Anarchic update news all over the world - 29.10.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  cgt.org.es: CGT supports the General Strike on October 26 in
      Italy (ca, it) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #287 - Collomb to
      business, from Lyon to Benalla (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Greece, dirty horse, APO: BUSINESS AND UNIVERSITY: LOVE
      RELATIONSHIP IN WINTER WEATHER [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  awsm.nz: Victory to The Bus Workers! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Poland, Rosbat, Poznan lawica: Red card for the president of
      LOT [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  Britain, freedomnews: Mexico: anarchist political prisoner
      begins hunger strike (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
7.  Britain, anarchistc ommunist group ACG: All Day Event -
      London 3/11/18 (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
8.  black rose fed: THE STATE AND REVOLUTION: THEORY AND
      PRACTICE (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





 From the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) we express our support and solidarity with 
the General Strike called on October 26 in Italy by the combative unions in Italy. ---- 
PERMANENT SECRETARIAT OF THE CONFEDERAL COMMITTEE OF THE CGT ---- As the comrades 
themselves inform us, in Italy, the living conditions of the working classes for years 
have worsened considerably in terms of income, and not only as a result of the last 
crisis. Social protection has declined, as well as labor stability and the bargaining 
power of the working class. Poverty has increased and the gap between rich and poor has 
widened. In addition, unlike other advanced capitalist countries, in Italy there has been 
no real recovery, with GDP even lower than pre-crisis levels. The long economic crisis 
that affects mainly the workers, has produced an enlargement in the gap between the 
center-north and the south of Italy respectively, in terms of income, employment and 
social assistance, and it has also expanded territorial inequalities. In the South, 
unemployment is particularly serious, but it is still high in the North, where job 
insecurity and remuneration persist.

Neither the previous governments assumed their responsibility to improve the living 
conditions of the working class nor is it expected that a new government that defines 
itself as racist, far-right and always in favor of the capitalism that sustains it will do 
so. Nor is it expected that the unions of the regime that renounce for years the 
mobilization and comfort against those causing precariousness and the maintenance of an 
unjust economic and social system, are keys that promote social change.

That is why the CGT sympathizes with anti-racist, class mobilizations and against 
corruption and exploitation in Italy this October 26, 2018.

For the struggle for wages; the reduction of working hours with equal pay to reduce 
unemployment; the defense of social welfare; union democracy against the monopoly of 
unions related to the government; the defense of the right to strike; the equality of 
civil and social rights for immigrants and the unity of the working class against racism, 
xenophobia, war and military missions.

Solidarity and internationalist mutual support,

Permanent Secretariat Confederal Committee CGT

http://cgt.org.es/noticias-cgt/comunicados/cgt-apoya-la-huelga-general-del-26-de-octubre-en-italia

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Message: 2





Small arrangements between friends, fictitious jobs, embezzlement, eviction of any 
contradictory debate, everything is good for Gerard Collomb to allow Macron to come to 
power and thus prepare his little place next to the king. But here, since the Benalla 
affair, Macron is hot on the buttocks and his small minister of the Interior is in a bad 
position. Suddenly, turn Collomb, haro on the town hall opposite Wauquiez. ---- Business, 
that, Gérard Collomb, he knows. They are not counted elsewhere. Those related to his name 
or those of his relatives. He is at the heart of a system he has built himself, placing 
his pawns where it is needed: at Lyon City Hall, at the Metropolis and now at the 
Interior. He weaves his web in the various boards of public and private companies in the 
Lyon region, plays elbows in politics. Between shenanigans, political favoritism, 
everything is good to ensure his back.

In 1969, he militated with the Mitterrand of the Convention of Republican institutions, 
then the refoundation of the PS. He began to interfere in the political landscape of Lyon 
in 1977 entering the city council. There, everything is linked: he became deputy of the 
Rhône from 1981 to 1988, senator of the Rhône from 1999 to 2017, mayor of Lyon from 2001 
to 2017 and president of the metropolis of Lyon from 2015 to 2017, to finally be named by 
Macron Minister of the Interior in 2017 for service to his idol president.

Gérard Collomb, a cumulard among the cumulards, acts as  the  undisputed " baron " on his 
Lyonnais grounds. Nothing can be done without going through it. Omerta and leaden sky 
weigh on the city, and public life actors can not speak freely about Collomb without going 
for political opponents. Thus Rue89 Lyon reported, in March 2017, that Gerard Collomb was 
at the maneuver to cancel a Mediapart debate with Edwy Plenel on democracy, organized by 
the municipal library ; as for the arrival of Christiane Taubira which he will refuse the 
loan of a municipal hall while she came to present his last book under the false pretext 
that it was "  a meeting of a political nature ". The latter had judiciously concluded 
that "  pluralism of ideas was not fully accepted by all  ".

Rebates of -30  % to -60  %
But this pseudo rule of "  political neutrality  " to which Gérard Collomb seems attached, 
does not apply to himself. Thus, Collomb and his friends have given the candidate Macron 
dubious advantages: for the organization of political rallies on the march, the company GL 
Events, led by Olivier Ginon, granted rebates of -30  %, -60  % , see "  it's a gift  ", 
for the rental of some rooms of the event group, for the Macron campaign in 2016 and 2017, 
according to an article in Le Figaro on April 30th. The right has not failed to file 
complaints against X for embezzlement of public money.

Olivier Ginon, who is not left in shady business, was quoted in the "  Panama papers  " 
for his international activities, updated by the newspaper Le Monde. This close to 
Collomb, whose friendship goes back more than 20 years, is also shareholder of Matmut 
Stadium (former Gerland stadium) and the Lyon rugby club, the Lou. In exchange for his " 
friendship  " with Lyonnaise Gerard characterized by a discreet and quiet, made of 
political and economic networks ; where for more than twenty years intermingling real 
estate transactions, public procurement and conflicts of interest according to Mediacités 
Lyon in May 2018, Olivier Ginon makes some small services.

But there are others: Jean-Marie Girier, chief of staff at the Lyon metropolis, is kindly 
available as Macron's campaign manager for several months full time on the city's funds. 
And as a good prince, Collomb organizes on June 2, 2016 around Macron, still Minister of 
Economy but just founder of The Republic on the march, a small party gathering 600 people 
- always at the expense of the taxpayer.

Gérard Collomb's relationships are not limited to politicians and entrepreneurs. He is a 
Freemason assumed in the Grand Orient of France, but also very close to the Catholic 
Church of Lyon. Close to Cardinal Barbarin, he would promote "  a climate of dialogue 
between the political world and Catholic religious  ". According to Rue89 Lyon in November 
2016, the archbishop of Lyon invited Gérard Collomb, PS president of the Lyon metropolis, 
Laurent Wauquiez, LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and Christophe Guiloteu, 
LR president of the Rhône department to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican, with masses in 
the program of the elect. As the secularity of the political world and public life, is not 
won for everyone.

Another strangeness is that of Collomb's complacency with regard to the fachos at Lyon. 
Clément Galant, the spokesman of Génération Identitaire and who was seen in the media 
during the anti-migrant action of the Col de l'Echelle, or the C-Star of Defend Europe is 
none other than the son of a great friend from Collomb, Philippe Gandin. [1]

The Benalla affair was a way out to recover the metropolis of Lyon. During the Benalla 
affair, Gérard Collomb assures anyone who would like to hear him that he does not know " 
the individual  " and that he has nothing to do in this "  state affair  ". All means are 
good to get out of this mess and to say that "  it is better to be someone incompetent 
than for a delinquent  ", while continuing to explain that the hiring of Benalla is well 
the responsibility of the Elysee (The Chained Duck of July 25).

It goes without saying that Collomb seeks to distance himself from Macron, to regain his 
virginity before returning to Lyon, in view of the next metropolitan elections of 2020. He 
announced on September 18 that he will be a candidate for the city hall and the Lyon 
metropolis in 2020, in an interview with L'Express.

While waiting for the elections, the political animal will be able to take back its place 
of mayor which he had ceded to Georges Képénékian. He explained that Collomb is "  on the 
idea of getting his office back in June 2019  ". Képénékian resigns himself to submit to 
the wishes of the Minister of the Interior: "  I pass him the mistigri, but I'll be by his 
side  ", and having to iron simple deputy mayor next summer, according to LyonMag 
magazine. Sad end for a man of straw who kept warm the place of his master.

The "  metropolitan  " will be the scene of political clashes between the Collomb clan and 
the Wauquiez clan. Everyone will want to pull out of the game. However, we anarchists of 
Lyon, do not forget the shenanigans of each other ! We will remain vigilant and mobilized 
! The new capital of the macronie must fall. Without Collomb, without Wauquiez, without 
fachos !

Marie-Line and Julien I. (AL Lyon)

[1] "  Col de l'Echelle: The spokesperson of the Identitaires is the son of a friend of 
Gerard Collomb  " (The Horde) .

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Collomb-aux-affaires-de-Lyon-a-Benalla

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Message: 3





We are going through a period in which the intervention and mobility of private capital 
and businesses within universities is growing more and more. Universities in every aspect 
of their function, ranging from catering to the club to research in departmental 
laboratories, are struck by any sort of aspiring contract or business that smells profits 
on the backs of students and workers. The aspirations of private individuals on account of 
the depreciation of student care and the withdrawal of the state from all kinds of 
benefits seek to make the great benefactors of the departments 'sharing' funds in the 
departments in exchange for unpaid student research, directly exploitable and usable for 
business interests, while at the same time they have the opportunity to control and 
determine the curriculum according to the needs of production.

In full compliance with the general tendency of business integration in universities, in 
the near future, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, a conference will be 
organized under the title "Natural Gas in Shipping" by the shipping company  Lloyd's 
Register, Marine & Shipping  and the Laboratory of Engineering of Fluids. According to the 
announcement, the shipping company will present the special subject "Computational 
investigation of flow and thermodynamic characteristics in heat exchangers and gas 
turbines under extreme temperature conditions", which will be given to students for the 
elaboration of relevant diplomatic work.

As the communication says, due to complexity, the working group on this issue will be 
divided into individual sections (5-6 departments in all probability), which will 
undertake to carry out separate parts of diplomacy. The essence of the announcement is 
summarized in the last paragraph where it is stated explicitly and without hesitation that 
if some students do not show any evidence of progress in their work, according to the 
supervision of the Supervising Directorate, the continuation of their diplomacy without 
the reboot, regardless of the stage of completion.

The opening of schools to enterprises is the product of a wider adaptation plan for 
universities in the evolution of production and the interests of capital. The use of 
enterprise research infrastructures by companies reduces their research costs while at the 
same time intensifying the existing climate of intensification, work discipline and 
accountability to the senior person in the sector. The formation of this climate goes hand 
in hand with the discipline of students, the sterilization of university institutions and 
their disengagement from all racing logic, so as to avoid any kind of resistance. Under 
these circumstances, the current student is embraced in the most profitable model for 
future bosses.

Do not let our schools be a profit-raising tank for the bosses. Re-establish barriers to 
the attempted educational restructuring that takes place against our student achievements, 
needs and desires!

AGAINST DEMANDING OUR NEEDS AND BUSINESS OPERATION

REMAINING OUR NEEDS IN THE PRESENCE

ORGANIZATION AND COMPETITION IN AND OUT OF SCHOOLS

TO COMPLETE THE BUSINESS BIZNA THAT WILL BE IN THE WORLD OF STUDENTS AND WORKERS IN THE 
UNIVERSITY INSTITUTIONS

Eleftherioscopy of the University of Patras

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Message: 4





Aotearoa Workers' Solidarity Movement (AWSM) extends its support to bus workers in the 
Wellington region who are on strike today. ---- After correctly warning the council months 
ago that changes to the transport system were unworkable and following the slashing of 
wages and conditions by new employers, the bus drivers have had enough. ---- The drivers, 
commuters and the community at large have all lost out due to the attitude of the bosses 
and politicians. Today's action is one way to deal with the situation and make the powers 
that be take notice. ---- We call on everyone to extend their personal and organisational 
support in whatever way they can. ---- Victory to the Bus Drivers! ---- An injury to one 
is an injury to all!
http://awsm.nz/2018/10/23/victory-to-the-bus-workers/

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Message: 5




On October 26, an information campaign was held at the Lawica airport in Poznan regarding 
the ongoing strike of the LOT crew. In front of the departure hall, we stood with the 
slogans: "We support the strike at LOT", "Restore all the dismissals", "Cancel the 
president", "Contracts for work - not junk" and direct message to strikers: "Poznan holds 
your fingers crossed for you". We distributed the leaflets to the passengers regarding the 
postulates of the strikers, we talked with the local media and we kept red cards dedicated 
to the president of Milczarski, who should leave after disciplinary dismissal of Monika 
Zelazka and the remaining dozen people.
http://ozzip.pl/teksty/informacje/wielkopolskie/item/2420-poznan-lawica-czerwona-kartka-dla-prezesa-lot-u

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Message: 6



Last Friday Miguel Angel Peralta Betanzos, an anarchist political prisoner from Oaxaca, 
has decided to begin hunger strike. ---- Peralta, who prior to his arrest was an 
anthropology student, is one of the 7 indigenous members of the Community Assembly of 
Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, a Mazatec community in Oaxaca, who are imprisoned in 
different prisons in Oaxaca. Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón is known for putting up a fight 
against the imposition of the mainstream political parties on their community, and for 
campaigning to preserve their own governing system. ---- Miguel, one of presidents of 
Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, has been in prison since April  2015, following his arrest 
on alleged charge of attempted homicide during a riot: something him, his family, friends 
and his community strongly deny. According to Peralta, the police begun arrests in the 
community following a riot during which the police shot live ammunition at the crowd. 
Peralta has been kept in prison for nearly four years without a trial, basically living in 
a legal limbo.

The statement issued recently by Peralta's friends and family reads:

Our compañero has been in prison for nearly four years, having to endure a legal process 
plagued with irregularities and violations of local, national and international norms. The 
legal terms that are clearly stated in these local, national and international norms, have 
not been respected by the court. As such, to this date, he remains in complete legal 
uncertainty. His detention has been extended and various rights of his have been violated 
including the obstruction of an adequate defense, the presumption of innocence and access 
to prompt and expeditious justice.

It is important to note that, in the criminal case 02/2015, legal decisions have been 
emitted by the First Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Oaxaca, District Judges and 
also of the same Court of Huautla, through which eight others accused for the same acts 
were given their freedom. Furthermore, they have canceled more than 18 arrest warrants, 
stating that the only evidence that exists-that is the testimonies of the 8 witnesses-are 
generic, contradictory and implausible. It is evidence that lacks probative value, for 
which the responsibility of our compañeros in the supposed crimes is not fully proven.

Miguel Angel Peralta Betanzos demands:

his acquittal
freedom to the seven prisoners of the Community Assembly of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón: 
Herminio Monfil, Fernando Gavito, Omar Morales, Miguel Peralta, Jaime Betanzos, Isaías 
Gallardo and Alfredo Bolaños
end the arrest warrants against members of the Community Assembly
freedom to Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón community

https://freedomnews.org.uk/mexico-anarchist-political-prisoner-begins-hunger-strike/

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Message: 7



Anarchist Communist Group Dayschool ---- Libertarian Communism 2018: Advancing the Class 
Struggle ---- Takes place on Saturday 3rd November at May Day Rooms, London - between 
10.30 am and 5pm 88 Fleet St, London EC4Y 1DH ---- Workshops on the NHS, What is effective 
organisation? Effective organisation: Neither Party nor Network ---- Facebook Events page 
here: https://www.facebook.com/events/453867468435624/ ---- "There are periods in the life 
of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself 
as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, 
to find an application in life." ---- "We are profoundly convinced that no revolution is 
possible if the need for it is not felt among the people themselves. No handful of 
individuals, however energetic and talented, can arouse a popular insurrection if the 
people themselves through their best representatives do not come to the realization that 
they have no other way out of the situation they are dissatisfied with except insurrection."
Kropotkin

Austerity and poverty, attacks on wages and working conditions, unaffordable housing, war 
and nationalism, the rise of right-wing populism and increase in racism, climate change- 
all things to make us feel that the situation is hopeless and that all we can do is make 
feeble efforts to resist. However, we believe, as Kropotkin says, that real change is 
possible and may come when it is most unexpected. So what can we do to bring this moment 
closer? We will discuss this question in the context of actual struggles going on in 
Britain today.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/10/26/acg-all-day-event-london-3-11-18/

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Message: 8





The following text was first published as a chapter in "Bloodstained, One Hundred Years of 
Lenninist Counterrevolution" by AK Press. Taking Lenin's The State and Revolution as a 
focus, this text compares the rhetoric of Lenin to the reality of the regime that was 
created - comparing the theory to the practice. You can download and read this as a PDF . 
---- By Iain McKay ---- There were three Revolutions in 1917 - the February revolution 
which started spontaneously with strikes on International Women's Day; the October 
revolution when the majority of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets voted to elect 
a Bolshevik government; and what the Russian anarchist Voline termed The Unknown 
Revolution in between when the workers and peasants started to push the revolution from a 
mere political change into a social transformation.

This Unknown Revolution saw the recreation of the soviets first seen during the revolution 
of 1905 based on delegates elected from workplaces subject to recall, workers creating 
unions and factory committees and peasants seizing land back from the landlords while 
unprecedented political freedoms were taken for granted after the tyranny of Tsarism. Hope 
for a better future spread around the globe and the October Revolution was welcomed by 
many on the revolutionary left - anarchists included - as the culmination of this process.

Yet by 1921 anarchists had broken with the regime with the crushing of the Kronstadt 
rebellion for soviet freedom. The Bolshevik State was, rightly, denounced as being 
politically a party dictatorship and economically state-capitalism. How did this happen?

It would be impossible to cover all aspects of Leninist ideology and practice as well as 
the anarchist alternative, so here we indicate the main factors at work in the process. 
Lenin's The State and Revolution[1]is taken as the focus for written during 1917 it 
expresses the aspirations of Bolshevism in their best light - as shown by the fact that 
even today Leninists recommend we read it in order to see why we should join their party. 
We will compare the rhetoric of Lenin's work to the reality of the regime that was 
created, the theory to the practice. By doing that we can see why the revolution 
degenerated and better understand - to use Alexander Berkman's expression - The Bolshevik 
Myth in order to learn from history rather than repeat it.[2]

Theory
When Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917, he quickly came into conflict with his 
colleagues by taking a radical position. Instead of arguing - in-line with Marxist 
orthodoxy - that Russia faced a bourgeois revolution and so required the creation of a 
republic and capitalism, he argued that the revolution be intensified and pushed towards 
social transformation by means of the creation of a new State based on the soviets. This 
and continued opposition to the Imperialist war saw the Bolsheviks gain more and more 
influence, going from a small sect to a mass party in the space of a few months.

He wrote The State and Revolution during this heady period and it aimed to theoretically 
justify this change in perspective. It was primarily aimed against those within the 
Marxist movement who disagreed with Lenin as well as, to a lesser degree, anarchists. The 
two are related for Lenin's positions on the need for social transformation and opposition 
to both sides in capitalist conflicts had previously been advocated by only anarchists.[3]

The "bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring 
of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its 
revolutionary soul" and so "our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on 
the subject of the state." Lenin does, as he promised, provide "a number of long 
quotations from the works of Marx and Engels themselves" (313) yet has to provide 
commentary in order to ensure that the reader interprets them correctly. This is because 
Marx and Engels did not argue quite as Lenin suggested they did. Similarly, his comments 
on anarchism - as well as distorting it - fail to address the real issues between it and 
Marxism.[4]

Lenin argued that "[o]nly he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class 
struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." (334) The revolution 
requires "that the ‘special coercive force' for the suppression of the proletariat by the 
bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a 
‘special coercive force' for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the 
dictatorship of the proletariat)." (322) The aim was "to overthrow the bourgeoisie, to 
destroy bourgeois parliamentarism, for a democratic republic after the type of 
the[Paris]Commune, or a republic of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, for the 
revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." (396) For the "proletariat needs state 
power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the 
resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the 
peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organizing a 
socialist economy." (328)

The current State was a bourgeois State and had to be smashed and replaced by a new kind 
of State and "it is precisely this fundamental point which has been completely ignored by 
the dominant official Social-Democratic parties and, indeed, distorted[...]by the foremost 
theoretician of the Second International, Karl Kautsky." (329) The anarchists fail to 
understand that this new State is needed just as they fail to understand that the "organ 
of suppression" is "the majority of the population, and not a minority, as was always the 
case under slavery, serfdom, and wage slavery. And since the majority of people itself 
suppresses its oppressors, a ‘special force' for suppression is no longer necessary! In 
this sense, the state begins to wither away." (340) The State cannot be abolished as 
anarchists claim but it can and will disappear.

The practice of the Bolshevik regime did not match the theory but first we need to discuss 
the theoretical problems of Lenin's argument in order to understand why this happened for 
bad theory produces bad practice.

The Paris Commune
The core of Lenin's argument rests on the Paris Commune of 1871 and the lessons Marx and 
Engels drew from it. Yet he fails to mention key aspects of this event and like Marx and 
Engels provides a superficial analysis of it. This is in stark contrast to anarchists, for 
example Kropotkin wrote far more on the Commune than Marx or Engels did.

The key aspect of the Commune for Lenin is summarized by this quote of Marx: "One thing 
especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that ‘the working class cannot simply lay hold 
of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'..." (336) Marx is 
also quoted on how it "was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and 
legislative at the same time" (341) It, Lenin summarized, "replaced the smashed state 
machine ‘only' by fuller democracy: abolition of the standing army; all officials to be 
elected and subject to recall" (339) and "was ceasing to be a state since it had to 
suppress, not the majority of the population, but a minority (the exploiters). It had 
smashed the bourgeois state machine. In place of a special coercive force the population 
itself came on the scene. All this was a departure from the state in the proper sense of 
the word." (357)

Yet the Paris Commune was not a new State structure at all but rather was a transformed 
municipal council. Indeed, Lenin quotes Marx on how the Commune "was formed of the 
municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, 
responsible and revocable at any time." (339) After the initial (spontaneous) insurrection 
on March 18th the Central Committee of the Paris National Guard refused to take power 
itself and instead called elections to the existing municipal council with its members 
elected from the existing municipal wards by means of (male) universal suffrage. The 
Commune, then, was no soviet.[5]

The practical conclusions which Marx and Engels drew from it was - as before it - that 
workers should organize in political parties and take part in "political action" to 
capture the State on the national level in the same way as the Communards had locally. 
Lenin confuses smashing the State machine with smashing the State itself.

It is also important to note that Marx's The Civil War in France is his most appealing 
work because it is mostly reporting what had happened during a revolution inspired by 
anarchist ideas. While Marx failed to mention it, the driving force behind the Commune's 
proclamations were Internationalists influenced by Proudhon. To see this we need simply 
compare Proudhon's position during the 1848 Revolution to that applied - and praised by 
Marx - in 1871:

"We do not want the government of man by man any more than the exploitation of man by 
man[...]It is up to the National Assembly, through organisation of its committees, to 
exercise executive power, just the way it exercises legislative power through its joint 
deliberations and votes. [...]socialism is the contrary of governmentalism.[...]

"Besides universal suffrage and as a consequence of universal suffrage, we want 
implementation of the imperative mandate[mandat impératif]. Politicians balk at it! Which 
means that in their eyes, the people, in electing representatives, does not appoint 
mandatories but rather abjure their sovereignty!... That is assuredly not socialism: it is 
not even democracy."[6]

Lenin - like Marx - forgets to mention that the Communards called themselves Fédérés 
("Federals"). As such, his complaint "that the renegade[Eduard]Bernstein" suggested "as 
far as its political content" went Marx's program "displays, in all its essential 
features, the greatest similarity to the federalism of Proudhon"17 ignores the awkward 
fact that in-so-far-as Marx reports accurately on the revolt, he cannot help but appear to 
be a federalist

Lenin seems ignorant of what federalism means. The whole point of federalism is to 
co-ordinate activity at the appropriate level (and so cannot be anything other than 
bottom-up). Centralism, in contrast, co-ordinates everything at the center (and so cannot 
be anything other than top-down). So when Lenin proclaims that when Marx "purposely used" 
certain words (such as "National unity was... to be organised") to "oppose conscious, 
democratic, proletarian centralism to bourgeois, military, bureaucratic centralism" (348) 
he was completely missing the point.

Likewise, Proudhon wrote of how "to create national unity[...]from the bottom to the top, 
from the circumference to the centre" and how under federalism "the attributes of the 
central authority become specialized and limited" to "concerning federal services."[7]So 
the Communards talking of organizing national unity and (to quote Marx) how a "few but 
important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be 
suppressed, as had been deliberately mis-stated, but were to be transferred to communal, 
i.e., strictly responsible, officials" (346) is an expression of federalism and not its 
denial. That Marx confuses the highest federal body with "a central government" does not 
change this.

Similarly, Proudhon also argued that it was "necessary to disarm the powers that be" by 
ending military conscription and "organiz[ing]a citizens' army". It "is 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." In this way "the army retains its civic feelings" while the People "organize 
its military in such a way as to simultaneously guarantee its defense and its liberties". 
Moreover, he predated Lenin on "the replacement of bourgeois democracy by proletarian 
democracy" (388) by contrasting "labor democracy" to existing forms.[8]

Given this obvious influence, it is not the case that "[t]o confuse Marx's view on the 
‘destruction of state power, a parasitic excrescence', with Proudhon's federalism is 
positively monstrous!" (347) For the Communards were federalists and while Lenin 
proclaimed that there is "not a trace of federalism in Marx's above-quoted observation on 
the experience of the Commune" (347) there had to be if his account were remotely 
accurate. That before and after the Commune Marx was a centralist does not distract from 
his reporting on the Communards but it does mean we cannot, as Lenin wishes, take The 
Civil War in France as the definitive account of his ideas on social transformation.

While for Lenin Marx had "tried to draw practical lessons" from and so "‘learned' from the 
Commune," (344) in fact anarchists provided a deeper analysis of the revolt. For 
Kropotkin, by "proclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential 
anarchist principle" but "they stopped mid-course" and gave "themselves a Communal Council 
copied from the old municipal councils." Thus the Paris Commune did not "break 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." The elected 
revolutionaries were isolated from the masses and shut-up in the town hall which lead to 
disaster as the Commune council became "immobilized, in the midst of paperwork," lost "the 
inspiration that comes from continual contact with the masses" and so "they themselves 
paralyzed the popular initiative."[9]This is confirmed by one Marxist account of the 
Commune which admitted (in passing!) that the communal council was "overwhelmed" by 
suggestions from other bodies, the "sheer volume" of which "created difficulties" and it 
"found it hard to cope with the stream of people who crammed into the offices."[10]

Regardless of Lenin's assertions, the anarchists were right "to claim the Paris Commune 
as[...]a collaboration of their doctrine" and it is the Marxists who have "completely 
misunderstood its lessons". (385)

Opportunism
Lenin's work was directed against two main opponents in the Marxist movement, the 
Opportunists and the Kautskyites. The former were the reformist wing of the Social 
Democratic parties and most associated with Eduard Bernstein. The latter were their main 
opponents in the Second International and most associated with Karl Kautsky. Until the 
outbreak of World War One Lenin considered himself a follower of Kautsky and repeatedly 
invoked his writings to show his Marxist orthodoxy (most infamously in What is to be Done? 
on how "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class 
struggle from without" by "the bourgeois intelligentsia.").[11]

Even as late as 1913 he praised the "fundamentals of parliamentary tactics" of German 
Social Democracy which was "implacable on questions of principle and always directed to 
the accomplishment of the final aim."[12]As is well-known, Lenin originally disbelieved 
news reports on German Social Democrat politicians voting for war credits in 1914 such was 
his faith in that party.

So while he was surprised that it had "turned out that in reality the German 
Social-Democratic Party was much more moderate and opportunist than it appeared to be" 
(390) anarchists were not for we had predicted and repeatedly denounced the obvious 
reformism in Social Democracy for decades.[13]Nor does Lenin discuss why "opportunism" 
developed in the first place, namely the Marxist tactic of political action by parties in 
elections rather than the anarchist one of direct action by workers' unions. As such, it 
was a striking confirmation of Bakunin's warnings that when "common workers" are sent "to 
Legislative Assemblies" the result is that the "worker-deputies, transplanted into a 
bourgeois environment, into an atmosphere of purely bourgeois ideas, will in fact cease to 
be workers and, becoming Statesmen, they will become bourgeois" for "men do not make their 
situations; on the contrary, men are made by them."[14]Indeed, "opportunism" existed in 
Social Democracy from the start - as can be seen from Lenin's admission that Bakunin's 
attacks were "justified" as the "people's state" was as "an absurdity" and "a departure 
from socialism" and so Engels sought to "rid" German Social Democracy "of opportunist 
prejudices" (357) concerning the State... in 1875![15]

So while much of Lenin's book is commentary upon numerous quotes from Marx and Engels and 
contrasting his interpretation to the then orthodox position, he fails to mention that he, 
like all Marxists before 1917, were "opportunists" in the sense of after having read Marx 
and Engels they concluded that "political action" would be used to capture "political 
power" which would then, in turn, be used to transform both State and society.[16]

The reason for this is obvious as Lenin confuses smashing the State machine with smashing 
the State itself. He is right that "it was Marx who taught that the proletariat cannot 
simply win state power in the sense that the old state apparatus passes into new hands, 
but must smash this apparatus, must break it and replace it by a new one." (392) He is 
wrong in that Marx thought it would be achieved without first a securing universal 
suffrage and then a majority in the legislature. As such, when Lenin states that Kautsky 
"speaks of the winning of state power - and no more" and so "has chosen a formula which 
makes a concession to the opportunists, inasmuch as it admits the possibility of seizing 
power without destroying the state machine" (387) he misses the point. This can be seen 
quotes by Marx and Engels which Lenin himself provides and to which he feels the need to 
add commentary to what should be self-evident comments.[17]

Thus, after providing a long quote by Engels, Lenin has to add "Engels speaks here of the 
proletariat revolution ‘abolishing' the bourgeois state, while the words about the state 
withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist 
revolution" (322) when Engels himself makes no such distinction and just talks of the 
State. Similarly, he quotes Engels on how "one thing is certain it is that our party and 
the working class can only come to power in the form of the democratic republic" and that 
this "is even the specific form for the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the Great 
French Revolution has already shown" before feeling the need to add - presumably hoping 
his readers would not notice that Engels said no such thing - that "Engels realized here 
in a particularly striking form the fundamental idea which runs through all of Marx's 
works, namely, that the democratic republic is the nearest approach to the dictatorship of 
the proletariat." (360). Thus "the specific form" becomes "the nearest approach"![18]

Engels repeatedly suggested that "the republic" is "the ready-made political form for the 
future rule of the proletariat" which in France "is already in being"[19]and did so in 
text Lenin quotes:

"So, then, a unified republic[...]From 1792 to 1798 each French department, each 
commune[Gemeinde], enjoyed complete self-government on the American model, and this is 
what we too must have. How self-government is to be organised and how we can manage, 
without a bureaucracy has been shown to us by America and the first French Republic, and 
is being shown even today by Australia, Canada and the other English colonies." (362)

There is no mention of the Paris Commune at all in Engels' critique of the draft of the 
Erfurt Programme which is significant given Lenin proclaims that it "cannot be ignored; 
for it is with the opportunist views of the Social-Democrats on questions of state 
organisation that this criticism is mainly concerned." (358)

This position is consistent with Marx's comments on "smashing" the State machine which 
Lenin thinks is so important. This is because it is possible to argue that political 
action can be used to capture political power and that the first action of the victorious 
party is to smash the State bureaucracy - as Engels confirmed in an 1884 letter when asked 
to clarify this precise point by Bernstein:

"It is simply a question of showing that the victorious proletariat must first refashion 
the old bureaucratic, administrative centralised state power before it can use it for its 
own purposes: whereas all bourgeois republicans since 1848 inveighed against this 
machinery so long as they were in the opposition, but once they were in the government 
they took it over without altering it and used it partly against the reaction but still 
more against the proletariat."[20]

Which reflects Marx's earlier comment (quoted by Lenin) on the "executive power with its 
enormous bureaucratic and military organisation, with its vast and ingenious state 
machinery, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another 
half million, this appalling parasitic body[...]All revolutions perfected this machine 
instead of smashing it." (329) So unlike anarchists - who, from Proudhon onwards, had 
argued that it was "inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the 
proletariat"[21]- Marxists had viewed the bourgeois State as not only able to be captured 
but reformed in the interests of the working class.

The fundamental difference between the Opportunists and Kautskyites was that the former 
simply wished the party to revise the rhetoric used to bring it in line with the party's 
(reformist) practice while the latter insisted that the rhetoric remain revolutionary. 
However, both utilized the same tactics and aimed for the same thing - a Social Democratic 
majority. The former wished to use the existing State machine to implement reforms to the 
system and saw no need to smash that machinery or quickly transform the system. The latter 
remained true to Marx and argued that to secure the proletariat as the ruling class, 
parliament would have to smash that machine in order to replace capitalism with socialism.

Given that the Paris Commune had utilized a part of the current State - the Parisian 
municipal council - to abolish the State machine, it is easy to see why Lenin's 
interpretation of Marx and Engels took until 1917 to be formulated, particularly given 
their well-known support for electioneering and opposition to anarchist calls to smash the 
State and replace it with a new form of social organisation based on federations of 
workers' groupings.

Before turning to this, we must note that while finding the time to berate Bernstein for 
having "more than once repeated the vulgar bourgeois jeers at ‘primitive' democracy" (340) 
and how he "combats the ideas of ‘primitive' democracy" - "binding mandates, unpaid 
officials, impotent central representative bodies, etc." - to "prove" that this "is 
unsound" and "refers to the experience of the British trade unions, as interpreted by the 
Webbs" (394) he failed to note how he refers to the same book in What is to be Done? to 
also prove "the absurdity of such a conception of democracy."[22]

Anarchism
If Lenin's account of Marxism leaves much to be desired, this is nothing compared to the 
nonsense he inflicts on anarchism. To describe Lenin's understanding of Anarchism as 
superficial would be generous. He summarizes what he considers the differences between 
Marxists and anarchists:

"(1) The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognize that this 
aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as 
the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the 
state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, not understanding the 
conditions under which the state can be abolished. (2) The former recognize that after the 
proletariat has won political power it must completely destroy the old state machine and 
replace it by a new one consisting of an organisation of the armed workers, after the type 
of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have 
a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its 
revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should 
use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) The former demand 
that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilizing the present state. The 
anarchists reject this." (392)

First, regardless of Lenin's suggestions of "overnight" revolutions, anarchists had never 
viewed social revolution in that way. Quite the reverse, as anarchists have always 
stressed that revolutions are difficult and take time as well as explicitly rejecting the 
notion of "one-day" revolutions. Kropotkin argued that while it may be possible to "topple 
and change a government in one day", a revolution, "if it is to achieve a tangible 
outcome[...]takes three or four years of revolutionary upheaval."[23]Then working class 
would be in a position to finally smash the State and capitalism its revolt had weakened 
and so be free to start constructing a new society.

The element of truth in Lenin's statement is that anarchists do reject the Marxist notion 
that we need a State to rebuild and defend society after a successful revolution. This is 
because of our differing analyses of what the State is. Both agree that the current and 
all previous States are instruments of class rule, that class being the minority of 
oppressors and exploiters who have monopolized social wealth. Marxists think that a State 
- whether a suitably transformed republic (Kautsky, Lenin before 1917) or a new 
soviet-State (Lenin in 1917) - can be the instrument of the majority, of the working 
class, for it is simply "a special force for the suppression of a particular class". (340) 
Anarchists reject this analysis and argue that the State institution is marked by certain 
structures which allow it to do its task and that the State develops its own interests. 
The "dictatorship of the proletariat" would soon become the "dictatorship over the 
proletariat."

This is because the State is an "organisation of hierarchical centralization" and is 
"necessarily hierarchical, authoritarian - or it ceases to be the State." It is "the 
absorption of the whole national life, concentrated into a pyramid of 
functionaries."[24]This structure did not appear by accident. What is striking about 
Lenin's account of the State is that he never, ever wonders why this social structure has 
taken the form it has. The bourgeois State is centralized and the proletarian State will 
likewise be - and any attempts to suggest Marx was a federalist are dismissed (albeit, 
correctly!) for he "upheld democratic centralism, the republic - one and indivisible." (361)

Yet hierarchical and centralized structures are needed for a minority to rule. They 
exclude the masses from participation in social life. As Proudhon argued:

"And who benefits from this regime of unity? The people? No, the upper 
classes[...]Unity[...]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."[25]

The centralized, hierarchical, state is "the cornerstone of bourgeois despotism and 
exploitation."[26]Under the rising bourgeoisie, Kropotkin noted, "the State was the sole 
judge" which meant that "all the local, insignificant disputes[...]piled up in the form of 
documents in the offices" and "parliament was literally inundated by thousands of these 
minor local squabbles. It then took thousands of functionaries in the capital - most of 
them corruptible - to read, classify, evaluate all these, to pronounce on the smallest 
detail" and "the flood[of issues]always rose!"[27]The same process would be at work in the 
new so-called semi-State as it, too, was centralized and so had "a whole new 
administrative network in order to extend its writ and enforce obedience."[28]This was why 
anarchists sought to decentralize decision making away from one central body into 
federations of workplace and community associations and wondered why Marxists had "adopted 
the ideal of the Jacobin State when this ideal had been designed from the viewpoint of the 
bourgeois, in direct opposition to the egalitarian and communist tendencies of the people 
which had arisen during the[French]Revolution."[29]

Lenin confuses social organisation with the State and misses the point by saying we 
"cannot imagine democracy, even proletarian democracy, without representative 
institutions, but we can and must imagine democracy without parliamentarism" (343-4) for 
while any organisation requires delegates to co-ordinate decisions it is a mistake to 
confuse this with representative - and so centralized - government. So if "[u]nder 
socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing" 
(395) under Anarchism, rather than having a series of rulers, all would participate in 
decision making and the "centralistic, bureaucratic and military organisation" of the 
State which operates "from the top down and from center to periphery" will be replaced 
"with a federal organisation" of associations and communes "from the bottom up, from 
periphery to center" with "elective officials answerable to the people, and with arming of 
the nation".[30]

The question is whether these elected bodies are focused on specific tasks at appropriate 
levels or whether they are, like Parliaments, cover all social matters at the center. In 
both cases "representative" institutions remain in the sense that specific individuals are 
elected to specific bodies but Lenin confused the matter by saying the "way out of 
parliamentarism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the 
elective principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from talking 
shops into ‘working' bodies." (342) This is only part of what is needed as the question of 
centralization is key for it vastly decreases popular participation and vastly increases 
bureaucratic tendencies.

For Lenin, the "exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation, i.e., in 
the selfish interests of an insignificant minority against the vast majority of all 
people" while the "exploited classes need political rule in order to completely abolish 
all exploitation" (327) anarchists agree with the first part but disagree with the second. 
Political rule - a State - is needed for a minority class to dominate society and is 
structured appropriately (hierarchical, centralized, top-down). It is not needed - indeed, 
defeats the aim - when we are talking about formerly exploited classes ("the vast 
majority") running society simply because it is not structured to allow that. By creating 
a new centralized social structure, Marxists create the conditions for the birth of a new 
ruling class - the bureaucracy. This is why anarchists reject the notion of using a State 
to build socialism:

"the State, with its hierarchy of functionaries and the weight of its historical 
traditions, could only delay the dawning of a new society freed from monopolies and 
exploitation[...]what means can the State provide to abolish this monopoly that the 
working class could not find in its own strength and groups?[...]what advantages could the 
State provide for abolishing these same[class]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 unions, their federations, completely 
outside the State?"[31]

Lenin is also keen to confuse the need to defend a revolution with the State and quotes 
from a polemic Marx addressed to the reformist mutualists, generalizing it to all anarchists:

"Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchists: 
After overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers ‘lay down their arms', 
or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the 
systematic use of arms by one class against another if not a ‘transient form' of state?" (353)

So, according to Marx and Engels, the anarchists urged the working class to rise in 
insurrection against the bourgeoisie and its State and, once victorious, then simply put 
down its arms? It is difficult to take this seriously - particularly as it confuses 
defense of a revolution (of freedom) with the State. Lenin, like Marx and Engels, join 
those who "believe that after having brought down government and private property we would 
allow both to be quietly built up again, because of a respect for the freedom of those who 
might feel the need to be rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting 
our ideas!"[32]

Lenin suggests that the "armed workers who proceed to form a militia involving the entire 
population" is "a more democratic state machine." (383) Yet if the State were simply this 
then there would be no disagreement between Anarchism and Marxism:

"Immediately after established governments have been overthrown, communes will have to 
reorganize themselves along revolutionary lines[...]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[...]and to federate with them for common defense."[33]

Lenin's innovation was to move away from the orthodox Marxist position on the State 
towards the anarchist position that socialism must be built by the workers' themselves 
using the organisations they themselves create in the struggle against capitalism. 
However, he linked this to a continued Marxist prejudice in favor of centralized 
structures and so his assertion that the new regime "is no longer the state proper" (340) 
was simply not true for in a centralized structure power rests at the top, in the hands of 
a minority - with its own (class) interests.[34]So when Lenin argued that "we shall fight 
for the complete destruction of the old state machine, in order that the armed proletariat 
itself may become the government (396) anarchists simply note that in a centralized 
structure it would be the Marxist party leadership who would become the government, not 
the armed proletariat:

"By popular government the marxians mean government of the people by means of a small 
number of representatives elected through universal suffrage[...]government of the vast 
majority of the masses of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, the 
marxians argue, will be made up of workers. Yes, to be sure, of former workers who, as 
soon as they become the people's governors and representatives, will stop being workers 
and will begin to look down upon the proletarian world from the heights of the State: they 
will then represent, not the people, but themselves and their ambitions to govern it. 
Anyone who queries that does not know human nature."[35]

In a centralized, "one and indivisible" republic electing, mandating and recalling become 
increasingly meaningless - it would require millions of electors at the base across the 
country to simultaneously act in the same manner to have any impact. This means that there 
is substantial space for the interests of the State to diverge from the people and, as 
Bakunin warned, "the State cannot be sure of its own self-preservation without an armed 
force to defend it against its own internal enemies, against the discontent of its own 
people."[36]

Which is why, while recognizing the need for insurrection and defense of the revolution, 
anarchists seek to abolish the State and replace it with a social structure more 
appropriate for building socialism - for "whenever a new economic form emerges in the life 
of a nation - when serfdom, for example, came to replace slavery, and later on wage-labor 
for serfdom - a new form of political grouping always had to develop" and so "economic 
emancipation will be accomplished by smashing the old political forms represented by the 
State. Man will be forced to find new forms of organisation for the social functions that 
the State apportioned between its functionaries."[37]

Second, the claim that anarchists have only a "vague" notion of what to replace the State 
with is simply wrong. Proclaiming that anarchists argue that we "must think only of 
destroying the old state machine" and "it is no use probing into the concrete lessons of 
earlier proletarian revolutions and analyzing what to put in the place of what has been 
destroyed, and how," (395) flies in the face of the many articles and books in which 
anarchists did precisely that. To quote Bakunin:

"Workers, no longer count on anyone but yourselves[...]Abstain from all participation in 
bourgeois radicalism and organize outside of it the forces of the proletariat. The basis 
of that organisation is entirely given: the workshops and the federation of the workshops; 
the creation of funds for resistance, instruments of struggle against the bourgeoisie, and 
their federation not just nationally, but internationally. The creation of Chambers of 
Labor[...]the liquidation of the State and of bourgeois society[...]Anarchy, that it to 
say the true, the open popular revolution[...]organisation, from top to bottom and from 
the circumference to the center."[38]

The "Chambers of Labor" were federations of local unions grouped by territory and 
Bakunin's visions of revolution predicted the workers' councils of 1905 and 1917. 
Likewise, Kropotkin argued that "independent Communes for the territorial groupings, and 
vast federations of trade unions for groupings by social functions - the two interwoven 
and providing support to each to meet the needs of society - allowed the anarchists to 
conceptualize in a real, concrete, way the possible organisation of a liberated 
society"[39]- based on an analysis of both the workers' movement and the Paris Commune as 
well as the history of the State

Yet Lenin claimed that "anarchists dismissed the question of political forms altogether"! 
(349)

Similarly, he was wrong to proclaim that if the workers and peasants "organize themselves 
quite freely in communes, and unite the action of all the communes in striking at capital, 
in crushing the resistance of the capitalists, and in transferring the privately-owned 
railways, factories, land and so on to the entire nation, to the whole of society" then 
that would "be the most consistent democratic centralism." (348) In fact it would be 
federalism:

"All productive capital and instruments of labor are to be confiscated for the benefit of 
toilers' associations[...]the Alliance of all labor associations[...]will constitute the 
Commune[...]there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary 
Communal Council[... made up of]delegates[...]invested with binding mandates and 
accountable and revocable at all times[...]all provinces, communes and associations[... 
will]delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all[...]invested with binding 
mandated and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of 
insurgent associations, communes and provinces"[40]

Unsurprisingly then, it was Kropotkin and not Lenin who in 1905 saw the soviets as the 
means of both fighting and replacing the State as well as comparing them to the Paris 
Commune. Thus "the Council of workers[...]were appointed by the workers themselves - just 
like the insurrectional Commune of August 10, 1792." The council "completely 
recalls[...]the Central Committee which preceded the Paris Commune in 1871 and it is 
certain that workers across the country must organize themselves on this model[...]these 
councils represent the revolutionary strength of the working class.[...]Let no one come to 
proclaim to us that the workers of the Latin peoples, by preaching the general strike and 
direct action, were going down the wrong path.[...]A new force is thus constituted by the 
strike: the force of workers asserting themselves for the first time and putting in motion 
the lever of any revolution - direct action." The "urban workers[...]imitating the 
rebellious peasants[...]will likely be asked to put their hands on all that is necessary 
to live and produce. Then they can lay in the cities the initial foundations of the 
communist commune."[41]

In contrast, the Bolsheviks in 1905 could "find nothing better to do than to present the 
Soviet with an ultimatum: immediately adopt a Social-Democratic program or 
disband."[42]Nor did the Bolsheviks seek to transform or extend the revolution from 
bourgeois to socialist aims - unlike the anarchists. Given this, perhaps it was for the 
best that the October Revolution meant Lenin never wrote the second part of The State and 
Revolution which was to deal with the events of 1905. (397)

All of which makes a mockery of Lenin's assertion that "Anarchism has given nothing even 
approximating true answers to the concrete political questions: Must the old state machine 
be smashed? And what should be put in its place?" (385) Anarchism had advocated workers' 
councils as a means of both fighting and replacing capitalism and the State since Bakunin 
clashed with Marx in the International.

Third, those paying attention would have concluded that the fate of Social Democracy and 
its degeneration into "Opportunism" would have shown why anarchists reject taking part in 
the State by contesting elections. This only "trains" workers in letting others act for 
them and so "disaccustom the people to the direct care of their own interests and schools 
the ones in slavishness and the others in intrigues and lies."[43]As Kropotkin stressed:

"We see in the incapacity of the statist socialist to understand the true historical 
problem of socialism a gross error of judgement[...]To tell the workers that they will be 
able to introduce the socialist system while retaining the machine of the State and only 
changing the men in power; to prevent, instead of aiding, the mind of the workers, 
progressing towards the search for new forms of life that would be their own - that is in 
our eyes a historic mistake which borders on the criminal."[44]

Instead of electioneering, "anarchists, since the beginnings of the International to the 
present, have taken an active part in the workers organisations formed for the direct 
struggle of Labor against Capital. This struggle, while serving far more powerfully than 
any indirect action to secure some improvements in the life of the worker and opening up 
the eyes of the workers to the evil done to society by capitalist organisation and by the 
State that upholds it, this struggle also awakes in the worker thoughts concerning the 
forms of consumption, production and direct exchange between those concerned, without the 
intervention of the capitalist and the State."[45]

Finally, Lenin's work is the source of the common assertion by Marxists that most 
anarchists supported their ruling class during the First World War. Regardless of his 
comment about "the few anarchists" who "preserved a sense of honor and a conscience" (380) 
by opposing the war, in reality pro-war anarchists in spite of having "amongst them 
comrades whom we love and respect most" were "not numerous" and "almost all" of the 
anarchists "have remained faithful to their convictions".[46]Nor does Lenin mention that 
these few - which, sadly, included Kropotkin - had rejected Bakunin's position (turn the 
imperialist war into a revolution) in favor of Engels' defense of the fatherland while, 
ironically, Lenin went the opposite way.[47]

Socialism
The State and Revolution is primarily a work on political structures and an ideological 
defense for Lenin's new positions. There is very little in it on socialism or, more 
correctly, the initial steps the socialist State would take once power had been seized but 
those few words are significant.

The key factor for Lenin is not who manages production but rather who owns property. "The 
means of production are no longer the private property of individuals" but rather they 
would "belong to the whole of society" (376) and while there would, initially, be 
differences in wealth "the exploitation of man by man will have become impossible because 
it will be impossible to seize the means of production - the factories, machines, land, 
etc. - and make them private property." (377)

Yet it is perfectly possible for exploitation to exist without private property - it 
depends on how society "owns" the means of production. Do workers manage their own labor 
or does someone else - the State - do that? Lenin's vision of socialism sets up the latter 
possibility by equating socialism with universal wage-labor rather than its abolition:

"All citizens are transformed into hired employees of the state[...]All citizens becomes 
employees and workers of a single countrywide state ‘syndicate'[...]The whole of society 
will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labor and pay." (383)

There is some talk of how we "must start with the expropriation of the capitalists, with 
the establishment of workers' control over the capitalists" but why workers would need to 
control capitalists who have had their property expropriated is not immediately obvious. A 
closer read shows that Lenin had no desire to immediately expropriate the capitalists and 
introduce workers' management of production. Instead the capitalists would remain and 
control "must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats, but by a state of armed 
workers."[48](380)

While the political structures created by capitalism had to be smashed, the economic ones 
had to be used as the "economic foundation" (346) for socialism:

"A witty German Social-Democrat[...]called the postal service an example of the socialist 
economic system. This is very true. At the present the postal service is a business 
organised on the lines of state-capitalist monopoly. Imperialism is gradually transforming 
all trusts into organisations of a similar type, in which[...]one has the same bourgeois 
bureaucracy. But the mechanism of social management is here already to hand. Once we have 
overthrown the capitalists[...]and smashed the bureaucratic machinery of the modern state, 
we shall have a splendidly-equipped mechanism, freed from the ‘parasite', a mechanism 
which can very well be set going by the united workers themselves, who will hire 
technicians, foremen and accountants, and pay them all, as indeed all ‘state' officials in 
general, workmen's wages. Here is a concrete, practical task which can immediately be 
fulfilled in relation to all trusts, a task whose fulfillment will rid the working people 
of exploitation" (345)

The Bolshevik's "immediate aim" was to "organize the whole economy on the lines of the 
postal service" and "on the basis of what capitalism has already created". (345) So the 
structures created by the capitalists and their State - fitting for their priorities and 
interests - would be extended with "the conversion of all citizens into workers and other 
employees of one huge ‘syndicate' - the whole state - and the complete subordination of 
the entire work of this syndicate to a genuinely democratic state, the state of the 
Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies." (380)

Control, then, would be by the State - initially over the capitalists but eventually of 
State employees. Lenin is well aware of Engels' infamous article "On Authority"[49]in 
which he "ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists, who call themselves 
‘anti-authoritarians', i.e., repudiated all authority, all subordination, all power. Take 
a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels: is it not clear that not one 
of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and the 
systematic co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of 
subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?" (353) 
Yet Engels argues much more strongly than that:

"organisation[...]means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic 
machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ 
workers ever have been[...]If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has 
subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in 
so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social 
organisation."[50]

Lenin's aim was to turn the new economy into a single factory under the control of the 
State and yet did not conclude that this would be "more despotic" than capitalism. He 
completely fails to realize that without workers' management of production when "equality 
is achieved for all members of society in relation to ownership of the means of 
production, that is, equality of labor and wages" (381) it is just turning them into 
wage-slaves of the State bureaucracy. Capitalism - individual ownership by the few - turns 
into State-Capitalism - collective ownership by the few in the new centralized structures 
of the State and the institutions inherited from capitalism.[51]

There is nothing in Lenin's work which suggests anything like Proudhon's vision of 
socialism built by workers themselves using their own organisations:

"under universal association, ownership of the land and of the instruments of labor is 
social ownership[...]We do not want expropriation by the State[...]it is still 
monarchical, still wage-labor. We want[...]democratically organised workers' 
associations[...]the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies 
woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic."[52]

Similarly, there is no notion that a "strongly centralized Government" could "command that 
a prescribed quantity" of a good "be sent to such a place on such a day" and be "received 
on a given day by a specified official and stored in particular warehouses" was not only 
"undesirable" but also "wildly Utopian" not least because it could not utilize "the 
co-operation, the enthusiasm, the local knowledge" of the people.[53]Hence the anarchist 
prediction "that to hand over to the State all the main sources of economic life" and 
"also the management of all the main branches of industry" would "create a new instrument 
of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and 
capitalism." This "new bureaucracy would end by making expropriation hateful in the eyes 
of all."[54]

The Party
The most obvious difference between the theory of The State and Revolution and the 
practice of the new regime is that the book makes next-to-no mention of the vanguard party 
and its role. The most significant mention is ambiguous:

"By educating the workers' party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, 
capable of assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism, of directing and 
organizing the new system, of being the teacher, the guide, the leader of all the working 
and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against 
the bourgeoisie." (328)

Is it the proletariat or its vanguard which assumes power? Lenin's other writings during 
1917 make it clear - it is the vanguard, the party, which assumes power.[55]Given this, we 
need to understand the nature of the party Lenin spent his life building and whose 
ideology would necessarily shape the decisions being made and structures being built.

The first thing to note about the vanguard is how important it is for socialism. Without 
the right kind of party, socialism would be impossible. As Lenin stressed in 1902 "there 
could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers" as it must "be 
brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, 
exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness" while 
the "theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic 
theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by 
intellectuals."[56]The party was needed to educate a class which could never develop 
socialist ideas by itself:

"there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses 
themselves in the process of their movement, the only choice is - either bourgeois or 
socialist ideology. There is no middle course[...]Hence, to belittle the socialist 
ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen 
bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of 
the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology[...]Hence, our 
task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class 
movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the 
bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy."[57]

Ignoring the obvious point that "history" shows no such thing - as an obvious 
counter-example, in 1917 "the masses were incomparably more revolutionary than the Party, 
which in turn was more revolutionary than its committeemen"[58]- this perspective cannot 
help give the party and more particularly its leadership a privileged position. The 
obvious conclusion is that to disagree with the party and its leadership was to show the 
absence of socialist consciousness. The party, then, substitutes itself for the working 
class.[59]This perspective helps explain one of Lenin's stranger comments in The State and 
Revolution:

"We are not utopians, we do not ‘dream' of dispensing at once with all administration, 
with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of 
the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, 
serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want 
the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with 
subordination, control, and ‘foremen and accountants.'" (344)

Ignoring the awkward fact administration no more equates to subordination than 
organisation equates to authority and so these "anarchist dreams" existed only in Lenin's 
head, this statement flows naturally from the perspective that the working class people 
cannot by their own struggles change themselves.[60]At best the majority can recognize 
that the party embodies its interests and vote for it (and even join it, if the party 
considers them suitable). Perhaps it will be objected that Lenin does add that this 
"subordination, however, must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited and working 
people, i.e., to the proletariat" (345) but this is question begging - for surely the 
proletariat are people too? How can that class also dispense "at once with all 
administration, with all subordination"? But then he talks about "establishing strict, 
iron discipline backed by the state power of the armed workers." (345)

This is significant for during the 1905 revolution he mocked the Mensheviks for only 
wanting "pressure from below" which was "pressure by the citizens on the revolutionary 
government." Instead, he argued for pressure "from above as well as from below," where 
"pressure from above" was "pressure by the revolutionary government on the citizens." He 
notes that Engels "appreciated the importance of action from above" and that he saw the 
need for "the utilization of the revolutionary governmental power" for "[l]imitation, in 
principle, of revolutionary action to pressure from below and renunciation of pressure 
also from above is anarchism."[61]

The 1905 revolution also saw this deep-routed suspicion of working class self-activity 
surface in the position of the St. Petersburg Bolsheviks who were convinced that "only a 
strong party along class lines can guide the proletarian political movement and preserve 
the integrity of its program, rather than a political mixture of this kind, an 
indeterminate and vacillating political organisation such as the workers council 
represents and cannot help but represent."[62]So the soviets could not reflect workers' 
interests because they were elected by the workers. Lenin, to his credit, fought against 
this position when he turned from exile but support for the soviets was simply seen, as he 
put it in 1907, "for the purpose of developing and strengthening the Social-Democratic 
Labour Party" and "if Social-Democratic activities among the proletarian masses are 
properly, effectively and widely organised, such institutions may actually become 
superfluous."[63]Building the party remains the end and working class self-organisation 
merely a means.

As well as privileging the party over the class, within the party it privileges the 
leadership over the membership. The leadership naturally substitutes itself for the 
membership as required by "the transformation of the power of ideas into the power of 
authority, the subordination of lower Party bodies to higher ones."[64]A centralized, 
top-down perspective becomes a necessity:

"it is the organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy as opposed to the 
organisational principle of opportunist Social-Democracy. The latter strives to proceed 
from the bottom upward[...]The former strives to proceed from the top downward."[65]

The need for centralization flows from the assumptions of vanguardism for if socialist 
consciousness comes from outside the working class then that also applies within the 
party. Hence the need for central control beyond the prejudices that it is more efficient 
and effective than federalism.[66]So the vanguard party is centralized like the capitalist 
system it claims to oppose. Anarchists have long argued that the centralization of the 
State structure produced around it a bureaucracy and, unsurprisingly, the Bolshevik party 
likewise produced a caste of officials. Discussing the Bolsheviks in 1905 Trotsky points 
out this tendency existed from the start:

"The habits peculiar to a political machine were already forming in the underground. The 
young revolutionary bureaucrat was already emerging as a type. The conditions of 
conspiracy, true enough, offered rather meager scope for such formalities of democracy as 
electiveness, accountability and control. Yet, undoubtedly the committeemen narrowed these 
limitations considerably more than necessity demanded and were far more intransigent and 
severe with the revolutionary workingmen than with themselves, preferring to domineer even 
on occasions that called for lending an attentive ear to the voice of the masses."[67]

Unsurprisingly, Lenin also spent a lot of energy fighting the bureaucracy of his own party 
in 1917 to push the revolution forward. As Trotsky reported:

"As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the classes in motion and the 
interests of the party machines. Even the Bolshevik Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit 
of exceptional revolutionary training, were definitely inclined to disregard the masses 
and to identify their own special interests and the interests of the machine on the very 
day after the monarchy was overthrown. What, then, could be expected of these cadres when 
they became an all-powerful state bureaucracy?"[68]

And it is now to that question, the reality of the Bolshevik regime that we turn.

Practice
Of course, the anarchist position may be wrong and Lenin's right. We discover this through 
practice so we need to look at what happened after the Bolshevik party seized power and 
started to implement their vision of socialism.[69]

While often portrayed as a coup d'état, in reality the Bolsheviks did have significant 
popular support in the main industrial centers and the October Revolution took place only 
once the party had a majority in the Petrograd and Moscow soviets. They then gained a 
majority of votes in the Second All-Russian Soviet Congress for ratifying the overthrow of 
the provisional government and its replacement by some-kind of soviet system. The question 
is, what happened next?

We concentrate on the Bolshevik's relations with the urban working class as this was their 
favored class and the class the new State was meant to ensure was the ruling class.[70]We 
cannot cover everything and will by necessity focus on certain key developments which 
historian S.A. Smith summarizes well:

"The Bolsheviks established their power in the localities through soviets, soldiers' 
committees, factory committees, and Red Guards. Numbering less than 350,000 in October 
1917, the party had little option but to allow such independent organisations extensive 
leeway. Yet the same desperate problems of unemployment and lack of food and fuel that 
helped turn the workers against the Provisional Government soon began to turn workers 
against the Bolsheviks. In the first half of 1918, some 100,000 to 150,000 workers across 
Russia took part in strikes, food riots and other protests, roughly on a par with labor 
unrest on the eve of the February Revolution. In this context, the Bolsheviks struggled to 
concentrate authority in the hands of the party and state organs.[...]In spring 1918, 
worker discontent translated into a renewal of support for the Mensheviks and, to a lesser 
extent, the SRs, causing the Bolsheviks to cancel soviet elections and close down soviets 
that proved uncooperative, thus initiating the process whereby soviets and trade unions 
were turned into adjuncts to a one-party state. When the Whites seized leadership of the 
anti-Bolshevik movement in the latter months of 1918, however, most workers swung back in 
support of the government. During the civil war, labor unrest continued[...]the Bolsheviks 
generally reacted by rushing in emergency supplies and by arresting the leaders of the 
protest, who were often Mensheviks or Left SRs[...]they did not scruple when they deemed 
it necessary to deploy armed force to suppress strikes, to confiscate ration cards or even 
to dismiss strikers en masse and then rehire them selectively. The Bolsheviks expected the 
working class to speak with one voice - in favor of the regime - and when they didn't 
they, who had once excoriated the Mensheviks for their refusal to accept that a true 
proletariat existed in Russia, charged the working class with being no more than a mass of 
uprooted peasants with a thoroughly petty-bourgeois psychology."[71]

These developments did not come out of the blue. They reflected the clash of Bolshevik 
ideology and prejudices with reality, a clash in which the former made the latter worse. 
They also reflected the changed perspectives of those who found themselves in positions of 
power within a centralized, hierarchical, top-down social organisation - the State.

While such factors as economic crisis, civil war, imperialist invention, a "declassed" or 
"disappeared" working class were later invoked by Leninists (starting with Trotsky in the 
1930s) to rationalize and justify the anti-socialist decisions of the Bolsheviks which so 
obviously pathed the way for Stalinism, as we will show it was primarily the combination 
of ideology and the realities of the centralized political and economic structures the 
Bolshevik favored which proved the anarchist position correct and showed the nativity of 
The State and Revolution.

The State and the Soviets
Lenin had stressed the need for "working bodies" and the fusion of legislative and 
executive bodies yet the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets elected a new Central 
Executive Committee (VTsIK, with 101 members) and created the Council of People's 
Commissars (Sovnarkom, with 16 members). As the latter acted as the executive of the 
soviet executive, Lenin's promises in The State and Revolution did not last the night. 
Worse, a mere four days later the Sovnarkom unilaterally give itself legislative power 
simply by issuing a decree to this effect. This was not only the opposite of the example 
given by the Paris Commune but also made clear the party's pre-eminence over the soviets.

However, this would only come as a surprise if only The State and Revolution were read for 
Lenin had throughout 1917 argued that the "Bolsheviks must assume power" and "can and must 
take state power into their own hands."[72]This they did as the Bolshevik Central 
Committee admitted just after the October Revolution: "it is impossible to refuse a purely 
Bolshevik government without treason to the slogan of the power of the Soviets, since a 
majority at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets[...]handed power over to this 
government."[73]So in the "new" State, it was not the people nor the soviets which 
governed but rather the Bolsheviks.

Thus the VTsIK, in theory the highest organ of soviet power, was turned into little more 
than a rubber stamp for a Bolshevik executive. This was aided by the activities of its 
Bolshevik dominated presidium which circumvented general meetings, postponed regular 
sessions and presented it with policies which had already been implemented by the 
Sovnarkom.[74]In addition, "[e]ffective power in the local soviets relentlessly gravitated 
to the executive committees, and especially their presidia. Plenary sessions became 
increasingly symbolic and ineffectual."[75]

Combined with the rise of executive power, the "new" State also saw an increase in 
bureaucracy which started immediately with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks:

"The old state's political apparatus was ‘smashed,' but in its place a new bureaucratic 
and centralized system emerged with extraordinary rapidity. After the transfer of 
government to Moscow in March 1918 it continued to expand[....]As the functions of the 
state expanded so did the bureaucracy, and by August 1918 nearly a third of Moscow's 
working population were employed in offices. The great increase in the number of 
employees[...]took place in early to mid-1918 and, thereafter, despite many campaigns to 
reduce their number, they remained a steady proportion of the falling population"[76]

Bureaucracy "grew by leaps and bounds. Control over the new bureaucracy constantly 
diminished" while "alienation between ‘people' and ‘officials,' which the soviet system 
was supposed to remove, was back again. Beginning in 1918, complaints about ‘bureaucratic 
excesses,' lack of contact with voters, and new proletarian bureaucrats grew louder and 
louder."[77]In stark contrast to the promise to "take immediate steps to cut bureaucracy 
down to the roots" (389) it swiftly and dramatically increased. Perhaps Lenin was right to 
assert that the notion of "[a]bolishing the bureaucracy at once, everywhere and 
completely, is out of the question" and "a utopia" (344) but to massively increase that 
bureaucracy is something else - particularly when the opposite had been so confidently 
proclaimed.[78]

As well as an ever-increasing bureaucracy, the new "semi-State" also gained "special 
bodies" of armed forces. On 20th of December 1917 the Sovnarkom decreed the formation of a 
political police force, the Cheka. For all the talk of "smashing" the old State machine, 
the Cheka's first headquarters was at Gorokhovaia 2 which had housed the Tsar's notorious 
security service the Okhrana. In March 1918, Trotsky replaced the militia with a regular 
army by eliminating the soldier's committees and elected officers: "the principle of 
election is politically purposeless and technically inexpedient, and it has been, in 
practice, abolished by decree."[79]

This shifting of power territorially to the center and functionally to executives, the 
rise of a "new" bureaucracy and specialized armed forces - while all expected by 
anarchists - did not automatically mean dictatorship as other parties could, in theory, 
win elections to soviets, become the majority and replace the executives. This is 
precisely what the Mensheviks decided to do and they achieved significant success by the 
spring of 1918 as the working class was "becoming increasingly disillusioned with the 
Bolshevik regime, so much so that in many places the Bolsheviks felt constrained to 
dissolve Soviets or prevent re-elections where Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries 
had gained majorities."[80]

As well as delaying elections and disbanding by force soviets elected with non-Bolshevik 
majorities, the Bolsheviks also took to packing soviets with representatives of 
organisations they controlled. So, for example, in Petrograd the Bolshevik Soviet 
confirmed new regulations "to help offset possible weaknesses" in their "electoral 
strength in factories." The "most significant change" was the "numerically decisive 
representation" given "to agencies in which the Bolsheviks had overwhelming strength, 
among them the Petrograd Trade Union Council, individual trade unions, factory committees 
in closed enterprises, district soviets, and district non-party workers' conferences." 
This ensured that "[o]nly 260 of roughly 700 deputies in the new soviet were to be elected 
in factories, which guaranteed a large Bolshevik majority in advance" and so the 
Bolsheviks "contrived a majority" in the new Soviet long before gaining 127 of the 260 
factory delegates. This, moreover, ignores the repression of opposition parties and press 
on the results. Overall, the Bolshevik election victory "was highly suspect, even on the 
shop floor."[81]

So much for Lenin's promise of "sovereign, all-powerful Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' 
Deputies." (393)

Such activities would have been hard with a State dependent on the armed people - but by 
then the Bolsheviks had a regular army and political police force to do their bidding. The 
Bolshevik regime confirmed Engels description of the State as quoted by Lenin:

"the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the 
population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary 
because a self-acting armed organisation of the population has become impossible since the 
split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of 
armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all 
kinds" (316)

The irony is that it was Engels' own ideology which produced this as the classes into 
which society had split was the working class and the new party-bureaucratic ruling class. 
As anarchists predicted, function and organ are inseparable and the centralized State 
produced around it a new minority class. The State did not begin to "wither away" but 
rather enlarged and strengthened. If, "according to Marx, the proletariat needs only a 
state which is withering away, i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither away 
immediately, and cannot but wither away." (326) then Lenin's regime failed to provide it.[82]

The State and Socialism
Throughout 1917 the Bolsheviks had argued that the economic problems facing Russia were 
the fault of the Provisional Government as it was bourgeois in origin and so unwilling to 
take the measures needed against (bourgeois) speculators and vested interests. The 
creation of a new "soviet" power would quickly end the problems. This proved to be 
optimistic in the extreme. The economic crisis continued once the Bolsheviks seized power 
and got worse as Bolshevik ideology started to play its role.

The Bolsheviks did what Lenin had indicated in The State and Revolution - build 
"socialism" on the structures created by capitalism. In December 1917, the VTsIK decreed 
the creation of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (Vesenka). This "was an 
expression of the principle of centralization and control from above which was peculiar to 
the Marxist ideology." This body utilized the "chief committees" (glavki) formed during 
the war by the Tsarist regime and were viewed by the Bolsheviks "to provide good grounds 
and prerequisites for nationalization and price control" and so "were kept on and assigned 
increasing functions." More were created and these "became the foundation of the 
organisation of production" based on "a ready-made institutional framework for further 
policies of coordination and control."[83]Alternatives based on workers' own organisations 
were rejected:

"On three occasions in the first months of Soviet power, the[factory]committee leaders 
sought to bring their model into being. At each point the party leadership overruled them. 
The result was to vest both managerial and control powers in organs of the state which 
were subordinate to the central authorities, and formed by them."[84]

Indeed, it is "likely that the arguments for centralization in economic policy, which were 
prevalent among Marxists, determined the short life of the All-Russian Council of Workers' 
Control."[85]Moreover, attempts by the factory committees to organised themselves were 
systematically hindered by the Bolsheviks using their controlled unions to prevent, 
amongst other things, a planned All-Russian Congress.

Lenin initially rejected calls for nationalization and left the capitalists in place, 
subject to "workers' control" (or rather supervision) by the workers' State. Direct 
workers' control of production was not seen as essential and, indeed, was rejected. By 
April 1918, faced with the growing economic crisis which Bolshevik power had not improved, 
Lenin turned on the factory committees by channeling Engels article "On Authority" - with 
its confusion of agreement with authoritarianism, co-operation with coercion - and 
demanded "[o]bedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man 
decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet 
institutions, vested with dictatorial powers."[86]In short, capitalist relations in 
production in which workers were once again mere order-takers:

"Firstly, the question of principle, namely, is the appointment of individuals, dictators 
with unlimited powers, in general compatible with the fundamental principles of Soviet 
government?[...]concerning the significance of individual dictatorial powers from the 
point of view of the specific tasks of the present moment, it must be said that 
large-scale machine industry - which is precisely the material source, the productive 
source, the foundation of socialism - calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which 
directs the joint labors of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people[...]But 
how can strict unity of will be ensured? By thousands subordinating their will to the will 
of one[...]unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the 
success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine 
industry.[...]revolution demands - precisely in the interests of its development and 
consolidation, precisely in the interests of socialism - that the people unquestioningly 
obey the single will of the leaders of labor."[87]

This was part of "our task" which was "to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to 
spare no effort in copying it and not to shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to 
hasten the copying of it" and prefigured in The State and Revolution (as Lenin himself 
latter stressed against opponents within the Party).[88]

The State and Civil War
A standard response to the anarchist critique of the Bolshevik regime by modern-day 
Leninists is that it fails to mention the terrible Civil War and imperialist invasion. 
This, it will be argued, caused the degeneration of regime from the ideals of The State 
and Revolution.

Yet there is a good reason for this: the usurpation of soviet power by executives, 
abolition of democracy in the armed forces, "dictatorial" one-man management, creation of 
a highly centralized economic structure based on the institutions inherited from Tsarism, 
packing and disbanding of soviets, expanding bureaucracy, and so on - all these occurred 
before Civil War broke-out in late May 1918.

The State and Revolution made clear that Lenin - unlike anarchists - expected the 
Revolution to be an easy affair, with minimal resistance. His hopes seemed justified 
initially. As he noted in March 1918, "victory was achieved" with "extraordinary ease" and 
the "revolution was a continuous triumphal march in the first months."[89]Yet signs of 
authoritarianism - some consistent with The State and Revolution, some not - were present 
from the first day and increased during the next six months.  The outbreak of civil war in 
late May 1918 merely accelerated them.

The Bolsheviks had already packed and disbanded soviets at the local level for some months 
before acting on the national level at the Fifth All-Russian Soviet Congress in July 1918. 
With the Mensheviks and Right-SRs banned from the soviets, popular disenchantment with 
Bolshevik rule was expressed by voting for the Left-Social-Revolutionaries (SRs). The 
Bolsheviks ensured their majority in the congress and so a Bolshevik government by 
"electoral fraud[which]gave the Bolsheviks a huge majority of congress delegates" by means 
of "roughly 399 Bolsheviks delegates whose right to be seated was challenged by the Left 
SR minority in the congress's credentials commission." Without these dubious delegates, 
the Left SRs and SR Maximalists would have outnumbered the Bolsheviks by around 30 
delegates and this ensured "the Bolshevik's successful fabrication of a large 
majority."[90]Deprived of their democratic majority the Left SRs assassinated the German 
ambassador to provoke a revolutionary war with Germany. The Bolsheviks labelled this an 
uprising against the soviets and the Left-SRs joined the Mensheviks and Right-SRs in being 
made illegal.

So by July 1918, the regime was a de facto Bolshevik dictatorship. It took some months for 
this reality to be reflected in the rhetoric. The ex-anarchist Victor Serge recalled in 
the 1930s that "the degeneration of Bolshevism" was apparent "at the start of 1919" for he 
"was horrified to read an article" by Zinoviev "on the monopoly of the party in 
power."[91]By 1920 Zinoviev was proclaiming this conclusion to the assembled 
revolutionaries of the world at the Second Congress of the Communist International:

"Today, people like Kautsky come along and say that in Russia you do not have the 
dictatorship of the working class but the dictatorship of the party. They think this is a 
reproach against us. Not in the least! We have a dictatorship of the working class and 
that is precisely why we also have a dictatorship of the Communist Party. The dictatorship 
of the Communist Party is only a function, an attribute, an expression of the dictatorship 
of the working class[...]the dictatorship of the proletariat is at the same time the 
dictatorship of the Communist Party."[92]

It is within the context of secure one-party rule that we must view the fate of the 
opposition parties. The Bolsheviks banned the Mensheviks from the soviets in June 1918 and 
rescinded it in November 1918 and they, like other left-wing parties, experienced periods 
of tolerance and repression.[93]This reflected a general pattern - when the civil war was 
at its most intense, the Bolsheviks legalized opposition parties for they knew they could 
be counted upon to work with the regime against the White threat. Once the danger had 
receded, they were once again banned - so they could not influence nor benefit from the 
inevitable return of popular discontent and protest which accompanied these victories 
against the Whites. Unsurprisingly, then, oppositional parties - like factions within the 
party - were finally banned after the end of the Civil War.

Economically, the same building upon the authoritarian tendencies already present before 
the civil war continued. Faced with the predictable resistance by the capitalists, at the 
end of June 1918 wide-scale nationalization was decreed - although many local soviets had 
already decided to do this under workforce pressure. This simply handed the economy to the 
ever-growing bureaucracy - the apparatus of the Vesenka grew from 6,000 in September 1918 
to 24,000 by the end of 1920, with over half its budget consumed by personnel costs by the 
end of 1919.[94]

April 1920 saw what appeared to be victory against the Whites and with peace the 
Bolsheviks started to concentrate on building socialism. Whatever limited forms of 
workers' control or management remained were replaced by one-man management and so the 
perspective of 1918 continued with Lenin in 1920 stressing that "domination of the 
proletariat consists in the fact that the landowners and capitalists have been deprived of 
their property" The "victorious proletariat has abolished property" and "therein lies its 
domination as a class. The prime thing is the question of property."[95]Workers' 
self-management of production - in other words, basic economic power - was considered as 
irrelevant.

Looking back at April 1918, Lenin reiterated his position ("Dictatorial powers and one-man 
management are not contradictory to socialist democracy.") while also stressing that this 
was not forced upon the Bolsheviks by civil war. Discussing how, again, the civil war had 
ended and it was time to build socialism he argued that the "whole attention of the 
Communist Party and the Soviet government is centered on peaceful economic development, on 
problems of the dictatorship and of one-man management[...]When we tackled them for the 
first time in 1918, there was no civil war and no experience to speak of." So it was "not 
only experience" of civil war, argued Lenin "but something more profound" that has 
"induced us now, as it did two years ago, to concentrate all our attention on labor 
discipline."[96]The Bolsheviks "took victory as a sign of the correctness of its 
ideological approach and set about the task of economic construction on the basis of an 
intensification of War Communism policies."[97]

Even such abominations as the "militarization of labor" were defended not as desperate 
measures provoked by necessity - which, while wrong, would at least indicate some 
awareness of what socialism meant - but ideologically in terms of appropriate tools for 
building socialism. Thus Trotsky as well as defending the "substitution" of "the 
dictatorship of the Soviets" by "the dictatorship of the party" also defended one-man 
management ("I consider if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that 
was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undoubtedly have 
entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much 
sooner and much less painfully") and the militarization of labor ("the only solution to 
economic difficulties from the point of view of both principle and of practice is to treat 
the population of the whole country as the reservoir of the necessary labor power[...]and 
to introduce strict order into the work of its registration, mobilization and 
utilization.").[98]Such perspectives were helped by Engels' "On Authority" and the 
reference to "industrial armies" in the Communist Manifesto. They failed.[99]

So rather than being driven by civil war, "for the leadership, the principle of maximum 
centralization of authority served more than expedience. It consistently resurfaced as the 
image of a peacetime political system as well."[100]This was to be expected for Lenin had 
long argued that centralized, top-down organisation were the model for the revolutionary 
State and, once in power, he did not disappoint.

However, by its very nature centralism, cannot help but produce bureaucracy - how else 
will the central bodies gather and process the needed information and implement its 
decisions? Thus "red tape and vast administrative offices typified Soviet reality" for as 
the "functions of the state expanded, so did the bureaucracy" and so "following the 
revolution the process of institutional proliferation reached unprecedented heights."[101]

If the Paris Commune had been "overwhelmed" by the demands placed on it, the new 
institutions covering a far greater territorial and functional areas experienced for 
worse. Thus the Commissariat of Finance was "not only bureaucratically cumbersome, 
but[it]involved mountainous accounting problems" and "the various offices of the 
Sovnarkhoz and commissariat structure[were]literally swamped with ‘urgent' delegations and 
submerged in paperwork."[102]The Vesenka "was deluged with work of an ad hoc character", 
demands "for fuel and supplies piled up" and factories "demanded instructions". Its 
presidium "scarcely knew what its tasks were."[103]In short:

"The most evident shortcoming[...]was that it did not ensure central allocation of 
resources and central distribution of output, in accordance with any priority 
ranking[...]materials were provided to factories in arbitrary proportions: in some places 
they accumulated, whereas in others there was a shortage. Moreover, the length of the 
procedure needed to release the products increased scarcity at given moments, since 
products remained stored until the center issued a purchase order on behalf of a centrally 
defined customer. Unused stock coexisted with acute scarcity. The center was unable to 
determine the correct proportions among necessary materials and eventually to enforce 
implementation of the orders for their total quantity. The gap between theory and practice 
was significant."[104]

To ensure centralism, customers had to go via a central orders committee, which would then 
past the details to the appropriate glavki and, unsurprisingly, it was "unable to cope 
with these enormous tasks" and the "shortcomings of the central administrations and glavki 
increased together with the number of enterprises under their control."[105]The "center 
lacked basic information about the performance of the economy" and "lacked the knowledge 
on which to judge the costs or effects of the policies it proposed." Elementary 
information about the state of production "could not be gathered" and "[l]acking 
information about the availability of fuel, raw materials, and labor and about the state 
of repair of equipment, the glavki issued blind production orders."[106]

Faced with the realities rather than rhetoric of centralized, top-down structures even the 
most committed Bolshevik ended up acting independently of the formal structures just to 
get things done.[107]Such local initiative came into conflict with orders from above but 
repeated demands for change were ignored for they "challenged" the "central directives of 
the party" which "approved the principles on which the glavki system was based" and "the 
maximum centralization of production." So "the failure of glavkism did not bring about a 
reconsideration of the problems of economic organisation[...]On the contrary, the ideology 
of centralization was reinforced."[108]

While the situation was pretty chaotic in early 1918, this does not prove that the factory 
committees' socialism was not the most efficient way of running things under the 
circumstances.[109]Unless, like the Bolsheviks, you have a dogmatic belief that 
centralization is always more efficient and, moreover, a principle of socialism.

Lenin's vision of socialism was impoverished but very much in the orthodox Marxist 
tradition. So rather than being unclear on what socialism was, the Bolsheviks had very 
strong opinions on the subject and sought to implement them. The net effect of The State 
and Revolution's vision of socialism was to build state-capitalism and make the economic 
crisis worse.

In short, "[f]rom the first days of Bolshevik power there was only a weak correlation 
between the extent of ‘peace' and the mildness or severity of Bolshevik rule, between the 
intensity of the war and the intensity of proto-war communist measures" while 
"[c]onsidered in ideological terms there was little to distinguish the ‘breathing space' 
(April-May 1918) from the war communism that followed." The "breathing space of the first 
months of 1920 after the victories over Kolchak and Denikin" saw their "intensification 
and the militarisation of labour" and "no serious attempt was made to review the aptness 
of war communist policies." Ideology "constantly impinged on the choices made at various 
points of the civil war" and so "Bolshevik authoritarianism cannot be ascribed simply to 
the Tsarist legacy or to adverse circumstances." Indeed, "in the soviets and in economic 
management the embryo of centralised and bureaucratic state forms had already emerged by 
mid-1918."[110]

Finally, there is a major irony in this standard defense of the Bolsheviks for Leninists 
usually (and falsely) attack anarchists for not recognising the need to defend a 
revolution. Yet here we have them rationalizing Bolshevik authoritarianism by referring to 
something - Civil War - which they proclaim is an inevitable aspect of any revolution. So 
even if we ignore the awkward fact that before May 1918 the regime was well on its way to 
a one-party state-capitalist dictatorship, we can only conclude that if Leninism cannot 
experience what it (rightly) proclaims is inevitable without degenerating then it is best 
avoided.

The State and the Masses
The privileged position of the party unspoken of in The State and Revolution - both in 
terms of ideology and in terms of holding and exercising power - played its role in 
Bolshevik attitudes to the masses in whose name their ruled. Lenin quotes Engels:

"As the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the 
revolution, to hold down one's adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a 
‘free people's state'; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need 
it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries" (356)

The problem is that in a State it is not the people who rule but rather those who make up 
the government and these, in turn, need bodies to implement their decisions. The 
transformation of the Red Army and the creation of the Cheka confirm anarchist predictions 
that the ruling party would need an armed force to defend it against the people. So Engels 
confused the need to defend a revolution with the ruling party suppressing those who 
oppose it - including the proletariat. As Lenin explained in 1920:

"Without revolutionary coercion directed against the avowed enemies of the workers and 
peasants, it is impossible to break down the resistance of these exploiters. On the other 
hand, revolutionary coercion is bound to be employed towards the wavering and unstable 
elements among the masses themselves."[111]

Who determines what these "elements" are? The party, of course. The party which was built 
on the assertion that the working class cannot reach socialist consciousness by its own 
efforts and which pledged to combat spontaneity as this reflected bourgeois influences. 
Thus "the Party, shall we say, absorbs the vanguard of the proletariat, and this vanguard 
exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat" for "in all capitalist countries" the 
proletariat "is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts" that the 
dictatorship "can be exercised only by a vanguard". The lesson of the revolution was 
clear: "the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian 
organisation."[112]

Yet, as Lenin argued in 1917, "it is clear that there is no freedom and no democracy where 
there is suppression and where there is violence." He was talking of the "freedom of the 
oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists" but it equally applies to the working class - 
if the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organisation of the vanguard 
of the oppressed as the ruling class" (373) is suppressing the working class itself then 
that class cannot be the ruling class, then its self-proclaimed "vanguard" is in fact the 
ruling class and just like "under capitalism we have the state in the proper sense of the 
word, that is, a special machine for the suppression of one class by another, and, what is 
more, of the majority by the minority." (374)

Lenin did, in passing, mention this in 1917 for he talks of the "organised control over 
the insignificant capitalist minority" and "over the workers who have been thoroughly 
corrupted by capitalism" (383) but he failed to indicate that this latter category was 
defined by how much they agreed with the party leadership. Soon it amounted to the bulk of 
the working class - and pressure "from above" by the "revolutionary government" 
unsurprisingly was stronger than that "from below" by the citizens. That this minority was 
the class of the State bureaucracy - armed with political and economic power - did not 
make it any less exploitative or oppressive.

This is the grim reality of Engels comment that a "revolution is certainly the most 
authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its 
will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly 
authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the 
terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries." (354) Ignoring the obvious point that 
it is hardly authoritarian to destroy an authoritarian system in which a minority of 
continuously imposes it will on the majority, Engels failed to see that in a State the 
"victorious party" will need to maintain its rule against the many as well as the few.

Space precludes a comprehensive account of labor protest under - and State repression by - 
the Bolsheviks. Suffice to say, from the spring of 1918 both were a regular feature of 
life in "revolutionary" Russia. Workers' protests and strikes regularly became general in 
nature and the Bolsheviks sent in troops and the Cheka, withheld rations, made mass 
firings and selective rehirings - all throughout the civil war period when, according to 
Leninists, the working class had become "declassed," "atomised" or had 
"disappeared."[113]Indeed, this argument was first raised by Lenin himself "to justify a 
political clamp-down" and as "discontent amongst workers became more and more difficult to 
ignore," Lenin began to argue that the consciousness of the working class had 
deteriorated" and that "workers had become ‘declassed.'"[114]While self-serving, this 
argument reflected the notions raised in What is to Be Done? and the privileged position 
the party holds in Leninism - as the workers disagreed with the party by definition they 
were lacking class consciousness and "declassed."

In short, Lenin was right when he argued that the "essence of the matter" was has "the 
oppressed class arms?" (364) This was the case with new State and its various actions to 
dispossess the working class of its arms, to replace democratic militias with a 
regular-style standing armies, to create a political-police force. When workers' 
organisations, protests and strikes are being repeatedly and systematically repressed, it 
is a nonsense to suggest that the working class is the ruling class - particularly when 
this repression began so soon into the new regime.

Alternatives
It may be objected that we are indulging in arm-chair theorizing and the fact that it was 
the Bolsheviks and not the anarchists who were facing civil war and imperialist 
intervention shows that anarchism should, as Trotsky proclaimed, be consigned into the 
dustbin of history. Except for two facts. First, the Bolshevik descent into 
authoritarianism preceded the civil war and, second, anarchists did face those challenges 
and did not succumb as the Bolsheviks did.

We have shown the former and space precludes a detailed account of the latter beyond 
indicating that the Makhnovist movement in the Ukraine faced the same (arguably worse) 
pressures and encouraged soviet democracy, freedom of speech, workers' management, and so 
on while the Bolsheviks repressed them. After helping to defeat the Whites, the Bolsheviks 
betrayed the Makhnovists and crushed them after yet more months of fighting.[115]

This counter-example - flawed as any real movement would be compared to the ideal, 
undoubtedly - shows that ideas and structures matter. Thus prejudices in favor of 
centralization, notions that "top-down" structures reflect "revolutionary 
Social-Democracy", impoverished visions of socialism, the privileged position of the 
party, the confusion of defending freedom with "authoritarian" methods, all played their 
part in the failure of the Russian Revolution and the degeneration of the Bolshevik regime.

Regardless of Lenin's claims, anarchists do not envision "overnight" revolutions. Emma 
Goldman, for example, did not come to Russia "expecting to find Anarchism realized" nor 
did she "expect Anarchism to follow in the immediate footsteps of centuries of despotism 
and submission." Rather, she "hope[d]to find in Russia at least the beginnings of the 
social changes for which the Revolution had been fought" and that "the Russian workers and 
peasants as a whole had derived essential social betterment as a result of the Bolshevik 
regime."[116]Both hopes were dashed.

So anarchists did not and do not contrast the reality of Bolshevik Russia with an 
impossible ideal of a swiftly created utopia. Rather, the issue is whether the masses were 
building a better world or whether they subject to a new minority regime. Regardless of 
Lenin's claims in 1917, the latter was the case in the new "soviet" system with its ruling 
party, marginalized soviets, centralization, bureaucracy, appointed from above dictatorial 
managers, nationalization, and so forth. The Bolsheviks may have won the Civil War but 
they lost the Revolution.

The continued mass working class protests from the spring of 1918 onward (that is, during 
and after the civil war) indicate that there was a social base upon which an alternative 
could be based. This would involve - as anarchists argued at the time - keeping the 
soviets as delegates from workplaces and actually eliminating executive bodies; supporting 
the factory committees and their federations; supporting customer co-operatives; keeping 
democratic armed forces; protecting freedom of press, assembly and organisation; 
implementing socialization rather than nationalization. In short, recognizing that freedom 
is not an optional extra during a revolution but its only guarantee, by recognizing the 
validity of anarchism - for it did not correctly predict the failures of Marxism by accident.

Finally, while the Russian Revolution shows the bankruptcy of vanguardism, it also shows 
the pressing need for anarchists to organize as anarchists to influence the class 
struggle.[117]The Russian anarchists - unlike their Ukrainian comrades - did not organize 
sufficiently and paid the price. Rising anarchist influence in 1917 could not make-up for 
the previous lack of systematic organisation and activity within the labor movement. Only 
anarchists having a firm social basis would have meant the Unknown Revolution becoming 
victorious against both Red and White authority.

Conclusions
If, as Lenin argued, the State is "a power which arose from society but places itself 
above it and alienates itself more and more from it" and "consists of special bodies of 
armed men having prisons, etc., at their command" (316) then the Bolshevik regime was most 
definitely a State... in the normal sense of the term. The notion that it was a semi-State 
or some-such cannot be sustained for from the moment of the Bolsheviks seizing power the 
soviets were marginalized from decision making and transformed from "working bodies" into 
talking shops while all around them a "new" bureaucracy grew at a staggering rate and the 
regime created regular armed forces, a specialized armed political police force with its 
own prisons, etc.

The key difference is that rather than being an instrument of the bourgeoisie or feudal 
aristocracy as had the Tsarist State it replaced, it was the instrument of a new minority 
- the Party leadership and the State bureaucracy. This ruling class combined political and 
economic power in its own hands and the latter slowly but surely replacing the former as 
the real power within the new social hierarchy.

While many anarchists concentrate on the Kronstadt Rebellion of early 1921 (presumably 
because noted anarchists like Goldman and Berkman arrived in Russia in 1920), the fate of 
the revolution was made much earlier. The Unknown Revolution had been fighting for its 
life from the start as the anti-Socialist tendencies of the regime expressed themselves 
rapidly - within six months of the October Revolution the so-called "semi-State" had all 
the features of the State in the "proper sense of the word" and well on its way to 
one-party dictatorship and state-capitalism. It was both well within a year and by early 
1919 the reality of, and necessity, for party dictatorship became official ideology. 
Zinoviev proclaimed it at the Second Congress of the Communist International while Trotsky 
was still arguing for the "objective necessity" of the "dictatorship of a party"[118]into 
the late 1930s. The so-called workers' State was needed to repress the workers:

"The very same masses are at different times inspired by different moods and objectives. 
It is just for this reason that a centralised organisation of the vanguard is 
indispensable. Only a party, wielding the authority it has won, is capable of overcoming 
the vacillation of the masses themselves[...]if the dictatorship of the proletariat means 
anything at all, then it means that the vanguard of the proletariat is armed with the 
resources of the state in order to repel dangers, including those emanating from the 
backward layers of the proletariat itself."[119]

As everyone is, by definition, "backward" compared to the vanguard and "vacillations" get 
expressed by elections, mandates and recall we have the logical conclusion of the 
vanguardism of Lenin's What is to be Done? in Trotsky's implicit acknowledgment that the 
party needs a State in "the proper sense of the word," that the working class is not the 
"ruling class" in the "new" State.

The reality of the Revolution did not reflect the promises made in 1917 yet we are still 
referred to the latter by modern-day Leninists. Yet looking closely at these promises, at 
Lenin's The State and Revolution, we can see the role ideology played in the degeneration. 
Ideas matter - particularly the ideas of those at the highest levels of the State. 
Structures matter - particular as these are not neutral but reflect class interests and 
needs as well as shaping the decisions made by those in power and by either fostering or 
hindering meaningful mass participation in society. Both the ideas and structures 
advocated by Lenin in 1917 had their (negative) impact.

That the Bolsheviks were initially elected did not undermine the dynamics inherent in the 
centralized political and economic structures they favored and built. A bloated 
bureaucratic State and a state-capitalist economy were inevitable given the simplistic 
Marxist formulas believed in and the structures they favored. Rather than the pressures of 
civil war producing Bolshevik authoritarianism, the reality is that the combination of 
Bolshevik ideology and its favored (centralized, top-down) structures which produced this 
outcome - and confirmed anarchist theory.

In a way, then, Lenin was right was argue that "[s]o long as the state exists there is no 
freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state." (379) His error was thinking that 
a State - a centralized, hierarchical structure developed by the few to secure their rule 
- could be utilised in a different way by the many. Even when based on workers' 
organisations it quickly reverted to its role - of securing minority rule, in this case 
that of the party leadership and the bureaucracy which any centralized structure 
generates. Anarchist warnings were proven right and only anarchism offers a solution: in 
the form of a federalist, self-managed, bottom-up social organisation.

The Russian Revolution shows that it was not a case of the State and Revolution but rather 
the State or Revolution.

If you enjoyed this article we also recommend the following similarly themed pieces. "One 
Hundred Years of Counterrevolution: Introduction to ‘Bloodstained'" is the introduction to 
the book that the above text appears in. We also recommend "Kali Akuno on Lenin's Vanguard 
Party" and "The Bolshevik Myth Reloaded."

End Notes
[1]"The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the 
Proletariat in the Revolution", The Lenin Anthology (New York: Princeton University, 
1975), 311-398.
[2]Excellent anarchist analyses of the Russian Revolution include: Emma Goldman, My 
Disillusionment in Russia (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1970); Alexander Berkman, 
The Bolshevik Myth (London: Pluto Press, 1989); Voline, The Unknown Revolution 
(Detroit/Chicago: Black & Red/Solidarity, 1974); GP Maximoff, The Guillotine At Work: The 
Leninist Counter-Revolution(Sanday: Cienfuegos Press, 1979); Ida Mett, The Kronstadt 
Uprising (London: Solidarity, 1967); Goldman and Berkman, To Remain Silent is Impossible: 
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in Russia (Atlanta: On Our Own Authority!, 2013).
[3]For the 1905 revolution, see Peter Kropotkin's articles "The Revolution in Russia", 
"The Russian Revolution and Anarchism" and "Enough of Illusions" (Direct Struggle Against 
Capital: A Peter Kropotkin Anthology[Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK Press, 2014]). For 
his refusal to take sides in the imperialist Russo-Japanese War, see "La Guerre 
russo-japonaise", Les Temps Nouveaux, 5 March 1904.
[4]Space precludes discussing every aspect of this, for further discussion see section H 
of An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) volume 2 (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2012).
[5]Marx later suggested (in 1881) that it was "merely the rising of a city under 
exceptional conditions, the majority of the Commune was in no wise socialist, nor could it 
be." Karl Max and Friedrich Engels, Marx-Engels Collected Works (MECW) Vol. 46 (London: 
Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), 66
[6]Property is Theft! A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology (Edinburgh/Oakland/Baltimore: AK 
Press, 2011), 378-9; he had argued this from the very first days of the revolution: "we 
are all voters[...]We can do more; we can follow them step-by-step in[...]their votes; we 
will make them transmit our arguments[...]; we will suggest our will to them, and when we 
are discontented, we will recall and dismiss them." (273)
[7]Proudhon, 447, 698.
[8]Proudhon, 407, 443-4, 724, 750, 763.
[9]Kropotkin, Direct, 446.
[10]Donny Gluckstein, The Paris Commune: A Revolutionary Democracy (London: Bookmarks, 
2006), 47-8.
[11]The Lenin Anthology, 28.
[12]Collected Works (CW) 19: 298.
[13]See Kropotkin's "Socialism and Politics" and other texts included in Direct Struggle 
Against Capital.
[14]The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-71 (Buffalo: Promethus Books, 1994.) 108. That there 
was no real possibility of electioneering in Tsarist Russia allowed the Bolsheviks to 
avoid the fate of their sister parties in the Second International.
[15]It may be the case that "every state is not ‘free' and not a ‘people's state'" but 
"Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies" (323) 
only in private letters. Publicly, Der Volksstaat (The People's State) was the central 
organ of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Germany between 1869 and 1876 and Marx and 
Engels regularly contributed to it. So the "opportunist" notion of a Volkstaat was 
associated with the party most influenced by Marx and Engels. Moreover, "People's State" 
was used in the same way that modern-day Leninists use the term "Workers' State" to 
describe their new regime. Opportunism does not lie, surely, in the words used?
[16]As Kautsky noted in 1919 (The Road to Power: political reflections on growing into the 
revolution[Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1996]34, xlviii).
[17]This, by necessity, is just a selection of the evidence. See section H.3.10 of An AFAQ 
for further analysis. For a similar account but from a more-or-less orthodox Marxist 
perspective, see Binay Sarker and Adam Buick, Marxism-Leninism - Poles Apart (Memari: 
Avenel Press, 2012).
[18]Julius Martov, leader of the Menshevik-Internationalists, noted this in his important 
critique of Lenin ("Decomposition or Conquest of the State", The State and The Socialist 
Revolution[New York: International Review, 1938], 40-1).
[19]MECW 50: 276.
[20]MECW 47: 74; This perspective is reflected a passage in a draft of Marx's The Civil 
War in France (MECW 22: 533).
[21]Proudhon, 226.
[22]The Lenin Anthology, 90.
[23]Kropotkin, Direct, 553; also see sections H.3.5 and I.2.2 of AFAQ.
[24]Kropotkin, Modern Science and Anarchy (Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2018), 199, 227, 365.
[25]La fédération et l'unité en Italie (Paris: E. Dentu, 1862), 27-8.
[26]Proudhon, 33.
[27]Kropotkin, Modern, 269.
[28]Kropotkin, Direct, 509.
[29]Kropotkin, Modern, 366: "Attacks upon the central authorities, stripping these of 
their prerogatives, de-centralisation, dispersing authority would have amounted to 
abandoning its affairs to the people and would have run the risk of a genuinely popular 
revolution. Which is why the bourgeoisie is out to strengthen the central government still 
further" and why the working class, "not about to abdicate their rights to the care of the 
few, will seek some new form of organisation that allows them to manage their affairs for 
themselves". (Kropotkin, Direct, 232, 228)
[30]Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism (Edinburgh/San Francisco: AK 
Press 2005), Daniel Guérin (ed.), 162.
[31]Kropotkin, Modern, 164.
[32]Errico Malatesta, Anarchy (London: Freedom Press, 2001) 42-3.
[33]Michael Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 164; also see section H.2.1 of AFAQ.
[34]See section H.3.9 of AFAQ.
[35]Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 195.
[36]Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (London: Jonathan Cape, 1973) 265.
[37]Kropotkin, Modern, 169.
[38]"Letter to Albert Richard", Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 62, 18.
[39]Kropotkin, Modern, 164.
[40]Bakunin, No Gods, No Masters, 181.
[41]"L'Action directe et la Grève générale en Russie," Les Temps Nouveaux, 2 December 1905.
[42]Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the man and his influence (London: Panther History, 
1969) 1: 106; Anweiler, The Soviets: The Russian Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Councils 
1905-1921 (New York: Random House, 1974) 77-9.
[43]Errico Malatesta, The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader 
(Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2014), 210; also see section J.2 of AFAQ.
[44]Kropotkin, Modern, 189-190.
[45]Kropotkin, Modern, 169.
[46]Malatesta, 379, 385. Similarly, of the syndicalist unions only the CGT in France 
supported the war - unlike the vast the majority of Marxist parties and unions 
(significantly, the CGT was a member of the Marxist Second International).
[47]As regards Lenin's rejection of Engels position, see "What Lenin Made of the Testament 
of Engels" by the ex-communist Bertram D. Wolfe (Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of 
a Doctrine[New York: The Dial Press, 1965]).
[48]Also see section H.3.14 of AFAQ.
[49]For a critique of Engels' article, see section H.4 of AFAQ.
[50]MECW 23: 423.
[51]See section H.3.13 of AFAQ.
[52]Proudhon, Property, 377-8.
[53]Kropotkin, Direct, 32.
[54]Kropotkin, Direct, 165, 527.
[55]See section H.3.11 of AFAQ.
[56]The Lenin Anthology, 24.
[57]The Lenin Anthology, 28-9.
[58]Trotsky, Stalin 1: 305.
[59]For a critique of vanguardism, see section H.5 of AFAQ.
[60]While recognising the need for anarchists to organise to influence the class struggle, 
Bakunin also recognised that people learn through struggle and draw socialist conclusions, 
see Basic Bakunin, 101-3
[61]CW 8: 474, 478, 480, 481.
[62]quoted by Anweiler, 77.
[63]CW 12: 43-4.
[64]CW 7: 367.
[65]CW 7: 396-7.
[66]Space excludes a discussion of the false nature of such notions as shown by 
limitations of the Bolshevik Party in 1917, see section H.5.12 of AFAQ.
[67]Trotsky, 101.
[68]Trotsky, 298.
[69]We quote exclusively from academic accounts of the new regime as these confirm the 
analysis presented by anarchists. For example, compare the accounts of bureaucratic 
paralysis presented below to the summaries by Goldman in My Disillusionment in Russia on 
pages 99 and 253 and Kropotkin in Direct Struggle against Capital on 490 and 584.
[70]Given the size of Russian peasantry within the population, it would have been 
impossible for the Bolsheviks to gain a majority in the republic they had supported 
previously (and, indeed, they received 25% of the vote to the Constituent Assembly while 
the peasant party, the SRs, received 57%). Gaining a majority in the urban soviets elected 
by workers and soldiers was feasible and may explain Lenin's new perspective in 1917. The 
new regime gave priority to urban workers and built in an institutional bias in voting of 
approximately five-to-one against the peasants.  . While fitting for a Marxist party and 
its prejudices against the peasantry, this helped to alienate the bulk of the population 
against the new regime - an alienation reinforced by numerous other Bolshevik policies 
such as the creation of "poor peasants' committees" and the forced requisition of food 
(driven, in part, due to lack of goods to trade with the peasants, a lack Bolshevik 
economic policies made worse). Bolshevik attitudes to the peasants undoubtedly made the 
situation worse.
[71]S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History 
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008), 201. Also see section H.6 of AFAQ for a 
fuller discussion of these events.
[72]CW 26: 19.
[73]Robert V. Daniels (ed.), A Documentary History of Communism (New York: Vintage Books, 
1960) 1: 128-9.
[74]Charles Duval, "Yakov M. Sverdlov and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of 
Soviets (VTsIK)", Soviet Studies, XXXI, 1.
[75]Carmen Sirianni, Workers' Control and Socialist Democracy (London: Verso/NLB, 1982), 204.
[76]Richard Sakwa, "The Commune State in Moscow in 1918," Slavic Review 46, 3/4: 437-8.
[77]Anweiler, 242.
[78]As Kropotkin noted, "It is often thought that it would be easy for a revolution to 
economise in the administration by reducing the number of officials. This was certainly 
not the case during the Revolution of 1789-1793, which with each year extended the 
functions of the State, over instruction, judges paid by the State, the administration 
paid out of the taxes, an immense army, and so forth." The Great French Revolution 
(Montreal/New York: Black Rose Books, 1989) 440
[79]How the Revolution Armed (London: New Park Publications, 1979) 1: 47.
[80]Israel Getzler, Martov: A Political Biography of a Russian Social Democrat (Carlton: 
Melbourne University Press, 1967) 179;; Vladimir Brovkin, "The Mensheviks' Political 
Comeback: The Elections to the Provincial City Soviets in Spring 1918," The Russian Review 
42, 1; Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in 
the Soviet State: The First Phase, 1917-1922 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), 191; 
Silvana Malle, The Economic Organisation of War Communism, 1918-1921([Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2002), 366-7; Duval, 13-14.
[81]Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The first year of Soviet rule in 
Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) 248-252; also see Vladimir N. 
Brovkin, The Mensheviks After October: Socialist Opposition and the Rise of the Bolshevik 
Dictatorship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 238-43.
[82]This is not to suggest that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were happy with the bureaucracy 
they failed to anticipate. Quite the reverse as they denounced it repeatedly while 
flailing around for some kind of solution. Yet blinded by simplistic Marxist notions, they 
could think of nothing better than organisational and police methods - new bodies are 
organised to oversee the existing bureaucratic ones, only to become bureaucratic 
themselves; other bodies are enlarged or workers added to them, only for the problems to 
worsen; more centralisation is implemented, resulting in more bureaucracy. The conflict 
with the bureaucracy is finally resolved after Lenin's death - with the complete victory 
of the bureaucrats under Stalin who then uses the repressive techniques perfected under 
Lenin against the left-wing opposition and the working class within the party itself.
[83]Malle, 95, 45-6, 218.
[84]Thomas F. Remington, Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia: Ideology and Industrial 
Organisation 1917-1921 (London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984) 38.
[85]Malle, 94.
[86]CW 27: 316.
[87]CW 27: 267-9.
[88]CW 27: 340, 341, 354; Also see Maurice Brinton's classic The Bolsheviks and Workers' 
Control for an excellent discussion of this subject (Maurice Brinton, For Workers' Power: 
The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton[Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004]).
[89]CW 27: 88-9.
[90]Rabinowitch, 396, 288, 442, 308; The Bolsheviks "allowed so-called committees of poor 
peasants to be represented at the congress" and this "blatant gerrymandering ensured a 
Bolshevik majority." (Geoffrey Swain, The Origins of the Russian Civil War[London/New 
York: Longman, 1996], 176).
[91]The Serge-Trotsky Papers (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 188; it must be noted that Serge 
kept his horror well-hidden throughout this period - and well into the 1930s (see my "The 
Worst of the Anarchists", Anarcho-Syndicalist Review No. 61).
[92]Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the 
Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920 (New York: Pathfinder, 1991) 1: 
151-2; Lenin made similar comments in the work Left-Wing Communismwritten for that 
Congress (The Lenin Anthology, 567-8, 571-3)
[93]Space excludes a detailed discussion of Menshevik and other opposition to the 
Bolsheviks beyond noting that the Menshevik's official position was to oppose armed 
rebellions in favour of winning a majority in the soviets (any party members who 
participated in such revolts were swiftly expelled): "The charge that the Mensheviks were 
not prepared to remain within legal limits is part of the Bolsheviks' case; it does not 
survive an examination of the facts." (Schapiro, 355)
[94]Remington, 153-4.
[95]CW 30: 456.
[96]CW 30: 503-4.
[97]Jonathan Aves, Workers Against Lenin: Labour Protest and the Bolshevik Dictatorship 
(London: Tauris Academic Studies, 1996) 37.
[98]Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky (Ann Arbor, MI: University of 
Michigan Press, 1961), 109, 162-3, 135.
[99]Trotsky applied his ideas on the railway workers which led to the "ignorance of 
distance and the inability to respond properly to local circumstances[...]‘I have no 
instructions' became all the more effective as a defensive and self-protective 
rationalisation as party officials vested with unilateral power insisted all their orders 
be strictly obeyed. Cheka ruthlessness instilled fear, but repression[...]only impaired 
the exercise of initiative that daily operations required." William G. Rosenberg, "The 
Social Background to Tsektran," Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War 
(Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989), Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and 
Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), 369. Militarisation was imposed in September 1920 which was 
followed by a disastrous collapse of the railway network in the winter. "The revolutionary 
tribunal and the guillotine could not make up for the lack of a constructive communist 
theory," Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, 499.
[100]Remington, 91.
[101]Richard Sakwa, Soviet Communists in Power: a study of Moscow during the Civil War, 
1918-21 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), 190-1.
[102]William G. Rosenberg, "The Social Background to Tsektran," 357.
[103]Remington, 61-2.
[104]Malle, 233.
[105]Malle, 232, 250.
[106]Remington, 154.
[107]Ironically, the "run-down of large-scale industry and the bureaucratic methods 
applied to production orders and financial estimates" made the supply system based on 
glavki "unreliable" and instead the Red Army "started relying directly" on craft 
co-operatives, a sector which "developed to a large extent because it involved a smaller 
amount of bureaucratic procedure." (Malle, 477-8)
[108]Malle The Economic Organisation of War Communism, 1918-1921, 271, 275.
[109]Rates of "output and productivity began to climb steadily after" January 1918, "[i]n 
some factories, production doubled or tripled in the early months of 1918" and "[m]any of 
the reports explicitly credited the factory committees for these increases." (Sirianni, 
109) There is "evidence that until late 1919, some factory committees performed managerial 
tasks successfully. In some regions factories were still active thanks to their workers' 
initiatives in securing raw materials." (Malle, 101) While this may be dismissed as 
speculation based on a few examples, we cannot avoid recognising that turning the economy 
over to the bureaucracy coincided with the deepening of the economic crisis.
[110]Sakwa, 24, 27, 30, 96-7.
[111]CW 42: 170.
[112]CW 32: 20-1.
[113]See section H.6.3 of AFAQ for an account of the massive and frequent labour protests 
- and subsequent repression - under the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks also clamped down even 
advisory bodies they themselves set up. In his 1920 diatribe against Left-wing Communism, 
Lenin pointed to "non-Party workers' and peasants' conferences" and Soviet Congresses as 
means by which the party secured its rule. Yet, if the congresses of soviets were 
"democratic institutions, the like of which even the best democratic republics of the 
bourgeois have never known", the Bolsheviks would have no need to "support, develop and 
extend" non-Party conferences "to be able to observe the temper of the masses, come closer 
to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among them to state posts". (The Lenin 
Anthology, 573) Yet even these were too much for the Bolsheviks for during the labour 
protests and strikes of late 1920 "they provided an effective platform for criticism of 
Bolshevik policies" and they "were discontinued soon afterward." (Sakwa, 203)
[114]Aves, 18, 90.
[115]Peter Arshinov, The History of the Maknovist Movement (London: Freedom Press, 1987); 
Michael Malet, Nestor Makhno in the Russian civil war (London: MacMillan Press, 1982.); 
Alexandre Skirda, Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack - The Struggle for Free Soviets in the 
Ukraine 1917-1921 (Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004).
[116]Goldman, xlvii.
[117]See section J.3 of AFAQ.
[118]Writings of Leon Trotsky 1936-37 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1978), 513-4.
[119]"The Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism," Their Morals and Ours (New York: 
Pathfinder, 1973), 59.

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