Wayne Price - Marx’s Economics for Anarchists: An Anarchist’s Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

Yet how can anarchists learn anything from Marxists? The First International was torn apart in a bitter faction fight between the followers of Marx and those of Michael Bakunin, the founder of anarchism as a movement. The Second (Socialist) International did not let anarchists join. Following the Russian Revolution, the regime of Lenin and Trotsky had anarchists arrested and shot. In the Spanish revolution of the 1930s, the Stalinists betrayed and murdered the anarchists. More generally, the Marxist movement has led, first, to social-democratic reformism and support for Western imperialism, and, second, to mass-murdering, totalitarian, state capitalism (miscalled Communism). Finally it collapsed back into traditional capitalism.

But both Marxism and anarchism grew out of the 19th century socialist and working class movements. Both had the same goals of the end of capitalism, of classes, of the state, of war, and of all other oppressions. Both focused on the working class as the agent of revolutionary change, in alliance with other oppressed parts of the population.

Yet anarchists rejected Marxs concepts of the transitional state (the dictatorship of the proletariat), of a nationalised and centralised post-capitalist economy, of the strategy of building electoral parties, and of the tendency toward teleological determinism. Instead, anarchists sought to replace the state with non-state federations of workers councils and community assemblies, to replace the military and police with a democratically-organised armed people (a militia), and to replace capitalism with federations of self-managed workplaces, industries, and communes, democratically planned from the bottom-up.

However, many anarchists expressed appreciation for Marxs economic theory. This began with Bakunin and continues to today. They believed that it was possible to unhook it from Marxs political strategy. For example, Cindy Milstein, an influential US anarchist, wrote in Anarchism and its Aspirations, More than anyone, Karl Marx grasped the essential character of what would become a hegemonic social structure articulated most compellingly in his Capital (2010; p. 21).

Some radicals have argued that there was two sides to Marxism (Marxs Marxism that is) and I agree. One side was libertarian, democratic, humanistic, and proletarian, and another side was authoritarian, statist, and bureaucratic; one side was scientific and one side was determinist and scientistic (pseudo-scientific). From this viewpoint, Stalinist totalitarians had used both sides of Marxs Marxism, not only the centralising, authoritarian aspects, but even the positive, libertarian and humanistic aspects, in order to paint an attractive face over their monstrous reality. So they have misled hundreds of millions of workers and peasants in mass movements which thought they were fighting for a better world.

Does that mean that libertarian socialists should reject all of Marxs work, even those positive aspects? What is the alternative? If we reject Marxs system, we are essentially left with bourgeois economic theory, rationalisations of a social system which also has a history of bloodshed, mass suffering, tyranny (including racial oppression and Nazi genocide), and two world wars. This is not a superior record to that of Marxism.

There has long been a minority trend within Marxism which has based itself on the humanistic and libertarian-democratic aspects of Marxs concepts. This goes back to William Morris, the Britisher who worked with Engels while being a friend of Peter Kropotkin. It continues to todays autonomist Marxists. The version of Marxist economics I learned was heavily influenced by the Johnson-Forrest Tendency (C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya) and by Paul Mattick (of the council communists).

I am not arguing here whether these libertarian Marxists were correct in their understanding of Marxism, as opposed to the authoritarianism of Marxist-Leninists. I am only pointing out, empirically, that it was possible for some to combine Marxist economics with a politics which was essentially the same as anarchism. I draw the conclusion that it is possible for anarchists to learn from Marxs critique of political economy.