Beyond the Rainbow: Overcoming Dogma and Confusion in the Articulation of Revolutionary Theory and Practice

Larry Portis

Overcoming Dogma and Confusion in Revolutionary Theory and Practice: Red and Black in Historical Perspective

A central question in contemporary revolutionary thinking is how to draw the best from past experience while overcoming political reflexes tied to debates that no longer (or should no longer) exist. Historical knowledge is absolutely necessary for informed thinking and acting, but partial historical understanding can perpetuate doctrinal disputes that further limit and rigidify perspectives. At the same time, partial knowledge of individual motivations— especially our own—can amplify the effects of the ignorance and confusion in which everyone participates in some way.

From this perspective, it is necessary to confront the motive bases of dogma and confusion. By dogma I mean defined and received certainties that are often founded in personal insecurities but projected onto perceived adversaries or heretics. Confusion may be best defined as misunderstandings that arise from either lack of knowledge or understanding, and that tend to be reinforced by individual interests and their conscious or unconscious defense. The history of the “Red and Black”[568] current of political praxis—theory and practice—is perhaps the best example of how dogma and confusion have limited the effectiveness of revolutionary struggle since the mid-nineteenth century.

The “Red and Black” refers to a revolutionary political current or tendency defined in relation to what is generally taken to be, on the one hand, “Marxism” and, on the other, “anarchism.” And here is much of the problem: a supposed conflict between two doctrinal tendencies has largely hidden from view the existence of an alternative current that has attempted to draw upon all expressions of transcendent social philosophy and action. There is, indeed, a fundamental division of the revolutionary movement, but it is a division that exists artificially in that it has been willed into existence and has obstructed perception and knowledge of alternatives. There is, in fact, no reason to juxtapose in a binary way what Red and Black represent. In reality, there is no implicit contradiction in a nuanced synthesis of the most directly democratic and egalitarian ideas and practices called into existence by opposition to the industrial capitalist system.

Historical origins

This division of the revolutionary left into “Marxist” and “anarchist” camps might be called the “Great Misunderstanding.” As it is well known, the idea and reality of such a division emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century, splitting the movement calling for a free, egalitarian social relations into two parts, each with its own symbols, hallowed texts and authority figures. The backdrop of this antagonism—called the “Great Schism” by James Joll—long preceded the clash between the “Marxists” and the “Bakuninists” in the early 1870s. The political strife manifest during the establishment of the First International Working Men’s Association was perhaps an inevitable development rooted in the multifaceted reaction against the growth of industrial capitalism that is most largely conceived of within the context of the Romantic Movement.

In other words, it was the “humanistic” rejection, on both emotional and intellectual grounds, of the de-humanizing civilization and mentalities produced by capitalist social relations that most fundamentally gave rise to modern revolutionary movements. Such activity expressed a will to go beyond existing social and mental structures towards those that would somehow liberate human creative potential and facilitate the “pursuit of human happiness.” In North America, for example, this general movement was rightly called “transcendentalist.”

To “transcend,” to accede to a qualitatively different state of being, is to realize revolutionary change. Throughout the nineteenth century, the social revolutionary dimension of this impulse became progressively more evident, and it was given inspiration and formulation by thinkers of the European Enlightenment of the previous century—Jean- Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, William Godwin, G.W.F. Hegel and others. However, ideas are one thing, and the realization of them is another. Attempts to realize—to create— free and equal social relations on a practical basis raise the most difficult questions of all.

The split between the Red and the Black is generally expressed as a disagreement over method, over the political strategy needed to accomplish the real transcendence of the capitalist system of production and the social relations necessary to it. To go beyond the localized experiments in communal living and working that were rightly (if derisively) called by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “utopian socialism”[569] implied the destruction of “actually existing” capitalism.

Genesis and evolution of the Great Misunderstanding

The thinkers at the origins of the Red and Black agreed as to the ultimate expression of transcendence of the capitalist mode of production and its corresponding civilization. But the way of transcendence was the problem. Even then, however, when Marx and Engels spoke of the “dictatorship” of the proletariat, it was not because they approved dictatorship as a mode of political governance or social control; it was rather to emphasize that the reign of social- class domination must be thoroughly eliminated. When Marx so cruelly ridiculed Pierre- Joseph Proudhon (in the Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy), it was not to say that Proudhon was an agent of the capitalist system, but rather to expose how what he perceived as idealist confusion is a dangerous foundation for an anti-capitalist revolutionary movement.

Still, we know that the conflict was more than this, even if these are its principled, philosophcal bases. If Marx believed that a proletarian revolution would be liberation from wage slavery and class domination, and if he dedicated his life to the struggle for this liberation, it is nevertheless clear that his personality was that of an authoritarian. And it is important to say it because, firstly, his authoritarian cast of mind combined with the perception that working-class revolution was imminent gave rise to the centralized, exclusionary power relations that Marx promoted in the First International. Secondly, in response, Mikhail Bakunin opposed what he called Marx’s “authoritarian communism” with what is, in effect, “libertarian socialism”—the idea that only the creation of autonomous, local administrative bodies can ensure non coercive social relations. For Bakunin, the strategy and tactics of revolutionary struggle must directly, that is to say immediately, contribute to the creation of non-authoritarian social relations.

What is remarkable to me, and I believe it relates fundamentally to our perception of the “red and black” current of revolutionary struggle, is how this split between the so-called “Marxists” and the so-called “Anarchists” has persisted to the present day. “Marxism” continues to be synonymous with authoritarian political practice, not only in the delusion of capitalist ideologists but also in the rhetoric of far-too-many self-proclaimed anarchists. This is the case in spite of the fact that Bakunin repeatedly expressed his greatest admiration for Marx’s analysis of the capitalist system in all its aspects. Bakunin, at least, was an anarchist who knew how to distinguish between theory and practice. But this confusion between the analytical, theoretical corpus of Marx’s intellectual work, on the one hand, and, on the other, his organizational intrigues, created unnecessary, but long-lasting barriers within the revolutionary movement. And the confusion between anti-capitalist analysis and political practice quickly congealed into sectarian ideologies.

There have been many prominent and less-prominent individuals who resisted the red or black dichotomy, and this resistance has been given important organizational expression. The will to transcend invidious notions limiting revolutionary struggle has, for example, been evident in the revolutionary syndicalism and more particularly in the Confederation generale du travail, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), in council communism, and in the work of “affinity groups” and “consensus” decision-making within some of the “new social movements,” especially those associated with radical environmental groups and anti “globalization” in general.

More broadly, however, it may be best to think of the history of the “Red and Black”—or “libertarian socialism” or “libertarian communism” or “anarcho-communism”—as a struggle within a struggle. There are two important questions in this regard. The first is: how and why has libertarian socialism taken so long to reach a larger militant public? The second is: what are the possibilities for the development of libertarian socialism in the future?

The acceptance of revolutionary libertarian socialism has been countered by two powerful forces: 1) the idea and reality of the nation state; 2) the idea and practice of authoritarian socialism, defined as political organization adopting hierarchical modes of functioning and decision-making. These latter are most prominently represented by those Leninist ones consequent to the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the U.S.S.R. Under the reign of Joseph Stalin, the idea of “socialism in one country” even combined, in practice at least, an expression of a kind of nationalism with a particular vision of social and political organization that was called socialism.[570]

However, even before the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, the possibility of appropriating of existing governance by an “avant-guard” political formation and the subsequent exercise of power was a widely held idea. Marxist dogma about the difference between “utopian socialism” and “scientific socialism” reinforced the expectation. By the same token, the debate between the Marists and the Narodniks in Russia in the 1880s tended to valorize the privileging of “objective,” “structural” and, thus, “scientific” factors over the types of human agency privileged by the Russian Populists. In the context of nineteenth- century European culture, the positivistic, “scientistic” character of Marx’s intellectual work (but especially that of those people he so influenced—the “Marxists”) had a distinct advantage over more prosaically practical or common-sensical visions of revolutionary social change. The practical exigencies of class struggle seemed to require rigorous organization and discipline, including a clear hierarchy of leadership. This perception lent force to the more authoritarian mind-set seemingly made necessary by the ferocity of the counter-revolutionary forces.[571]

The dominance of authoritarian socialism lasted precisely one century, from the creation of the Second Socialist International to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. As long as the Soviet Union existed, the Third and Fourth Communist internationals remained powerful machines for recruitment and indoctrination in the pursuit of authoritarian revolutionary socialism.

During this century, there was little debate between the proponents of libertarian and authoritarian revolutionary socialism. The Leninists, like Marx, did not attempt to reason with their opponents on the revolutionary Left, but rather worked to destroy them, to discredit them by any and all means. Even within Leninist parties, the techniques of humiliation, forced submission, exclusion and, if need be, physical modes of “liquidation” were standard operating procedure. Within such a movement, the “humanistic” impulse was bound to become an object of scorn and relegated to the category of “bourgeois” mentality.

Ideals and authoritarian socialism: Dialectics of “Bad Faith”

Historical developments seem to indicate that hierarchical political structures— revolutionary in intent or not—lead to manipulations and forms of social and political domination. Institutionalized, formalized control over others develops that is invidious to the emergence of healthy social relations.

There is a mechanism here that leads to (or contributes to) what Jean-Paul Sartre called la mauvaise foi—that “bad faith” that justifies the use of others for selfish reasons that is masked as altruism. In other words, one’s own self-interested motives are transformed, in one’s own mind, into the most selfless ideals. They are then presented to others in this guise.

“Bad faith” is not peculiar to the capitalist system or to reactionary politics. It is a psychic mechanism of people who, for a variety of reasons, have not learned to pursue their personal projects or to present themselves as individuals openly, without resorting to misrepresentation. Instead of confronting positively inter-personal differences or interests, this personal weakness is compensated for by the manipulation of others.

It is important to understand that the exercise of bad faith cannot be a totally unconscious process. The major distinction here is that conscious deception is more than hypocrisy; it is lying. In contrast, bad faith is situated somewhere between consciously deceitful, calculated deception (lying) on the one hand, and the hypocritical blindness characteristic of narcissistic egoism on the other. As Sartre says, bad faith is a continual vacillation between self-delusion and the terror of understanding and, consequently, self-reproach.[572] It is this uneasiness, this malaise, which reinforces the will to dominate others by any and all means. It is a failure to confront the contradiction between self-interest and professed motivations that produces (or contributes to) the authoritarian pathologies that can be associated with Leninism.[573]

From a phenomenological or psychoanalytical perspective, therefore, we are in the presence of political mechanism produced by the psychic consequences of hierarchical social relations, those inherent in both feudal and capitalist systems. But this type of character formation has the effect of reinforcing non-egalitarian social relations. Character weaknesses and emotional immaturity, involving low self-esteem, passivity and submissiveness to authority, even when compensated for by rebellious poses and attitudes, can lie behind authoritarian casts of mind.

The political consequences of character and personality formation can be a serious problem in political activity and decision-making. Subjectively, and within a “progressive” milieu, the desire to democratize social relations is often used as a means to dominate other people in order to liberate them. Objectively (or “sociologically”) speaking, however, the effect is to replicate the existing social relations necessary to the perpetuation of domination and exploitation.

Again, it must be insisted that, on the revolutionary political Left, this will to dominate is rarely cynical. Rather, it is explained to the self as well as to others as necessary in the pursuit of a social ideal. But it is a psychic house of cards that is fragile. Bad faith is in continual danger of self-revelation, which is why any attempt to call attention to its weaknesses brings forth the most violent and merciless retaliation. So dominant was this paranoid, desperate and arrogant mindset on the revolutionary political Left that many involved with libertarian socialism have been, also, seriously afflicted by it.

Towards a reassertion of a “Red and Black” revolutionary praxis

After one century of enormous influence over the expression of revolutionary thought and practice in the western industrial capitalist countries, the dominance of authoritarian socialism no longer exists. And this is why the potential for the “Red and Black,” for libertarian socialism, is now greater than ever.

Over the past several decades, the once strong Communist parties have largely collapsed, and support for other Marxist-Leninist organizations has also dramatically dwindled. In contrast, it is true that, for more than thirty years, the most dynamic critique of capitalism has been, in some way—Green. We have come to understand that environmental destruction is an inescapable sign of the humanly dysfunctional essence of the capitalist system. But the limitations of the environmental, anti-corporate movement are also manifest, and it seems equally clear that environmentalism, as a reform program, is no solution to the problem posed by the capitalist system of production.

What is needed is a generalized recognition of how a non-authoritarian, anti-capitalist perspective has developed over the past century and a half, and how it can offer a solution to the class-based, short-sighted logic inherent in capitalist production. This is the analysis and world view—that drawing from the works of all revolutionary writers and actors who have elucidated and combated this system—that must now be presented as the revolutionary position most capable of inspiring real democratic—libertarian and egalitarian—change. The history and contemporary relevance of this understanding, this existing tradition, must rise out of obscurity, out of the recesses of revolutionary theory and practice, and be shown to be the most ethnically coherent, analytically refined, and socially healthy orientation produced by resistance to the rise and decline of the capitalist system.

This is what we must refer to, but to whom should we refer? We all have contributions to make to this historic task. And we all have ideas about who has been important in the elaboration of libertarian socialism. My experience, partial as it is, has led me to some consider what I believe are important experiences or figures in this movement. Here are a few of them.

First on my short list is William Morris, because his appropriation and active propagation of both Marxian analysis and libertarian principles, on the one hand, and his integration of esthetic concerns and environmentalist sensitivities is more than relevant to contemporary conditions. Morris’ focus on how industrialism capitalism devastated the human habitat for the vast majority of people, and how that devastation contributes to the destruction of human spirituality is, perhaps, a contribution that is far-too-neglected. And it is one that needs greater elaboration. In addition, in my opinion, Morris’ News from Nowhere, for example, breaks down the invidious distinction between “utopian” and “scientific” socialist perspectives.

Next, my reading of Georges Sorel has convinced me that his contribution to anticapitalist thinking has either been misunderstood or consciously maligned, and that his place in the evolution of the Red and Black is essential. Sorel was one of the earliest to insist, like Marx himself, that there was little in common between Marxian ideas and Marxist dogma, at least concerning revolutionary philosophy. This perception caused him to be one of the first to explore the complex philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of Marx’s thought. But it was an effort eclipsed both by slanderous interpretation on the part of capitalist ideologists and by the Bolshevik revolution and its lamentable effect on revolutionary thought in general.

Most importantly, For Georges Sorel, as for William Morris, the object of revolutionary struggle is, or should be, the engendering of values—morality in this sense—that contribute to the acceptance of social solidarity and individual creativity. Egalitarian revolution means overcoming the deference towards authority generated by hierarchy and social-class domination. It means liberation in the Wilhelm-Reichian sense, of a society of psychically free individuals, tolerant of others, recognizing their own limitations, and yet confident in their own creative potential.

This stress on the Revolution as a moral transformation—one that forges values through political struggle—can easily be derided as “bourgeois humanism”—which is perhaps why Goerge Orwell referred to “bourgeois morality” as “common decency,” or why C.L.R. James placed high value on a “sense of fair play.” Orwell understood that the epithet “bourgeois” is simply part of that totalitarian cant that must be exposed as such.

Another major example of the transcendence of the Great Misunderstanding in the evolution of revolutionary theory and practice is the experience of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). There must be a reason (and there is) why the I.W.W. continues to enjoy the admiration, even the adulation, of revolutionaries coming from both the libertarian and authoritarian ranks. But what is particularly striking is how so many disillusioned people from Leninist backgrounds became (and have become) nostalgic about the actions, the organization and especially the spirit of the famous Wobblies.[574]

There are many important examples of this passage from authoritarian to libertarian socialism: Victor Serge, Daniel Guerin, Daniel Anselme, Clancy Segal. And there are many people who always seemed to have avoided the Great Misunderstanding, such as Franklin and Penelope Rosemont, Georges Fontenis, Rene Lefeuve...

It seems clear to me that both Leninist and reformist socialism have reached a dead end, that they are in a state of complete decomposition. One indication is that there are now Marxist mandarins, still enjoying the advantages of political and publishing networks, who are attempting to shift towards the libertarian left, but without joining what they call the “ultra-left.”

The problem is that “Red and Black”—revolutionary, libertarian socialism, anarcho- communism—is the “ultra-Left.” To make the shift—this political transition, means abandoning the habit of intellectual domination and the smearing of opponents. It means becoming aware of how this elitist approach to knowledge and its uses—that cultivated especially in universities and political parties—is destructive of real political consciousness and of individual creativity. It means breaking with the idolatry proper to movements based on the faith inspired by the cult of the leader—whether Marx or Lenin or Trotsky or Mao or Che Guevara or Bakunin or Durruti.

This is the meaning and the promise of the Red and Black. These, the only revolutionary elements of Marxian and Anarchist thinking and practice, cannot be dead, because the capitalist system engenders their very existence.