A discussion of the Paris Commune and its legacy from an anarchist perspective, indicating how it influenced both Anarchism and Marxism. It shows that anarchism alone has learnt its lessons and that Marxism, particularly in its Leninist form, paid lip-service to it while ignoring both its actual politics and its lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cOn March 17th<\/sup> the Communist Government completed its \u2018victory\u2019 over the Kronstadt proletariat and on the 18th<\/sup> of March it commemorated the martyrs of the Paris Commune. It was apparent to all who were mute witnesses to the outrage committed by the Bolsheviki that the crime against Kronstadt was far more enormous than the slaughter of the Communards in 1871, for it was done in the name of the Social Revolution, in the name of the Socialist Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Emma Goldman[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
There are a few sure things about reading history books. Firstly, and most obviously, you generally know how it ends (badly, in the case of the Paris Commune). What is important is what you learn from the events discussed. Secondly, when it is a Marxist account you are guaranteed that it will (at best) ignore or (at worse) distort the anarchist involvement and analysis of events. In this, Leninist Donny Gluckstein\u2019s account of the Paris Commune[2]<\/a> does not disappoint: he both ignores key aspects of the anarchist critique and<\/em> distorts what parts he does cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Paris Commune is a significant influence for all revolutionary socialists, anarchists as well as Marxists. It should be well known in libertarian circles so there should be no need to discuss its history in any great length. Not only were there \u201camong the Communards Anarchists and Syndicalists of a number of different brands\u201d[3]<\/a> but Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin saw the Commune as a striking confirmation (in both positive and negative senses) of anarchist ideas. Karl Marx produced his classic Civil War in France<\/em>immediately after its fall and added what he considered its key lesson \u2013 \u201cthe working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes\u201d[4]<\/a> \u2013 to the next preface of the Communist Manifesto.<\/em> Lenin placed it at the heart of his State and Revolution<\/em> and proclaimed that while \u201canarchists had tried to claim\u201d it as \u201ca corroboration of their doctrine\u201d in fact they \u201ccompletely misunderstood its lessons and Marx\u2019s analysis of these lessons.\u201d[5]<\/a> More recently, Leninist Paul Blackledge has utilised this work to suggest the \u201cproblem for Bakunin was that Marx was palpably correct\u201d as \u201cthe Commune was a novel form of government and indeed a novel form of state\u201d and so Kropotkin produced \u201can immanent critique of Bakunin\u2019s analysis of the Commune.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
We will use Gluckstein\u2019s book as means of exploring the lessons from the Commune, to show how anarchist ideas are distorted and how the standard Marxist interpretation he summarises is flawed. It will reaffirm the anarchist influences on the Commune, the place of the Commune in anarchism and the anarchist critique of it. It will also show how implausible Leninist attempts to appropriate it for their tradition are, for, while Gluckstein praises the Commune for introducing \u201cworkers\u2019 control of production\u201d and \u201cdemocracy from below,\u201d (53) he fails to mention the awkward fact that the Bolsheviks abolished both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon, Marx and exploitation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
While Marx in The Civil War in France<\/em> failed to mention any intellectual influences on the Commune, so presenting it as something which appeared to spring from nowhere, Gluckstein rightly notes that \u201cfor all its daring and forward-looking ideas\u201d it was \u201cnot written on a blank sheet.\u201d (85) He follows most historians of the Commune into splitting the Commune\u2019s political influences into three: Jacobin, Blanquist and Proudhonist. The first were radical republicans, inspired by the Jacobins of the Great French Revolution and primarily sought political change, with the social question being addressed later. The Blanquists followed their eponymous hero, Louis Auguste Blanqui, in favouring a party of professional revolutionaries who would seize power in a coup and implement socialism from the top-down. The \u201cProudhonists\u201d were inspired by the federal socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to call themselves an anarchist, and were a mixed bag, whom Gluckstein rightly splits into right and left wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That the Commune was heavily influenced by Proudhon\u2019s ideas should go without saying and the best that can be said of Gluckstein\u2019s account is that he at least acknowledges this by stating that while Marx \u201cplayed a significant role\u201d in the First International that did \u201cnot mean, however, that the French section was full of Marxists. Here the Proudhonists were the most influential current.\u201d (82) However, his discussion of Proudhon\u2019s ideas is a travesty.[7]<\/a> To be charitable, it simply repeats the standard Marxist analysis of the Frenchman\u2019s ideas so his account is not breaking new ground in distortion. Given how regularly this nonsense is repeated, it is worthwhile contrasting Gluckstein\u2019s account to what the \u201cfather of anarchism\u201d actually argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The usual Leninist equation of a market economy with capitalism is repeated, with Gluckstein stating Proudhon\u2019s \u201ccriticisms of the failings of capitalist society where sharp\u201d but he \u201cdid not reject the market system as such.\u201d (72) Confusing capitalism with the market allows Proudhon to be presented as an advocate of wage labour and it is asserted that he market exchange under capitalism was based on freedom and equality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIt followed that, since the selling of labour was itself a form of commercial operation, when employees went to work for the bosses they were not being exploited because \u2018any man\u2019s labour can buy the value it represents.\u2019\u201d (72)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Significantly, Gluckstein quotes Marx quoting Proudhon. Indeed, he rarely quotes Proudhon directly, suggesting a lack of familiarity with the source material for if he were at all familiar with it then he would have known that the anarchist explained how property \u2013 wage labour \u2013 \u201cviolates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism,\u201d resulting in the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist who employed him.[8]<\/a> Ironically, the passage Marx rips out of context and which Gluckstein regurgitates was Proudhon taunting bourgeois economists on why the surplus produced by labour was not enjoyed by the workers who created it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWhy do not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the labour of each should leave a surplus, use all their influence in spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man\u2019s labour can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is proportional to the services of all other workers?\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon explains why this does not occur under capitalism, how selling their labour and its product ensures workers are exploited by their employers, how it is wage-labour that produces this outcome. So if the \u201cexchange of commodities through a market system\u201d was for Proudhon \u201cfundamentally fair,\u201d it did not<\/em> follow that \u201cthe selling of labour was a form of commercial operation, where employees\u2026 were not being exploited.\u201d (72) Showing his utter ignorance of the matter, Gluckstein asserts that \u201cKarl Marx, who studied Proudhon\u2019s work carefully, had a very different analysis which located exploitation at the very heart of the capitalist production process.\u201d (72) In reality, Proudhon had argued that this was the case from 1840 onwards. He was well aware that workers produced a value greater than what they received in wages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWhoever labours becomes a proprietor\u2026 I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages, \u2013 I mean proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone profits\u2026 the worker retains, even after he has received his wages, a natural right of property in the thing which he has produced<\/em>.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Compare this to the \u201cMarxist\u201d account Gluckstein provides in which the worker \u201cwill normally create during a working day more value than his daily wages with which the capitalist has purchased his or her labour power\u201d. (72) In this, Marx was echoing Proudhon rather than presenting a different analysis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cI have shown that every labour must leave a surplus; so that, supposing the consumption of the worker to remain constant, his labour should create, on top of his subsistence, an ever greater capital. Under the regime of property, the surplus of labour, essentially collective, passes entirely\u2026 to the proprietor\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This, obviously, is a theory of surplus value being produced in production, as recognised by more informed Marxists like John Enrenberg who notes that Proudhon\u2019s ideas were \u201canticipating what Marx and Engels were later to call the appropriation of surplus value\u201d.[12]<\/a> This was part of the reason why \u201cproperty is theft,\u201d the other being that the appropriation of the means of live by the few placed the rest in the position of having to sell their labour (and so its product) to those who did (\u201cWe who belong to the proletarian class: property excommunicates us!\u201d[13]<\/a>). Thus, the theft of the land and workplaces needed by all to produce and live, allowed the theft by the owner of the product and surplus created by labour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gluckstein fails to mention an essential part of Proudhon\u2019s analysis, namely his concept of \u201ccollective force\u201d. This was \u201c[o]ne of the reasons Proudhon gave for rejecting\u201d property, that \u201ccollective endeavours produced an additional value\u201d which was \u201cunjustly appropriated by the proprietaire<\/em>.\u201d[14]<\/a> Edward Hyams, whom Gluckstein quotes in support of his incorrect account, summarised it well enough even if he did not use the term:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe proprietor (capitalist)\u2026 cheats [his workers] abominably: for he has paid nothing for their collective effort, only for the individual effort of each.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is on the page before<\/em> the one Gluckstein quotes from Hyman\u2019s book: so much for the notion that Proudhon thought \u201cthe crime [of theft] did not occur in the labour process.\u201d (72) Marx, incidentally, repeated Proudhon\u2019s analysis of the role of \u201ccollective force\u201d in Capital<\/em> in essentially the same fashion but without acknowledgement.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein explains the \u201cMarxist\u201d theory of exploitation in terms of \u201cthe difference between the value created by labour power once it is put to work, and the value of labour power itself\u201d. (73) Yet Proudhon had raised this in 1846 when he noted labour \u201cis a thing vague and indeterminate in its nature, but qualitatively defined by its object \u2013 that is, it becomes a reality through its product.\u201d[17]<\/a> Marx, ironically, \u201cmade some disparaging remarks about this passage\u201d yet this \u201canticipated an idea that Marx was to develop as one of the key elements in the concept of labour power<\/em>, viz. that as a commodity<\/em>, labour produces nothing and it exists independently of and prior to the exercise of its potential to produce value as active<\/em> labour.\u201d[18]<\/a> Likewise Marx is quoted from 1871 on the \u201cdespotism of capital over labour\u201d (97) yet Gluckstein fails to mention Proudhon\u2019s \u201cproperty is despotism\u201dfrom 1840.[19]<\/a> This is unfortunate because it was this despotism which allowed exploitation to occur as workers \u201chave sold their arms and parted with their liberty\u201d when they become an employee. [20]<\/a> Proudhon, then, was well aware of the oppressive nature of wage labour:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThus, property, which should make us free, makes us prisoners. What am I saying? It degrades us, by making us servants and tyrants to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDo you know what it is to be a wage-worker? To work under a master, watchful of his prejudices even more than of his orders\u2026 Not to have any thought of your own\u2026 to know no stimulus except your daily bread, and the fear of losing your job!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wage-worker is a man to whom the proprietor who hires his services gives this speech: What you have to do does not concern you at all: you do not control it\u201d[21]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, he linked rising inequality to the exploitation produced by the hierarchical relationship created in the capitalist workplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cI have shown the entrepreneur, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become his workers. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers.\u201d[22]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon clearly saw exploitation occurring in the workplace and so his \u201cposition that property is theft locates a fundamental antagonism between producers and owners at the heart of modern society. If the direct producers are the sole source of social value which the owners of capital are expropriating, then exploitation must be the root cause of\u2026 inequality.\u201d[23]<\/a> Indeed, he linked his analysis of how exploitation occurred within production \u2013 by the appropriation of the \u201ccollective force\u201d by the capitalist \u2013 with his calls for both association (\u201cBy virtue of the principle of collective force, workers are the equals and associates of their leaders\u201d[24]<\/a>) and socialisation (\u201cAll human labour being the result of collective force, all property becomes, by the same reason, collective and undivided\u201d[25]<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein does, in passing, acknowledge Proudhon\u2019s actual position by noting that big capitalists \u201ccould be excluded from commodity production through mutualism, or workers\u2019 co-operatives.\u201d (75) If Proudhon really thought that exploitation did not occur within the workplace then why did he advocate co-operatives? Why did he consistently argue for the abolition of wage labour? Simply because, contra Gluckstein, Proudhon knew that \u201cindustrial democracy\u201d, in which \u201call positions are elective, and the by-laws subject to the approval of the members,\u201d would ensure that \u201cthe collective force, which is a product of the community, ceases to be a source of profit to a small number of managers\u201d and becomes \u201cthe property of all the workers.\u201d Thus \u201cworkers\u2019 associations\u2026 are full of hope both as a protest against wage-labour, and as an affirmation of reciprocity<\/em>\u201d and their importance lies \u201cin the negation of the capitalist regime.\u201d His aim was \u201cCapitalist and landlord exploitation stopped everywhere, wage-labour abolished, equal and just exchange guaranteed.\u201d[26]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
So even a basic awareness of his ideas would be sufficient to recognise that Gluckstein\u2019s claim that, for Proudhon, exploitation \u201cdid not occur in the labour process\u201d and so it \u201cmust come from outside of the commercial or capitalist relations, through force and fraud\u201d (72) is nonsense. The notion that Proudhon was not against wage labour simply cannot stand even a superficial look at his works.[27]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon and Associational Socialism<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Like Marx,[28]<\/a> Proudhon was well aware that the \u201cmarket system\u201d was not identical to capitalism, that \u201ccapitalist society\u201d was marked by wage labour and that such an economic system was not the end of social evolution.[29]<\/a> Like Marx, he repeatedly called for the abolition of wage labour (hence his consistent support for co-operatives).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein obscures this by his flawed account of the Associational Socialism then predominant within the French labour movement. He is keen to assign the idea of socialism based on co-operatives to Louis Blanc whom he claims \u201coriginally promoted\u201d the idea and his ideas were \u201cattractive to people in small workshops that operated with minimum machinery\u201d for in these cases it was superficially plausible that the co-operatives \u201ccould win in competition with the capitalist system.\u201d This is dismissed as \u201cclassic reformism\u201d and doomed to failure due to \u201cindustrial development [having] rendered it impossible to out-compete the capitalist.\u201d Marx is quoted approvingly indicating that a \u201cworkers\u2019 government\u201d was needed to foster a national production based on a common plan. (197-8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is wrong for three reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first is that Blanc did not think that co-operatives, by themselves, could out-compete capitalism. He was of the opinion it was \u201cnecessary to use the whole power of the state\u201d to achieve the organisation of labour for what \u201cthe proletarians lack to free themselves are the tools of labour\u201d and \u201cthese the government must furnish them.\u201d The state \u201cshould place itself resolutely at the head of industry\u201d and \u201cwould constitute itself, by and by, as master of industry and in the place of monopoly we have obtained\u2026 association.\u201d[30]<\/a> That Gluckstein seems unaware of Blanc\u2019s actual position is strange as it is well-established in the secondary literature. Moreover, if he had consulted the writings of Proudhon, he would have discovered the repeated criticising of Blanc\u2019s system because it was state run and financed. This centralised form of association was denounced as a new form of wage-labour in which simply mean replacing capitalists with bureaucrats. As history shows, Proudhon was right.[31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second is that other socialists recognised the need for associations to replace wage-labour. Proudhon had also popularised the idea of workers associations (co-operatives) as the basis of socialism from 1840 onwards when he had stated managers \u201cmust be chosen from the workers by the workers themselves\u201d[32]<\/a>. While 1851\u2019s General idea of the Revolution<\/em> is particularly strong on this, it can be found in almost all of his works.[33]<\/a> For Proudhon, the workplace must be run by \u201cindustrial associations, small worker republics\u201d and so \u201cindustrial democracy must follow industrial feudalism.\u201d[34]<\/a> As Dorothy W. Douglas correctly noted, \u201cthe co-operative movement\u2026 syndicalism\u2026 guild socialism\u2026 all bear traces of the kind of self-governing industrial life to which Proudhon looked forward.\u201d[35]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third, and most importantly, is that Blanc \u2013 like Proudhon \u2013 did not<\/em> originate the idea of workers associations. While Gluckstein misdates the publication of Blanc\u2019s influential work (The Organisation of Labour<\/em>) to 1847 rather than 1840,[36]<\/a> the fact is that \u201cAssociationism\u201d was born during the wave of strikes and protests unleashed by the 1830 revolution. That year saw Parisian printers, for example, producing a newspaper (L\u2019Artisan: Journal de la classe ouvri\u00e8re<\/em>) which suggested that the only way to stop being exploited by a master was for workers to form co-operatives. During the strikes of 1833, this was echoed by other skilled workers and so co-operatives were seen by many workers as a method of emancipation from wage labour long before Blanc put pen to paper.[37]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, Blanc and Proudhon simply took up the ideas expressed by workers and interpreted them in different ways. This is important because simply acknowledging that other socialist thinkers raised the idea of workers co-operatives as an alternative to wage-labour still gives credence to Lenin\u2019s notion that the working class could not come up with socialist ideas by themselves.[38]<\/a> The opposite is the case with, for example Proudhon picking up the term Mutualisme<\/em> from the workers in Lyon in the early 1840s and their ideas of co-operative credit, exchange and production influenced him as surely as his influenced the Lyon workers. Thus, there was \u201cclose similarity between the associational ideal of Proudhon\u2026 and the program of the Lyon Mutualists\u201d and \u201cit is likely that Proudhon was able to articulate his positive program more coherently because of the example of the silk workers of Lyon. The socialist ideal that he championed was already being realised, to a certain extent, by such workers.\u201d[39]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there is the usual Marxist nonsense that \u201cProudhon wanted to return society to an earlier golden age.\u201d (73) In reality, he did not and he championed association precisely to accommodate the development of industry and large-scale production.[40]<\/a> Yet, he was also well aware that in the France of his time artisans and peasants predominated and so any serious socialist theory and movement had to recognise this fact. Gluckstein knows this, as he admits that, in 1871, \u201c[o]lder forms of production predominated\u201d as well as \u201cthe prevalence of artisans and handicraft production\u201d in Paris and elsewhere in France. (69) Yet this does stop Gluckstein \u2013 like Engels before him \u2013 labelling Proudhon anachronistic in spite of him advocating ideas applicable to the economic structure he lived in rather than, as with Marx, ones that only became predominant decades after his death. Rather than being and backward looking, Proudhon tailored his ideas to the economy he faced. As Daniel Gu\u00e9rin summarised long ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cProudhon really moved with the times and realized that it is impossible to turn back the clock. He was realistic enough to understand that \u2018small industry is as stupid as petty culture\u2019 and recorded this view in his Carnets<\/em>. With regard to large-scale modern industry requiring a large labour force, he was resolutely collectivist: \u2018In future, large-scale industry and wide culture must be the fruit of association.\u2019 \u2018We have no choice in the matter,\u2019 he concluded, and waxed indignant that anyone had dared to suggest that he was opposed to technical progress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn his collectivism he was, however, as categorically opposed to statism. Property must be abolished. The community (as it is understood by authoritarian communism) is oppression and servitude. Thus Proudhon sought a combination of property and community: this was association. The means of production and exchange must be controlled neither by capitalist companies nor by the State\u2026 they must be managed by associations of workers\u201d[41]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, it could have been Proudhon talking when a club meeting in Paris proclaimed the commune \u201cwill place its contracts with workers\u2019 associations which will replace the big bosses, the great companies (railway companies in particular\u2026)\u201d and \u201corganise the democratic and social Republic.\u201d (104) After all, as Proudhon recalled in 1851:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cI said one day, in February or March 1849, at a meeting of patriots, that I rejected equally the construction and management of railroads by companies of capitalists and by the State. In my opinion, railroads are in the field of workers\u2019 companies, which are different from the present commercial companies, as they must be independent of the State.\u201d[42]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
While grudgingly admitting that \u201cProudhon\u2019s criticisms of the failing of capitalist society were sharp and won him many converts,\u201d Gluckstein also asserts, with casual abandon, that Proudhon\u2019s ideas are \u201ceasily recognisable as the precursor of neo-liberal economics today. But Proudhon\u2019s ideas were located in a different context and so took a far more radical form when adopted by the male artisan class.\u201d (72) Since when did neo-liberalism refrain from using the state to impose its reforms and skew the market in favour of the capitalist class? When has the capitalist state ever left working class people alone when they act for themselves? Equally, when has an advocate of neo-liberal economics ever argued that laissez-faire capitalism meant \u201cthe victory of the strong over the weak, of those who have over those who have not\u201d? Or denounced capitalist firms because they result in \u201cthe worker [being] subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience\u201d and so people are related as \u201csubordinates and superiors\u201d with \u201ctwo\u2026 castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society\u201d and urged co-operatives to replace them? Or suggested that \u201cworkers\u2019 association will remain a utopia as long as government does not understand that it must not perform public services itself or convert them into corporations but entrust them by term lease at a fixed rate to companies of united and responsible workers.\u201d[43]<\/a> Like Marx Proudhon was well aware of the role economics played in defending, justifying, rationalising capitalism: \u201cPolitical economy \u2013 that is, proprietary despotism \u2013 can never be in the wrong: it must be the proletariat.\u201d[44]<\/a> Unsurprisingly, Proudhon had nothing but contempt for the neo-liberals of his time and they for him.[45]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given that Gluckstein seems to draw almost exclusively from secondary sources to create his account of Proudhon\u2019s ideas, it comes as no surprise that he utilises a quote by Proudhon via the unreliable J. Salwyn Schapiro[46]<\/a> to suggest Proudhon was opposed to \u201ccommon ownership\u201d when, in reality, his source wilfully mistranslates the word communaut\u00e9<\/em> (community). (75) What Proudhon meant by \u201ccommunity\u201d is well-known as is his reasons for opposing it (although Gluckstein fails to mention both) and it was not<\/em> common ownership but rather the State control which nationalisation created that he opposed.[47]<\/a> This can be seen when he argued that mutualism is \u201cassociation, which is the annihilation of property\u201d for while \u201cthe use\u201d of wealth \u201cmay be divided\u201d as \u201cproperty [it] remains undivided\u201d<\/em> and so \u201cthe land [is] common property\u201d and capital is \u201ccommon<\/em> or collective<\/em>.\u201d[48]<\/a> As he put it during the 1848 Revolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cunder universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labour is social<\/em> ownership\u2026 We want \u2026 democratically organised workers\u2019 associations\u2026 that vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic.\u201d[49]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So Proudhon was also for associations of associations. Fifteen years later, in 1863, he called this system an \u201cagricultural-industrial federation\u201d in The Federative Principle<\/em> and this \u201csummarised\u201d all of his economic ideas \u201cdeveloped over the last twenty-five years.\u201d[50]<\/a> Even Gluckstein cannot ignore this, noting that for Proudhon \u201cthe many tiny[51]<\/a> economic units would federate together\u2026 group into local communes\u2026 and then upwards into regional and finally national federations\u201d (75) Still, he does manage to do better than Engels who proclaimed Proudhon \u201cregarded association with positive hatred\u201d and so \u201ccombin[ing] all these associations into one great union\u201d was \u201cthe direct opposite of the Proudhon doctrine.\u201d[52]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In summary, Proudhon favoured workers\u2019 co-operatives (or association) as he was well aware that bosses kept part of the value produced by workers. That Gluckstein does not know this basic fact shows the superficial nature of his critique. Dependent on a selective reading of secondary sources, he ironically confirms the comments of one such author he quotes: \u201csince [Marx\u2019s Poverty of Philosophy<\/em>] no good Marxists have had to think about Proudhon. They have what is mother\u2019s milk to them, an ex cathedra<\/em> judgement.\u201d[53]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proudhon and the State<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein\u2019s use of secondary sources ensures that he misrepresents Proudhon on numerous subjects beyond his economic theories. In terms of his political ideas, an unwillingness to discuss why<\/em> Proudhon held these views adds to the problems this approach inherently creates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an example of the former, Gluckstein utilises (74) Schapiro\u2019s hostile and inaccurate article to provide his readers with a quote from Proudhon: \u201cAll this democracy disgusts me\u2026 What would I not give to sail into this mob with clenched fists!\u201d Yet consulting the letter this is from, it quickly becomes clear that Schapiro is wilfully quoting Proudhon out-of-context to bolster his preposterous suggestion that he was a \u201charbinger\u201d of fascism. In reality, Proudhon was bemoaning how others on the left were attacking him as \u201ca false democrat<\/em>, a false friend of progress, a false republican\u201d due to his critical position on Polish independence. Unlike most of the rest of the left, Proudhon opposed the creation of a Polish state as it would not be a democracy but rather run by the nobility and so would \u201ccatholic, aristocratic, [and] divided into castes\u201d.[54]<\/a> Context shows that Proudhon is making an ironic comment about those on the left who violate their own stated democratic principles by supporting the creation of such a feudal regime. Likewise \u201cthis mob\u201d does not refer to \u201cthe people\u201d as Schapiro and Gluckstein sought to suggest but rather to a group of Proudhon\u2019s critics: Schapiro made no attempt to indicate the change in subject nor, for that matter, even the change of page![55]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
He relies on Schapiro\u2019s hostile and inaccurate article for other false assertions, not least that Proudhon \u201cfavoured war\u201d[56]<\/a> (216) when in fact the work in question (1861\u2019s La guerre et la paix<\/em>) sought to explain how war could be ended once and for all, finishing with the cry \u201cHUMANITY DOES NOT WANT ANY MORE WAR.\u201d[57]<\/a> He likewise utilises Schapiro for his summary of Proudhon\u2019s position on Louis-Napoleon\u2019s coup, noting that it was \u201cbizarre\u201d and expressed in \u201ca pamphlet with the extraordinary title The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em>\u201d (74-5) when what is \u201cbizarre\u201d and \u201cextraordinary\u201d is judging a book (not \u201ca pamphlet\u201d) by its title. Suffice to say, Gluckstein\u2019s summary leaves a lot to be desired (like Schapiro\u2019s[58]<\/a>). For Proudhon, the coup \u201cdemonstrated\u201d the Social Revolution only in-so-far as it showed that the situation before December 1851 could not<\/em> be maintained and that some kind of change was possible, whether positive or negative. This, in turn, meant that Louis-Bonaparte had two options \u2013 embrace the social and democratic revolution (and so end his personal power) or embrace reaction (and so maintain his personal power).[59]<\/a> Or, in the words of its final chapter, \u201cAnarchy or Caesarism.\u201d[60]<\/a> That Louis-Bonaparte chose the latter was perhaps unsurprising and while Proudhon\u2019s work is hardly his best, it arguments are not even summarised by Gluckstein who clearly has only read its title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as showing the dangers of insufficient research \u2013 or doing as little research as needed to confirm your assumptions or prejudices \u2013 this also highlights a key flaw of Gluckstein\u2019s account of both Proudhon\u2019s ideas and the anarchist critique of the Commune. Simply put, he does not explain why<\/em> Proudhon opposed the state and argued against political action. Given that the reason he held these positions feeds directly into the anarchist critique of the Commune, it is doubly unfortunate that it is not discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein does quote Proudhon arguing that \u201cthe social question can only be resolved by you, by you alone, without the assistance of power.\u201d[61]<\/a> (74) So why did Proudhon stress self-organisation and change from below? This was because he recognised that the state (\u201cpower\u201d) was run by capital. As he put it, to \u201cconduct this offensive and defensive war against the proletariat a public force was indispensable\u201d and this \u201cfinds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat.\u201d[62]<\/a> Forgetting that Proudhon successfully stood for election, Gluckstein uses out-of-context quotes to bolster the claim that \u201cthe idea of any working class political involvement enraged him.\u201d (74) Yet his experiences in Parliament are of note when seeking to understand and explain his position \u2013 particularly when Proudhon explicitly uses them to confirm his earlier analysis of the class nature of the state, as he did in his 1849 work Confessions of a Revolutionary<\/em>.[63]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, his critique of the State was built on a clear understanding of its class nature and basis, that the Republic \u201cis nothing but the offensive and defensive alliance of those who possess, against those who do not possess\u201d, a \u201ccoalition of the barons of property, commerce and industry against the disinherited lower class.\u201d A centralised, unitarian, indivisible republic creates a division between rulers and ruled and so \u201cthe citizen has nothing left but the power of choosing his rulers by a plurality vote.\u201d Thus France was \u201ca quasi-democratic Republic\u201d in which citizens \u201care permitted, every third or fourth year, to elect, first, the Legislative Power, second, the Executive Power. The duration of this participation in the Government for the popular collectivity is brief\u2026 The President and the Representatives, once elected, are the masters; all the rest obey. They are subjects<\/em>, to be governed <\/em>and to be taxed, without surcease.\u201d[64]<\/a> It \u201cno sooner exists than it creates an interest of its own, apart from and often contrary to the interests of the people; because, acting then in that interest, it makes civil servants its own creatures, from which results nepotism, corruption, and little by little to the formation of an official tribe, enemies of labour as well as of liberty.\u201d[65]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The centralisation (unit\u00e9<\/em>, unity) of the \u201cindivisible republic\u201d was not a neutral form of social organisation but rather \u201cthe cornerstone of bourgeois despotism and exploitation.\u201d[66]<\/a> It was needed to secure bourgeois rule:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cAnd who benefits from this regime of unity? The people? No, the upper classes\u2026 Unity\u2026 is quite simply a form of bourgeois exploitation under the protection of bayonets. Yes, political unity, in the great States, is bourgeois: the positions which it creates, the intrigues which it causes, the influences which it cherishes, all that is bourgeois and goes to the bourgeois.\u201d[67]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Given that even a democracy was enchained to capital and could not be captured, Proudhon turned to the working class economic self-organisation so that \u201ca new society be founded in the heart of the old society\u201d and by this \u201ccombat and reduce power, to put it in its proper place in society, [for] it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave.\u201d [68]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is something that Gluckstein, in theory, is aware of. He notes that \u201cthe communards had no doubt of the limitations of suffrage operating where capitalist economics was dominant.\u201d (46) Which is exactly why the various shades of \u201cProudhonists\u201d were either against standing or hesitant about in elections. As history shows, social democracy failed to live up to the hopes of Marx and became as reformist as Bakunin had warned.[69]<\/a> Gluckstein himself notes that these parties \u201cend up running the capitalist system\u201d (204) and so have \u201cfoundered on the state machine, the British Labour Party being one example. These movements thought they could use the existing power structures to bring about the changes they wanted.\u201d (63) Yet he fails to link this end with the means used, with the awkward fact those parties had following Marx\u2019s call to take part in \u201cpolitical action\u201d and organise as a political party rather than as a militant union movement desired by the \u201cCollectivists\u201d in the International.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Likewise, Proudhon was not convinced that any centralised state socialist structure would be anything other than state capitalism: \u201cWe do not want expropriation by the State of the mines, canals and railways; it is still monarchy, still wage-labour.\u201d[70]<\/a> Again, this was the case with Labour\u2019s nationalisation and, of course, under Lenin, Trotsky and then Stalin. As he had predicted, if government is substituted for private ownership, then \u201cnothing is changed but the stockholders and the management; beyond that, there is not the least difference in the position of the workers.\u201d[71]<\/a> Replacing the private boss with a public bureaucrat did not create socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was why Proudhon advocated political, economic and social federalism so that \u201cno longer do we have the abstraction of people\u2019s sovereignty as in the \u201993 Constitution and the others that followed it, and in Rousseau\u2019s Social Contract<\/em>. Instead it becomes an effective sovereignty of the labouring masses which rule and govern\u2026 the labouring masses are actually, positively and effectively sovereign: how could they not be when the economic organism \u2013 labour, capital, property and assets \u2013 belongs to them entirely\u201d.[72]<\/a> As well as economic association and federalism, Proudhon also urged community federalism and Gluckstein does admit that a \u201cfederation of communes\u201d \u2013 \u201cFree France, that is communal France in federal form,\u201d as one Communard put it (52) \u2013 would \u201creplace the state, as Proudhon had envisaged.\u201d (101) Yet at the same time he asserts that \u201cProudhon\u2019s approach was to focus on economics alone\u201d and \u201cthe state had to be disregarded.\u201d (74) Proudhon, though, was not indifferent to the State and sought ways to undermine it until such time as it would disappear \u2013 he simply recognised that political action instead of popular pressure and economic transformation from below would never result in real change. Given the subsequent history of capitalism, he seems to have had a point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus it is simply untrue to claim that Proudhon \u201cheld back from dealing with the core of the system \u2013 the exploitation at the heart of the capitalist-worker relationship, and the state which exists to protect that exploitative process.\u201d (76) He was well aware that the state was a capitalist tool and that wage labour lead to exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLeft Proudhonists\u201d or Collectivists?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Rather than being at odds with Associational Socialism, Proudhon was one of its most influential advocates. His ideas found expression in working class circles during and after his lifetime and when Proudhon expressed support for workers associations as the basis of libertarian socialism he was not expressing new ideas but rather expressing a common perspective developed within working class circles and this was later reflected in the Continental European sections of the First International and within the Commune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It comes as no surprise, then, that during the Commune, numerous workers urged the Council to promote co-operatives as the means of solving the \u201csocial question.\u201d The Communal Council itself decreed that workshops whose owners had fled should be given to \u201cthe co-operative association of workers who were employed there.\u201d (30) Like Proudhon, it raised the possibility that all<\/em> large workplaces would be turned over to workers\u2019 associations. However, the Commune (like Proudhon) was fundamentally gradualist in its approach. This failure to take a revolutionary approach was highlighted by Bakunin and subsequent libertarians as a key flaw in the Commune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein does seem to contradict himself by providing some praise for Proudhon, noting that the \u201cstrengths of Proudhon\u2019s approach \u2013 his anti-authoritarianism and stress on self-organisation by the working class \u2013 were adapted\u201d by his followers. (75) This is a significant improvement on, say, Engels who considered \u201canti-authoritarianism\u201d as being total nonsense and inapplicable to modern society.[73]<\/a> He also notes that \u201cProudhonism had deep roots in the working class movement and laid stress on action from below.\u201d (83) This is an improvement on Lenin who argued that \u201cthe organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy\u2026 strives to proceed from the top downward.\u201d[74]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Proudhon\u2019s death, militants influenced by him revised and developed many of his ideas. Based on their experiences, many became (like Eug\u00e8ne Varlin) organisers of trade unions and strikes as well as rejecting his patriarchal notions. Gluckstein labels these \u201cLeft Proudhonists\u201d (134-5) but a far better term would be \u201ccollectivists\u201d\u2013 what Bakunin initially called his politics before taking up the term anarchist. Like the French militants, Bakunin favoured collective ownership, economic struggles and strikes, the expropriation of capital by unions and a decentralised, federal social organisation based on communes and workplace associations. Yet this is hardly a radical departure as may appear at first for these militants sought to extend Proudhon\u2019s \u201cagricultural and industrial combination\u201d from just co-operative credit and workplaces to trade unionism. That Proudhon had rejected this position does not mean denying the obvious links between the \u201cleft mutualists\u201d (collectivists) and his ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By not presenting accurate account of Proudhon\u2019s ideas, Gluckstein also presents a false picture of the theoretical influences within the International and inflates that of Marx in the process. As G.D.H. Cole notes, the French Internationalists, including Varlin, were \u201cstrongly hostile to centralisation. They were federalists, intent on building up working-class organisations on a local basis and then federating the local federations. The free France they looked forward was to be a country made up of locally autonomous communes, freely federated for common purposes which required action over larger areas\u2026 In this sense they were Anarchists.\u201d Varlin \u201chad at bottom a great deal more in common with Proudhon than with Marx\u201d and had a \u201cSyndicalist outlook.\u201d[75]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
To quote Varlin himself, unions have \u201cthe enormous advantage of making people accustomed to group life and thus preparing them for a more extended social organisation. They accustom people not only to get along with one another and to understand one another, but also to organise themselves, to discuss, and to reason from a collective perspective.\u201d As well as mitigating capitalist exploitation and oppression in the here and now, the unions also \u201cform the natural elements of the social edifice of the future; it is they who can be easily transformed into producers associations; it is they who can make the social ingredients and the organisation of production work.\u201d[76]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
While such views can be found in Bakunin\u2019s writings, nothing like this can be seen in Marx\u2019s so Gluckstein suggesting the correspondence between Marx and Varlin \u201cis surely significant\u201d in refuting the \u201c[m]any recent historians [who] feel the need to deny any Marxist influence in Paris\u201d (210) is clutching at straws. The notion that Varlin was a Marxist cannot be squared with him warning that \u201cplacing everything in the hands of a highly centralised, authoritarian state\u2026 would set up a hierarchic structure from top to bottom of the labour process\u201d. Rejecting state ownership he had, like Proudhon, suggested that \u201cthe only alternative is for workers themselves to have the free disposition and possession of the tools of production\u2026 through co-operative association\u201d.[77]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
As can be seen, Varlin\u2019s position was close to Bakunin\u2019s \u2013 perhaps the fact that Marx also corresponded with the Russian Anarchist shows a \u201cMarxist influence\u201d in his ideas? This is an example of the many times Gluckstein seeks to bolster Marx\u2019s influence in a revolution and an International section were little existed. Yet, the similarities with Bakunin\u2019s ideas are obvious, although go unmentioned by Gluckstein as Marxists regularly ignore the obvious links between Bakunin\u2019s ideas and what later became known as syndicalism.[78]<\/a> Unsurprisingly, when Bakunin met Varlin at the International\u2019s Basel Congress and, \u201conce the program of the Alliance was explained to\u201d Varlin, he said he \u201cshared the same ideas and agreed to co-ordinate with their revolutionary plans.\u201d[79]<\/a> \u201cVarlin and the French Bakuninists,\u201d George Woodcock notes, \u201chad also [like the syndicalists] recognised before the Paris Commune the role of the trade unions in social struggle, and the general strike.\u201d[80]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally, Gluckstein considers Varlin\u2019s work in overthrowing the Empire as being in contradiction with Proudhon\u2019s apolitical stance. Yet he forgets that Proudhon built barricades and utilised the skills of his trade to print the first Republican proclamation in the 1848 revolution and, of course, successfully stood for election a few months later (although the experience did, as noted, confirm his anti-parliamentarianism). Likewise, Anarchists are well aware that republics can offer more opportunity for activity than dictatorships, that the \u201cmost imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy\u2026 The democratic system gradually educates the masses to public life\u201d[81]<\/a> and so the \u201cInternational does not reject politics of a general kind; it will be compelled to intervene in politics so long as it is forced to struggle against the bourgeoisie. It rejects only bourgeois politics.\u201d[82]<\/a>Anarchists took part in the protests which overthrew the Tsar in February 1917[83]<\/a> as well as in Spain, 1931 (for example). The key is that they participated in such events to push them further, to turn them into social revolutions rather than purely political ones.[84]<\/a> This was the position of Kropotkin during the 1905 Russian Revolution: \u201cTogether with the whole Russian people we fight against autocracy. At the same time, we have to work in order to broaden our struggle and fight simultaneously against capital and against the government<\/em>.\u201d[85]<\/a> This was Varlin\u2019s position as well when he noted that \u201cfor us political revolution and social revolution are interdependent\u201d and \u201cin view of all the obstacles we now meet we feel that it will be impossible for us to organise the social revolution so long as we live under a government as authoritarian as the present one.\u201d[86]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Engels in 1891, \u201cthe Commune was the grave of the Proudhon school of socialism.\u201d[87]<\/a> Yet the evidence suggests otherwise \u2013 the \u201cProudhon school\u201d had transformed long before March 1871 and continued to do so afterwards in the form of Collectivism. Varlin, in other words, was part of the general development on the libertarian movement from reformist mutualism towards revolutionary collectivism, from Proudhon to Bakunin (so to speak). For Bakunin, his ideas were \u201cProudhonism widely developed and pushed to these, its final consequences.\u201d[88]<\/a> However, this is not to say that without Bakunin this would not have happened for Varlin \u201cseems to have moved independently towards his collectivist position.\u201d[89]<\/a> In other words, Bakunin became influential because he was part of a general development within Internationalist circles, ideas which he helped deepen but was also influenced by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, given Varlin\u2019s links with Bakunin and the similarities in their politics, Gluckstein is right to state that \u201cVarlin showed what could be achieved\u201d (84) but not in the sense he meant it. It was precisely the rise of the \u201ccollectivism\u201d which Bakunin and Varlin subscribed to which finally forced Marx to move the General Council to America.[90]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cthe form at last discovered\u2026\u201d?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
For Marx, the Commune was \u201cthe political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour.\u201d He praised such features as the Communal Council being made up of delegates who were \u201cat any time revocable and bound by the mandat imp\u00e9ratif<\/em> (formal instructions) of his constituents,\u201d that it was a \u201cworking, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time\u201d and that \u201cthe standing army was to be replaced by a national militia.\u201d[91]<\/a> Marx is paraphrased by Gluckstein: \u201cWhat made the Parisian democratic structure so different?\u201d Simply that its representatives \u201cwere \u2018at all times revocable\u2019 so delegates could not stray from the mandate of their electors.\u201d (199) The creation of a militia is also praised as it meant that state \u201cforce was fundamentally different\u201d and so \u201cturned the very principles of the state upside down\u201d. (51)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet while the Communards had applied these forms it is false to suggest, as Marx does, that they had come entirely out of the blue. In fact, the Paris Commune applied ideas which anarchists had been discussing for some time. Proudhon, for example, raised the idea of representatives with binding mandates being elected to executive and legislative assemblies during the 1848 revolution:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIt is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its committees, to exercise executive power, just the way it exercises legislative power\u2026 Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want implementation of the binding mandate. Politicians balk at it! Which means that in their eyes, the people, in electing representatives, do not appoint mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty! That is assuredly not socialism: it is not even democracy.\u201d[92]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The vision of a free society being a federation of communes was discussed by Proudhon in his 1863 book The Federative Principle<\/em>. Bakunin repeated the same vision of a federal system of communes based on mandated and revocable delegates in 1868:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cthe Alliance of all labour associations\u2026 will constitute the Commune\u2026 there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council\u2026 [made up of] delegates\u2026 invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times\u2026 all provinces, communes and associations\u2026 [will] delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all\u2026 invested with binding mandated and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces\u201d[93]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
What of abolishing the army and replacing it with a militia? For Gluckstein, the idea of a militia \u201cowed nothing to\u2026 Proudhon\u2019s anarchist rejection of the state\u2026 The federation wanted to replace the permanent army with a workers\u2019 militia\u2026 That completely subverted the idea of the state as something imposing its will upon society from above.\u201d (114) This is not true, as Proudhon did suggest in 1848 that it was \u201cnecessary to disarm the powers that be\u201d by ending military conscription and \u201corganis[ing] a citizens\u2019 army\u201d. It \u201cis the right of the citizens to appoint the hierarchy of their military chiefs, the simple soldiers and national guards appointing the lower ranks of officers, the officers appointing their superiors.\u201d In this way \u201cthe army retains its civic feelings\u201d while the People \u201corganise its military in such a way as to simultaneously guarantee its defence and its liberties, while waiting for the nations to agree to terminate the armed peace.\u201d[94]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a reformist Proudhon did not address the issue of defence of a revolution but the revolutionary Bakunin built upon his call for a democratic militia:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cImmediately after established governments have been overthrown, communes will have to reorganise themselves along revolutionary lines\u2026 In order to defend the revolution, their volunteers will at the same time form a communal militia. But no commune can defend itself in isolation. So it will be necessary to radiate revolution outward, to raise all of its neighbouring communes in revolt\u2026 and to federate with them for common defence.\u201d[95]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So the awkward fact is that anarchists had been advocating the organisational forms Gluckstein praises the Commune for implementing since Proudhon in the 1840s and developed by Bakunin in the 1860s. Nothing similar can be found in Marx until after<\/em> the Commune. As K.J. Kenafick notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cthe programme [the Commune] set out is\u2026 the system of Federalism, which Bakunin had been advocating for years, and which had first been enunciated by Proudhon. The Proudhonists\u2026 exercised considerable influence in the Commune. This \u2018political form\u2019 was therefore not \u2018at last\u2019 discovered; it had been discovered years ago; and now it was proven to be correct by the very fact that in the crisis the Paris workers adopted it almost automatically, under the pressure of circumstance, rather than as the result of theory, as being the form most suitable to express working class aspirations.\u201d[96]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, clearly, the major influence in terms of \u201cpolitical vision\u201d of the Commune was anarchism. The \u201crough sketch of national organisation which the Commune had no time to develop\u201d[97]<\/a> which Marx praises but does not quote was written by a follower of Proudhon and it expounded a clearly federalist<\/em> and \u201cbottom-up\u201d organisational structure.[98]<\/a> Based on this libertarian revolt, it is unsurprising that Marx\u2019s defence of it took on a libertarian twist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That the ideas generated by workers in struggle reflected Bakunin\u2019s predictions is not to suggest that the Internationalists influenced by him somehow injected these ideas into the struggle. Rather, both groups of people, subject to much the same experiences as well as theoretical discussions and influences, drew similar conclusions from them. So, indeed, \u201c[b]y the end of 1870 the vision of a Commune as a complete alternative to the existing power was emerging from club discussions\u201d (104) and these discussions were influenced by Internationalists just as they were influenced by them. Which disproves the Leninist assumption that the masses could not develop socialist consciousness on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Anarchist Critique<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
In his discussion of the champions of the Commune, Gluckstein does at least acknowledge that anarchists have analysed it and claimed it as expressing our ideas. He gives slightly less than two pages to the subject (what he terms the feminist critique is covered in more depth). It is, at best, perfunctory and superficial and, at worse, simply false and self-contradictory while, at the same time, he also unwittily shows that it is correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The presentation of what Gluckstein terms the \u201canarchist interpretation\u201d of the Commune starts badly, with the author asserting that \u201cAnarchists believe that the Commune cannot be described as a workers\u2019 government, because it abolished the very concept of government\u201d (184) and quotes both Bakunin\u2019s and Kropotkin\u2019s most famous essays on the Paris Commune as evidence. Yet, regardless of Gluckstein\u2019s assertions, Anarchists believe no such thing \u2013 as these very essays prove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Central to the anarchist critique is precisely that one of the key problems with the Commune was that it retained a government within Paris while proclaiming the free federation of communes outside it. This was Bakunin\u2019s position, who while proclaiming that \u201crevolutionary socialism has just attempted its first striking and practical demonstration in the Paris Commune\u201d and \u201cshow[ed] to all enslaved peoples (and are there any masses that are not slaves?) the only road to emancipation\u201dalso noted that the Communards had \u201cset up a revolutionary government\u201d and so organised \u201cthemselves in a Jacobin manner, forgetting or sacrificing the first conditions of revolutionary socialism.\u201d[99]<\/a> Kropotkin repeated and extended this analysis as admitted by Gluckstein himself: \u201cOne of Kropotkin\u2019s complaints against the Commune was precisely that the masses co-operated with the centralised power they had created at the Hotel de Ville.\u201d (184-5) He even quotes Kropotkin arguing that \u201c[t]here is no more reason for a government inside the commune than for a government outside.\u201d (185) In spite of this, he does not ask the obvious question: if this is the case, how could Anarchists think that the commune \u201cabolished\u201d government?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Gluckstein cannot bring himself to present the anarchist critique, it is useful to summarise it here by taking Kropotkin\u2019s analysis as the starting point. It has two main aspects, which Kropotkin summarised in a few words: \u201cthe Commune was not Communistic enough<\/em>\u2026 the Commune was not Anarchist enough<\/em>.\u201d[100]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, the Commune \u201ctreated the economic question as a secondary one, which would be attended to later on, after<\/em> the triumph of the Commune\u201d when \u201cthe triumph of a popular Commune was materially impossible without a parallel triumph of the people in the economic field.\u201d Second, that while \u201cproclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential anarchist principle\u201d but \u201cthey stopped mid-course\u201d and gave \u201cthemselves a Communal Council copied from the old municipal councils.\u201d The Commune did not \u201cbreak with the tradition of the State, of representative government, and it did not attempt to achieve within the Commune that organisation from the simple to the complex it inaugurated by proclaiming the independence and free federation of the Communes.\u201d This resulted in the revolutionaries being isolated from the masses in the town hall, \u201cimmobilised\u2026 by red tape\u201d and losing \u201cthe sensitivity that comes from continued contact with the masses\u2026 Paralysed by their distancing from the revolutionary centre \u2013 the people \u2013 they themselves paralysed the popular initiative.\u201d[101]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Totally missing the point of the anarchist critique, Gluckstein opines that \u201c[i]f the Commune had only been a moment from below, the anarchist interpretation might have been correct\u201d but the insurrection \u201cfounded a new focus of power.\u201d (185) Quite \u2013 and anarchists argued that this power was simply not up to the task at hand. This can be seen when Gluckstein admits that the council was \u201coverwhelmed\u201d by suggestions from other bodies, the \u201csheer volume\u201d of which \u201ccreated difficulties\u201d, it \u201cfound it hard to cope with the stream of people who crammed into the offices\u201d (47-8) while reports, letters and motions \u201cpiled up\u201d at the Town Hall and in the offices of the secretariat and were not discussed. (51) This bureaucratic inertia can be seen from the 16 April 1871 decree on turning closed workshops into co-operatives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWorkers trade councils are convened to establish a commission of inquiry [\u2026] To compile statistics on abandoned workshops, as well as an inventory [\u2026] To present a report on the practical requisites for the prompt restarting of these workshops [\u2026] by the co-operative association of the workers who were employed there [\u2026]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 [\u2026] the draft of a decree [\u2026]\u201d[102]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps because the author of this decree which Gluckstein (30) praises was Leo Frankel (the only member of the Council who can be considered even remotely a Marxist), Gluckstein mentions it almost in passing, uncritically summarising it in less than a paragraph, before noting \u201c[i]n practice there was little time to do very much.\u201d (30) Given the process being implemented, this is hardly surprising. Little wonder Kropotkin concluded from this decree and others like it the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cthe insurgent people will not wait for any old government in its marvellous wisdom to decree economic reforms. They will abolish individual property by themselves\u2026 They will not stop short at expropriating the owners of social capital by a decree that will remain a dead letter; they will take possession and establish their rights of usufruct immediately. They will organise the workshops so that they continue production.\u201d[103]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That Gluckstein has so little to say on this issue is strange, as he obviously considers this decree a key example of the \u201cnew kind of society [that] can be fleetingly glimpsed in [the Commune\u2019s] action.\u201d (27) Given the central role this clearly played in the lessons anarchists drew from the Commune, the lack of discussion surely points to a political perspective rooted in governmental action rather than workers\u2019 self-activity as the means of creating socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of mass participation, Gluckstein notes that \u201c[r]elations between the Commune\u201d and \u201cthe Clubs and the mass meetings\u201d are \u201charder to measure\u201d (50) which is a damning admission for someone claiming that the Commune implemented a new regime based on direct democracy and that the evidence that it was a \u201cradically different from all previous states\u201d was to be found here. (46) Even his conclusions against the \u201canarchist interpretation\u201d are question begging:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was this combination of direct activity, plus an organised governmental structure (for all its inadequacies), that earned the Paris Commune its historic significance as the moment when an anti-capitalist movement was transformed into a power in its own right.\u201d (185)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, \u201cfor all its inadequacies\u201d! Rather than address whether \u201can organised governmental structure\u201d undermines the \u201cdirect activity\u201d of the masses and is up to solving the many tasks facing a social revolution as Kropotkin and other anarchists did, Gluckstein simply ignores the issue. He notes, in passing, the difficulties facing the Council trying to handle the numerous problems facing the revolution but does not draw any conclusions from them. Anarchists, however, would note that they confirm Bakunin\u2019s 1870 prediction that any revolutionary government \u201ccould not fail to severely constrict the scope of revolutionary action because it is impossible, even for the most energetic and enterprising authoritarian revolutionary, to understand and deal effectively with all the manifold problems generated by the Revolution. For every dictatorship, be it exercised by an individual or collectively by relatively few individuals, is necessarily very circumscribed, very short-sighted, and its limited perception cannot, therefore, penetrate the depth and encompass the whole complex range of popular life.\u201d[104]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people of Paris were also aware of this problem, namely the inability of the Commune to be effective. As the Council \u201cappeared increasingly incompetent or insufficiently revolutionary, clubs and committees became the vehicles for the assertion of direct sovereignty by means of association\u2026 Had the Commune managed to last longer it is certain that Leftist factions of the clubs and committees and the National Guard would have posed serious, organised opposition to the Communal Council.\u201d[105]<\/a> Before and during the Commune, there were attempts to federate various clubs and assemblies (such as the Delegation of the Twenty Arrondissements<\/em>). These would have, eventually, produced a federal structure within the commune itself as the limitations of the Council became clear. As Kropotkin argued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cBack in 1871, Paris saw a vague anticipation of a better manner of acting. The revolutionaries among the people seemed to understand that that the \u2018Council of the Commune\u2019 had to be regarded as a mere backdrop, as a nod to past traditions; that the people should not only not disarm but should retain, together with the Council, its own organisation<\/em>, its federated groups<\/em>, and that the requisite measures to ensure the success of the revolution ought to come from these groups rather than from the City Hall. Unfortunately, a certain modesty among the popular revolutionaries, underpinned also by authoritarian prejudices whose roots still ran deep at that time, prevented these federated groups from completely ignoring the Council, as if it were non-existent and acting so as to usher in a new age of social construction<\/em>.\u201d[106]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Significantly, during the Commune, the Delegation \u201cbegan or joined a series of initiatives designed to more effectively unite popular organisations. It started a Federation of Clubs\u2026 Had the Commune survived it is almost certain that these projects would have once again made the Delegation the centre of the revolutionary club and committee movement, as it had been during the siege and armistice.\u201d In other words, it \u201creturned to the idea of directing a central club in which delegates from all clubs and committees could meet\u2026 it would be open to the public and would unite delegates from popular clubs.\u201d[107]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein suggests that the Commune was a \u201cnew form of government based on mass active democracy,\u201d and the \u201cfirst workers\u2019 state.\u201d (7) The question is, if the so-called workers\u2019 state is \u201can entirely new form of state, in its utterly novelty\u201d (114) then why call it a state? Insofar as it was based on \u201cmass active democracy\u201d it was not a state as it was based on what states have evolved to stop \u2013 mass participation in social life (\u201cThe State is necessarily hierarchical, authoritarian\u2014or it ceases to be the State\u201d[108]<\/a>). He is right to state that power \u201cfrom above, acting on those below, was challenged and the very foundations of the conventional state were undermined\u201d (205) however he shows the typical Marxist confusion when he calls the new social institutions formed \u201ca new type of state which fused people and power.\u201d (205) Which is understandable, given the false Marxist metaphysical notion that the state is simply \u201ca system of domination by one class over another\u201d (205) rather than a set of institutions marked by specific social relationships required to maintain minority class rule over society.[109]<\/a> As Kropotkin argued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cDeveloped in the course of history to establish and maintain the monopoly of land ownership in favour of one class \u2013 which, for that reason, became the ruling class par excellence \u2013 what means can the State provide to abolish this monopoly that the working class could not find in its own strength and groups? Then perfected during the course of the nineteenth century to ensure the monopoly of industrial property, trade, and banking to new enriched classes, to which the State was supplying \u2018arms\u2019 cheaply by stripping the land from the village communes and crushing the cultivators by tax \u2013 what advantages could the State provide for abolishing these same privileges? Could its governmental machine, developed for the creation and upholding of these privileges, now be used to abolish them? Would not the new function require new organs? And these new organs would they not have to be created by the workers themselves, in their<\/em> unions, their<\/em> federations, completely outside the State?\u201d[110]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So, in the words of Gluckstein, \u201cthe reality was not simple.\u201d (184) Sadly, this applies to his distortions of the \u201canarchist interpretation\u201d rather than to the analysis he cannot bring himself to present never mind discuss. Simply put, to assert \u201cthe anarchist belief that in 1871 the Commune had already abolished the state\u201d (206) cannot be sustained by looking at what anarchists actually wrote about the Commune and how one of its failings was precisely that it had not<\/em> abolished the state within<\/em> Paris itself \u2013 as Gluckstein himself indicates in passing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps this obvious unwillingness to address the actual anarchist position helps, in part, to explain Gluckstein\u2019s repeating of an all too common Marxist contradiction about anarchism. Thus we find him asserting that Proudhon\u2019s \u201cdisciple, Michael Bakunin, made the abolition of the state his central tenet\u201d (74) while also it being a case of the state being \u201cignored\u201d \u201canarchist style\u201d. (50) Needless to say, you cannot \u201cignore\u201d the state if your goal is its \u201cabolition.\u201d In addition, it should be stressed that Bakunin\u2019s \u201ccentral tenet\u201d was not simply the abolition of the state but, rather, as Wayne Thorpe correctly summarises, \u201cthe simultaneous destruction of the state and of the capitalist system, accompanied by the organisation from below of a federalist system of administration based upon labour\u2019s economic associations.\u201d[111]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, contra the Marxist tradition, it is not<\/em> the case that the \u201coriginality of the Commune lay in its determination to found a new type of state.\u201d (63) Rather, its decentralised and federal form showed how to replace the state with a new form of social organisation, one which is based upon, rather than designed to exclude, mass participation. One of the limitations of the Commune, as Bakunin and Kropotkin stressed, was that it combined aspects of this new social organism with aspects of the state and, as a consequence, hindered the social revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Centralisation and Federalism<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
For most Marxists, any form of co-operation or co-ordination is \u201ccentralisation\u201d or \u201ccentralism\u201d and, correspondingly, decentralisation implies isolation and atomisation of forces. The anarchist system of federalism simply does not fit into this stark dichotomy. This as can be seen when Lenin proclaimed the clearly federalist aim of the Commune an example \u201cof voluntary centralism, of the voluntary fusion of the proletarian communes\u201d. He seemed unaware that \u201cto abolish the central authority\u201d does not mean \u201cto destroy national unity\u201d for federalism postulates the need to co-ordinate joint activity.[112]<\/a> In short, Marxists like all \u201c[a]dversaries of federalism benevolently take it for granted that centralisation boasts all of the advantages that they deny federation.\u201d[113]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gluckstein does not disappoint and he confuses decentralisation with isolation, centralisation with co-ordination. He points to discussion within the Commune on \u201cwhether to emphasise centralised direction or local initiative, freedom or authority\u201d (159) and states that \u201c[e]ven leading anarchists, who opposed centralisation on principle,\u201d (165) recognised the need for co-ordinated resistance to the central government and its forces. He contrasts the Communards\u2019 distrust of central leadership with \u201cVersailles\u2019s unified command\u201d (165) and notes that the debate about the Committee of Public Safety<\/em> was, at its heart, \u201cwhether, given conditions of civil war, power could be decentralised immediately.\u201d (52) He, of course, sides with the Blanquists as civil war showed \u201cworkers could not dispense with a concentrated authority of their own. Lenin, recalling Marx, called this authority a workers\u2019 state.\u201d (206)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet no anarchist has ever argued against the idea of co-ordination of struggle and have consistently advocated federalism as a means of doing so. Hence the commune \u201cmust break the State and replace it by the Federation.\u201d[114]<\/a> As Proudhon argued, a federal body \u201conly has a quite restricted part of the public administration, the one concerning federal services\u201d and \u201csubordinate and entrusted to an Assembly formed of delegates\u201d who \u201cexert over the federal assembly\u2019s acts supervision all the more jealous and severe.\u201d Thus communes and workplaces \u201cconfederate to jointly guarantee their territorial integrity or for the protection of their liberties\u201d and from \u201can economic standpoint, one can federate for a mutual protection of commerce and industry\u2026 for the construction and maintenance of communication routes, roads, canals, railways, for the organisation of credit and insurance, etc.\u201d[115]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In short, anarchist argue for federation precisely to co-ordinate joint activities and to provide services that are better organised or can only be organised by many groups working together. We reject centralisation because it is does not do such co-ordination as well and, moreover, empowers and benefits the few at the expense of the many as \u201c[t]here are no limits on the State besides those which it voluntarily imposes on itself.\u201d[116]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were attempts to centralise power in the Commune, most notably the Communal Council itself which saw the \u201cconcentrating [of] power in fewer and fewer hands over the course of the Commune, centralising authority rather than broadening it\u201d[117]<\/a> followed by the Blanquist\/Jacobin inspired Committee of Public Safety<\/em>. This, as Gluckstein notes, was a \u201cproposal for [a] five-strong leadership [which] reflected widespread frustration with the existing arrangements\u201d. (158) In the debate to form the latter, \u201cthe majority stressed the need for centralised decision-making at the expense of grass roots democracy\u201d but he has to admit that it \u201cperformed no better than the Communal Council.\u201d (160) If centralisation is considered as automatically ensuring the means of success in a revolution, this failure should give pause for thought but it does not and so the Commune shows that \u201cdiscipline under a centralised command was absolutely vital to mould a fighting force out of the workers of Paris. This was not an optional extra.\u201d (141)<\/p>\n\n\n\n