'
     associations . . . We want these associations to be models for
     agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast
     federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of
     the democratic and social Republic." [Op. Cit., pp. 377-8]

   As the experience of workers under Lenin indicates (see [10]section
   H.3.13), collective ownership by the state does not end wage labour,
   exploitation and oppression and so Proudhon's arguments in favour of
   socialisation and possession and against capitalist and state ownership
   were proven right. As the forced collectivisation of the peasantry
   under Stalin shows, Proudhon's respect for artisan/peasant possessions
   was a very sensible and humane position to take. Unless McNally
   supports the forced collectivisation of peasants and artisans,
   Proudhon's solution is the only position a socialist can take.

   We doubt that McNally wants to socialise all "property" (including
   individual possessions and such like). We are sure that he, like Marx
   and Engels, wants to retain individual possessions in a socialist
   society. Thus they stated that the "distinguishing feature of Communism
   is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of
   bourgeois property" and that "Communism deprives no man of the power to
   appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him
   of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such
   appropriation." Later Marx argued that the Paris Commune "wanted to
   make individual property a truth by transforming the means of
   production, land and capital . . . into mere instruments of free and
   associated labour." [Selected Writings, p. 47, p. 49 and pp. 290-1]
   This echoes Proudhon's position that property "changed its nature" when
   it "the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the thing
   into the right to use it by his neighbour's labour". Thus support for
   "individual property" is not confined to Proudhon and, as noted, he
   desired to turn capital over to associated labour as well and this
   association he considered "the annihilation of property". [Op. Cit., p.
   155 and p. 148] It should also be stressed, as we note in [11]section
   A.5.1, the followers of Proudhon played a key role in the Paris Commune
   and its attempts to create co-operatives reflected his ideas. Moreover,
   initially Marx had nothing but praise for Proudhon's critique of
   property contained in his classic work What is Property?:

     "Proudhon makes a critical investigation -- the first resolute,
     ruthless, and at the same time scientific investigation -- of the
     basis of political economy, private property. This is the great
     scientific advance he made, an advance which revolutionises
     political economy and for the first time makes a real science of
     political economy possible. Proudhon's treatise Qu'est-ce que la
     propriété? is as important for modern political economy as
     Sieyês' work Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? for modern politics."
     [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 32]

   As Rocker argued, Marx changed his tune to "conceal from everyone just
   what he owed to Proudhon and any means to that end was admissible."
   [Marx and Anarchism] This can be seen from the comments we quote above
   which clearly show a Proudhonian influence in their recognition that
   possession replaces property in a socialist society and that associated
   labour is its economic basis. However, it is still significant that
   Proudhon's analysis initially provoked such praise by Marx -- an
   analysis which McNally obviously does not understand.

   Moving on from Proudhon, we discover Bakunin also opposing individual
   property and arguing that "the land, the instruments of work and all
   other capital [will] become the collective property of society and by
   utilised only by the workers, in other words by the agricultural and
   industrial associations." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 174]
   With regards to peasants and artisans Bakunin also desired voluntary
   collectivisation. "In a free community," he argued, "collectivism can
   only come about through the pressure of circumstances, not by
   imposition from above but by a free spontaneous movement from below."
   Rather than being a defender of "individual property" as McNally
   implies, Bakunin was a clear and consistent supporter of collective
   property (as organised in workers' associations and communes) and
   supported peasant and artisan property only in the sense of being
   against forced collectivisation as this would result in "propelling
   [the peasants] into the camp of reaction." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p.
   200 and p. 197] Expropriation of capital was considered a key aspect of
   social revolution:

     "let us suppose . . . it is Paris that starts [the revolution] . . .
     Paris will naturally make haste to organise itself as best it can,
     in revolutionary style, after the workers have joined into
     associations and made a clean sweep of all the instruments of
     labour, every kind of capital and building; armed and organised by
     streets and quartiers, they will form the revolutionary federation
     of all the quartiers, the federative commune . . . All the French
     and foreign revolutionary communes will then send representatives to
     organise the necessary common services . . . and to organise common
     defence against the enemies of the Revolution, together with
     propaganda, the weapon of revolution, and practical revolutionary
     solidarity with friends in all countries against enemies in all
     countries." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 178-9]

   Given how often Bakunin stressed the need for union struggles and
   collective labour property, it is easy to conclude that McNally did no
   research into anarchism before writing about it. So we discover him
   arguing that "resistance funds and trade unions" are "the only
   efficacious weapons" the workers have against the bourgeoisie and this
   needed "the organisation of the international strength of the workers
   of all countries." This movement aimed for a society "based on
   equality" where "all capital and every instrument of labour, including
   the soil, belong to the people, by right of collective property."
   States "must be abolished, for their only mission is to protect
   individual property, that is, to protect the exploitation by some
   privileged minority, of the collective labour of the masses of the
   people" and a "just human society" must be created, one "free of
   political domination and economic exploitation, founded only on
   collective labour which is guaranteed by collective property." He
   repeatedly proclaimed his support for "the great principle of
   collective property" and argued that "the collective property of
   capital" was one of "the absolutely necessary conditions for the
   emancipation of labour and of the workers". [The Basic Bakunin, p. 153,
   p. 196 and p. 85] The social revolution would see "the passing of all
   the land, capital and means of production into the hands of the
   international federation of free workers' associations." Land "belongs
   to those who have cultivated it with their own hands -- to the rural
   communes" while "capital and all tools of labour belong to the city
   workers -- to the workers' associations." Anarchism would be "nothing
   else but a free federation of workers -- agricultural workers as well
   as factory workers and associations of craftsmen." [The Political
   Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 344 and p. 410]

   Clearly neither Proudhon nor Bakunin "glorified" individual property.
   Hence Daniel Guérin's summary:

     "Proudhon and Bakunin were 'collectivists,' which is to say they
     declared themselves without equivocation in favour of the common
     exploitation, not by the State but by associated workers of the
     large-scale means of production and of the public services. Proudhon
     has been quite wrongly presented as an exclusive enthusiast of
     private property . . . At the Bale congress [of the First
     International] in 1869, Bakunin . . . all[ied] himself with the
     statist Marxists . . . to ensure the triumph of the principle of
     collective property." ["From Proudhon to Bakunin", The Radical
     Papers, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos (ed.), p. 32]

   Thirdly, while it is true that Proudhon did glorify the patriarchal
   family, the same cannot be said of Bakunin. Unlike Proudhon, he argued
   that "[e]qual rights must belong to both men and women," that women
   must "become independent and free to forge their own way of life" and
   that "[o]nly when private property and the State will have been
   abolished will the authoritarian juridical family disappear." He
   opposed the "absolute domination of the man" in marriage, urged "the
   full sexual freedom of women" and argued that the cause of women's
   liberation was "indissolubly tied to the common cause of all the
   exploited workers -- men and women." An anarchist society's
   organisations would be populated by people elected "by the universal
   suffrage of both sexes" and so it would be based on "[e]qual political,
   social, and economic rights, as well as equal obligations, for women."
   [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 396-7, p. 78 and p. 93] In short:

     "Abolition of the patriarchal family law, based exclusively upon the
     right to inherit property and also upon the equalisation of man and
     women in point of political, economic, and social rights." [The
     Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 343]

   It should be redundant to note that Bakunin's position was shared by
   the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman, Chomsky and Ward but,
   clearly, it is not -- and best not ponder where such noted anarchists
   as Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre and Louise Michel
   "glorified . . . the patriarchal family"! André Léo, a feminist
   libertarian and future Communard, pointed out the obvious contradiction
   in Proudhon's position in 1869 which these anarchists also saw:

     "These so-called lovers of liberty, if they are unable to take part
     in the direction of the state, at least they will be able to have a
     little monarchy for their personal use, each in his own home . . .
     Order in the family without hierarchy seems impossible to them --
     well then, what about in the state?" [quoted by Carolyn J. Eichner,
     "'Vive La Commune!' Feminism, Socialism, and Revolutionary Revival
     in the Aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune", Journal of Women's
     History, vol. 15, No. 2, p. 75]

   These anarchists, and many others, extended anarchist ideas to the one
   area of life where Proudhon excluded liberty: the family.
   Unsurprisingly, both during and after his lifetime, anarchists
   subjected it to an immanent critique (i.e., using Proudhon's own
   concepts against his own position) and so while repulsive, Proudhon's
   anti-feminism should not be used for a blanket rejection of all his
   ideas given the otherwise appealing nature of his vision of a federated
   self-managed society -- nor anarchism as such. So to state, as McNally
   does, that "anarchism" glorifies the patriarchal family simply staggers
   belief. Only someone ignorant of both logic and anarchist theory could
   make such an assertion.

   Finally, we turn to the claim that anarchism "glorified . . . racism".
   While it is undoubtedly true that both Proudhon and Bakunin made a few
   racist comments, it does not follow that anarchism as a political
   theory is racist. Few would suggest that because Marx and Engels made
   racist comments that this makes Marxism inherently racist (see
   [12]section 6 for a few examples of racist comments by the founders of
   Marxism). The same with anarchism -- particularly given that both
   Proudhon and Bakunin made anti-racist statements in their writings.
   Thus we find Proudhon arguing in 1851 that in an anarchist society
   there will "no longer be nationality, no longer fatherland, in the
   political sense of the words: they will mean only places of birth.
   Whatever a man's race or colour, he is really a native of the universe;
   he has citizen's rights everywhere." [Property is Theft!, p. 567]
   Bakunin echoed this in 1867, arguing that "all collective and
   individual morality rests essentially upon respect for humanity" and
   this meant "the recognition of human right and human dignity in every
   man, of whatever race, colour, degree of intellectual development, or
   even morality." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 146] That these comments, and
   others like them, are the ones consistent with Anarchist principles is
   obvious.

   So a few anti-Semitic and anti-German remarks, made in passing, does
   not equate to people who "glorified . . . racism" nor a theory which is
   inherently racist. Rather, it means someone who expressed personal
   bigotries which failed to live up to their stated ideals. Yet rather
   than admit the obvious, McNally exaggerates Proudhon's and Bakunin's
   flaws while remaining silent on similar ones in Marx and Engels as well
   as the lack of them in the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta, Rocker,
   Goldman, and so on. Ultimately, the weakness of McNally's position can
   be seen from the very large Jewish anarchist movement in both Europe
   and America which placed Proudhon and Bakunin in their pantheon of
   influences.

4. Why are McNally's comments on Proudhon a distortion of his ideas?

   McNally does attempt to provide some evidence for his remarks. He turns
   to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "widely proclaimed 'the father of
   anarchism.'" As he correctly notes, Proudhon was a "printer by
   vocation" and "strongly opposed the emergence of capitalism in France."
   However, McNally claims that Proudhon's "opposition to capitalism was
   largely backward-looking in character" as he "did not look forward to a
   new society founded upon communal property which would utilise the
   greatest inventions of the industrial revolution. Instead, Proudhon
   considered small, private property the basis of his utopia. His was a
   doctrine designed not for the emerging working class, but for the
   disappearing petit bourgeoisie of craftsmen, small traders and rich
   peasants." Unfortunately McNally has got his facts wrong.

   To be fair to McNally, he is simply repeating what Marxists have been
   asserting about Proudhon since Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy. In
   that work, Marx claimed to be replying to Proudhon's System of Economic
   Contradictions but, in reality, the bulk of the work is inaccurate
   diatribe and its few valid points are swamped by selective quoting,
   false attribution and the repeation of points Proudhon made but in such
   a way as to suggest he argued the opposite. This last method of
   distortion can be seen when Marx implies that Proudhon wished to return
   to a pre-industrial economy based on small-scale private property:

     "Those who, like Sismondi, wish to return to the correct proportions
     of production, while preserving the present basis of society, are
     reactionary, since, to be consistent, they must also wish to bring
     back all the other conditions of industry of former times."
     [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 137]

   Compare this to Proudhon's position expounded with similar words in
   System of Economic Contradictions:

     "M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the
     division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be
     abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive
     indivision, -- that is, to each one by himself, each one for
     himself, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to
     retrograde; it is impossible." [Property is Theft!, p. 194]

   As we will show, this was not an isolated statement: Proudhon
   consistently supported not only large-scale industry but also
   socialised ownership. Indeed, the Frenchman was critical of those
   socialists (whom he rightly labelled "utopian") who replaced analysis
   of capitalism and its tendencies with visions of an ideal system:

     "It is important, then, that we should resume the study of economic
     facts and practices, discover their meaning, and formulate their
     philosophy. Until this is done, no knowledge of social progress can
     be acquired, no reform attempted. The error of socialism has
     consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious reverie by launching
     forward into a fantastic future instead of seizing the reality which
     is crushing it; as the wrong of the economists has been in regarding
     every accomplished fact as an injunction against any proposal of
     reform.

     "For my own part, such is not my conception of economic science, the
     true social science. Instead of offering a priori arguments as
     solutions of the formidable problems of the organisation of labour
     and the distribution of wealth, I shall interrogate political
     economy as the depository of the secret thoughts of humanity"
     [System of Economical Contradictions, p. 128]

   It worthwhile noting that the System of Economic Contradictions
   Proudhon was discussing was not some new utopian scheme, as Marx
   implied, but rather capitalism: "We will reserve this subject [the
   future organisation of labour] for the time when, the theory of
   economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their
   general equation the programme of association, which we shall then
   publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our
   predecessors". This analysis was essential in order to base ideas of
   social transformation on current tendencies. So rather than abstractly
   contrast a "utopia" to capitalism, Proudhon stressed the need to first
   analyse and understand the current system and so "to unfold the system
   of economical contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal
   association." [Op. Cit., p. 311 and p. 132]

   While Marx asserted that Proudhon wished "to take us back to the
   journeymen or, at most, to the master craftsman of the Middle Ages"
   there is nothing in his work to support such claims. Unsurprisingly,
   then, rather than provide a quote from Proudhon confirming this
   aspiration Marx makes many an assertion such as that individual
   exchange "is consistent only with the small-scale industry of past
   centuries . . . or else with large-scale industry and all its train of
   misery and anarchy." [Op. Cit., p. 190, p. 138] Yet this forgets that
   under capitalism, workers do not own or control their work but in a
   mutualist society they would do both. As Proudhon argued, "the pace of
   mechanical progress" under capitalism has "no other effect" than to
   "make the chains of serfdom heavier, render life more and more
   expensive, and deepen the abyss which separates the class that commands
   and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers." This was because
   people "work under a master" and so "[u]nder the regime of property,
   the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely, like
   the revenue, to the proprietor". [Property is Theft!, p. 195, p. 248,
   p. 253] Would this "misery" happen if workers managed their own work?
   Of course not.

   Marx ignored this, proclaiming that there is "no individual exchange
   without the antagonism of classes." Yet a system of worker-managed
   workplaces exchanging the product of their labour with peasant farmers
   would not be marked by classes for these "relations are not relations
   between individual and individual, but between worker and capitalist,
   between farmer and landlord, etc." Marx ignores the nature of
   Proudhon's ideas, favouring the assertion he "borrows from economists
   the necessity of eternal relations" and forgets that economic relations
   "are historical and transitory products." [Op. Cit., p. 144, p. 159, p.
   178 and p. 166] Strangely, Marx forgot to quote Proudhon arguing that
   the "present form" of how labour was organised "is inadequate and
   transitory" and that "the radical vice of political economy, consists,
   in general terms, in affirming as a definitive state a transitory
   condition, -- namely, the division of society into patricians and
   proletarians". [Op. Cit., p. 170 and p. 174]

   So McNally, like Marx, distorts Proudhon's position. While many later
   anarchists -- the communist-anarchists -- rejected Proudhon's market
   socialism in favour of libertarian communism, the notion that his
   "opposition to capitalism was largely backward-looking in character"
   and that "small, private property the basis of his utopia" is just
   nonsense. To quote Proudhon from 1841: "We must apply on a large scale
   the principle of collective production" [Op. Cit., p. 140] As K. Steven
   Vincent correctly summarises:

     "On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the
     general image given on the secondary literature, Proudhon was not
     hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of
     what these large enterprises had introduced into society. For
     example, Proudhon strenuously opposed the degrading character of . .
     . work which required an individual to repeat one minor function
     continuously. But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale
     production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to
     socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a
     machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result,
     according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers'
     associations. These associations would enable the workers to
     determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed
     and operated on a day-to-day basis." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the
     Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 156]

   So if you look at Proudhon's writings rather than what Marx and Engels
   claimed he wrote, it will soon be discovered that Proudhon in fact
   favoured collective ownership and for workers' associations to manage
   the means of production. Thus we find Proudhon arguing in 1840 that
   "the land is indispensable to our existence, -- consequently a common
   thing" and "all accumulated capital being social property" so "no one
   can be its exclusive proprietor". Property becomes "collective and
   undivided" and managers "must be chosen from the workers by the workers
   themselves." [Property is Theft!, p. 105, p. 118, p. 137 and p. 119]
   Interestingly, Marx himself noted how the Frenchman in this work, What
   is Property?, "abolishes property in order to abolish poverty. Proudhon
   did even more. He proved in detail how the movement of capital produces
   poverty". [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 35]

   Property would be owned collectively and so access would be free -- as
   we discuss in [13]section I.3.3 there would be no more bosses and
   wage-workers but simply associates. However, unlike under Marxism,
   there would be no central planning and the associates would decide what
   to produce. So "the use of [workplaces], like that of the land, may be
   divided, but which as property remains undivided." This
   "non-appropriation of the instruments of production" would be "a
   destruction of property." Ten years later, in 1851, he argued that
   "[e]very industry, operation or enterprise which by its nature requires
   the employment of a large number of workers of different specialities,
   is destined to become a society or company of workers." Thus "every
   individual employed in the association . . . has an undivided share in
   the property of the company" as well as "the right to fill any
   position" for "all positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to
   the approval of the members." This means that "the collective force,
   which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to
   a small number of managers and speculators: it becomes the property of
   all the workers." Thus there would be a new form of economic
   organisation based on "the co-operation of all who take part in the
   collective work" with "equal conditions for all members [Op. Cit., p.
   153, p. 149, p. 583, pp. 585-6]

   Public utilities would be under the "initiative of communes and
   departments" with "workers companies . . . carrying the works out."
   This decentralisation, this "direct, sovereign initiative of
   localities, in arranging for public works that belong to them, is a
   consequence of the democratic principle and the free contract." Land
   and housing would see rental payments being "carried over to the
   account of the purchase" of the resource used and once the property
   "has been entirely paid for, it shall revert immediately to the
   commune." In the case of housing, such payments would result in "a
   proportional undivided share in the house [the tenant] lives in, and in
   all buildings erected for rental, and serving as a habitation for
   citizens." The land and housing would become socialised as the property
   "thus paid for shall pass under the control of the communal
   administration" and for "repairs, management, and upkeep of buildings,
   as well as for new constructions, the communes shall deal with
   bricklayers companies or building workers associations." In short:
   "Capitalist and landlord exploitation stopped everywhere, wage labour
   abolished, equal and just exchange guaranteed." [Op. Cit., pp. 594-5,
   p. 576, p. 578, p. 576 and p. 596]

   Proudhon termed this vision of a self-managed economy "an industrial
   democracy" or "the industrial republic" and argued that "Workers'
   Associations are the locus of a new principle and model of production
   that must replace present-day corporations". When "in an industry, all
   the workers, instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps
   their product, work for one another and thereby contribute to a common
   product from which they share the profit" then, when you "extend the
   principle of mutuality that unites the workers of each group to all the
   Workers' Associations as a unit, and you will have created a form of
   civilisation that, from all points of view -- political, economic,
   aesthetic -- differs completely from previous civilisations" [Op. Cit.,
   p. 610 and p. 616] Compare this, the anarchist position, on industrial
   democracy with Lenin's who, in 1921 went so far as to suggest, somewhat
   disingenuously given the reality of party dictatorship at the time,
   that "Democracy is a category proper only to the political sphere".
   [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 26]

   As can be seen, rather than base his "utopia" on "small, private
   property" Proudhon based it on the actual state of the French economy
   -- one marked by both artisan and large-scale production. The latter he
   desired to see transformed from the individual property of the few
   (capitalists) into the collective property of workers' associations and
   placed under workers' self-management. The former, as it did not
   involve wage-labour, was non-capitalist and was compatible with a
   system of undivided (collective) ownership and divided use
   (possession). While Proudhon's vision may be considered as (in part or
   in whole) undesirable, contradictory and unstable, it is not
   "backward-looking in character" nor based on "small, private property".
   That Proudhon himself publicly rejected the assertion he stood for
   private ownership is of note:

     "You have me saying, and I really do not know where you could have
     found this, that ownership of the instruments of labour must forever
     stay vested in the individual and remain unorganised. These words
     are set in italics, as if you had lifted them from somewhere in my
     books. And then, on the back of this alleged quotation, you set
     about answering me that society, or the State that stands for it,
     has the right to buy back all property assets . . . But it does not
     follow at all from my speaking on the basis of socialism in order to
     reject the buy back of such assets as nonsensical, illegitimate and
     poisonous that I want to see individual ownership and
     non-organisation of the instruments of labour endure for all
     eternity. I have never penned nor uttered any such thing: and have
     argued the opposite a hundred times over. I make no distinction . .
     . between real ownership and phoney ownership . . . I deny all kinds
     of proprietary domain. I deny it, precisely because I believe in an
     order wherein the instruments of labour will cease to be
     appropriated and instead become shared; where the whole earth will
     be depersonalised . . ."

     "There is a more straightforward, more effective and infinitely less
     onerous and less risky way of transferring ownership, of achieving
     Liberty, Equality and Fraternity . . .

     "Capital having been divested of its power of usury, economic
     solidarity is gradually created, and with it, an equality of wealth.

     "Next comes the spontaneous, popular formation of groups, workshops
     or workers associations;

     "Finally, the last to be conjured and formed is the over-arching
     group, comprising the nation in its entirety, what you term the
     State because you invest it in a representative body outside of
     society, but which, to me, is no longer the State." [Property is
     Theft!, pp. 498-500]

   Clearly McNally distorts Proudhon's ideas on the question of property.
   That he may have been aware of the actual facts in shown by his
   qualification that Proudhon's critique of capitalism was "largely
   backward-looking in character." The utility of which qualification is
   clear -- it allows him to ignore the substantial evidence against his
   assertion by muttering that he never said that Proudhon was always
   "backward-looking"...

   McNally goes too far when he asserts that Proudhon "so feared the
   organised power of the developing working class that he went so far as
   to oppose trade unions and support police strike-breaking." There is,
   of course, a deep irony in McNally attacking Proudhon on this matter
   given that the Bolshevik regime he supports and considers as a
   "workers' state" repeatedly used not only its political police (the
   infamous Cheka) but also the Red Army to break strikes (see [14]section
   H.6.3). This was done to secure Bolshevik power over the working class
   (see [15]section 8).

   It must also be stressed that while Proudhon did oppose trade unions
   (as we noted in [16]section 2 he argued the working class would be
   better served using other means to liberate itself) it was not the case
   he supported police strike-breaking. As the editor of a collection of
   Marx's works had to admit that "[t]o give Proudhon his due, he was not
   so much justifying the actions of the French authorities as exposing
   the contradictions' he saw as an inevitable evil of the present social
   order" [quoted by Iain McKay, "Introduction", Property is Theft!, p.
   65] As Proudhon himself put it:

     "workers' strikes are ILLEGAL. And it is not only the penal code
     which says this, but the economic system, the necessity of the
     established order. As long as labour is not sovereign, it must be a
     slave; society is possible only on this condition. That each worker
     individually should have the free disposition of his person and his
     arms may be tolerated; but that the workers should undertake, by
     combinations, to do violence to monopoly society cannot permit.
     Authority, in shooting down the miners, found itself in the position
     of Brutus placed between his paternal love and his consular duties:
     he had to sacrifice either his children or the republic. The
     alternative was horrible, I admit; but such is the spirit and letter
     of the social compact, such is the tenor of the charter . . . the
     police function, instituted for the defence of the proletariat, is
     directed entirely against the proletariat." [Property is Theft!, pp.
     221-2]

   The key words here are "[a]s long as labour is not sovereign" and,
   unsurprisingly, when Marx quoted this passage in Poverty of Philosophy
   he omitted it, so changing Proudhon's meaning completely. So while
   Proudhon opposed trade unions in favour of other forms of working class
   self-organisation (co-operatives) it does not follow that he supported
   the breaking of strikes when he reported when it happened. Rather he
   was noting that such things were inevitable under capitalism and that
   this system had to be replaced by one based on workers' self-management
   of production.

   It is significant that the French syndicalists whom McNally is so keen
   to praise and differentiate from "classical anarchists" considered
   Proudhon (like Bakunin) one of their influences. Similarly, the French
   trade unionists who joined with their British counterparts to create
   the International Working Men's Association were followers of the
   French anarchist. Both groups of trade unionists saw the state repress
   their strikes so this would be a strange paradox indeed if McNally's
   account of Proudhon's position on police strike-breaking were correct.
   As it is not, there is no paradox.

   McNally correctly states that Proudhon "oppose[d] trade unions" but
   rather than it being because he "feared the organised power of the
   developing working class" it was for the opposite reason: "As things
   are at present, which do you think will win [in a strike]? . . . [the
   bosses as] the match is clearly unequal". At best strikes would "lead
   to a general price increase". [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon, p. 182 and p. 181] Worse, as well as distorting Proudhon's
   position McNally fails to mention that Proudhon opposition to trade
   unions and strikes as counter-productive was not shared by subsequent
   anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Goldman, and so on (see
   [17]section 9). Why should Proudhon (the odd man out in anarchist
   theory with regards to this issue) be taken as defining that theory?
   Such an argument is simply dishonest and presents a false picture of
   the facts.

   Next McNally states that Proudhon "violently opposed democracy" and
   presents a series of non-referenced quotes to prove his case. Such a
   technique is useful for McNally as it allows him quote Proudhon without
   regard to when and where Proudhon made these comments and so their
   context. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader
   to discover both. This is a deeply problematic technique, particularly
   given the seriousness of the charges being made. However, the reasons
   why he pursued this approach become understandable when the statements
   are tracked down as it becomes clear that McNally is quoting Proudhon
   completely out of context and so twisting his words into the opposite
   of what he meant.

   He suggests that Proudhon's "notes for an ideal society involved the
   suppression of elections, of a free press, and of public meetings of
   more than 20 people." The word "notes" gives the game way, as he is not
   referring to any work produced in Proudhon's lifetime but rather his
   notebooks which were published a hundred years after his death, in the
   1960s, and unknown until then. Private notebooks are hardly the best
   source for determining a person's ideas as they are the means by which
   a thinker explores ideas, some of which he may later conclude are
   deeply flawed. Moreover, as we note in [18]section 6, neither Proudhon
   nor Bakunin were not anarchists throughout their lives nor consistently
   libertarian when they were. Nor was anarchism born complete and ready
   made in 1840 when Proudhon proclaimed himself an anarchist in What is
   Property?. He developed his libertarian ideas over time and,
   unsurprisingly, we would discover passages in his published works at
   odds with his subsequent, better developed, ideas. This applies even
   more to his private notebooks in which we would expect ideas to be
   sketched which he later rejected -- perhaps sketching ideas he
   disagreed with precisely to clarify his thoughts.

   While difficult to be completely sure, it seems likely that McNally is
   selectively referring Proudhon's Notebooks from 1845 when he was
   clarifying his ideas on the idea of universal association. As one
   historian notes, Proudhon did envision some kind of national council at
   this time and the passages on how it would be selected "are not
   consistent. In some sections he suggested that the leaders of the
   association were to be chosen by the members, presumably by election .
   . . In yet other passages, Proudhon rather immodestly pictured himself
   in the director's role. One must be extremely cautious not to draw too
   many implications from these infrequent references to the council and
   its method of selection. Proudhon did not . . . have any designs for a
   small dictatorial elite" as this would "fly in the face of his sincere
   concern for individual liberty". So it is to his published works we
   must turn to see how the conclusions of these private notes and
   speculations. Interestingly, in a book published in 1843 Proudhon
   "referred to the important role that government was to perform" but in
   the introduction to a later edition he indicated that "he had changed
   his mind on this issue on the role of government" and "he insisted that
   reform should not -- could not -- come 'from above'; rather it could
   only 'from below, from the spontaneity of the masses, and not from the
   initiative of the government' . . . this change had already occurred by
   1846" when he was "vehemently attacking other socialists such as Blanc
   for trumpeting reform initiated 'from above'". [Vincent, Op. Cit., p.
   146 and pp. 143-4]

   The same applies to when McNally suggested that Proudhon "looked
   forward to a 'general inquisition' and the condemnation of 'several
   million people' to forced labour". With no means to see whether this is
   selective quoting or not, McNally disarms his readers. However, we must
   note a certain irony here as he does not, of course, mention that Marx
   and Engels advocated "industrial armies, especially for agriculture" to
   ensure the "[e]qual liability of all to labour" in the Communist
   Manifesto. [Selected Writings, p. 53] Nor does McNally mention the
   Bolshevik's introduction of the "militarisation of labour" in 1919 and
   1920 with Trotsky its leading advocate. The "very principle of
   compulsory labour service is for the Communist quite unquestionable . .
   . The only solution of economic difficulties from the point of view of
   both principle and of practice is to treat the population of the whole
   country as the reservoir of the necessary labour power . . . and to
   introduce strict order into the work of its registration, mobilisation
   and utilisation." The "introduction of compulsory labour service is
   unthinkable without the application . . . of the methods of
   militarisation of labour". This is the "State compulsion without which
   the replacement of capitalist economy by the Socialist will for ever
   remain an empty sound." The "Labour State considers itself empowered to
   send every worker to the place his work is necessary" and had "the
   right to lay its hand upon the worker who refuses to execute his labour
   duty". This "presents the inevitable method of organisation and
   disciplining of labour-power during the period of transition from
   capitalism to Socialism." [Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism, p. 135, p.
   137, p. 141, p. 142 and p. 143] As can be seen Trotsky did not, as
   McNally would wish to suggest, think this was a result of the Civil War
   but rather a matter of principle.

   McNally also fails to note that in December 1917 the Bolshevik regime
   created the Cheka, a political police force, to repress opposition to
   it from both the left and right as well as from reactionary forces and
   workers . At its worse, it even utilised torture and the shooting of
   unarmed prisoners. However, its main task was repression of opposition
   organisations -- including other socialists (the anarchists were its
   first victims in early 1918) -- and breaking strikes and other forms of
   labour protest in association with the Red Army.

   If Proudhon's one-off, never repeated, scribbles in a private notebook
   mean anarchism is "elitist and authoritarian to the core" and "hostile
   to ideas of mass democracy and workers' power" what does it mean for
   Bolshevism which actually created a regime based on party dictatorship,
   political police and the militarisation of labour which its leading
   thinkers defended and justified at length in books and articles written
   to influence the international workers' movement? McNally, of course,
   does not mention these awkward facts so does not raise, never mind
   answer, the question.

   However, reading the context of quotes McNally provides which can be
   tracked down, it is difficult to take his summary seriously. We turn to
   this now and will show that his readers would be justified in
   questioning his claims on Proudhon. Simply put, once the context of the
   quotes he provides is understood then it becomes clear McNally is
   quoting selectively in order to attribute ideas to Proudhon he did not,
   in fact, hold. The dishonesty is shocking.

   This can be seen when McNally presents another unattributed quote: "The
   masses, he wrote are 'only savages . . . whom it is our duty to
   civilise, and without making them our sovereign.'" Let us provide both
   the source and the context McNally is keen to avoid. First, the quote
   is from a letter written by Proudhon on the 11th of December 1852 and
   it is quoted by J. Hampden Jackson who also helpfully presents the
   context which McNally strips, namely a few days after the plebiscite
   which saw an overwhelming majority of French men vote to end the Second
   Republic, create the Second Empire and convert the President into an
   Emperor. This was exactly one year on from the President's military
   coup which saw him impose a new constitution and extend his tenure by
   ten years, an act again endorsed by a vast majority in a plebiscite. As
   Hampden notes: "The people of France had spoken. It remained for
   Proudhon to point the moral". [Marx, Proudhon and European Socialism,
   p. 103]

   This is the context for this quote -- a cry of despair at a people
   which so willingly voted to destroy a republic and their own freedom.
   These two plebiscites in favour of Louis-Napoleon's coup and autocratic
   rule resulted in "Proudhon's faith in the people" falling "to its
   lowest level" and "no epithet was too severe for the classes in whom he
   had seen the great hope of humanity." [George Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon, p. 184] This becomes obvious when you read the full context
   of the words McNally quotes:

     "You still worship the people . . . you should absolutely demolish
     this false religion. It is necessary to serve freedom and morals for
     themselves . . . without scorning the people, which is only
     uncivilised [sauvage] and that we have to civilise, do not make it
     your sovereign. I saw, on December 7th, 1851, when paving stones of
     the boulevard were still red with blood, these honest people rush to
     small theatres, content, merry, without regret nor remorse. That
     once I had surprised it, for five years, in red-handed indifference,
     immorality, imperialist plot, ingratitude for its initiators! Ah!
     admittedly, it did not mislead me; but cowardice, even when
     predicted, is always hideous to see. I will strike these people, I
     warn you, until I made them embarrassed of the alleged dogma of its
     sovereignty; because it is not enough for us to re-examine the
     incompetents of '48, we must re-examine their idol . . ."
     [Correspondance de P-J Proudhon, vol. V, p. 111]

   Is McNally really suggesting that Proudhon's position was incorrect and
   that he should have proclaimed popular support of the military coup and
   its repression of those defending the Republic as an example of
   civilised behaviour and the people's sovereignty? As Proudhon lamented,
   "the truth" was that "the people have the government which it prefers,
   and the bourgeoisie the government that it deserves" and "Napoleon III
   is the legitimate, authentic expression of the middle-class and
   proletarian masses. If it is not precisely the product of the national
   will, it is undoubtedly that of the national permission." [Op. Cit., p.
   110] McNally for all his talk of democracy does not tackle -- does not
   even raise! -- the question of what happens if the majority make
   authoritarian and repressive decisions, as it did in December 1851 and
   1852. If, as the Republicans of Proudhon's time argued, the voice of
   the people is the voice of God did that make Louis-Napoleon's
   Presidency, coup and then Empire all legitimate? Proudhon argued no
   and, moreover, placed the underlying principle of democracy -- freedom
   -- above its expression within the (bourgeois) state. His writings
   explored how to secure mass participation in social life while
   minimising the possibility of tyranny. Thus the "federative system puts
   a stop to the agitation of the masses, to all the ambitions and
   incitements of demagogy" [Property is Theft!, p. 708]

   By stripping away the context, McNally turns his lament for the
   destruction of political freedom into a demand for it. The dishonesty
   is striking. It also raises some problems for McNally's stated
   political position of being in favour of "democracy" -- if anarchists
   are to be denounced because they "reject any decision-making process in
   which the majority of people democratically determine the policies they
   will support" then McNally is in a bind. The French people
   democratically determined to create an Empire and destroy what was left
   of their Republic. Presumably it would be "elitism" for him, like
   Proudhon, to denounce the decision and despair at those who made it? As
   we discuss in [19]section 7, the anarchist position on democracy is
   driven precisely by the obvious fact that majorities can be wrong and
   oppressive. This does not imply "elitism", quite the reverse.

   We should also note that Marx dismissed the peasants as "a class of
   barbarians standing half outside of society" [Capital, vol. 3, p. 949]
   "In countries like France" the peasants "constitute far more than half
   of the population" but, he argued, they "cannot represent themselves,
   they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time
   appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited
   governmental power". Thus "the Bonaparte who dispersed [the National
   Assembly in 1851] is the chosen of peasantry." [The Marx-Engels Reader,
   p. 493, p. 608 and pp. 607-8] Marx does not ponder the implications of
   these comments nor what they mean for democracy and the so-called
   "dictatorship of the proletariat".

   The second quote McNally provides as evidence for his case is "All this
   democracy disgusts me". Again, no reference is provided for obvious
   reasons for when it is tracked down it becomes clear that McNally is
   again quoting the Frenchman completely out-of-context in order to
   attribute to him ideas he did not hold, indeed was arguing against.
   This sentence comes from a private letter written in 1861 bemoaning how
   others on the left were attacking him as "a false democrat, a false
   friend of progress, a false republican" due to his critical position on
   Polish independence. Unlike most of the rest of the left (including
   Bakunin, it should be noted), Proudhon opposed the creation of a Polish
   state as it would be run by the "nobility [nobiliarie], [and so]
   catholic, aristocratic, [and] divided into castes". In other words, not
   a democracy. He then proclaims: "All this democracy disgusts me".
   [Correspondance de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, vol. XI, p. 196-7] Once this
   context is provided, it becomes clear that using his justly famous
   talent for irony against those on the left who violate their own stated
   democratic principles by supporting the creation of a feudal regime --
   if this is democracy, Proudhon was saying, then it disgusts him ("All
   this [so-called] democracy disgusts me"). By quoting out-of-context
   McNally turns a letter by Proudhon in which he wished the left would be
   consistently in favour of democracy into an anti-democratic rant. His
   dishonesty is clear.

   This, it must be noted, is also relevant to McNally's politics. While
   proclaiming that Leninism is the only consistently democratic socialist
   theory and that to "talk of a workers' state is necessarily to talk of
   workers' power and workers' democracy", he makes an exception to the
   party dictatorship ruled by Lenin and Trotsky from 1918 to 1923. Then
   it becomes the case that socialism no longer "depends upon the
   existence of democratic organisation that can control society from
   below" nor "presupposes that workers are running the state." If, in
   1861, Proudhon expressed his frustration at those on the left who made
   exceptions to democracy for illogical reasons (the creation of a feudal
   Poland) what would have been his views of socialists who made
   exceptions for the Bolshevik regime?

   Even without the context for the quotes McNally presents, anyone with a
   basic grasp of anarchist ideas would know that he fails to quote the
   many statements Proudhon made in favour of democracy. Why should the
   apparently anti-democratic quotes represent anarchism and not the
   pro-democratic ones? Which ones are more in line with anarchist theory
   and practice? Surely the pro-democratic ones. Hence we find Proudhon
   arguing that "[i]n democratising us, revolution has launched us on the
   path of industrial democracy" and that his People's Bank "embodies the
   financial and economic aspects of modern democracy, that is, the
   sovereignty of the People, and of the republican motto, Liberty,
   Equality, Fraternity." We have already mentioned Proudhon's support for
   workers' self-management of production and his People's Bank was also
   democratic in nature: "A committee of thirty representatives shall be
   set up to see to the management of the Bank . . . They will be chosen
   by the General Meeting . . . [which] shall consist of not more than one
   thousand nominees of the general body of associates and subscribers . .
   . elected according to industrial categories and in proportion to the
   number of subscribers and representatives there are in each category."
   [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 63, p. 75 and p. 79]
   Thus, instead of bourgeois democracy Proudhon proposes industrial and
   communal democracy:

     "every industry needs . . . leaders, instructors, superintendents,
     etc. . . . they must be chosen from the workers by the workers
     themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the
     same with all public functions, whether of administration or
     instruction." [Property is Theft!, p. 118]

     "In order that association may be real, he who participates in it
     must do so . . . as an active factor; he must have a deliberative
     voice in the council . . . everything regarding him, in short,
     should be regulated in accordance with equality. But these
     conditions are precisely those of the organisation of labour." [Op.
     Cit., p. 2156]

     "In the republic, everyone reigns and governs . . . Representatives
     are plenipotentiaries with the imperative mandate and are recallable
     at will . . . Here is the republic! Here is the People's
     sovereignty! [Op. Cit., p. 279]

     "At present we are a quasi-democratic Republic: all the citizens are
     permitted, every third or fourth year, to elect, first, the
     Legislative Power, second, the Executive Power. The duration of this
     participation in the Government for the popular collectivity is
     brief; forty-eight hours at the most for each election. For this
     reason the correlative of the Government remains nearly the same as
     before, almost the whole Country. The President and the
     Representatives, once elected, are the masters; all the rest obey.
     They are subjects, to be governed . . ." [Op. Cit., p. 573]

     "In place of laws, we will put contracts [i.e. free agreement]. --
     No more laws voted by a majority, nor even unanimously; each
     citizen, each commune or corporation [i.e., self-managed industry],
     makes its own laws." [Op. Cit., p. 591]

     "Unless democracy is a fraud, and the sovereignty of the People a
     joke, it must be admitted that each citizen in the sphere of his
     industry, each municipal, district or provincial council within its
     own territory, is the only natural and legitimate representative of
     the Sovereign, and that therefore each locality should act directly
     and by itself in administering the interests which it includes, and
     should exercise full sovereignty in relation to them." [Op. Cit., p.
     595]

     "Workers' Associations are the locus of a new principle and model of
     production that must replace present-day corporations . . . The
     principle that prevailed there, in place of that of employers and
     employees . . . is participation, that is, the MUTUALITY of services
     supplementing the force of division and the force of collectivity.

     "There is mutuality, in fact, when in an industry, all the workers,
     instead of working for an owner who pays them and keeps their
     product, work for one another . . . extend the principle of
     mutuality that unites the workers of each group to all the Workers'
     Associations as a unit, and you will have created a form of
     civilisation that, from all points of view -- political, economic,
     aesthetic -- differs completely from previous civilisations . . ."
     [Op. Cit., p. 616]

     "groups that comprise the confederation. . . would be . . .
     self-governing, self-judging and self-administering in complete
     sovereignty. . . universal suffrage form its basis" [Op. Cit., p.
     716]

     "under the democratic constitution, insofar we can judge from its
     most salient ideas and most authentic aspirations, the political and
     the economic are one and the same, a sole and single system based
     upon a single principle, mutuality . . . no longer do we have the
     abstraction of people's sovereignty as in the '93 [French]
     Constitution and the others that followed it, and in Rousseau's
     Social Contract. Instead it becomes an effective sovereignty of the
     labouring masses . . . the labouring masses are actually, positively
     and effectively sovereign: how could they not be when the economic
     organism -- labour, capital, property and assets -- belongs to them
     entirely" [Op. Cit., pp. 760-1]

     "If political right is inherent in man and citizen, consequently if
     suffrage ought to be direct, the same right is inherent as well, so
     much the more so, for each corporation [i.e. self-managed industry],
     for each commune or city, and the suffrage in each of these groups,
     ought to be equally direct." [quoted by Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 219]

   So, clearly, McNally is hardly presenting a fair summary of either
   Proudhon's private notebooks, letters or his published works. This can
   be seen from his justly famous manifesto issued during the 1848
   revolution which presents a better notion of his "ideal society". It
   advocated "democratically organised workers' associations" along with
   "universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want
   implementation of the imperative mandate" otherwise "the people, in
   electing representatives, does not appoint mandatories but rather
   abjure their sovereignty!" This "is assuredly not socialism: it is not
   even democracy". He also demanded: "Freedom of association", "Freedom
   of assembly" and "Freedom of the press". [Property is Theft!, p. 377
   and p. 379]

   Do all these quotes suggest a man who "violently opposed democracy"? Of
   course not. Proudhon opposed certain types of democracy (centralised,
   hierarchical, top-down, statist democracy) and was in favour of another
   kind (decentralised, federal, bottom-up, libertarian democracy). So
   when looking at quotes by Proudhon ripped from their context it is
   important to ask whether he is attacking the centralised, hierarchical
   democracy of the state or the decentralised, participatory democracy of
   federated self-managed workplaces and communes? By taking of
   "democracy" in the abstract and not indicating that there are different
   forms of it (reflecting different class interests), McNally is
   confusing the issue. He fails to inform his readers that while Proudhon
   repeatedly attacked the former he advocated the latter. To use terms
   McNally should be familiar with, Proudhon attacked bourgeois democracy
   in favour of working-class democracy rooted in mandates, recall,
   decentralisation and federalism -- what would be better termed
   "self-management" but which Proudhon came to call "labour democracy"
   which would be "the IDEA of the new Democracy." In the state,
   "universal suffrage is the strangulation of the public conscience, the
   suicide of popular sovereignty, the apostasy of the Revolution" and to
   "make the vote for all intelligent, moral, democratic, it is necessary.
   . . to make the citizens vote by categories of functions, in accordance
   with the principle of the collective force". This federative democracy
   would be applied in the community (communes) and industry ("the
   agricultural-industrial federation"), indeed all areas including the
   military where it was necessary to "abolish military conscription,
   organise a citizens' army" based on "the right of the citizens to
   appoint the hierarchy of their military chiefs, the simple soldiers and
   national guards appointing the lower ranks of officers, the officers
   appointing their superiors." [Op. Cit., pp. 724-5, pp. 676-7, p. 711,
   p. 407 and p. 443]

   As can be seen, Proudhon's position on democracy is not quite what
   McNally suggests. Under a centralised social system it simply meant the
   people "is confined to choosing its bosses and its charlatans every
   three or four years." The issue for Proudhon was to create a system
   which allowed the people to govern itself and not hand power over to a
   few leaders -- particularly when the majority often pass that power to
   demagogues like Louis-Napoleon. It was the case "that the only way to
   organise democratic government is to abolish government" for the State
   "is the external constitution of the social power. . . the people does
   not govern itself . . . We affirm . . . that the people, that society,
   that the mass, can and ought to govern itself by itself . . . We deny
   government and the State, because we affirm that which the founders of
   States have never believed in, the personality and autonomy of the
   masses." [Op. Cit., p. 437, p. 485 and pp. 482-483]

   Thus McNally presents a distorted picture of Proudhon's ideas and thus
   leads the reader to conclusions about anarchism violently at odds with
   its real nature. It is somewhat ironic that McNally attacks Proudhon
   for being anti-democratic. After all, as we indicate in [20]section 8
   below, the Leninist tradition in which he places himself has a distinct
   contempt for democracy and, in practice, destroyed it in favour of
   party dictatorship.

   There is an addition irony. McNally praises the Paris Commune and
   states that "to secure their rule, the Parisian workers took a series
   of popular democratic measures. They suppressed the standing army and
   replaced it with a popular militia; they established the right of the
   people to recall and replace their elected representatives" and
   "universal male suffrage". He does not mention that, as can be seen,
   all these were advocated by Proudhon nor that his followers played a
   key role in the 1871 revolt. Clearly it is simply not the case that
   Marx's "work signalled an entirely new direction in socialist thought
   and socialist politics" if he "insisted" that "the abolition of the
   standing army", "universal suffrage" and "the right to recall
   representatives" were "all essential elements of any workers' state."
   Proudhon advocated all these over a decade before his followers made
   Marx belatedly see their benefit in 1871. Where Proudhon differed from
   Marx was his awareness that a federated society organised from the
   bottom-up was no state and to confuse the two opened the door to
   centralisation and the creation of a new class system -- as happened in
   Russia under the Bolsheviks.

   After distorting Proudhon's ideas on democracy and his desired society,
   McNally moves onto more secure ground, namely his sexism. He is correct
   to note that Proudhon "denounced women's liberation" and so right to
   quote Lichtheim that Proudhon had "a firmly patriarchal view of family
   life" and "regarded women as inferior beings." However, while correct
   to attack the Frenchman for this, it is incorrect to extend this to a
   rejection of anarchism as such -- particularly given the obvious
   contradiction of this position with the rest of his ideas. As noted in
   [21]section 3, other anarchists rejected these reactionary ideas and
   consistently applied libertarian principles to within the family.

   Lastly, McNally states that Proudhon "was a rabid racist reserving his
   greatest hatred for Jews, whose 'extermination' he advocated. He
   opposed emancipation for the American blacks and backed the cause of
   the southern slave owners during the American Civil War." To support
   his claims, he quotes George Lichtheim (whom he considers as having
   "written quite accurately") stating that Proudhon expressed "tolerance
   for slavery (he publicly sided with the South during the American civil
   war)" and "he believed in inherent inequalities among the races". It
   will come as no surprise that this is either completely false or not
   entirely true.

   Let us take the question of Proudhon's anti-Semitism. It is true that
   Proudhon made the occasional anti-Semitic remark in his writings but as
   Robert Graham correctly summarises "anti-semitism formed no part of
   Proudhon's revolutionary programme." ["Introduction", General Idea of
   the Revolution, p. xxxvi] In terms of the claim that he advocated the
   "extermination" of the Jews what McNally does not mention is that this
   comes from a single entry in his private Notebooks and was unknown
   until a hundred years after his death. The intellectual dishonesty of
   this should be clear and, unsurprisingly, he does not prove that this
   was anything more than a passing rant nor that Proudhon held this view
   before 1847 or after, either publicly or privately. In terms of the
   former, it is the case that Proudhon's anti-Semitism is limited to a
   few passing Jewish stereotypes (which, sadly, reflected French culture
   at the time) in a few of his minor articles and books. A reader
   consulting his most important works would not come across a single
   anti-Semitic remark and many proclamations in favour of racial
   equality.

   This does not mean that this private remark should not be condemned --
   it should -- but it does not follow that we reject everything wrote
   before or after it. That this was a one-off rant suggests that when it
   was written something caused Proudhon's (culturally reflective, but
   still inexcusable) anti-Semitic feelings to intensify so resulting in
   this rant. Significantly, Proudhon's beloved mother died that very
   month (December 1847) which suggests that it reflected an outlet for
   the deep despair he must have been feeling. Given that he never
   expressed this view before 1847 nor afterwards it should be considered
   as a quickly forgotten aberration produced by the pressures of a family
   crisis rather than something indicative of his politics.

   So quoting a single rant from his private notebook presents a false
   impression of Proudhon's ideas on race. To imply that a never repeated
   comment made in a private notebook and completely unknown until over a
   century later was part of his public work or a central aspect of
   Proudhon's ideas presents a completely false impression of both them
   and their influence -- particularly given his discussion of race in The
   Federative Principle, to which we now turn.

   McNally and Lichtheim proclaim that Proudhon "publicly" expressed
   "tolerance for slavery", "opposed emancipation for the American blacks
   and backed the cause of the southern slave owners" because he was a
   racist. This is not the case, as can be seen from the extended
   discussion on slavery in the only major work written during the
   American Civil War, The Federative Principle. First, though, it must be
   stressed that the American Civil War had very little to do with slavery
   and far more to do with conflicts within the US ruling class. As Howard
   Zinn noted, the war "was not over slavery as a moral institution . . .
   It was not a clash of peoples . . . but of elites. The northern elite
   wanted economic expansion -- free land, free labour, a free [national]
   market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the
   United States. The slave interests opposed all that" [A People's
   History of the United States, pp. 188-9] Slavery was never the driver
   for the war, regardless of how this has retroactively become the main
   cause (because this fits into the self-image and rhetoric of America
   far better than the grim reality). Indeed, abolition of slavery was
   raised as a war aim only in 1862 as a way of boosting the North's
   chances of winning.

   Proudhon recognised this obvious fact, arguing consistently applying
   the federal principle would mean "progressively raising the Black
   peoples' condition to the level of the Whites." However, the North
   "cares no more than the South about a true emancipation, which renders
   the difficulty insoluble even by war and threatens to destroy the
   confederation." Rather than express "tolerance" for slavery he wrote
   "the enslaving of one part of the nation is the very negation of the
   federative principle." [Property is Theft!, pp. 698-9f] Both sides were
   "fighting only over the type of servitude" and so both must "be
   declared equally guilty blasphemers and betrayers of the federative
   principle and banned from all nations." The union could only be saved
   if the North "grants the blacks their civil rights" and pursues radical
   economic reform by "providing possessions for the wage-workers and
   organising, alongside political guarantees, a system of economic
   guarantees." This last was key, for the slaves had "acquired the right
   of use and habitation on American soil." Justice demanded that both the
   freed slaves and wage workers must be given means of production (land,
   tools, workplaces) and other economic guarantees as "the conversion of
   black slaves to the proletariat" would mean that "black servitude will
   only change its form" rather than ended. Both "slavery and the
   proletariat are incompatible with republican values." [quoted by Iain
   McKay, "Neither Washington nor Richmond: Proudhon on Racism & the Civil
   War", Anarcho-Syndicalist Review, no. 60, pp. 25-6]

   Proudhon stressed "with regard to black workers, that physiologists and
   ethnographers recognise them as part of the same species as whites;
   that religion declares them, along with the whites, the children of God
   and the church, redeemed by the blood of the same Christ and therefore
   spiritual brothers; that psychology sees no difference between the
   constitution of the Negro conscience and that of the white, no more
   than between the comprehension of one and the other." This meant that
   blacks should be "as free as the whites by nature and human dignity."
   Therefore "the principle of equality before the law must have as
   corollaries: 1) the principle of equality of races, 2) the principle of
   equal conditions and 3) the principle of increasingly similar, although
   never completely equal, fortunes." This meant that "[i]n a federal
   republic, the proletariat and slavery both seem unacceptable; the
   tendency must be to abolish them both". So, Proudhon argued, "grant
   equal political rights to both the emancipated blacks and those kept in
   servitude until now" and proclaim them "fellow citizens and equals".
   "The federative principle," he summarised, "here appears closely
   related to that of the social equality of races and the equilibrium of
   fortunes. The political problem, the economic problem and the problem
   of races are one and the same problem, and the same theory and
   jurisprudence can resolve that problem." [quoted by McKay, Op. Cit., p.
   25]

   As can be seen, McNally and Lichtheim completely distort Proudhon's
   actual position. A more accurate account of this is given by academic
   Ralph Nelson:

     "But it would be naive to think that it is just the peculiar
     institution of slavery that Proudhon detests. He finds in the North
     also the principle of inequality and class distinction. If he is
     critical of both sides in the war, it is because the federative
     principle is incompatible with inequality, whether the agrarian
     variety of master and slave or the modern version of capital and
     labour . . .

     "Proudhon didn't really believe that the Union side would emancipate
     the Negro, but would fix on deportation as the solution to the
     problem. The union could be saved only by the liberation of the
     Negroes, granting them full citizenship, and by a determination to
     stop the growth of the proletariat. For what is gained for the
     former slaves, if emancipation means that they will become members
     of the proletariat? He notes that the situation in Russia after the
     emancipation of the serfs (1861) is analogous. Liberated serfs
     without land would be helpless. Economic guarantees must be
     developed alongside political ones. The corollaries of equality
     before the law are racial equality, equality of condition, and an
     approach toward equality of fortunes." ["The Federal Idea in French
     Political Thought", Publius, vol. 5, No. 3, p. 41]

   There is an obvious flaw in his position, namely that "Proudhon
   suggests that nothing will have been gained if the blacks were freed
   only to become wage earners, as if the condition of the wage-earner
   were not closer to the realisation of personal autonomy than the
   condition of a well-treated slave." [Nelson, Op. Cit., p. 43] Yet his
   fears should not be ignored as the Southern states "enacted 'black
   codes' which made the freed slaves like serfs" after the end of the
   Civil War. [Zinn, Op. Cit., p. 199] As one Black newspaper put it: "The
   slaves were made serfs and chained to the soil . . . Such was the
   boasted freedom acquired by the coloured man at the hands of the
   Yankees." [quoted by Zinn, Op. Cit., pp. 196-7] However, these
   reservations about Proudhon's arguments -- which did contain relevant
   concerns -- do not make McNally's comments any more accurate. That he
   repeats someone else's mistakes do not matter as he should have taken
   the time to verify the claims by consulting Proudhon's own works --
   particularly given the serious nature of the assertions being made.

   As can be seen, the notion that Proudhon was "a rabid racist" cannot be
   supported. While he undoubted made the occasion racist remark (usually
   anti-Jewish), this was not reflected in his political ideas. Similarly,
   if, as Lichtheim suggests "dislike of Germans, Italians, Poles" is
   considered important, then why are similar dislikes of other
   nationalities by Marx and Engels not worthy of note? Neither was free
   from anti-Semitic and other racist comments but anarchists consider
   these as relatively unimportant as they are understandable given the
   culture they lived in. In other words, Proudhon, Marx and Engels were
   people of their times and so it is unsurprising that certain of their
   opinions shock and disgust us. The question is, are these views at the
   core of their politics or do they reflect personal bigotries in
   contradiction with them? In all three cases, the answer is obvious and
   so such attacks on Proudhon fail to convince  particularly if they are
   generalised to all anarchists, as if Proudhon's opposition to strikes
   or his sexism were remotely applicable to the likes of Bakunin,
   Kropotkin or Goldman!

   Also, it is somewhat ironic that McNally mentions Proudhon's alleged
   "support" for the South as the Leninist tradition he places his own
   politics is renown for supporting various dictatorships during wars.
   For example, during the Vietnam war the various Leninist groups called
   for victory to North Vietnam, a Stalinist dictatorship while during
   both Gulf Wars they called for victory to Iraq, another dictatorship.
   In other words, they "tolerated" and "supported" anti-working class
   regimes, dictatorships and repression of democracy. They stress that
   they do not politically support these regimes, rather they wish these
   states to win in order to defeat the greater evil of imperialism. In
   practice, of course, such a division is hard to defend -- for a state
   to win a war it must repress its own working class and so, in calling
   for a victory for a dictatorship, they must support the repression and
   actions that state requires to win the war (as an explosion of
   resistance, class struggle and revolt in the "lesser imperialist power"
   will undermine its war machine and so lead to its defeat). The notion
   that such calls do not mean support for the regime is false and so
   McNally's comments against Proudhon as well as being inaccurate also
   smack of hypocrisy -- his political tradition has sided with repressive
   dictatorships during wars in the name of wider political aims and
   theory. In contrast, anarchists have consistently raised the idea of
   "No war but the class war" in such conflicts (see [22]section A.3.4).
   Proudhon's position of refusal to side with either the North or the
   South during the American Civil War is related to the revolutionary
   anarchist position.

   To conclude, with the exception of his sexism McNally's account of
   Proudhon's ideas is either completely false (on small-scale property,
   democracy, racial equality) or, at best, half-truths turned into
   full-lies (his anti-Semitism and position of strikes). The scale of the
   distortion is simply staggering, suggesting he never consulted a single
   book by Proudhon. In terms of Proudhon's sexism and anti-Semitism,
   dismissing a theory based on the personal failings of those who
   advocate it only convinces the superficial. Proudhon rejected many of
   the assumptions of his times, yet he did not rise above all of them. As
   George Lichtheim suggests (in a passage McNally could not bring himself
   to quote), "[i]n all these respects Proudhon simply reflected the
   milieu from which he had sprung. His mental crudities were commonplace
   and not peculiar to him. Half peasant, half townsman, he was the
   embodiment of the average French workingman of his day". [The Origins
   of Socialism, p. 87] Subsequent anarchists (including Bakunin) overcame
   the limitations of Proudhon the man by using Proudhon the theorist.
   McNally, by personalising the matter, seeks to deny the significant
   contributions Proudhon made to socialism (as can be seen by the Paris
   Commune). If he were more confident in his own political tradition he
   would not have to do this as Leninism should be able to convince by
   presenting an accurate account of the ideas of others and showing their
   weaknesses. That McNally did not do this for Proudhon shows that, for
   all his flaws, his argument that socialism needs to be decentralised,
   federal and self-managed still rings true. The failure of the Bolshevik
   regime confirms this.

5. Why are McNally's comments on Bakunin a distortion of his ideas?

   McNally then moves on to Bakunin whom he states "shared most of
   Proudhon's views." The truth is somewhat different. Unlike Proudhon,
   Bakunin supported trade unions and strikes, equality for women and
   revolution as well as being far more explicit in support for the
   collectivisation of property.

   This can be seen from Bakunin's last book in which he argued that the
   International Working Men's Association "has shown the proletariat the
   objective it must achieve and at the same time has indicated to it the
   ways and means of organising a popular force", namely "a voluntary
   alliance of agricultural and factory worker associations, communes,
   provinces and nations" organised "from below upwards". Socialism would
   be created "only through concerted action by the proletariat of all
   countries, whose organisation first on an economic basis is precisely
   the object of the International", by means of "factory, artisan, and
   agrarian sections". A "federal organisation, from below upwards, of
   workers' associations, groups, communes, districts, and, ultimately,
   regions and nations" was needed "for real as opposed to fictitious
   freedom". This "popular federation" would be "based on emancipated
   labour and collective property" as the "mode of future production"
   would be "producers' cooperatives" and "all forms of land and capital
   must become collective property". He also "demand[ed], along with
   liberty, the equality of rights and obligations for men and women."
   [Statism and Anarchy, p. 32, p. 33, p. 49, p. 51, p. 13, p. 22, p. 201
   and p. 219]

   So Bakunin disagreed with Proudhon on many subjects. He did share
   Proudhon's support for industrial self-management, self-organisation in
   workers' associations, his hatred of capitalism and his vision of a
   decentralised, libertarian, federal, "from below" socialist society. It
   is true that, as McNally notes, "Bakunin shared [Proudhon's]
   anti-semitism" but he fails to mention Marx and Engels' many racist
   remarks against Slavs and other peoples. Also it is not true that
   Bakunin "was a Great Russian chauvinist convinced that the Russians
   were ordained to lead humanity into [the] anarchist utopia." Rather,
   Bakunin (being Russian) hoped Russia would have a libertarian
   revolution, but he also hoped the same for France, Spain, Italy and all
   countries in Europe (indeed, the world). He opposed the Russian Empire
   and he wished "the destruction of the Empire of All the Russias" and
   supported national liberation struggles of nationalities oppressed by
   Russia (and any other imperialist nation). [The Basic Bakunin, p. 162]
   Unlike Proudhon, he supported Polish National liberation although he
   recognised that "its leading parties, which are still drawn primarily
   from the gentry. have been unable to renounce their state-centred
   program" and hoped that the national movement would embrace economic
   change and seek the "liberation and renewal of their homeland in social
   revolution". [Statism and Anarchy, p. 40]

   McNally moves on to "Bakunin's organisational methods", stating that
   they "were overwhelmingly elitist and authoritarian." This assertion
   completely misunderstands Bakunin's ideas on how revolutionaries should
   organise and influence working class organisations as well as the
   revolutionary process. Before turning to these, we must discuss
   Bakunin's views on social organisation as these indicate what his
   "utopia" (to use McNally's word) would be like and place his ideas on
   how anarchists should organise into context. If this is not done then
   Bakunin cannot be understood nor how later anarchists revised his
   ideas.

   We must start by pointing out that Bakunin's viewpoints on the
   organisational methods of mass working class organisations and those of
   political groupings were somewhat different. As we show in [23]section
   9, Bakunin had what would now be termed a syndicalist position on the
   labour movement and so he rejected organising political parties and
   electioneering ("political action") in favour of "the development and
   organisation of the social (and, by consequence, anti-political)
   power of the working masses as much in the towns as in the
   countryside." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 197-8] This was
   reflected in his ideas on social revolution as expressed in 1868:

     "the federative Alliance of all working men's associations will
     constitute the Commune . . . by the creation of a Revolutionary
     Communal Council composed of one or two delegates vested with
     plenary but accountable and removable mandates . . . all provinces,
     communes and associations [would send] their representatives to an
     agreed meeting place . . . vested with similar mandates to
     constitute the federation of insurgent associations, communes and
     provinces to organise a revolutionary force capable of defeating
     reaction it is the very fact of the expansion and organisation of
     the revolution for the purpose of self-defence among the insurgent
     areas that will bring about the triumph of the revolution . . .
     Since revolution everywhere must be created by the people, and
     supreme control must always belong to the people organised in a free
     federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . .
     organised from the bottom upwards by means of revolutionary
     delegation" [Op. Cit., pp. 170-2]

   How is this federation of workers councils based on elected, mandated
   and recallable delegates organised from the bottom-up "elitist and
   authoritarian"? Compare this to McNally's own words on the soviets of
   the Russian Revolution:

     "The Russian revolution was based upon a wholly new kind of social
     organisation, the workers' council or soviet. These councils, based
     on elected delegates from the workplace and the neighbourhoods,
     became the new decision-making bodies of Russia. They were organs of
     direct democracy whose delegates, like those of the Paris Commune,
     could be recalled by the electors. The soviets represented a new
     form of mass democracy. It was for this reason that Lenin and
     Trotsky made the demand for 'All power to the soviets!' the central
     slogan of the Russian revolution."

   As noted in [24]section 4, Proudhon had already raised the idea of
   recallable delegates in the 1848 revolution and it was his followers
   who applied them in 1871. Given McNally's praise of the Paris Commune
   and the Russian soviets, it seems strange that Bakunin's comments with
   regards to revolutionary social organisation with its obvious parallels
   to both should not be mentioned. Perhaps because to do so would totally
   undermine his case? Thus rather than being "overwhelmingly elitist and
   authoritarian" Bakunin's ideas on a future society have marked
   similarities to the actual structures created by working people in
   struggle and are marked by libertarian and self-managed visions and
   concepts -- as anyone familiar with Bakunin's work would know.

   The key difference between Bakunin and Lenin is that for the former
   turning the soviets into a state (even a so-called "workers' state") as
   desired by the latter would mean that power moved from the bottom to
   the top, empowering the few at the expense of the many. Given that
   Lenin's aim was the creation of a Bolshevik government it comes as no
   surprise that this "central slogan" of the revolution was quickly
   violated (see [25]section H.1.7). As Bakunin once put it, there is the
   "Republic-State" and there is "the system of the Republic-Commune, the
   Republic-Federation, i.e. the system of Anarchism. This is the politics
   of the Social Revolution, which aims at the abolition of the State and
   establishment of the economic, entirely free organisation of the people
   -- organisation from bottom to top by means of federation." [The
   Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 314] The difference is fundamental
   and not simply a question of words (see [26]section H.2.1).

   The question now arises of how Bakunin thought revolutionaries should
   influence both working class struggle and revolution. While not
   completely libertarian, Bakunin's ideas on this issue are different
   than McNally's summary would suggest.

   The aim of the political grouping was to exercise a "natural influence"
   on the members of unions and associations, seeking to convince them of
   the validity of anarchist ideas. The political group did not aim to
   seize political power (unlike Marxists) and so it "rule[d] out any idea
   of dictatorship and custodial control." All it could do was to "assist
   the birth of the revolution by sowing ideas corresponding to the
   instincts of the masses" and act "as intermediaries between the
   revolutionary idea and the popular instinct." It "help[s] the people
   towards self-determination on the lines of the most complete equality
   and the fullest freedom in every direction, without the least
   interference from any sort of domination." [Michael Bakunin: Selected
   Writings, p. 172 and p. 191] The "sole aim of a secret society must be,
   not the creation of an artificial power outside the people, but the
   rousing, uniting and organising of the spontaneous power of the
   people". It "does not foist upon the people any new regulations,
   orders, styles of life, but merely unleashes its will and gives wide
   scope to its self-determination and social organisation, which must be
   created by itself from below and not above. The organisation must
   accept in all sincerity the idea that it is a servant and a helper, but
   never a commander, of the people, never under any pretext its manager,
   not even under the pretext of the people's welfare." The secret society
   "acts on the people only by the natural personal influence of its
   members who are not invested with any power" and so this "does not
   threaten the liberty of the people because it is free from all official
   character. It is not placed above the people like state power because
   its whole aim, defined by its programme, consists of the fullest
   realisation of the liberty of the people." [quoted by Michael Confino,
   Daughter of a Revolutionary, p. 250, pp. 258-9 and p. 261]

   As we discuss in more detail in [27]section J.3.7, the key to
   understanding the role of Bakunin's secret societies is to recognise
   that rather than seek to be elected into positions of power, they would
   work within popular organisations at the base and argue their ideas and
   win others over to them (i.e., their "natural personal influence").
   This is why Bakunin considered such organisations as being no danger to
   popular liberty -- by not having power they could not force their ideas
   onto others, unlike a new state regime. All this is ignored by McNally.

   McNally then quotes "one historian" on Bakunin. It should be noted that
   not even providing a name makes evaluating the accuracy of the
   historian's work impossible and so leaves the reader in the dark as to
   whether the historian does provide a valid account of Bakunin's ideas.
   However, after investigation the historian in question is George
   Lichtheim whom McNally feels provides "the most reliable guides to
   early socialist thought" presumably because his account chimes with all
   the standard Marxist prejudices, assumptions and errors about anarchism
   (significantly McNally ignores Lichtheim's statement that Bakunin's
   supported "anti-authoritarian collectivism"). A socialist, Lichtheim
   opposed Marxist-Leninism while presenting a sceptical but superficial
   account of anarchism. This can be seen from the words McNally quotes:

     "The International Brotherhood he founded in Naples in 1865-66 was
     as conspiratorial and dictatorial as he could make it, for Bakunin's
     libertarianism stopped short of the notion of permitting anyone to
     contradict him. The Brotherhood was conceived on the Masonic model,
     with elaborate rituals, a hierarchy, and a self-appointed directory
     consisting of Bakunin and a few associates." [A Short History of
     Socialism, p. 126]

   First, it should be noted that Bakunin considered secret societies as
   necessary because, at the time, most countries were monarchies and did
   not have basic civil liberties. Bakunin had been imprisoned by the Tsar
   for his activities during the 1848 revolution and so had personal
   experience of the fate of revolutionaries who were caught by these
   regimes. As Murray Bookchin argues, "Bakunin's emphasis on conspiracy
   and secrecy can be understood only against the social background of
   Italy, Spain, and Russia the three countries in Europe where conspiracy
   and secrecy were matters of sheer survival." [The Spanish Anarchists,
   p. 24] McNally ignores the historical context -- and the awkward fact
   that Marxists have also favoured secret groupings in the face of
   similar regimes.

   Second, it should be noted that in 1865-6 Bakunin was just becoming an
   anarchist and this period "represents the transition from the
   revolutionary nationalism of his middle-years to the revolutionary
   anarchism of his last period." The "rituals" of the International
   Brotherhood were not reflected in later organisations because, as
   Bakunin admitted to a recruit, "they aren't necessary. We invented that
   for the Italians". In other words, they reflected the revolutionary
   traditions of the democratic conspiracies of that country rather than
   his own ideas, something confirmed by James Guillaume, his associate in
   the Alliance of Social Democracy, who recounted this, Bakunin's group
   in the First International, "had little resemblance to 'the classic
   type of secret society where one had to obey orders coming from above.'
   Bakunin's organisation was nothing more than a 'free association of men
   who were uniting for collective action, without formalities, without
   ceremonies or mysterious rites.'" As for the Brotherhood, "the
   constitution thus laid down was to be regarded as provisional; for when
   the Brotherhood attained a membership of seventy, a constituent
   assembly was to be convened which would determine the definite rules
   and programme of the organisation." [E.H. Carr, Michael Bakunin, p.
   320, p. 316, p. 357 and p. 315]

   Third, this summary is simply inaccurate. To show this, we shall quote
   from Bakunin's letter to the Russian Nihilist Sergy Nechayev in which
   he explains the differences in their ideas. He discusses the
   "principles and mutual conditions" for a "new society" of
   revolutionaries in Russia (noting that this was an "outline of a plan"
   which "must be developed, supplemented, and sometimes altered according
   to circumstances"):

     "Equality among all members and the unconditional and absolute
     solidarity -- one for all and all for one -- with the obligation for
     each and everyone to help each other, support and save each other. .
     . Complete frankness among members and proscription of any
     Jesuitical methods in their relationships . . . When a member has to
     say anything against another member, this must be done at a general
     meeting and in his presence. General fraternal control of each other
     . . . Everyone's personal intelligence vanished like a river in the
     sea in the collective intelligence and all members obey
     unconditionally the decisions of the latter.

     "All members are equal; they know all their comrades and discuss and
     decide with them all the most important and essential questions
     bearing on the programme of the society and the progress of the
     cause. The decision of the general meeting is absolute law. . . The
     society chooses an Executive Committee from among their number
     consisting of three or five members who should organise the branches
     of the society and manage its activities in all the regions of the
     [Russian] Empire on the basis of the programme and general plan of
     action adopted by the decision of the society as a whole. . . This
     Committee is elected for an indefinite term. If the society . . .
     the People's Fraternity is satisfied with the actions of the
     Committee, it will be left as such; and while it remains a Committee
     each member . . . and each regional group have to obey it
     unconditionally, except in such cases where the orders of the
     Committee contradict either the general programme of the principle
     rules, or the general revolutionary plan of action, which are known
     to everybody as all . . . have participated equally in the
     discussion of them. . . In such a case members of the group must
     halt the execution of the Committee's orders and call the Committee
     to judgement before the general meeting . . . If the general meeting
     is discontented with the Committee, it can always substitute another
     one for it. . . Any member or any group is subject to judgement by
     the general meeting . . . No new Brother can be accepted without the
     consent of all or at the very least three-quarters of all the
     members. . .

     "The Committee divides the members . . . among the Regions and
     constitutes Regional groups of leaderships from them . . . Regional
     leadership is charged with organising the second tier of the society
     -- the Regional Fraternity, on the basis of the same programme, the
     same rules, and the same revolutionary plan . . . Each Regional
     Committee will set up District Committees from members of the
     Regional Fraternity . . . District Committees can, if necessary and
     only with the consent of the Regional Committee, set up a third tier
     of the organisation -- District Fraternity with a programme and
     regulations as near as possible to the general programme and
     regulations of the People's Fraternity. The programme and
     regulations of the District Fraternity will not come into force
     until they are discussed and passed by the general meeting of the
     Regional Fraternity and have been confirmed by the Regional
     Committee. . .

     "Jesuitical control . . . are totally excluded from all three tiers
     of the secret organisation . . . The strength of the whole society,
     as well as the morality, loyalty, energy and dedication of each
     member, is based exclusively and totally on the shared truth,
     sincerity and trust, and on the open fraternal control of all over
     each one." [quoted by Confino, Op. Cit., pp. 264-6]

   As can be seen, while there is much in Bakunin's ideas that few
   anarchists would agree with today, it cannot be said that it was
   "dictatorial" as McNally and Lichtheim wish to suggest. Ironically, as
   we note in [28]section H.2.14, there are distinct similarities to
   Lenin's (and Marx's during the 1848 revolution) ideas on how
   revolutionaries should organise. Thus we find Lenin arguing in What is
   to be Done? for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation, which
   concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities, an
   organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation"
   because the revolutionary movement would "benefit by the fact that a
   'dozen' experienced revolutionaries, no less professionally trained
   than the police, will centralise all the secret side of the work --
   prepare leaflets, work out approximate plans and appoint bodies of
   leaders for each urban district, for each factory district and for each
   educational institution, etc." Under Tsarism, the "only serious
   organisational principle the active workers of our movement can accept
   is strict secrecy, strict selection of members, and the training of
   professional revolutionaries." [The Essential Lenin, p. 158, p. 149 and
   p. 162]

   The parallels with Bakunin's system are clear and are predominately the
   result of the identical political conditions both revolutionaries
   experienced. While anarchists are happy to indicate and oppose the
   non-libertarian aspects of Bakunin's ideas, it is hard for the likes of
   the McNally to attack Bakunin while embracing Lenin's ideas on the
   party, justifying their more "undemocratic" aspects as a result of the
   objective conditions of Tsarism. Worse, in 1920 these principles were
   agreed by the Communist International, including the necessity of both
   legal and illegal structures within the party for "the Communist
   parties must learn to combine legal and illegal activity in a planned
   way. However, the legal work must be placed under the actual control of
   the illegal party at all times." [Proceedings and Documents of the
   Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 198-9] Anarchists have, since
   Bakunin's death, rejected his ideas that anarchists should organise in
   a centralised fashion (see [29]section J.3).

   Therefore, McNally has a problem. On the one hand, he denounces
   Bakunin's ideas of a centralised, secret top-down organisation of
   revolutionaries. On the other, the party structure that Lenin
   recommends is also a tightly disciplined, centralised, top-down
   structure with a membership limited to those who are willing to be
   professional revolutionaries. So if he attacks Bakunin, he must also
   attack Lenin, not to do so is hypocrisy. And, unlike Bakunin, Lenin
   wished his party to seize state power -- which then used it to build a
   system in its own image (see [30]section H.5.9).

   At this point it will be objected that Lenin's party was more
   democratic and he allowed people to disagree with him. Yet Lichtheim's
   summation leaves a lot to be desired. To point to just three examples:
   the historian T.R. Ravindranathan indicates that "Bakunin wanted the
   Alliance to become a branch of the International [Working Men's
   Association] and at the same time preserve it as a secret society. The
   Italian and some French members wanted the Alliance to be totally
   independent of the IWA and objected to Bakunin's secrecy. Bakunin's
   view prevailed on the first question as he succeeded in convincing the
   majority of the harmful effects of a rivalry between the Alliance and
   the International. On the question of secrecy, he gave way to his
   opponents". [Bakunin and the Italians, p. 83]; while other Bakunin
   influenced sent delegates to the Hague Congress of the First
   International in 1872, the Italian sections decided not to; The Spanish
   section of the Alliance "survived Bakunin . . . yet with few exceptions
   it continued to function in much the same way as it had done during
   Bakunin's lifetime." [George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ideology and the
   Working Class Movement in Spain, p. 43] Hardly what you would expect if
   Lichtheim's comments were accurate.

   The evidence suggests that the Alliance "was not a compulsory or
   authoritarian body." In Spain, it "acted independently and was prompted
   by purely local situations. The copious correspondence between Bakunin
   and his friends . . . was at all times motivated by the idea of
   offering advice, persuading, and clarifying. It was never written in a
   spirit of command, because that was not his style, nor would it have
   been accepted as such by his associates." Moreover, there "is no trace
   or shadow or hierarchical organisation in a letter from Bakunin to
   [Spanish anarchist] Mora . . . On the contrary, Bakunin advises
   'direct' relations between Spanish and Italian Comrades." The Spanish
   comrades also wrote a pamphlet which "ridiculed the fable of orders
   from abroad." [Juan Gomez Casa, Anarchist Organisation, p. 25 and p.
   40] This is confirmed by George R. Esenwein, who argues that "[w]hile
   it is true that Bakunin's direct intervention during the early days of
   the International's development in Spain had assured the pre-dominance
   of his influence in the various federations and sections" of the
   organisation, "it cannot be said that he manipulated it or otherwise
   used the Spanish Alliance as a tool for his own subversive designs."
   Thus, "though the Alliance did exist in Spain, the society did not bear
   any resemblance to the nefarious organisation that the Marxists
   depicted." [Op. Cit., p. 42] Indeed, as Max Nettlau points out, those
   Spaniards who did break with the Alliance were persuaded of its
   "hierarchical organisation . . . not by their own direct observation,
   but by what they had been told [by Marxists] about the conduct of the
   organisation" in other countries. [quoted by Casa, Op. Cit., pp. 39-40]

   In summary, McNally's comments are a distortion of Bakunin's ideas and
   activities. He misrepresents one aspect of Bakunin's ideas while
   ignoring those aspects which support working class self-organisation
   and self-management. Ironically, he ignores the awkward fact that
   Bakunin's and Lenin's ideas on how revolutionaries should organise were
   similar (as to be expected given similar circumstances) but with the
   key difference that Lenin, unlike Bakunin, sought state power for the
   professional revolutionaries (see [31]section H.3.11).

6. Are these "quirks of personality" or "rooted in the very nature of
anarchist doctrine"?

   After chronicling the failings of, and distorting the facts about, two
   individuals, McNally tries to generalise. "These characteristics of
   Bakunin and Proudhon," he argues, "were not mere quirks of personality.
   Their elitism, authoritarianism and support for backward-looking and
   narrow-minded causes are rooted in the very nature of anarchist
   doctrine." Thus McNally claims that these failings of Proudhon and
   Bakunin are not personal failings but rather political. They, he
   suggests, represent the reactionary core of anarchist politics but
   makes no attempt to show that this is the case. Worse, many of his
   claims about "anarchist doctrine" are simply untrue and, once
   corrected, leave little left other than "quirks of personality".

   Take, for example, Proudhon's position on the American Civil War. Let
   us assume that McNally's assertion is correct (as shown in [32]section
   4 it is not) and he supported the South. Bakunin "supported the Union
   in the struggle between the states". [Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits,
   p. 20] What does this mean for "anarchist doctrine"? Which of the two
   represented the "real" anarchist position? So the question remains why
   Proudhon's refusal to support either side during the American Civil War
   (his actual position) is an example of "anarchist doctrine" while
   Bakunin's support of the North is not. Proudhon, to raise another
   obvious example, did not share Bakunin's interest in secret societies
   (nor did Kropotkin, Goldman, etc.). What does this tell us about "the
   very nature of anarchist doctrine"? Could Bakunin's position not be
   better explained by him being imprisoned in a Tsarist dungeon? Could it
   be that rather than attack anarchism, McNally simply attacks the
   failings of individual anarchists?

   Unlike Proudhon, Bakunin and other revolutionary anarchists supported
   both unions and strikes and, as Kropotkin summarised, anarchists "do
   not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not to constitute,
   political parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since the foundation
   of the International Working Men's Association in 1864-1866, they have
   endeavoured to promote their ideas directly amongst the labour
   organisations and to induce those unions to a direct struggle against
   capital, without placing their faith in parliamentary legislation". How
   can Proudhon's position represent "the very nature of anarchist
   doctrine" when he was the only one to hold it? Similarly, Kropotkin
   simply (and rightly) dismissed Proudhon's position on women's equality
   as one "which most modern writers will, of course, not agree." [Direct
   Struggle Against Capital, p. 165 and p. 218] If McNally is right then
   we can only conclude that only Proudhon amongst all anarchist thinkers
   understood what anarchism stood for. That is, needless to say, unlikely
   and so we can only conclude that Proudhon's sexism and opposition to
   strikes were "quirks of personality" which later anarchists rejected in
   favour of a more consistent libertarian position (in the case of
   Proudhon's anti-feminism) or as inadequate (in the case of Proudhon's
   reformism). Neither, in short, is inherent to anarchist theory and it
   would be silly to suggest they were.

   It should also be noted that Marx and Engels took positions which
   modern readers would consider strange at best. In the case of slavery,
   Marx suggested in his polemic against Proudhon that if you "[c]ause
   slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of
   nations". [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 167] Engels, unsurprisingly,
   after the American Civil War added a note suggesting that this obvious
   tolerance of slavery was only valid in 1847. A few years later, in the
   early 1850s, Marx argued that slavery in Jamaica had been marked by
   "freshly imported BARBARIANS" in contrast to the United States where
   "the present generation of Negroes" was "a native product, more or less
   Yankeefied" and "hence capable of being emancipated." {Op. Cit., vol.
   39, p. 346] The many comments by Marx and Engels on the progressive
   role of imperialism in replacing traditional societies by capitalist
   social relationships are also relevant in this context as are the many
   racists comments on Slavs and other peoples (including Jews). In other
   words, Proudhon and Bakunin were not the only major socialist thinkers
   to express racist views and if they are to be dismissed as a result
   then why not Marx and Engels as well?

   We will draw upon Roman Rosdolsky's important work "Engels and the
   Nonhistoric' Peoples: The National Question in the Revolution of
   1848." (Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, No. 18/19) to sketch the
   bigotries of Marx and Engels (unless otherwise indicated all quotes in
   this section come from Rosdolsky's work). As will be seen, on almost
   every issue McNally raises against Proudhon and Bakunin we find similar
   comments by Marx and Engels.

   Unsurprisingly, given the times, Marx and Engels made numerous
   anti-Semitic remarks both in private and public. During the 1848
   revolution, the paper Marx edited (Neue Rheinische Zeitung) published
   the reports of Müller-Tellering who expressed "an all too maniacal
   hatred" of Jews. Engels wrote "very unpleasant passages on the (Polish)
   Jews" [193, 116], describing them as "the very incarnation of haggling,
   avarice and sordidness" and "the meanest of all races" with "its lust
   for profit." The Austrian Jews had "exploited the revolution and are
   now being punished for it" while "anyone who knows how powerful" they
   were. He generalised by suggesting that "Jews are known to be cheated
   cheats everywhere" and, according to Marx, they had put themselves "at
   the head of the counter-revolution" and so the revolution had "to throw
   them back into their ghetto". [quoted 192, 203,196] Marx's paper "did
   not dissociate itself from the anti-Semitic 'popular opinion'" and its
   articles resulted in some of its backers who were Jewish demanding the
   return of their money as it preached "religious hatred." [201, 191]

   Yet the despicable attitude expressed against Jews in Neue Rheinische
   Zeitung is the least of the issues of concern here given the opinions
   expressed over Slavs by the founders of Marxism. Thus we find Engels
   asserting that the Slavs have been "forced to attain the first stage of
   civilisation only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will
   never be able to achieve any kind of independence" and that the
   conquered should be grateful to the Germans for "having given
   themselves the trouble of civilising the stubborn Czechs and Slovenes,
   and introducing among them trade, industry, a tolerable degree of
   agriculture, and culture!" [Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 8, p 238]
   Worse, Engels proclaimed that "one day we shall take a bloody revenge
   on the Slavs for this cowardly and base betrayal of the revolution" and
   "hatred of the Russians was, and still is, the first revolutionary
   passion of the Germans". The revolution could only be secured "against
   these Slavs peoples by the most decisive acts of terrorism" and "a war
   of annihilation and ruthless terrorism, not in the interests of Germany
   but in the interests of the revolution!" There would be "a bloody
   revenge in the Slav barbarians" and a war which will "annihilate all
   these small pig-headed nations even to their very names" and "will not
   only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face
   of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples. And that too is an
   advance." [quoted, 85, 86]

   In short, Engels advocated ethnic cleansing in the name of the
   revolution against those whom he considered "nonhistoric" peoples. This
   was recognised by leading Marxist Karl Kautsky who, rightly, denounced
   him for advocating that "they had to be exterminated" [quoted 90]
   Regardless of what drove these rants, as Rosdolsky rightly states "it
   no way nullifies the fact that they made entire peoples the object of
   this hatred and proclaimed a 'war of annihilation' against them." [87]

   Ignoring the genocidal ethnic cleansing proclaimed against the Slavs
   (bar Poles) and other "nonhistoric" people, Engels wrote of the war
   which "broke out over Texas" between Mexico and the USA and how it was
   good that "that magnificent California was snatched from the lazy
   Mexicans, who did not know what to do with it" by "the energetic
   Yankees." [quoted, 159] He failed to mention that the revolt of 1836
   over Texas which was the root of the 1846 war was conducted by
   "planters, owners of Negro slaves, and their main reason for revolting
   was that slavery had been abolished in Mexico in 1829." [160] In fact
   in 1845 a majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approved a
   proposed constitution that specifically endorsed slavery and the slave
   trade and was later accepted by the U.S. Congress. Unlike Engels,
   Northern abolitionists attacked this war as an attempt by slave-owners
   to strengthen the grip of slavery and ensure their influence in the
   federal government and publicly declared their wish for the defeat of
   the American forces. Henry David Thoreau was jailed for his refusal to
   pay taxes to support the war, penning his famous essay Civil
   Disobedience. [Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States,
   pp. 155-7] Rosdolsky rightly comments on how "inappropriate, in fact
   perverse, was Engels' illustration." [160]

   So we find distinct parallels between McNally's attacks on Proudhon and
   the many racist and anti-Semitic remarks by Marx and Engels (as listed
   by Peter Fryer in his "Engels: A Man of his Time" [John Lea and Geoff
   Pilling (eds.), The condition of Britain: Essays on Frederick Engels])
   as well as their siding with slave states against abolitionist ones.
   Nor did Marx, it must be noted, denounce Proudhon's racism or sexism
   (he also failed to comment on the Paris Commune being elected by male
   universal suffrage, thinking nothing of the exclusion of half the
   population while proclaiming its democratic nature). Strangely, most
   Marxists (rightly) condemning Proudhon for his bigotries are silent
   about this -- as silent as they are on the awkward facts that Proudhon
   did not actually support the Southern States in the American Civil War
   and that a one-off, never repeated, comment made in a private notebook
   simply cannot be taken as expressing his political ideas (see
   [33]section 4 for details).

   The fact is, once we correct McNally's errors, we discover that the
   vast majority of Proudhon's and Bakunin's positions are not
   "backward-looking and narrow-minded", quite the reverse. Where a
   position is so (Proudhon's position to trade unions and feminism being
   the most obvious examples) then we quickly discover that subsequent
   anarchists publicly rejected it. Most of the position's McNally paints
   as "anarchist doctrine" were not actually held by either Proudhon or
   Bakunin (such as, opposition to industry and collectively-owned and
   managed property). Rather than take examples which are common to most
   anarchist theorists -- and so actually reflective of "anarchist
   doctrine" -- McNally takes only a few positions held by one, at most
   two, major anarchist thinkers. Worse, these positions are tangential to
   the core of their ideas and, indeed, directly opposed to them (such as
   infrequently expressed bigotries against specific peoples being in
   obvious conflict to their other, more common, support for racial
   equality). From this minority of examples McNally generalises a theory
   -- and so violates the basic principles of the scientific method!

   So McNally's position leaves something to be desired. Why is Proudhon's
   opposition to trade unions and strikes is an example "anarchist
   doctrine" while Bakunin's (and Kropotkin's, Malatesta's, Berkman's,
   Goldman's, etc.) support for both is not? Why is Proudhon's sexism
   "anarchist doctrine" but Bakunin's (and Kropotkin's, Goldman's,
   Malatesta's, etc.) support for women's liberty and equality is not? Why
   proclaim Bakunin "shared most of Proudhon's views" when anyone who did
   the most basic research would quickly conclude that in these two issues
   (and others!) Bakunin rightly rejected the positions McNally raises
   with regards to Frenchman's ideas? Worse, many of the positions McNally
   attacks Proudhon for are simply inaccurate -- he simply did not hold
   the ideas McNally so confidently asserts he did.

   Moreover, as Daniel Guérin notes "[m]any of these masters were not
   anarchists throughout their lives and their complete works include
   passages which have nothing to do with anarchism." Bakunin, for
   example, was only an anarchist from around 1864 to his death in 1876
   while "in the second part of his career Proudhon's thinking took a
   conservative turn". [Anarchism, p. 6] As such, the positions McNally,
   rightly, attacks (once his errors are corrected!) are clearly "quirks
   of personality" rather than somehow "rooted in the very nature of
   anarchist doctrine." This can be seen from the awkward fact that no
   later anarchists advocated them. Not to mention the awkward fact that
   Marx and Engels shared similar views as those McNally attacks Proudhon
   and Bakunin for having (even if, in reality, they did not hold the
   positions McNally claims they did).

   These examples in themselves prove the weakness of McNally's claims and
   the low levels of scholarship which lay behind them. Indeed, it is
   amazing that the SWP/ISO printed this diatribe -- it obviously shows
   their contempt for facts, history and the intelligence of their desired
   audience.

7. Are anarchists against democracy?

   McNally asserts the following:

     "Originating in the revolt of small property owners against the
     centralising and collectivising trends in capitalist development
     (the tendency to concentrate production in fewer and fewer large
     workplaces), anarchism has always been rooted in a hostility to
     democratic and collectivist practices. The early anarchists feared
     the organised power of the modern working class. To this day, most
     anarchists defend the 'liberty' of the private individual against
     the democratically made decisions of collective groups."

   As indicated in [34]section 3, the notion that anarchists are against
   large-scale industry or collective property is simply an invention.
   Both Proudhon and Bakunin, for example, argued for collective
   management and ownership of the means of production by the workers
   themselves. Indeed, workers' self-management of production and
   collective ownership were raised in the very first anarchist book,
   Proudhon's What is Property? and both have remained an key aspect of
   anarchism ever since. Proudhon put it well: "Large industry and high
   culture come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in
   the future to make them rise from the association." [quoted by [K.
   Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French
   Republican Socialism, p. 156] So workers' associations running
   workplaces is at the heart of anarchism, an easy fact to discover if
   you bother to read Proudhon and Bakunin -- as is the fact that Bakunin
   supported revolutionary trade unionism as the means of producing a
   social revolution (see [35]section 9). So much for "fear[ing] the
   organised power of the modern working class"!

   So the premise of his assertion is factually incorrect. What of the
   conclusion, the idea that anarchists support the liberty to ignore "the
   democratically made decisions of collective groups"? Here McNally takes
   a grain of truth to create a lie.

   First, however, we need to ask an obvious question: what does
   "democracy" mean? Or, more correctly, what kind of democracy are we
   talking about? If quoting Lenin is not too out of place, in a section
   of his pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky in
   section entitled "How Kautsky Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal", Lenin
   stated it was "natural for a liberal to speak of 'democracy' in
   general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: 'for what class?'"
   [The Lenin Anthology, p. 465] So the question is not whether anarchists
   support "democracy" or not but what kind of democracy and for whom. For
   if McNally is right (and he is) and there are two kinds of socialism
   (one "from above" and one "from below") then there are multiple kinds
   of democracy: centralised and decentralised; unitarian and federal,
   top-down and bottom-up; bourgeois and workers. That is why Proudhon
   talked of the workers democracy ("Démocratie ouvrière") in his last
   work, contrasting it to the democracy (the left-Jacobin
   bourgeois-republican democracy which included the state socialists),
   but the elements of which he had been expounding upon since the 1840s.

   A close reading of Proudhon shows that his main opposition to
   "democracy" was that it was, paradoxically, not democratic enough as it
   referred to the Jacobin notion that the whole nation as one body should
   elect a government. In such a regime "the People reigns and does not
   govern, which is to deny the Revolution." [Property is Theft!, p. 267]
   He sought a social organisation in which people had meaningful control
   over their own lives -- as individuals and as groups, collectives. This
   was not possible under a centralised democracy and so "universal
   suffrage provides us, . . . in an embryonic state, with the complete
   system of future society. If it is reduced to the people nominating a
   few hundred deputies who have no initiative . . . social sovereignty
   becomes a mere fiction and the Revolution is strangled at birth."
   [Selected Writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 123] Nor was it
   possible as long as workers did not control their work and workplaces.
   This meant, as discussed in [36]section 4, he argued for a
   decentralised, federal bottom-up system of communal and workplace
   associations based on elected, mandated and recallable delegates:

     "we are all voters; we can choose the most worthy . . . we can
     follow them step-by-step in their legislative acts and their votes;
     we will make them transmit our arguments and our documents; we will
     suggest our will to them, and when we are discontented, we will
     recall and dismiss them.

     "The choice of talents, the imperative mandate . . . and permanent
     revocability are the most immediate and incontestable consequences
     of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable program of all
     democracy. [Property is Theft!, p. 273]

   As we noted in [37]section 5, Bakunin had identical ideas on the need
   for a decentralised, federal, bottom-up social organisation based on
   elected, mandated and recallable delegates. Rather than express
   "hostility to democratic and collectivist practices", anarchists have
   always sought to discover which social forms allow genuine democratic
   and collectivist practices to flourish -- a "democracy" which reduces
   the masses to simply picking their masters every few years while
   workers were employed by bosses would not promote libertarian values.
   Hence the support for workers' self-management of production by
   democratic associations, communal self-government and social-economic
   federalism even the casual reader would find in the works of Proudhon
   and Bakunin but which McNally fails to mention.

   Anarchists are well aware that support for democratic collectives in
   the workplace and community is a necessary but not sufficient condition
   for individual freedom (to quote McNally, the "challenge is to restore
   to socialism its democratic essence, its passionate concern with human
   freedom"). This is because collectives can make bad decisions, the
   majority can -- and does -- act oppressively towards the minority. For
   example, the United States has seen numerous votes on the issue of
   homosexual rights which saw the majority of voters or their
   representatives reject equality. That the majority are against equality
   for gays does not make it right -- anymore than previous majorities
   against equality for women and blacks were right. If a majority vote
   for a right-wing party which promises to make strikes illegal would
   McNally accept that decision and urge trade unionists to obey the
   democratic decisions of the collectivity? Would a referendum result
   make it any more just and worthy of respect? What if the majority vote
   to ban the teaching of evolution in all schools? And, finally, what if
   the majority vote in favour of authoritarian regimes? This is no idle
   question, it happened in, for example, France in 1851 and 1852 (much to
   Proudhon's disgust).

   Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the right often invoke the
   "silent majority" against the progressive minorities seeking change.
   The term was popularised (though not first used) by U.S. President
   Richard Nixon in 1969 when he asked for the support of "the great
   silent majority of my fellow Americans", those who felt threatened by
   attacks on "traditional values" during the 1960s -- the civil rights,
   women's and peace movements as well as student rebellions, the
   counter-culture, wildcat strikes, and so on. Nixon, it should be noted,
   won a landslide victory in the 1972 Presidential election and took 49
   of 50 states. The Thatcher government, likewise, invoked its democratic
   credentials (in spite of never receiving an actual majority of support)
   when launching state repression against strikes (particularly the
   1984-85 miners' strike) and imposing the most draconian anti-union laws
   in the Western World. Their trade union "reforms" included forcing a
   paper ballot of members before taking strike action, so replacing the
   mass union meeting with the atomised democracy of the bourgeois state.
   Many Tory politicians wish to go further and impose yet more
   legislation which would outlaw strikes unless a majority of trade union
   members take part in the ballot as well as the majority voting for
   strike action (rather than just the majority of those voting in the
   ballot) -- in the interests of "democracy", of course, as it would stop
   "unrepresentative" minorities disrupting the (non-union) majority.

   Needless to say, this is a condition they never suggest for the
   electing of politicians for good reason: "democratic" government
   usually means government by those elected by a minority of a
   population. For example, in the 2012 London Mayor election the
   successful candidate received just over 50% of a 38% turn-out, meaning
   that the successful candidate represented a mere 20% of the city's
   population. It should also be stressed that this minority of voters did
   not actually make decisions -- that rested in the hands of one person,
   the mayor. In other words, power over a city of ten million rested in
   the hands a person elected by 20% of those eligible to vote. The same
   can be said of U.S. elections, particularly Presidential ones. So
   democracy can easily mean government by the largest minority although,
   in practice, it means government of the few elected by the largest
   minority of the minority who bother to vote. None of which is very
   democratic and confirms Proudhon's critique that "nothing resembles a
   monarchy more than a république unitaire". [quoted by Vincent, Op.
   Cit., p. 211]

   So invoking "democracy" is problematic, given its wide number of uses.
   At its most basic, the majority can be wrong (as can be seen from the
   numerous crooks, incompetents, authoritarians and demagogues who have
   managed to win the popular vote). The aim, of course, is to change the
   views of the majority but that cannot be done by simply obeying its
   unjust opinions but rather challenging them by direct action -- or
   "ignoring" them to use McNally's term. As we note in [38]section
   H.2.11, all progressive movements -- whether trade unionism, civil
   rights activism, feminism and gay rights -- started out as minorities
   (and sometimes remained so!) but managed, by direct action and protest
   (i.e., ignoring the wishes of the majority) to change perspectives and
   make society more freedom and just (see Kropotkin's essay
   "Revolutionary Minorities" in Words of a Rebel for further discussion).
   Malatesta put it well:

     "We do not recognise the right of the majority to impose the law on
     the minority, even if the will of the majority in somewhat
     complicated issues could really be ascertained. The fact of having
     the majority on one's side does not in any way prove that one must
     be right. Indeed, humanity has always advanced through the
     initiative and efforts of individuals and minorities . . . [W]e are
     even more opposed to domination of the majority by a minority. It
     would be absurd to maintain that one is right because one is in a
     minority . . . [I]t is not a question of being right or wrong; it is
     a question of freedom, freedom for all, freedom for each individual
     so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others . . . it
     is necessary that majority and minority should succeed in living
     together peacefully and profitably by mutual agreement and
     compromise, by the intelligent recognition of the practical
     necessities of communal life and of the usefulness of concessions
     which circumstances make necessary." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and
     Ideas, p. 72]

   So, yes, anarchists do defend the liberty of individuals to rebel
   against the decisions of collective groups (we should point out that
   Marxists usually use such expressions as a euphemism for the state, but
   here we will take it at face value). This is for two very good reasons.
   Firstly, the majority is not always right. Secondly, simply because
   progress is guaranteed by individual liberty -- by dissent. That is
   what McNally is attacking here -- the right of individuals and groups
   to dissent, to express themselves and live their own lives. As we argue
   in [39]section A.2.11, most anarchists are in favour of direct
   democracy in free associations. However, we agree with Carole Pateman
   when she argues:

     "The essence of liberal social contract theory is that individuals
     ought to promise to, or enter an agreement to, obey representatives,
     to whom they have alienated their right to make political decisions
     . . . Promising . . . is an expression of individual freedom and
     equality, yet commits individuals for the future. Promising also
     implies that individuals are capable of independent judgement and
     rational deliberation, and of evaluating and changing their own
     actions and relationships; promises may sometimes justifiably be
     broken. However, to promise to obey is to deny or limit, to a
     greater or lesser degree, individuals' freedom and equality and
     their ability to exercise these capacities. To promise to obey is to
     state that, in certain areas, the person making the promise is no
     longer free to exercise her capacities and decide upon her own
     actions, and is no longer equal, but subordinate." [The Problem of
     Political Obligation, p. 19]

   She indicates an obvious truth which McNally ignores:

     "Even if it is impossible to be unjust to myself, I do not vote for
     myself alone, but along with everyone else. Questions about
     injustice are always appropriate in political life, for there is no
     guarantee that participatory voting will actually result in
     decisions in accord with the principles of political morality." [Op.
     Cit., p. 160]

   Thus, for anarchists, a democracy which does not involve individual
   rights to dissent, to disagree and to practice civil disobedience would
   violate freedom and equality, the very values McNally claims to be at
   the heart of Marxism. He is essentially arguing that the minority
   becomes the slave of the majority -- with no right of dissent when the
   majority is wrong or being unjust and restricting the freedom democracy
   is meant to be based upon, reflect and defend. In effect, he wishes the
   minority to be subordinate, not equal, to the majority. Anarchists, in
   contrast, because we support self-management also recognise the
   importance of dissent and individuality -- in essence, because we are
   in favour of self-management ("democracy" does not do the concept
   justice) we also favour the individual freedom that is its rationale.
   We support the liberty of private individuals because we believe in
   self-management ("democracy") so passionately.

   Then there is the question of which "collective groups" make the
   democratic decision. This is a key issue for anyone concerned about
   freedom for its answer determines what kind of democracy we are talking
   about -- a meaningful one which empowers all or a formal one which
   restricts what democracy is meant to be about?

   For example, during debates on Scottish Independence some commentators
   suggest that limiting the vote on whether Scotland should withdraw from
   the UK to just those who lived there was "undemocratic" as the
   consequences impacted on those who lived in England, Wales and Northern
   Ireland. However, expanding the vote would have meant that the
   democratic decision of those in Scotland -- a small minority of the
   total population of the UK -- would have been irrelevant to the final
   decision. This can be generalised to all nation states which contain
   distinct cultural or ethic groupings within it. Can it be considered
   "democratic" to favour "collective groups" which ensure the
   marginalisation of minorities who wish to govern themselves?

   This applies with equal force to the labour movement. In terms of
   strike action, which "collective groups" get to decide? Is it a
   sub-unit of a union branch (for example, IT staff within a University
   facing a restructuring), the branch (in which the IT staff may be a
   minority), the region or the national union. The strike decision would
   impact on all these levels but McNally's position gives no guidance for
   what is the correct level. Is it "democratic" if the sub-unit of the
   branch has to face redundancies because the majority of the branch does
   not support strike action? Is it "democratic" if the local branch
   cannot strike because the majority of the national union considers it
   harmful to the union as a whole?

   This is no academic discussion as the answer has a significant impact
   on the evolution of the labour movement. In the Marxist-influenced
   German unions, the prejudice for centralisation meant that the whole
   union (in practice, a few leaders at the top) was considered the key
   collective group and so "every local strike had first to be approved by
   the Central, which was often hundreds of miles away and was not usually
   in a position to pass a correct judgement on the local conditions"
   which lead to "inertia of the apparatus of the organisation [and]
   renders a quick attack quite impossible". The unions were "condemned .
   . . to stagnation" and the structure "kills the spirit and the vital
   initiative of its members." This "turned over the affairs of everybody
   in a lump to a small minority" and resulted in "barren official
   routine" which "crushed individual conviction, kills all personal
   initiative by lifeless discipline and bureaucratic ossification and
   permits no independent action." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 61 and p. 60]

   The anarchist position is clear -- the appropriate group makes the
   decision. Thus federalism allows "free combination from below upward,
   putting the right of self-determination of every member above
   everything else and recognising only the organic agreement of all on
   the basis of like interests and common convictions." [Rocker, Op. Cit.,
   p. 60] Unsurprisingly, then, we discover that the most militant British
   union was that of the miners which had, due to syndicalist influence, a
   decentralised, federal structure based on autonomous branches. And, as
   Rocker notes, while the German unions made no attempt to resist the
   Nazi seizure of power, the anarcho-syndicalist CNT rose in insurrection
   and stopped Franco across two-thirds of Spain in 1936.

   Simply put, Marxism (as McNally presents it here) flies in the face of
   how societies change and develop. New ideas start with individuals and
   minorities and spread by argument and by force of example. McNally is
   urging the end of the free expression of individuality. For example,
   who would seriously defend a society that "democratically" decided
   that, say, homosexuals should not be allowed the freedom to associate?
   Or that inter-racial marriage was against "Natural Law"? Or that trade
   unions and strikes should be outlawed as the acts of "selfish"
   minorities? Or that socialists were dangerous subversives and should be
   banned? He would, we hope (like all sane people), recognise the rights
   of individuals to rebel against the majority when the majority violate
   the spirit of association, the spirit of freedom and equality which
   should give democracy its rationale. However, if he did then he would
   have to also admit the correctness of the anarchist position.

   So McNally fails to understand the rationale for democratic decision
   making -- it is not based on the idea that the majority is always right
   but that individual freedom requires democracy to express and defend
   itself. By placing the collective above the individual, McNally
   undermines democracy and replaces it with little more than tyranny by
   the majority -- or, more likely, those who claim to represent the
   majority. It also, ironically, places him on the wrong side within his
   own political tradition.

   If we take McNally's comments seriously then we must conclude that
   those members of the German Social Democratic Party who opposed their
   party's role in supporting the First World War were acting
   inappropriately. Rather than express their opposition to the war and
   act to stop it, according to McNally's "logic", they should have
   remained in their party (after all, leaving the party meant ignoring
   the democratic decision of a collective group), accepted the democratic
   decision of the collective and supported the Imperialist slaughter in
   the name of party democracy. Indeed, the minority of anti-war
   Social-Democratic representatives in the German Parliament did
   precisely that, refusing to vote against war credits in 1914 in the
   name of party discipline (presumably because, as good Marxists, they
   thought only "anarchists defend the 'liberty' of the private individual
   against the democratically made decisions of collective groups", to use
   McNally's words). It took until 1915 for Karl Liebknecht to do the
   right thing. If quoting Trotsky is not too out of place: "Do not fear
   to remain in a minority -- even a minority of one, like Liebknecht's
   one against a hundred and ten". [History of the Russian Revolution,
   vol. 1, p. 293] Common sense as well as political principle indicates
   that Liebknecht's (belated) defence of socialist internationalism
   against the democratically made decision of the Social-Democratic
   representatives (and wider party) was right -- and his principled
   dissent helped turn the tide against the jingoism of the majority.

   Another obvious example is provided by Lenin who, just before the
   party's seizure of power in 1917, was so frustrated with the
   conservativism of his own party's central committee that he, "by way of
   protest resigns from the Central Committee" after his "furious
   criticism" had no effect. Rather than abide by the rules of his own
   party and the majority of its governing body "by announcing his
   resignation . . . Lenin obviously wanted to make it possible to free
   himself in case of need from internal discipline of the Central
   Committee". This meant the "withdrawing completely beyond the limits of
   party legality" and the threat of resigning gave him "greater freedom
   to develop his offensive along internal lines." [Op. Cit., vol. 3, p.
   131] Perhaps McNally is of the opinion that a private individual should
   not ignore the democratically made decisions of collective bodies --
   unless the individual in question is Lenin!

   We are sure that McNally would reject the notion that Liebknecht and
   Lenin were wrong -- in these cases the rights of minorities (even of
   one) take precedence over the "democratic decisions of collectives."
   This is because the majority is not always right and it is only through
   the dissent of individuals and minorities that the opinion of the
   majority can be moved towards the right one. Thus his comments are
   fallacious.

   Progress is determined by those who dissent and rebel against the
   status quo and the decisions of the majority. That is why anarchists
   support the right of dissent in self-managed groups -- in fact,
   dissent, refusal, revolt by individuals and minorities is a key aspect
   of self-management. Given that Leninists do not support self-management
   (rather they, at best, support the Lockean notion of electing a
   government as being "democracy") it is hardly surprising they, like
   Locke, view dissent as a danger and something to denounce. Anarchists,
   on the other hand, recognising that self-management's (i.e. direct
   democracy's) rationale and base is in individual freedom, recognise and
   support the rights of individuals to rebel against what they consider
   as unjust impositions (hence our recognition of the possibility of "the
   tyranny of the majority" -- see [40]section I.5.6). As history shows,
   the anarchist position is the correct one -- without rebellion,
   numerous minorities would never have improved their position. Indeed,
   McNally's comments is just a reflection of the standard capitalist
   diatribe against strikers and protestors -- they do not need to
   protest, for they live in a "democracy."

   So, yes, anarchists do support individual freedom to resist even
   democratically made decisions simply because democracy has to be based
   on individual liberty. Without the right of dissent, democracy becomes
   a joke and little more than a numerical justification for tyranny
   (usually of the few who make up the so-called "democratically elected"
   government). Thus McNally's latter claim that the "challenge is to
   restore to socialism its democratic essence, its passionate concern
   with human freedom" seems farcical -- after all, he has just admitted
   that Marxism aims to eliminate individual freedom in favour of
   "collective groups" (i.e. the government). Unless of course he means
   freedom for the abstraction "humanity" rather than concrete freedom of
   the individual to govern themselves as individuals and as part of
   freely joined self-managed associations? For those who really seek to
   restore to socialism its passionate concern for freedom the way it
   clear -- anarchism. Hence Murray Bookchin's comments:

     "Here is the nub of the problem [with] . . . Marxism . . . its
     perspectives are orientated not towards concrete, existential
     freedom, but towards an abstract freedom -- freedom for 'Society',
     for the 'Proletariat', for categories rather than for people." [Post
     Scarcity Anarchism, p. 148]

   Anarchism, on the other hand, favours freedom for people and that
   implies two things -- individual freedom and self-management (direct
   democracy) in free associations. Any form of "democracy" not based on
   individual freedom would be so contradictory as to be useless as a
   means to human freedom (and vice versa, any form of "individual
   freedom" -- such a liberalism -- which denies self-management would be
   little more than a justification for minority rule and a denial of
   human freedom). Ultimately, McNally's attack on anarchism fails simply
   because the majority is not always right and dissent a key to progress.
   That he forgets these basic facts of life indicates the depths to which
   Marxists will sink to distort the truth about anarchism.

   Not that those in the Bolshevik tradition have any problem with
   individuals ignoring the democratic decisions of collective groups. The
   Bolsheviks were very happy to let individuals ignore and revoke the
   democratic decisions of collective groups -- as long as the individuals
   in question were the leaders of the Bolshevik Party. As the examples we
   provide later (in [41]section 8) indicate, leading lights in the
   Leninist tradition happily placed the rights of the party before the
   rights of working people to decide their own fate. Thus McNally
   comments are strange in the extreme. Both anarchists and Leninists
   share a belief that individuals can and should have the right to ignore
   decisions made by groups. However, Leninists seem to think only the
   government and leadership of the Party should have that right while
   anarchists think all should. Unlike the egalitarian support for freedom
   and dissent for all anarchists favour, Leninists have an elitist
   support for the right of those in power to ignore the wishes of those
   they govern. Thus the history of Marxists parties in power expose
   McNally as a hypocrite and as we argue in [42]section 14, Leninist
   ideology provides the rationale for such action. Thus his attempt to
   portray anarchism as "anti-democratic" is somewhat ironic.

   McNally states that anarchists "oppose even the most democratic forms
   of collective organisation of social life. As the Canadian anarchist
   writer George Woodcock explains: 'Even were democracy possible, the
   anarchist would still not support it . . . Anarchists do not advocate
   political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics . . .'
   That is to say, anarchists reject any decision-making process in which
   the majority of people democratically determine the policies they will
   support."

   It is perhaps understandable that McNally fails to provide a reference
   for Woodcock's quote given that the two parts come from different
   chapters of the pamphlet Anarchy or Chaos. The first part ("Even were
   democracy possible, the anarchist would still not support it") appears
   in chapter 3 on page 20 while the second ("Anarchists do not advocate
   political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics") comes
   from chapter 15, page 108. In other words, McNally skips most of the
   pamphlet and ignores such trivial discussions as anarchist support for
   organisation and so collective decision making, the links between
   anarchism and syndicalism (including a chapter explaining syndicalist
   ideas), revolutionary anarchist support for collective property in the
   means of production and products (libertarian communism) as well as
   what was meant by "political freedom" and "democracy".

   It is useful, then, to present what Woodcock actually argued in order
   to understand what anarchism stands for. First, it should be stressed
   that Woodcock is very specific about what he meant by democracy: "for
   democracy puts forward the will of the majority as the supreme law, and
   declares that society must be governed, and the individual, whether he
   agrees or not, be coerced by that will." Thus he is not discussing
   democratic decision making within free associations but rather the
   majority passing laws which all must obey. As indicated above, this is
   not an unproblematic situation. Woodcock indicates this by noting the
   "laws against bigamy, abortion, homosexual practices, transvestism, and
   other [so-called] sexual deviations, as well as the semi-official
   persecution of the unmarried mother and the bastard child, protect the
   institution of the family". Thus "laws protecting the state [or the
   wishes of the majority] find their way into every sphere of life, and
   involve the prohibition of activities that, at first consideration,
   would appear to have no bearing on the social structure." [Op. Cit., p.
   20 and p. 107]

   So it is essential to remember that democracy and freedom need not go
   hand-in-hand -- majorities can, and do, restrict the freedom of
   individuals in repressive and unjust ways. So while democracy is a
   necessary condition for freedom it is not sufficient for, ultimately,
   the defining feature of democracy is not that the majority is always
   right but rather that a ruling minority cannot be trusted to not abuse
   its position and power. This is why Woodcock states "Anarchists seek
   neither the good of a minority, nor the good of the majority, but the
   good of all." He also notes that in so-called democracies it is usually
   the handful of people who make up the "democratically elected"
   government who make the decisions and so it is "not even of the
   majority [who rule] but of the privileged few who forms its ruling
   class". [Op. Cit., p. 20] This awareness informs his comments on
   political freedom which McNally shamefully ignores:

     "Political freedom the right to vote, trial by jury, freedom of
     speech and press -- does not constitute real freedom. Indeed it
     masks the unfree nature of the society from which it springs. The
     right to vote means the right to choose whether one will have a
     brewer or a lawyer for a master. It does not mean the right to do
     without a master. Trial by jury means the right to be judged by a
     handful of petty tradesmen, in accordance with the laws of a society
     based on property and class . . . Political freedom in a class
     society is virtually meaningless . . . it is strictly limited in the
     interests of the controlling class, and its availability is in
     relation to the class and economic position of the man concerned . .
     . Democratic freedoms, then, are relative to wealth. But this is not
     the full measure of the relationship. In reality the rich enjoy a
     far greater freedom than that . . . In a class society the ruling
     class are always free owing to their control of the means of
     production, of the money that in an acquisitive society is the way
     to all enjoyment. The ruled are not free because lack of control of
     production, and the benefits of money, liberal education, etc.,
     proceeding there from . . . Moreover, political freedom in a class
     society (and all political societies are by definition class
     societies), is relative to the security of that society. The ruling
     class give just so much political freedom as it is worthwhile and
     possible to give to keep the people out of mischief . . . Political
     freedom, at its best, can only be limited, as it maintains the power
     of property, which, by conferring the right of exploitation, limits
     the freedom of the exploited, who are the majority of the population
     . . .

     "Political freedom is thus, in fact, an ingenious delusion, by which
     the governing classes give the people the comforting belief that
     they themselves have made the chains that bind them and that for
     this reason the chains are necessary and good. It gives men certain
     liberties that the ruling classes find it wise to concede as a cheap
     way of buying security, but its very retention of a political
     system, which means government, which means coercion, must in the
     end destroy political freedom itself.

     "Anarchists do not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is
     freedom from politics, freedom from the institution of government,
     freedom from coercion, freedom from the law's interference in the
     lives of individual men and women, freedom from economic domination
     and inequality . . . Only a society based on control from above has
     need of coercion. A society based on co-operation can do without
     oppression and restriction because it is based on the voluntary
     agreement between its members." [Op. Cit. pp. 105-8]

   Ultimately, if you define political freedom as the freedom to elect a
   government then, obviously, anarchists do not aim for it because we aim
   to end all governments! As is clear from the pamphlet McNally
   shamefully rips quotes from. The dishonesty is clear.

   Given McNally's assertions about anarchism opposing collective property
   and being undemocratic, it is useful to also quote Woodcock's words on
   what anarchism is based on and what it logically implies. He stresses
   that "few anarchists contend that absolute individual freedom is
   possible, or, indeed, desirable . . . man is a social being, depending
   for his well-being on working and living together in society . . . The
   freedom anarchists seek, then, is a reciprocal freedom, a freedom of
   men and women recognising each other's rights, a freedom based on
   justice." [Op. Cit., p. 105] Therefore:

     "Anarchism . . . is based on the concepts of freedom and justice,
     justice being that reciprocity of freedom without which no real
     individual freedom is possible. The social principles that follow
     from these concepts are mutual aid, or co-operation, and communism,
     or common ownership of the means of production . . . In the
     anarchist view these principles are expressed concretely in the
     administration of economic and functional affairs by voluntary
     associations of the workers for the purpose of running the factories
     and the farms and providing the necessary social services such as
     posts, drainage, roads, etc. Each industry would be administered by
     its own workers who are the most competent people for that purpose .
     . . who, having expert knowledge of their professions, are obviously
     better fitted to do this than politicians chosen according to the
     methods of parliamentary democracy." [Op. Cit., p. 91]

   The means used to create such a society would be "prosecuting the
   economic struggle . . . an organisation on an economic basis which will
   embrace all the workers, according to their industries and workplaces .
   . . The syndicate [union], organised and governed by the workers
   themselves . . . [also] contain[s] the germ of the functional
   organisation upon which the new society can be built after the
   revolution.". Anarchists wish "that the people themselves take their
   destiny into their own hands and carry through the social revolution."
   [Op. Cit., p. 89]

   All of which, to state the obvious, is at odds with McNally's claims
   about anarchism.

   To summarise: Anarchists are not opposed to people in free associations
   democratically determining the policies they will support (see sections
   [43]I.3.1 and [44]I.5.1 for more details on this). The minority can
   then decide to abide by the decision, protest against it or, if all
   else fails, to leave the association if they cannot tolerate the
   decisions being made. What we do oppose is the assumption that the
   majority is always right and that (non-repressive or non-oppressive)
   minorities should submit to the decisions of the majority no matter how
   wrong they are. We feel that history is on our side on this one -- it
   is only by the freedom to dissent, by the direct action of minorities
   to defend and extent their freedoms that society progresses. We also
   feel that theory is on our side -- majority rule without individual and
   minority rights is a violation of the principle of freedom and equality
   which democracy is said to be built on. Democracy should be an
   expression of individual liberty but in McNally's hands it is turned
   into bourgeois liberalism. Little wonder Marxism has continually failed
   to produce a free society. It has no conception of the relationship of
   individual freedom to democracy and vice versa.

   Finally, we must point out a slight irony in McNally's claim, namely
   that Marxists usually claim that they seek a society similar to that
   anarchists seek but have different means to achieve it. In the words of
   Marx:

     "What all socialists understand by anarchy is this: once the aim of
     the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, has been
     attained, the power of the State . . . disappears, and the functions
     of government are transformed into simple administrative functions."
     [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 76]

   Or, as the Communist Manifesto put it, "the free development of each is
   the condition for the free development of all" [The Marx-Engels Reader,
   p. 491] So, Marxists and anarchists seek the same society, one of
   individual freedom which means that McNally's comments about anarchism
   also apply (once the state "withers away", which it never will) to
   Marxism. But, of course, McNally fails to mention this aspect of
   Marxism and its conflict with anarchism -- but, then, he fails to
   discuss what anarchism actually stands for nor does he present an
   accurate account of its views of democracy and democratic decision
   making.

8. Are Leninists in favour of democracy?

   McNally's attack on anarchism for being anti-democratic, authoritarian
   and elitist is somewhat ironic given that the Leninist tradition he
   places himself in did destroy democracy during the Russian Revolution
   -- whether in the soviet, the workplace, the union or the military --
   and replaced it with party dictatorship. This means that his attack on
   anarchism can be turned back on his own politics, with much more
   justification and evidence.

   We need to understand the importance of comparing the rhetoric of
   Bolshevism to its reality as we can have repeated pronouncements about
   "democracy" made while, at the same time, the necessity of party
   dictatorship is both being practised and advocated. Thus Lenin
   repeatedly contrasted the higher form of democracy expressed by the
   soviets to bourgeois democracy. In his in 1918 polemic against leading
   Social-Democrat Karl Kautsky who was accusing the Bolsheviks of being
   undemocratic, Lenin argued that the "only view that corresponds to
   Marxism" was expounded by Plekhanov (the father of Russian Marxism) at
   the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903,
   namely "in the revolution the proletariat would, if necessary,
   disenfranchise the capitalists and disperse any parliament that was
   found to be counter-revolutionary." [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 280]
   Which raises the obvious question, found to be counter-revolutionary by
   whom? The proletariat? No, according to Plekhanov it was the party:

     "Every democratic principle must be considered not by itself,
     abstractly, but in relation to . . . the success of the revolution
     [as this] is the highest law. And if the success of the revolution
     demands a temporary limitation on the working of this or that
     democratic principle, then it would be criminal to refrain from such
     a limitation . . . the principle of universal suffrage must be
     considered from the point of view of what I have designated the
     fundamental principle of democracy. It is hypothetically possible
     that we might . . . speak out against universal suffrage . . . If in
     a burst of revolutionary enthusiasm the people chose a very fine
     parliament then we would be bound to make it a long parliament; and
     if the elections turned out unsuccessfully, then we would have to
     try to disperse it. [quoted by Samuel H. Baron, Plekhanov: The
     Father of Russian Marxism, p. 242]

   As we will discover, the dispersing of elected bodies by the party was
   not limited to bourgeois Parliaments: soviets were also subject to this
   policy. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given that before seizing power
   Lenin had repeatedly equated the power of the Bolsheviks with that of
   the proletariat. Thus "Bolshevik power" was "one and the same thing" as
   "proletarian revolutionary power" and so the Second All-Russian
   Congress "gave a majority to the Bolshevik Party and put it in power."
   [The Lenin Anthology, p. 413 and p. 419] While problematic (it
   substitutes the party for the class), it could be argued that as the
   party was supported by the majority of workers (but not peasants) then
   the Bolshevik government was democratic. Which is true, in the limited
   bourgeois sense. The question is what would happen if the workers
   turned against the party -- would it give up its power as required by a
   movement committed to democracy? Unfortunately for McNally, the answer
   was: no.

   Before discussing this, we must present some context and discuss the
   Bolshevik regime from the democratic perspective of one-person,
   one-vote. Before seizing power, Lenin protested that the Bolsheviks
   "must pass a resolution demanding equal suffrage (both in the Soviets
   and at trade union congresses), branding the slightest departure from
   equality as a fraud . . . We cannot tolerate a fraud of democracy if we
   call ourselves 'democrats'. We are not democrats but unprincipled
   people if we tolerate this!!" [Collected Works, vol. 25, p. 304] After
   winning around 25% of the votes in the elections to the Constituent
   Assembly he was happy with a Soviet Constitution which saw the
   All-Russian Congress of Soviets being composed of representatives of
   urban soviets (one delegate for 25,000 voters) and of representatives
   of the rural congresses of soviets (one delegate for 125,000
   inhabitants). In other words, a worker's vote was 5 times more
   important than a peasant's vote. That this ensured a Bolshevik majority
   in the Third and Fourth All-Russian Congresses may explain this embrace
   of unequal suffrage in 1918 after the votes in the Constituent Assembly
   had been counted.

   Given that the Bolsheviks disbanded the Constituent Assembly in spite
   of it being elected by universal suffrage (i.e., by democracy) McNally
   would, undoubtedly, argue -- as Lenin did -- that soviet democracy was
   much superior. Ignoring the awkward issue of unequal suffrage between
   workers and peasants, the fact is that the Bolsheviks also disbanded
   soviets which elected non-Bolshevik majorities. Martov, the leader of
   the left-Mensheviks, recounted in June 1918 how in those "places where
   we were in the majority, the soviets will be liquidated". When "workers
   demanded new elections" the demands were "stubbornly resisted" and the
   issue "escalated to workers' strikes and the suppression of workers'
   demonstrations by armed forces". If the protests succeeded, then
   elections resulted in "a majority to the Mensheviks and SRs" and in
   those cases Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Councils ensured "the
   soviets were disbanded by armed force or the opposition delegates were
   expelled as 'counter-revolutionaries' from the soviets" (although
   "Bolshevik investigators themselves could not succeed in implicating
   even one Menshevik in the conspiracy trials"). The disbanding of
   soviets was "applied to the uzed congresses of peasant soviets."
   ["Iulii Martov's Letter to A.N. Stein", pp. 78-82, The Structure of
   Soviet History, Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), p. 78] Martov gave amongst
   many the example of Tula and a leading Bolshevik there informed his
   Party's Central Committee in early 1918 about the means being used
   there:

     "After the transfer of power to the soviet, a rapid about-face began
     in the mood of the workers. The Bolshevik deputies began to be
     recalled one after another, and soon the general situation took on a
     rather unhappy appearance. Despite the fact that there was a schism
     among the SRs, and the Left SRs were with us, our situation became
     shakier with each passing day. We were forced to block new elections
     to the soviet and even not to recognise them where they had taken
     place not in our favour." [quoted by Scott Smith, "The
     Socialists-Revolutionaries and the Dilemma of Civil War", pp.
     83-104, The Bolsheviks In Russian Society, Vladimir N. Brovkin
     (ed.), p. 87]

   "The sum of this evidence from around the country," summarises one
   historian, "makes clear that the majority of Russian workers were
   hostile to the Bolsheviks by the spring of 1918 . . . the Bolsheviks
   simply dissolved opposition-controlled soviets, disregarded workers'
   opinions, and cracked down brutally on such manifestations of
   discontent as strikes." [Smith, Op. Cit., p. 94] This meant disbanding
   soviets which were elected with the wrong majority and so in response
   to the "great Bolshevik losses in the soviet elections" during the
   spring and summer of 1918 "Bolshevik armed force usually overthrew the
   results of these provincial elections." For example, in the city of
   Izhevsk in "the May election [to the soviet] the Mensheviks and SRs won
   a majority" and the following month "these two parties also won a
   majority of the executive committee of the soviet. At this point, the
   local Bolshevik leadership refused to give up power" and by the use of
   the military "abrogated the results of the May and June elections and
   arrested the SR and Menshevik members of the soviet and its executive
   committee." [Samuel Farber, Before Stalinism, pp. 23-4]

   As we summarise in [45]section H.6.1, the Bolsheviks applied many
   tactics to secure their power: soviet elections were delayed, the
   soviets themselves were packed with their representatives to secure
   their majority (so making direct election from the workplace
   irrelevant) and, when all else failed, the soviets themselves were
   simply, as noted, disbanded. This applied at the national level as
   well, and "electoral fraud gave the Bolsheviks a huge majority of
   congress delegates" for the fifth All-Russian Soviet Congress in July
   1918. The "number of legitimately elected Left SR delegates was roughly
   equal to that of the Bolsheviks." The Left-SRs expected a majority but
   did not include "roughly 399 Bolsheviks delegates whose right to be
   seated was challenged by the Left SR minority in the congress's
   credentials commission." Without these dubious delegates, the Left SRs
   and SR Maximalists would have outnumbered the Bolsheviks by around 30
   delegates. This ensured "the Bolshevik's successful fabrication of a
   large majority in the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets."
   [Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power, p. 396, p. 288, p. 442
   and p. 308]

   This was reflected in Lenin's 1917 argument that the "Bolsheviks have
   no right to await the Congress of Soviets. They ought to seize the
   power right now" [quoted by Trotsky, The History of the Russian
   Revolution, vol. 3, pp. 132-2] The important thing was party power and
   the soviets were seen as only a means to that end and so perhaps their
   fate once the Bolsheviks had reached their goal is unsurprising. Hence
   we see Lenin, in his polemic against Kautsky, pointing with no apparent
   concerns to the fact that "97 per cent of the total number of delegates
   [to the Sixth All-Russian Soviet Congress] were Bolsheviks" as an
   example of his party's popular support! [Collected Works, vol. 28, p.
   303] It should be noted that the delegates to the congress were elected
   not by workers and peasants but rather by the appropriate soviet body
   below it. In other words, Bolshevik gerrymandered and packed soviets
   elected Bolsheviks to the national congress.

   Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the reality of their regime, Bolshevik
   rhetoric started to change. By the end of 1918 the necessity of party
   dictatorship started to appear in party material and, as Victor Serge
   noted in the 1930s, "the degeneration of Bolshevism" was apparent by
   that time "since at the start of 1919 I was horrified to read an
   article by Zinoviev . . . on the monopoly of the party in power". [The
   Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 188] It must be stressed that Serge's horror
   was well hidden and, as noted in [46]section H.1.2 he joined the
   Bolsheviks and publicly defended this monopoly of power as a necessity
   of revolution. Lenin admitted the reality in 1919:

     "When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of
     one party and . . . . a united Socialist front is proposed, we say,
     'Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for
     and we shall not shift from that position . . .'" [Op. Cit., vol.
     29, p. 535]

   Not only did the Bolsheviks not shift from that position, they
   recommended this position to the world revolutionary movement at the
   Second Congress of the Second International in 1920. In the words of
   Zinoviev:

     "Today, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do
     not have the dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship
     of the party. They think this is a reproach against us. Not in the
     least! We have a dictatorship of the working class and that is
     precisely why we also have a dictatorship of the Communist Party.
     The dictatorship of the Communist Party is only a function, an
     attribute, an expression of the dictatorship of the working class .
     . . the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the
     dictatorship of the Communist Party." [Proceedings and Documents of
     the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, pp. 151-2]

   "We must have a state organisation" he argued, "and only the party can
   direct it, because a state political organisation is one that
   encompasses the best working-class elements of the entire country."
   [Op. Cit., p. 154] Elsewhere that year he argued that "soviet rule in
   Russia could not have been maintained for three years -- not even three
   weeks -- without the iron dictatorship of the Communist Party. Any
   class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the
   working class can be achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard,
   i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All questions of economic
   reconstruction, military organisation, education, food supply -- all
   these questions, on which the fate of the proletarian revolution
   depends absolutely, are decided in Russia before all other matters and
   mostly in the framework of the party organisations . . . Control by the
   party over soviet organs, over the trade unions, is the single durable
   guarantee that any measures taken will serve not special interests, but
   the interests of the entire proletariat." [quoted by Oskar Anweiler,
   The Soviets, pp. 239-40] In short: "The chief conclusion of the
   proletarian revolution is the need for an iron, organised and
   monolithic Party." [Zinoviev, quoted by Robert Service, The Bolshevik
   Party in Revolution, p. 144] Lenin dismissed the notion that workers
   could govern themselves:

     "In the transition to socialism the dictatorship of the proletariat
     is inevitable, but it is not exercised by an organisation which
     takes in all industrial workers . . . What happens is that the
     Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and
     this vanguard exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat . . .
     the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an
     organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all
     capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most
     backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so
     corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking in the whole
     proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It
     can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the basic
     mechanism of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the essentials
     of transition from capitalism to communism . . . for the
     dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass
     proletarian organisation." [Collected Works, vol. 32, pp. 20-1]

   This, of course, did not stop the Bolsheviks also claiming their regime
   was far more democratic than any other. In 1920, Zinoviev as head of
   the Communist International wrote a letter to the Industrial Workers of
   the World, a revolutionary labour union, which stated that the "Russian
   Soviet Republic . . . is the most highly centralised government that
   exists. It is also the most democratic government in history. For all
   the organs of government are in constant touch with the working masses,
   and constantly sensitive to their will." [Proceedings and Documents of
   the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 928] Lenin, in his diatribe
   against Left-Wing Communism made a similar claim and proclaimed the
   soviets "democratic institutions, the like of which even the best
   democratic republics of the bourgeois have never known" while also
   suggesting that it was "ridiculously absurd, and stupid" to make "a
   contrast, in general, between the dictatorship of the masses and the
   dictatorship of the leaders." He also pointed to "non-Party workers'
   and peasants' conferences" as means by which the party secured its rule
   and so the Bolsheviks would have to "support, develop and extend"
   non-Party conferences "to be able to observe the temper of the masses,
   come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among
   them to state posts". [The Lenin Anthology, p. 573] Yet if the soviets
   were so democratic, then why were the non-Party Congresses needed at
   all? Perhaps because "the dictatorship of the leaders" is not the same
   as "dictatorship of the masses" and so the Soviets were irrelevant due
   to the party dictatorship?

   Perhaps unsurprisingly given the fate of the soviets in 1918, the
   Bolsheviks disbanded these "non-Party" conferences because "[d]uring
   the disturbances" of late 1920, "they provided an effective platform
   for criticism of Bolshevik policies." Their frequency was decreased and
   they "were discontinued soon afterward." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet
   Communists in Power, p. 203] Lenin summarised the reasons for this
   policy:

     "Non-Party conferences are not a fetish. They are valuable if they
     help us to come closer to the impassive masses -- the millions of
     working people still outside politics. They are harmful if they
     provide a platform for the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries
     masquerading as 'non-party' men. They are helping the mutinies, and
     the whiteguards. The place for Mensheviks and
     Socialist-Revolutionaries, avowed or in non-party guise, is not at a
     non-Party conference but in prison . . . We can and must find other
     methods of testing the mood of the masses and coming closer to them.
     We suggest that those who want to play the parliamentary,
     constituent assembly and non-Party conference game, should go abroad
     . . . " [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 362]

   In other words, the conferences were used by the proletariat to express
   its opinions and these were found to be lacking in the eyes of its
   vanguard. Like soviet democracy, they threatened the rule of the party
   and as Lenin suggested in 1920 "[w]hoever brings about even the
   slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the
   proletariat (especially during its dictatorship) is actually aiding the
   bourgeoisie against the proletariat." [The Lenin Anthology, p. 570] So
   any conflict between the vanguard and the proletariat would, by this
   logic, necessitates the victory of the former over the latter -- in the
   latter's interests, of course. As Trotsky put it in 1921:

     "The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans, making
     a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to
     elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not
     entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship
     temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers'
     democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the
     revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged to maintain
     its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the
     working classes. This awareness is for us the indispensable element.
     The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the
     formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Farber, Op.
     Cit., p. 209]

   So, politically, the Bolsheviks systematically disbanded democratic
   institutions -- whether bourgeois (the Constituent Assembly) or
   proletarian (the soviets and non-Party Conferences). They proclaimed to
   the world the necessity of party dictatorship and how mass working
   class organisations could not exercise the so-called dictatorship of
   the proletariat. In March 1923 the Central Committee of the Communist
   Party, in a statement issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the
   founding of the Party, summarised the lessons gained from the Russian
   revolution: "the party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out
   fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations
   which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an
   unprecedented defeat for the proletariat." Vacillations, of course, are
   expressed by workers' democracy. Little wonder the statement rejects
   it: "The dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the
   dictatorship of the party." ["To the Workers of the USSR" in G.
   Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party, p. 213 and p. 214]

   Bolshevik authoritarianism, needless to say, was not limited to the
   political regime. In the workplace, they replaced workers' economic
   democracy with "one-man management" selected from above, by the state.
   These "individual executives" would have "dictatorial powers (or
   'unlimited' powers)" as there was "absolutely no contradiction in
   principle between Soviet (that is, socialist) democracy and the
   exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals." The applied also at the
   national level for "our task is to study the state capitalism of the
   Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from
   adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it." [Collected
   Works, vol. 27, p. 267, p. 268 and p. 340] He suggested dictatorial
   power was universal fact of all revolutions:

     "in the history of revolutionary movements the dictatorship of
     individuals was very often the expression, the vehicle, the channel
     of the dictatorship of the revolutionary classes has been shown by
     the irrefutable experience of history." [Op. Cit., p. 267]

   It is churlish, but essential, to note that previous revolutionary
   movements had transformed one form of class society into another and so
   we must note, as well as refuting McNally's claim that Leninism is a
   democratic tradition, Lenin's comments display a distinct confusion
   over the nature of a social revolution (rather than a political one).
   Yes, previous revolutions may have utilised the dictatorship of
   individuals but these revolutions have been revolutions from one class
   system to another. The "revolutionary" classes in question were
   minority classes and so elite rule would not in any way undermine their
   class nature. Not so with a socialist revolution which must be based on
   mass participation (in every aspect of society, economic, political,
   social) if it is too achieve its goals -- namely a classless society.
   Little wonder, with such theoretical confusion, that the Russian
   revolution ended in Stalinism -- the means used determined the ends.
   Unsurprisingly enough, the Bolshevik imposition of one-management
   simply transformed private-capitalism into state-capitalism, that is
   one form of class society into another (see [47]section H.3.13). After
   the end of the Civil War Lenin summarised his position: "Industry is
   indispensable, democracy is not. Industrial democracy breeds some
   utterly false ideas." [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 27]

   This system of state-appointed "one-man" managers armed with
   "dictatorial" powers was not considered as opposed to socialism, as
   McNally implies. Lenin stressed in 1919 that the "organisation of the
   communist activity of the proletariat and the entire policy of the
   Communists have new acquired a final, lasting form." [Op. Cit., vol.
   30, p. 144] Moreover, after the end of the civil war he combated the
   idea of workers' control as (rightly!) a syndicalist and anarchist
   deviation within the party at odds with Marxism:

     "Syndicalism hands over to the mass of non-Party workers . . . the
     management of their industries . . . thereby making the Party
     superfluous. . . Why have a Party, if industrial management is to be
     appointed . . . by trade unions nine-tenths of whose members are
     non-Party workers?" [Op. Cit., vol. 32, p. 50]

   He went so far as to admit that he thought "the syndicalist deviation"
   (i.e., giving the proletariat economic democracy, the power to elect
   their own workplace managers and economic conferences) "leads to the
   collapse of the dictatorship of the proletariat". [Op. Cit., p. 86]
   This was a theme to which he repeatedly returned:

     "Does every worker know how to run the state? . . . this is not true
     . . . If we say that it is not the Party but the trade unions that
     put up the candidates and administrate, it may sound very democratic
     . . . It will be fatal for the dictatorship of the proletariat . . .
     To govern you need an army of steeled revolutionary Communists. We
     have it, and it is called the Party. All this syndicalist nonsense
     about mandatory nominations of producers must go into the wastepaper
     basket. To proceed on those lines would mean thrusting the Party
     aside and making the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia
     impossible." [Op. Cit., pp. 61-2]

   In short, the economic relations favoured by the Bolsheviks were
   identical to that of capitalism except that the boss was replaced by a
   state-appointed bureaucrat, private-capitalism by state-capitalism (an
   awkward fact McNally cannot bring himself to mention, never mind admit
   to). "In the shops where one-man management (Lenin's own preference)
   replaced collegial management," notes Diane Koenker, "workers faced the
   same kinds of authoritarian management they thought existed only under
   capitalism." The "overall management of industry in 1921 was no more
   democratic than it had been in 1914; indeed, it was much more highly
   centralised, hierarchical, and bureaucratic." [Labour Relations in
   Socialist Russia, p. 177 and p. 190]

   Needless to say, the Bolsheviks also combated independent trade unions
   with the same methods. As one historian summarises, "Soviets and trade
   unions with non-Bolshevik majorities, and there was a definite revival
   in the electoral fortunes of the opposition in the spring of 1918, were
   dispersed" and by the "beginning of 1920 non-Bolshevik controlled trade
   union organisations no longer existed at the national level". [Jonathan
   Aves, "The Demise of Non-Bolshevik Trade Unionism in Moscow: 1920-21",
   pp. 101-33, Revolutionary Russia, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 101-2 and p. 103]
   By the end of 1920, the Bolsheviks had broken the both
   Menshevik-influenced printers and anarchist-influenced bakers union,
   with the offices of the former "occupied by soldiers. Eleven members of
   the [union] board where arrested along with twenty-nine members of the
   Council of Representatives, factory committees and ordinary unionists .
   . . five were also members of the Moscow soviet. After being held
   without trial most were sentenced to terms between six months and two
   years in prison. The disbandment was approved by the plenum of the
   Moscow trade union council" which "also voted to disband the bakers'
   section. The leading anarchist members of the section . . . and . . .
   an SR Maximalist . . . and two other members . . . were barred from
   office and arrested to stand trial." [Jonathan Aves, Workers Against
   Lenin, pp. 68-9] In May 1921, to present another example, the
   All-Russian Congress of the Metalworkers' Union met and the "Central
   Committee of the [Communist] Party handed down to the Party faction in
   the union a list of recommended candidates for union (sic!) leadership.
   The metalworkers' delegates voted down the list, as did the Party
   faction in the union . . . The Central Committee of the Party
   disregarded every one of the votes and appointed a Metalworkers'
   Committee of its own. So much for 'elected and revocable delegates.'
   Elected by the union rank and file and revocable by the Party
   leadership!" [M. Brinton, "The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control", For
   Workers' Power, , p. 375] The same year also saw the Bolshevik disperse
   provincial trade unions conferences in Vologda and Vitebsk "because
   they had anti-communist majorities." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 176]

   A similar onslaught by the party against democracy also occurred in the
   armed forces. Trotsky simply abolished the soldier's committees and
   elected officers in early 1918, stating that "the principle of election
   is politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has
   been, in practice, abolished by decree." This destruction of military
   democracy was compared to the concurrent push by the Bolsheviks to
   introduce "one-man" management in production, as workplace democracy
   "is not the last word in the economic constructive work of the
   proletariat". The "next step must consist in self-limitation of the
   collegiate principle" and its replacement by "[p]olitical collegiate
   control by the Soviets", i.e. the state control Lenin had repeatedly
   advocated in 1917. Moreover "for executive functions we must appoint
   technical specialists." He ironically called this the working class
   "throwing off the one-man management principles of its masters of
   yesterday" and failed to recognise it was imposing the one-man
   management principles of new masters. As with Lenin, the destruction of
   workers' power at the point of production was of little concern for
   what mattered was that "with power in our hands, we, the
   representatives of the working class" would introduce socialism.
   ["Work, Discipline, and Order to save the Socialist Soviet Republic",
   How the Revolution Armed, vol. 1, p. 47, p. 37 and p. 38]

   Thus the Bolshevik tradition clearly placed the power of the party
   above the ability of working people to elect their own representatives,
   managers and officer. And McNally claims that his tradition aims at
   "workers' power" and a "direct and active democracy"!

   Of course McNally tries to blame the destruction of democracy in Russia
   on the Civil War: "By 1920, the very face of Russia had changed.
   Workers' democracy, in the meaningful sense of the term, had
   disappeared -- as had most of the working class through death or
   retreat to the countryside." This meant the rise of Stalinism for "[a]s
   workers' democracy disintegrated, a new bureaucracy rose to power."
   However, this is hard to accept, given that the undermining of
   democracy began before the civil war started and continued after it had
   finished (for example, the onslaught on soviet democracy and attempts
   to impose one-man management in the workplace and armed forces predate
   the start of the civil war at the end of May 1918). Moreover, as we
   indicate in [48]section 13, the Bolshevik state was marked by
   bureaucracy from the start.

   Both these developments did not occur by accident, they were due to the
   nature of Bolshevik ideology and the kind of centralised structures it
   favoured. Trotsky is typical. In April 1918 he argued that once elected
   the government was to be given total power to make decisions and
   appoint people as required as it is "better able to judge in the matter
   than" the masses. The sovereign people were expected to simply obey
   their public servants until such time as they "dismiss that government
   and appoint another." Trotsky raised the question of whether it was
   possible for the government to act "against the interests of the
   labouring and peasant masses?" And answered no! Yet it is obvious that
   Trotsky's claim that "there can be no antagonism between the government
   and the mass of the workers, just as there is no antagonism between the
   administration of the union and the general assembly of its members" is
   just nonsense. [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 113] The history of trade
   unionism is full of examples of committees betraying their membership.
   Needless to say, the subsequent history Lenin's government showed that
   there can be "antagonism" between rulers and ruled and that
   appointments are always a key way to further elite interests. Needless
   to say, the notion that the party leaders are "better able to judge in
   the matter than" has its roots in Lenin's vanguardism, as discussed in
   [49]section 11.

   McNally's claim that the working class had been destroyed by the civil
   war is equally flawed and cannot explain the fact that attempts by
   working class people to express themselves were systematically
   undermined by the Bolshevik party. Nor does the notion of a
   "disappeared" working class make much sense when "in the early part of
   1921, a spontaneous strike movement . . . took place in the industrial
   centres of European Russia" and strikes involving around 43 000 per
   year took place between 1921 and 1925. [Samuel Farber, Op. Cit., p. 188
   and p. 88] As we show in [50]section H.6.3, while the number of workers
   did decrease from 1918 to 1921, there remained substantial numbers who
   were able to and did take collective action before, during and after
   the civil war. So rather than there being objective reasons for the
   lack of democracy under Lenin we can suggest political reasons -- the
   awareness that, given the choice, the Russian working class would have
   preferred someone else in power. Indeed, McNally's argument can be
   traced back to Lenin who formulated it "to justify a political
   clamp-down" in the face of rising working class protest rather than its
   lack: "As discontent amongst workers became more and more difficult to
   ignore, Lenin . . . began to argue that the consciousness of the
   working class had deteriorated . . . workers had become 'declassed.'"
   However, there "is little evidence to suggest that the demands that
   workers made at the end of 1920 . . . represented a fundamental change
   in aspirations since 1917." [Aves, Op. Cit., p. 18, p. 90 and p. 91]

   Also, we must point out a certain duplicity in McNally's comments that
   Stalinism can be explained purely by the terrible civil war Russia
   experienced. After all, Lenin himself before seizing power mocked those
   who opposed revolution because "the situation is exceptionally
   complicated" and argued that "the development of the revolution itself
   always creates an exceptionally complicated situation" and that it was
   an "incredibly complicated and painful process." In fact, it was "the
   most intense, furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a single
   great revolution in history has taken place without civil war. And only
   a 'man in a muffler' can think that civil war is conceivable without an
   'exceptionally complicated situation.'" "If the situation were not
   exceptionally complicated there would be no revolution." [Op. Cit.,
   vol. 26, pp. 118-9] Thus McNally's assertion that for "the germ cell of
   socialism to grow [in Russia], it required several essential
   ingredients. One was peace. The new workers' state could not establish
   a thriving democracy so long as it was forced to raise an army and wage
   war to defend itself" is simply incredible. It also raises an important
   question with regards Leninist ideas: if Bolshevik politics and its
   organisational form cannot survive during a period of disruption and
   complicated circumstances (i.e., a revolution) then it is clearly a
   theory to be avoided at all costs.

   The leading Bolsheviks all argued that the specific problems their
   latter day followers blame for their authoritarianism were natural
   results of any revolution and, consequently, unavoidable. In addition,
   there is a slight irony in this standard but flawed excuse for
   Bolshevik authoritarianism as Leninists like to suggest that anarchists
   do not recognise the possibility of counter-revolution and so reject
   the idea of defending a revolution. As we discuss in [51]section H.2.1,
   this is simply untrue -- the anarchist rejection of "the dictatorship
   of the proletariat" has nothing to do with defending revolution. As
   Bakunin stressed, "the sole means of opposing the reactionary forces of
   the state" was the "organising of the revolutionary force of the
   people." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 156] So given that Leninists mock
   anarchists for their supposed naivety over the dangers of
   counter-revolution, it seems ironic that McNally uses what he is
   supposed to consider an inevitable aspect of revolution to explain
   (excuse would be the better word) the degeneration of the Bolshevik
   revolution. Long after 1917, Lenin repeated his earlier comments by
   stating "history teaches us that no big question has ever been settled
   and no revolution accomplished without a series of wars." [Op. Cit.,
   vol. 31, p. 494] He was adamant that "were it not for this iron rule of
   the workers, of this workers' vanguard, we should not have been able to
   hold out for two months, let alone two years". [Op. Cit., vol. 30, p.
   498]

   Simply put, if counter-revolution is considered inevitable by your
   ideology then explaining Bolshevik authoritarianism by it is
   unconvincing -- particularly if that authoritarianism started before
   the start of the civil war at the end of May 1918 and continued after
   its end. So "the effective conclusion of the Civil War at the beginning
   of 1920 was followed by a more determined and comprehensive attempt to
   apply these so-called War Communism policies rather than their
   relaxation" and so the "apogee of the War Communism economy occurred
   after the Civil War was effectively over." With the fighting over Lenin
   "forcefully raised the introduction of one-man management . . . Often
   commissars fresh from the Red Army were drafted into management
   positions in the factories." By the autumn of 1920, one-man management
   was in 82% of surveyed workplaces. This "intensification of War
   Communism labour policies would not have been a significant development
   if they had continued to be applied in the same haphazard manner as in
   1919, but in early 1920 the Communist Party leadership was no longer
   distracted by the Civil War from concentrating its thoughts and efforts
   on the formulation and implementation of its labour policies." While
   the " experience of the Civil War was one factor predisposing
   communists towards applying military methods" to the economy in early
   1920, "ideological considerations were also important." [Jonathan Aves,
   Workers Against Lenin, p. 2, p. 17, p. 15, p. 30, p. 17 and p. 11]
   Unsurprisingly, then, the defeat of Wrangel in November 1920 saw no
   changes in Bolshevik policy nor the Bolshevik use of coercion against
   workers and peasants calling and protesting for the re-introduction of
   freedom and democracy.

   So there is a continuity between Bolshevik policies before, during and
   after the civil war which McNally does not mention. Take one-man
   management, for example. This was advocated by Lenin before the civil
   war started and when he looked back at this time from April 1920, he
   reiterated his position ("Dictatorial powers and one-man management are
   not contradictory to socialist democracy") while also stressing that
   this was not forced upon the Bolsheviks by civil war. It was time to
   build socialism and the "whole attention of the Communist Party and the
   Soviet government is centred on peaceful economic development, on
   problems of the dictatorship and of one-man management". "When we
   tackled them for the first time in 1918, there was no civil war and no
   experience to speak of" and so it was "not only experience" of civil
   war, argued Lenin "but something more profound . . . that has induced
   us now, as it did two years ago, to concentrate all our attention on
   labour discipline." Lenin stressed that we "need more discipline, more
   individual authority and more dictatorship". [Collected Works, vol. 30,
   p. 503, p. 504 and p. 514]

   The same can be said of the arguments for party dictatorship, which
   were raised at the Second Congress of the Communist International and
   aimed to influence the revolutionary movement across the globe. Trotsky
   wrote his infamous Terrorism and Communism as part of this debate
   between socialists and, to quote syndicalist-turned-Bolshevik Alfred
   Rosmer, it "dealt with the theoretical and practical problems posed by
   the revolution, the civil war and the building of the new society" and
   it "formed a sort of introduction and commentary on the Theses prepared
   for the Congress." As we show in [52]section 15, this work acknowledged
   that party dictatorship was a necessity of a successful revolution, the
   need for one-man management as well as the militarisation of labour
   (needless to say, we also show how -- McNally's claims notwithstanding
   -- Trotsky did not reject these positions in the 1920s and 1930s). In
   addition, the congress took place in July 1920 when the civil war
   appeared to have been won, with Rosmer recalling that when he had
   arrived in "June 1920" in Russia "the civil war was virtually at an
   end" for "[a]fter the triple blow struck at the interventionist forces,
   after the destruction of Kolchak, Yudenich and Denikin, the
   counter-revolution was defeated." [Lenin's Moscow, p. 58, p. 65, p. 128
   and p. 101]

   To stress the point, Lenin, Zinoviev and Trotsky were all clearly
   arguing for party power, not workers' power, and that party
   dictatorship is inevitable in every revolution. This position was not
   put in terms of the problems facing the Russian Revolution but rather
   were expressed in universal terms and unsurprisingly, then "[f]rom the
   first days of Bolshevik power there was only a weak correlation between
   the extent of 'peace' and the mildness or severity of Bolshevik rule,
   between the intensity of the war and the intensity of proto-war
   communist measures . . . Considered in ideological terms there was
   little to distinguish the 'breathing space' (April-May 1918) from the
   war communism that followed." Unsurprisingly, then, "the breathing
   space of the first months of 1920 after the victories over Kolchak and
   Denikin . . . saw their intensification and the militarisation of
   labour" and, in fact, "no serious attempt was made to review the
   aptness of war communist policies." Ideology "constantly impinged on
   the choices made at various points of the civil war . . . Bolshevik
   authoritarianism cannot be ascribed simply to the Tsarist legacy or to
   adverse circumstances." [Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power, p.
   24, p. 27 and p. 30]

   As we discuss in [53]section H.6.2, Bolshevik ideology and the
   decisions it inspired helped make the difficult circumstances the
   revolution was facing worse. Their centralised vision of socialism
   could not help but produce economic mismanagement as well as a new
   class of bureaucrats. The inherent tendencies of Bolshevism were
   revealed by the civil war, a war which only accelerated the development
   of what was implicit (and, often, not so implicit) in Bolshevik
   ideology and its vision of socialism, the state and the role of the
   party. Therefore, in practice, Leninism has proven to be profoundly
   anti-democratic. In terms of McNally's argument, to not discuss in
   detail Bolshevik authoritarianism and blame it on the impact of the
   civil war is dishonest, particularly given the awkward fact that their
   anti-democratic activities started before its beginning at the end of
   May 1918.

   Bolshevik authoritarianism had two main causes.

   First, the obvious change in its social position -- it became part of
   the state and, as a result, viewed society -- and the working class --
   from above, as rulers. So as Marxism is "centralist" and aims for
   "conscious, democratic, proletarian centralism" it will inevitably lead
   to a new class system being created. [The Lenin Anthology, p. 348] This
   is not necessarily because Leninists seek dictatorship for themselves
   (although they do aim for party power -- see [54]section H.3.11) but
   rather it is because of the nature of the state machine. In the words
   of Murray Bookchin:

     "Anarchist critics of Marx pointed out with considerable effect that
     any system of representation would become a statist interest in its
     own right, one that at best would work against the interests of the
     working classes (including the peasantry), and that at worst would
     be a dictatorial power as vicious as the worst bourgeois state
     machines. Indeed, with political power reinforced by economic power
     in the form of a nationalised economy, a 'workers' republic' might
     well prove to be a despotism (to use one of Bakunin's more favourite
     terms) of unparalleled oppression . . .

     "Republican institutions, however much they are intended to express
     the interests of the workers, necessarily place policy-making in the
     hands of deputies and categorically do not constitute a 'proletariat
     organised as a ruling class.' If public policy, as distinguished
     from administrative activities, is not made by the people mobilised
     into assemblies and confederally co-ordinated by agents on a local,
     regional, and national basis, then a democracy in the precise sense
     of the term does not exist. The powers that people enjoy under such
     circumstances can be usurped without difficulty . . . [I]f the
     people are to acquire real power over their lives and society, they
     must establish -- and in the past they have, for brief periods of
     time established -- well-ordered institutions in which they
     themselves directly formulate the policies of their communities and,
     in the case of their regions, elect confederal functionaries,
     revocable and strictly controllable, who will execute them. Only in
     this sense can a class, especially one committed to the abolition of
     classes, be mobilised as a class to manage society." ["The Communist
     Manifesto: Insights and Problems", pp. 14-17, Black Flag, no. 226,
     pp. 16-7]

   As we discuss in [55]section H.3.9, anarchists argue that the state
   cannot be considered as simply an instrument of economic class but,
   rather, has interests of its own. As such, concentrations of political
   power will produce a new class system and become independent of the
   masses of people and even of economically dominant classes like
   capitalists. This is why anarchists stress direct democracy
   (self-management) in free federations of free associations. It is the
   only way to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people and is
   not turned into an alien power above them. Thus Marxist support for
   statist forms of organisation will inevitably undermine the liberatory
   nature of the revolution. As we note in [56]section 14, that is
   anarchists have long argued for the need for social transformation
   "from below".

   Second, as indicated in [57]section H.5, their idea of the party being
   the "vanguard" of the working class, combined with its desire for
   centralised power, makes the dictatorship of the party over the
   proletariat inevitable. Lenin's belief that working class people could
   not liberate themselves explains his continual emphasis on
   representative democracy and centralism as well as the Bolshevik's easy
   slide into both practicing and advocating party dictatorship -- simply
   put, the party must have power over the working class as that class
   could not be trusted to make the right decisions (i.e. know what its
   "real" interests were). At best they would be allowed to vote for the
   government, but even this right could be removed if they voted for the
   wrong people as shown above. For Leninists, revolutionary consciousness
   is not generated by working class self-activity in the class struggle,
   but is embodied in the party ("Since there can there can be no talk of
   an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in
   the process of their movement the only choice is: either bourgeois or
   socialist ideology" [Lenin, The Essential Works of Lenin, 82]). The
   conclusions of this position are obvious: the important issues facing
   the working class are to be determined not by the workers ourselves,
   but by the leadership of the party, who are the (self-appointed)
   "vanguard of the proletariat".

   The nature of the relationship between the party and the working class
   is clear. We remain incapable of achieving revolutionary consciousness
   and have to be led by the vanguard -- using state coercion, if need be.
   As Lenin argued:

     "it must he made clear that democracy under the Soviet system does
     not contradict dictatorship . . . Unity of will must not be a
     catchword, a symbol. We demand it in practice. This is how unity of
     will was expressed during the [civil] war -- anybody who placed his
     own interests (or the interests of his village or group) above the
     common interests, was branded as a self-seeker and was shot; this
     was justified by the moral consciousness of the working class that
     it must achieve victory. We spoke about these shootings openly; we
     said that we made no secret of coercion, because we realised that we
     could not emerge from the old society without resorting to
     compulsion as far as the backward section of the proletariat was
     concerned . . ." [Op. Cit., vol. 30 pp. 509-10]

   This raises numerous questions, the most obvious is who (which
   individual or group) decides which is and is not in the common
   interests? Another is, what is to stop this pivileged person or group
   placing their interests above "the common interests" and repressing
   those who object in the name of those very same "common interests"?
   Moreover, as everyone is -- by definition! -- "backward" in comparison
   to the vanguard in its own eyes, Lenin's position ensures that
   "compulsion" can be used by the party against all who it considers an
   danger to its power -- including the proletariat it claims to be the
   ruling class. Hence the destruction of soviet, workplace, union and
   armed forces democracy and, of course, the creation of bodies of armed
   men (such as the political police, the Cheka) separate from the people
   (i.e., a state in the normal sense of the word -- see [58]section
   H.3.8).

   In short, the notion that dictatorship does not contradict democracy is
   simply nonsense -- self-serving nonsense, of course -- and which could
   have no other impact than a negative one of socialism. What would stop,
   say, a Stalin proclaiming that his regime was simply using coercion
   against the backward sections of the masses in the common interest and
   that those who objected were placing their own interests above it? It
   is the crudest form of idealism to hope that the socialist principles
   of the ruling elite will overcome the pressures of their position in
   the social hierarchy and, unsurprisingly, it did not happen.

   "If we perish", Lenin said privately to Trotsky in 1921, "it is all the
   more important to preserve our ideological line and give a lesson to
   our continuators. This should never be forgotten, even in hopeless
   circumstances". [quoted by Brinton, "The Bolsheviks and Workers'
   Control", For Workers' Power, p. 372] Hence the comments made by
   Zinoviev at the Second Congress of the Communist International, Trotsky
   in Terrorism and Communism and Lenin in innumerable speeches and
   articles. Sadly for McNally's case, the lesson that the Bolsheviks
   wanted to give to the world revolutionary movement was not the
   importance of freedom and democracy but rather that party dictatorship
   and one-man management were necessary to achieve a successful
   revolution and that an economic regime which was obvious
   state-capitalism was socialism. Little wonder Leninists had so much
   difficulty in recognising Stalinism was a new class system -- to do so
   would have been to raise awkward questions about the similar -- if less
   brutal -- regime under Lenin and Trotsky.

   To conclude, both anarchism and Leninism have a critical position on
   democracy. Lenin argued that "formal democracy must be subordinate to
   the revolutionary interest" and in a sense he was right. [Collected
   Works, vol. 32, p. 86] As we indicated in [59]section 7, anarchists
   argue that minorities should ignore (or rebel against) the majority if
   it is oppressing the minority -- for progress to be achieved the
   "revolutionary interest" (freedom) must come first. Only in this way
   can the liberatory promise of democracy can be secured in the face of
   any potential dictatorship of the majority. The Leninist position is
   that a minority can ignore the majority only if it is the party
   leadership for it is they, the vanguard, who determine what the
   "revolutionary interest" is and, as a result, Leninism -- for all its
   rhetoric -- is fundamentally an anti-democratic ideology simply because
   this justifies party dictatorship as everyone is "backward" compared to
   the vanguard. McNally distorts the anarchist position while proclaiming
   the democratic credentials of Leninism. The facts are otherwise.

9. Why is McNally wrong on the relation of syndicalism to anarchism?

   After slandering anarchism, McNally turns towards another form of
   libertarian socialism, namely syndicalism. It is worth quoting him in
   full as his comments are truly ridiculous:

     "There is . . . another trend which is sometimes associated with
     anarchism. This is syndicalism. The syndicalist outlook does believe
     in collective working class action to change society. Syndicalists
     look to trade union action -- such as general strikes -- to
     overthrow capitalism. Although some syndicalist viewpoints share a
     superficial similarity with anarchism -- particularly with its
     hostility to politics and political action -- syndicalism is not
     truly a form of anarchism. By accepting the need for mass,
     collective action and decision-making, syndicalism is much superior
     to classical anarchism."

   The weakness of McNally's position can be seen from comparing his
   summary of syndicalism's key ideas with "classical anarchism", namely
   Bakunin's revolutionary anarchism. This passage by Bakunin expresses
   almost all the ideas McNally ascribes to syndicalism:

     "Toilers count no longer on anyone but yourselves. Do not demoralise
     and paralyse your growing strength by being duped into alliances
     with bourgeois Radicalism . . . Abstain from all participation in
     bourgeois Radicalism and organise outside of it the forces of the
     proletariat. The bases of this organisation . . . are the workshops
     and the federation of workshops . . . instruments of struggle
     against the bourgeoisie, and their federation, not only national,
     but international . . . when the hour of revolution sounds, you will
     proclaim the liquidation of the State and of bourgeois society,
     anarchy, that is to say the true, frank people's revolution."
     [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, pp. 120-1]

   Bakunin, therefore, stressed trade union action, arguing as "strikes
   spread from one place to another, they come close to turning into a
   general strike. And with the ideas of emancipation that now hold sway
   over the proletariat, a general strike can result only in a great
   cataclysm which forces society to shed its old skin." He raised the
   possibility that this could "arrive before the proletariat is
   sufficiently organised" and dismissed it the "necessities of the
   struggle impel the workers to support one another" and the "more active
   the struggle becomes . . . the stronger and more extensive this
   federation of proletarians must become." Thus strikes "indicate a
   certain collective strength already" and "each strike becomes the point
   of departure for the formation of new groups." [The Basic Bakunin, pp.
   149-50]

   For Bakunin, like the later syndicalists, "the natural organisation of
   the masses . . . is organisation based on the various ways that their
   various types of work define their day-to-day life; it is organisation
   by trade association" and once "every occupation . . . is represented
   within the International [Working-Men's Association], its organisation,
   the organisation of the masses of the people will be complete." [Op.
   Cit., p. 139] Thus "unions create that conscious power without which no
   victory is possible" while strikes "create, organise, and form a
   workers' army, an army which is bound to break down the power of the
   bourgeoisie and the State, and lay the ground for a new world." [The
   Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 379 and pp. 384-5] The
   "organisation of the trade sections and their representation by the
   Chambers of Labour . . . bear in themselves the living seeds of the new
   society which is to replace the old world. They are creating not only
   the ideas, but also the facts of the future itself." [Bakunin on
   Anarchism, p. 255]

   And yet McNally proclaims that Bakunin "shared most of Proudhon's
   views" and so, by implication, "so feared the organised power of the
   developing working class that he went so far as to oppose trade
   unions"! Rather than be against the "freedom of the working class to
   make collectively a new society", Bakunin repeatedly argued that "the
   new social order" would be attained "through the social (and therefore
   anti-political) organisation and power of the working masses of the
   cities and villages." This would see "capital and all tools of labour
   belong to the city workers -- to the workers associations. The whole
   organisation of the future should be nothing but a free federation of
   workers -- agricultural workers as well as factory workers and
   associations of craftsmen." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p.
   300 an p. 410] This position was common to all revolutionary anarchists
   (see sections [60]H.2.2 and [61]H.2.7).

   What is ridiculous about McNally's comments is that all historians who
   take the time to read Bakunin's works note the obvious links between
   his ideas and syndicalism. Let us present a few examples here (many
   writers also point to syndicalist aspects in Proudhon's ideas as well
   but we will concentrate on Bakunin). Thus we discover Caroline Cahm
   pointing out "the basic syndicalist ideas of Bakunin" and that he
   "argued that trade union organisation and activity in the International
   [Working Men's Association] were important in the building of
   working-class power in the struggle against capital . . . He also
   declared that trade union based organisation of the International would
   not only guide the revolution but also provide the basis for the
   organisation of the society of the future." Indeed, he "believed that
   trade unions had an essential part to play in the developing of
   revolutionary capacities of the workers as well as building up the
   organisation of the masses for revolution." [Kropotkin and the Rise of
   Revolutionary Anarchism, p. 219, p. 215 and p. 216] George R. Esenwein
   noted that syndicalism "had deep roots in the Spanish libertarian
   tradition. It can be traced to Bakunin's revolutionary collectivism"
   and the class struggle was "central to Bakunin's theory." [Anarchist
   Ideology and the Working Class Movement in Spain, p. 209 and p. 20] The
   syndicalists "viewed themselves as the descendants of the federalist
   wing of the First International, personified above else by Mikhail
   Bakunin." [Wayne Thorpe, "The Workers Themselves", pp. xiii-xiv]
   "Hardly any of these ideas [associated with syndicalism] are new",
   stated Bertrand Russell "almost all are derived from the Bakunist
   [sic!] section of the old International" and this was "often recognised
   by Syndicalists themselves." [Roads to Freedom, p. 52] J. Romero Maura
   correctly summarised that for the "Bakuninists" in the First
   International, the "anarchist revolution, when it came, would be
   essentially brought about by the working class. Revolutionaries needed
   to gather great strength and must beware of underestimating the
   strength of reaction" and so they "logically decided that
   revolutionaries had better organise along the lines of labour
   organisations." ["The Spanish case", pp. 60-83, Anarchism Today, D.
   Apter and J. Joll (eds.), p. 66]

   We could go on but as leading syndicalist activist and thinker Rudolf
   Rocker summarised:

     "Modern Anarcho-syndicalism is a direct continuation of those social
     aspirations which took shape in the bosom of the First International
     and which were best understood and most strongly held by the
     libertarian wing of the great workers' alliance."
     [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 54]

   Perhaps, in the face of such evidence (and the writings of Bakunin
   himself!), Marxists like McNally could claim that the sources we quote
   are either anarchists or "sympathetic" to anarchism. To counter this we
   will quote Marx and Engels. According to Marx, Bakunin's theory
   consisted of urging the working class to "only organise themselves by
   trades-unions" and "not occupy itself with politics." Engels asserted
   that in the "Bakuninist programme a general strike is the lever
   employed by which the social revolution is started" and that they
   admitted "this required a well-formed organisation of the working
   class". [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p.
   48, p. 132 and p. 133] Ignoring the misrepresentations of Marx and
   Engels about the theories of their enemies, we can state that they got
   the basic point of Bakunin's ideas -- the centrality of trade union
   organisation and struggle as well as the use of strikes as the means of
   starting a social revolution.

   (As an aside, ironically enough, Engels distorted diatribe against
   Bakunin and the general strike was later used against more radical
   Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg -- usually claimed by Leninists as part of
   their tradition -- by the reformists in Social Democratic Parties. For
   orthodox Marxists, the mass strike was linked to anarchism and Engels
   had proven that only political action -- i.e. electioneering -- could
   lead to working class emancipation. This appeal to authority lead
   Luxemburg to the innovative tactic of suggesting Engels was correct
   against the anarchist general strike but not against her mass strike!
   That this involved distorting the anarchist position -- as Engels had
   done -- should go without saying -- see [62]section H.3.5.)

   It should be stressed that Bakunin's position on revolutionary class
   struggle waged by workers' organisations became the basis of
   revolutionary anarchism. Thus we find, for example, Emma Goldman
   arguing that in the First International "Bakunin and the Latin workers"
   forged ahead "along industrial and Syndicalist lines" and so
   syndicalism "is, in essence, the economic expression of Anarchism" and
   "[l]ike Anarchism, Syndicalism prepares the workers along direct
   economic lines, as conscious factors in the great struggles of to-day,
   as well as conscious factors in the task of reconstructing society."
   The "most powerful weapon" for liberation was "the conscious,
   intelligent, organised, economic protest of the masses through direct
   action and the general strike." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 89, p. 91 and p.
   60] Kropotkin summarised the libertarian perspective well in 1907:

     "Workmen's organisations are the real force capable of accomplishing
     the social revolution - after the awakening of the proletariat has
     been accomplished, first by individual action, then by collective
     action, by strikes and revolts extending more and more; and where
     workmen's organisations have not allowed themselves to be dominated
     by the gentlemen who advocate 'the conquest of political power', but
     have continued to walk hand in hand with anarchists - as they have
     done in Spain - they have obtained, on the one hand, immediate
     results (an eight-hour day in certain trades in Catalonia), and on
     the other have made good propaganda for the social revolution - the
     one to come, not from the efforts of those highly-placed gentlemen,
     but from below, from workmen's organisations." ["Anarchists and
     Trade Unions", Direct Struggle Against Capital, pp. 391-2]

   We will leave the matter here and point interested readers to our
   extended discussion of the links between anarchism and syndicalism in
   [63]section H.2.8. However, the inaccuracy of McNally's statement
   should be clear as we have shown that according to him "syndicalism"
   (i.e. Bakunin's ideas) is "much superior to classical anarchism" (i.e.
   Bakunin's ideas)! How spurious his argument actually is can be seen
   from his comments about syndicalism and its relation to anarchism.

10. Do syndicalists reject working class political action?

   McNally, after getting the relationship between "classical anarchism"
   and syndicalism completely wrong (see [64]last section), moves on to an
   equally flawed argument against syndicalism. He states that "by
   rejecting the idea of working class political action, syndicalism has
   never been able to give real direction to attempts by workers to change
   society." However, syndicalists (like all anarchists) are clear what
   kind of politics they reject -- bourgeois politics (i.e. the running of
   candidates in elections). It is worth quoting Rudolf Rocker at length
   on McNally's claim:

     "It has often been charged against Anarcho-Syndicalism that it has
     no interest in the political structure of the different countries,
     and consequently no interest in the political struggles of the time,
     and confines its activities to the fight for purely economic
     demands. This idea is altogether erroneous and springs either from
     outright ignorance or wilful distortion of the facts. It is not the
     political struggle as such which distinguishes the
     Anarcho-Syndicalists from the modern labour parties, both in
     principle and in tactics, but the form of this struggle and the aims
     which it has in view. . .

     "The attitude of Anarcho-Syndicalism toward the political power of
     the present-day state is exactly the same as it takes toward the
     system of capitalist exploitation. . . [and so] Anarcho-Syndicalists
     pursue the same tactics in their fight against that political power
     which finds its expression in the state. . .

     "For just as the worker cannot be indifferent to the economic
     conditions of his life in existing society, so he cannot remain
     indifferent to the political structure of his country. . . It is,
     therefore, utterly absurd to assert that the Anarcho-Syndicalists
     take no interest in the political struggles of the time. . . But the
     point of attack in the political struggle lies, not in the
     legislative bodies, but in the people. . . If they, nevertheless,
     reject any participation in the work of bourgeois parliaments, it is
     not because they have no sympathy with political struggles in
     general, but because they are firmly convinced that parliamentary
     activity is for the workers the very weakest and the most hopeless
     form of the political struggle. . .

     "But, most important of all, practical experience has shown that the
     participation of the workers in parliamentary activity cripples
     their power of resistance and dooms to futility their warfare
     against the existing system. . .

     "Anarcho-Syndicalists, then, are not in any way opposed to the
     political struggle, but in their opinion this struggle, too, must
     take the form of direct action, in which the instruments of economic
     power which the working class has at its command are the most
     effective. . .

     "The focal point of the political struggle lies, then, not in the
     political parties, but in the economic fighting organisations of the
     workers. It as the recognition of this which impelled the
     Anarcho-Syndicalists to centre all their activity on the Socialist
     education of the masses and on the utilisation of their economic and
     social power. Their method is that of direct action in both the
     economic and the political struggles of the time. That is the only
     method which has been able to achieve anything at all in every
     decisive moment in history." [Op. Cit., pp. 73-78]

   Rocker's work, Anarcho-Syndicalism, was written in 1938 and is
   considered the standard introduction to that theory. McNally wrote his
   pamphlet in the 1980s and did not bother to consult the classic
   introduction to the ideas he claims to be refuting. That in itself
   indicates the worth of his pamphlet and any claims it has for being
   remotely accurate with respect to anarchism and syndicalism.

   Syndicalists, then, do reject working class "political action" only if
   you think "political action" means simply bourgeois politics -- that
   is, electioneering, standing candidates for Parliament, local town
   councils and so on. It does not reject "political action" in the sense
   of direct action to effect political changes and reforms. As
   syndicalists Ford and Foster argued, syndicalists use "the term
   'political action' . . . in its ordinary and correct sense.
   Parliamentary action resulting from the exercise of the franchise is
   political action. Parliamentary action caused by the influence of
   direct action tactics . . . is not political action. It is simply a
   registration of direct action." They also note that syndicalists "have
   proven time and again that they can solve the many so-called political
   questions by direct action." [Earl C. Ford and William Z. Foster,
   Syndicalism, p. 19f and p. 23] A historian of the British syndicalist
   movement reiterates this point:

     "Nor did syndicalists neglect politics and the state. Revolutionary
     industrial movements were on the contrary highly 'political' in that
     they sought to understand, challenge and destroy the structure of
     capitalist power in society. They quite clearly perceived the
     oppressive role of the state whose periodic intervention in
     industrial unrest could hardly have been missed." [Bob Holton,
     British Syndicalism: 1900-1914, pp. 21-2]

   This awareness that the state could not be ignored but had to be fought
   is reflected in the 1909 French syndicalist novel How We Shall Bring
   About the Revolution which discussed how the Chamber of Deputies was
   "invaded from all sides" by the crowd during the revolution, which
   "threatened with death any deputies who should dare sit again." The
   "General Strikers were on watch" and "in order to guard against any
   aggressive action by the fallen power, or any effort to re-establish
   Parliamentarianism, a certain number of their comrades should remain
   permanently at the Palais Bourdon" and "oppose by force any
   counter-revolutionary measures." Guards were also used in "the Police
   Offices, the Government Offices, the Elysée, etc." after "having taken
   them by assault." The town hall "was not neglected" and "was occupied"
   in a similar fashion. Thus there was a "definite intention of
   disorganising the State, of dismantling and thoroughly disabling it" to
   ensure it was "impossible for the Government to recover itself, or
   rally around any point whatever." Thus the general strike "very soon
   changed into an insurrectional strike" and the General Strikers
   occupied the centres of Government action, and expelled the
   representative of the State. The state would be replaced by Bourses du
   Travail (local federation of unions) and the Trades Unions Congress,
   with the latter being formed by delegates "from all parts of France"
   and "from all trades, from all professions" and "having to decide upon
   points previously discussed by the comrades who had sent them." The
   similarities to soviets -- and Bakunin's ideas (see [65]section 5) --
   are clear. Nor did they ignore the need to defend a revolution and like
   revolutionary anarchists (see [66]section H.2.1) argued for the unions
   to form "bands" to "watch over the security of the committees" and
   "sought to arm themselves" in order to "counterbalance the military and
   other forces" which "held them under the yoke." The trade unions
   distributed arms and in each syndicate "a group for defence was formed"
   which entered "into relation with like groups in the same district, and
   with distant centres" by means of an "organisation of defence, with a
   Trade Union and Federal basis." These "Syndicalist battalions were not
   a force external to the people. They were the people themselves" who
   "had the common-sense to arm themselves in order to protect their
   conquered liberty." [Emile Pataud and Emile Pouget, How We Shall Bring
   About the Revolution, pp. 79-83, p. 94, pp. 128-9, p. 69 and pp. 155-7]

   As we argued in [67]section J.2.10, anarchist support for direct action
   and opposition to taking part in elections does not mean we are
   "apolitical" or reject political action. Anarchists have always been
   clear -- we reject "political action" which is bourgeois in nature in
   favour of "political action" based on the organisations, action and
   solidarity of working class people. This is because electioneering
   corrupts those who take part, watering down their radical ideas and
   making them part of the system they were meant to change. As Rocker
   summarised:

     "Participation in the politics of the bourgeois States has not
     brought the labour movement a hair's-breadth nearer to Socialism,
     but thanks to this method, Socialism has almost been completely
     crushed and condemned to insignificance . . . Participation in
     parliamentary politics has affected the Socialist Labour movement
     like an insidious poison. It destroyed the belief in the necessity
     of constructive Socialist activity, and, worse of all, the impulse
     to self-help, by inoculating people with the ruinous delusion that
     salvation always comes from above." [Op. Cit., p. 54]

   Rocker's last point is important, given that McNally seeks to
   appropriate the idea of "from below" for Marxism. He is well aware of
   the results of socialist electioneering, reporting how by the start of
   the 20th century "most European socialists. . . came to the view that
   socialism would be achieved gradually, through the slow transformation
   of capitalism into a kind of welfare capitalism under which workers
   would prosper" and "[g]one was Marx's notion that socialism could only
   come into being through a revolutionary transformation of society from
   below. In its place developed the view that capitalism would slowly
   grow over into socialism." However, he significantly fails to note that
   these parties considered themselves as Marxist and had been following
   the strategy Marx and Engels had advocated.

   It would have been informative to his readership if McNally had found
   time to discuss this awkward fact. One of the key differences between
   Marx and Bakunin in the First International was over "political
   action": the forming of political parties and standing in elections.
   Bakunin argued that "it is usually enough for these men of the people
   to enter government for them to become members of the bourgeoisie in
   their turn, sometimes scorning the people from whom they came more than
   do the natural-born members of the bourgeoisie." The need was "the
   organisation of the might of the workers, the unification of the
   proletariat of the entire world" by "eliminat[ing] from its program all
   bourgeois political schemes" in favour of "workers' solidarity in their
   struggle against the bosses. It means trades unions, organisation, and
   the federation of resistance funds." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 51, p. 93,
   p. 99 and p. 103] Marx and Engels, in contrast, favoured "political
   action" and completely failed, unlike Bakunin, to recognise the dangers
   of reformism in the tactic. Indeed, in 1891 Engels proudly announced
   that the Brussels Congress of the Second International "proved a
   brilliant success for us . . . And, best of all, the anarchists have
   been shown the door, just as they were at the Hague Congress. The new,
   incomparably larger and avowedly Marxist International is beginning
   again at the precise spot where its predecessor ended." [Collected
   Works, vol. 49, p. 238]

   McNally, like most Leninists, is keen to distance Marx and Engels from
   Social Democracy and so does not note their repeated comments -- both
   before and after the Paris Commune that socialism could come about
   peacefully by utilising elections (see [68]section H.3.10). Engels in
   1847, for example, argued that the "first, fundamental condition for
   the introduction of community of property is the political liberation
   of the proletariat through a democratic constitution" and so the
   revolution's had to "inaugurate a democratic constitution and thereby .
   . . the political rule of the proletariat" as in "America, where a
   democratic constitution has been introduced" [Collected Works, vol. 6,
   p. 102, p. 350 and p. 356] In contrast, Proudhon had concluded the year
   before that the state could not be captured and reformed and socialism
   could only be created by proletarian self-organisation:

     "Thus power [i.e. the state] . . . finds itself inevitably enchained
     to capital and directed against the proletariat . . . The problem
     before the labouring classes, then, consists, not in capturing, but
     in subduing both power and monopoly -- that is, in generating from
     the bowels of the people, from the depths of labour, a greater
     authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the
     State and subjugate them. Every proposition of reform which does not
     satisfy this condition is simply one scourge more . . . which
     threatens the proletariat." [Property is Theft!, p. 226]

   

   The syndicalists, like Bakunin, argued the same -- although, unlike the
   Frenchman, saw the trade union movement as the means of social
   transformation. It is almost redundant to note that history has proven
   the validity of anarchist anti-electioneering ideas. For example, as we
   argue in [69]section J.2.6, the net result of the Marxists use of
   electioneering ("political action") was the de-radicalising of their
   movement and theory and its becoming yet another barrier to working
   class self-liberation. Rather than syndicalism not giving "real
   direction to attempts by workers to change society" it was Marxism in
   the shape of Social Democracy which did that. Indeed, at the turn of
   twentieth century more and more radicals turned to Syndicalism and
   Industrial Unionism as the means of by-passing the dead-weight of
   Social Democracy (i.e. orthodox Marxism), its reformism, its
   opportunism and its bureaucracy.

   This was recognised by Lenin, if in his own way. Anarchism, he
   suggested, "was not infrequently a kind of penalty for the opportunist
   sins of the working-class movement." [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 32]
   His claim that anarchist and syndicalist support in the working class
   is the result of the opportunist nature of the Social Democratic
   Parties has an element of truth. Obviously militants sick to death of
   the reformist, corrupt and bureaucratic "working class" parties will
   seek a revolutionary alternative and find libertarian socialism.
   However, Lenin seeks to explain the symptoms (opportunism) and not the
   disease itself (Parliamentarianism) . Nowhere does he see the rise of
   "opportunist" tendencies in the Marxist parties as the result of the
   tactics and organisational struggles they used. Indeed, Lenin desired
   the new Communist Parties to practice electioneering ("political
   action"). Anarchists rather point out that given the nature of the
   means, the ends surely follow. Working in a bourgeois environment
   (Parliament) will result in bourgeoisifying and de-radicalising the
   party. Working in a centralised environment will empower the leaders of
   the party over the members and lead to bureaucratic tendencies. In
   short, the means urged inevitably produced a "from above" mentality and
   the descent into reformism -- a descent Lenin only noticed with the
   outbreak of war in 1914 and the siding of German Social Democracy with
   its state in the imperialist slaughter.

   As Bakunin predicted, using bourgeois institutions will corrupt
   "revolutionary" and radical parties and tie the working class to the
   current system. Lenin's analysis of anarchist influence as being the
   off-spring of opportunist tendencies in mainstream parties may be
   right, but if so it is a natural development as the tactics supported
   by Marxists from Marx onwards inevitably lead to opportunist tendencies
   developing. What Lenin could not comprehend was that opportunism was
   the symptom and electioneering was the disease -- using the same means
   (electioneering) with different parties/individuals ("Communists"
   instead of "Social Democrats") and thinking that opportunism would not
   return was idealistic nonsense.

   Sadly for his readers, McNally did not discuss any of this and
   preferred to present an inaccurate account of the syndicalist position
   on political struggles. Perhaps this is understandable, for an accurate
   account would mention the debates of the First International and have
   to draw the obvious conclusion: Bakunin -- and the syndicalists -- were
   right.

11. Why is McNally's claim that Leninism supports working class
self-emancipation wrong?

   McNally claims that Marx "was the first major socialist thinker to make
   the principle of self-emancipation -- the principle that socialism
   could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and
   self-organisation of the working class -- a fundamental aspect of the
   socialist project." This is not entirely true as "Proudhon insisted
   that the revolution could only come from below, through the action of
   the workers themselves." [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and
   the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 157] In his words:

     "Workers, labourers, men of the people, whoever you may be, the
     initiative of reform is yours. It is you who will accomplish that
     synthesis of social composition which will be the masterpiece of
     creation, and you alone can accomplish it." [quoted by George
     Woodcock, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography, p. 64]

   As we indicated in [70]section 2, Proudhon stressed that the working
   class had to free itself by its own means and its own organisations
   for, as indicated in [71]section 10, the state was a capitalist
   institution which could not be captured by the masses. So while
   Proudhon placed his hopes in reformist tendencies (such as workers'
   co-operatives and mutual banks) he clearly believed in working class
   self-emancipation, even stating in 1848 that "the proletariat must
   emancipate itself" for "the revolutionary power . . . is not in the
   National Assembly: it is in you. The people alone, acting upon
   themselves without intermediary, can achieve the economic Revolution
   begun in February. The people alone can save civilisation and advance
   humanity!" [Property is Theft!, 306 and p. 366]

   Marx's use of the famous expression -- "the emancipation of the working
   class is the task of the working class itself" -- dates from 1865, 17
   years after Proudhon's comment that "the proletariat must emancipate
   itself." Moreover, as Libertarian Marxist Paul Mattick pointed out,
   Marx was not even the first person to use the expression "the
   emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class
   itself" as Flora Tristan used it in 1843. [Marx and Keynes, p. 333]
   Thus a case could be made that Marx was, in fact, the third "major
   socialist thinker to make the principle of self-emancipation -- the
   principle that socialism could only be brought into being by the
   self-mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class -- a
   fundamental aspect of the socialist project."

   Similarly, Bakunin continually quoted Marx's (and so Tristan's) words
   from the Preamble to the General Rules of the First International:
   "That the emancipation of the workers must be accomplished by the
   workers themselves." Far more than Marx, Bakunin argued that workers'
   can only free themselves by a "single path, that of emancipation
   through practical action" namely "workers' solidarity in their struggle
   against the bosses" by "trades-unions, organisation, and the federation
   of resistance funds". The "collective experience" workers gain in the
   "collective struggle of the workers against the bosses" will ensure
   they "will necessarily come to realise that there is an irreconcilable
   antagonism between the henchmen of reaction and [their] own dearest
   human concerns. Having reached this point, [the worker] will recognise
   [themselves] to be a revolutionary socialist." [The Basic Bakunin, p.
   92 and p. 103]

   In contrast Marx placed his hopes for working class self-emancipation
   on a political party which would conquer "political power." As history
   soon proved, Marx was mistaken on two levels. First, as Bakunin
   predicted, political action by socialist parties resulted in the
   political system changing the party rather than vice versa, that it
   "inexorably enmeshes its adherents, under the pretext of political
   tactics, in endless accommodations with governments and the various
   bourgeois political parties -- that is, it thrusts them directly into
   reaction." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 180] Second, "political power" can
   only be seized by a minority (i.e. the party, not the class it claims
   to represent) and if the few have the power, the rest are no longer
   free (i.e. they no longer govern themselves). That the many elect the
   few who issue them orders does not signify emancipation!

   However, this is beside the point. McNally proudly places his ideas in
   the Leninist tradition. It is thus somewhat ironic that McNally claims
   that Marxism is based on self-emancipation of the working class while
   claiming Leninism as a form of Marxism as Lenin explicitly stated the
   opposite, namely that the working class could not liberate itself by
   its own actions. In his 1902 book What is to be Done? Lenin argued that
   "the working class, exclusively by their own effort, is able to develop
   only trade union consciousness . . . The theory of socialism [i.e.
   Marxism] . . . grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic
   theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the
   propertied classes, the intellectuals . . . the theoretical doctrine of
   Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous growth of
   the labour movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of
   ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia." This meant
   that "Social Democratic [i.e. socialist] consciousness . . . could only
   be brought to them [the workers] from without." Speaking on behalf of
   workers, he asked that the "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us
   more about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our
   factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us political
   knowledge." [Essential Works of Lenin, pp. 74-5 and p. 108]

   Thus, rather than believe in working class self-emancipation, Lenin
   thought the opposite. Without the radical bourgeois to provide the
   working class with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let along
   society, was impossible. Hardly what you would consider
   self-emancipation. As Lenin put it:

     "Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being
     developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their
     movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist
     ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence, to belittle
     socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest
     degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of
     talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the
     labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois
     ideology . . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to
     combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from its
     spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the wing of the
     bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary
     Social-Democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

   As we discuss in [72]section H.5, this is a deeply anti-socialist
   position which, due to its privileging of the party, creates the
   theoretical justification for the anti-democratic actions of the
   Bolsheviks we sketched in [73]section 8. This perspective states that
   the party has a better understanding of what the interests of the
   people are than the people themselves. If they reject the party then it
   means that they simply do not understand their own class interests and
   so they have become "declassed", to use Lenin's term. The party, due to
   it being the repository of what socialism is, then has the right -- the
   duty -- to ignore the masses for to do otherwise "means strengthening
   bourgeois ideology". That this is self-serving circular logic is an
   understatement but it is self-serving circular logic which, in
   revolutionary Russia, destroyed socialism in favour of state-capitalism
   and party dictatorship.

   For this notion of working class passivity is not confined to the
   "early" Lenin of What is to Be Done? infamy (not that there is any
   evidence that Lenin later repudiated the ideas expressed there -- see
   [74]section H.5.4). It can be found in his apparently more
   "libertarian" work The State and Revolution which argues that "we do
   not indulge in 'dreams' of dispensing at once . . . with all
   subordination; these anarchist dreams . . . are totally alien to
   Marxism . . . we want the socialist revolution with human nature as it
   is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination,
   control and 'managers'" Nowhere is the notion that working class
   people, during the process of mass struggle, direct action and
   revolution, revolutionises themselves (see sections [75]A.2.7 and
   [76]J.7.2, for example). Instead, we find a vision of people as they
   are under capitalism ("human nature as it is now") and no vision of
   self-emancipation of the working class and the resulting changes that
   implies for those who are transforming society by their own action.
   Perhaps it will be argued that Lenin sees "subordination" as being "to
   the armed vanguard of all the exploited . . . i.e., to the proletariat"
   and so there is no contradiction. However, this is not the case as he
   confuses the rule of the party with the rule of the class: "We cannot
   imagine democracy, not even proletarian democracy, without
   representative institutions." [Op. Cit., p. 307 and p. 306]

   Thus "subordination" is not to the working class itself (i.e. direct
   democracy or self-management). Rather it is the "subordination" of the
   majority to the minority, of the working class to "its"
   representatives. Thus we have a vision of a "socialist" society in
   which the majority have not revolutionised themselves and are
   subordinated to "their" party. Such a subordination, however, ensures
   that a socialist consciousness cannot develop as only the process of
   self-management generates the abilities required for self-management
   ("Only freedom or the struggle for freedom can be the school for
   freedom." [Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 59]).
   Lenin saw the revolution as the means by which the mass of the people
   will recognise that the vanguard party represents their interests and
   so vote it into power. However, as "there can be no talk of an
   independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in
   the process of their movement" any clash between the party and masses
   simply mean that the latter are wrong and "the armed vanguard" needs
   "to combat spontaneity" -- literally, as we showed in [77]section
   H.6.3. As Lenin admitted in 1920:

     "Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies
     of the workers and peasants, it is impossible to break down the
     resistance of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary
     coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable
     elements among the masses themselves." [Collected Works, vol. 42, p.
     170]

   As we indicate in [78]section H.3.8, this perspective meant that
   Leninist theorists ended up arguing for a state separate from the
   working class (a "state in the proper sense of the word") rather than
   the semi-state promised in such works as The State and Revolution (a
   work whose promises, as we note in [79]section H.1.7, were forsaken
   completely within six months of the Bolshevik seizure of power). This
   was required to ensure that the party could "combat" spontaneous
   movements in the working class which questioned the privileged position
   of the party -- both ideologically (in terms of its advanced ideas) and
   politically (its holding of power). This privileged position for the
   party engenders a perspective which can (and did) justify party
   dictatorship over the proletariat. Given Lenin's position that the
   working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its own efforts,
   of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union consciousness"
   independently of the party, the clear implication is that the party
   could in no way be bound by the predominant views of the working class
   as these are, by definition non-socialist, bourgeois even. As the party
   embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises outside the working
   class and its struggles) then opposition of the working class to the
   party signifies a failure of the class to resist alien influences, a
   failure that the party must fight to ensure that this failure does not
   spread to the revolution itself -- the proletariat, in short, must be
   repressed in its own interests by the "proletarian" dictatorship.

   Therefore McNally's comments that Leninism is a valid expression of
   Marx's idea of proletarian self-emancipation is false. In reality,
   Lenin rejected the idea that working class people can emancipate
   themselves and, therefore, any claim that this tradition stands for
   proletarian self-emancipation is false. Rather Leninism, for all its
   rhetoric, has no vision of working class self-activity leading to
   self-liberation -- it denies it can happen and that is why it stresses
   the role of the party and its need to take centralised power into its
   own hands. Of course, it never entered Lenin's mind that if bourgeois
   ideology imposes itself onto the working class it also imposes itself
   on the party as well -- more so as they are bourgeois intellectuals in
   the first place.

   While anarchists are aware of the need for groups of like minded
   individuals to influence the class struggle and spread anarchist ideas,
   we reject the idea that such ideas have to be "injected" into the
   working class from outside. Rather, as we argued in [80]section J.3,
   anarchist ideas are developed within the class struggle by working
   people themselves. Anarchist groups exist because we are aware that
   there is an uneven development of ideas within our class and to aid the
   spreading of libertarian ideas it is useful for those with those ideas
   to work together. However, being aware that our ideas are the product
   of working class life and struggle we are also aware that we have to
   learn from that struggle. It is because of this that anarchists stress
   self-management of working class struggle and organisation from below
   (anarchists are, to use Bakunin's words, "convinced that revolution is
   only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that when
   it is concentrated in those of a few ruling individuals it inevitably
   and immediately becomes reaction" [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings,
   p. 237]). Only when this happens can new ways of life be created and
   truly develop freely. It also explains anarchist opposition to
   political groups seizing power -- that will only result in old dogmas
   crushing the initiative of people in struggle and the new forms of life
   they create. That is why anarchists stress the importance of
   revolutionaries using "natural influence" (i.e. arguing their ideas in
   popular organisations and convincing by reason) -- doing so allows new
   developments and ideas to be expressed and enriched by existing ones
   and vice versa.

   One last point. It could be argued that similar comments to Lenin's
   arguments can be found in Marx and Engels and so Marxism as such rather
   than just Leninism does not believe in proletarian self-emancipation.
   After all, had not The Manifesto of the Communist Party proclaimed that
   "a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the
   revolutionary class" and this "portion of the bourgeois ideologists"
   have "raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the
   historical movement as a whole." In addition, the Communists are "the
   most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties" and
   "they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of
   clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the
   general results of the proletarian movement". [The Marx-Engels Reader,
   p. 481 and p. 484] This, needless to say, places "bourgeois
   ideologists" and party leaders (like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky)
   in a privileged position within the party, labour movement and society
   as a whole. Had not Marx and Engels argued in The Holy Family that the
   "question is not what this or that proletarian, or even the whole of
   the proletariat at the moment considers as its aim. The question is
   what the proletariat is, and what, consequent on that being, it will be
   compelled to do." [quoted by Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists,
   p. 280] As Murray Bookchin argued:

     "These lines and others like them in Marx's writings were to provide
     the rationale for asserting the authority of Marxist parties and
     their armed detachments over and even against the proletariat.
     Claiming a deeper and more informed comprehension of the situation
     than 'even the whole of the proletariat at the given moment,'
     Marxist parties went on to dissolve such revolutionary forms of
     proletarian organisation as factory committees and ultimately to
     totally regiment the proletariat according to lines established by
     the party leadership." [Op. Cit., p. 289]

   Unlike Lenin and Trotsky, Marx and Engels rarely drew the obvious
   conclusions from their arguments (although their contempt for working
   class socialist thinkers -- like Proudhon -- was legendary) but the
   elitism was there. It is to Bakunin's merit that he recognised the
   danger long before the likes of Lenin and Trotsky (see [81]section 15)
   made it explicit.

12. Why is Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism contradictory?

   Another ironic aspect of McNally's pamphlet is its demonisation of
   anarchism combined with praise for the Paris Commune and the Russian
   Soviets. This is because key aspects of both revolutionary forms were
   predicted by Proudhon and Bakunin. For example, McNally's and Marx's
   praise for revocable mandates in the Commune was advocated by Proudhon
   in 1840s (see [82]section 4). Bakunin also advocated this in the late
   1860s along with a federation of delegates from workplaces which showed
   a marked similarity with the Russian soviets (see [83]section 5).

   Indeed, the Paris Commune (in both its economic and political aspects)
   showed a clear inspiration from Proudhon's works. In the words of
   George Woodcock, there are "demands in the Commune's Manifesto to the
   French People of the 19th April, 1871, that might have been written by
   Proudhon himself." [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography, p. 276] K.
   Steven Vincent also points out that the declaration "is strongly
   federalist in tone, and it has a marked proudhonian flavour."
   [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p.
   232] Moreover, the desire to replace wage labour with associated labour
   by the creation of co-operatives expressed during the Commune clearly
   showed the influence of Proudhon. Marx mentions a "rough sketch of
   national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop" but
   does not quote from it. [The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 633] This is
   perhaps unsurprising as the Commune's declaration clearly shows its
   anarchist roots and tendencies:

     "The absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all localities in
     France and assuring to each one its full rights, and to every
     Frenchman the full exercise of his faculties and abilities as man,
     citizen and producer.

     "The only limit to the autonomy of the Commune should be the equal
     right to autonomy for all communes adhering to the contract, whose
     association shall insure French unity . . . The choice by election
     or competition of magistrates and communal functionaries of all
     orders, as well as the permanent right of control and revocation.

     "The absolute guarantee of individual freedom and freedom of
     conscience.

     "The permanent intervention of citizens in communal affairs by the
     free manifestation of their ideas, the free defence of their
     interests . . .

     "The organisation of urban defence and the National Guard, which
     elects its chiefs and alone watches over the maintenance of order in
     the city . . .

     "Paris wants nothing else as a local guarantee, on condition, of
     course, of finding in the great central administration -- the
     delegation of federated Communes -- the realisation and the practice
     of the same principles. But as an element of its autonomy, and
     profiting by its freedom of action, within its borders it reserves
     to itself the right to operate the administrative and economic
     reforms called for by the populace as it wills; to create the
     institutions needed to develop and spread instruction, production,
     exchange and credit; to universalise power and property in keeping
     with the needs of the moment, the wishes of those concerned and the
     facts furnished by experience.

     "Unity, as it has been imposed on us until today by the Empire, the
     monarchy or parliamentarism is nothing but unintelligent, arbitrary
     or onerous centralisation.

     "Political unity, as Paris wants it, is the voluntary association of
     all local initiatives, the spontaneous and free concourse of all
     individual energies in view of a common goal: the well-being, the
     freedom and the security of all.

     "The communal revolution, begun by popular initiative on March 18,
     begins a new era of experimental, positive, scientific politics.

     "It is the end of the old governmental and clerical world, of
     militarism and bureaucracy, of exploitation, speculation, monopolies
     and privileges to which the proletariat owe their servitude and the
     Fatherland its misfortunes and disasters." ["Declaration to the
     French People", pp. 789-791, Property is Theft!, pp. 789-790]

   The links with Proudhon's ideas cannot be clearer. Little wonder, then,
   that during the Commune anarchist James Guillaume stated that "the
   Paris Revolution is federalist . . . in the sense given it years ago by
   the great socialist, Proudhon." It is "above all the negation of the
   nation and the State." [contained in The Paris Commune of 1871: The
   View From the Left, Eugene Schulkind (ed.), p. 191] Bakunin, for his
   part, rightly argued that its "general effect was so striking that the
   Marxists themselves, who saw their ideas upset by the uprising, found
   themselves compelled to take their hats off to it. They went further,
   and proclaimed that its programme and purpose where their own, in face
   of the simplest logic . . . This was a truly farcical change of
   costume, but they were bound to make it, for fear of being overtaken
   and left behind in the wave of feeling which the rising produced
   throughout the world." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 261]

   To see why, we need simply to compare Marx's reporting of the Commune
   with Proudhon's words. Marx stated, correctly, that the Commune "was
   formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in
   the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short
   terms" and was "a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and
   legislative at the same time". The delegates would "revocable and bound
   by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents" [The
   Marx-Engels Readers, p. 632 and p. 633] As well as arguing that
   "federalism is the political form of humanity", Proudhon also argued
   that the "legislative power is not distinguished from the executive
   power." [Property is Theft!, p. 678 and p. 674] As he put it in 1848:

     "It is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its
     committees, to exercise executive power, just the way it exercises
     legislative power . . . Besides universal suffrage and as a
     consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the
     imperative mandate [mandat impératif]. Politicians balk at it!
     Which means that in their eyes, the people, in electing
     representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their
     sovereignty! That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even
     democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 378-9]

   This applies to the economic goals of the Commune, with Marx suggesting
   that it "wanted to make individual property a truth by transforming the
   means of production, land, capital, now chiefly the means of enslaving
   and exploiting labour, into mere instruments of free and associated
   labour" and "this is Communism". Engels, twenty years later, painted a
   picture of Proudhon being opposed to association (except for
   large-scale industry) and stated that "to combine all these
   associations in one great union" was "the direct opposite of the
   Proudhon doctrine" and so "the Commune was the grave of the Proudhon
   school of socialism." [Op. Cit., p. 635 and p. 626] Yet they must have
   been aware of Proudhon's support for large-scale industry and workers
   associations ([84]section 4) as expressed, for example, in his 1863
   call for an "agricultural-industrial federation" or his 1846 comment
   that "to unfold the system of economic contradictions is to lay the
   foundations of universal association" [Op. Cit., p. 712 and p. 179] As
   he put it in 1848:

     "under universal association, ownership of the land and of the
     instruments of labour is social ownership . . . We want the mines,
     canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers
     associations . . . We want these associations to be models for
     agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast
     federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of
     the democratic and social Republic." [Op. Cit., pp. 777-8]

   Given that Marx described the Commune as "essentially a working-class
   government", "the political form at last discovered under which to work
   out the economic emancipation of labour" and "will be for ever
   celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society", it is strange
   that McNally terms Proudhon's and Bakunin's ideas as those of the past.
   [Op. Cit., pp. 634-5 and p. 652] It seems the height of hypocrisy for
   McNally to attack Proudhon while praising the Paris Commune.

   So the awkward fact is that anarchists had been advocating these forms
   since Proudhon in the 1840s and they were developed by Bakunin in the
   1860s. Nothing similar can be found in Marx until the Commune which
   suggests, as Anarchist K.J. Kenafick stated, "that the programme [the
   Commune] set out is . . . the system of Federalism, which Bakunin had
   been advocating for years, and which had first been enunciated by
   Proudhon. The Proudhonists . . . exercised considerable influence in
   the Commune. This 'political form' was therefore not 'at last'
   discovered; it had been discovered years ago; and now it was proven to
   be correct by the very fact that in the crisis the Paris workers
   adopted it almost automatically, under the pressure of circumstance,
   rather than as the result of theory, as being the form most suitable to
   express working class aspirations." [Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, pp.
   212-3]

   Little wonder few Marxists (like Marx himself) directly quote from the
   Commune's declaration. It would be difficult to attack anarchism (as
   "petty-bourgeois") while proclaiming the Paris Commune as the first
   example of "the dictatorship of the Proletariat." The decentralised,
   federalist nature of the Commune cannot be squared with the usual
   Marxist instance on centralisation and the claim that federalism "as a
   principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of
   anarchism. Marx was a centralist" and to "confuse Marx's views . . .
   with Proudhon's federalism is positively monstrous!" While there may be
   "not a trace of federalism" in Marx's "observations on the experience
   of the Commune", the Commune itself was distinctly federalist in its
   aspirations. If Marx "upheld democratic centralism, the republic -- one
   and indivisible" the same cannot be said of the Communards themselves.
   [Lenin, "The State and Revolution", The Lenin Anthology, p. 348, p. 347
   and p. 361] As Paul Avrich noted, the "influence of Proudhon --
   unquestionably greater than that of Marx -- was reflected in the title
   of 'Federals' by which the Communards were known." [Anarchist
   Portraits, p. 232]

   This is not to suggest that the Commune was a perfect example of
   anarchism in action -- far from it. As we indicate in [85]section
   A.5.1, while it wished federalism outside of Paris it was not
   federalist within its boundaries. If, as Marx put it, "the Paris
   Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands" then
   its structure simply was not up to its tasks. [Op. Cit., p. 636] As
   Bakunin put it, while the Commune was "a bold and outspoken negation of
   the State", the Communards had set up "a revolutionary government"
   within Paris and so organised "themselves in reactionary Jacobin
   fashion, forgetting or sacrificing what they themselves knew were the
   first conditions of revolutionary socialism", rather than "by the free
   association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in
   the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation,
   international and universal" organised "solely from the bottom
   upwards." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p. 199, p. 202 and p.
   206] Building on Bakunin's comments, Kropotkin argued that while
   "proclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an
   essential anarchist principle" but "they stopped mid-course" and gave
   "themselves a Communal Council copied from the old municipal councils."
   Thus the Paris Commune did not "break with the tradition of the State,
   of representative government, and it did not attempt to achieve within
   the Commune that organisation from the simple to the complex it
   inaugurated by proclaiming the independence and free federation of the
   Communes." Kropotkin continually stressed that the revolutionaries were
   isolated from the masses and shut-up in the town hall which lead to
   disaster as the Commune council became "immobilised . . . by red tape"
   and lost "the sensitivity that comes from continued contact with the
   masses . . . Paralysed by their distancing from the revolutionary
   centre - the people - they themselves paralysed the popular
   initiative." [Words of a Rebel, p. 97, p. 93 and p. 97]

   So the Commune applied aspects of anarchism but not all. However, the
   main thrust of the revolt was federalist in nature -- something
   Marxists tend to forget to mention. Anarchists argued that the Commune
   should have rejected the Municipal Council and instead organised a
   workers' council. Anarchist ideas, then, as can be seen from the Paris
   Commune and the soviets were the ideas of the future -- and of working
   class self-liberation and self-organisation. And ones that Marx and his
   followers paid lip service to.

   (We say lip service for Marx's praise for the Commune did not stop him
   recommending the labour movement to stand candidates in national
   elections nor did Lenin quoting Marx's statement that the future
   proletarian state, like the Paris Commune, would abolish the
   distinction between executive and administrative powers mean he
   honoured it. Immediately after the October Revolution the Bolsheviks
   established an executive power above the soviets, namely the Council of
   People's Commissars. Those who quote Lenin's The State and Revolution
   as proof of his democratic nature usually fail to mention this little
   fact. In practice that work was little more than an election manifesto
   to be broken as required, as we shown in [86]section H.1.7)

   In fact, the Paris Commune was primarily the work of artisans (the bulk
   of the Parisian workers at the time). This is reflected in Marx's
   comments in 1866 that the French workers were "corrupted" by Proudhon's
   "sham criticism and sham opposition to the Utopians (he himself is only
   a petty-bourgeois utopian . . .)", "particularly those of Paris, who as
   workers in luxury trades are strongly attached, without knowing it [!],
   to the old rubbish." The "Parisian gentlemen had their heads full of
   the emptiest Proudhonist phrases" and so "Proudhon did enormous
   mischief." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-syndicalism,
   pp. 45-6] Five years later, these workers (still obviously influenced
   by "the old rubbish" and their heads still full of "Proudhonist
   phrases") created "the political form" of "the economic emancipation of
   labour." This is not explained by Marxists, who also do not trouble
   themselves to explain how can the Paris Commune be the "Dictatorship of
   the Proletariat" when 35 members of the Commune's council were artisans
   and only 4 or 5 were industrial workers (i.e. proletarians).

   Can the fact that Proudhon-influenced artisans were, according to
   McNally and Marx, social strata of the past, were backward looking,
   etc. be reconciled with the claim that the Paris Commune was the
   political form of proletarian emancipation? No, not from a Marxist
   class analysis. Hence Marxists ignoring the real nature of the Parisian
   working class when discussing the commune. However, from an anarchist
   perspective -- which sees the artisan, peasant and proletariat forming
   a common class of working people -- the development of the Paris
   Commune is no surprise. It is the work of people seeking to end wage
   labour and the threat of wage labour now rather than sometime in the
   future once capitalism has fully developed. Thus McNally's (and Marx's)
   support for the Commune makes a mockery of his attacks on anarchism as
   the theory of the artisans and peasants for it was the artisans who
   created the first model of their "proletarian" state and applied what
   they say they consider the foundations of "proletarian" democracy --
   electing mandated and recallable delegates. That the "petty-bourgeois"
   Proudhon advocated this 23 years before Marx did is, of course, left
   unsaid.

   As indicated, McNally's arguments do not hold water. Ironically, if
   anarchism was the death-cry of the artisan and peasant then it is
   strange, to say the least, that this theory so influenced the Paris
   Commune which McNally praises so much. We therefore suggest that rather
   than being a backward-looking cry of despair for those disappearing
   under the wheels of rising capitalism, anarchism was in fact a theory
   developed from the struggles and self-activity of those currently
   suffering capitalist and state oppression -- namely the artisans,
   peasants and industrial proletariat (i.e. the working class as a
   whole). In other words, it is a philosophy and theory for the future,
   not of the past. This can be seen from the libertarian aspects of the
   Paris Commune, aspects Marx immediately tried to appropriate for his
   own theories (which, unfortunately, were swamped by the authoritarian
   elements that existed already).

   In addition the "old rubbish" the Parisian workers supported was very
   much ahead of its time. In 1869 the delegate of the Parisian
   Construction Workers' Trade Union argued that "[a]ssociation of the
   different corporations [labour unions] on the basis of town or country
   . . . leads to the commune of the future . . . Government is replaced
   by the assembled councils of the trade bodies, and by a committee of
   their respective delegates." In addition, "a local grouping which
   allows the workers in the same area to liaise on a day to day basis"
   and "a linking up of the various localities, fields, regions, etc."
   (i.e. international trade or industrial union federations) would ensure
   that "labour organises for present and future by doing away with wage
   slavery." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 184] Such a vision of
   workers' councils and associated labour has obvious similarities with
   the spontaneously created soviets of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
   These, too, were based on assembled councils of workers' delegates. Of
   course they were differences but the basic idea and vision are
   identical.

   Therefore to claim that anarchism represents the past presents Marxists
   with a few problems given the nature of the Paris Commune and its
   obvious libertarian nature. If it is claimed that the Parisian artisans
   defended "not their present, but their future interests" and so
   "desert[ed] their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the
   proletariat" (the class they are being "tranfer[ed]" into by the rise
   of capitalism) then, clearly, anarchist ideas are "future,"
   proletarian, ideas as it is that class interest artisans serve "[i]f by
   chance they are revolutionary." [Marx and Engels, "The Communist
   Manifesto", The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 482]

   Whichever way you look at it, McNally's claims on the class nature of
   anarchism do not stand up to close analysis. Proudhon addressed both
   artisan/peasant and wage-worker in his works. He addressed both the
   current and the future working class. Bakunin did likewise. Moreover,
   both were part of the workers movement. Proudhon was working class, the
   son of an artisan and peasant who was a printer by trade, and took part
   in the debates and polemics of the French socialist movement as well as
   the 1848 Revolution. Bakunin joined the First International, taking an
   active part in its debates and championing the syndicalist ideas which
   had evolved from Proudhon's mutualism in France, Belgium, Spain and
   Italy. As Paul Avrich suggests, as "early as the 1860's and 1870's, the
   followers of Proudhon and Bakunin in the First International were
   proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as a weapon
   of class struggle against capitalists and as the structural basis of
   the future libertarian society" [The Russian Anarchists, p. 73]
   Therefore it is not surprising that Proudhon and Bakunin predicted
   aspects of the Paris Commune -- they were expressing the politics of
   the future. As is clear from their writings, which still remain fresh
   today.

   This is reflected in another comment by McNally, who writes that "all
   major trends in Russian socialism had believed that a bourgeois
   democratic revolution -- a revolution against Czarism and for the
   establishment not of socialism but merely of liberal capitalism --
   would have to precede a workers' revolution in Russia. In 1906, Leon
   Trotsky developed a dissenting view. Only the working class of Russia,
   Trotsky argued, would be willing and able to carry through the fight
   for democratic reforms and for a democratic republic. But why, he
   asked, should the workers be expected to stop at that point? Why should
   they not extend the fight for democratic rights into a struggle for
   workers' control and socialist democracy?" In reality, the idea that
   working people should extend a revolution from political to economic
   goals was raised by both Proudhon and Bakunin long before Trotsky and,
   moreover, was advocated by Kropotkin the year before Trotsky introduced
   it into Marxism.

   Thus Proudhon argued that the 1848 revolution "had been made 'without
   an idea' and that it had unfortunately satisfied itself with the
   proclamation of purely political palliatives" and "he did not believe
   that such political reforms would solve the social problem." [K. Steven
   Vincent, Op. Cit., p. 169] Bakunin took up, as with so many other
   things, Proudhon's argument and, as we discuss in [87]section H.1.1, a
   key part of Bakunin's critique of Marxism was precisely that it looked
   to political change before social and economic transformation, the
   latter coming as a result of "political action" allowed by the previous
   political revolution. Thus "[t]o win political freedom first can
   signify no other thing but to win this freedom only, leaving for the
   first days at least economic and social relations in the same old
   state, -- that is, leaving the proprietors and capitalists with their
   insolent wealth, and the workers with their poverty." [The Political
   Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 294] This meant that anarchists aimed to
   ensure any revolution was "simultaneously universal, social,
   philosophical, economic and political revolution". The "revolution as
   we understand it will . . . set about the . . . complete destruction of
   the State . . . The natural and necessary upshot of that destruction"
   will include the "[d]issolution of the army, magistracy, bureaucracy,
   police and clergy" and "[a]ll productive capital and instruments of
   labour . . . be[ing] confiscated for the benefit of toilers
   associations, which will have to put them to use in collective
   production" as well as the "[s]eizure of all Church and State
   properties." The "federated Alliance of all labour associations . . .
   will constitute the Commune." The people "must make the revolution
   everywhere, and . . . ultimate direction of it must at all times be
   vested in the people organised into a free federation of agricultural
   and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom up." [No
   Gods, No Masters, vol. 1 pp. 152-6] This was echoed by Kropotkin in
   1905:

     "The Russian people -- the working men -- having compelled the
     autocrat to abdicate his despotic power, must compel him now to give
     body to his abdication by sending away the troops upon which rest
     his power and the power of bureaucracy, the power of unbridled
     capitalism.

     "The people must arm itself; otherwise the Tsar, the bureaucrats and
     the capitalists will crush it down . . . the Russian working men
     must not forget their own demands. To guarantee the individual
     against police arbitrariness is necessary for all. But he who works
     and produces riches with his own hands requires something else. . .
     . If you are compelled tomorrow, after the Constitution has been
     proclaimed, to return to the factories the same slaves as you have
     been before, then you will have been betrayed . . .

     "Don't expect anything from would-be saviours. But in every factory,
     every building yard, every workshop, and every mine, establish
     yourselves the order of things which, by common accord, you will
     find proper to establish. But remember this: Don't allow others to
     interfere! It is your affair, and you have to settle it.

     "Accomplish yourselves a revolution in the organisation of labour as
     you have accomplished it in the general administration of the
     Russian State.

     "Don't trust those who will tell you: 'Not yet! It is too soon!' No,
     it is not too soon; it is just the time for it." ["The Revolution in
     Russia", Direct Struggle Against Capital, pp. 456-7]

   As with the Paris Commune and the soviets, yet another key aspect of
   McNally's Marxism was first advocated by anarchists. As Emma Goldman
   noted in 1918, the Bolsheviks where "adopting Anarchist Revolutionary
   tactics" and, unlike in 1905, in 1917 they "no longer believe" that
   "the industrialisation of Russia and the historic mission of the
   bourgeoisie as a necessary evolutionary process before the Russian
   masses could come into their own" and now accepted "the point of view
   held by the Anarchists since Bakunin; namely, that once the masses
   become conscious of their economic power, they make their own history"
   and so revolution "means a fundamental social and economic change,
   something which has its roots in the needs and hopes of the people and
   which must not end until the disinherited of the earth come into their
   own. In a word, the Russian people saw in the overthrow of the
   autocracy the beginning and not the finale of the Revolution." For the
   toiler, the Russian Revolution "can mean nothing . . . unless it sets
   the land fee and joins to the dethroned Tsar his partner, the dethroned
   land-owner, the capitalist." ["The Truth About the Bolsheviki",
   Writings of Emma Goldman, p. 163 and p. 165]

   So when Victor Serge, like McNally, stated that by concluding the
   "self-evident truth" that "the Russian Revolution cannot confine itself
   to changing the political order" in 1917 but that it had to take in "a
   social character" by expropriating capital and land he was unknowingly
   "on the line" advocated by Lenin we must remember that this was not
   "the line" pioneered by Trotsky but rather the one raised by Kropotkin
   and other anarchists during the 1905 revolution (and rejected at the
   time by all Marxists) and that this had been argued for since the late
   1860s by Bakunin and other libertarians. [Memoirs of a Revolutionary,
   p. 60]

   This confusion associated with Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism
   was also present in Lenin. Given that anarchism is apparently
   associated with the petty-bourgeois we find a strange contradiction in
   Lenin's work. On the one hand Lenin argued that Russia "despite the
   more petty-bourgeois composition of her population as compared with the
   other European countries" anarchist influence was "negligible during
   the two revolutions (of 1905 and 1917)". The lack of influence in
   Russia, he claimed, was due to Bolshevism having "waged a most ruthless
   and uncompromising struggle against opportunism" for anarchism was "a
   penalty for the opportunist sins of the working-class movement." On the
   other he admitted that, in the developed capitalist nations,
   syndicalism was "a profoundly proletarian and mass movement" and that
   it is "the duty of all Communists to do everything to help all
   proletarian mass elements to abandon anarchism . . . the measure in
   which genuinely Communist parties succeed in winning mass proletarian
   elements . . . away from anarchism, is a criterion of the success of
   those Parties." [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 31, p. 32, p. 200 and p.
   201]

   Thus, in the most capitalist nations, ones with a more widespread and
   developed proletariat, the anarchist and syndicalist movements were
   more firmly developed and had closer connections with the masses than
   in Russia. Moreover, these movements were also quite revolutionary as
   well and should be won to Bolshevism. But anarchism is the politics of
   the petit-bourgeois and so should have been far smaller in Western
   countries than in Russia due to the larger numbers of artisans and
   peasants in the latter. The opposite was the case, thus suggesting that
   Lenin's analysis is wrong.

   We can point to another explanation of these facts. Rather than the
   Bolsheviks "struggle against opportunism" being the reason why
   anarchism was "negligible" in 1917-18 in Russia (it was not, in fact)
   but had mass appeal in Western Europe perhaps it was the fact that
   anarchism was a product of working class struggle in advanced
   capitalist countries while Bolshevism was a product of bourgeois
   struggle (for Parliament, a liberal republic, etc.) in Tsarist Russia?
   Similarly, perhaps the reason why Bolshevism did not develop the same
   opportunist tendencies as in other Social-Democratic movements was
   because it did not work in an environment which encouraged them. After
   all, unlike the German Social Democrats, the Bolsheviks were illegal
   for long periods of time and worked in an absolutist monarchy. The
   influences that corrupted the German Social Democrats were not at work
   in the Tsarist regime simply because there was no genuine
   Parliamentarianism for the party to get corrupted by. Thus, Bolshevism,
   perhaps at best, was applicable to Tsarist conditions and anarchism to
   Western ones.

   However, contrary to Lenin, Russian anarchism was far from "negligible"
   during 1917-18 and was growing in influence within the Russian working
   class which was the real reason why the Bolsheviks suppressed them
   before the start of the civil war. As Emma Goldman noted, a claim such
   as Lenin's "does not tally with the incessant persecution of Anarchists
   which began in [April] 1918, when Leon Trotsky liquidated the Anarchist
   headquarters in Moscow with machine guns. At that time the process of
   elimination of the Anarchists began." [Trotsky Protests Too Much",
   Writings of Emma Goldman, p. 265] This fact of anarchist influence
   during the revolution does not contradict our earlier analysis. This is
   because the Russian anarchists, rather than appealing to the
   petit-bourgeois, were influencing exactly the same workers, sailors and
   soldiers the Bolsheviks were. Indeed, the Bolsheviks often had to
   radicalise their activities and rhetoric to counter anarchist
   influence. As Alexander Rabinowitch in his study of the July uprising
   of 1917 notes:

     "At the rank-and-file level, particularly within the [Petrograd]
     garrison and at the Kronstadt naval base, there was in fact very
     little to distinguish Bolshevik from Anarchist . . . The
     Anarchist-Communists and the Bolsheviks competed for the support of
     the same uneducated, depressed and dissatisfied elements of the
     population, and the fact is that in the summer of 1917, the
     Anarchist-Communists, with the support they enjoyed in a few
     important factories and regiments, possessed an undeniable capacity
     to influence the course of events. Indeed, the Anarchist appeal was
     great enough in some factories and military units to influence the
     actions of the Bolsheviks themselves." [Prelude to Revolution, p.
     64]

   This is hardly what would be expected if anarchism was
   "petit-bourgeois" as Marxists assert.

   It could, in fact, be argued that the Bolsheviks gained the support of
   so many workers during the summer of 1917 because they sounded and
   acted like anarchists and not like Marxists and lost it, by the summer
   of 1918, because, once in power, they reverted to acting like Marxists
   and their centralised policies were simply not solving the problems
   facing the revolution. At the time many considered the Bolsheviks as
   anarchists and one fellow Marxist (an ex-Bolshevik turned Menshevik)
   thought Lenin had "made himself a candidate for one European throne
   that has been vacant for thirty years -- the throne of Bakunin!"
   [quoted by Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 40] As Alexander Berkman argued,
   the "Anarchist mottoes proclaimed by the Bolsheviks did not fail to
   bring results. The masses relied to their flag." [What is Anarchism?,
   p. 120] Indeed, as we note in [88]section H.5.12, the Bolshevik party
   in the summer of 1917 was far from the disciplined vanguard party of
   Leninist myth and far more like a federation of local groups which
   could -- and did -- ignore the party's central committee and its
   conservatism. It was in 1918, faced with the realities of holding state
   power in the face of popular discontent and counter-revolution that
   Lenin's long desired model of a centralised, top-down, disciplined
   party came to be -- a development which contributed to the degeneration
   of the regime away from socialism and towards state capitalism.

   Moreover, this stealing of anarchist slogans and tactics in 1917 was
   forced upon the Bolsheviks by the working class. On Lenin's own
   admission, the masses of peasants and workers were "a hundred times
   further to the left" than the Bolsheviks. Trotsky himself notes that
   the Bolsheviks "lagged behind the revolutionary dynamic . . . The
   masses at the turning point were a hundred times to the left of the
   extreme left party." [History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 1, p.
   403f] Indeed, one leading Bolshevik stated in June 1917 (in response to
   a rise in anarchist influence), "[b]y fencing ourselves off from the
   Anarchists, we may fence ourselves off from the masses." [quoted by
   Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 102] That, in itself, indicates the weakness
   of Lenin's class analysis of anarchism.

   Rather than the Russian experience refute the claim that anarchism is a
   working class theory, it reinforces it -- the Bolsheviks would not have
   succeeded if they had used traditional Marxist slogans and tactics (as
   was the fate of the Mensheviks). Instead, much to the dismay of their
   more orthodox comrades, the Bolsheviks embraced traditional anarchist
   ideas and tactics and thereby gained increased influence in the working
   class. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in the name of the soviets,
   anarchist influence increased as more working people recognised that
   what the Bolsheviks meant by their slogans was different than what
   working people thought they meant (see [89]section A.5.4). So the
   experience of the Russian Revolution re-enforces the fact that Marxist
   "class analysis" of anarchism fails to convince. Far from proving that
   libertarian socialism is non-proletarian, that Revolution proved that
   it was: just as it confirmed the prophetic correctness of the views of
   the founders of anarchism and, in particular, their critique of
   Marxism.

   To conclude, the usual Marxist "class analysis" of anarchism is
   somewhat confused. On the one hand, it claims that anarchism is
   backward looking and the politics of the petit-bourgeois being
   destroyed by the rise and development of capitalism. On the other hand
   Marxists point to events and organisations created in working class
   struggle which were predicted and/or influenced by anarchist ideas and
   ideals, not Marxist ones. That indicates better than any other argument
   that Marxists are wrong about anarchism and their "class analysis"
   nothing more than distortions and bigotry. Based on the evidence and
   the contradictions it provokes in Marxist ideology, we have to argue
   that McNally is simply wrong. Rather than being an ideology of the
   petit-bourgeois anarchism is, in fact, a political theory of the
   working class (artisans, peasants and proletariat). Rather than a
   backward looking theory, anarchism is a theory of the present and
   future -- it has a concrete and radical critique of current society, a
   vision of the future and a theory how to get there which appeals to
   working people in struggle. Such is obviously the conclusion when you
   read anarchist theory and see how Marxists have appropriated aspects of
   it which they had previously denounced. Sadly, as we note in
   [90]section H.3.5, this appropriation has been selective and had not
   made Leninism any more libertarian, its pre-revolution rhetoric aside.

13. If Marxism is "socialism from below," why do anarchists reject it?

   McNally claims that Marxism is "socialism from below." In his text he
   indicates support for the Paris Commune and the soviets of the Russian
   Revolution. He states that the "democratic and socialist restructuring
   of society remains . . . the most pressing task confronting humanity.
   And such a reordering of society can only take place on the basis of
   the principles of socialism from below. Now more than ever, the
   liberation of humanity depends upon the self-emancipation of the world
   working class. . . The challenge is to restore to socialism its
   democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom."

   So, if this is the case, why the hostility between anarchists and
   Marxists? Surely it is a question of semantics? No, for while Leninists
   pay lip-service to such developments of working class self-activity and
   self-organisation as workers' councils (soviets), factory committees,
   workers' control, revocable and mandated delegates they do so in order
   to ensure the election of their party into positions of power (i.e. the
   government). Rather than see such developments as working people's
   direct management of their own destinies and as a means of creating a
   self-managed (i.e. free) society as anarchists do, Leninists see them
   as a means for their party to take over state power. Nor do they see
   them as a framework by which working class people can take back control
   of their own lives. Rather, they see them, at best, as typical
   bourgeois forms -- namely the means by which working people can
   delegate their power to a new group of leaders, i.e. as a means to
   elect a socialist government into power. The nature of the regimes they
   wish to create are centralised in nature, so reducing meaningful
   democracy to picking a few leaders and, even worse, producing the
   natural conditions under which a bureaucracy can flourish -- both
   conditions for creating a new ruling elite (the bureaucracy).

   This attitude can be seen from Lenin's perspectives on the Russian
   soviets during the 1905 Russian Revolution. Rather than seeing them as
   a means of working class self-government, he saw them purely as a means
   of gaining influence for his party:

     "the Party . . . has never renounced its intention of utilising
     certain non-party organisations, such as the Soviets of Workers'
     Deputies . . . to extend Social-Democratic influence among the
     working class and to strengthen the Social-Democratic labour
     movement . . . the incipient revival creates the opportunity to
     organise or utilise non-party working-class institutions, such as
     Soviets . . . for the purpose of developing the Social-Democratic
     movement; at the same time the Social-Democratic Party organisations
     must bear in mind if Social-Democratic activities among the
     proletarian masses are properly, effectively and widely organised,
     such institutions may actually become superfluous." [Collected
     Works, vol. 12, pp. 143-4]

   Such a perspective indicates well the difference between anarchism and
   Leninism. Anarchists do not seek power for their own organisations.
   Rather they see self-managed organisation created by working class
   people in struggle as a means of eliminating hierarchy within society,
   of directly involving the mass of people in the decisions that affect
   them. In other words, as a means of creating the organisations through
   which people can change both themselves and the world by their own
   direct action and the managing of their own struggles, lives,
   communities and workplaces. Leninists view working class
   self-organisation as a means of gaining power for their own party
   (which they identify with the power of the working class -- see
   [91]section H.3.11). Mass organisations, which could be schools for
   self-management and freedom, are instead subjected to an elitist
   leadership of intellectual ideologues. The party soon substitutes
   itself for the mass movement, and the party leadership substitutes
   itself the party. This is the inevitable result of a vision of
   socialism rooted in being "fully and unreservedly in favour of a strong
   state power and of centralism." [Op. Cit., vol. 26, p. 116]

   Lenin's view of the soviets was instrumental: he regarded them merely
   as a means of getting the workers to support the Bolshevik Party and
   ensuring his party seized state power. Indeed, he constantly confused
   soviet power with party power, seeing the former as the means to the
   latter and the latter as the key to creating socialism (see [92]section
   H.3.11). Given his vanguardist ideology (see [93]section H.5) this is
   unsurprising and, indeed, understandable -- flawed assumptions will
   produce incorrect conclusions. What is missing from his vision is the
   idea of socialism as being based on working class self-activity,
   self-management, self-government and, ultimately, self-emancipation
   ([94]section 11 refutes McNally's claims that Leninism is based on
   working class self-emanicipation). "Lenin" as one historian concluded,
   "believed that the transition to socialism was guaranteed ultimately,
   not by the self-activity of workers, but by the 'proletarian' character
   of state power." [A. S. Smith, Red Petrograd, pp. 261-2] Worse, the
   'proletarian' character of the state was determined by the party in
   government and, as we indicated in [95]section 8, the party determined
   what was and was not "proletarian" so allowing -- indeed, justifying --
   party dictatorship. This gap in his politics, this confusion of party
   with class, helped undermine the revolution and create the dictatorship
   of the bureaucracy. Little wonder that by the end of 1918, the
   Bolsheviks ruled the newly established soviet state entirely alone and
   had turned the soviets into docile instruments of their party apparatus
   rather than forms of working class self-government. Perhaps needless to
   say, this reality came to be reflected in Bolshevik ideology and the
   assertion that a socialist revolution required a party dictatorship was
   embedded into it at this time -- where it remained (Trotsky, for
   example, arguing this position throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as shown
   in [96]section 15).

   So despite its radical language, Leninism is totally opposed to the
   nature of revolt and rebellion. It seeks to undermine what makes these
   activities and the organisations they create potentially revolutionary
   (their tendencies towards self-management, decentralisation,
   solidarity, direct action, free activity and co-operation) by using
   them to build the party and, ultimately, a centralised, hierarchical
   state structure on the corpse of these once revolutionary forms of
   working class self-organisation and self-activity. This applies both to
   the social organisations of the working class and to their economic
   ones as Leninists view nationalisation (i.e., state ownership and
   control) as the basis of socialism rather than, as anarchists do,
   socialisation and workers self-management of production. The Leninist
   position can only produce a new ruling class (the bureaucracy) in a new
   class system (state capitalism). As Kropotkin predicted:

     "The state organisation, having always been . . . 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 decentralisation, both territorial and functional, in
     the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and
     of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the
     present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery." [Direct
     Struggle Against Capital, pp. 164-5]

   While Leninists point to Lenin's The State and Revolution as proof of
   Leninism's "socialism from below" credentials, anarchists note that,
   firstly, its promises were either not applied or quickly abandoned and,
   secondly, its vision of socialism is impoverished. As we discuss the
   first objection in [97]section H.1.7, we will note here that Lenin's
   work postulated a centralised proletarian state rooted in
   representative rather than delegate institutions as well as a
   "socialism" modelled on capitalist institutions which the workers were
   expected to "control" rather than self-management of production. Thus
   Lenin's pointing to the postal service, in which workers are usually
   employed by the State under capitalism, as "an example of the socialist
   economic system" and argued that we needed to "organise the whole
   economy on the lines of the postal service" simply transferred economic
   power to the state bureaucracy. [Collected Works, vol. 25 pp. 426-7]
   Anarchists, in contrast, argue that working class bodies like trade
   unions must take into their "hands the management of production" and
   co-operatives "for production and for distribution, both in industry
   and agriculture" were expressing aspects of "communist society" for
   "Socialist forms of life could find a much easier realisation" by means
   of these bodies "than by a State organisation". [The Conquest of Bread,
   pp. 22-23] As Maurice Brinton documents in great detail in his classic
   The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, the Leninist vision of socialism
   was never based on workers management of the economy (see [98]section
   H.3.14). Politically, the Bolsheviks placed an executive power (their
   own) over the soviets and so centralised power into the hands of a few
   party leaders.

   So as well as differences in the political nature of a socialist
   society, the role of organisations created in, by and for the class
   struggle and the nature of socialist organisation, anarchists and
   Marxists disagree with the economic nature of the future society.
   McNally claims that in Russia "[c]ontrol of the factories was taken
   over by the workers" but this is a total distortion of what actually
   happened. Throughout 1917, it was the workers themselves, not the
   Bolshevik Party, which raised the issue of workers' self-management and
   control. As S.A. Smith puts it, the "factory committees launched the
   slogan of workers' control of production quite independently of the
   Bolshevik party. It was not until May that the party began to take it
   up." [Op. Cit., p. 154] Given that the defining aspect of capitalism is
   wage labour, the Russian workers' raised a clearly socialist demand
   that entailed its abolition. It was the Bolshevik party, we must note,
   who failed to raise above a "trade union conscious" in this and so many
   other cases and, worse, they hindered the movement of workers trying to
   control, and then manage, the factories they worked in. As Maurice
   Brinton correctly argued, "it is ridiculous to claim -- as so many do
   today -- that in 1917 the Bolsheviks really stood for the full, total
   and direct control by working people of the factories, mines, building
   sites or other enterprises in which they worked, i.e. that they stood
   for workers' self-management." ["The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control",
   For Workers' Power, p. 328] Rather, Lenin identified "workers' control"
   as something totally different:

     "When we say: 'workers' control', always juxtaposing this slogan to
     dictatorship of the proletariat, always putting it immediately after
     the latter, we thereby explain what kind of state we mean . . . if
     we are speaking of a proletarian state, that is, of the proletarian
     dictatorship, then workers' control can become the country-wide,
     all-embracing, omnipresent, most precise and most conscientious
     accounting of the production and distribution of goods." [Collected
     Works, vol. 26, p. 105]

   By this Lenin meant the "power" to oversee the books, to check the
   implementation of decisions made by others, rather than fundamental
   decision making by the workers themselves. As he argued, when "the
   proletariat is victorious it will do the following, it will set
   economists, engineers, agronomists, and so forth, to work under the
   control of the workers' organisations on drawing up a 'plan', on
   verifying it, on devising labour-saving methods of centralisation, on
   devising the simplest, cheapest, most convenient and universal measures
   and methods of control. For this we shall pay the economists,
   statisticians and technicians good money . . . but we shall not give
   them anything to eat if they do not perform this work conscientiously
   and entirely in the interests of the working people." "The important
   thing," he stressed "will not be even the confiscation of the
   capitalists' property, but country-wide, all-embracing workers' control
   over the capitalists and their possible supporters . . . by the
   workers' control of the workers' state." The economy would be state-run
   based on the structures inherited from capitalism: "Compulsory
   syndication, i.e., compulsory amalgamation in associations under state
   control -- this is what capitalism has prepared the way for" [Op. Cit.,
   vol. 26, p. 118, pp. 107-8 and p. 108] Thus others -- a few planners at
   the top of a centralised state -- would determine the plans, not the
   workers themselves, and primarily the "control" would be exercised over
   the capitalists whom Lenin thought should remain in position for an
   indefinite period after the revolution. Rather than workers' managing
   their own workplaces and economy Leninism meant "the organisation of
   really democratic control, i.e., control from 'below', control by the
   workers and the poor peasants over the capitalists" [Op. Cit., vol. 25,
   p.353] Unsurprisingly, then, in 1922, he even suggested granting
   legislative power to the State Planning Commission to ensure its
   decisions "could not be rejected by ordinary procedure in Soviet
   bodies, but would need a special procedure to be reconsidered" as it
   was "a body of experienced people, experts, representatives of science
   and technology" and so was "actually in a better position to form a
   correct judgment of affairs". [Op. Cit., vol. 36, p. 598]

   So Lenin's commitment to workers' control was limited and as Maurice
   Brinton correctly summarised:

     "Nowhere in Lenin's writings is workers' control ever equated with
     fundamental decision-taking (i.e. with the initiation of decisions)
     relating to production . . . He envisioned a period during which, in
     a workers state, the bourgeois would still retain the formal
     ownership and effective management of most of the productive
     apparatus . . . capitalists would be coerced into co-operation.
     'Workers' control' was seen as the instrument of this coercion."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 314-5]

   Thus the capitalists would remain and wage slavery would continue but
   workers could "control" those who had the real power and gave the
   orders (the capitalists were later replaced by "one-man management" by
   state bureaucrats but the lack of effective power remained -- see
   [99]section H.3.14). In other words, no vision of workers'
   self-management in production (and so real socialism) and the reduction
   of "socialism" to a warmed up variation of state capitalism with (in
   theory, but not in practice) a dash of liberal democracy in the form of
   "control" of those with the real power by those under them in the
   hierarchy. This is to be expected because, as S.A. Smith correctly
   argues, Lenin's proposals were "thoroughly statist and centralist in
   character" and that he used "the term ['workers' control'] in a very
   different sense from that of the factory committees." [Op. Cit., p.
   154] As can be seen from McNally's pamphlet, Leninists still follow
   this tradition and hide the grim reality that their tradition advocates
   an economic regime drastically different from the workers'
   self-management their words imply to most readers. Using the same
   slogans as others ("workers' control" or "socialism from below", for
   example) but meaning something radically different by it can only bred
   confusion.

   Given Lenin's lack of concern about the revolutionising of the
   relations of production (a lack not shared by the Russian workers, we
   must stress) it is hardly surprising that Lenin considered the first
   task of the Bolshevik revolution was to build state capitalism. "State
   capitalism," he wrote, "is a complete material preparation for
   socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history
   between which and the rung called socialism there are no gaps".
   [Collected Works, vol. 24, p. 259] The aim was to ensure that "[a]ll
   citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state" and the
   "whole of society will have become a single office and a single
   factory, with equality of labour and pay." [Op. Cit., vol. 25, pp.
   473-4] For Lenin, the "domination of the proletariat consists in the
   fact that the landowners and capitalists have been deprived of their
   property . . . The victorious proletariat has abolished property . . .
   and therein lies its domination as a class. The prime thing is the
   question of property." [Op. Cit., vol. 30, p. 456] Hence his support
   for centralisation and "one-man management" -- if the issue is property
   then working class power in production cannot be considered as a
   necessary condition for socialism. Little wonder Soviet Russia never
   progressed beyond state capitalism -- it could not as the fundamental
   aspect of capitalism, wage labour, was never replaced by workers'
   self-management of production. Lenin, in short, was firmly in the same
   tradition as those "certain utopians" whose call that "the Government
   seize trade, industry and agriculture, to add them to its attributes
   and to make the French nation a nation of wage-workers" Proudhon
   rejected during the 1848 revolution as "expropriation by the State" was
   "still wage-labour." [Property is Theft!, p. 22 and p. 377]

   Writing in May 1917, Lenin took the viewpoint that state capitalism "is
   a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of
   socialism" and so socialism "is nothing but the next step forward from
   state capitalist monopoly." It is "merely state-capitalist monopoly
   which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to
   that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly." [Op. Cit., vol. 25, p.
   359 and p. 358] Rather than seeing "workers' control" as workers
   managing production directly by means of their own class organisations,
   he always saw it in terms of workers' "controlling" those who did
   within institutions inherited from capitalism. It simply meant "the
   country-wide, all-embracing, omnipresent, most precise and most
   conscientious accounting of the production and distribution of goods."
   He clarified what he meant, arguing for "country-wide, all-embracing
   workers' control over the capitalists" who would still manage
   production. Significantly, he considered that "as much as nine-tenths
   of the socialist apparatus" required for this "country-wide
   book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and
   distribution of goods" would be achieved by nationalising the "big
   banks," which "are the 'state apparatus' which we need to bring about
   socialism" (indeed, this was considered "something in the nature of the
   skeleton of socialist society"). This structure would be taken intact
   from capitalism for "the modern state possesses an apparatus which has
   extremely close connection with the banks and [business] syndicates . .
   . this apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed." [Op. Cit., vol.
   26, p. 105, p. 107, p. 106 and pp. 105-6] He had no real notion of
   workers' self-management of production nor of the impossibilities of
   combining the centralised state capitalist system with its big banks,
   monopolies, big business with genuine rank and file control, never mind
   self-management.

   As discussed in [100]section H.6.2, this was what the Bolsheviks did
   do, using the institutions inherited from Tsarism as framework for
   "socialism". They believed that this economic structure would be made
   to serve the many rather than the few by a change in the political
   regime for "given a really revolutionary-democratic state,
   state-monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step,
   and more than one step, towards socialism!" [Op. Cit., vol. 25, pp.
   357-8] Yet a centralised state (never mind party dictatorship!) is
   hardly "a really revolutionary-democratic" anything other than in
   Bolshevik rhetoric. Surely, then, such an centralised economic
   structure would simply become a step, and more than a step, towards
   rule by the bureaucracy? And, sadly, that was the case so confirming
   anarchist warnings that state socialism would produce a new class
   system with the bureaucracy replacing the capitalist elite.

   Yet even this is too generous, given the two obvious flaws in Lenin's
   position. First, in-so-far-as a social organisation is
   "revolutionary-democratic" then it is not a state and, as Lenin's
   regime showed, any new state will not remain so for long. Second, Lenin
   seems to have forgotten the Marxist theory of base and superstructure.
   The base is the economic forces and relations of production while the
   superstructure is the culture, institutions and state. In Marxist
   theory, while some mutual influences are sometimes admitted, the base
   determines the superstructure. Given this, surely an economic structure
   created under a class system would be far more likely to produce an
   undemocratic superstructure (state) than the opposite? Surely a
   centralised economic structure would produce concentrations of economic
   and bureaucratic power and so it would be far more consistent for a
   Marxist to suggest a centralised economic base (and "state-monopoly
   capitalism" can be nothing less) would produce an equally centralised
   political superstructure (state)? And so it came to be --
   "state-monopoly capitalism" inevitably and unavoidably implies a step,
   and more than one step, towards a new class system (state-capitalism)
   rather than a classless one (socialism). Although, to be fair to Lenin,
   Marx and Engels were equally untroubled by this danger and did not draw
   this obvious conclusion. Anarchists were not so naive. As Alexander
   Berkman correctly argued:

     "The role of industrial decentralisation in the revolution is
     unfortunately too little appreciated . . . Most people are still in
     the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that centralisation is 'more
     efficient and economical.' They close their eyes to the fact that
     the alleged 'economy' is achieved at the cost of the workers' limb
     and life, that the 'efficiency' degrades him to a mere industrial
     cog, deadens his soul, kills his body. Furthermore, in a system of
     centralisation the administration of industry becomes constantly
     merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful bureaucracy of
     industrial overlords. It would indeed be the sheerest irony if the
     revolution were to aim at such a result. It would mean the creation
     of a new master class." [What is Anarchism?, p. 229]

   The Leninist "vision" of the future socialist economy is one of a
   highly centralised organisation, modelled on capitalism, in which, at
   best, workers can supervise the decisions made by others and "control"
   those in power. It is a vision of a more democratic corporate
   structure, with the workers replacing the shareholders. In practice, it
   would be a new bureaucracy exploiting and oppressing those who do the
   actual work -- as in private capitalism -- simply because capitalist
   economic structures are designed to empower the few over the many. Like
   the capitalist state, they cannot be used by the working class to
   achieve their liberation (they are not created for the mass
   participation that real socialism requires, quite the reverse in fact).
   Sadly, Lenin failed to understand this and called the centralised,
   bureaucratic monstrosity the Bolsheviks created "socialism".

   In contrast, anarchists view the socialist economy as being based on
   workers' self-management of production and the workplace turned into an
   association of equals. Above the individual workplace, federations of
   factory committees would co-ordinate activities and ensure wide scale
   co-operation is achieved. Thus anarchists see a new form of economic
   structure developing, one based on workers' organisations created in
   the process of struggle against capitalism. Rather than embrace
   bourgeois notions of "democracy" (i.e. the election of leaders into
   positions of power) like Marxists do, anarchists dissolve hierarchical
   power by promoting workers' self-management and association. While
   Marxism ends up as state capitalism pure and simple (as can be seen by
   the experience of Russia under Lenin and then Stalin) anarchism
   destroys the fundamental social relation of capitalism -- wage labour
   -- via association and workers' self-management of production.

   So while both Leninists and anarchists claim to support factory
   committees and "workers' control" we have decidedly different notions
   of what we mean by this. The Leninists see them as a means of workers'
   to supervise (a closer translation of the Russian expression) those who
   have the real power in the economy and so perpetuate wage slavery with
   the state replacing the capitalist. Anarchists, in contrast, see them
   as a means of expressing workers self-organisation, self-management and
   self-government -- as a means of abolishing wage slavery and so
   capitalism by eliminating hierarchical authority. The difference could
   not be more striking. Indeed, it would be correct to state that the
   Leninist tradition is not, in fact, socialist as it identifies
   socialism as the natural development of capitalism and not as a new
   form of economy which will develop away from capitalism by means of
   associated labour and workers' self-management of production (see
   [101]section H.3.12).

   So anarchists and Leninism may often use similar words and expressions
   but they aim for different things. Leninists seek party power over a
   state capitalist economy and favour centralised political and economic
   structures. Sadly, they seem unaware that this will simply generate a
   new ruling class, the bureaucracy as centralised structures mean
   placing power at the top of society. The new layer of rulers this
   produces need the means to enforce their decisions and to gather and
   process the information needed to make their decisions, which is why
   bureaucracy grows. However, by the nature of bureaucracy the servants
   of the government quickly become the masters due to their control over
   information, resources and so on. This is why anarchists advocate
   federalism, to combat the obvious dangers of centralisation. The
   Bolshevik regime confirmed the wisdom of the libertarian position as
   the new state soon saw a new bureaucratic system quickly emerge around
   it. The size and power of the bureaucracy "grew by leaps and bounds.
   Control over the new bureaucracy constantly diminished, partly because
   no genuine opposition existed. The alienation between 'people' and
   'officials,' which the soviet system was supposed to remove, was back
   again. Beginning in 1918, complaints about 'bureaucratic excesses,'
   lack of contact with voters, and new proletarian bureaucrats grew
   louder and louder." [Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 242] So the rise
   of a state bureaucracy started immediately with the seizure of power by
   the Bolsheviks, particularly as the state's functions grew to include
   economic as well as political ones. Instead of the state starting to
   "wither away" it grew:

     "The old state's political apparatus was 'smashed,' but in its place
     a new bureaucratic and centralised system emerged with extraordinary
     rapidity. After the transfer of government to Moscow in March 1918
     it continued to expand . . . As the functions of the state expanded
     so did the bureaucracy, and by August 1918 nearly a third of
     Moscow's working population were employed in offices. The great
     increase in the number of employees . . . took place in early to
     mid-1918 and, thereafter, despite many campaigns to reduce their
     number, they remained a steady proportion of the falling population"
     [Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918," pp. 429-449,
     Slavic Review, vol. 46, no. 3/4, pp. 437-8]

   While Lenin started to be concerned about the growth of the bureaucracy
   after 1920 and Trotsky argued that the Stalinist regime rested on this
   caste, neither had the theoretical framework to understand exactly why
   and how the centralisation and statist structures they favoured
   produced the bureaucracy they denounced. By not understanding the need
   for federalism they ensured that the socialistic tendencies being built
   by the Russian people were crushed under the weight of the bureaucratic
   machine which centralisation needs to function. That this bureaucracy
   soon became the ruling class is as unsurprising as Trotsky's inability
   to recognise the state capitalist nature of Stalinism (nor his and
   Lenin's role in producing such a regime in the first place).

   Russia, Lenin once said, "was accustomed to being ruled by 150 000 land
   owners. Why can 240 000 Bolsheviks not take over the task?" [Op. Cit.,
   vol. 21, p. 336] The idea of socialism as working class self-management
   and self-government was lost on him -- and the possibility real
   socialism was soon lost to the Russian working class when the Tsar was
   replaced by the autocratic the rule of the Bolshevik Party. "Workers'
   power" cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party --
   as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks (and Social Democrats before
   them).

   Thus Malatesta's comments that the "important, fundamental dissension"
   between anarchists and Marxists is that the latter "are authoritarians,
   anarchists are libertarians. Marxists "want power . . . and once in
   power wish to impose their programme on the people . . . Anarchists
   instead maintain, that government cannot be other than harmful, and by
   its very nature it defends either an existing privileged class or
   creates a new one." [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 142]
   Therefore anarchists seek to influence people by the power of our ideas
   within popular organisations. We see such organisations as the means by
   which working people can take control of their own lives and start to
   create a free, libertarian socialist society -- in other words, as we
   sketch in [102]section I.2.3, the structures of a free society are
   created in the struggle against hierarchy today and, moreover, people
   become able to govern themselves by the very process of that struggle.
   A self-managed society can only be created by self-management, in
   short, and any tendencies to undermine popular self-management in
   favour of hierarchical power of a party will subvert a revolution and
   create an end drastically at odds with the ideals of those who take
   part in it.

   Similarly, anarchists reject the Leninist idea of highly centralised
   "vanguard" parties. As the anarchists of Trotwatch explain, such a
   party leaves much to be desired:

     "In reality, a Leninist Party simply reproduces and
     institutionalises existing capitalist power relations inside a
     supposedly 'revolutionary' organisation: between leaders and led;
     order givers and order takers; between specialists and the
     acquiescent and largely powerless party workers. And that elitist
     power relation is extended to include the relationship between the
     party and class." [Carry on Recruiting!, p. 41]

   As we discuss in [103]section H.5.9, such an organisation can never
   create a socialist society. In contrast, anarchists argue that
   socialist organisations should reflect as much as possible the future
   society we are aiming to create (see [104]section H.1.6. To build
   organisations which are statist/capitalistic in structure cannot do
   other than reproduce the very problems of statism/capitalism into them
   and so undermine their liberatory potential. As Murray Bookchin put it:

     "The 'glorious party,' when there is one, almost invariably lags
     behind the events . . . In the beginning . . . it tends to have an
     inhibitory function, not a 'vanguard' role. Where it exercises
     influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not
     'co-ordinate' the revolutionary forced. This is not accidental. The
     party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
     society it professes to oppose . . . Its membership is schooled in
     obedience . . . The party's leadership, in turn, is schooled in
     habits born of command, authority, manipulation . . . Its leaders .
     . . lose contact with the living situation below. The local groups,
     which know their own immediate situation better than any remote
     leaders, are obliged to subordinate their insights to directives
     from above. The leadership, lacking any direct knowledge of local
     problems, responds sluggishly and prudently . . .

     "The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of view
     the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres and
     centralisation. 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 moulding society in its own
     hierarchical imagine if the revolution is successful. It recreates
     bureaucracy, centralisation and the state. It fosters the
     bureaucracy, centralisation 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." [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp.
     123-6]

   As we argue in [105]section J.3, anarchists do not reject the need for
   political organisations (anarchist groups, federations and so on) to
   work in mass movements and in revolutionary situations. However, we do
   reject the Leninist idea of a vanguard party as being totally
   inappropriate for the needs of a social revolution -- a revolution that
   aims to create a free society.

   In short, anarchists reject both the means and the ends Leninists aim
   for and so our disagreements with that tradition is far more than
   semantics. Simply put, for anarchists Leninism is not "socialism from
   below" but rather a centralised, top-down movement aiming for a
   centralised, top-down state capitalist system.

   This does not mean that all members of Leninist parties do not support
   workers' self-management in society and production and some genuinely
   seem to favour workers' democracy and actually do believe in working
   class self-emancipation, etc. They are simply unaware that the
   tradition they have joined does not actually share those values (thanks
   to, it must be stated, works like McNally's). It could, perhaps, be
   argued that such values can be "added" to the core Leninist ideas.
   However, such a viewpoint is optimistic in the extreme. Leninist
   positions on workers' self-management, etc., do not "just happen" nor
   are they the product of ignorance. Rather they are the natural result
   of those "core" ideas. To add other values to Leninism would be like
   adding extensions to a house built on sand -- the foundations are
   unsuitable and any additions would soon fall down. This was what
   happened during the Russian Revolution -- movements from below which
   had a different vision of socialism came to grief on the rocks of
   Bolshevik power. Simply put, adding self-management to a centralised
   system and party power is impossible and if we strip Leninism of all
   its authoritarian notions then we would simply have anarchism.

   So as we discuss in [106]section H.3.1, while there appears to be some
   similarity between the aims of anarchism and Marxism (namely a free
   classless society of free and equal individuals) on closer look there
   are significant differences between the two and only anarchism truly
   represents "socialism from below" (as we will see [107]next section, we
   have been talking about "from below" since the 1840s while Marxist use
   of the terminology dates from much later). This is no coincidence..
   Moreover, as shown in [108]section H.6.2, these differences are
   important as Bolshevik ideology, once its advocates held power at the
   top of a centralises state structure and started to apply it, impacted
   negatively on the Russian revolution and ensured its failure (i.e., it
   was not creating socialism even if a self-proclaimed "communist" party
   remained in power at the end of the civil war in 1920). The issue is
   clear -- either you aim for a socialist society and use socialist
   methods to get there or you do not. Those who do seek real socialism
   (as opposed to warmed up state capitalism) would be advised to
   recognise this and study closely what Leninists actually mean by the
   slogans they use rather than taking them at face value.

14. Why is McNally's use of the term "socialism from below" dishonest?

   McNally argues that Marxism can be considered as "socialism from
   below." Indeed, that is the name of his pamphlet. However, his use of
   the term is somewhat ironic for two reasons. First, because the
   expression "from below" can be found in the writings of Bakunin and
   Proudhon, not Marx. Second, because Lenin explicitly attacked the idea
   of "from below" as an anarchist principle.

   In terms of the first point, the expression "from below" was constantly
   on the lips of Bakunin and Proudhon. Indeed, it was a defining part of
   their ideas. Thus we find Proudhon attacking the state socialism of
   Louis Blanc in 1846 because he "is never tired of appealing to
   authority, and socialism loudly declares itself anarchistic; M. Blanc
   places power above society, and socialism tends to subordinate it to
   society; M. Blanc makes social life descend from above, and socialism
   maintains that it springs up and grows from below" [Property is Theft!,
   p. 205] He re-iterated this during the 1848 revolution:

     "From above . . . signifies power; from below signifies the people.
     On the one hand we have the actions of government; on the other, the
     initiative of the masses . . . revolution from above is . . .
     inevitably revolution according to the whims of the Prince, the
     arbitrary judgement of a minister, the fumblings of an Assembly or
     the violence of a club: it is a revolution of dictatorship and
     despotism . . . Revolution on the initiative of the masses is a
     revolution by the concerted action of the citizens, by the
     experience of the workers, by the progress and diffusion of
     enlightenment, revolution by the means of liberty . . . a revolution
     from below, from true democracy . . . Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen,
     Cabet, Louis Blanc, all believers in the organisation of labour by
     the State, by Capital, by whatever authority, appealed . . . to
     revolution from above. Instead of teaching the people how to
     organise themselves, by calling on their experience and their
     reasoning, they demanded Power . . .

     "The conclusion is that government can never be revolutionary quite
     simply because it is government. Society alone, the masses armed
     with their intelligence, can create revolution; society alone is
     able to deploy all its spontaneity, to analyse and explain the
     mystery of its destiny and its origin, to change its faith and its
     philosophy, because it alone is capable of fighting against its
     originator and bearing its fruit. Governments are Gods scourge,
     established to discipline the world: do you really expect them to
     destroy themselves, to create freedom, to make revolution?

     "They cannot act otherwise. All revolutions . . . were achieved by
     the spontaneity of the people: governments have always hindered,
     always suppressed, always beaten back; they have never created
     revolution. Their role is not to create change but to control it."
     [Op. Cit., pp. 398-9]

   Thus "experience testifies and philosophy demonstrates . . . that any
   revolution, to be effective, must be spontaneous and emanate, not from
   the heads of the authorities but from the bowels of the people: that
   government is reactionary rather than revolutionary: that it could not
   have any expertise in revolutions, given that society, to which that
   secret is alone revealed, does not show itself through legislative
   decree but rather through the spontaneity of its manifestations: that,
   ultimately, the only connection between government and labour is that
   labour, in organising itself, has the abrogation of government as its
   mission". [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1., p. 52] "The Revolution from
   above," Proudhon stressed, "is the intervention of power in everything;
   it is the absolutist initiative of the State, the pure governmentalism
   of . . . [state-socialist] Louis Blanc. The Revolution from above is
   the negation of collective activity, of popular spontaneity . . . What
   serious and lasting Revolution was not made from below, by the people?
   How did the Revolution of 1789 come about? How was that of February
   made? The Revolution from above has never been other than the
   oppression of the wills of those below." [quoted by George Woodcock,
   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, p. 143]

   Proudhon, then, placed his hopes for introducing socialism in
   alternative institutions created by working class people themselves and
   "insisted that the revolution could only come from below, through the
   action of the workers themselves." [K. Steven Vincent, Pierre-Joseph
   Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 157] Bakunin
   did likewise, seeing the labour movement as the means of ensuring that
   an anarchist revolution would come "from below." As he put it, "liberty
   can be created only by liberty, by an insurrection of all the people
   and the voluntary organisation of the workers from below upward."
   [Statism and Anarchy, p. 179] Elsewhere he wrote that "future social
   organisation must be made solely from the bottom upwards, by the free
   association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in
   the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation,
   international and universal." [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, p.
   206] As he wrote in 1868:

     "I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because
     for me humanity is unthinkable without liberty. I am not a
     Communist, because Communism concentrates and swallows up in itself
     for the benefit of the State all the forces of society, because it
     inevitably leads to the concentration of property in the hands of
     the State . . . I want to see society and collective or social
     property organised from below upwards, by way of free associations,
     not from above downwards, by means of any kind of authority
     whatsoever . . . That is the sense in which I am a Collectivist and
     not a Communist." [quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl
     Marx, pp. 67-8]

   Anarchists, argued Bakunin, opposed the state because "all State rule,
   all governments being by their very nature placed outside the people,
   must necessarily seek to subject it to customs and purposes entirely
   foreign to it. We therefore declare ourselves to be foes . . . of all
   State organisations as such, and believe that the people can be happy
   and free, when, organised from below upwards by means of its own
   autonomous and completely free associations, without the supervision of
   any guardians, it will create its own life." [Marxism, Freedom and the
   State, p. 63] This applied to the so-called "workers' state" because
   "every state, even the pseudo-People's State concocted by Mr. Marx, is
   in essence only a machine ruling the masses from above, through a
   privileged minority of conceited intellectuals who imagine that they
   know what the people need and want better than do the people
   themselves." [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 338] The revolution would see
   "an end to all masters and to domination of every kind, and the free
   construction of popular life in accordance with popular needs, not from
   above downward, as in the state, but from below upward, by the people
   themselves, dispensing with all governments and parliaments -- a
   voluntary alliance of agricultural and factory worker associations,
   communes, provinces, and nations; and, finally, . . . universal human
   brotherhood triumphing on the ruins of all the states." [Statism and
   Anarchy, p. 33]

   No such idea is present in Marx. Rather, he saw a revolution as
   consisting of the election of a socialist party into government. At its
   best, for example when he was reporting on the Paris Commune, this
   vision had libertarian ("from below") aspects -- perhaps
   unsurprisingly, given its obviously Proudhon-inspired federalism (which
   Marx could not bring himself to mention). However, at its worse this
   was not only reformist in the sense of utilising bourgeois elections
   (see [109]section H.3.10) but also "from above" in nature. In 1850, for
   example, he argued that the workers must "not only strive for a single
   and indivisible German republic, but also within this republic for the
   most determined centralisation of power in the hands of the state
   authority." This was because "the path of revolutionary activity" can
   "proceed only from the centre." This meant that the workers must be
   opposed to a "federative republic" and "must not allow themselves to be
   misguided by the democratic talk of freedom for the communities, of
   self-government, etc." This centralisation of power was essential to
   overcome local autonomy, which would allow "every village, every town
   and every province" to put "a new obstacle in the path" of the
   revolution due to "local and provincial obstinacy." Decades later, Marx
   dismissed Bakunin's vision of "the free organisation of the worker
   masses from bottom to top" as "nonsense." [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 509
   and p. 547]

   As we discuss in [110]section H.3.2, the idea of "socialism from below"
   is a distinctly anarchist notion, one found in the works of Proudhon
   and Bakunin, not Marx. It is ironic, given his distorted account of
   Proudhon and Bakunin, that McNally uses their words to describe
   Marxism!

   Secondly, and far more seriously for McNally, Lenin repeatedly
   dismissed the idea of "from below" as not Marxist. In 1904, during the
   debate over the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin
   stated that the argument "[b]ureaucracy versus democracy is in fact
   centralism versus autonomism; it is the organisational principle of
   revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the organisational
   principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The latter strives to
   proceed from the bottom upward, and, therefore, wherever possible . . .
   upholds autonomism and 'democracy,' carried (by the overzealous) to the
   point of anarchism. The former strives to proceed from the top
   downward." [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Lenin repeated this
   argument during the near revolution of 1905, mocking the Mensheviks for
   only wanting "pressure from below" which was "pressure by the citizens
   on the revolutionary government." Instead, he argued for "pressure . .
   . from above as well as from below," where "pressure from above" was
   "pressure by the revolutionary government on the citizens." He notes
   that Engels "appreciated the importance of action from above" and that
   he saw the need for "the utilisation of the revolutionary governmental
   power." Lenin summarised his position (which he considered as being in
   line with that of orthodox Marxism) by stating: "Limitation, in
   principle, of revolutionary action to pressure from below and
   renunciation of pressure also from above is anarchism." [Op. Cit., vol.
   8, p. 474, p. 478, p. 480 and p. 481] He returned to this theme,
   explicitly stating that it was an "anarchist stand" to be for "'action
   only from below', not 'from below and from above'". [Op. Cit., vol. 9,
   p. 77]

   How you can have "socialism from below" when your "organisational
   principle" is "from the top downward" and "renunciation of pressure
   also from above is anarchism" is not explained by McNally. Moreover,
   given that McNally states repeatedly the evils of "from above" in his
   pamphlet he gives his account of Marxism a distinctly anarchist feel
   (while denouncing it in a most deceitful way). Why is this? Perhaps
   because his readers would recognise that in a conflict between
   "pressure from above" (the armed might of the state) and "pressure from
   below" (the people) it would be the former which would tend to win? And
   that this was the case in the Russian Revolution, with the Bolshevik
   state crushing all forms of working class protest? As we discuss in
   [111]section H.6, the "the utilisation of the revolutionary
   governmental power" simply produced a "dictatorship over the
   proletariat" as Bakunin (see [112]section H.1.1). and other anarchists
   had long predicted.

   In other words, Marxism is based on idea that the government pressuring
   the citizens is acceptable. As we discuss in the [113]next section,
   Trotsky recognised this and openly proclaimed the need for party
   dictatorship to resist the pressures from below (dismissed as
   "wavering" and "vacillation" by the backward masses). As we discuss in
   [114]section H.5, the vanguardism of Leninism privileges the party and
   its leadership and lays the foundation for "socialism from below." A
   given ideological premise will led to certain conclusions in practice
   -- conclusions Lenin and Trotsky were not shy in explicitly stating.

   Little wonder McNally fails to mention Lenin's support for
   revolutionary action "from above" for in practice Leninism substituted
   the rule (and then dictatorship) of the party for that of the working
   class as a whole. Lenin always stressed that the "Bolsheviks must
   assume power" and they "can and must take state power into their own
   hands." He raised the question of "will the Bolsheviks dare take over
   full state power alone?" and answered it: "I have already had occasion
   . . . to answer this question in the affirmative." Moreover, "a
   political party . . . would have no right to exist, would be unworthy
   of the name of party . . . if it refused to take power when opportunity
   offers." He equated rule by the party with rule by the class, noting
   that "proletarian revolutionary power" and "Bolshevik power" are "now
   one the same thing" and indicated that once in power the Bolsheviks
   "shall be fully and unreservedly in favour of a strong state power and
   of centralism." [Op. Cit., vol. 26, p. 19, p. 90, p. 179 and p. 116] In
   this confusion, we must note, Lenin followed Engels who argued that
   "each political party sets out to establish its rule in the state, so
   the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party is striving to establish
   its rule, the rule of the working class." [Collected Works, vol. 23, p.
   372] Such confusion is deadly to a true "revolution from below" and
   justifies the use of repression against the working class based on the
   advanced ideas of the vanguard party.

   McNally, of course, stresses the impact of the civil war on the
   degeneration of Bolshevism but comments like these were not caused by
   circumstantial factors as can be seen from Lenin's work Left-Wing
   Communism. In this 1920 tract, written for the Second Congress of the
   Communist International, Lenin lambasted those Marxists who argued for
   direct working class power against the idea of party rule (i.e. the
   various council communists around Europe) and argued that "the
   Communists' correct understanding of his tasks" lies in "correctly
   gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the
   proletariat can successfully assume power, when it will be able --
   during and after the seizure of power -- to win adequate support from
   sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the
   non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to
   maintain, consolidate, and extend its rule by educating, training and
   attracting ever broader masses of the working people." Note, the
   vanguard (the party) seizes power, not the masses and he stressed that
   the "mere presentation of the question -- 'dictatorship of the party or
   dictatorship of the class: dictatorship (party) of the leaders or
   dictatorship (party) of the masses?' -- testifies to most incredible
   and hopelessly muddled thinking" and "[t]o go so far . . . as to
   contrast, in general, the dictatorship of the masses with a
   dictatorship of the leaders is ridiculously absurd, and stupid." [The
   Lenin Anthology, p. 575, p. 567 and p. 568] He then explained the
   nature of Bolshevik rule:

     "In Russia today, the connection between leaders, party, class and
     masses . . . are concretely as follows: the dictatorship is
     exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets and is guided
     by the Communist Party . . . The Party, which holds annual
     congresses . . ., is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen
     elected at the congress, while the current work in Moscow has to be
     carried on by [two] still smaller bodies . . . which are elected at
     the plenary sessions of the Central Committee, five members of the
     Central Committee to each bureau. This, it would appear, is a
     full-fledged 'oligarchy.' No important political or organisational
     question is decided by any state institution in our republic [sic!]
     without the guidance of the Party's Central Committee.

     "In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions, which .
     . . have a membership of over four million and are formally
     non-Party. Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority
     of the unions . . . are made up of Communists, and carry out of all
     the directives of the Party. Thus . . . we have a formally
     non-communist . . . very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of
     which the Party is closely linked up with the class and the masses,
     and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class
     dictatorship of the class is exercised." [Op. Cit., pp. 571-2]

   This was "the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed
   'from above,' from the standpoint of the practical realisation of the
   dictatorship" and so "all this talk about 'from above' or 'from below,'
   about 'the dictatorship of leaders' or 'the dictatorship of the
   masses,'" is "ridiculous and childish nonsense." [Op. Cit., p. 573] The
   links with his comments from 1904 and 1905 are clear, as clear as his
   explanation of the lessons he thought that the world communist movement
   had to learn from the Bolshevik revolution. The notion that Leninism
   stands for "socialism from below" in untenable.

   Lenin, of course, did not bother to view "proletarian" state power
   "from below," from the viewpoint of the proletariat. If he had, perhaps
   he would have recounted the numerous strikes and protests broken by the
   Cheka under martial law, the gerrymandering and disbanding of soviets,
   the imposition of "one-man management" onto the workers in production,
   the turning of the unions into agents of the state/party and the
   elimination of working class freedom by party power (see [115]section
   8). All of which suggests that there are fundamental differences, at
   least for the masses, between "from above" and "from below."

   Anarchists, in contrast, recognise that parties and classes are
   different and only self-management in popular organisations from below
   upwards can ensure that a social revolution remains in the hands of all
   and not a source of power for the few. Thus "All Power to the Soviets,"
   for anarchists, means exactly that -- not a euphemism for "All Power to
   the Party." As Russian anarchist Voline argued, "for, the anarchists
   [in 1917] declared, if 'power' really should belong to the soviets, it
   could not belong to the Bolshevik Party, and if it should belong to
   that Party, as the Bolsheviks envisaged, it could not belong to the
   soviets." Marxist confusion of the difference between working class
   power and party power, combined with the nature of centralised power
   and an ideology which privileges the party over the working class (see
   [116]section 11) cannot help but lead to the rise of a ruling
   bureaucracy, pursuing "from above" their own power and privileges. "All
   political power inevitably creates a privileged situation for the men
   who exercise it," argued Voline. "Thus is violates, from the beginning,
   the equalitarian principle and strikes at the heart of the Social
   Revolution" and "becomes the source of other privileges . . . power is
   compelled to create a bureaucratic and coercive apparatus indispensable
   to all authority . . . Thus it forms a new privileged caste, at first
   politically and later economically." [The Unknown Revolution, p. 213
   and p. 249]

   The concept of revolution "from above" is one that inevitably leads to
   a new form of class rule -- rule by bureaucracy. This is not because
   the Bolsheviks were "bad people" -- rather it is to do with the nature
   of centralised power (which by its very nature can only be exercised by
   the few) combined with bad politics (the confusion of party power with
   people power, unthinking prejudices in favour of centralism, ignoring
   the need for only "from below", etc.). As the Russian anarchist Sergven
   argued in 1918 while the Bolshevik regime was building state
   capitalism:

     "The proletariat is being gradually enserfed by the state. The
     people are being transformed into servants over whom there has
     arisen a new class of administrators -- a new class born mainly form
     the womb of the so-called intelligentsia . . . We do not mean to say
     . . . that the Bolshevik party set out to create a new class system.
     But we do say that even the best intentions and aspirations must
     inevitably be smashed against the evils inherent in any system of
     centralised power. The separation of management from labour, the
     division between administrators and workers flows logically from
     centralisation. It cannot be otherwise." [The Anarchists in the
     Russian Revolution, pp. 123-4]

   Thus McNally's use of the term "from below" is dishonest on two levels.
   Firstly, it is of anarchist origin and, secondly, it was repudiated by
   Lenin himself (who urged revolution "from below" and "from above", thus
   laying the groundwork for a new class system based around the Party).
   It goes without saying that either McNally is ignorant of his subject
   (and if so, why write a pamphlet on it?) or he knew these facts and
   decided to suppress them. Either way it shows the bankruptcy of Marxism
   -- it uses libertarian rhetoric for non-libertarian ends while
   distorting the real source of those ideas. That Lenin dismissed this
   rhetoric and the ideas behind them as "anarchist" says it all.
   McNally's (and the SWP/ISO's) use of this rhetoric and imagery is
   therefore deeply dishonest.

15. Did Trotsky keep alive Leninism's "democratic essence"?

   McNally argues that "[d]uring the terrible decades of the 1920s and
   1940s . . . the lone voice of Leon Trotsky kept alive some of the basic
   elements of socialism from below" and suggests it "was Trotsky's great
   virtue to insist against all odds that socialism was rooted in the
   struggle for human freedom." By the mid-1920s "the programme of the
   Left Opposition" which Trotsky lead had as one of its "two central
   planks" that "democracy had to be re-established in the Bolshevik party
   and in the mass organisations such as the trade unions and the
   soviets." In short:

     ""Throughout the 1920s and until his death at the hands of Stalinist
     agent in 1940, Trotsky fought desperately to build a revolutionary
     socialist movement based on the principles of Marx and Lenin.""

   There is one slight flaw with this argument, namely that it is not
   actually true. All through the 1920s and 1930s Trotsky, rather than
   argue for "socialism's democratic essence", continually argued for
   party dictatorship. That McNally asserts the exact opposite suggests
   that the ideas of anarchism are not the only ones he is ignorant of. To
   prove our case, we simply need to provide a chronological account of
   Trotsky's actual ideas.

   We shall begin in early 1920 when he argued that the "working class
   cannot be left wandering round all over Russia. They must be thrown
   here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers" and that
   "[d]eserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or
   put into concentration camps". [quoted by Maurice Brinton, "The
   Bolsheviks and Workers' Control", For Workers' Power, p. 61] Is "human
   freedom" (to use McNally's words) compatible with Trotsky's
   suggestions? This was no isolated comment and in July of that year we
   discover him arguing that:

     "In the hands of the party is concentrated the general control . . .
     it has the final word in all fundamental questions . . . the last
     word belongs to the Central Committee of the party . . . Such a
     regime is possible only in the presence of the unquestioned
     authority of the party, and the faultlessness of its discipline . .
     .

     "The exclusive role of the Communist Party under the conditions of a
     victorious proletarian revolution is quite comprehensible. The
     question is of the dictatorship of a class. In the composition of
     that class there enter various elements, heterogeneous moods,
     different levels of development. Yet the dictatorship pre-supposes
     unity of will, unity of direction, unity of action. By what other
     path then can it be attained? The revolutionary supremacy of the
     proletariat pre-supposes within the proletariat itself the political
     supremacy of a party, with a clear programme of action and a
     faultless internal discipline.

     "The policy of coalitions contradicts internally the regime of the
     revolutionary dictatorship. We have in view . . . a coalition of
     Communists with other 'Socialist' organisations, representing
     different stages of backwardness and prejudice-of the labouring
     masses.

     "[ . . .]

     "We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the
     dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it
     can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the
     Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the
     party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its
     strong revolutionary organisation that the party has afforded to the
     Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless
     parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour.
     In this 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of
     the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there
     is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental
     interests of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the
     period in which history brings up those interests . . . the
     Communists have become the recognised representatives of the working
     class as a whole." [Terrorism and Communism, pp. 107-9]

   He argued against those who suggested that the dictatorship should be
   carried out by the whole class: "It is not easy to understand what
   actually they imagine when they say this. The dictatorship of the
   proletariat, in its very essence, signifies the immediate supremacy of
   the revolutionary vanguard, which relies upon the heavy masses, and,
   where necessary, obliges the backward tail to dress by the head." [Op.
   Cit., p. 110] This rejection of democracy also applied to workplace
   democracy:

     "our Party Congress . . . expressed itself in favour of the
     principle of one-man management in the administration of industry .
     . . It would be the greatest possible mistake . . . to consider this
     decision as a blow to the independence of the working class . . . It
     would consequently be a most crying error to confuse the question as
     to the supremacy of the proletariat with the question of boards of
     workers at the head of factories. The dictatorship of the
     proletariat is expressed in the abolition of private property in the
     means of production, in the supremacy over the whole Soviet
     mechanism of the collective will of the workers, and not at all in
     the form in which individual economic enterprises are administered .
     . . we took our stand, and continue to do so on purely Marxist views
     of the revolutionary problems and creative duties of the proletariat
     when it has taken power into its own hands . . . I consider if the
     civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was
     strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should
     undoubtedly have entered the path of one-man management in the
     sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less
     painfully." [Op. Cit., pp. 161-3]

   In this, as with party dictatorship, he was simply repeating Bolshevik
   orthodoxy -- Lenin had been arguing for state-appointed one-man
   management (armed with "dictatorial" authority) since the spring of
   1918. Ignoring all the euphemisms for party dictatorship ("the
   collective will of the workers") and obvious questions (like, if this
   were the case, how Trotsky could argue that it was the proletariat
   which had "taken power into its own hands"?), the fact is that he was
   simply wrong. It does matter if workplaces are run by their workers or
   not for if they do not then someone else does. Replacing capitalists
   with state bureaucrats just changes the face of the boss -- as
   anarchists have been arguing since Proudhon. Trotsky did not deny how
   authoritarian this regime was:

     "Both economic and political compulsion are only forms of the
     expression of the dictatorship of the working class in two closely
     connected regions . . . the road to Socialism lies through a period
     of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the
     State . . . Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a
     brilliant flame, so the State, before disappearing, assumes the form
     of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form
     of State, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in
     every direction . . . No organisation except the army has ever
     controlled man with such severe compulsion as does the State
     organisation of the working class in the most difficult period of
     transition. It is just for this reason that we speak of the
     militarisation of labour." [Op. Cit., pp. 169-170]

   Against those who argued that by "[d]estroying or driving underground
   the other parties, you have thereby prevented their political
   competition with you, and consequently you have deprived yourselves of
   the possibility of testing your line of action" Trotsky replied by
   pointing to the efficiency of Bolshevik repression: "In a period in
   which . . . the political struggle swiftly passes into a civil war, the
   ruling party has sufficient material standard by which to test its line
   of action, without the possible circulation of Menshevik papers. Noske
   crushes the Communists, but they grow. We have suppressed the
   Mensheviks and the SRs -- and they have disappeared. This criterion is
   sufficient for us." From this he concluded that Bolshevism "expresses
   the interests of historical development." [Op. Cit., pp. 109-110]
   Needless to say, he did not repeat this "might-makes-right" criteria
   when the Stalinists made the Trotskyists disappear in the late 1920s
   and 1930s.

   Of course, this was written during the Civil War and may be excused in
   terms of the circumstances in which it was written. However, this
   ignores the awkward fact that Trotsky's arguments reflected the
   theoretical conclusions required to produce what he considered as a
   successful revolution and, as noted in [117]section 8, other leading
   Bolsheviks had proclaimed to the world this necessity of party
   dictatorship. Trotsky did not object and universalised the argument
   when he pondered the important decisions of the revolution and who
   would make them in his reply to the delegate from the Spanish
   anarcho-syndicalist union the CNT:

     "Who decides this question [and others like it]? We have the Council
     of People's Commissars but it has to be subject to some supervision.
     Whose supervision? That of the working class as an amorphous,
     chaotic mass? No. The Central Committee of the party is convened to
     discuss . . . and to decide . . . Who will solve these questions in
     Spain? The Communist Party of Spain." [Proceedings and Documents of
     the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 174]

   

   This dismissal of working-class democracy was party orthodoxy, as can
   be seen from the awkward fact that Trotsky continued to argue for party
   dictatorship after the end of the civil war in November 1920. Thus we
   discover him in early in 1921 arguing again for Party dictatorship at
   the Communist Party's Tenth Party Congress. His comments made there
   against the Workers' Opposition within the Communist Party make his
   position clear:

     "The Workers' Opposition has come out with dangerous slogans, making
     a fetish of democratic principles! They place the workers' right to
     elect representatives above the Party, as if the party were not
     entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship
     temporarily clashed with the passing moods of the workers'
     democracy. It is necessary to create amongst us the awareness of the
     revolutionary birthright of the party, which is obliged to maintain
     its dictatorship, regardless of temporary wavering even in the
     working classes. This awareness is for us the indispensable element.
     The dictatorship does not base itself at every given moment on the
     formal principle of a workers' democracy." [quoted by Samuel Farber,
     Before Stalinism, p. 209]

   It should be noted that Trotsky was being too generous to the Workers'
   Opposition, for "while demanding more freedom of initiative for the
   workers" in economic matters, "it was quite content to leave untouched
   the state of affairs in which a few hundred thousand imposed their will
   on many millions" and it "had no wish to disturb the communist party's
   monopoly of political power." [Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the
   Communist Autocracy, p. 294] So even limited industrial democracy was
   considered too much by Trotsky in 1921. In late March 1921, he
   re-iterated this position in relation to the crushing of the Kronstadt
   revolt for soviet democracy by asserting that the "economic, political,
   and national independence of Russia is possible only under the
   dictatorship of the soviets. The backbone of this dictatorship is the
   Communist Party. There is no other party that can play this part, nor
   can there be." [Lenin and Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 73]

   Trotsky repeated this call again in 1922 when he stated plainly that
   "we maintain the dictatorship of our party!" [The First Five Years of
   the Communist International, vol. 2, p. 255] Writing in the following
   year, he argued that "[i]f there is one question which basically not
   only does not require revision but does not so much as admit the
   thought of revision, it is the question of the dictatorship of the
   Party, and its leadership in all spheres of our work." He stressed that
   "[o]ur party is the ruling party . . . To allow any changes whatever in
   this field, to allow the idea of a partial . . . curtailment of the
   leading role of our party would mean to bring into question all the
   achievements of the revolution and its future." He indicated the fate
   of those who did question this: "Whoever makes an attempt on the
   party's leading role will, I hope, be unanimously dumped by all of us
   on the other side of the barricade." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158 and
   p. 160] Which, of course, was exactly what the Bolsheviks had done to
   other socialists (anarchists and others) and working class militants
   and strikers after they had taken power (see [118]section H.6 for
   details).

   At this point, it will be argued that this was before the rise of
   Stalinism and his activities in the Left Opposition. As McNally
   suggests, many argue that these developments saw Trotsky finally
   rejecting the idea of party dictatorship and re-embracing what McNally
   terms the "democratic essence" of Leninism. Unfortunately, yet again,
   this argument suffers from the flaw that it is false.

   Let us start with the so-called "New Course" of December 1923, in which
   Trotsky stated that "[w]e are the only party in the country and, in the
   period of the dictatorship, it could not be otherwise", the Party was
   "obliged to monopolise the direction of political life" and it was
   "incontestable that fractions [within the Party] are a scourge in the
   present situation". Of course, there was talk of "workers' democracy"
   but the "New Course Resolution" was clear that that term in fact meant
   only internal party democracy: "Workers' democracy means the liberty of
   frank discussion of the most important questions of party life by all
   members, and the election of all leading party functionaries and
   commissions". [The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25), p. 87,
   p. 89 and p. 460]

   This applied to the banning of factions within the Communist party,
   with Trotsky keen to stress at the 13th Party Congress in 1924 that
   "party democracy in no way implies freedom for factional groupings
   which are extremely dangerous for the ruling party, since they threaten
   to split or divide the government and the state apparatus as a whole. I
   believe this is undisputed and indisputable". He linked his position to
   the 10th Party Congress "where Valdimir Ilyich [Lenin] personally" made
   the same points and re-iterated his position: "I have never recognised
   freedom for groupings inside the party, nor do I now recognise it".
   [Op. Cit., p. 170 and p. 171] He declared his faith in the Party:

     "Comrades, none of us wants to be or can be right against the party.
     In the last analysis the party is always right, because the party is
     the only historical instrument that the working class possesses for
     the solution of its fundamental tasks . . . I know that no one can
     be right against the party. It is only possible to be right only
     with the party and through it because history has not created any
     other way to determine the correct position . . . the party, in the
     last analysis, is always right". [Op. Cit., p. 179]

   He did acknowledge that "even the party itself can make occasional
   mistakes" but argued that the duty of a party member was to follow its
   decisions if they could not convince the party that it had made one of
   these. The links to his arguments from 1920 and 1921 are clear enough,
   alongside the privileged position this places the party in terms of its
   right to ignore any democratic decisions of the masses it claimed to be
   ruling on behalf of. Needless to say, the "New Course Resolution"
   likewise stated party democracy "does not . . . imply the freedom to
   form factional groupings". [Op. Cit., p. 180 and p. 460]

   Moving on to Left Opposition proper, we see Trotsky opining in 1926
   that the "dictatorship of the party does not contradict the
   dictatorship of the class either theoretically or practically; but is
   the expression of it, if the regime of workers' democracy is constantly
   developed more and more." [The Challenge of the Left Opposition
   (1926-27), p. 76] The obvious contradictions and absurdities of this
   assertion are all too plain. Needless to say, when defending the
   concept of "the dictatorship of the party" he linked it to Lenin (and
   so to Leninist orthodoxy):

     "Of course, the foundation of our regime is the dictatorship of a
     class. But this in turn assumes . . . it is class that has come to
     self-consciousness through its vanguard, which is to say, through
     the party. Without this, the dictatorship could not exist . . .
     Dictatorship is the most highly concentrated function of function of
     a class, and therefore the basic instrument of a dictatorship is a
     party. In the most fundamental aspects a class realises its
     dictatorship through a party. That is why Lenin spoke not only of
     the dictatorship of the class but also the dictatorship of the party
     and, in a certain sense, made them identical." [Op. Cit., pp. 75-6]

   The following year saw Trotsky state that "[w]ith us the dictatorship
   of the party (quite falsely disputed theoretically by Stalin) is the
   expression of the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat . . . The
   dictatorship of a party is a part of the socialist revolution". [Leon
   Trotsky on China, p. 251] 1927 also saw the publication of the Platform
   of the Opposition, in which Trotsky still did not question the issue of
   Party dictatorship. Indeed, it was actually stressed in that document
   and so while it urged a "consistent development of a workers' democracy
   in the party, the trade unions, and the soviets" and to "convert the
   urban soviets into real institutions of proletarian power" it
   contradicted itself by, ironically, attacking Stalin for weakening the
   party's dictatorship. In its words, the "growing replacement of the
   party by its own apparatus is promoted by a 'theory' of Stalin's which
   denies the Leninist principle, inviolable for every Bolshevik, that the
   dictatorship of the proletariat is and can be realised only through the
   dictatorship of the party." It stressed that "the dictatorship of the
   proletariat demands a single and united proletarian party as the leader
   of the working masses and the poor peasantry" and "[n]obody who
   sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the idea of 'two
   parties' or play with the suggestion of a split. Only those who desire
   to replace Lenin's course with some other can advocate a split or a
   movement along the two-party road". Given this: "We will fight with all
   our power against the idea of two parties, because the dictatorship of
   the proletariat demands as its very core a single proletarian party. It
   demands a single party." [The Challenge of the Left Opposition
   (1926-7), p. 384, p. 395, p. 439 and p. 441]

   The Platform was as anti-democratic economically as it was politically,
   asserting that "nationalisation of the means of production was a
   decisive step toward the socialist reconstruction of that whole social
   system which is founded upon the exploitation of man by man" and that
   the "appropriation of surplus value by a workers' state is not, of
   course, exploitation" yet makes no call for workers' management of
   production (unsurprisingly as one-man management had been raised by
   Lenin in early 1918 and became Bolshevik orthodoxy as Trotsky had
   explained in 1920). The Platform does acknowledge that "we have a
   workers' state with bureaucratic distortions" and so its "swollen and
   privileged administrative apparatus devours a very considerable part of
   our surplus value" and "the growing bourgeoisie, by means of trade and
   gambling on the abnormal disparity of prices, [also] appropriates a
   part of the surplus value created by our state industry". Thus "all the
   data testify that the growth of wages is lagging behind the growth of
   the productivity of labour." [Op. Cit., p. 347, p. 348 and p. 350]
   Trotsky appeared to believe that an economic regime marked by one-man
   management by state-appointed bosses under a party dictatorship would
   somehow be without exploitation even though someone other than the
   workers controlled both their labour and how its product (and any
   surplus) was used -- just as in a capitalist workplace. He failed to
   understand that this exploitation was the inevitable result of the
   economic regime he considered as "socialist" -- namely "nationalisation
   of the means of production" which simply handed the economy to the
   bureaucracy and created state capitalism (see [119]section H.3.13).
   This did not abolish "the exploitation of man by man" but rather
   changed the social class which exploited the working class from private
   capitalists to state bureaucrats -- as anarchists had predicted from
   Proudhon onwards.

   

   Of course The Platform did not bother to explain how workers' democracy
   could develop within a party dictatorship nor how soviets could become
   institutions of power when real power would, obviously, lie with the
   party. But, then, it did not have to as by "workers' democracy" the
   Platform meant inter-party democracy, as can be seen when it
   "affirm[s]" the "New Course Resolution" definition quoted above. [Op.
   Cit., p. 402]

   

   As is well know, the Opposition was crushed and Trotsky forced into
   exile. This did not lead to a fundamental re-evaluation of the
   degeneration of the revolution and the need for genuine soviet
   democracy. A key task was "[t]o stop the dissolution of the party into
   the class in the USSR" and so, perhaps unsurprisingly, Soviet democracy
   went unmentioned. [Writings 1930, p. 148] Repeating previous arguments,
   Trotsky was fundamentally concerned about the dangers "if the vanguard
   is dissolved into the amorphous mass" for "the party is not the class,
   but its vanguard; it cannot pay for its numerical growth by the
   lowering of its political level". There was "the demand of party
   democracy" for the dictatorship of the proletariat "is inconceivable
   without a ruling proletarian party" but nothing on working class
   freedom or democracy. Perhaps this is unsurprising: "What we mean by
   the restoration of party democracy is that the real revolutionary,
   proletarian core of the party win the right to curb the bureaucracy and
   to really purge the party". In other words, the first act of the
   successful Opposition would have been the reduction in numbers of those
   who had some kind of meaningful vote. Rest assured, though, because the
   new party regime "means that the party directs the proletarian
   dictatorship but does not strangle the mass organisations of the
   toilers" and the secret ballot is "one of the most important means to
   discipline the entire apparatus and subordinate it to the party".
   [Writings 1930-31, p. 241, p. 244, p. 247, pp. 255-6, p. 70 and p. 130]
   Clearly "socialism's democratic essence" was, at best, applicable to
   within the ruling party -- or at least what remained of it after the
   purges.

   In 1932, he was arguing that the "same class can rule with the help of
   different political systems and methods according to circumstances. So
   the bourgeoisie on its historical road carried through its rule under
   absolute monarchy, bonapartism, parliamentary republic and fascist
   dictatorship . . . the Soviet regime means the rule of the proletariat,
   irrespective of how broad the stratum on whose hands the power is
   immediately concentrated." This was justification for his denial that
   there was "a small group in the Kremlin who exercise oligarchical
   powers" ("No, that is not so"). [Writings 1932, p. 217] Trotsky seemed
   to have forgotten that the bourgeoisie was a minority class which
   controlled the economic life of a country. Given this, it is not
   surprising that it could still rule under dictatorships. The same
   cannot be said of the working class -- particularly if, as under Lenin
   and Trotsky, its democratic control of work and so the economy was
   replaced by one-man management. Yet Trotsky had no alternative to make
   such an obviously wrong assertion -- to acknowledge the truth, that
   socialism needs meaningful workers' social and economic democracy to
   qualify as genuinely socialist -- would have meant raising questions
   over the nature of the Bolshevik regime between 1918 and 1923 when he
   was at its commanding heights. Hence clearly incorrect assertions like:
   "The dictatorship of a class does not mean by a long shot that its
   entire mass always participates in the management of the state"
   [Writings 1933-34, p. 124]

   In 1936 Trotsky finally appeared to revise his ideas in The Revolution
   Betrayed, although his revisionism in terms of democracy was combined
   with revisionism in the events of the Russian Revolution. It would be
   fair to suggest that McNally's account of Trotsky's ideas may be based
   on this work for in stark contrast to his early arguments he now stated
   that "[b]ureaucratic autocracy must give place to Soviet democracy. A
   restoration of the right of criticism, and a genuine freedom of
   elections, are necessary conditions for the further development of the
   country. This assumes a revival of freedom of Soviet parties, beginning
   with the party of Bolsheviks". [The Revolution Betrayed, p. 273] Given
   his previous comments on the matter, the reader would be justified in
   wondering whether, rather than a sincere change of heart, Trotsky's
   position was a limited and temporary aberration
   (Anarchist-turned-Bolshevik Victor Serge, who later broke with Trotsky
   over this issue, stated that he "had prevailed on him to include in"
   this book "a declaration of freedom for all parties accepting the
   Soviet system." [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 348]).

   The evidence suggests the latter, that it was a temporary aberration --
   particularly given the misleading account of the rise of the Bolshevik
   dictatorship. Thus we find Trotsky suggesting that it was 1924-26 that
   saw "the complete suppression of party and Soviet democracy" when, as
   noted above, he was publicly acknowledging the reality of party
   dictatorship in 1920. He also forgot the ideas of his own Opposition
   from 1927 and in 1936 it was no longer was it a case of the necessity
   of a single party as "a class has many 'parts' - some look forward and
   some back - [and so] one and the same class may create several parties
   . . . An example of only one party corresponding to one class is not to
   be found in the whole course of political history - provided, of
   course, you do not take the police appearance for the reality." That
   the need for the dictatorship of the vanguard was justified precisely
   in terms of the backwardness of the class and other parties was
   forgotten. Likewise, the acknowledgement of party dictatorship as a
   principle of Leninism was overlooked in favour of the suggestion that
   the civil war resulted in the opposition parties being "forbidden one
   after the other" and while this was "obviously in conflict with the
   spirit of Soviet democracy, the leaders of Bolshevism regarded [it] not
   as a principle, but as an episodic act of self-defence." [Op. Cit., p.
   34, p. 252 and p. 96] It would be churlish to note that the final
   abolition of opposition parties -- like factions within the ruling
   party -- occurred after the end of the civil war.

   These awkward facts did not stop Trotsky from suggesting a fundamental
   difference between the Leninist and Stalinist dictatorships:

     "To be sure, during the first period of the Soviet era the Bolshevik
     party also exercised a monopoly. But to identify these two phenomena
     would be to take appearance for reality. The prohibition of
     opposition parties was a temporary measure dictated by conditions of
     civil war, blockade, intervention and famine. The ruling party,
     representing in that period a genuine organisation of the
     proletarian vanguard, was living a full-blooded inner life. A
     struggle of groups and factions to a certain degree replaced the
     struggle of parties. At present, when socialism has conquered
     'finally and irrevocably,' the formation of factions is punished
     with concentration camp or firing squad. The prohibition of other
     parties, from being a temporary evil, has been erected into a
     principle." [Op. Cit., p. 251]

   In reality, the necessity of a party dictatorship was embraced by
   leading Bolsheviks like Trotsky and proclaimed to the world Socialist
   movement. The prohibition of opposition parties was not lamented at the
   time but rather raised to a principle (a Leninist principle, no less!)
   and implemented after victory in the civil war was secure. Factions
   were banned -- with Trotsky's wholehearted support -- precisely
   because, as he later noted, they had replaced the struggle of parties.
   Nor was Trotsky bothered by state repression of opposition when he was
   in charge. For example a series of (unofficial) strikes broke out in
   July and August 1923 in Moscow and Petrograd and this "gave a new lease
   of life to the Mensheviks" and so "the GPU carried out a massive round
   up of Mensheviks, and as many as one thousand were arrested in Moscow
   alone." [Tony Cliff, Trotsky, vol. 3, p. 25] When it was the turn of
   the ex-Bolsheviks in the Workers' Group, Trotsky "was not at all eager
   to defend" them and "did not protest when their adherents were thrown
   into prison. Nor was he at all eager to support their demand for soviet
   democracy in that extreme form". [Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed,
   pp. 108-9] It should be noted that rather than "extreme" a better word
   would have been "genuine" as the Workers' Group, unlike Trotsky, did
   call for a multi-party workers' democracy -- and paid the price.
   Indeed, the "New Course Resolution" even went so far as to say that "it
   is obvious that there can be no toleration of the formation of
   groupings whose ideological content is directed against the party as a
   whole and against the dictatorship of the proletariat, as for instance
   the Workers' Truth and Workers' Group." [The Challenge of the Left
   Opposition (1923-25), p. 408]

   It would be remiss to not note how limited Trotsky's position was:
   being limited to the Soviet Union it does not automatically negate his
   arguments previously made to the international socialist movement.
   Moreover, given the revisionism of the origins of the Bolshevik
   dictatorship it is legitimate to ponder how honest Trotsky's statement
   is. He stated that if ""the Soviet bureaucracy is overthrown by a
   revolutionary party having all the attributes of the old Bolshevism"
   then it "would begin with the restoration of democracy in the trade
   unions and the Soviets" and it "would be able to, and would have to,
   restore freedom of Soviet parties." Yet it was precisely the Bolsheviks
   who decreed that other parties within the Soviets were not genuine
   Soviet parties after all and repressed them. What guarantee exists that
   once the Bolsheviks had been revived (i.e., his faction took over) they
   did not conclude, as before, the necessity of party dictatorship? None.
   After all, did he not suggest that the "dictatorship of the Bolshevik
   party proved one of the most powerful instruments of progress in
   history"? [Op. Cit., pp. 238-9 and p. 104]

   This limited support for Soviet Democracy was short-lived. Writing in
   1937, ten years after the Platform was published and a year after The
   Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky was reiterating the privileged position of
   the party. In his essay "Bolshevism and Stalinism" he argued quite
   explicitly that "the proletariat can take power only through its
   vanguard" and that "the necessity for state power arises from an
   insufficient cultural level of the masses and their heterogeneity."
   Only with "support of the vanguard by the class" can there be the
   "conquest of power" and it was in "this sense the proletarian
   revolution and dictatorship are the work of the whole class, but only
   under the leadership of the vanguard." Thus, rather than the working
   class as a whole seizing power, it is the "vanguard" which takes power
   -- "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still by
   no means the sovereign ruler of society." Note, the party is "the
   sovereign ruler of society," not the working class. Nor can it be said
   that he was not clear who held power in his system: state power is
   required to govern the masses, who cannot exercise power themselves as
   "[t]hose who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party
   dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the Bolshevik
   leadership were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of
   reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat." [Writings
   1936-37, p. 490, p. 488 and p. 495] Later that same year he repeated
   this position clearly and unambiguously:

     "The revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is for me not
     a thing that one can freely accept or reject: It is an objective
     necessity imposed upon us by the social realities -- the class
     struggle, the heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the
     necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory.
     The dictatorship of a party belongs to the barbarian prehistory as
     does the state itself, but we can not jump over this chapter, which
     can open (not at one stroke) genuine human history . . . The
     revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship
     surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution . . . Abstractly
     speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be
     replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without
     any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political
     development among the masses that it can never be achieved under
     capitalist conditions. The reason for the revolution comes from the
     circumstance that capitalism does not permit the material and the
     moral development of the masses." [Op. Cit., pp. 513-4]

   Which was, let us not forget, his argument in 1920. Such remarkable
   consistency on this point over a 17 year period and one which cannot be
   overlooked if you seek to present an accurate account of Trotsky's
   ideas during this period. Significantly, this was the year after his
   apparent (and much belated) embrace of soviet democracy for the USSR in
   The Revolution Betrayed and so that work must be considered as a
   temporary aberration, quickly rejected. His advice on what to do during
   the Spanish Revolution followed this pattern: "Because the leaders of
   the CNT renounced dictatorship for themselves they left the place open
   for the Stalinist dictatorship." [our emphasis, Op. Cit., p. 514] So
   much for workers' power!

   The following year saw Trotsky produce an article defending the
   suppression of the Kronstadt revolt which proclaimed that a "revolution
   is 'made' directly by a minority. The success of a revolution is
   possible, however, only where this minority finds more or less support,
   or at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority. The shift
   in different stages of the revolution, like the transition from
   revolution to counterrevolution, is directly determined by changing
   political relations between the minority and the majority, between the
   vanguard and the class." ["Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt", Lenin and
   Trotsky, Kronstadt, p. 85] Given that Kronstadt had rebelled against
   the Bolshevik dictatorship for soviet democracy, Trotsky's argument
   suggests that for him the rule of the party (the "minority . . . the
   vanguard") is more important than soviet democracy (see the appendix on
   [120]"What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?" for more details of this key
   event in the history of the Russian Revolution). In other words, if the
   majority come to reject the minority then the former shows lack of
   sufficient class awareness and so the latter needs, as in Kronstadt, to
   use state power to secure its ruling position. This is implicit in the
   following strange comment:

     "It is true that some of them [the critics of Bolshevism] recognise
     the revolution and the dictatorship - in words. But this does not
     help matters. They wish for a revolution which will not lead to
     dictatorship or for a dictatorship which will get along without the
     use of force. Of course, this would be a very 'pleasant'
     dictatorship. It requires, however, a few trifles: an equal and,
     moreover, an extremely high, development of the toiling masses. But
     in such conditions the dictatorship would in general be unnecessary.
     Some Anarchists, who are really liberal pedagogues, hope that in a
     hundred or a thousand years the toilers will have attained so high a
     level of development that coercion will prove unnecessary.
     Naturally, if capitalism could lead to such a development, there
     would be no reason for overthrowing capitalism. There would be no
     need either for violent revolution or for the dictatorship which is
     an inevitable consequence of revolutionary victory" [Op. Cit., pp.
     92-3]

   Given that the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" is meant to
   be the means by which the proletariat coerce the former ruling elite,
   it is strange to read Trotsky argue that coercion becomes unnecessary
   if the toiling masses have a high level of political development. Why
   would the ruling elite stop their attempts at counter-revolution in
   those circumstances? That seems unlikely so we can only conclude that
   the coercion (like the dictatorship) is directed against the "toiling
   masses" by the ruling party. This is confirmed the following year
   (1939) when Trotsky repeats the same dictatorial ideas of 1921 by
   indicating -- yet again -- that he viewed democracy as a threat to the
   revolution and saw the need for party power over workers' freedom:

     "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." ["The Moralists and
     Sycophants against Marxism", pp. 53-66, Their Morals and Ours, p.
     59]

   Needless to say, by definition everyone is "backward" when compared to
   the "vanguard of the proletariat." Moreover, as it is this "vanguard"
   which is "armed with the resources of the state" and not the
   proletariat as a whole we are left with one obvious conclusion, namely
   party dictatorship rather than working class freedom. This is because
   such a position means denying exactly what workers' democracy is meant
   to be all about -- namely that working people can recall and replace
   their delegates when those delegates do not follow the wishes and
   mandates of the electors. If the governors determine what is and what
   is not in the "real" interests of the masses and "overcome" (i.e.
   repress) the governed, then we have dictatorship, not democracy.

   Trotsky was hardly alone in his views given that they were Bolshevik
   orthodoxy. Amazingly enough, even in the Russian prison camps in the
   late 1920s and early 1930s, "almost all the Trotskyists continued to
   consider that 'freedom of party' would be 'the end of the revolution.'
   'Freedom to choose one's party -- that is Menshevism,' was the
   Trotskyists' final verdict." This was because it had been "condemned
   formerly by Lenin, by Trotsky" as well as by other Opposition Groups.
   [Ante Ciliga, The Russian Enigma, p. 280] As Left Oppositionist Victor
   Serge pointed out "the greatest reach of boldness of the Left
   Opposition in the Bolshevik Party was to demand the restoration of
   inner-Party democracy, and it never dared dispute the theory of
   single-party government -- by this time, it was too late." [The
   Serge-Trotsky Papers, p. 181] Sadly, like Trotsky's The Revolution
   Betrayed, Serge's later Memoirs paint a different picture by asserting
   one of its "great fundamental ideas" was "working-class democracy"!
   [Memoirs of a Revolutionary, p. 252]

   As can be seen, McNally does not present a remotely accurate account of
   Trotsky's ideas during the 1920s and 1930s. All of which makes
   McNally's comments deeply ironic. He argues that "Stalin had returned
   to an ideology resembling authoritarian pre-Marxian socialism. Gone was
   socialism's democratic essence. Stalin's 'Marxism' was a variant of
   socialism from above" Clearly, Trotsky's Marxism was also a variant of
   "socialism from above" and without "socialism's democratic essence"
   (unless you think that party dictatorship can somehow be reconciled
   with democracy or expresses one of the "basic elements of socialism
   from below"). For Trotsky, as for Stalin, the dictatorship of the party
   was a fundamental principle of Bolshevism and one which was above
   democracy (which, by its very nature, expresses the "vacillation of the
   masses"). Compare McNally's words on Stalinism to Trotsky's position:

     ""For [Stalin's] group, 'socialism' lost all foundation in organs of
     workers' democracy, soviets . . . They came increasingly to identify
     socialism with a bureaucratic monopoly of power which allowed no
     place for organs of mass democracy . . . Gone was the commitment to
     workers' democracy and international socialism . . . Stalin
     undertook to reshape the entire nature and direction of Russian
     society . . . the elimination of all dissent; the liquidation of all
     forms of democracy and of genuine working class organisation . . . "

   Given that the identification of socialism with the party's "monopoly
   of power" as well as removal of "the commitment to workers' democracy"
   occurred under Lenin and that Trotsky's defended this, the question
   arises was there any fundamental difference between Leninism and
   Stalinism? As Victor Serge admitted, "a good many Oppositionists
   rallied to the [Stalinist] 'general line' and renounced their errors
   since, as they put it, 'After all, it is our programme that is being
   applied'" [Op. Cit., p. 252] Hence Emma Goldman:

     "In point of truth I see no marked difference between the two
     protagonists of the benevolent system of the dictatorship except
     that Leon Trotsky is no longer in power to enforce its blessings,
     and Josef Stalin is . . . Stalin did not come down as a gift from
     heaven to the hapless Russian people. He is merely continuing the
     Bolshevik traditions, even if in a more relentless manner . . . I
     admit, the dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous.
     That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of
     the actors in the revolutionary drama" ["Trotsky Protests Too Much",
     Writings of Emma Goldman, pp. 251-2]

   Ante Ciliga saw the similarities first-hand while in prison in the
   Soviet Union, noting that the Trotskyists "who were in prison for
   anti-Stalinism could find nothing better to do than to indulge in
   Stalinism themselves [in their political groups] while in prison. This
   absurdity was only apparent; it merely served to prove that between
   Trotskyism and Stalinism there were many points in common". The outlook
   of the Trotskyist majority "was not very different from that of the
   Stalinist bureaucracy; they were slightly more polite and human, that
   was all." [Op. Cit., p. 218 and p. 263] This is unsurprising given, as
   indicated, the same Bolshevik political legacy and same class position
   (Trotskyists were labelled "the bureaucracy in exile"). It may have
   been that if the Trotskyists had won the inter-bureaucracy struggle in
   the mid-1920s then the Soviet Union would have avoided the horrors of
   Stalinism but it would have remained a state capitalist party
   dictatorship and, as such, a class system in which the few exploit,
   oppress and repress the many. That this few would have exploited the
   many less ruthlessly and aimed to impose similar regimes
   internationally rather than concentrating on building "socialism in one
   country" does not mean much.

   Needless to say, Goldman had no difficulty in recognising that
   Bolshevik Russia was "State Capitalism" in the early 1920s (i.e., when
   Trotsky was still part of the ruling class). [My Disillusionment in
   Russia, p. 247] McNally argues that "[b]y making the nature of property
   ownership the criterion of workers' state" rather than "workers' power
   and workers' democracy" Trotsky had "committed an error that was
   seriously to disorient the Trotskyist movement in later years. For,
   unwittingly, Trotsky had broken from the most basic precepts of
   socialism from below." Yet what alternative did he have? After all,
   both workers' democracy and power had been eliminated when he held
   power alongside Lenin and he did not consider the first -- bar for a
   short period in 1936 -- as important enough to advocate and equated the
   second with party rule. So if McNally's criteria is taken seriously
   then we must conclude that the Bolshevik regime had not been a
   "workers' state" since mid-1918 nor did Trotsky aim for one during the
   1920s and 1930s. Which raises the awkward question of why McNally
   thinks he had not broken "from the most basic precepts of socialism
   from below" by defending Lenin's party dictatorship and Trotsky's
   attempts to recreate it? Does having the right people in power make
   "workers' control of society" an optional extra for "socialism from
   below"?

   McNally then suggests that this breaking with "the most basic precepts
   of socialism from below" by not recognising Stalinist Russia was "a
   system of bureaucratic state capitalism in which capital is
   collectively controlled by the privileged bureaucracy that controls the
   state" was "not readily apparent during Trotsky's lifetime." Far from
   it -- anarchists had recognised the grim reality of the new Bolshevik
   state from early 1918 and indicated that it had confirmed the fears
   raised by Bakunin in his polemics with Marx (see [121]section H.3.13).
   It is worth indicating these arguments since we did not have to wait
   until the 1940s before drawing what to the uninitiated was an obvious
   conclusion -- that the Soviet Union was a state capitalist dictatorship
   run by and for a new ruling minority.

   A state, Bakunin argued, "stands outside the people and above them" and
   so was "the government of society from above downward" which resulted
   in the "actual subordination of the sovereign people to the
   intellectual minority that governs them." It was the "government of the
   masses from above downwards" by a minority "which supposedly
   understands the real interests of the people better than the people
   themselves". However, "power corrupts those invested with it just as
   much as those compelled to submit to it" and the "government of the
   majority by a minority in the name of the presumed stupidity of the one
   and the presumed intelligence of the other" would have "the direct and
   inevitable result of consolidating the political and economic
   privileges of the governing minority and the political and economic
   slavery of the masses". Bakunin recognised the elitism inherent in
   Trotsky's privileging of the party (the vanguard) and argued that while
   it was claimed "those elected will be passionately committed as well as
   learned socialists" the reality would be that "the pseudo-popular state
   will be nothing but the highly despotic government of the masses by a
   new and very small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars. The
   people are not learned, so they will be liberated in entirety form the
   cares of government and included in entirety in the governed herd. A
   fine liberation!" The new government would "begin to look upon the
   whole workers world from the heights of the state. They will no longer
   represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern
   the people." Rather than securing the freedom of the people "no
   dictatorship can have any other objective than to perpetuate itself,
   and that it can engender only slavery in the people who endure it".
   [Statism and Anarchy, p. 136, p. 198, p. 13, p. 24, p. 136, p. 137, pp.
   178-9, p. 178 and p. 179]

   Economically, the workers would remain oppressed and exploited as the
   Marxists would "concentrate the reins of government in a strong hand,
   because the ignorant people require strong supervision. They will
   create a single state bank, concentrating in their own hands all
   commercial, industrial, agricultural, and even scientific, production,
   and will divide the people into two armies, one industrial and one
   agrarian, under the direct command of state engineers, who will form a
   new privileged scientific and political class." The state bureaucracy
   would become the new ruling class, "a new bureaucratic aristocracy" who
   are "corrupted by state service", and as soon as "they enter state
   service . . . the iron logic of their position, the force of
   circumstances inherent in certain hierarchical and profitable
   relationships, makes itself felt and . . . [they] become bureaucrats
   from head to toe . . . The demands of a certain position always prove
   stronger than sentiments, intentions, or good impulses . . . They have
   to become members of the bureaucratic class . . . they become enemies
   of the people, whether they want to or not". [Op. Cit., p. 181 and p.
   51]

   Clearly the Bolshevik experience confirmed Bakunin's critique of
   Marxism while the Makhnovist insurrectionary army in the Ukraine
   confirmed the validity of the anarchist alternative (see the appendix
   [122]"Why does the Makhnovist movement show there is an alternative to
   Bolshevism?" for details). As such, it is ironic to read McNally state
   that "[t]hroughout the 1920s and until his death . . . Trotsky fought
   desperately to build a revolutionary socialist movement based on the
   principles of Marx and Lenin." Leaving Marx to one side for the moment,
   McNally's comments are correct simply because in his advocacy of party
   power and dictatorship (for a "socialism from above," to use McNally's
   term) Trotsky was indeed following Lenin's principles and Bolshevik
   orthodoxy. As noted in the [123]last section, Lenin had been arguing
   from a "socialism" based on "above" and "below" since at least 1905
   (which, to show their Marxist orthodoxy, he linked to Engels and his
   arguments against Bakunin.) The reality of Bolshevik rule (as indicated
   in [124]section 8) showed that pressure "from above" by a
   "revolutionary" government easily crushes pressure "from below" in the
   name, as Trotsky constantly stressed throughout the 1920s and 1930s, of
   the advanced political ideas of the Bolshevik party leaders. Yet
   despite Lenin and Trotsky's dismissal of democracy, McNally argues that
   democracy is the core need of socialism:

     "A workers' state, according to Marx and Lenin, is a state based
     upon workers' control of society. It depends upon the existence of
     democratic organisation that can control society from below. A
     workers' state presupposes that workers are running the state. To
     talk of a workers' state is necessarily to talk of workers' power
     and workers' democracy."

   Which, as far as it goes, is correct (for anarchists, of course, the
   idea that a state can be run from below is utopian -- it is not
   designed for that and no state has ever been). Sadly for his argument,
   both Lenin and Trotsky argued against the idea of workers' democracy
   and, in stark contrast, argued that the dictatorship of the party was
   essential for a successful revolution. Indeed, they both explicitly
   argued against the idea that a mass, democratic organisation could run
   society during a revolution. The need for party power was raised
   explicitly to combat the fact that the workers' could change their
   minds and vote against the vanguard party. As such, the founding
   fathers of the SWP/ISO political tradition explicitly argued that a
   workers' state had to reject workers power and democracy in order to
   ensure the victory of the revolution. Clearly, according to McNally's
   own argument, his own politics cannot be considered as "socialism from
   below" as it explicitly argued that a workers' state did not
   "necessarily" mean workers' power or democracy.

   As indicated above, for the period McNally himself selects (the 1920s
   and 1930s), Trotsky consistently argued that the Bolshevik tradition
   the SWP/ISO places itself was based on the "Leninist principle" of
   party dictatorship. For McNally to talk about Trotsky keeping
   "socialism from below" alive is, therefore, truly amazing. It either
   indicates a lack of awareness of Trotsky's ideas or a desire to
   deceive. To be fair to McNally, the notion that Trotsky's Opposition
   supported genuine workers' democracy seems to be a common fallacy in
   SWP circles. Thus Chris Harman asserted that the "alternative to
   Stalinism" in the late 1920s was "returning to genuine workers'
   democracy and consciously linking the fate of Russia to the fate of the
   world revolution" (while allowing "a limited development of heavy
   industry") and it was the "historical merit of the Left Opposition"
   that "it framed a policy along these lines." [Chris Harman, Bureaucracy
   and Revolution in Eastern Europe, p. 19] Clearly McNally is not the
   only Leninist unable -- or unwilling -- to discover the grim truth
   about the Left Opposition or, for that matter, the reality of Bolshevik
   rule.

   For anarchists, we stress, the Bolshevik substitution of party power
   for workers power did not come as a surprise. The state is the
   delegation of power -- as such, it means that the idea of a "workers'
   state" expressing "workers' power" is a logical impossibility (see
   [125]section H.3.7). If workers are running society then power rests in
   their hands. If a state exists then power rests in the hands of the
   handful of people at the top, not in the hands of all. The state was
   designed for minority rule. No state can be an organ of working class
   (i.e. majority) self-management due to its basic nature, structure and
   design.

   For this reason anarchists from Bakunin onwards have argued for a
   bottom-up federation of workers' councils as the agent of revolution
   and the means of managing society after capitalism and the state have
   been abolished. If these organs of workers' self-management are
   co-opted into a state structure (as happened in Russia) then their
   power will be handed over to the real power in any state -- the
   government (in this case, the Council of People's Commissars). They
   will quickly become mere rubberstamps of the organisation which holds
   the reigns of power, the vanguard party and its central committee.

   McNally rewrites history by arguing that it was "Stalin's
   counter-revolution" which saw "communist militants . . . executed,
   peasants slaughtered, the last vestiges of democracy eliminated." The
   SWP/ISO usually date this "counter-revolution" to 1928 (the defeat of
   the Left Opposition and the first Five Year Plan). However, long before
   this date there was no "vestiges" of meaningful democracy left -- as
   Trotsky himself made clear in his comments in favour of party
   dictatorship between 1920 and 1923. Indeed, Trotsky had supported the
   repression of the Kronstadt revolt which had called for soviet
   democracy. McNally ignores this and instead argues that Trotsky
   "acknowledged that the soviets had been destroyed, that union democracy
   had disappeared, that the Bolshevik party had been stripped of its
   revolutionary character" under Stalinism. Yet, as we discusse in
   [126]section H.6, the Bolsheviks had already destroyed soviet
   democracy, undermined union democracy and repressed all revolutionary
   elements outside of the party, argued for the introduction of state
   capitalism and the appointment of "one-man management" as well as
   repressing peasants and striking and protesting workers long before the
   start of the Russian Civil War in late May 1918. In short, the
   Bolsheviks had introduced much of which McNally denounces as
   "Stalinism" before the war he uses to excuse them for all
   responsibility for its rise. As Maurice Brinton rightly states:

     "there is a clear-cut and incontrovertible link between what
     happened under Lenin and Trotsky and the later practices of
     Stalinism . . . The more one unearths about this period the more
     difficult it becomes to define -- or even to see -- the 'gulf'
     allegedly separating what happened in Lenin's time from what
     happened later. Real knowledge of the facts also makes it impossible
     to accept . . . that the whole course of events was 'historically
     inevitable' and 'objectively determined'. Bolshevik ideology and
     practice were themselves important and sometimes decisive factors in
     the equation, at every critical stage of this critical period
     [between 1917 and 1921]" ["The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control", For
     Workers' Power, p. 376]

   To draw a sharp distinction between Stalinism and Bolshevism is
   difficult, if not impossible, to make based on McNally's own criteria.
   That Stalinism was more brutal, more unequal, more despotic is true but
   that does not change the similarities in social relationships between
   the two -- both were dictatorial state capitalist regimes. That the
   repression did not extend to within the Bolshevik party is a weak hook
   to hang a theory on.

   During his analysis of the failure of orthodox Trotskyism, McNally
   states that after the second world war "the Trotskyist movement
   greeted" the various new Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and
   elsewhere "as workers' states" in spite of being "brutally undemocratic
   state capitalist tyrannies." Given that the SWP/ISO and a host of other
   Leninist groups still argue that Lenin's brutally undemocratic state
   capitalist tyranny was some kind of "workers' state" McNally's comments
   seem deeply ironic. As such, Trotsky's defence of Stalinism as a
   "degenerated workers' state" is not as surprising nor as puzzling as
   McNally tries to claim. If, as he argues, "[t]o talk of a workers'
   state is necessarily to talk of workers' power and workers' democracy"
   then Lenin's regime had ceased to be a "workers' state" (if such a
   thing could exist) by the spring of 1918 at the latest. For anarchists
   (and libertarian Marxists) the similarities are all too clear between
   the regime under Lenin and that under Stalin. That McNally cannot see
   the obvious similarities suggests a lack of objectivity and a weak
   commitment to the principles of "socialism from below"

   He sums up his account of the post-Second War World Trotskyists by
   arguing that "the movement Trotsky had created fell victim to the
   ideology of socialism from above." Unfortunately for his claims, this
   is not the case. As proven above, Trotsky had consistently argued for
   the dictatorship of the party between 1920 and 1940 and so Trotskyism
   had always been based on "the ideology of socialism from above."
   Trotsky had argued for party dictatorship simply because democratic
   mass organisations would allow the working class to express their
   "wavering" and "vacillations." Given that, according to those who
   follow Bolshevik ideas, the working class is meant to run the so-called
   "workers' state" Trotsky's arguments are extremely significant. He
   explicitly acknowledged that under Bolshevism the working class does
   not actually manage their own fates but rather the vanguard party does.
   This is cannot be anything but "socialism from above." If, as McNally
   argues, Trotsky's "fatal error" in not recognising that Stalinism was
   state capitalism came from "violating the principles of socialism from
   below," then this "fatal error" is at the heart of the Leninist
   tradition.

   As such, the roots of Trotsky's "fatal error" can be traced further
   back than the rise of Stalin. Its real roots lie with the idea of a
   "workers' state" and so with the ideas of Marx and Engels. As Bakunin
   argued against Marx (and anarchists have repeated since) the state is,
   by its nature, a centralised and top-down machine. By creating a
   "revolutionary" government, power is automatically transferred from the
   working class into the hands of a few people at the top. As they have
   the real, de facto, power in the state, it is inevitable that they will
   implement "socialism from above" as that is how the state is
   structured. As Bakunin argued, all states "are in essence only machines
   governing the masses from above" by a "privileged minority, allegedly
   knowing the genuine interests of the people better than the people
   themselves." The idea of a state being run "from below" makes as much
   sense as "dry rain." Little wonder Bakunin argued for a "federal
   organisation, from the bottom upward, of workers' associations, groups,
   city and village communes, and finally of regions and peoples" as "the
   sole condition of a real and not fictitious liberty." In other words:
   "Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is no State." [The
   Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 211, p. 210 and p. 223] Only this,
   the destruction of every state and its replacement by a free federation
   of workers' councils, can ensure a real "socialism from below".

   Therefore, rather than signifying the working class running society
   directly, the "workers' state" actually signifies the opposite --
   namely, that the working class has delegated that power and
   responsibility to others, namely the government. As Leninism supports
   the idea of a "workers' state" then it is inevitably and logically tied
   to the idea of "socialism from below." Given that Lenin himself argued
   that "only from below" was an anarchist principle, we can easily see
   what the "fatal error" of Trotsky actually was. By rejecting anarchism
   he automatically rejected real "socialism from below."

   Sadly for McNally, Trotsky did not, as he asserts, embrace the
   "democratic essence" of Leninism in the 1920s or 30s. Rather, as is
   clear from Trotsky's writings, he embraced party dictatorship (i.e.
   "socialism from above") and considered this as quite compatible
   (indeed, an essential aspect) of his Leninist ideology. That McNally
   fails to indicate this and, indeed, asserts the exact opposite of the
   facts shows that it is not only anarchism he is ignorant about.
   [127] Appendix : Anarchism and Marxism [128]up [129]Marxists and
   Spanish Anarchism 

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