Bakunin and Marx on the Paris Commune: Grounds for a synthesis between Anarchism and Marxism?

Philip O’Sullivan

Introduction

In this paper I will examine one critical element of the contested relationship between anarchism and Marxism. Among others, I am chiefly concerned with arguments by two writers, Paul Thomas and Daniel Guerin, who have focused specifically on this topic and whose work in this area presents a clear axis from which to examine again these historically hostile ideologies (Thomas, 1980; Guerin, 1970, 1988 and 1989). Thomas critiqued anarchism from Marx’s perspective and denies that anarchism and Marxism merge and while he produces an extremely thorough analysis of their relationship, he comes down strongly in favor of Marx. Thomas argues that any similarities between Marxism and Anarchism are, in his metaphor of light and shadows, not an overlap or convergence, but merely a penumbra. For Thomas while they are related, these are two intrinsically separate and distinct political thought systems (Thomas, 1980, p.2). Adopting a contrary position, Guerin has ambitiously tried to create a synthesis from the more libertarian elements of Marxism with anarchism. Guerin is much more sympathetic to the anarchists, especially Proudhon and Bakunin. Driven by the possibilities of a libertarian communism which he considers could result from such a synthesis, Guerin bases his argument on the historical Paris Commune of 1871 and the works by Bakunin and Marx directly inspired by that event, Bakunin’s The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State and Marx’s The Civil War in France. While Guerin considers Bakunin’s The Paris Commune is consistent with his earlier work and represents what he calls the distillation of libertarian socialism, Guerin claims that The Civil War in France differs significantly from Marx’s earlier work and ‘compares exceptionally well to Bakunin’s writings’ (Guerin, 1988, p.167).

In support of Guerin, Noam Chomsky argues there remains the potential for anarchism to shape Marxist theory positively – that in many ways anarchism is the key to a more libertarian Marx. Chomsky has argued that ‘the constructive ideas of anarchism retain their vitality, that they may, when reexamined and sifted, assist contemporary socialist thought to undertake a new departure ... [and] ... contribute to enriching Marxism’ (Guerin, cited by Chomsky, 1970, p.xviii). Chomsky approvingly quotes the anarchist historian Rudolf Rocker who says that anarchism insists that ‘socialism will be free or it will not be at all. In its recognition of this lies the genuine and profound justification for the existence of anarchism’ (Chomsky, 1970, p.xii). From this point of view, adds Chomsky, anarchism may be regarded as the libertarian wing of socialism. This potentially enriching role for anarchism as suggested by Chomsky represents an appropriate point of departure to further examine the relationship between anarchism and Marxism.

1. The Case for a Synthesis: Some Common ground

Firstly, the obvious needs stating, though neither Marx or Bakunin were involved in the Paris Commune itself, nor directly influenced its events or leading protagonists, yet the Commune is ‘claimed’ by both sides.

We must bear in mind when we invest so much store and import in the history and theories of Marxism and anarchism, that as Cole has pointed out, ‘the Commune arose, not because a compact body of revolutionary Socialists had planned it in advance, as the model organization for a new Socialist society, but because events dictated its circumstances’ (Cole, 1954, p. 148). Cole provides a useful, sober historical account, noting that ‘there had been no clear idea of the Commune as a new kind of workers’ State, resting on proletarian dictatorship or on any other bass other than that of free, equal and universal manhood [male] suffrage’ and that as the commune was the traditional unit of local administration, indeed ‘France was made up of local communes; and every opponent of centralized State power naturally thought of the commune as the point of focus for a rival power emanating directly from the people. The Paris Commune because a body primarily representing the working classes only because the respectable classes either fled from Paris or elected representatives who, hostile to the Revolution, refused to serve’ (Cole, 1954, p. 148).[321]

Yet it nevertheless remains a shared touchstone and we do not have to accept Guerin’s case for synthesis to concede that, in broad terms, anarchists and Marxists do indeed hold much in common. Even Thomas concedes Bakunin and Marx had much in common and lists five similarities as both: believed in the primacy of economic ‘base’ over political ‘superstructure’; wished to overthrow capitalism and were engaged upon working as active revolutionaries to this end; were socialists and collectivists, opposed to bourgeois individualism; were bitterly at odds with religion, and finally, both had a veneration for natural science (Thomas, 1980, p. 297).

David Miller also noted that both were severely critical of the capitalist economy, bourgeois society, and the liberal state. Indeed, anarchists and Marxists ‘willingly borrowed from each other, anarchists absorbing the Marxian critique of capitalism and Marxists the anarchist exposure of liberal politics (Miller, 1984, pp. 78–9). As Guerin has shown, Marxists and anarchists share a common origin drawing inspiration first of all from the French Revolution and then specifically from the efforts of French workers in 1840 who started to organize themselves and struggle against capitalist exploitation (Guerin, 1989, pp. 118–119). There was a general strike of building trades in Paris in 1840 and soon workers were producing their newspapers such as L’Atelier. In 1840 Proudhon published What Is Property? and in 1844 Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts which were partly a result of his visit to the Paris workers and the impression they made on him. ‘Thus anarchism and Marxism, at the start, drank from the same proletarian spring’ (Guerin, 1989, p. 119). Under the pressure of the newly born working class Guerin maintains that they assigned to themselves the same final aim, that of overthrowing the capitalist state and giving the wealth of society, that is the means of production, to the workers themselves.

Citing David Apter, Thomas asserts that anarchism ‘combines a socialist critique of capitalism with a liberal critique of socialism.’ For Thomas however, such a combination is bound to be tense and ‘it is not surprising that anarchism, which emerged as a movement in the nineteenth century alongside socialism and Marxism, was not always ...in tandem with socialism and Marxism.’ Many of its doctrinal features point further back, through the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century into the liberal tradition (Thomas, 1980, p.7). I will develop this link to Enlightenment thought further below.

2. Why Compare and the Dangers of Comparative Analysis

This common origin meant that anarchism and Marxism developed in contrast to and alongside each other. Miller argues that the point of comparing anarchism with Marxism is not merely to discover interesting contrasts. He maintains that anarchist ideas cannot be properly understood unless seen as shaped in direct opposition to the ideas of Marx and his followers (Miller, 1984, p. 78). However, we must be careful with comparisons, generalizations and universalizing. April Carter properly warns that, while the vision of what an anarchist society would be like has been indicated by Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin – who all defined their positions in opposition to Marx’s socialism – any comparison with Marxism is full of difficulties because of the diversity of the anarchist tradition and the complexity of Marxism as it has evolved. But I also agree with Carter and take it as read when she adds that, as anarchism has been engaged in a conscious critique of Marxism for over 150 years, such comparison is relevant (Carter, 1971, p. 60).

This critique started when Proudhon first wrote to Marx over one hundred and sixty years ago. Yet it has not been a one-sided debate but clearly a dialogue – Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy in direct response to Proudhon and his marginal comments made while reading Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy have survived. Anarchism has remained a constantly critical of Marxism, ever since. Indeed, only since the bloody battles in Spain in 1936 can the fight between anarchists and Marxists be in any sense considered ‘academic.’

Whilst acknowledging that these two theories had a common origin it is also important we do not accept that the only thing that separated them was disagreement over practical method. Such disagreements were manifestations of fundamental theoretical differences (Miller, 1984, p.79). They had, for example: different philosophies of history; different views of the role of the State; different analysis of class; different views of the nation state and nationalism; different views on the relationship between rural and city life and lastly, (but this list is not intended to be exhaustive) they differed fundamentally on the legitimacy of forms of political participation, on voting and representation.

It is generally held that such theoretical differences led necessarily, therefore, to disputes over the use of political methods to bring about a social revolution. This debate is usually reduced to the mantra that while anarchists and Marxists had the same goals their means for achieving those goals were different, this is what I call the ‘shared goals thesis.’

From a Marxist perspective, Thomas disagrees with the argument that Marx and his anarchist critics shared the same ends – opposition to the state – and only disagreed on the means, or the tactics. For Thomas, neither Marx nor the anarchists, particularly in the First International, were inclined to separate means from ends in so absolute a fashion. Both sides acknowledged the very real stakes involved in any seeming ‘tactical’ resolution about organization; they were the shape of future society. Thomas argues that both Marx and Bakunin saw the International, and I would add here by extension, the Paris Commune, not only as the embodiment of the revolutionary movement as it then existed, but also a presentiment – quite possibly the presentiment – of future society which would be stamped by its origins. This joint perception was not a measure of their agreement, but the source of an increasingly bitter hostility, as they themselves were at pains to point out (Thomas, 1980, pp.13- 14).

While I will contend that this ‘shared goals’ analysis simplifies the anarchist position and does not reflect the force and full range of their critique, Miller is correct when he says that the anarchists demand that ‘the stateless society must be pre-figured in the revolutionary strategy used to attain it,’ that ‘means and ends have to be congruent’ (Miller, 1984, p.79). Arthur Lehning similarly paraphrases Bakunin’s doubts that the dictatorship of the proletariat would lead to socialism: ‘He advocated socialist (i.e., libertarian) means in order to achieve a socialist (i.e., libertarian) society’ (Lehning, 1973, p. 27). It is this element which primarily divides anarchists from Marxists. This explains Bakunin’s oft-repeated phrase that freedom can only be created by freedom. (In Rocker’s words: ‘Socialism must be free or it must not be at all.’) For Bakunin, the revolutionary end cannot be justified by the means; both ends and means must be congruent.

3. Possible synthesis between Marxism and Anarchism?

The possibility of a synthesis is not a new idea and the similarities are obvious to many commentators. For example, Sam Dolgoff notes that like Marx, Bakunin emphasized the importance of the economic factor in social revolution and that some of Marx’s own earlier writings concerning freedom, alienation, and the State ‘could well have been produced by an anarchist; and many “Marxist humanists” have tried to use these writings to show that Marx really was a libertarian. Typical in this regard is Herbert Marcuse’s assertion that “Once the humanistic idea is seen... as the very substance of Marx’s theory, the deep-rooted libertarian and anarchistic elements of Marxian theory come to life’ (Dolgoff, 2002 [1972], pp. 5–6).

Guerin has argued that the aftermath the Paris Commune can possibly show how a merging might be possible when we compare Bakunin’s The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State with Marx’s The Civil War in France (Guerin, 1988, pp.167–170). Guerin says Bakunin’s text contains nothing unusual and is quite consistent with his earlier writings. In it we find what Guerin calls the distillation of libertarian socialism. By contrast, his argument is that there is more to surprise us in the Address drafted by Marx on behalf of the General Council of the Workers’ International to which both followers of Marx and Bakunin belonged at the time. ‘It differs noticeably from Marx’s writings of before and after 1871, and compares exceptionally well to Bakunin’s writings. We can look at it as one of the very few bridges established between Marxism and anarchism, as one of the very few attempts at a synthesis of ‘authoritarian’ with libertarian thought’ (Guerin, 1988, p.167).

The basis of this argument is straightforwardly textual. Guerin tells us that in The Civil War in France Marx overhauled certain passages of the 1848 Communist Manifesto in which he and Engels had set out their ideal of proletarian revolution in stages. The first stage would be the capture of political power thanks to which, “little by little,” the means of production, the means of transportation and credit would be centralized in the hands of the State. Only at the end of a protracted evolution, once class conflicts would have vanished and public authority been rid of its political character, would the whole of production be concentrated, not in State hands now, but in the hands of “associated individuals”: in this libertarian style of association, the unfettered development of each would be the precondition for the free development of all.

But Bakunin was conversant with the Communist Manifesto in the German original since 1848 and had not missed an opportunity to criticize the splitting of the revolution into two stages, the first of which would still be emphatically statist. Under the pressure of events and Bakunin’s criticisms, argues Guerin, Marx and Engels felt a need to amend their overly statist thinking of 1848. Thus, in a foreword (June 24, 1872) to a new edition of the Manifesto, they conceded that ‘in many respects,’ they would now ‘rephrase’ the passage in question from the 1848 text. Remarkably, in support of any such redrafting they cited ‘the practical experiences, first of the February [1848] revolution, then, to a much greater extent, of the Paris Commune, when, for the first time, the proletariat held political power in its hands over a two-month period’ concluding ‘All of which means that, in places, this program is no longer up to the minute. The Commune in particular has supplied proof that the working class cannot rest content with taking possession of existing machinery of the State in order to place it in the service of its own aims.’ The 1871 Address also announces that the Commune has ‘discovered at last, the political formula whereby the economic emancipation of labor can be brought about’ (Guerin, 1988, p.168).

In support of his argument, Guerin cites Lehning who stressed the contradiction between the ideas in the Address and all of Marx’s other writings: ‘The essential principle of the Commune, according to Marx, was that political centralization of the State had to be replaced by self-government of the producers, by a federation of autonomous communes to which had to be afforded.... the initiative hitherto devolved to the State’ (Guerin, 1988, p.169). The significance of Marx’s writing of The Civil War is transparent: ‘The Civil War fully contradicts the other Marxist writings where the withering away of the State is concerned. The Paris Commune did not centralize the means of production into State hands. The goal of the Paris Commune was not to let the State ‘wither away’ but rather to banish it immediately ... The annihilation of the State was not the inevitable conclusion to a dialectical historical process, of a higher stage of society, itself shaped by a higher form of production.’

For Guerin, Marx has conceded everything Bakunin argued for on the issue of the role of the State after a revolution ‘The Paris Commune obliterated the State, without fulfilling a single one of the conditions which Marx had previously stipulated as prefacing its abrogation ... The Commune’s defeat of the bourgeois State had not been designed to install another State in its place.... Its aim was not to found some new State machinery, but rather to replace the State by organizing society on economic and federalist foundations ... In the Civil War [the Address], there is no mention of “withering away,” but rather of immediate and utter extirpation of the State”’ (Guerin, 1988, p.170). In a similar vein Michael Levin admits that in third part of the Address Marx ‘seemed to moving the way of his opponents Proudhon and Bakunin’ and ‘that Marx was attempting the delicate balancing act of opposing the state without favoring anarchism’ (Levin, 1989, p.115).

But Guerin accepts there is nevertheless disagreement between the scholars of the two camps, much depends on what interpretation of Marx this form of anarchism or libertarian socialism is compared against. Lehning, who regards Marx as ‘authoritarian,’ alleges that the Address is a ‘foreign body’ in Marxist socialism, whereas someone else, on the other hand, eager to discover a ‘libertarian’ in Marx, contends that Marxian thought found in the Address its ‘definitive form.’ So depending on your point of view, this work by Marx is either explained due to pressing historical and tactical necessity (not forgetting the real pressure of publishing quickly), or in actual fact, a clear glimpse of the true libertarian Marx.

Even allowing for interpretations of an ‘authoritarian’ or ‘libertarian’ Marx, it is difficult to deny that after the Paris Commune Marx and Engels changed position on the theory of revolution in their preface to the Communist Manifesto, and that Bakunin was aware of this change. Perhaps the best defenders of Marx can do is actually agree with Lehning, who for his own reason does not want to admit to the idea of a more libertarian Marx, that, in the Address Marx temporarily and uncharacteristically let his heart rule his head, and then later back tracked from this position. However, I have some sympathy with Guerin when he says that in striving to work out some theoretical synthesis between anarchism and Marxism, ‘the Address of 1871 has to be regarded as a starting-point, a prime facie demonstration that it is feasible to reconcile fruitfully the two strands of thought, the authoritarian and the libertarian’ (Guerin, 1988, p.170). This project however, is not without its critics on both sides.

4. Marxists Against a Synthesis

For Thomas all anarchist convictions can be summed up under the rubric of ‘the removal of obstacles from some vision of the good life. It is this imperative that links anarchism to the liberal tradition, and most particularly to the Enlightenment — the more so since the obstacle in question are seen, first and foremost, as political obstructions that need to be overthrown’ (Thomas, 1980, p. 8).

Intriguingly, Thomas’ description of the lineage of anarchist thought is strikingly similar to Chomsky’s account. Chomsky says that if one were to seek a single leading idea in the anarchist tradition, he believes it to be that expressed by Bakunin’s description of liberty in The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State. Chomsky argues that these ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt’s Limits of State Action, Kant’s insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. He claims that with the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, ‘it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order’ (Chomsky, 2005, [1970] p.122).

Chomsky always places great value on Humboldt’s, The Limits of State Action, which he claims anticipated and perhaps inspired Mill. Completed in 1792 and profoundly, though prematurely, anti-capitalist, Chomsky maintains that this vision by Humboldt of a society in which social fetters are replaced by social bonds and labor is freely undertaken also suggests the early Marx, with his discussion of the ‘alienation of labor ...depriving man of his ‘species character’ of ‘free conscious activity’’ and ‘productive life.’ Similarly, continues Chomsky, Marx conceives of ‘a new type of human being who needs his fellow men ... [The workers’ association becomes] the real constructive effort to create the social texture of future human relations.’ Classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association. Therefore, capitalist relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, the ideology of ‘possessive individualism’’ all must be regarded as fundamentally antihuman. This leads Chomsky to conclude that ‘Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.’

Yet, for Thomas, Enlightenment speculation about politics is not all the same, the aspect it turns towards anarchism, that of negative liberty and of a certain disdain for power is not the only face it has to present. Basing his argument on a completely different reading of Rousseau than Chomsky’s Rousseau of the Discourse on Inequality, Thomas draws on Rousseau’s positive view of liberty and whose desire was not to minimize power but to admit the need for power legitimized as authority. Once legitimized, power is a promise, not a threat. [My emphasis]. Thomas argues it is important to that we [must] ‘recognize at the outset that it is Rousseau’s perception of the problem to which Marx, following Hegel, subscribes; and that:

[T]here is a divide, a watershed in Enlightenment thinking about power, authority and politics. Marx is one side of it, the anarchists on the other. The difference is not simply genealogical but programmatic; it means that while the distinction between Marxism and anarchism is in a sense incomplete — this area of agreement is in the nature of a penumbra, an overlap, that is to say, and not a convergence. It is for this reason that what on the face of it might appear to be a broad area of agreement has done nothing to bring Marxism and anarchism closer together, in Marx’s lifetime or since (Thomas, 1980, p. 11.)

Thomas argues Marx’s legacy from Hegel is of crucial importance, and in short, for Thomas, unlike the anarchists, Marx does not wish to dispense with politics. He approvingly Marx ‘this ass cannot even understand that any class movement, as such is necessarily ... a political movement.’ We may suppose, says Thomas, (in a massive and deliberate understatement!), that Marx understood by the word ‘political’ something quite different from the anarchist definition.

5. Anarchists against Synthesis

It would be a serous error however, to think that it is only defenders of Marx like Thomas who object to the idea that Marxism and anarchism are perhaps compatible. The idea of a synthesis of these two rival ideologies is also anathema to the majority of anarchists who similarly implicitly or explicitly reject the Guerin and Chomsky synthesis line.

Paul McLaughlin persuasively argues that although Marx and Engels anticipated the eventual demise of politics and political power, the future communist society they envisaged was, for all the talk of the abolition or withering away of the state, in no sense an anarchist one (McLaughlin, 2002, pp. 76–82). Rather, the State was to be the post-revolutionary society’s sole indispensable institution. McLaughlin agues that the Marxist sublation of the state willfully misrepresents Marxian socialism as the true anarchism. McLaughlin quotes Marx: ‘What all socialists understand by anarchism is this: as soon as the goal of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, is attained, the power of the State ... will disappear and governmental functions will be transformed into simple administrative functions.’ Similarly, Engels wrote in the same year (1872) ‘All socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed in to simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society...’ (Cited in McLaughlin, 2002, p. 76).

Despite a formal nonpolitical nature, this post-revolutionary dictatorship can have, for Bakunin, no other objective than to perpetuate itself as a political State. So when Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto about raising the proletariat to the position of ruling class, McLaughlin argues that, ‘for Bakunin, this is the first and last step of Marxian revolution...’ (McLaughlin, 2002, p. 77). For McLaughlin’s, Marx’s State can never achieve ‘nonpolitical’ status as the transition required is impossible. Moreover, even if this transition were possible, the ‘nonpolitical’ status would be a myth as every State, including the nominal ‘administrative’ ones, would necessarily be class-ridden and therefore a political and coercive entity. The State, for Bakunin, must be political by definition, and the state administered society can never be classless. There must always be two classes at least, the administering and the administered — ‘the specter of bureaucracy haunting the specter of communism’ in Marx and Engels. According to McLaughlin, this is the context in which Bakunin rejects the Marxist ‘political’ state and why he maintains such a State can never be anything other than the ‘highly despotic government of the masses by a new and small aristocracy of real or pretended scholars.’

McLaughlin thus argues against the ultimate convergence of Marxian and anarchist ends. This apparent ‘shared goal’ theory is illusory and part of a specious anarchist façade adroitly constructed by Marx and Engels ‘to ward off the successive threats from their more radical rivals, the Anarchists.’ Many writers on anarchism, while acknowledging the influence of anarchism on Marxism in the formulation of apparent revolutionary ends, have failed to acknowledge ‘that the Marxist end is not anarchist at all’ and to acknowledge that Marxism and Bakuninian anarchism differ with respect to revolutionary ends as well as revolutionary means’ (Mclaughlin, 2002, p. 79).[322] Contrary to the ‘shared goal or ends’ thesis, McLaughlin stresses that what is in question is the theoretical debate about the State, and he maintains that the Marxian theory is Statist and therefore in no way anarchist on the grounds that ‘it embraces the state as a pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary means, and the post-revolutionary, post-transitional end.’ [Emphasis in original]. It is this notion of Marxism masquerading as anarchism that McLaughlin interprets as the motive force behind Bakunin’s critique of Marx’s statism. Because Marx’s economic egalitarianism lacks all sense of freedom, McLaughlin argues, Marx’s socialism cannot be properly considered anarchist.

For different reasons and from a different perspective, two other anarchist thinkers – George Woodcock and Alan Ritter also both reject the specific Guerin/Chomsky line. Woodcock, as Ruth Kinna noted, accused Guerin and Chomsky of ‘selecting from anarchism the elements that may serve to diminish the contradictions in Marxist doctrines’ and ‘abandoning the elements which do not serve their purpose. Their work enriched Marxism but impoverished anarchism’ (Kinna, 2005. p. 25). For Ritter, the error of those who claim that anarchists are socialists at heart stems from blindness toward their disagreement about the causal efficacy of the state qua state. Anarchism is not to be identified with socialism simplicitier as many socialists rely on legal government. Ritter notes that Chomsky cites socialists like Anton Pannekoek and William Paul who are at one with anarchists in finding the state antipathetic. Chomsky’s claim that anarchism should be classed as part of this ‘libertarian wing of socialism’ would only be correct Ritter argues, if the antipathy to legal government from libertarian socialists came from alarm about the effects of the state’s inherent attributes. But they are alarmed mainly by the effects of the state’s changeable characteristics, such as its organization or policies. The difference in the causal perspective from which they view the state puts socialists, however libertarian, a great distance away from anarchists. What libertarian socialists fear in the state is not the perpetuation of an unredeemable institution but its continued use as an oppressive instrument by a bureaucracy or a vanguard party. And what they envisage as a successor to the existing state is not a society freed of legal government but a society organized in Chomsky’s words ‘on truly democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace and in the community.’

So for Ritter libertarian socialists are not anarchists but democrats. ‘Hence any theory such as libertarian socialism which, far from excluding democratic institutions from its vision of the good society, regard them as indispensable, cannot possibly be called anarchist’ (Ritter, 1981, p. 131). Even between anarchists and socialists whose affinities are closest, there is a clear dividing line. When libertarian socialists denounce the present state as a tool of capitalism, call for workers’ councils, or attack elitism or bureaucracy, they may sound like anarchists, but the theory they depend on for reaching these conclusions is no form of anarchism at all.

6. Bakunin’s critique of Marx

Thus far, I have outlined Guerin’s argument for synthesis, based on his textual exegesis of The Civil War in France I have looked at the common ground between Marxism and anarchism, and also covered some of those key issues and ideas which separate them. I have considered the rival interpretations of those who, again, in both the Marxist and anarchist camps, reject the synthesis or convergence line to which Guerin aspires. While I applaud Guerin’s non- sectarian, nuanced and imaginative attempt, ultimately the textual foundation on which he bases his case is simply too narrow. I consider Bakunin’s wider critique of Marxism, while not regrettably free of some caricature, exaggeration and polemic (he was responding in kind to Marx), nevertheless still too broad, deep and convincing overall to put aside and construct or accept a synthesis on the basis of one text. It is to that broader critique of Marx by Bakunin, made principally between 1870 and 1872 to which I now turn.

Bakunin completely rejected the political road to revolution and criticized Marx’s ‘fatal preoccupation with making the political question a plank of the International, and a binding principle.’ He called on the workers of Germany, not their leaders, to join his side of the International ‘to raze those people’s prisons which are called States and to pass sentence on politics, which is in fact nothing but the art of subduing and fleecing the masses’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1872], p .239). The main issue between Bakunin and Marx and Engels was ‘the seizure of political power by the working class’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1872], p. 253). Bakunin sarcastically commented that it is understandable that ‘indispensable men like Herren Marx and Engels’ should support a program whose retention and advocacy of political power is an open invitation to ambition. The implications of this are clear for Bakunin. Since there is to be political power there will inevitably be subjects, albeit called citizens in a republic, but subjects all the same, and as such compelled to obey. This is important in Bakunin’s analysis as without obedience no power is possible. Such obedience for Bakunin ‘never means anything except submission to some custodial and governmental minority, in other words freedom to be slaves’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1872], p. 253).

Considerations of revolution do not end with just the act of revolt. There will still be an enormous task having survived the revolution ‘to make sure, the day after the people’s victory, that there is no establishment of any sort of State control over the people, even one that appears to be revolutionary itself, even yours – because all domination, whatever it might be called, would inevitably inflict the old slavery on the people in a new form.’ But having warned us what form the revolutionary organization must not take, what form it should it assume? Bakunin states that the chief aim and purpose of this organization should be to help the people towards self determination on the lines of the most complete equality and the fullest human freedom in every direction, but crucially adds the qualifier ‘without the least interference from any sort of domination, even if it be temporary or transitional, that is without any sort of governmental control’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1870], p. 191). Thus even the transitory State is rejected.

There is to be no waiting for the State to wither away; it must not be allowed to establish itself even temporarily, in case it is abused, prolonged and turned against the people. Bakunin proclaims anarchists ‘the most pronounced enemies of every sort of official power – even if it is an ultra-revolutionary power. We are the enemies of any sort of publicly declared dictatorship, we are social revolutionary anarchists.’ In Bakunin’s own terms this is the essence of his critique of Marxism:

We do not accept, even in the process of revolutionary transition, either constituent assemblies, provisional governments or so-called evolutionary dictatorships; because we are convinced that revolution is only sincere, honest and real in the hands of the masses, and that when it is concentrated into the those of a few ruling individuals it inevitably and immediately becomes reaction....The Marxists profess quite different ideas. They are worshipers of State power, and necessarily also prophets of political and social discipline and champions of order established from the top downward, always in the name of universal suffrage and the sovereignty of the masses, for whom they save the honor and privilege of obeying leaders, elected masters....between the Marxists and ourselves there is a chasm. They are for government, we, for our part, are anarchists (Bakunin, 1973 [1872], pp. 237–8).

Bakunin considers the Marxist rejoinder that such a State would be transitory, temporary and short-lived, that its sole objective will be to educate the people and raise them both economically and politically to such a level that government of any kind will soon become unnecessary. He dismisses the idea that the state, having lost its political, that is, ruling, character, will transform itself into a totally free organization of economic interests and communities. If their state is truly to be a people’s state, Bakunin asks, then why abolish it? If its abolition is essential for the real liberation of the people, then how do they dare call it a people’s state? (Bakunin, 1990 [1873] p. 179).

As Lehning has noted, the most disastrous alliance imaginable for Bakunin would ‘combine socialism with absolutism, combining the aspirations of the people for economic liberation and material prosperity with dictatorship and the concentration of all political and social forces in the State.’ Bakunin pleaded to be saved from the benevolence of despotism ‘and the damaging and stultifying consequences of authoritarian, doctrinaire or institutional socialism.’ He was adamant that socialism and freedom were both necessary conditions for overcoming oppression and creating a new social order and that neither alone was sufficient: ‘...we are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality’ (Bakunin, 1953 [1867], p. 269). In a passage clearly distinguishing ‘libertarian’ from ‘authoritarian’ socialism he implored:

Let us be socialists, but let us never become sheep. Let us seek justice, complete political, economic and social justice, but without any sacrifice of liberty. There can be no life, no humanity, without liberty, and a form of socialism which excluded liberty, or did not accept it as a basis and as the only creative principle, would lead us straight back to slavery and bestiality (Cited by Lehning, 1973, p. 15).

Alan Carter is even more critical of Marx. While accepting that his ‘glowing comments on the Paris Commune show that he was not opposed to some elements of workers’ power,’ he argues that ‘since Marx vigorously opposed Bakunin’s efforts to ensure that only libertarian and decentralist means were employed by revolutionaries so as to facilitate the revolution remaining in the hands of the workers, he ‘must accept a fair measure of culpability for the authoritarian outcome of the Russian revolution’ (Alan Carter, 1988, p. 218).

Carter accuses Marx, claiming that because he argued against the anarchists who attempted to preclude what was to become the Leninist form of revolutionary strategy, Marx tacitly condoned the Leninist development. In short Carter boldly argues that ‘Lenin did not build his theories on air: they arose on the basis of serious inadequacies in Marx’s conception of the state and political power’ (Alan Carter, 1988, p. 218). Carter claims Marx was indifferent to the revolutionary forms thrown up by the workers in the Paris Commune. If they threw up libertarian and egalitarian forms, all well and good, if they did not, then this doesn’t ultimately matter for Marx, according to Carter, as ‘history would vindicate those revolutionary forms with the ultimate withering away of the ‘transitional’ state.’ Quoting from The Civil War directly Carter says that ‘whatever revolutionary forms spring up are given explicit sanction by Marx, as “They [the working class] have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant”’ (Alan Carter, 1988, p. 219).

Of course, Marx rejected Bakunin’s analysis of revolution, most clearly in notes from his reading of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy. His chief criticism was that Bakunin did not pay enough attention to the economic preconditions of revolution and Thomas approvingly quotes Marx retort to Bakunin that he understood nothing about the social revolution, that its economic conditions do not exist for him and that he believes that a radical revolution is possible in any circumstances: ‘The will, and not economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution’ (Marx, 1977 [1874], p. 562). Marshall Shatz has pointed out however, what Marx did not perceive so clearly was that precisely the opposite criticism might be leveled against him. His only response to Bakunin’s warning that socialism might produce a new ruling elite was to reiterate confidently that once economic conditions were changed and class rule came to an end, the state and all relations of political authority would necessarily disappear. He would not entertain the possibility that political domination was a product of will, and not solely of economic conditions, and that the former might persist even after the latter had been transformed (Shatz, 1990, pp. xxxi- xxxii). It is also wrong to accept that Bakunin did little else but agitate for and proclaim revolutions regardless of the prevailing social and economic conditions as Bakunin held ‘It is impossible to bring about such a revolution artificially. It is not even possible to speed it up at all significantly ... There are some periods in history when revolutions are quite simply impossible; there are other periods when they are inevitable’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1870], p. 183).

Thomas readily admits however, that Bakunin’s criticism of Marx signified more than the primacy of will, yet Thomas argues it also signified an indifference to all matters political as a guiding conception for the revolutionary movement. For Thomas, abstention from any revolutionary activity that could be called political was opposed bitterly by Marx, who remained untroubled by what his anarchist rivals saw as an unbearable paradox: that of using political means to transcend what now passes for politics. According to Thomas, Marx saw no reason why the proletariat should not ‘use means for its liberation which become superfluous after its liberation,’ the important point is not to abjure political action across the board, lest it contaminate the actor, but to be able to distinguish among different kinds of political action, the better to be able to use those that were appropriate to furthering the revolutionary cause. ‘Politics, after all, does not just stop just because some people think it unimportant or distasteful’ (Thomas, 1980, p. 343).

For Thomas, Marx makes a crucial distinction about the State, a distinction that meant little to the anarchists to whom any State was the main enemy and politics an unconditional evil; but to Marx, who regarded the category ‘the state’ as an abstraction, it meant a great deal. Far from denigrating the positive accomplishments brought about by the modern, liberal-bourgeois State that had emerged, Marx insisted that political reforms making the State more liberal and more democratic were laudable and worthy of support. What he had termed ‘political emancipation’ earlier in On the Jewish Question – the freedom signified by the French and other bourgeois revolutions, which consisted in liberal democracy, formal freedoms and parliamentarism – marks a radically unsubstantiated stage of freedom in its true notion, of real, ‘human emancipation,’ the need for which it cannot satisfy, and the outlines of which it can but dimly discern. Yet it is a stage, and the gains denoted by ‘political emancipation’ are no less real by virtue of their incomplete character; they are not to be despised or ignored but recognized and, where appropriate, put to good use by those having an interest in revolutionary emancipation in its more substantiated form (Thomas, 1980, p. 344). Supporting this argument on how politics can be put to good use Thomas cites Marx’s willingness to quote the ‘Ten Hours Bill’ or ‘Factory Act’ passed in 1846. Marx called the passing of this act ‘a great practical success; it was the victory of a principle; it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class’ (Marx, 1977 [1864], p.535).

Writing on the Paris Commune, Bakunin explained the divide between revolutionary socialists (or collectivists) from the authoritarian communists. While both factions equally desire the creation of a new social order based on the organization of collective work, on equality and the collective appropriation of the instruments of labor, only the communists imagined they could attain this by the organization of the political power of the working classes, principally of the urban proletariat. In contrast the revolutionary socialists think that ‘they will not be able to attain this goal except by the development and organization, not of the political, but of the social power [emphasis added] of the working masses as much as in the towns as in the countryside...’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1871], pp. 1–2). The revolution is not restricted to the urban proletariat or even rural workers, but is open to all people of good will, including those formerly from the upper classes, who wished to join and accept the revolutionary program with sincerity. By making this appeal Bakunin hopes to show how a non-authoritarian revolutionary socialist movement genuinely aims for a spontaneous mass uprising, not restricting its appeal to one economic class with a specific relationship to the prevailing mode of production. For Bakunin, Marx put too much faith in the inevitable progress of science, and could only see the struggle against capital as confined to the narrow arena of the urban factory floor. This was representative of a broader city/country divide between anarchism and Marxism.[323]

The distinction made by Bakunin here between the terms political and social is significant. Several commentators, (for example, Lehning, Saltman and McLaughlin) have all noted the fact that Bakunin’s theory of revolution was a social theory more than a political theory and of course, by definition, a pure form of anarchism without the structure and bureaucracy of a state apparatus is avowedly ‘nonpolitical.’ No imposed social organization for Bakunin can satisfy the needs of everybody, such an organization ‘will never be anything but a Procrustean bed which the more or less obvious violence of the State will be able to force unhappy society to lie down on’ (Bakunin, 1973 [1871], p. 4). He argues that this is what has always happened until now in history, and it is exactly this old system of organization by force that the social revolution must stop. The social revolution does this by giving back their complete freedom to the masses, groups, communes, associations, and individuals and by destroying for once and for all the historic cause of all the violent acts – the state.

Conclusion — Penumbra or convergence?

Thomas claims that while Marx may have got the better of his anarchist rivals, he paid a heavy price for his success and the final reckoning awaits settlement. I would suggest however, that Marx’s ‘success’ against the anarchist the Hague Congress in 1872 was at most, a Pyrrhic victory. Thomas correctly predicted though that the last had not been heard from the anarchists as they have outlived the historical context in which their doctrine first appeared:

This context overlaps significantly with that of the growth of Marxist doctrine; but such an overlap does not suggest a convergence, unless we assume, against all the evidence, a homogeneity of outlook within the Left, or an equally unlikely willingness to compromise of the type that neither Marxists nor anarchists have yet been eager to reveal’ (Thomas, 1980, p. 2).

Thomas holds the belief ‘that in the last analysis Marxism expresses more intellectual and human content, and has greater political sense, than its anarchist rivals have generally displayed.’ But he concedes that this last analysis has yet to be reached and the final word about these issues has yet to be written (Thomas, 1980, p. 4). This conference is testament to that fact.

While I retain sympathy with Guerin’s intention in attempting to work out some theoretical synthesis between anarchism and Marxism based on the Address of 1871, it is too ambitious a project as I think I have shown that the differences run too deep. ‘When libertarian Marxists try to distinguish themselves from authoritarian Marxists, they adopt a stance forbidden by Marx’s political theory’ (Alan Carter, 1988, p. 219). Bakunin’s uncompromising consistency in demanding that freedom and equality be realized both in any social revolution and post-revolutionary society distinguished anarchism from Marxist socialism. In discerning that the imposition of socialism without freedom would lead not only to failure, but worse, to injustices and inequalities no better than the capitalist system they purported to transcend, Bakunin subjected Marxian socialism to a perceptive and critical judgment. The Marxist revolution and State fail on their own terms, they cannot enable the very liberation they profess to effect because they are by nature incompatible with socialism and freedom, with socialism and equality. This is not hindsight on the part of Bakunin and anarchists, Proudhon warned of it as early as 1844 and Bakunin from before 1871–2 and the acrimonious split in the First International. The connected and sustained critique of Marxism continued with Kropotkin and came full circle with Goldman’s evaluation of the Bolshevik regime after the Russian Revolution. Many defenders of Bakunin justifiably highlight his astute comments on the dangers of authoritarian socialism in practice, and rightly so as his critical analysis of Marx are lucid and even at this distance still impressive in their prescience.

I also reject Thomas’ contention that the disputes between Marx and the anarchists have vindicated the former, in fact the opposite seems much more plausibly to be the case, the strength, breadth and timing of anarchist critique actually vindicates them. This critique – summarized by ‘Socialism will be free or it will not be at all’ is a key or indication of a more libertarian Marx, but that is all it is. It represents the possibility of developing on common ground but requires the specific and narrowly held version of each ideology (Marx of the Paris Commune, a libertarian socialist version of anarchism) as to be widely adopted or accepted either by Marxists or certainly the even more diverse anarchist movement. So while I agree with Thomas that the more apt metaphor for the inter-relationship between anarchism and Marxism is a penumbra and not a convergence, he is right on this for the wrong reasons.

While Guerin’s comparison of the two strands of thought (the authoritarian and the libertarian) alone is not enough to reconcile anarchism and Marxism, I still think this form of analysis, as articulated in slightly broader terms by Chomsky remains the more fruitful way to initially approach a possible reconciliation between anarchism and Marxism. Chomsky sympathizes with the argument that popular revolutions, seeking to replace ‘a feudal or centralized authority ruling by force’ with some form of communal system which ‘implies the destruction and disappearance of the old form of the State,’ will either be socialist or an ‘extreme form of democracy ... [which is] ... the preliminary condition for socialism inasmuch as Socialism can only be realized in a world enjoying the highest measure of personal freedom.’ This is at least the spirit in which to approach the continuing dialogue and while Guerin was right in so far as the Paris Commune is the place to start, it alone cannot bear the weight of the hopes for a unified future.