pearhaps, pearhaps…..

i have a lot of thoughts about anarchism but i think i can narrow down into my main disagreement with the ideology.

when i was first learning about anarchism, I found a handful of things frustrating, one early critique that stuck out was the handling of authority and hierarchies, the way Anarchists like Bakunin talk about authority just come across as blatantly out of touch, like in this quote:

“In short, we reject all legislation, all authority, and every privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even that arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can only ever turn to the advantage of a dominant, exploiting minority and against the interests of the immense, subjugated majority. It is in this sense that we are really Anarchists.”

This is where we get the classic Engel’s response On Authority, where he talks about how revolution itself is an exercise in authority, which seemed pretty straightforwardly true to me upon reading. The strange thing to me was, when I presented this to Anarchists, despite many of them referencing this work explicitly as a refutation of Marxist ideas on authority, and instead of discussing how this idea is true and where I’m misunderstanding it, or explaining how universal suffrage leads to exploitation, they instead simply say they do not believe this, and that they find some hierarchies justified. and while I will say that does seem to make the most sense to me, because I struggle to see a world in which Bakunin’s ideas are true, it left me a bit confused, because what does it mean to reject “unjust” hierarchies. Is that any different from any other ideology? Its not really against hierarchies if its just against the ones it thinks are wrong, being against the things you’re against is tautological, so what even is anarchism at that point? And this is the question little me set out to find an answer to about 5 years ago, and its also a big part of what led me to become a Marxist.

Obviously there is more to anarchism than just “being against the things you’re against”, and I knew that from the outset, but knowing it is different from knowing what it is and figuring that out took a lot of discussion, across the course I learned a lot of anarchists disagree on a lot of things, and at times their ideology holds very little in common at all, hence how capitalist anarchists exist, despite many protesting that they’re not “real” anarchists (to which I’m admittedly sympathetic).

So what did I finally grasp as a key and defining aspect of anarchism shared by (nearly) all anarchists?

Anarchists view the state as the base of society, and class as rising out of it, where as Marxists see it exactly opposite. Many anarchists and Marxists hold similar views about class distinctions and their oppressive function, and fewer, but still many, even agree on many elements of the state, this is part of why they seem in such close quarters at times, and why you sometimes see people who will call themselves both Marxists and Anarchists. However, the ordering of development and where importance is placed is switched, and far from a minor disagreement, this fundamentally changes the analysis and perspective of the world which Anarchism provides.

Marxism views the state as a tool of class oppression, which rises out of economic distinctions created from class society. The state is something the ruling class uses to force the oppressed class to be okay with the short end of the stick, the state is a type of gun wielded by a specific class, more than that, its also a wall, keeping the oppressed from running away. Before class, the state didn’t exist. While there may have been governments, the way a state exists under class society has this very specific purpose of controlling the underclass at the whim of the ruling class, and we can see this in how and when many organs of class oppression are created. In the US, the modern police force for example, was invented as a slave patrol. before then, there may have been a sheriff or a city watch, but there wasn’t a special and distinct body of people who’s sole job was policing. These policing forces then, were invented not as a class in their own right, but as a way to exert the will of the already existing class of the slave owner onto slaves. This is generally how Marxists view the state throughout history, to varying specifics and scales at different places and times.

Engels says:

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; (…) Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

Anarchists on the other hand, tend to view the state itself as the originator of class. A body of representatives, of rule, rose up out of some kind of primitive government, and because they were given (or took) this power to govern, they then had power to exert as they pleased and this power led to create distinctions between the exploiting class and the exploited. They see class (relationship to means of production) as something which came first from the state, the government, from hierarchy, from law and institution itself.

The issue with this is that its simply not true. The underlying relationships of who had power in production and who didnt, is what comes first, before politicians and bureaucracy. While no doubt the state and class relations developed along side one another, the class relations played the decisive role, because everything centers on production. Ultimately, power comes down to who has the food to eat at night.

Power in a government chamber means nothing if you don’t already control production, the owning class could simply starve you to death and ignore your government as illegitimate. Ownership is first and foremost a real power relation, only secondarily a legal one (possession is 9/10ths of the law after all). Conversely, if you control production, but not the government, that is an easy fix, you don’t need governmental approval, you hold all the cards, you control who gets to eat or not, and what are armies built on if not food and wealth?

In this way, Class always plays the decisive role over the state. Productive relations exist first, then you classify them with a formalized institution. The state is a tool of class, not the determiner of it. You dont invent guns if you dont have anyone to fight, or any animals to hunt, in the same way, you don’t create a state to justify your rule before you have one. The state and its laws were put there there to justify the already existing power relations determined by relationships to the means of production (Again, class), not the other way around.

You can still see this today, in the way laws serve only as a proxy for the true law, which is the rule of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie getting away with breaking the law is a regular occurrence, and its not a mistake or a failure of the system, the law is only a tool of the bourgeoisie, it is there for them, and they are free to bend or break it as they choose.

This matters for us today, rather than just being a query of ancient history, because it determines how we go about doing away with class. If you think the basis of class is the state, is law, then all you have to do is smash the state, and class will fall away on its own. The state itself is the enemy. but if you see the state as an outgrowth of Real Material class relations, then its a different story. Taking someones gun is still useful, but it does nothing if they can simply make more guns. You have to actually prevent the ruling class from utilizing their material power, their wealth, to simply create a new state, whether it be a small squadron of private security, or a gang of fascist goons, if class does indeed play the determining role in the states existence, and not the other way around, you Will have to contend with these things, and you will have to have a plan to deal with them.

This is why Marxists advocate for a proletarian state. Because we don’t see the state as creating class conflict, we see it as a tool of class conflict, and If you agree with what I’ve outlined above, it should be clear we need to continue waging class warfare even after the bourgeoisie state has been smashed, we need our own tools and structures to suppress capitalist relations and power. We need to organize the proletariat into a structure which leverages our power, our collective labor, against the power of the bourgeoisie in a continual process of expropriation of assets and power from the bourgeoisie, until all remnants of their previous power gained through exploitation and which incentivizes further exploitation, is gone.

If, however, you see the state itself as the impetus behind class existing in the first place, you will see this organization, this structure and consolidation of proletarian power into a weapon, as itself something dangerous, as something which will lead to new class distinctions, and new oppression. This is why Anarchists historically have opposed many socialist countries, because they think the state is going to simply do Class Society again.

That is my fundamental disagreement with Anarchism.

Anarchists often claim Marxists or “statists” in general, simply lack imagination to conceive a world without a state, but I think the opposite is true. Anarchists lack imagination to conceive a world in which a state truly works for the people, a state where the tools of suppression are actually used for good and not for evil.

Anarchists have imbued the state with a moral characteristic, an innate evil, which will create destruction wherever it may appear, and hence they must be fought with fervor no matter what, regardless of good intentions or track record.

Marxists on the other hand, view the state as a tool, one which lends itself especially well to consolidating power of a class even, but we also understand that consolidating power in the working class, doing away with private property, and creating one single class which everyone falls into, is an unambiguously desirable thing for anyone outside the bourgeoisie. We understand that the state comes out of class distinctions, and if we can use a tool to do away with those distinctions, then we should do it.

This is why Lenin says the state will wither away, because it relies on class, not the other way around. Without class distinctions, the state serves everyone, and ceases to be a tool of suppression, and stops meaningfully being a “state” in the process.

It is also why I am a Marxist.

If you’re unconvinced of the withering of the state, that is fine, it is perhaps one of the single most misunderstood ideas of Marxism from non-marxists, but it is founded on a strong basis of dialectical materialism, and I would be happy to go further into it another time.

What is clear though, is that we absolutely need to organize proletarian power into a tool which can meaningfully challenge the bourgeoisie, which can keep them from regaining societal power through what remains of their wealth, and to keep them from simply fleeing with their wealth elsewhere until they can strong arm a proletarian country into surrender or enforce their own regime change, like we’ve see so many times over. Anarchist projects have failed to achieve these goals time and time again, and while Marxism has failed in some places and some times, it has had undoubted and resounding successes as well.

All the power to the people