Anarchism

An A enclosed in a circle, a common symbol of anarchism.

Anarchism is a libertarian socialist tendency which espouses opposition to all forms of hierarchy and authority and which seeks the total and immediate abolition of the state. Anarchism has been criticized by Marxists for its idealist views which omit any form of class analysis, utopianism, and individualism.

“The philosophy of the anarchists is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out. Their individualistic theories and their individualistic ideal are the very opposite of socialism. Their views express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striding with irresistible force towards the socialization of labor, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small producer. Their tactics, which amount to a repudiation of the political struggle, disunite the proletarians and convert them in fact into passive participators in one bourgeois policy or another, since it is impossible and unrealizable for the workers really to dissociate themselves from politics.” —Vladimir Lenin, Socialism and Anarchism

Variations

Communist anarchism

Main article: Anarcho-communism

Anarcho-communism is an anarchist sub-ideology which seeks to create a communistic society in the immediate aftermath of a socialist revolution, using institutions such as a gift economy. One of the most popular proponents of anarchist communist was Peter Kropotkin, who formalized many aspects of this tendency in his book The Conquest of Bread. Anarcho-communism broadly emphasizes communalism and localized economic distribution.

Collectivist anarchism

Main article: Collectivist anarchism

Anarcho-collectivism is a tendency inspired by the works of Michael Bakunin and James Guillaume with additional influence from Proudhonian economics. It puts emphasis on workers' autonomy and holds that the exchange of goods between communities should be determined based on the cost of labor established by communal banks. Other anarchists have described this variant as a limited form of anarchist communism.

Syndicalism

Main article: Anarcho-syndicalism

Anarcho-syndicalism is a sub-variety of anarchism involving organizing revolutionary trade unions that will lead a general strike in order to overthrow capitalism and the state, and will form the basis for a socialist society.

Criticism

Anarchism has always been a large failure in comparison to Marxism. While revolutionary movements following Marxist doctrine have been able to conquer state-power and build successful socialist societies, anarchists possess not a single example of an "anarchist society" which ever survived longer than a few years (with their most cited examples of the Ukrainian Free Territory and Anarchist Catalonia only being able to exist as small war-time entities).

This is due to a number of reasons. The mundane reason being that anarchist tactics are inherently unproductive. Without a centralized vanguard party to secure revolutionary gains, organize militant workers, coordinate actions, etc. anarchists are left only with ineffective "direct action" (largely street-violence and terrorism) as usable tactics. Further, even if anarchists were ever to overthrow the bourgeois state in one area, bourgeois states would still exist in other parts of the world. While Marxists would be able to defend a revolution from the forces of external capitalist states and internal counter-revolution via the development and empowerment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, anarchists, on account of their inflexible idealist notions, would (and have) quickly be defeated. As Joseph Stalin said in Foundations of Leninism:

"The victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat signifies the suppression of the bourgeoisie, the smashing of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution of proletarian democracy for bourgeois democracy. That is clear. But by means of what organisation can this colossal work be carried out? The old forms of organisation of the proletariat, which grew up on the basis of bourgeois parliamentarism, are inadequate for this work-of that there can hardly be any doubt. What, then, are the new forms of organisation of the proletariat that are capable of serving as the gravediggers of the bourgeois state machine, that are capable not only of smashing this machine, not only of substituting proletarian democracy for bourgeois democracy, but also of becoming the foundation of the proletarian state power?"

See also

• Right-wing libertarianism
• Anarcho-capitalism
• Terrorism

Further reading

• Anarchism or Socialism?, by Joseph Stalin