Anti-Capitalism or State Capitalism?

A new movement has appeared, one which has made a name for
itself in its militancy, its willingness to consider
alternatives to the status quo, to accept with pride the
name "anti-capitalist."
Sadly, Globalise Resistance is not part of that
movement. Eschewing any explicit anti-capitalist label, it
claims to be "a network of groups opposed to the global
growth of corporate power." It is a "central organising
goal of unity-in-diversity among the anti-globalisation,
environmental, anti-privatisation and human rights
movements." No mention of anti-capitalism.
Why? Could it be because many of its leading activists
proudly place themselves in the Bolshevik tradition. The
politics of Lenin and Trotsky are their basis, the Russian
Revolution their inspiration. They argue that the current
wave of protest is the latest in a long line of movements
which challenged how the world works and we should learn
from them.

Past and Future
And they are right. Every new movement has the past to
contend with. The importance of understanding previous
movements, their successes and their failures is obvious ?
we do not want to repeat the same mistakes again nor
continually reinvent the wheel. Past struggles, movements
and ideas are a foundation upon which we can build, an
inspiration for the poetry of the future. The danger is
that we forget that and seek safety in the past, in what
appeared to have been have successful.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the anti-
capitalist movement is facing that danger. When it exploded
at the J18 "Carnival against Capitalism" and Seattle, the
various vanguards of the Left were conspicuous by their
absence. Since then they have tried to catch up, hoping to
gain members from the movement for their parties. They aim
to recreate the apparent success of the Bolsheviks and
their role in any movement is to show that it is doomed to
failure unless that model is embraced.
The question is, is Bolshevism actually anti-capitalist
in the full sense of the word?

State Capitalism
For anarchists, capitalism is defined by wage labour. Under
capitalism workers can only gain access to the means of
life by selling themselves to those who do. If workers do
not directly manage their own activity then capitalism
remains, regardless of who formally owns property. That is
why we argue for workers? self-management of production
based on federations of workers? associations and communal
ownership.
Bolshevism does not share this vision. Lenin was clear
what kind of economy he was aiming for, a state capitalist
one. For Lenin "socialism is merely state-capitalist
monopoly *which is made to serve the interests of the whole
people* and has to that extent *ceased* to be capitalist
monopoly." The institutional framework of capitalism would
be utilised as the principal (almost exclusive) instruments
of "socialist" transformation. The "modern state possesses
an apparatus which has extremely close connections with the
banks and syndicates, an apparatus which performs an
enormous amount of accounting and registration work . . .
This apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed."
"*Without big banks Socialism would be impossible*," argued
Lenin, as they "*are* the ?state apparatus? which we *need*
to bring about socialism, and which we take ready made from
capitalism." The job of socialism was to "make it even
bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive," a
"single State Bank, the biggest of the big." As this would
be "nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus," the building
of socialism would be easy, created from above, "at one
stroke, by a single decree."
The Bolsheviks would "not invent the organisational form
of work, but take it ready-made from capitalism" and
"borrow the best models furnished by the advanced
countries." The idea that capitalist means could not be
used for socialist ends did not exist for Bolshevism.
Workers Control or Controlled workers?
Lenin did, at first, advocate "workers? control." Unlike
anarchists, he did not see "workers? control" as workers
directly managing production, he always saw it in terms of
workers? "controlling" those who did. It simply meant "the
country-wide, all-embracing, omnipresent, most precise and
most conscientious *accounting* of the production and
distribution of goods." In other words, "over the
capitalists" who would still manage production.
This "workers? control" was always placed in a statist
context. For Lenin "the new means of control have been
created *not* by us, but by capitalism in its military-
imperialist stage" and so "the proletariat takes its
weapons from capitalism and does not ?invent? or ?create
them out of nothing." Thus "workers? control" would be
based on state capitalist institutions, not on workers?
ones.
Once in power, the Bolsheviks quickly turned away from
even this limited vision of workers? control. Lenin raised
the idea of "one-man management," granting state appointed
"individual executives dictatorial powers (or ?unlimited?
powers)." The revolution, he claimed, "demands" that "the
people *unquestioningly* obey the single will of the
leaders of labour." His "superior forms of labour
discipline" were simply hyper-developed capitalist forms.
The role of workers in production was the same, but with a
novel twist, namely "unquestioning obedience to the orders
of individual representatives of the Soviet government
during the work."
Capitalist management techniques were praised and
introduced. "We must raise the question of piece-work and
apply and test it in practice," stated Lenin, "we must
raise the question of applying much of what is scientific
and progressive in the Taylor system; we must make wages
correspond to the total amount of goods turned out."
Techniques designed and used by management to break the
collective power of workers at the point of production were
now considered somehow "neutral" when imposed by the Party.
Industry was soon nationalised, but capitalism was not
ended. As anarchists then (and now) pointed out, the
relations between labour and capital where the same. State
capitalism simply replaced private capitalism.
While most in the "anti-globalisation" movement are
inspired by a vision of a non-capitalist, decentralised,
diverse society based on appropriate technology and
appropriate scale, Bolshevism is not. Rather, it sees the
problem with capitalism is that its institutions are not
centralised and big enough. For Lenin, when "the separate
establishments are amalgamated into a single syndicate,
this economy can attain tremendous proportions, as economic
science teaches us." Yes, *capitalist* economic science,
based on *capitalist* definitions of efficiency and
economy! That Bolshevism bases itself on centralised, large
scale industry because it is more "economic" suggests
nothing less than that its "socialism" will be based on the
same dehumanising and anti-ecological priorities as
capitalism.
In a nutshell, Bolshevism advocated and implemented
*capitalist* relations in production based on *capitalist*
structures. It may be against private capitalism, but this
is because it favours *state* capitalism. It is significant
that the "one-man management," piece-work, Taylorism, etc.
advocated and implemented under Lenin are listed by his
followers as evils of Stalinism, showing its anti-socialist
nature. Clearly, Bolshevik policies had a decisive impact
on how the revolution developed.
Perhaps this explains why Globalise Resistance is not
explicitly anti-capitalist. If it were, it would have meant
that Lenin could not honestly join!

Party Power
Politically, Bolshevism argues for centralism and strong
government. For anarchists, this is unsurprising.
Centralism is designed for minority rule, to exclude the
mass of people from taking part in decision-making
processes in society. The state means the delegation of
power, the abdication of initiative and sovereignty of all
into the hands of a few. It means an inequality of power,
where the handful of people in the government rule the
rest.
Ironically, Bolshevism agrees. As Trotsky argued in
1939, "the very same masses are at different times inspired
by different moods and objectives. It is just for this
reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is
indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has
won, is capable of overcoming the vacillation of the masses
themselves." This was not a new idea. In 1921, he had
argued that the party was "entitled to assert its
dictatorship even if that dictatorship temporarily clashed
with the passing moods of the workers? democracy."
In this he simply repeated Lenin?s opinion that "the
dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through
an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because
in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one
of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided,
so degraded, and so corrupted in parts . . . that an
organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot direct
exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only
by a vanguard."
For Bolshevism, "All Power to the Soviets" meant, in
practice, "All Power to the Party through the Soviets." As
Lenin made clear in 1917, it was the Bolsheviks who would
"take over full state power," not the working class as a
whole. Twenty years latter, Trotsky simply repeated this
Bolshevik truism when he argued that "the proletariat can
take power only through its vanguard." Significantly, he
stated that the "revolutionary party, even having seized
power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler of
society."
So the party is "the sovereign ruler of society," *not*
the working class. Unsurprisingly, when workers turned
against the Bolsheviks in the spring and summer of 1918,
soviets which were elected with non-Bolshevik majorities
were simply disbanded by force. In Petrograd and Moscow,
the soviets were gerrymandered by packing them with
Bolshevik controlled bodies, making direct election from
the workplace irrelevant.
Even after the rise of Stalinism, Trotsky stressed that
the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party" was
"an objective necessity" and that the "revolutionary party
(vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders
the masses to the counter-revolution."
Rather than seek popular self-government in federations
of self-managed community and workplace assemblies,
Bolshevism aims for party power. As Trotsky stated in 1937,
"those who propose the abstraction of Soviets to the party
dictatorship should understand that only thanks to the
party dictatorship were the Soviets able to lift themselves
out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of
the proletariat."

Socialism from Below?
The principle of Globalise Resistance is supposedly
organisation and direction from the bottom up. Lenin was
quite clear that the "organisational principle" of
Bolshevism was "centralism" and "to proceed from the top
downward." He argued that "limitation, in principle, of
revolutionary action to pressure from below and
renunciation of pressure also from above is *anarchism*."
He stressed that "the principle, ?only from below? is an
*anarchist* principle" and the importance of combining
"from above" and "from below," where "pressure from above"
was "pressure by the revolutionary government on the
citizens."
The implications of this became clear once the
Bolsheviks seized power. As Lenin explained to his
political police, the Cheka: "Without revolutionary
coercion directed against the avowed enemies of the workers
and peasants, it is impossible to break down the resistance
of these exploiters. On the other hand, revolutionary
coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and
unstable elements among the masses themselves." Of course,
"wavering" and "unstable" elements is just another way of
saying "pressure from below," the attempts by those subject
to the rule of the party to influence its policies.
Bolshevism confuses party power with working class
power. For Lenin, it was "evidence of the most incredible
and hopeless confusion of mind" to ask the question
"dictatorship of the Party or dictatorship of the class?"
and it was "ridiculously absurd and stupid" to "draw a
contrast . . . between the dictatorship of the masses and
the dictatorship of the leaders." Indeed, "all talk about
?from above? or ?from below,? about ?the dictatorship of
leaders? or ?the dictatorship of the masses,? cannot but
appear to be ridiculous, childish nonsense." He proved this
by discussing the "general mechanism of the proletarian
state power viewed ?from above,? from the standpoint of the
practical realisation of the dictatorship":
"The interrelations between leaders-Party-class-masses
. . . now present themselves concretely in Russia in the
following form. The dictatorship is exercised by the
proletariat which is organised in the Soviets and is led by
the Communist Party . . . The Party, which holds annual
congresses . . . is directed by a Central Committee of
nineteen elected at the congress, while the current work in
Moscow had to be carried on by [two] still smaller bodies .
. . which are elected at the plenary sessions of the
Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee in
each bureau. This, then, looks like a real ?oligarchy.? Not
a single important political or organisational question is
decided by any State institution in our republic [sic!]
without the guiding instructions of the Central Committee
of the Party."
This did not stop Lenin claiming that the soviets were
"more democratic" than anything in the "best democratic
republics of the bourgeois world." If true, then why did
the Bolsheviks need non-Party conferences "to be able to
watch the mood of the masses, to come closer to them, to
respond to their demands"? Needless to say, these
conferences were stopped once they criticised the party.
Perhaps this explains why Lenin did not bother to view
"proletarian" state power "from below," from the viewpoint
of the proletariat? If he did, perhaps he would have
recounted the numerous strikes and protests broken by the
Army and Cheka under martial law, the gerrymandering and
disbanding of soviets, the imposition of "one-man
management" in production, the turning of the unions into
agents of the state/party and the elimination of working
class freedom and power by party power.

Globalise Bolshevism?
Globalise Resistance states that its members "are unified
by a common belief in values such as human realisation,
freedom, welfare, equality, environmental responsibility,
democracy and peace, and by a common objection to the
debasement of these by current local, national and global
structures of dominance and profit making." Simply put,
none of the leading Bolsheviks could be members of
Globalise Resistance. As can be seen, the Bolshevik
tradition has no such "common belief" and when in power it
"debased" all of them by the party?s "structures of
dominance."
It is important to stress that this process had started
well *before* the outbreak of the Russian civil war, which
is usually used by modern day Leninists to justify
Bolshevik actions. Moreover, Lenin and Trotsky thought
civil war and economic disruption were inevitable in any
revolution and they universalised these anti-democratic
policies and placed them at the heart of their politics.
Bolshevism confirmed anarchist theory that a "workers?
state" is a contradiction in terms. For anarchists, the
Bolshevik substitution of party power for working class
power (and the conflict between the two) did not come as a
surprise. The state is the delegation of *power* ? as such,
the idea of a "workers? state" expressing "workers? power"
is a logical impossibility. If workers *are* running
society then power rests in their hands. If a state exists
then power rests in the hands of the handful of people at
the top, *not* in the hands of all. The state was designed
for minority rule. No state can be an organ of working
class (i.e. majority) self-management due to its basic
nature, structure and design. For this reason anarchists
have argued for a bottom-up federation of workers? councils
as the agent of revolution and the means of managing
society after capitalism and the state have been abolished.

Why this leaflet?
Our account of past struggles is not simply a history
lesson. We must understand the past in order to avoid
repeating mistakes and dead-ends. To advance we must reject
those ideologies which failed in the past, yet linger on
like the undead in our midst.
Some will dismiss this leaflet as "sectarian" and urge
us to "unite" against the evils facing the world ? fascism,
war, whatever else can make us feel guilty for daring to
discuss their politics. But debate is as important as
action. Mindless activism can only weaken a movement.
Theory and practice must become one if we are to succeed.
To dismiss our work as "sectarian" simply shows that some
people have skeletons in their closets and while they know
it, they do not want anyone else to!
Others will dismiss our leaflet by saying that it is
"old news," that "lessons have been learned" and so on.
This does not stop them praising the Bolshevik revolution
and urging us to repeat it. Nor does it stop them
justifying and rationalising Bolshevik actions, so ensuring
that they will be repeated. Nor does it stop them using the
same tired old slogans, such as "nationalisation under
workers? control," a "workers? government" and so on.
So when someone says that they, too, are "anti-
capitalist" we cannot assume we mean the same thing. A
hostility to private capitalism can hide support for state
capitalism, as Bolshevism proves.
As anarchists like Chomsky have argued, it is not just
a case of agreeing on the ends and arguing over the means.
The ends themselves are different. Bolshevism aims for
party power and a highly centralised state capitalist
system. Anarchists argue we cannot use capitalist means for
socialist ends -- means determine ends.
Ultimately, any "unity" which waters down anti-
capitalism is spurious at best, a betrayal at worse. It
links anti-capitalism with state capitalism, with a
politics which replaces direct action from below with power
from above. Don?t be fooled again!

An Alternative Vision
The idea that socialism may have *different* priorities,
have *different* visions of how an economy was structured
and run, need *different* methods of organising production
and society than capitalism, is absent in Bolshevism. We
may be against the same thing, but that does not mean we
are *for* the same thing. The anti-globalisation movement
should remember this and start to be explicitly positive.
Unless we clarify what we want, modern day Bolsheviks will
use the lack of clear *pro* ideas to push state capitalism,
not anti-capitalism.
There is another vision of socialism. This vision has
anarchism as its leading proponent. Anarchists are
extremely happy that many in the "anti-globalisation"
movement have embraced anarchist ideas and practice. It
shows that our ideas appeal to other activists and meet
their needs, that they are themselves drawing similar
conclusions from their own experiences and analyses. A new
generation is developing their own theories based on a
critical dialogue with previous revolutionary ideas and
their own experiences. This is an extremely positive sign.
We have a lot in common and can learn from each other.
Anarchism argues that *real* anti-capitalism has to be
based on worker?s self-management of production. Without
this, as Bolshevism showed, workers remain wage slaves,
subordinated and exploited by those who do manage
production. An anarchist society is a federation of
decentralised communities in which production would be
based appropriate technology and scale and on human and
ecological needs. In an anarchist society, the economy
would be run by federations of workplace assemblies and
committees. We have long argued that capitalist methods
cannot be used for socialist ends and this explains our
struggle to democratise and socialise the workplace and our
awareness of the importance of collective initiatives by
the direct producers in transforming their work situation.
Instead of a workers? state (a contradiction in terms)
run from the top-down by a "revolutionary" government,
anarchists argue for the abolition of the State and
establishment of a federation of communes (workers?
councils) based on mandated and recallable delegates, *not*
representatives. Only in this way can all participate in
the running of society. To quote Bakunin, the revolution
"everywhere must be created by the people, and supreme
control must always belong to the people organised into a
free federation of agricultural and industrial associations
. . . organised from the bottom upwards by means of
revolutionary delegation" and so the "future organisation
of society must proceed from the bottom up only, through
free association or federations of the workers, into their
associations to begin with, then into communes, regions,
nations and, finally, into a great international and
universal federation."
In other words, a real socialism from below based on
federations of workplace and community assemblies, a
socialism which is libertarian, built and run from the
bottom up and which does not equate party power with
popular power.

Building the future in the present!
As history shows, to get real change we have to impose from
the streets and workplaces that which politicians are
incapable of realising in parliament. Anarchists organise
accordingly. We argue that working class people must
organise their power apart from and against the State by
building their own fighting social and economic
organisations. This means encouraging direct action,
solidarity and community and workplace assemblies in the
struggle for improvements under capitalism while fighting
to get rid of it totally.
By organising resistance in the workplace and community
we can create a network of activists who can encourage the
spirit of revolt and resistance. By creating assemblies
where we live and work we can create an effective
countering power to the state and capital. We must create
that part of libertarian socialism which can be created
within bourgeois society in order to combat that system
with our own special weapons of solidarity, direct action
and mutual aid. These combative class organisations can
also be the focal point for creating co-operatives, credit
unions, self-managed schools, social centres and so on.
The seeds of anarchy are created in struggle. By
fighting for change, those involved have to organise
themselves, to management their own affairs, to make their
own decisions. They see that bosses and politicians are not
needed and that we can govern ourselves. The class struggle
is the school of anarchism, with self-management within the
class struggle preparing us for a self-managed society.
How we organise under capitalism is very important.
Anarchists stress the importance of building the new world
in the shell of the old. We argue for self-management,
federalism and decision making from below upwards. We apply
within our organisations the same principles which the
working class has evolved in the course of its own
struggles. Autonomy is combined with federalism, so
ensuring co-ordination of decisions and activities is
achieved from below upwards by means of mandated and
recallable delegates.
At the dawn of the 21st century, let us ensure history
does not repeat itself. This means rejecting the state
capitalism of Bolshevism in favour of a *rea*l anti-
capitalism, one rooted in working class struggle, self-
organisation, solidarity, direct action and self-
liberation.

For more on anarchism:
www.anarchistfaq.org
www.struggle.ws
www.infoshop.org
www.ainfos.ca
For more on Bolshevism and the Russian Revolution:
Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers?
Control
www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/2163/bolintro.html
www.struggle.ws/russia.html
www.infoshop.org/faq/secH.con.html
www.infoshop.org/texts/iso.html