The contradictions of anarchism...and Marxism

"Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism" is an anthology published in the Soviet Union by the foreign language publishing house Progress. This edition is from 1974. I have the 1989 edition, in which Bukharin has been rehabilitated in the footnotes. (Books published by Progress are notorious for their footnotes, in which the momentarily correct line of the Soviet regime is laid down.) Apparently, there is also a much later non-Soviet edition of this work, but I haven't seen it.

The anthology contains texts by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and V. I. Lenin attacking anarchism. Marx and Engels criticize really existing anarchists, including Proudhon and Bakunin. Lenin mostly criticizes perceived anarchists, often within his own party. Thus, the book contains several texts written against the Workers' Opposition, a dissident Bolshevik faction, rather than anarchists sensu stricto.

The texts by Marx and Engels are the most interesting ones. "The Bakuninists at Work" is perhaps the most interesting item in the entire book, dealing with the republican uprising in Spain in 1873. Engels points out that the anarchists (which were relatively influential in Spain at the time) joined several revolutionary governments, despite their much-vaunted opposition to all state power. In effect, the anarchists formed a coalition with a group of "bourgeois" republicans, known as the Intransigents! Marx and Engels also squeeze as much as possible out of Bakunin's secret alliance and his collaboration with the cultic sociopath Nechaev. They point out the obvious contradictions between Bakunin's "anarchism", the covert elitism of the Alliance, and the super-authoritarian and frankly bizarre antics of Nechaev. Other texts deal with the question of authority, the abolition of the state, and the ideas of the Proudhonists. (It should be noted, however, that the more militant wing of anarchism has very little to do with Proudhon, harking back rather to Bakunin.)

Of course, it's easy to point out various glaring inconsistencies in the ideas and actions of Mikhail Bakunin and his secret anarchist Alliance. Still, there are obvious contradictions in the Marxist position, as well. On the one hand, Marx and Engels extol the Paris Commune and claim that the state will wither away under communism. On the other hand, they praise authority and centralization, pointing out (correctly) that modern heavy industry is impossible without a central authority. Presumably, this means that even classless, stateless communism will be centralized. Of course, there are no known examples of societies combining the radically democratic features of the Commune with a centralized planned economy.

It's also amusing to read Marx' and Engels' attack, in the article "The Alliance and the IWMA", on Nechaev's vision of a future society. Nechaev was both centralist, collectivist and super-authoritarian. After describing his ideas in some detail, Marx and Engels ironically exclaim: "What a beautiful model of barrack-room communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, our committee, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme director. This is indeed the purest anti-authoritarianism". One wonders what Marx and Engels would have said about Stalin's Russia or Mao's China?

A problem with all anthologies of this kind, is that they contain very little context. People who know nothing about the conflicts between Marxism and anarchism will probably be bewildered by this book. The footnotes aren't always very helpful either. However, this collection might helpful to more advanced students of the subject.