Letter: Alternative to market (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In your review of David Ramsay Steele's book From Marx to Mises (June issue), you mention his citation of a non-market, anti-centralist model of society, that is “anarcho-communism". You seem to accept his view that lack of central planning leads to local autarky and that anarchist communists advocate this. This is certainly not the case. We believe that much can be decided on a local level through a system of neighbourhood and workplace councils, but that there is a need for coordination of areas on a regional basis, right on up to a global level—to determine what is produced and how much, for example, to satisfy the needs of the population of the whole world.

In the same issue you ask if “anarcho-communists feel comfortable being grouped with these people” (that is people like Ayn Rand etc). Well, the answer is, we do not. We in the Anarchist Communist Federation have consistently argued that anarchism is based on class-struggle, and as a movement had its origins in the First International, a working class organisation. We have always dismissed descriptions of Ayn Rand. Tolstoy. Stirner and so on as “anarchist” (descriptions which they never used themselves) as inaccurate and misleading.

Ron Allen

London E1

Reply:

Glad to see you agree with us that the alternative to the market is not some impossible return to local self-sufficiency but common ownership with real democracy local to global. Not that we did any more than record, without discussing its accuracy, Steele's claim that Kropotkin stood for “local autarky”—Editors.

Anarchism and the failure of direct action (1995)

Pamphlet Review from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Anarchist Movement in Japan by John Crump (BM Hurricane, London WC1N 3XX. 1995.)

This is a brief, but informative, account of anarchism in Japan by the author of The Origins of Socialist Thought In Japan.

Crump traces the origins of anarchism in that country to Kotoku Shusui who first edited an anti-war journal, Common People's Newspaper, in 1903 until its forced demise at the beginning of 1905. Kotoku was originally a Social Democrat who, together with Sakai Toshihiko and others, formed a short-lived party of that name. In 1904, Kotoku and Sakai translated Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto into Japanese. But shortly after, when in prison, Kotoku read Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, followed whilst travelling to the United States, by his Memoirs of a Revolutionist. In America, he read Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, and later he came under the influence of the Industrial Workers of the World—the "Wobblies".

On his return to Japan, Kotoku held many meetings and wrote many articles attacking what he called Social Democratic parliamentarianism, and advocating direct action. In an article in 1907, he wrote:

   "I hope that from now on our socialist movement in Japan will abandon its commitment to a parliamentary policy and will adopt as its methods and policy the direct action of the workers as one."

Thus began the anarchist movement in Japan. Crump emphasises that the ideas which Kotoku brought back to Japan from America were a mixture of anarchist-communism, syndicalism and terrorism, although Kotoku was foremost an anarchist-communist. or Kropotkinist; and that anarchist terrorism never really took off in Japan. Before the First World War, both anarchist-communism and anarchist-syndicalism had their advocates and activists: but. together with mounting repression by the state, the anarchist-communists and the anarchist-syndicalists became increasingly antagonistic towards each other. By 1927, there was a complete split between the two factions according to John Crump.

The Japanese anarchists, like many others at the time, were largely sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks following the 1917 coup d'état. Some even joined the Communist Party, only to leave it again soon after. But after the Bolsheviks' suppression of the Kronstadt Revolt in 1921, one prominent Japanese anarchist, Osugi, "concluded that there was nothing to choose between Russian state capitalism and Western private capitalism".

In 1923. both Kotoku and Osugi were murdered by the Japanese state, and some anarchists attempted a number of rather insignificant acts of terrorist revenge which were, of course, counter-productive. Mass arrests inevitably followed. During the 1930s the anarchist movement in Japan went, according to Crump, into rapid decline. There was. however, an attempt by some anarchist-communists to form an Anarchist Communist Party in 1934. It claimed to be committed to bringing about a stateless and free communist society; yet it used Bolshevik (i.e. Leninist) organisational methods. It was founded as a highly secretive organisation, whose existence was not openly proclaimed, and whose membership was a hand-picked ''élite''. Its main tactic was to manoeuvre its members into positions of influence in other organisations—just like the Leninists! Not surprisingly, it was soon destroyed by the Japanese state.

During the Second World War, Japanese anarchists largely went underground, and many were killed in air raids together with hundreds of thousands of other members of the working class. Following the war, attempts were made from time-to-time to revive, or recreate, an anarchist movement in Japan, but as Crump indicates, anarchism in that country (as elsewhere, but not mentioned by the author) has merely existed on a much reduced scale compared with earlier times

Peter E. Newell

Anarchism (2004)

Book Review from the September 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchism by Seán M. Sheehan. (Reaktion Books, 192 pp. £12.95)

The term “anarchism” covers a multitude of sins. From the egoism of Stirner, through the free market for small producers advocated by Proudhon, the revolutionary romanticism and posturings of Bakunin, Kroptotkin’s anarcho-communism, revolutionary syndicalism, to various avant-garde artists and writers.

Sheehan’s book was prompted by what he sees as the unconscious re-emergence of anarchist ideas and tactics in the “anti-globalisation” protests that began in Seattle in 1999. His aim is to present anarchism to such activists, even though not an anarchist himself. The result is a readable run-through of anarchist ideas.

Marx also comes into it Sheehan realises that there is a world of difference between Marx’s ideas and what in the 20th century came to be widely regarded as “Marxism”, i.e., the official doctrine of the Russian State, but which is more properly called Leninism and which, in its various forms, stands for state capitalism rather than socialism as understood by Marx.

Sheehan in fact pleads for a rapprochement between Marxism and anarchism. Certainly, those in the Marxist tradition and a minority of anarchists — the anarcho-communists and the class-struggle anarchists — share a common analysis of capitalism as a society based on the exploitation of the working class and want to see it replaced by a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society. But most anarchists today are into “direct action”, as an alternative to reformist electoral action, to try to get changes within capitalism and are not interested in longer-term, global change. When it comes down to it, they are just as reformist as any Labourite (or Liberal-Democrat) or Trotskyist, differing from them only in completely ruling out elections as a way to get reforms.

Marx, on the other hand, always insisted (as we do) on the need for the working class to win control of state power before attempting to change the basis of society from class ownership to common ownership. He also saw elections as one possible way of doing this. For anarchists, political action in this sense is anathema. The state must not be captured, it must be confronted. Anti-capitalists should not contest elections, they should boycott them. Confronting the state — as some of Sheehan's “anti-capitalists” tried in Genoa — is a senseless policy, especially when it’s a question of a minority confronting a state supported, even if only passively, by a majority. The state will always win in such confrontations since it has much more force at its disposable.

As to the time when there will be many, many more anti-capitalists (socialists), then boycotting elections — agreed there’s not much point in voting today, where all the candidates stand for the continuance of capitalism in one form or another — would also be senseless since this would be to leave state power in the hands of the pro-capitalists. Much more sensible would be to organise to take this power from them. That’s the difference between Marxian socialists and anarchism, a gap which, despite Sheehan, could only be bridged by anarchists dropping their dogmatic opposition to elections and political action. Hopefully, they will.

Adam Buick

'The reign of images and Spectacles' (1997)

Book Review from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Resistance—A Revolutionary Manifesto for the Millennium by the Anarchist Communist Federation. £2

Socialists can agree with the first half of this pamphlet in which capitalism is criticised and the alternative society to it outlined. On the other hand, we can't agree with the second half where the ACF sets out how they think the alternative society will come about and what they think revolutionaries should be doing today.

The crisis of capitalism is correctly analysed not just as an economic and an ecological crisis, but also as a crisis of civilization whose features are a “collapse of community spirit and solidarity; the false cult of individualism as opposed to individuality; law of the jungle as the rule of life; poverty of real thought; the reign of images and of the Spectacle (e.g. consumerism, wars and famines as televised 'entertainment', the whole of life as a commercialised show); crisis of artistic creation and recycling of old recipes in the market of culture and entertainment; disenchantment and melancholy; cynicism".

The alternative to capitalism is seen as a society in which "all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community".

So far, so good. But how to get to such a society which we call "socialist" but they call "anarcho-communist"? The ACF see violence as the only way and we are offered a nightmare vision of the revolution as a re-run of the Spanish Civil War on a world scale but in which, this time, the good guys win.

There is nothing appealing or inspiring about this. Just the opposite in fact. The prospect of the next century being one in which a world civil war will break out, with all the death and destruction this would involve, is positively off-putting.

Fortunately, this is not the way to socialism. Certainly, the ruling class in all countries will have to be forced to give up their power and privileges but by mass popular pressure, including voting out their political representatives.

As to their strategy for today, the ACF want to build up a "Culture of Resistance" amongst the working class, but their conception of the working class seems to be restricted to young male workers who live on council estates or in inner-city areas. At least, it is to this section of the working class that their appeal is directed, with its emphasis on resistance to "police presence on our streets” and on dealing with "anti-social elements in our communities” (for whom the ACF proposes punishment beatings).

But what about the rest of the working class: those (most of us) who have a fairly steady job and are buying our homes from some building society? Ignoring the more representative majority of workers means that the ACF’s particular strategy for building a "culture of resistance" differs little in practice from "lifestyle anarchism" which sees anarchism not as an alternative society but as an alternative way of surviving under capitalism.

Adam Buick

For the Anarchist Communist Federation's reply, see here.

Obsolete minority action (2001)

Book Review from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Obsolete Communism. The Left-Wing Alternative. By Daniel & Gabriel Cohn-Bendit. AK Press, 2001.

Books written by participants in events are always interesting if only because they are part of the documentary evidence as to what happened. The book by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who was prominent in the student movement which led to the "May events" in France in 1968, and his brother Gabriel (who wrote the theoretical parts) is no exception. Written in 1968 shortly after the events, and now republished by AK Press, it gives a good insight into what many of the radicalised students thought.

The Cohn-Bendits called for a revolution without leaders to abolish the wages system. They were therefore implacably opposed to Leninism and its concept of a centralised vanguard to lead the working class. A large part of the book in fact is devoted to exposing, on the one hand, the French Communist Party (PCF) and its claim to be the sole legitimate representative of the French working class and, on the other, how the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, introduced state capitalism into Russia, with their vanguard as the new managerial ruling class imposing one-man management in the state-owned factories and bloodily suppressing working-class resistance in Krondstadt in 1921. In fact the English title does not convey the full anti-Leninist significance of a literal translation of the original French title – Leftism: Remedy for the Senile Disorder of Communism – which was an obvious play on the title of Lenin's 1920 pamphlet Leftwing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.

The rest of the book is devoted to describing and analysing the events themselves – student occupation of the universities, street battles, followed by a general strike with many factory occupations involving at its height some 10 million workers – and including a good analysis of the role of universities under capitalism (to train cadres to run industry and the state on behalf of the capitalist class).

A revolution without leaders to abolish the wages system? Implacable opposition to Leninism and all its works? We can go along with that; in fact it's what we have always said and done. But that's as far as our agreement can go. The Cohn-Bendits envisaged "the revolution" as involving the overthrow of the government by mass street demonstrations and the occupation, and then the running, of workplaces by the workers. They argued that this could be sparked off by a "militant minority" provoking the state to drop its mask, as the students did by occupying the universities and provoking the police to try to dislodge them. In fact, they imagined that they nearly sparked off such a revolution, if only the students and others had taken over the finance and education ministries on the night of 24 May and if only the workers had had the self-confidence not just to occupy their workplaces but to have restarted production under their own control and management.

If only. Such a scenario would only have had any chance of working if workers were already socialist-minded; but they weren't. This is not to say that the workers in France in 1968 were not discontented, nor that they should not have gone on strike. But it was discontent with their treatment under capitalism, not with capitalism as such.

The Gaullist regime, installed in 1958 following a mutiny by the army in Algeria, had imposed a virtual wage freeze for ten years and the employers had managed their businesses in a particularly authoritarian way. The PCF and the trade union federation it controlled, the CGT, tried to keep the issue as one of economic demands (higher wages and benefits, more consultation of workers, etc). The Cohn-Bendits criticised them severely for this but, ironically, when the PCF did finally introduce a political element by calling for a change of government (not what the Cohn-Bendits wanted of course) they played into De Gaulle's hands. He immediately called an election on the theme "Who governs: Me or the Communists?" and got the answer he wanted.

Ironically too, although views such as those expressed here by the Cohn-Bendits got a boost, the main conclusion that most of the "militant minority" drew from the failure of May 1968 to overthrow capitalism was that this was because there hadn't been a strong enough vanguard party to direct the events. After 1968 Leninism, in the form of Trotskyism, Maoism, Castroism, Guevaraism, Ho Chi Minhism, flourished as never before and, although such views are now not as popular as they became in the 1970s, we are still suffering from this legacy.

While his brother Gabriel remained an anarchist, Daniel Cohn-Bendit eventually abandoned the claim to be a revolutionary to become an open reformist. He now sits as a Green Party member of the European Parliament. Clearly he was wrong to have gone reformist, but at least he now recognises that a "militant minority" cannot provoke a non-socialist-minded working class into carrying out a socialist revolution.

Adam Buick

Remembering Alexander Berkman

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog:

To-day is the anniversary of the death of the anarcho-communist Alexander Berkman , who died this day in 1936 from suicide .

A review of his book ABC of Anarchism can be found here

As a communist-anarchist, Berkman advocates a system without commodity-production or any “price system”, wages or payment of money. “This”, he says, “logically leads to ownership in common and to joint use. Which is a sensible, just, and equitable system, and is known as communism”. And “work will become a pleasure instead of the deadening drudgery it is today”. His views are similar to those of William Morris in as far as, in communism, people will no longer be employed in useless toil, but will be appreciated according to their willingness to be socially useful. People will live in freedom and equality.

Anarcho-communists, as their name suggests, are anarchists who are communists in the sense of standing for a society based on common ownership where people would produce goods and services to be taken and used without buying and selling and in accordance with the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. In other words, they stood more or less for what we call Socialism.

According to Berkman, “the social revolution can take place only by means of the general strike ...It is most important that we realize that the General Strike is the only possibility of social revolution. In the past the General Strike has been propagated in various countries without sufficient emphasis that its real meaning is revolution, that it is the only practical way to it. It is time for us to learn this, and when we do so the social revolution will cease to be a vague, unknown quantity. It will become an actuality, a definite method and aim, a program whose first step is the taking over of the industries by organized labour.” - The general strike is the revolution.

Unlike Berkman and the anarchist-communists , the SPGB claim that such actions as a general strike by workers would not, and could not, bring about a socialist society. In our view the working class must organise consciously and politically first, for the conquest of the powers of government, before it can convert private property in the means of production into common property. Our reasoning goes like this. We want the useful majority in society (workers of all kinds) to take over and run the means of production in the interest of all. However, at the moment these are in the hands of a minority of the population whose ownership and control of them is backed up and enforced by the State . The State stands as an obstacle between the useful majority and the means of production because it is at present controlled by the minority owning class. They control the state, not by some conspiracy, but with the consent or acquiescence of the majority of the population, a consent which expresses itself in everyday attitudes towards rich people, leaders, nationalism, money and, at election times, in voting for parties which support class ownership. In fact it is such majority support expressed through elections that gives their control of the state legitimacy. In other words, the minority rule with the assent of the majority, which gives them political control. The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule - they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. We simply argue that it is quite possible, and highly desirable, for a large majority to establish socialism without bloodshed. The more violence is involved, the more likely the revolution is to fail outright, or be blown sideways into a new minority dictatorship. Far better, if only to minimise the risk of violence, to organise to win a majority in parliament , not to form a government , of course , but to end capitalism and dismantle the State.

This not a dispute between supporters and opponents of socialism but a discussion amongst people who are agreed that the way forward for humanity lies in the establishment of a world of common ownership, democratic participation and production to meet needs and the question is what is the better way to achieve that .

Alan Johnstone

Anarchist communism (2003)

Book Review from the March 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

ABC of Anarchism. By Alexander Berkman. Freedom Press (Anarchist Classics) 2002 edition, 112 pages

First published in the United States, in 1929, under the title What is Communist Anarchism?, this slightly shortened version has been reprinted 12 times by Freedom Press. The present edition also reprints an introductory biography of Berkman, originally written by this writer in 1970 for the fifth edition.

Many of the words and phrases in the ABC of Anarchism were dated thirty years ago, and are even more so now. Nevertheless, it is still one of the best introductions to the ideas of anarchism, written from the communist-anarchist viewpoint. Berkman's knowledge of economics in general, and Marxist economics in particular, is somewhat shaky, although he has no time for capitalism and the profit system, unlike some anarchists such as individualists and mutualists. Like Marxists, Berkman argues that “there is a continuous warfare between capital and labour”. Again, as with other anarchists, he claims that communist-anarchists “are at one on the basic principle of abolishing government”. He sees government, rather than private-property society that needs and perpetuates government and the coercive state, as the main cause of humanity's problems. Like his companion, Emma Goldman, Berkman was not always consistent regarding governments. On their return to Russia in 1919, they were quite sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government, but soon criticised Lenin and Trotsky for jailing and executing anarchists, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.

Berkman admits that some anarchists have thrown bombs, and have advocated violence, but argues that anarchism is not about bombs, disorder or chaos. He says that anarchists “have no monopoly on violence”, and that governments have committed far more acts of violence than anarchists. For Berkman, anarchism is the very opposite of violence.

As a communist-anarchist, Berkman advocates a system without commodity-production or any “price system”, wages or payment of money. “This, he says, “logically leads to ownership in common and to joint use. Which is a sensible, just, and equitable system, and is known as communism”. And “work will become a pleasure instead of the deadening drudgery it is today”. His views are similar to those of William Morris in as far as, in communism, people will no longer be employed in useless toil, but will be appreciated according to their willingness to be socially useful. People will live in freedom and equality.

How will such a society come about?, asks Berkman.

To him, the idea is the thing. People must want fundamental change. They must want a revolutionary change before they can achieve a social revolution. And they must prepare for a social revolution. Unlike some anarchists, Berkman does not put much faith in spontaneous uprisings, although he does not reject them on principle. Indeed, he says “we know that revolution begins with street disturbances and outbreaks; it is the initial phase which involves force and violence”. Such a phase is of short duration. According to Berkman, “the social revolution can take place only by means of the general strike”. The general strike is the revolution. (All emphasis in the original). And such a strike can only be carried out by workers organised in labour, or industrial, unions. In his last chapter Berkman assumes that such a revolution would have to be defended by “armed force” if necessary .

This, very briefly, is Alexander Berkman's case for anarchist-communism and revolution. Is it desirable, and would it work? The answer is “yes” and “no”. The Socialist Party advocates and is organised for the establishment of a world-wide system of production solely for use and the abolition of the wages system; such a society would, of necessity, replace government over people by democratic administration of things. Unlike Berkman and the anarchist-communists, however, socialists claim that such actions as insurrection and a general strike by workers would not, and could not, bring about a socialist society. In our view (but not held by this writer 30 years ago!), the working class must organise consciously and politically first, for the conquest of the powers of government, before it can convert private property in the means of production into common property.
Nevertheless, the ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman should be read by all those interested in what anarchists in general, and anarchist-communists in particular, stand for.

Peter E. Newell

Review of J. Crump's "Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism" (1994)

Book Review from the January 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan. By John Crump. (Macmillan Press)

It is a little known fact, brought out by John Crump in this ridiculously priced new book, that until they were crushed by the militarist State in 1936 there was a small but flourishing anarchist movement in Japan. As elsewhere various currents existed, the main ones being the anarcho-communists and the anarcho-syndicalists.

The anarcho-communists, as their name suggests, were anarchists who were communists in the sense of standing for a society based on common ownership where people would produce goods and services to be taken and used without buying and selling and in accordance with the principle "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". In other words, they stood more or less for what we call Socialism.

The anarcho-syndicalists, on the other hand, were anarchists who embraced the doctrine of syndicalism. This arose at the turn of the century and taught that what workers should do to end their exploitation was to organise in unions (or syndicats in French, hence syndicalism). Unions were seen as providing the means both of defending workers' interests under capitalism and, once capitalism had been overthrown in a general strike, of administering the new society.

While in other countries anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists co-existed without seeing any fundamental incompatibility between their respective views, this was not the case in Japan. In the 1920s a group of "pure anarchists" emerged determined to rid the anarchist movement of what they regarded as the contamination of syndicalism. Prominent among them was Hatta Shuzo (1886-1934), a former Presbyterian clergyman.

The theme of Crump's book is that Hatta's critique of syndicalism was an important contribution to revolutionary theory. Hatta's criticism was radical. He disagreed with the syndicalist aim of a society and economy run by industrial unions, and he disagreed that the class struggle of workers for higher wages and better conditions could ever lead to a moneyless, stateless society.

A society run by industrial unions, said Hatta, would be a society which would perpetuate the occupational divisions which capitalism imposed on workers. In addition, the relations between the separate union-run industries would have to be regulated either by some central administration, which he claimed would amount to a government and so give rise to a new ruling class (his weakest argument, this), or by some form of commercial transaction even if conducted in labour-time vouchers rather than money as most syndicalists proposed. In other words, a syndicalist society would be a sort of capitalism run by the unions.

Hatta argued that the basic units of an anarchist society could not be industrial unions but only "communes", or local communities where real links of solidarity could exist between people and which would combine agriculture and small-scale industry so as to be able to satisfy all their needs. Hatta evisaged these having to be self-sufficient, but why? He forced himself into arguing this unreasonable and unnecessary position because of his mistaken belief thar any permanent administrative structure beyond local level (such as one that might facilitate local communities having free access to the materials and goods they did''t produce) would provide the basis for a new ruling class. Why should it if everybody had free access to what they needed and those who staffed it had no armed force at their disposal?

As to how he envisaged a communist society coming about, his views were even more wildly wrong than the general strike of the traditional syndicalists. He advocated the so-called "creative violence" of an anarchist minority which would, supposedly, arouse the peasant and worker masses to spontaneously express their "natural anarchism". In other words, he lived up to the popular caricature of anarchists as bomb-throwers. In doing so he overlooked that minority violence can never lead to a free society, only to repression by the existing State or the rule of a new minority. For communism (or socialism) to be established, as Crump points out, the mass of the prople must understand the nature and purpose of the new society. Such democratically-organised majority action, we would add, need not be violent and can use existing political institutions such as the ballot-box and parliament. Who needs violence when you're the majority?

Adam Buick

There is a Japanese language page on World Socialism on MySpace that you can access here.