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Marxism Vs. Anarchism, Fighters for the Communism of Lenin and Trotsky

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Marxism Vs. Anarchism, Fighters for the Communism of Lenin and Trotsky A Spartacist Pamphlet " , I US$2 Cdn$2.50 A$2.50 Rand4 £1.50 June 2001 .- Spartacist Publishing: Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 USA '" 1I111111......... III·_· __ ··..,...,..-··-""-··..,,m,.T'"1 "'1'1 "'1'1",1 i "1"1 .,1,.1 T'l'i i lTTIiI li!"'1 --"1 Inri Ii MI .ml.II.IiII._ .. _____ i~--~ "11r-r. INTRODUCTION This Spartacist pamphlet, Marxism vs. Anarchism, fighters for the communism of Lenin and Trotsky. reprints articles by Spartacist LeaguelU.S. Central Com­ Although he later broke from Marxism, the anarchist Vic­ mittee member Joseph Seymour which were originally tor Serge traveled to Soviet Russia to support the new published as a series in Workers Vanguard running from workers state. In the course of the struggle against coun­ 1 March to 30 August 1996. Parts One through Three ten·evolutionary forces (which some anarchists criminally (published in WV Nos. 640, 641 and 642) deal with the supported), Scrge joined the Bolshevik Party and wrote origins of anarchism and the views of its leading figures to his French anarchist friends motivating communism such as Proudhon and Bakunin up through the 1871 against anarchism: Paris Commune and the split in the First International. "What is the Communist Party in a time of revolution? Parts Four and Five (published in WV Nos. 643 and 646) It is the revolutionary elite, powerfully organised, disci­ analyze the anarchist and syndicalist movements in the plined, obeying a consistent direction, marching to­ period preceding World War I. Parts Six and Seven (pub­ wards a single clearly defined goal along the paths lished in WV Nos. 649 and 650) discuss the realignment traced for it by a scientific doctrine. Being such a force, of the left and international workers movement under the the party is the product of the necessity, that is the laws of history itself. That revolutionary elite which in a impact of the first imperialist world war, the 1917 Octo­ time of violence remains unorganised, undisciplined, ber Revolution and the founding of the Communist without consistent direction and open to variable or International. contradictory impulses, is heading for suicide. No view The introductory article to this pamphlet, "The Roots at odds with this conclusion is possible." of Anarchism" (published in WV No. 740, 25 August - La Vie ouvriere, 21 March 1922, reprinted in 2000), is an edited transcript of a class given by comrade The Serge-Trotsky Papers, Cotteril, cd. (1994) Seymour to the New York Spartacus Youth Club. Here he The isolation of the Soviet Union, the failure of a traces the origins of classical anarchism in the radical revolutionary opportunity in Germany in 1923 and the bourgeois idealism of the 17th and 18th centuries, and general restabilization of the capitalist order in Europe draws parallels with the attitudes encountered among led to the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, with radical youth today, not only those who call themselves a political counterrevolution installing a bureaucratic anarchists but Green radicals and left liberals as well. caste headed by 1. V. Stalin in power. Under the rubric In an ideological climate condi.tioned by the imperial­ of building "socialism in one country," which turned the ist rulers' celebration of the "death of communism" and Communist parties internationally into border guards for derision of Marxism as a "failed experiment," it is not sur­ the Kremlin's foreign policy of conciliating capitalist prising that there is something of a revival of miscellane­ imperialism in the name of "peaccful coexistence," Stalin ous anarchist tendencies among radicalizing youth. These destroyed Lenin and Trotsky's proletarian revolutionary run the gamut from petty-bourgeois anti-communists to Communist International. those who appeal to the imperialist powers to bring "free­ In "Ninety Years of the Communist Manifesto" (30 dom" and "democracy" to the oppressed masses around October 1937) Trotsky wrote: "The decomposition of the the globe, to those who genuinely want to fight for the Social Democracy and the Communist International at overthrow of imperialist rule. In the latter case, many are every step engenders monstrous ideological relapses. animated by a healthy revulsion for those self-proclaimed Senile thought seems to have become infantile. In search "socialists" whose whole activity is defined by a refor­ of all-saving formulas the prophets in the epoch of mist cringing before the capitalist state, its parties and decline discover anew doctrines long since buried by sci­ agencies. entific socialism" (Writings, 1937-38). The t1nal proof of In 1917, Lenin himself was denounced as an anarchist the complete bankruptcy of Stal inism (that of the Social when he called for a workers revolution in Russia. As Democrats having been long since proven) only came he wrote in State and Revolution: "The opportunists of with the counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet modern Social-Democracy accepted the bourgeois polit­ Union and the deformed workers states in East Europe. ical forms of a parliamentary, democratic state as the In thc wake of these monumental defeats for the limit which cannot be overstepped; they broke their fore­ world's working class, the recrudescence of disparate heads praying before this idol, denouncing as Anarchism anarchist tendencies is its own demonstration of the every attempt to destroy these forms." revival of "doctrines long since buried by scientific For the radical movement, the impact of the Russian socialism." Part of our task in winning a new genera­ Revolution-including the events leading up to it and tion to revolutionary Marxism, the communism which the revolutionary years following it-was decisive. At animated Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik Party, is to the height of the international revolutionary upheavals bring home the essential lessons from the history of spurred by the Russian Revolution, the best of the thc international workers movement. It is that purpose anarchist and syndicalist movements-those like James to which this pamphlet is dedicated. P. Cannon, Victor Serge, Andres Nin, Alfred Rosmer and Harrison George-became dedicated and disciplined -20 June 2001 2 THE ROOTS OF ANARCHISM What I want to try to do here is discuss those ideas and atti­ tudes of classical anarchism which we encounter among American radical youth today, not only those who call them­ selves anarchists. but the Green radicals and left-liberals; that is, the kind of people who were at the Seattle and D.C. pro­ tests, many of whom are now around the Nader campaign. As we shall see, the youth who demanded that the directors of the World Bank cancel the debts of poor Third World coun­ tries were expressing ,an attitude and a position entirely com­ patible with the doctrines of Peter Kropotkin, the foremost anarchist spokesman .and theoretician in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Basically, anarchism is part of a family-one might call it the slightly nutso second cousin in this family-of radical democratic idealism. Now all forms of radical democratic idealism derive in an intellectual sense from the Enlighten­ ment of the 17th and 18th centuries, or more precisely its left wing, and they achieved organized expression as a result of the French Revolution of 1789, which attempted to translate the ideals of the left wing of the Enlightenment into reality. Reuters In the early 19th century, the various schools of socialism Anti-WTO demonstrators in Seattle, November 1999. which Marx and Engels later called utopian socialism were Self-described anarchists joined with liberal activIsts a form of radical democratic idealism. In our day, Green in reformist appeals to "humanitarian" sentiments radicalism is a form of radical democratic idealism, which, against "globilization." as we'll see, has a close family resemblance to classical anarchism in some ways. Mainstream liberalism also draws in the mid-l 870s. He began as a student radical at the Uni­ from this same intellectual tradition. versity of Berlin, as a left Hegelian. Interestingly enough, he The central premise of radical democratic idealism is and Friedrich Engels were sort of like chums, they were sort that the world can be more or less instantaneously restruc­ of the "big reds on campus." They were part of a left Hege­ tured so as to conform to the ideals of the classic bourgeois­ lian circle which called themselves "the Free." democratic revolution---expressed, for example, as "the right Bakunin came to prominence during the European to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the American bourgeois-democratic revolutions of 1848 as an exponent of Declaration of Independence or the more radical expression what was called "democratic pan-Slavism," which was a form "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" of the far more radical French of extreme left-wing nationalliberationism. At this point, all Revolution. How these are interpreted varies, but they all of the Slavic peoples (except for the Russians) were subju­ stem from the same basic premise. By their nature, all forms gated and oppressed by other peoples. The South Slavs-the of radical democratic idealism are trans-class doctrines. That Serbs and the Bulgars-were part of the Turkish Ottoman is, they appeal to all men of all social classes, including the Empire. The western Slavs-the Czechs and the Slovaks­ "progressive" or "enlightened" elements of the propertied were part of the German-dominated Hapsburg Empire. and ruling class, to carry out these principles which many of Poland, which was the biggest Slavic country besides Rus­ them claim to uphold-to practice what they preach. sia, was divided at that time between the Hapsburg Empire, That anarchism is really a form of and derives from radi­ Prussia and the fellow Slavic empire of tsarist Russia. cal democratic idealism is very clear in the career of the most Bakunin put out what he called an "Appeal to the Slavs," historically important figure of the anarchist movement, the to unite and liberate all of the Slavic peoples and establish a man who actually founded the movement, Mikhail Bakunin.
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