Abstract
The reprinting of Peter Marshall’s very fine history of anarchist thought, Demanding the Impossible, places full center two important themes that have gnawed at the anarchist tradition. Marshall defines anarchism in largely ideological terms, as a set of beliefs that are, by characterization, anti-statist, anti-authoritarian, libertarian, self-regulating, decentralized, and anti-ego. These definitions lead Marshall in many fruitful directions in terms of the intellectual genesis of anarchist doctrine, but such a discussion comes at a price. It involves a view of anarchists as purer in theory than in practice. This relates to another important theme, equally in front view – anarchism’s vexed relationship with marxism, which has haunted it at every turn and raises questions as to why anarchism hasn’t simply claimed marxism for its own. The opposition of anarchism to marxism is well documented. Less known but nonetheless quite significant are those historical moments in which anarchists and marxists have cooperated, even if uncomfortably, in pursuit of common goals.
That Marshall defines anarchism as a set of beliefs, structures the entire book. Marshall traces the roots of anarchist doctrine to the sixth century BCE, with many excellent biographical portraits, summaries of key events and movements, and long, careful reconstructions of individual philosophies and doctrines. Major trends are plotted chronologically in a spirited, enjoyable narrative that does not presuppose prior knowledge. All this makes Demanding the Impossible indispensable. At 800 pages, Marshall’s book is best understood as a compendium of anarchist thought, a veritable mini-encyclopedia. The net effect is to position anarchism as an anticipated outcome of human development writ large. Its roots can be found in most of the great traditions: Taoism and Buddhism, Greek philosophy, Christianity, the French Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and more. Anarchist thought, it turns out, has been everywhere and in every epoch. Demanding the Impossible thinks big in terms of mega-history and grand theory.
But because anarchist thought has been ever present, it begins to appear a bit too natural and its critical edge somehow gets lost within its noble sentiments. Marshall admits that ‘it required the collapse of feudalism in order for anarchism to develop as a coherent ideology’, but if this is so, why bother to spend so much time unearthing its pre-industrial forerunners (p. 4)? Is there an unarticulated agenda to present anarchism as its own type of legitimate social theory? Anarchism is thereby normalized, in the same fashion that revolutionary marxism was once transformed into a social democracy. When Marshall states that ‘anarchism has had a bad press’ and that ‘only a tiny minority of anarchists have practiced terror as a revolutionary strategy’, one wonders if this too gestures towards anarchism’s pacification. Marshall draws attention towards that aspect of the ‘tradition which encompasses such thoughtful and peaceable men as Godwin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Tolstoy’, but perhaps that’s precisely the problem (p. ix). Mind over matter has its limits when it comes to social protest.
Proudhon is the most puzzling of all. Considered by many to be the ur-anarchist, at least for modern times, his doctrines raise as many objections as does his forceful advocacy of society on a small scale. Property may have been theft, but his contempt for women was combined with racist, anti-Semitic, and nationalist views and opposition to labor unions. In his unpublished manuscripts, he even suggested the creation of a ‘morals’ police in order to contain human desire. Marshall refers to him as ‘undoubtedly one of the most paradoxical and inconsistent social thinkers of the nineteenth century’ (p. 260).
Proudhon and Marx disagreed about the future of the small-scale worker cooperatives that Proudhon favored and that Marx predicted would be swamped economically by factory production. How this has translated into the anarchist-marxist dichotomy is one of the many areas in which fruitful discussion has been lacking. Proudhon emphasized size because of the desire for direct democracy, anti-alienation, and self-management on a realistic scale. Yet Proudhonian small-scale enterprises often presuppose a global-level division of labor. The production of the metal to make machines, for example, requires far-flung operations that involve mineral extraction, intercontinental transport, sizable processing facilities, and a highly trained and skilled workforce, with the latter necessitating an evolved educational system that at some point along the way differentiates students according to their future roles as workers. While anarchists have emphasized the small scale, marxists have tended to accept the capitalist division of labor as is. 1 Might not a more fruitful discussion be had from how these two levels of functioning – the local and the global – could be reorganized in order to complement and strengthen one another? This would require a discussion based not on ideological inclinations but on the needs and wishes of the populace at any particular point in time. How might society be restructured to do away with class differentiations yet without interjecting new hierarchies and economic burdens? The juxtaposition of Proudhon vs. Marx has been, in this sense, unhelpful and also unnecessary.
That Marshall is so conscientious about revealing anarchism’s weaknesses is quite remarkable. In his account, the personal and political inconsistencies of its advocates are admitted without equivocation. There are no heroes in Demanding the Impossible, only individuals whose ideas were more or less thought through and whose actions weren’t always consistent with what they espoused. Kropotkin, still another anarchist anomaly, supported Russia’s war effort during World War I despite decades of anarchist agitation. It was as if everything previous had been in vain. Kropotkin’s anarchism may have been peaceful, but it was not at all pacifist. Most curious was that after the war he was widely forgiven for this transgression by anarchists and bolsheviks alike.
In terms of the anarchist pantheon, Bakunin is just as puzzling. He and Marx shared a long history of interaction and mutual admiration. Marx valued Bakunin’s energy and activism, Bakunin Marx’s commitment and sharp overview of historical development. Marshall explains that both ‘adopted a form of historical materialism, accepted class struggle as the motor of social change, and saw the goal of history as a free and equal society. They both wanted the collective ownership of the means of production’ (p. 305). Some anarchists, like Malatesta, in fact found Bakunin too marxist. Marshall puts it thus: ‘Bakunin’s philosophy consists largely of Proudhonian politics and Marxian economics’ (p. 270). Bakunin, however, favored an elite of revolutionaries, a small clandestine group that would guide the insurrection and reorganize society, whereas Marx inclined toward mass-based electoral politics. Bakunin favored authoritarian leadership and revolutionary dictatorships, Marx preferred public meetings and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Bakunin was the ur-leninist even if Lenin derived his provenance from Marx.
Marx and Bakunin were good colleagues, so much so that Bakunin was under contract to translate the first volume of Marx’s Capital into Russian. That he reneged and thus contributed to the slow response to the work that Marx had chipped away at for 20-odd years did not help the political differences that emerged between them regarding the role of the peasantry as revolutionary actors, the place of the state in a socialized society, and the function of political organizations. What interfered with a clearer understanding of their ideological similarities were the personal antagonisms that helped fuel the political differences at issue within the European labor movement during the 1870s. Bakunin was certainly insurrectionary, but the conspiratorial aspect involved him in an attempt to undermine the European-wide association of working class groups that was already under pressure from many sources. Marx accused him of outright deceit, and even in the best of light, Bakunin was clearly reckless, irresponsible, and egotistical. Marx, on the other hand, was egged on by Engels, the latter newly retired from a long career as a senior administrator in his family’s multinational firm and eager to expand his role from the Marx family benefactor to that of protector as well. Engels intervened repeatedly into Marx and Marx family matters, often inappropriately. His long-standing vendetta against the anarchists, who he seemed unable to comprehend despite his great sociological and historical acumen in other circumstances, was just one case in point. Over the next quarter century he demonized anarchists, antagonized feminists, condensed Marx’s ideas such that they lost their subtlety, and encouraged social democratic passivity, thus catering to the revolutionary fatalism of the German socialists. The aspect of Engels as a practical politician came to outweigh his many talents as a synthesizer of complex intellectual developments and historical events. He was hugely literate but political intrigue in the here and now was not his forte. The personal became political and then hardened into an ideological stance. 2
If anything, Marshall goes too easy on marxism. Much harsher critiques of the marxian political tradition have formed within marxism itself, beginning with Rosa Luxemburg. Anarchists reject the state-oriented approach of social democrats and bolsheviks alike, but one misses the trenchant critiques of these traditions that have been made by other marxists. Why not undermine the doctrine on its own terms, in the way that Marx in his younger days hoped to undermine Hegelian philosophy and later bourgeois economics?
What about anarchism in practice rather than in theory, shorn of its leading lights and impressive thinkers? Might the analysis of anarchism in action tell us something different from the ideological footprint on which Marshall concentrates? Marshall unfortunately does not spend enough time on social movements. The interstices between anarchism and marxism have been some of the most interesting of them all. The Spanish anarchists during the 1930s, for example, had the support of virtually the entire independent left, including dissident bolsheviks (trotskyists) and left wing social democrats (British Independent Labour Party) – in fact, everyone to the left of social democracy and bolshevism and many of those caught in between as well. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was syndicalist in orientation, which in this case meant an anarcho-marxist organization. Carlo Tresca, Bill Haywood, Joseph Ettor, Arturo Giovannitti, Lucy Parsons, Eugene Debs, and Daniel DeLeon counted among its founders and public representatives, and together they represented virtually the entire map of the labor movement – everyone except the conservative trade unionists clustered in the American Federation of Labor. When Marshall refers to the IWW as ‘a curious blend of marxism, syndicalism and anarchism’, he misses some of what was most important about it (p. 501).
Other examples could also be chosen: for instance, the radical left in Germany after World War I as it coalesced around the workplace councils that transformed the political landscape. Marshall focuses on Gustav Landauer, but many others, most of whom are identified by their marxist pedigree, could be named in addition. Is someone like Franz Pfemfert, the editor of Die Aktion and known for his espousal of dada in art and literature and anti-war and revolution in politics, best thought of as an anarchist or as one of the marxists who along with Rosa Luxemburg founded the Spartacist League and then, after her death, helped create the Communist Workers Party in opposition to the bolshevik-oriented German Communist Party? When Lenin’s colleagues suppressed the anarchists in Russia and campaigned to eradicate ‘infantile leftism’ everywhere else, they had people like Pfemfert in mind.
Wherever workers’ councils have formed or where employees took direct control of production and distribution, it is likely that anarchists and marxists have found ways to cooperate. In these moments, it has been the hegemony of the councils versus that of the political organizations that has been the decisive factor. There is also some question how relevant the anarchist label still is, or whether the designation of anti-authoritarian best captures developments of the last half century. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed anarchists who were supporters of Marxist-Leninist regimes and marxists who skipped Marx altogether and went straight to Stalin. The anti-authoritarian designation in this context seems to provide a better means to judge such phenomena. A 30-page epilogue traverses the years since the original publication of Demanding the Impossible in 1992, with descriptions of the latest doctrines and developments, and this too seems to indicate that new ways of thinking about the radical past may be overdue.
Marshall is generally sympathetic to libertarian socialists, marxists included, but their interaction with anarchists is not a theme he pursues. When he highlights the anarchist–marxist overlap he tends to emphasize the ideological correspondences – moments when the one influenced the other. Edward Carpenter, William Morris, and Oscar Wilde are counted among the libertarians even though they were socialists by self-definition. Godwin and Stirner influenced Marx and Engels. Kropotkin was translated into English by the marxist Hyndman and was popular among the left communists in Germany after World War I. More could be done to turn these isolated instances into a leitmotif.
Marshall contends that anarchism draws sustenance from both the liberal and the socialist traditions, even though ‘anarchism is closer to socialism than liberalism’ (p. 641). This tends to elevate the individualist anarchists to the status of the only true believers, since everyone else needs to struggle with the thorny issues of governance amongst peers. But if ‘individualist anarchism comes closest to classical liberalism’, the liberal tradition tends to defend individuality by means of the state (p. 10). Anarchists in this sense are extreme liberals, since their goal is the state’s abolition. This leads us back to Proudhon, the ‘liberal in proletarian clothing’ (p. 261). Marshall’s magnanimity towards anarchism as a doctrine has left it as something quite versatile, embraced simultaneously by environment-oriented groups like the Earth Liberation Front (influenced by the ex-marxist Murray Bookchin) and the libertarian capitalist (‘anarcho-capitalism apologist’) Murray Rothbard (p. 561).
No doctrine can be inherently revolutionary. To believe otherwise is to get caught up in the mind over matter mentality that defines idealism. But a slightly different question can be posed, that is, what parts of the anarchist tradition are worth saving? Is a revolutionary anarchism still possible? And if so, why not also a revolutionary marxism to go with it?