This article appeared in Rivoluzione Internazionale N°117 (October-November 2000). Rivoluzione Internazionale is the bi-monthly paper of the (Left Communist) International Communist Current in Italy.

The translation is my own.

Marxism or Anarchism?

Which of the two offers a concrete prospective for changing society?

 Last May, in Milan and Naples, the ICC held public meetings with the theme: “Marxism or Anarchism - which of the two offers a concrete prospective for changing society?”  We chose this theme because since the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a result of ruling-class propaganda according to which Marxism is finished, an impossible dream or which, worse still, equates Stalinist state capitalism with Communism, many people who rebel against the present social system and who want to take action, have been attracted to Anarchism, in the belief that this alone can offer opposition to capitalism. This is an idea which is strongly encouraged by the bourgeoisie, as anarchism can offer no prospects for a real revolutionary transformation of society, but rather serves to trap those who oppose the present state of affairs in a struggle which has no hope of success.

The theoretical weakness of anarchism allows it to become an explicit support mechanism in the bourgeois campaign on the death of communism, as was demonstrated by the intervention of one anarchist at the Naples meeting, who said that it was Marxism that had failed because it had not been able to achieve social transformation, whereas anarchy had at least conducted an experiment which created “communist social relations” in the anarchist collectives of Spain in 1936. This point of view reveals an important inability to understand the revolutionary process in which seizing power from the bourgeoisie constitutes the first indispensable step in the destruction of capitalism. The fact that the Russian Revolution was defeated and was followed by Stalinist counterrevolutionary terror does not mean that every attempt on the part of the proletariat to destroy capitalism must inevitably lead to failure and degeneration. Rather, it shows that the ruling class fights tooth and nail against any attempt by the working class to realize its revolutionary potential and that the working class can only win through the greatest possible clarity on the objects and aims of the struggle. And in order to avoid new defeats in the future, one point on which there must be absolute clarity is precisely the nature of the collectives in Spain in 1936, which anarchists present as a model for the revolution. These communities were nothing else than the management by workers of enterprises in a capitalist society which served the interests of the Spanish bourgeoisie and forced the workers to accept ever-growing exploitation for the benefit of a greater effort in the imperialist war. These communities operated within the framework and logic of capitalism and played an indispensable role in blocking the workers off from the road to the destruction of the capitalist state. This is the social prospect offered by anarchy – a right to free administration and an increase in self-exploitation.

The purpose of the public meetings on Marxism and Anarchy was therefore to show that only the method of historical materialism and the revolutionary struggle of the working class can lead to the death of capitalism, whereas the anarchist method can at best offer the possibility of protesting in a sterile way against the evils of bourgeois society without offering a real alternative and, at worst, ends up by going along with bourgeois domination.

We welcome the fact that a significant number of anarchists took part in the meetings to defend their point of view, which allowed us to have a lively and interesting discussion which raised several questions of prime importance in the search for political clarity. We would like to echo here one important question which arose from the discussions at the Milan meeting – the importance of fighting against the social system, keeping in mind the context of the struggle to avoid falling into the traps laid by the bourgeoisie.

On this point, the difference between the Marxist view and the Anarchist view was illustrated particularly well by the contribution of one participant who described himself as an anarchist sympathizer. He compared the Italian situation to that of the Basque region where, in his opinion, there is an almost pre-revolutionary situation with immense demonstrations which mobilize massed forces from extremist nationalists to extremist internationalists. He added that in order to better develop the struggle we should forget our differences and fight together.

The error here lies in judging the value of the movement in terms of the number of people involved in the protest, as if any mass demonstration were positive per se, independent of its political content. The reality is different. The first and most important question to ask is – what are the objectives of the movement? What are the political interests it pursues? The demonstrations in the Basque region are in support of Basque nationalism, a cause which can only be in the interests of the capitalist class and the struggle for political power between bourgeois factions. In fact, independence  for this geographical area can bring no changes in the living conditions of the working class. The comrade who brought up this point should explain how it is possible for a struggle which represents solely the interests of the ruling class to be able in some way to be used against the system represented by that same class. On the contrary, the presence in these demonstrations of various social layers, workers included, indicates that the bourgeoisie has been able to mobilize them in the defence of its own reactionary plans, and it is the responsibility of revolutionaries to denounce this fact, keeping in mind that the revolutionary consciousness can only be developed on the basis of political clarity of the real prospects of the struggle and the ability to identify and reject the manoeuvrings of the capitalist class.

The call to struggle in itself, without reference to its objectives and its prospects, was also referred to by other anarchists at the Milan meeting with regard to other questions. One asked how we could sleep soundly in our beds at night when there are neo-nazis roaming the streets, and said that we must defend ourselves against them. He added that in simply stating that Fini¹ and D’Alema² are both part of the same bourgeois class, that the left is no better than the right, we end up doing nothing. Another expressed the same idea in relation to the resistance movement³ during World War II, in which anarchists participated, while the Left Communists assumed the internationalist stance of supporting none of the combatants in the imperialist conflict. What both arguments have in common is that opposition to one bourgeois fraction leads to the defence of another fraction. The example of World War II is particularly clear – the desire to struggle against the fascist regimes of the Axis powers led anarchists to participate actively in the Allied war effort through the resistance movement. The insistence on the necessity to fight the “neo-fascists” of today, following the same logic, leads to support for the bourgeois left. But we ask again – is it possible to fight the social system by supporting the class that represents this system? Choosing to participate indiscriminately in any struggle that seems to be of an antithetical nature on the basis that doing something is better than doing nothing, means only that you end up fighting on the side of the enemy.

At the root of this confusion, there is the inability to see that there is a revolutionary dynamic in society, whose social subject is the working class, and that only by adopting the point of view of this class can we understand when to support a social movement because it has the potentiality for a radicalization of the revolutionary process and when to condemn it and denounce it because it only serves to mystify the conscience and lend support to the hold of the ruling class on power. As far as anarchy is concerned, the strength which can give rise to a transformation of society can be seen in the “people” acting collectively en masse. But in reality there is no such body, given that society is made up of classes which have conflicting interests. On the level of struggle, what could possibly unite the bourgeoisie, whose interests are the defence of the system of exploitation of the proletariat and the continuation of its social domination over the whole of society, and the proletariat, whose interests lie in the struggle against the exploitation they endure and the destruction of the bourgeois social system? What direction could a common movement of the two classes possibly take? What coherent objectives could it possibly have? In fact, what always happens in inter-class movements is that the status quo rules, the bourgeois framework remains intact and renders the movement impotent or reactionary, precisely because the bourgeoisie is the ruling class and because the ability to break with the old mindsets can only derive from the autonomous action of the only class in society which has the capacity to put an end to this system.

A.S.

10^th September 2000

 Notes.

1.   Gianfranco Fini, leader of the main right-wing party in Italy, Alleanza Nazionale (“ex-fascist”).

2.   Massimo D’Alema, ex-prime minister and leader of the main centre-left party in Italy, Democratici di Sinistra (ex-Partito comunista italiano).

3.   In Italy.