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anarchy 99 revolutionary action, and Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898), his plan for post-revolutionary organization, fit this model. The specific debate between anarchists and Marxists on the question of utopia turns on a distinction Marx and Engels drew between utopian and scientific socialism. By utopian socialism they referred to the writings of early nineteenth-century socialists – Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and St Simon – whose work was largely devoted to the design of ideal communities. Scientific socialism was the term they gave to their own work. The distinction was not designed to denigrate the work of these early writers, but to suggest that the science of Marxism and, more specifically, the idea of historical development on which it was based, had made any attempt to design ideal futures redundant. It suggested that socialists who refused to accept the ‘truth’ of Marxist teachings were by definition utopian. Nickolai Bukharin applied this logic in critique of the anarchists. Their refusal to accept Marx’s economic theory led anarchists to approach the question of organizing production with a view to supplanting the industrial system rather than enhancing it. This idea was ‘utterly utopian’. 26 George Plekhanov advanced a similar case. The Anarchists are Utopians. Their point of view has nothing in common with that of modern scientific Socialism. But there are Utopias and Utopians. The great Utopians of the first half of our century were men of genius; they helped forward social science, which in their time was still entirely Utopian. The Utopians of to-day, the Anarchists, are the abstracters of quintessence, who can only fully draw forth some poor conclusions from certain mummified principles. 27 The anarchist response was two-pronged. Landauer’s countercharge was that the Marxist ideal was too mechanistic. Marxists naively trusted science to ‘reveal, calculate and determine the future with certainty from the data and news of the past and the facts and conditions of the present’. But socialism is an art that relies on the rediscovery of spirit. It is utopian because it demands human action. The future – where ‘we are going, must go, and must want to go’ – can be shaped only by ‘deepest conviction and feeling ... of what ought to be’. Landauer’s plaintive cry was: We are poets; and we want to eliminate the scientific swindlers, the Marxists, cold, hollow, spiritless, so that poetic vision, artistically concentrated creativity, enthusiasm, and prophecy will find their
100 anarchism: a beginner’s guide place to act, work and build from now on; in life, with human bodies, for the harmonious life, work and solidarity of groups, communities and nations. 28 Other anarchists believed that by elaborating their ideal of anarchy they could usefully highlight the weaknesses of Marxist communism and, by warning the oppressed of its dangers, help secure genuine social revolution. Bakunin devoted considerable energy to teasing out the implications of Marx’s communism, analysing his revolutionary programme in an effort to show that Marxist revolution would result in a reinforcement of state power, not its abolition. These defences of utopianism reinforced the arguments of planners like Kropotkin and encouraged a broad range of anarchists to consider how they might develop their alternative. The organizational principle they developed is decentralized federation. This principle was first given shape by Proudhon. His view, as George Woodcock explains, was that the federal principle should operate from the simplest level of society. The organization of administration should begin locally and as near the direct control of the people as possible; individuals should start the process by federating into communes and association. Above that primary level the confederal organization would become less an organ of administration than of coordination between local units. Thus the nation would be replaced by a geographical confederation of regions, and Europe would become a confederation of confederations, in which the interest of the smallest province would have as much expression as that of the largest, and in which all affairs would be settled by mutual agreement, contract, and arbitration. 29 Proudhon initially considered decentralized federation as a stepping-stone to anarchy rather than as an expression of anarchist organization. Yet taken up by other anarchists, it has come to be regarded as the framework for anarchist organization. Naturally, subsequent generations of anarchists have added their own glosses to Proudhon’s ideas. One line of development was inspired by industrial development. In 1869 Jean-Louis Pindy proposed a system of dual federation, in which parallel communal and worker associations were integrated into one self-regulating system. James Guillaume elaborated a similar plan. Guillaume’s version suggested a formal organizational framework in which the relationships between federal bodies, based on reciprocity and contract, were
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contents Acknowledgements vii intro
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acknowledgements A number of people
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chapter two anarchist rejections of
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chapter five concluding remarks Stu
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index Page numbers in italic denote
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index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
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index 179 and state 30, 45-6, 50, 5
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