Since last blogging, I've been concentrating on my two talks. Both were well attended (beyond official capacity) and seemed to go down well, although obviously the audience decides that. I tried to get too much in the first talk, but then I had to cover a lot of ground (maybe in ten libertarians would have been better?). Still, it was nice to go through such important activists and thinkers – particularly women libertarians, as these are often overlooked (which was why the Five Leaves people wanted it organised).

This summation work has helped me clarify A Libertarian Reader, which is now definitely being organised in two volumes based on eighty periods – one from 1857 to 1936, then from 1937 to 2017. While eighty years is a strange cut-off point, I think it makes sense in this case – not least because it makes volume 1 end with the Spanish Revolution. Not quite ending with Durruti’s rightly famous interview (due to a Camillo Berneri article that needs to go in), but it does end with a rare Emma Goldman speech. While the texts are not completely finalised, the introduction is now at its first draft stage – so progress is being made.

In relation to the talks, I’ve tracked down a few André Léo texts from the Commune which are going in. I’ve also thought about adding another Lucy Parsons one. Which brings me to my first Marxist myth of this blog, namely the contrast made by Marxists between Parsons and Goldman. Needless to say, these add to the various Marxists myths about anarchism already debunked in AFAQ.

After reading quite a few accounts, I think it is fair to say that Leninists really hate Emma Goldman with a passion – even to the extent of systematically distorting both her life and her ideas. For example, my reply to an ISO diatribe can be joined by another to be found here on Lucy Parsons:

‘By the turn of the century, Emma Goldman was the most popular anarchist in the U.S. Her focus was on the freedom of the individual, primarily around the question of sexual independence and "free love." Goldman and Parsons became fierce, lifelong adversaries over their differing perspectives on revolution.

‘Parsons charged Goldman with ignoring the class struggle and "addressing largely middle-class audiences." Goldman attacked Parsons for failing to prioritize the fight to "smash monogamy."

‘For Parsons, it was ridiculous to talk about women's sexual liberation without a struggle around economic issues. "I hold that the economic is the first issue to be settled," she writes. "That it is woman's economical dependence which makes her enslavement possible...How many women do you think would submit to marriage slavery if it were not for wage slavery?"

‘As the anarchist label came to be associated with those moving away from a focus on the working class, Lucy Parsons became increasingly disenchanted with anarchism. Soon she would be writing, "Anarchists are good at showing the shortcomings of others' organizations. But what have they done in the last 50 years?...Nothing to build up a movement; they are mere pipe-dreamers dreaming. Consequently, anarchism doesn't appeal to the public."

‘In 1905, Lucy Parsons would participate in the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary-syndicalist organization.”

I must note when the text quoted after “Soon she would be writing” dates from. Given the context of the article, the reader would be forgiven to thinking it was written sometime between 1900 (“the turn of the century”) and 1905, the founding of the IWW. No such luck. The quote is from a letter written on 27 February 1934 – soon, at least for the ISO, means around 30 years! The dishonesty is simply shocking, but sadly not an isolated case.

What of the feud between Parsons and Goldman? Well, it seems to be true the two did not get on (an issue not limited to anarchists, as shown by numerous splits by Marxists over the years). However, the rest is an invention – I particularly like the “smash monogamy” quote, as if Goldman used such words (or anyone used such terminology before the late 1960s at the very earliest…). Goldman – it must be stressed – was fully aware of the class nature of both capitalism and how to change it. I’ve indicated this in my review of Carolyn Ashbaugh’s terrible book – which is the main source for the ISO’s invented narrative.

There is a strange quality to this kind of diatribe, namely that anarchists are painted as being unable to hold more than one idea in their heads at any one time, combined with similar monolithic approach to tactics. Thus anarchists are class struggle orientated (like Parsons, and so “syndicalists” and so good because they are nearly Marxists) or they are culture orientated (like Goldman, and so “individualists” and express “anarchism”). In reality, anarchists are like everyone else and can hold multiple ideas and advocate multiple tactics – thus Goldman advocated syndicalism along with personal transformation, she recognised the importance of individual liberation along with having a class analysis of society and social change. These positions are not mutually exclusive, in other words.

As she recounts in Living My Life, Goldman was a worker and she took part in strikes while a worker – and supported strikes when she became a full-time anarchist activist, along with writing on and lecturing about syndicalism. Hell, Lucy Parsons sold Goldman’s pamphlets – including we can assume the one advocating syndicalism! Which makes claims like “Parsons' merciless and principled critique of lifestyle anarchist and Zinn hero Emma Goldman” laughable – but clearly Leninists feel that they can come out with this kind of nonsense, presumably being sure that their readers will not find out the reality of the situation by reading the authors in question – indeed, why would they given the picture pained?

Just to state the obvious, Goldman was not a “lifestyle” anarchist but rather a class struggle anarchist and her feminism was rooted in class analysis and class struggle – for example, “how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office?” (Anarchism and Other Essays, 216) Ironically, she critiqued the feminists of her time for ignoring the reality of class society long before her later critics put pen to paper – but, then, they clearly did not read her books before doing so (a better option than knowingly lying, the only other option).

So the picture painted by Ashbaugh and repeated by the likes of the ISO is simply an invention. I suppose the narrative of an anarchist critical of anarchist orthodoxy, who became a syndicalist and moved towards Marxist principles is just too appealing to reject. It is a morality tale for young anarchists to help them see the errors of their ways and so evidence and logic are not necessary. Likewise, articles like these are for young party members, to discourage them from reading the likes of Goldman and their eye-witness accounts of the failure of Bolshevism in practice. Indeed, her critique of Lenin in power was rooted in a very clear class analysis:

“There is another objection to my criticism on the part of the Communists. Russia is on strike, they say, and it is unethical for a revolutionist to side against the workers when they are striking against their masters. That is pure demagoguery practised by the Bolsheviki to silence criticism.

“It is not true that the Russian people are on strike. On the contrary, the truth of the matter is that the Russian people have been locked out and that the Bolshevik State – even as the bourgeois industrial master – uses the sword and the gun to keep the people out. In the case of the Bolsheviki this tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan: thus they have succeeded in blinding the masses. Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party.” (My Disillusionment in Russia, xlix)

Goldman was more than able to have more than one idea in her head... and in terms of her enriched perspective, she was right. Class struggle politics do not need to exclude a concern over other issues, nor a desire to expand individual freedom in the here-and-now. It is only the impoverished politics of Leninism which concludes it must.

Which raises a question, did Parsons join the Communist Party of the USA in 1939 as Ashbaugh claimed? Her book has no footnote indicating any evidence or source – given the claim, this seems strange. The wikipedia entry on Lucy Parsons shows the problem – for it refers to post-Ashbaugh texts which repeat her claims uncritically as if they were proof of the initial claim. Given the tone of her book as well as the inaccuracy of many of her statements (particularly as regards anarchism and anarchists), it seems that anything in that book should be taken as questionable.

It is interesting to note the influence of Ashbaugh’s claims. Thus we find Sam Dolgoff stating in 1971-2 that “I met Lucy Parsons” when she attended an anarchist talk and that she “later became a Communist sympathiser, leading her name to their affairs, petitions, and causes.” (Anarchist Voices, 422) In the 1980s, he quotes her stating “[a]lthough I am not a Communist Party member, I do work with them because they are more practical” before adding: “According to Carolyn Ashbaugh's biography of Lucy Parsons, she became an outspoken member of the Communist Party”. (Fragments, 41-2) So in spite of being active at the time, Dolgoff was not aware she had joined the Communist Party and only mentions it after Ashbaugh’s book made the assertion!

Interestingly, in 1986 Ashbaugh presented some oral history which seems on the face of it to contradict her claim. She quotes an interview of James P. Cannon who worked with Parsons in the International Labor Defense in the 1920s: “But we never talked Party. I never talked Party to her. I just assumed she was an anarchist and that didn't affect my willingness to cooperate with her – nor her with me, apparently.” (“Remembering Lucy Parsons”, Haymarket Scrapbook, 187). He makes no reference to her joining the party later, which seems a strange omission.

This is hardly irrefutable evidence (although more than Ashbaugh gave!). Cannon became a Trotskyist in 1928 and after attempting to form a Left Opposition within the Workers (Communist) Party was expelled in October that year. He may have wished to save Parsons’ memory from association with Stalinism…. Which raises an obvious question – why Trotskyists are so keen to defend the assertion Parsons joined the Stalinists in 1939? On the face of it, it is hard to understand. This is after the defeat of the Russian Revolution, the attack on Trotskyism in Russia and then internationally (not that there was a great deal of difference between the two…), the Moscow show trails, the 1933 Soviet pact with fascist Italy, the (cross-class) Popular Front, the betrayal of Spain, the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, etc., etc., etc. To join the Stalinists after all this should, surely, be unworthy of praise?

Moving to another question, namely the issue of the “Chicago Idea” and the Haymarket Martyrs. These will be the subject of my second Precursors of Syndicalism article –I’m including an article by Albert Parsons in A Libertarian Reader on how they viewed unions as the embryos of a free society. It ends as follows:

‘The International recognises in the Trades Unions the embryonic group of the future “free society.” Every Trades Union is, nolens volens [whether willing or not], an autonomous commune in the process of incubation. The Trades Union is a necessity of capitalistic production, and will yet take its place by superseding it under the system of universal free co-operation. No, friends, it is not the unions but the methods which some of them employ, with which the International finds fault, and as indifferently as it may be considered by some, the development of capitalism is hastening the day when all Trades Unions and Anarchists will of necessity become one and the same.’ (The Alarm, 4 April 1885)

Lucy Parsons made the same point a few years later in an article included by Albert in his very good 1887 book (see my review):

“We hold that the granges, trade-unions, Knights of Labor assemblies, etc., are the embryonic groups of the ideal anarchistic society.” (Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Scientific Basis, 110)

This is the second Marxist myth I want to discuss, namely the contrast between anarchism and syndicalism (as reflected in accounts of the Goldman/Parsons feud). It is quotes like these made Ashbaugh claim both Parsons and the other Haymarket Anarchists were not anarchists but really syndicalists – indeed, she insisted on putting anarchist in quote marks! Strange, given that Ashbaugh argued that Lucy Parsons had been ignored because she was a worker, a woman and black, that Ashbaugh herself ignores her politics and proclaims she knows better than Parsons herself what she believed…

This seems to be a common position. Historian Bruce C. Nelson, for example, proclaims in his Beyond the martyrs: a social history of Chicago's anarchists, 1870-1900 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988) that “[i]f European anarchist is identified with Proudhon and Kropotkin” and “immigrant anarchism with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, then the membership of Chicago's IWPA was not anarchist” (153) and later adds Bakunin (171) – indeed, Chapter 7 has the title “Bakunin never slept in Chicago.”

Of course, it would be churlish to note that Marx likewise never slept in Chicago – nor in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Peking, Havana, etc. Still, let us look at the arguments being made in order to evaluate the case being made. Nelson is not, as far as know, a Marxist but his arguments reflect an all-too-common Marxist narrative that anarchism and syndicalism are different things (see, for example, my critique of Darlington).

Nelson states that the issue “should not be approached with twentieth-century labels”. (153) While, of course, Nelson is right to suggest that current notions should not be projected backwards, he seems to forget that anarchism and socialism were nineteenth-century “labels.” As such, we need to understand what the terms meant at the time – and their meaning in the twentieth-century reflects that use, to some degree.

He states that the Internationalists were “Political Republicans,” “Economic Socialists,” “Social-Revolutionaries,” “Atheists and Freethinkers.” This meant that this “was not an evolution from socialism to anarchism but from republicanism, through electoral socialism, to revolutionary socialism.” (171) He is somewhat confused in his claims, noting “Republican images pervaded socialist and anarchist rhetoric” (171) and that “[i]f the Martyrs moved ideologically from socialism to anarchism, the active membership seems to have moved from republicanism, through parliamentary socialism, to revolutionary socialism.” (173)

Yet at the time – and now, for that matter – anarchism was a form of revolutionary socialism, one which rejected “political action” (parliamentary socialism) in favour of economic action and organisation. So the likes of Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin all called themselves socialists, indeed revolutionaries. In terms of “republicanism,” Proudhon considered himself as part of the French republican tradition – although a member deeply critical of its mainstream which was centralised, unitarian, Jacobin. Thus we find him advocating in 1857 an “industrial republic” along with “industrial democracy” (Property is Theft!, 610) while 1848 he suggested:

“The Republic is the organisation through which all opinions and activities remain free, the People, through the very divergence of opinions and wills, thinking and acting as a single man. In the Republic, all citizens, by doing what they want and nothing more, directly participate in the legislation and the government as they participate in the production and circulation of wealth. Therefore, all citizens are kings because they all have complete power; they reign and govern. The Republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subject to order, as in the constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order, as the provisional government understands it, but liberty delivered from all its obstacles, superstition, prejudice, sophistry, speculation and authority; it is a reciprocal, not limited, liberty; it is the liberty that is the MOTHER, not the daughter, of order.” (280)

Bakunin, likewise, in 1868 wrote that the Alliance of Social Democracy “acknowledge[ed] no political form other than the republican form” (Selected Writings, 174) and later that “States must be abolished, for their only mission is to protect individual property, that is, to protect the exploitation by some privileged minority, of the collective labor of the mass of the people; for in that very way they prevent the development of the worldwide economic republic.” (The Basic Bakunin, 196) He also pointed out the former (and do note he calls his ideas socialist):

“If socialism disputes radicalism, this is hardly in order to reverse it but rather to advance it. Socialism criticizes radicalism not for being what it is but, on the contrary, for not being enough so, for having stopped in midstream and thus having put itself in contradiction with the revolutionary principle, which we share with it. Revolutionary radicalism proclaimed the Rights of Man, for example, human rights. This will be its everlasting honor, but it dishonors itself today by resisting the great economic revolution without which every right is but an empty phrase and a trick. Revolutionary socialism, a legitimate child of radicalism, scorns its father's hesitations, accuses it of inconsistency and cowardice, and goes further” (The Basic Bakunin, 87)

So Proudhon and Bakunin moved from republicanism to socialism and a rejection of electoral politics – and in Bakunin’s case, to social revolution. Kropotkin made the same journey, as did many anarchists. As did many in the First International – as shown by the rise of revolutionary anarchism within it. As such, the process of the 1880s in America does mirror that of the late 1860s and early 1870s in Europe. Anarchism did not just pop into being, it evolved and we should not be surprised that it did so in different periods experiencing similar environments and experiences – particularly when the latter evolution clearly knows of and is informed of the previous one!

In addition, in term of “Republicanism,” well, along with noting that Nelson admits they rejected change by the ballot-box we can simply indicate that Proudhon and Bakunin came out of the European Republican tradition and did not aim to abolish the idea of “one-person, one-vote” within their preferred federal socio-economic self-organisation. As for the Chicago anarchists called themselves socialists… as if Bakunin and Kropotkin did not! Here is Emma Goldman stating the obvious some decades latter:

“While it is true that I am an Anarchist. I am also a Socialist. All Anarchists are Socialists, but not all Socialists are Anarchists. Anarchism is the higher form of Socialism. All Socialists who think and grow will be forced to the Anarchist conclusion. Anarchism is the inevitable goal of Socialism. We Anarchists believe in the socialisation of wealth and of land and of the means of production. But the doing away with capitalism is not a cure-all, and the substitution of the Socialistic state only means greater concentration and increase of governmental power. We believe in the revolution. The founders of Socialism believed in it. Karl Marx believed in it. All thinking Socialists of today believe in it. The political Socialists are only trimmers and they are no different from other politicians. In their mad effort to get offices they deny their birthright for a mess of pottage and sacrifice their true principles and real convictions on the polluted altar of politics.” (“Anarchists Socialists” The Agitator, 1 April 1911)

Nelson also noted that Albert Parson’s book included extracts from Marx’s economic analysis along with anarchists like Kropotkin. (161) This means little, given that Bakunin recognised the importance of Capital and its analysis. If agreeing with the idea that capital exploits workers by appropriating the surplus-value of labour then Bakunin – and Kropotkin, etc. – were all “Marxists.” Indeed, this analysis predates Marx’s Capital for Proudhon expounded a similar analysis twenty-years before – and, years before that, so did many of the so-called British “Ricardian Socialists.”

So Nelson seems to have, against his own warnings, applied the twentieth-century dictionary definitions of anarchism and socialism onto the activists of the 1880s. I say “seems” for it is left for the reader to work out what is meant by that, for the politics of Bakunin and Kropotkin are not actually defined. Perhaps just as well, for both rejected “political action” in favour of reforms and revolution by direct struggle by labour organisations – which is precisely “the Chicago Idea.” As Kropotkin noted:

“Were not our Chicago Comrades right in despising politics, and saying the struggle against robbery must be carried on in the workshop and the street, by deeds not words?” (“The Chicago Anniversary,” Freedom, December 1891)

Indeed, Goldman repeatedly referenced the Martyrs – including noting “that in this country five men had to pay with their lives because they advocated Syndicalist methods as the most effective, in the struggle of labor against capital” (Syndicalism: the Modern Menace to Capitalism)  – and Mother Earth explicitly linked itself to them twenty years after their judicial murder before arguing the following clearly “lifestyle” position:

“Bitter experience has gradually forced upon organized labor the realization that it is difficult, if not impossible, for isolated unions and trades to successfully wage war against organized capital ; for capital is organized, into national as well as international bodies, co-operating in their exploitation and oppression of labor. To be successful, therefore, modern strikes must constantly assume ever larger proportions, involving the solidaric co-operation of all the branches of an affected industry - an idea gradually gaining recognition in the trades unions. This explains the occurrence of sympathetic strikes, in which men in related industries cease work in brotherly co-operation with their striking bothers - evidences of solidarity so terrifying to the capitalistic class.

“Solidaric strikes do not represent the battle of an isolated union or trade with an individual capitalist or group of capitalists ; they are the war of the proletariat class with its organized enemy, the capitalist regime. The solidaric strike is the prologue of the General Strike.

“The modern worker has ceased to be the slave of the individual capitalist ; to-day, the capitalist class is his master. However great his occasional victories on the economic field, he still remains a wage slave. It is, therefore, not sufficient for labor unions to strive to merely lessen the pressure of the capitalistic heel ; progressive workingmen's organizations can have but one worthy object -- to achieve their full economic stature by complete emancipation from wage slavery.

“That is the true mission of trades unions. They bear the germs of a potential social revolution; aye, more - they are the factors that will fashion the system of production and distribution in the coming free society.” (“The First May and the General Strike,” Mother Earth, May 1907)

So it would seem that not only Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons and the other Haymarket defenders were ignorant of anarchism but also Bakunin, Kropotkin... and Goldman! At least Paul Avrich knew enough about anarchism to note the following:

‘The “Chicago idea,” in its essential outlines, anticipated by some twenty years the doctrine of anarcho-syndicalism, which, in a similar way, rejected centralized authority, disdained political action, and made the union the center of revolutionary struggle as well as the nucleus of the future society. Only two notable features were lacking, sabotage and the general strike, neither of which was theoretically developed until the turn of the century. This is not to say, however, that anarcho-syndicalism originated with Parsons and his associates. As early as the 1860s and 1870s the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin were proposing the formation of workers' councils designed both as a weapon of class struggle against the capitalists and as the structural basis for the libertarian millennium. A free federation of labor unions, Bakunin had written, would form “the living germs of the new social order, which is to replace the bourgeois world.”’ (Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 73)

I should note that the General Strike was raised by Bakunin, amongst others, in the First International (Marx and Engels were against it, obviously). Malatesta and Kropotkin were raising it again in 1889 onwards, as did Louise Michel who was lecturing on it in London in 1890. Talking of Louise Michel, I found this report of a lecture of hers in London as reported in New Zealand Herald, 8 November 1890, in one long paragraph:

MDLLE. LOUISE MICHEL ON THE GENERAL STRIKE.

A Meeting was held in the Athenaeum, Tottenham Court Road, on September 4, when Mdlle. Louise Michel spoke upon the “General Strikes and the Social Revolution.” Mdlle. Michel said the general strike which was imminent would in all probability be brought about. by the employers themselves. The tendency in all the methods of production was towards an increased use of machinery; in fact, so perfect was machinery becoming that more and more workmen were thrown out of employment every year and left to starve. In Paris they found a refuge in the bosom of the Seine, which told no tales; in England, the workman who was unable to obtain subsistence for himself and his family was driven into the workhouse. This state of affairs could not last. Workmen were held down by soldiers and police, but when the time came when the soldiers and police saw that the balance of power inclined to the working classes, they would at once come over to their side ; and when that happened the time would soon arrive when they would see the downfall of the capitalists. The unemployed in Paris, if they demonstrated, were shot, down; in London they had the privilege of walking about the streets in their misery. This state of things could only end in a general strike against all laws and Governments. They could not continue to be driven like animals to the slaughterhouse. They saw great magazines of food and raiment all round them, whilst they were naked and starving. What was to prevent them from going in and helping themselves? The whole of the capital of the world was getting into the hands of great financiers, who used it to exploit the workers, and this was only a gigantic system of robbery. Religion had been suggested as a means to bring a better state of affairs, but the only valuable principle and teaching in Christianity was the precept to do unto others as they would that men should do unto them, but the system of rewards and punishments, by which the teachings of Christianity were enforced, was a fatal drawback to its value as an elevating agent. Faith in the future progress of the human race was necessary for them all. Machinery was an obstacle in that progress, and should be replaced by intelligence. It was only by raising men to the higher state of intelligence that they could satisfy the growing needs of humanity. When labour was free the cultivation of the soil would be much more perfect. The fields were ready to supply all their needs if properly treated, but the present system of cultivation brutalised the workers, who reaped no benefit from their labours. The present system of government was a system of robbery by assassins, who shot down those who differed from them. It was the same in Republican France as in Monarchical England. She looked forward to the time when they could put an end to the struggle for existence now going on and bring about a true Republic – the Republic of Humanity, in which all would work together for the common good.

Two things. First, Michel talks of “a true Republic” and so reflects the same “Republican” symbolism Nelson mentions, talk which he suggests means the Chicago activists were not anarchists. Second, all this places the “standard” narrative (as repeated by Leninists) that anarchists turned to syndicalism in the mid-1890s after the failure of “propaganda by the deed” in the early 1890s. Yet this is nonsense, given the actual writings of the likes of Malatesta, Kropotkin, Michel, etc. – and the ideas and activities of Bakunin in the First International. The key date is 1889 and the London Dock Strike but here is Kropotkin from 1892 at a Martyrs commemoration:

“No one can underrate the importance of this labour movement for the coming revolution. It will be those agglomerations of wealth producers which will have to reorganise production on new social bases […] to organise the life of the nation […] and means of production. They — the labourers, grouped together — not the politicians.” (“Commemoration of the Chicago Martyrs,” Freedom, December 1892)

In terms of politics, the links with the “Chicago Idea” to anarchist politics is pretty clear – once you have a basic grasp of anarchism and its history.

Similar comments are applicable to historian James Green who, in Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America (Anchor Books, 2007), suggested that the Chicago Anarchists had “turned away from electoral competition and adopted Karl Marx’s strategy of organising workers […] building class-conscious trade unions as a basis for future political action.” (50) He repeats the claim: “they faithfully adhered to the lesson they had learned from Karl Marx: that socialism could be achieved only through the collective power of workers organised into aggressive trade unions.” (130)

Except, of course, Marx advocated no such thing. Yes, Marx supported unions but he did not think the workers movements should be based on it. Rather, he argued for the creation of workers’ parties and the use of “political action” in the shape of standing for elections. Indeed, he explicitly mocked Bakunin’s programme in 1870 for advocating the ideas Green proclaims as Marx’s:

“The working class must not occupy itself with politics. They must only organise themselves by trade-unions. One fine day, by means of the Internationale they will supplant the place of all existing states.” (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Anarchism, and Anarcho-Syndicalism, 48)

Surely Green should know that? There is a long, long history of Marxist attacks on syndicalism – social-democratic and Leninist – which echo Marx’s attack on Bakunin, namely that it ignores the need for political organisation (workers’ parties) and political action (electioneering). So if Green’s summary is correct – and in terms of their ideas, if not their source, he is – then the Chicago activists were… Bakuninists. Or, as he puts it elsewhere in his book:

“The Chicago militants thought of themselves as socialists of the anarchist type –that is, as revolutionaries who believed in liberating society from all state control, whether capitalist or socialist.” (129)

As anarchists were and are socialists, aiming for an anti-state socialism, his point is confused. In terms of individual acts of violence, it should be noted that Bakunin never advocated that. As for Kropotkin, he suggested “the spirit of revolt” as an alternative to “propaganda by the deed” and urged – in 1881 – an approach identical to that advocated by the Chicago Anarchists a few years later in a two part article entitled “Workers’ Organisation”:

“The French proletariat thus announces that it is not against one government or another that it declares war […] it is against the holders of capital […] that they wish to declare war. It is not a political party that they seek to form either: it is a party of economic struggle. It is no longer democratic reform that they demand: it is a complete economic revolution, the social revolution. […] the enemy is capital, along with all the Gambettas and the Clemenceaus from today or in the future who seek to uphold it or to serve it. The enemy is the boss, the capitalist, the financier – all the parasites who live at the expense of the rest of us and whose wealth is created from the sweat and the blood of the worker. […] The great struggle that we are preparing for is essentially economic, and so it is on the economic terrain that we should focus our activities.” (Le Révolté, 10 December 1881)

And:

“In order to be able to make revolution, the mass of workers must organise themselves, and resistance and the strike are excellent means by which workers can organise. Indeed, they have a great advantage over the tactics that are being proposed at the moment (workers’ representatives, constitution of a workers’ political party, etc.) which do not actually derail the movement but serve to keep it perpetually in thrall to its principal enemy, the capitalist. The strike and resistance funds provide the means to organise not only the socialist converts (these seek each other out and organise themselves anyway) but especially those who are not yet converted, even though they really should be. […] What is required is to build societies of resistance for each trade in each town, to create resistance funds and fight against the exploiters, to unify [solidariser] the workers’ organisations of each town and trade and to put them in contact with those of other towns, to federate across France, to federate across borders, internationally. […] We must marshal all of our efforts with the aim of creating a vast workers’ organisation to pursue this goal. The organisation of resistance [to] and war on capital must be the principal objective of the workers’ organisation, and its methods must be informed not by the pointless struggles of bourgeois politics but the struggle, by all of the means possible, against those who currently hold society’s wealth – and the strike is an excellent means of organisation and one of the most powerful weapons in the struggle.” (24 December 1881)

I guess that makes Kropotkin, like Bakunin, a Marxist?

The problem is that Nelson and Green do not define what they mean by “anarchism” or what it meant at the time (these are not automatically the same thing). Thus we get an implicit suggestion that anarchism and socialism are different things rather than anarchism being a school of socialism. Which means saying that the Chicago anarchists aimed for socialism means little – Bakunin aimed for that, as did Proudhon , Kropotkin, etc. They differed from other socialists on tactics and on what constituted a genuine socialist society – hence Kropotkin arguing social democracy would produce state-capitalism, not socialism.

In short, having an awareness of the ideas of anarchism and its development within the First International would result in a better understanding of the “Chicago Idea” – and why the Chicago militants called themselves anarchists. Instead, we get myths – myths in which Bakunin’s ideas are assigned to Marx…

The next myth relates to the International and Proudhon, as expressed by David Harvey in his Paris, capital of modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003). I know, Harvey again, but this book is of note for its contradictory nature and unwillingness to really engage with ideas and movements being discussed. It is very much informed by the Marxist myth of how the victory of “collectivism” in the International in 1868 meant the end of “Proudhonism” rather than its transformation – and it definitely did not mean the victory of Marxism.

In terms of activists, Harvey notes “the eclipse of the mutualists like Tolain and Fribourg and their replacement by communists like Varlin and Malon” (299) Yet this is extremely misleading given that the term used – “communist” – is loaded with a lot of subsequent history. In short, the reader is encouraged to conclude they were Marxists when, in reality, they were not.

Yes, the right-wing mutualists would have called both Varlin and Malon “communists” for they had both argued for the collectivisation of land along with industry. For reasons better explained by fear of a rural backlash as happened during the 1848 revolution rather than Proudhon’ actual ideas, the “mutualists” rejected extending association to land ownership (given that most land in France was worked by families, there was not much wage-labour to abolish). Varlin did call himself a “communist,” but with a significant qualification:

“The principles that we must strive to uphold are those of the almost unanimous delegates of the International at the Congress of Basel [in 1869], that is to say collectivism or non-authoritarian communism”. (James Guillaume, L’internationale: documents et souvenirs [Paris, 1905-09] I: 258).

Varlin and Malon both had contact with Bakunin before the Commune – afterwards, Malon worked with the Federalist wing against the Marxists, being expelled from the Geneva International for his troubles.

Sadly, Harvey makes no use of the standard work on Malon. For if he had, he would have discovered a radical very far from a “communist.” Thus, “all active militiants shared a great deal” and the “intellectual orientation of this collectivism was primarily Colinsian and anarchist, not Marxist” (Colins being a Belgium socialist, who influenced César de Paepe). Their “ultimate goal was a decentralised control of property, with administration by workers' cooperatives. The majority of French militants, in short, though collectivist, still favoured a federalist structure of society.” In short, we must appreciate “how federalist and mutualist – hence a-Marxist or pre-Marxist – this collectivism was.” Malon, post-Commune, argued the International had “to avoid Jacobin and Blanquist centralisation, and to pursue a vigorous program of federalist socialism.” (K. Steven Vincent, Between Marxism and anarchism: Benoît Malon and French reformist socialism [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992], 16, 20, 40)

So definitely not Marxists, as most people would conclude by the use of the term “communist.” Ah, but perhaps I’m being unfair as Harvey earlier defined “two sorts” of communists (283), but neither Varlin nor Malon were followers of Blanc, Blanqui, Cabet and others of that type. Both were influenced by Proudhon and so were federalist socialists. If Malon in the 1880s did embrace a reformist social-democracy, it did not make him a Marxist in the 1860s.

Early Harvey admits as much, noting “most workers seem to have looked for some form of association, autogestion, or mutualism rather than centralised state control.” (154) Except, of course, mutualism advocated self-managed (autogestion) associations in production to replace wage-labour, a concept Harvey seems to have difficulties understanding. His presentation of Proudhon’s ideas starts as follows:

“Buchez [...] argued for bottom-up associations of producers with the aim of freeing workers from the wage-system [...] factory owners and employers were just as parasitic as the aristocracy and landowners. This idea was later taken up [...] by Proudhon.” (75)

I should note that he does not reference a single book by Proudhon, but does at least reference K. Steven Vincent’s excellent Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism. He quotes Vincent (pages 144-6) and then asserts that Proudhon “never sought to abolish the distinction between capital and labour.” (76)

This is nonsense, as shown by Vincent – for Harvey stops short of the quote provided by Vincent in which Proudhon notes “the member of the association is essentially [...] wage giver and wage earner” (146) and the page following were Vincent writes “in Proudhon's system there was no owner of the association other than the associates themselves: there was, therefore, no idle proprietaire who could appropriate profits.” (147) Likewise Harvey fails to quote Vincent on how Proudhon aimed at “abolishing the wage system” and “ushering in the regime of associations – a regime in which the exploiters of labour and the idle rich would be eliminated.” (160)

So Harvey should know better. Yet even if we do not check his reference, he does contradicts himself in the space of a few short paragraphs by going from how Proudhon took up the idea of “bottom-up associations of producers with the aim of freeing workers from the wage-system” as “factory owners and employers were just as parasitic as the aristocracy and landowners” to asserting he “never sought to abolish the distinction between capital and labour.” (75, 76) As a Marxist, he should know that abolishing wage-labour means reuniting the worker with the means of production, of abolishing the distinction between capital and labour. Proudhon was well aware of it, explicitly and repeatedly arguing for the combination of the two roles in the same people. As Harvey puts it latter:

“Cooperation and mutualism meant a new conception of workers’ democracy in the labour process, and it was to be backed by mutual credit and banking, mutual insurance and benefit societies, cooperative housing schemes, and the like.” (283)

So if association did aim to “reorganise work and reform the social relations of production” how would this be possible without “abolish[ing] the distinction between capital and labour”? (155, 76)

Harvey also suggests that “Proudhon supported private property in housing” (283) while at the same time noting “a whole wing of the workers’ movement, particularly influenced by Proudhon, [which led it] to disapprove of strikes, push for association, and confine their opposition to financiers, monopolists, landlords, and the authoritarian state rather than to private property and capital ownership.” (155) Of course, by “private property” in housing Proudhon did not mean having landlords – that was a form of property which produced theft. Nor is it clear that Proudhon favoured private property in housing – Engels suggested so, but he misrepresented Proudhon’s ideas. Sadly, Harvey presents no actual references to support his claim so we cannot confirm or refute.

Likewise, association within production automatically meant opposition to “capital ownership.” As for “private property,” Proudhon argued that individual associations would control their own affairs (in determining what they produce, how to produce it, how much to sell it for, etc.) rather than being dictated to by some central authority. It confuses two radically different things to proclaim this “private property.” As it stands, Harvey ignores Proudhon’s repeated calls for the socialisation of property.

Harvey, then, contradicts himself again. After noting how the mutualists expressed “opposition to […] landlords” (155) he then suggests that Proudhon was “in favour of individual home ownership for workers [...] Proudhon’s influence was so strong that no challenge was mounted to property ownership under the Commune, when resentment against landlords was at its height.” (200) What is it? Were they opposed to landlords or not?

In terms of the Paris Commune, I doubt that the lack of a “challenge to property ownership” is best explained by Proudhon’s influence (assuming Harvey is correct!), particularly given that the majority of the Commune’s council were Jacobins. Rather, I would argue that it is better explained by the fact the council was overloaded with issues and focused on political and social issues. Even the attempt to promote co-operatives was marked by a bureaucratic mentality – the call was not to expropriate workplaces but rather to call form a commission to look into the matter:

Decree on convening workers trade councils

Journal officiel de la République française, 17 April 1871

The Paris Commune (16 April 1871)

Considering that a number of factories have been abandoned by those who were running them in order to escape civic obligations and without taking into account the interests of workers;

Considering that as a result of this cowardly desertion, many works essential to communal life find themselves disrupted, the livelihood of workers compromised.

Decreed:

Workers trade councils [chambres syndicales ouvrières] are convened to establish a commission of inquiry with the purpose:

1. To compile statistics on abandoned workshops, as well as an inventory of their condition and of the work instruments they contain.

2. To present a report on the practical requisites for the prompt restarting of these workshops, not by the deserters who abandoned them but by the co-operative association of the workers who were employed there.

3. To develop a constitution for these workers’ co-operative societies.

4. To establish an arbitration panel which shall decide, on the return of said employers, on the conditions for the permanent transfer of the workshops to the workers’ societies and on the amount of the compensation the societies shall pay the employers.

This commission of inquiry must send its report to the Communal Commission on Labour and Exchange, which will be required to present to the Commune, as soon as possible, the draft of a decree satisfying the interests of the Commune and the workers.

I translated this decree for A Libertarian Reader, but it probably will not be included – it is hardly an example of a libertarian approach even it goal is. Indeed, reading this decree you can appreciate Kropotkin’s critique of the Commune and the need for workers to “act for themselves” in taking over their workplaces rather than waiting for a commission to be convened, its investigations made, its report written, then read and – finally! – acted upon. All done before the word “prompt” can be in a position to be actioned! To include it would mean to summarise all that, so the introductory comments would be longer than the text…

I cover this in an article on the Commune which I am in the process of revising (another project which I need to get back to!) so I will leave it here.

All this is more than sloppy research – I think it shows the negative impact of Marxist myths on Proudhon, the International, the Commune, amongst others. Suffice to say, contradicting yourself in the course of a few pages is unfortunate but it does show what happens if you let ideology get in the way.

Finally, I came across this claim recently:

“Many of the left intellectuals Marx and Engels most strongly criticised had antisemitic or proto-antisemitic leanings: not just the young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, to whom Marx’s essays ‘On the Jewish Question’ were a response, but also the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the co-operative socialist Charles Fourier, the radical philosopher Eugen Dühring, the insurrectionist socialist Louis-Auguste Blanqui, and the revolutionary anarchist and pan-Slavist, Mikhail Bakunin. Marx's and Engels' criticisms of these and like-minded authors were directed in part at their anti-Jewish prejudices and more especially at the political and intellectual limitations of which these prejudices were symptomatic. These critiques indicate how actively and purposefully Marx and Engels confronted anti-Judaic and antisemitic currents running through the ‘left’.” (Robert Fine and Philip Spencer, Antisemitism and the left: On the return of the Jewish question [Manchester University Press, 2017], 33)

Surely Fine and Spencer must know that this claim is nonsense? They must know that Marx and Engels made no mention of these author’s anti-Semitism when they attacked them? So, yet another myth is created – one which I am sure Fine and Spencer sincerely wish were true but for which no evidence is presented because none exists. I made a similar point before against another Marxist:

Looking at the fate of Jews in Russia, what is significant is “the total silence Marx and Engels seem to have observed, in private as well as in public,” about the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia in the spring of 1861. While, of course, this means little, it “does suggest a significant blind spot” (along with “the stream of vituperation [of Jewish people] that runs for decades through the private correspondence of Engels and Marx”). A similar combination of public silence and private racism marks their opinions of Blacks ([Peter Fryer, “Engels: A Man of his Time”, The Condition of Britain, John Lea and Geoff Pilling (eds.)]). (A reply to Louis Proyect's “A Marxist Critique of Bakunin”

Fryer’s account is, sadly, the accurate one of the two – having read a lot of Marx and Engels, particularly their attacks on Bakunin and Proudhon, I can state that a desire to combat anti-Semitism was not an aspect of them. Nor did Marx write much about anti-Semitism, even “On the Jewish Question” is usually quoted as being an anti-Semitic screed (“misread” or “selectively quoted,” scream Marxists – which seems poetic justice in so many ways!). Similarly, Marx made no public comment against Proudhon’s sexism (all I have found is a passing comment on “the miserable patriarchal amourous illusions of the domestic hearth” in his letter to Annenkov on System of Economic Contradictions) – Indeed, I did think about including some sexist comments by Marx in my second talk but decided against it as mostly irrelevant (the slide still exists, but in an appendix which remained unshown on the night).

Then there is the question of the article “The Russian Loan,” published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 4 January 1856. This was included by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling in the 1897 collection Karl Marx, The Eastern Question (London, S. Sonnenschein & co., 1897) but has been excluded from the Marx-Engels Collected Works – due to its anti-Semitism. Perhaps the editors are right and Marx did not in fact write the article, but that his daughter included it must suggest that she at the very least did not think it completely at odds with what she knew of his views on the subject?

And what if he did write it? Does that mean his other contributions are nullified? Sadly, due to the standard attacks on Proudhon and Bakunin by Marxists, Marxists have painted themselves into a corner here. If they say Marx was a man of his time and occasionally expressed ideas we now reject as wrong, then they must say the same about Proudhon and Bakunin. Then they would be left with critiquing their actual ideas – or, more likely, a caricature of them or an invention – and that would be awkward for them given how right and relevant those are.

So this Marxist myth is counter-productive. Attempts to portray Marx and Engels as enlightened people expressing all the sensibilities of the late-twentieth or early twenty-first century left are simply misplaced – and historically inaccurate and unlikely, and – surely? – a violation of historical materialism? People are embedded in their times and while they can and do question aspects of the dominant culture we cannot expect them to predict every aspect of over 150 years of social development in their writings.

Thus I read Proudhon’s sexist comments and despair at his backwardness but read his 1863 defence of giving black slaves full citizenship (as they were equal members of the human race) and – along with the white proletariat – property to stop the wage-labour the republicans aimed to give them as liberty (when not seeking to transport them from the country!) and see that here he was in the vanguard of opinion. We can attack the first while still recognising his contributions to socialism.

Ultimately, attacking the personal failings of individuals gets us nowhere – it is the pathetic “likeability” factor raised during American Presidential elections. Who would be fun in the pub is not a firm basis for political decisions…

The question is whether these opinions are in contradiction to the underlying core principles and are whether they a significant aspects of their ideas – can they be removed without impact the rest of the ideas? The answer is yes to both, in the case of Proudhon’s sexism and anti-Semitism as well as Marx, Bakunin, etc. We should deplore the comments, note the palpable contradictions and seek to do better.

Ultimately, if the critique of Proudhon – or Marx! – is based on their unpleasant personal bigotries and ignore the bulk of their ideas, then its not a serious critique. Not least because it will come back to haunt you as it will, inevitably, be applied to your tradition by those with the same low standards of debate. We can see that by the numerous right-wing blogs on Marx as anti-Semite – let us hope they don’t come across Engels’ writings on unhistoric peoples…

Finally, talking of Proudhon, I must note that his papers from the 1848 revolution – Le Représentant du peuple : journal des travailleurs and successors – are how available at Gallica, where they join Les Temps Nouveaux and a host of other important texts. When is the British Library going to the same for its archives? A full set of Freedom, at the very least, would be nice!

Until I blog again, be seeing you….