Among activists, intellectuals, and organizations of the so-called far left, there has often been confusion between council communism and anarcho-communism. I am referring to the political space occupied by autonomy, whose popularization in the 1970s did not always accurately address the political categories discussed in this text. Nevertheless, there has always been some movement between activists from one current and the other, and they are often considered companions on the same path, despite theoretical or methodological differences.
We are dealing with two traditions that legitimately claim the legacy of communist identity. Both share the objective or premise of the abolition of the State and Capital. Their difference lies more in revolutionary strategy than in terminology—which could be compatible or understandable between both currents. This would be an ontological difference.
To put it very simply, while council communism is based on the Marxist theory of crisis, which understands revolution as a material necessity imposed by the contradictions of capital, anarcho-communism has historically revolved around the technical intuition of abundance (seizing the masses) and a voluntarist activism often detached from material conditions (Malatesta). The difference here lies in the understanding of the productive forces and the nature of the capitalist crisis.
So, if they differ in revolutionary strategy, we could analyze the praxis of these currents and see some patterns.
The critique of voluntarism
On the one hand, council communism demonstrates a historical determination. For this current of thought, the possibility of a revolution erupting is a product of the historical trends of capitalist development. Revolution doesn't happen simply by wanting it, but rather as a result of material needs arising from a crisis in the capitalist production model. This is what would activate millions of workers to set in motion the mechanisms for a revolutionary process.
Marx understood revolution as an organic process stemming from the development of the productive forces: "need is only becoming more general, and with poverty there will necessarily be a reproduction of the struggle over needs and all the old, filthy filth, " as he warns in The German Ideology . Therefore, a revolution will fail if it misjudges the moment and focuses solely on reproducing scarcity.
On the other hand, we have Libertarian Communism or anarcho-communism, which tends to prioritize subjective will, something that can lead to a disconnect from existing material conditions. Marx was very critical of this way of understanding revolution, calling it "communism of poverty . " Malatesta was one of the leading proponents of voluntarism. Those who advocate propaganda by the deed would also be considered voluntarists. So, according to this premise, revolution can be provoked. State crises are created, some base is won, authority is undermined, workers are mobilized, there are strikes, armed clashes, land seizures, and eventually the bourgeois state could fall like a ripe fruit, establishing a revolutionary society.
Criticism of autarkic localism
The clearest breaking point, the most relevant difference, lies in the form or scale of post-capitalist social organization. Council communism considers that the anarchist tradition falls into a localist trap when it proposes society as a federation of autonomous and self-sufficient communes, since this implies a scale that is materially incompatible with the communist principle of "to each according to their needs. "
According to council communism critics, anarcho-communist models, ranging from William Morris's regressive ideology to Murray Bookchin's municipalism, tend to overlook the fact that the local fragmentation of social reproduction (i.e., a federation of communes) prevents the achievement of the necessary level of abundance. Thus, an isolated commune, lacking self-sufficiency, is forced to exchange goods or services with others. This exchange inevitably requires a measure of value (money). This process restores economic competition between communes and, by extension, would reactivate the state as a regulator of conflicts of interest. Their conclusion is that localism does not transcend capital and, in practice, reproduces its logical functions in smaller units.
What would the proposed alternative be? The World Commune of Councils . According to this proposal, communism is only possible as a world commune. Since capital is the first "totalizing social form " in history, its overcoming requires a nested structure of councils that scales globally and is also totalizing. Only this scale allows for the coordination of global social reproduction without vertical command structures or the autonomy of state power, reabsorbing alienated social powers within humanity. Therefore, without coordinated global interdependence, abundance is technically impossible, condemning any revolutionary attempt to scarcity and the spontaneous resurgence of the functions of money in the face of such scarcity.
The fundamental problem is that anarchism has not always been expressed correctly, nor has it always presented its project in an understandable way. Whether for this reason, or because those explaining the anarchist project within the Marxist field were fundamentally anti-anarchist intellectuals, council communism fell into significant errors of interpretation that undermined the convergence of the two traditions.
One of the most significant errors in communist council critiques is the assertion that anarchism aims for a fragmentation of society into autonomous and self-sufficient communes that would inevitably reproduce market exchange and, consequently, capitalism. This is untrue. Anarchism does not propose isolation, but rather federalism . The anarchist structure is based on free agreement and the federation of production and consumption bodies that coordinate at the regional, national, and international levels.
Even left-wing communists now recognize that modern technology (such as the internet and AI) allows for global coordination without top-down command, something anarchists have always championed through federation. Therefore, accusing anarchism of being retrograde or medieval overlooks the fact that anarchist figures of the 1880s, such as Kropotkin and Cafiero, already incorporated large-scale production and advanced technology into their frameworks.
Therefore, the criticism from council communism that anarchism seeks a return to medieval villages or isolated communes that would reproduce capitalism is false. Modern authors like Felipe Corrêa and Lucien Van der Walt, and entire movements such as platformism and anarcho-syndicalism, demonstrate that mass anarchism is global and internationalist. They propose democratic planning and federalist coordination of large-scale production, not local isolation.
The mistake lies in confusing autonomy (that is, freedom of decision at the grassroots level) with autarky (economic isolation). Anarchists advocate social interdependence within a global structure of federations, which closely resembles the World Commune of nested councils of council communism.
On technology and progress
Returning to the topic of technology, in the 1930s, council workers feared a “dictatorship of the statistical office . ” Today, the internet and massive data processing act as the material foundation that resolves this threat. Inspired by the principles of Otto Neurath, feedback loops and real-time global inventories render labor time accounting obsolete. Technology allows for need-based distribution without the mediation of a bureaucratic body, making the GIC scheme a historically outdated model.
However, the accounting of working time is not a neutral measure; it is an inertial force that reproduces the money-form and the need for state power to monitor it. The true overcoming of capital requires eliminating the exchange relationship from the very beginning of the revolutionary process, preventing the functions of money from spontaneously resurfacing under “conditions of disciplinary control . ”
We can see that communism is not an idealistic utopia, but rather a real movement that transcends the current state of affairs based on existing material conditions. Communism, as advocated by council communists, is only viable as a globally coordinated system of abundance supported by advanced technological development. Therefore, large-scale interdependence and the use of data systems to guarantee free access are technical imperatives for its functioning.
Thus, any return to the "simple life " or local self-sufficiency would only guarantee the generalization of scarcity, which would inevitably lead to a resurgence of the struggle for survival and market exchange, and eventually, the State. Hence, they argue that human emancipation can only be achieved through the Council form of government.
Criticism surrounding the concept of revolutionary power and dictatorship of the proletariat
Left-wing communists often claim that anarchists "regress ideologically " in the face of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat and that they lack a theory of revolutionary power. This criticism falls into the trap of suggesting that anarchists simply "deny power " and are therefore ineffective.
From the very beginning of the anarchist movement, revolutionary sectors (such as Bakunin, Johann Most, Malatesta, and the Friends of Durruti ) fully understood the need to use force to crush the bourgeoisie. For example, the Friends of Durruti explicitly proposed a Revolutionary Junta during the Spanish Revolution . Meanwhile, the CNT-FAI tirelessly called for, both explicitly and implicitly, a National Defense Council as an organ of workers' power to defeat fascism and, from within it, defend revolutionary society. And this is to say nothing of their role in workers' uprisings, with the establishment of revolutionary juntas, committees, and councils. The difference is not that anarchists ignore the necessity of revolutionary violence, but rather that they reject the idea that this violence should become a state separate from the working class, which, as Luigi Fabbri warns, inevitably becomes an oppressor of the very society it claims to defend.
On the other hand, anarchism does not deny power as the "capacity to do things " or as a social force, but rather power as "domination ," which would be a hierarchization of social relations (Felipe Corrêa). By failing to distinguish between these concepts, left-wing communism accuses anarchism of being "apolitical , " ignoring that anarchism proposes popular power or self-managed power from below, a power that arises from the bottom up through federation, which is a tangible political structure… but is not a state.
On workers' councils and the dictatorship of the proletariat
Beyond semantic issues, the "dictatorship of the proletariat " of council communism takes a historical form based on armed workers' councils. Here it differs from Leninism, which prefers the form of a Party-State (in other words, the Communist Party becomes the workers' state, and its leading cadres become the government).
At this point, revolutionary anarchism always recognized the need for a "power " to crush bourgeois reaction. For example, Bakunin spoke of the armed Commune. This was a Commune inspired by the Paris Commune, which should be made up of workers' associations (or workers' societies). A little later, Johann Most argued that revolutionary communes must annihilate the "beasts of property " in order not to be crushed by them. For his part, Errico Malatesta defined a kind of dictatorship of the proletariat (without calling it that) as the effective power of the workers once they took possession of the means of subsistence until reactionary resistance ceased. Another author, Erich Mühsam, linked the dictatorship of the proletariat (he was a contemporary of the Russian Revolution) with the self-determination of the working class through its councils.
As we can see, both traditions are saying very similar things, which can be summarized as follows: councils should assume all power. In this sense, councils would absorb the functions that are politically and economically separate in capitalist society. Both traditions would entail an end to government as the ruler of people and would establish councils as administrators of things. They would also have the function of dissolving the class structure, and as this process progresses, as classes dissolve, the council would lose its coercive character and become a human community.
Ultimately, if we focus on the similarities between the council communist and anarcho-communist traditions, the distinction between " Marxists " and " anarchists " is less relevant than the boundary between " communist " and " non-communist " elements . The councils are not a separate state, but rather assemblies of the proletariat, and their success depends on their technical capacity to organize life.
Councilist critics claim that anarchists "back down " in the face of the need for a proletarian dictatorship. But in practice, anarchist organizations proposed revolutionary juntas to defend the revolution and repress bourgeois sectors. The difference is that these juntas would not be a separate state, but rather an organ of the armed workers themselves.
Critique of " political evasion "
According to left-wing communism, Spanish anarchists treated the State like Tinker Bell from Peter Pan: they believed that if they stopped "believing " in it or "legitimizing " it , it would disappear. By not destroying the republican State under the pretext of "anti-fascist unity , " they allowed it to reorganize and ultimately crush the revolutionary committees. The mistake was trying to manage commodity production (exchange between collectives) without destroying political power, when both must be transcended dialectically.
Therefore, for left-wing communism, both social democracy (which absolutized the state) and anarcho-syndicalism (which, according to them, absolutized the exchange economy) failed. They clearly see the lesson of the Spanish Revolution: the state and the capitalist market economy are expressions of the same social alienation and must be rejected simultaneously.
However, the criticism from council communists, such as Helmut Wagner, that the anarchist attitude is "apolitical " or "evasive " with respect to bourgeois political power is incorrect. Luigi Fabbri clarified that anarchism is not apolitical in the sense of being passive, but rather possesses its own revolutionary methodology . Its politics consist of direct action and the construction of freedom as a "weapon of combat " against the old world.
Contemporary authors like Agustín Guillamón argue that the failure of the Spanish Revolution was not due to anarchism itself, but rather because the CNT leadership lacked a revolutionary theory suited to the historical moment and preferred to build a "state anarchism " and favor government collaboration instead of destroying the bourgeois state as it collapsed. Thus, left-wing communists err in judging anarchism by the "capitulations of its collaborationist leaders , " ignoring the revolutionary minorities, such as "The Friends of Durruti " or sectors of the Libertarian Youth, who demanded "all power to the unions . "
Incidentally, I should add that Guillamón himself began with an interpretation of the Spanish Revolution centered on Barcelona, while the vision of the CNT and FAI leaders was fundamentally Spanish, possessing a broader view of the balance of power throughout Republican Spain. For this reason, although they saw revolution as possible in Catalonia, they did not see it as feasible for all of Spain, since this would provoke a "civil war within the civil war " that would entail the total defeat of the Republic and the death of the revolutionaries. Eventually, this civil war within the civil war did occur anyway, but only because the Counter-Revolution armed itself and attacked the Revolution (the May Days in Barcelona, the dissolution of the Council of Aragon). As we can see, those militants were adrift in a sea of doubt.
Therefore, the anarchist critique of the state is materialist and practical. Authors like Fabbri explain that the state is an institution based on violence that must be physically destroyed through insurrection and immediate expropriation. Marxism's error lies in believing that the state can be captured by the proletariat for its own purposes. Since Bakunin's time, anarchists have warned that the state machinery transforms those who occupy it.
Critique of anarchist disorganization
Anarchism is often accused of being inherently disorganized and chaotic. In this sense, almost all Marxists view anarchism as an immature stage of the workers' movement. This is a mixture of the arrogance of many 19th-century Marxist and Marxist authors, their defense of "scientific socialism , " and their prejudices against anarchism for various reasons that have little to do with rigorous analysis.
Revolutionary anarchism has actively sought theoretical and tactical unity from its inception and has championed collective responsibility. The infamous "disorganization " has been a symptom of specific historical periods and is by no means an intrinsic principle of communist anarchism. This can be demonstrated in documents such as Makhno and Arshinov's * The Platform *.
Some council ideological texts even claim that anarchists try to avoid politics by focusing on the "economic power " of the unions. Revolutionary syndicalism, with figures like Salvador Seguí, and the Plataforma itself, argue that the Unified Union is not just an economic tool, but the political and social epicenter capable of managing public life without the need for a vanguard party. It is the "arm and brain " that prepares the working class for self-government. Council ideology assumes that politics should be the monopoly of the Party (or of a council or soviet dominated by the Party's ideology), disregarding the capacity of the workers' organization to be, in and of itself, the structure of the new society.
By being portrayed as disorganized, anarchism acquired yet another stigma: its disorganization would prevent victory. Thus, by July 1936, anarchism had been mired in theoretical "confusion , " lacking a theory of power and unsure of how a "transitional society " should be formed , or even if such a society was necessary. We can acknowledge these criticisms, which are the same ones that revolutionary anarchist sectors leveled against the CNT during those same days (for example, by Camilo Bernieri or by "The Friends of Durruti " ), as I will discuss later.
However, by focusing criticism on the supposed error of the CNT leaders in 1936, left-wing communists ignore the practical convergence that existed at times such as Germany 1918-19, Kronstadt 1921 or the barricades of May 1937, where both revolutionary anarchists and left-wing communists faced the same statist counter-revolution.
Placing the anarchist critique of the role of the CNT-FAI in the Spanish Revolution
In Catalonia , the seizure of power by revolutionary organizations was physically possible , since after defeating the army in the streets on July 19 and 20, the CNT-FAI became the absolute master of the situation . The Barcelona proletariat was heavily armed with some 35,000 rifles captured from the Sant Andreu barracks and controlled strategic points in the city. However, the political viability of such an action—seizing power—was questioned internally at the Regional Plenum of Trade Unions on July 21, 1936. At this assembly, although Juan García Oliver proposed " going for broke , " the majority of delegates considered that implementing libertarian communism alone was unfeasible due to several important factors.
The main arguments against seizing power were the fear of international isolation and the threat of an economic blockade or even armed intervention by capitalist powers. Furthermore, as already mentioned, the anarcho-syndicalist leaders feared that an " anarchist dictatorship " in Catalonia would provoke a civil war within the Republican camp, given that the CNT was a minority in other regions of Spain. Therefore, they opted for anti-fascist collaboration through the creation of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias (CCMA) , a class-collaboration organization that allowed the Generalitat government to survive as a legal "facade. "
From a later critical perspective, developed within the anarchist movement of the time, it is argued that the revolution failed because the CNT was " bereft of revolutionary theory " and lacked a concrete program to replace the state with centralized organs of workers' power. In practice, power was fragmented into a myriad of local and factory committees that exercised authority on the ground, but which were unable to coordinate themselves to form a pole of power antagonistic to, or even alternative to, the capitalist state. The group " Friends of Durruti " later argued that the only viable option to save the revolution was precisely the immediate destruction of the state and its replacement by a Revolutionary Junta based on the unions and the militias.
In short, the analysis of dozens of anarchist authors over decades tells us that, although the military triumph of the workers' uprising of July 1936 was total in areas like Catalonia, the lack of political vision and commitment to anti-fascist unity led the revolutionaries to relinquish political power, allowing the bourgeois state to gradually rebuild itself. In the end, the workers who had won the war in the streets of Barcelona ended up surrendering politically to those sectors that favored strengthening the bourgeois state.
Although the evaluation of the CNT leaders was national and sought to avoid the isolation of Catalonia, we can also identify some contradictions in that strategy:
The fundamental contradiction pointed out by the sources, especially from critical currents of anarchism (such as Camillo Berneri and "The Friends of Durruti " ), lies in the fact that one cannot defend a social revolution by using and strengthening the same instrument whose historical purpose is to destroy it: the bourgeois state .
The stance of "winning the war first and making the revolution later " (adopted by the CNT when it adopted the language of the Communist Party) is seen in the sources as a strategic trap . Berneri argued that the Spanish Civil War was a "social war " and that it could not be won by limiting itself to bourgeois military criteria. By postponing the revolution, the morale of the armed people, who were the only force capable of defeating fascism, was destroyed . The result was the creation of a traditional bourgeois army which, stripped of revolutionary fervor, ended up losing the war.
The idea of collaborating with bourgeois anti-fascist forces while maintaining the revolution in the economy proved to be an "unrealizable utopia ," according to the Friends of Durruti . The organs of coercion (army and police) were allowed to remain in the hands of the republican state while the workers managed the factories. As Fabbri presciently warned, whoever has power over things ends up having power over people. The bourgeoisie used its control over finance, gold, and weapons to economically strangle the collectives that the CNT sought to defend from within the ministries.
By accepting ministerial posts, the CNT was accused of committing a "historical heresy . " In this way, the confederal organization went from being a class-struggle trade union to becoming an " appendage of bourgeois democracy . " While in the Republican government, the anarchist ministers were forced to ask the workers to abandon the barricades (May 1937) and to relinquish some social gains in the name of unity, becoming "firefighters " of the revolution itself.
Critics from anarchist circles (from Bernieri to Guillamón, including César M. Lorenzo) argue that the CNT leaders presented the situation as a false choice between imposing an anarchist dictatorship or collaborating with the state. However, a third way existed that was neither an anarchist dictatorship nor surrender to the bourgeois state: the coordination of revolutionary committees and the creation of a Revolutionary Junta based on unions and militias. By ignoring this option, the CNT did not prevent a dictatorship, but rather facilitated the rise of the Stalinist dictatorship of the PSUC/PCE, which ultimately held absolute power thanks to the CNT's political weakness.
In short, the contradiction was trying to save the revolution by handing over the keys to its natural enemies (the State and the bourgeois parties) in the hope that they would respect it until the end of the war, something that historically did not happen.
Conclusions, the errors of left-wing communism
Based on what has been stated above in the text, I have thought it appropriate to point out the weaknesses of the theory of council communism.
Let's start with the most obvious point: both theories aim to reach the same goal, but one does so from a Marxist perspective and the other from an anarchist one.
As we have seen, council communism is deeply influenced by Marx's theory of crisis , which generates a stance of anti-voluntarism and anti-activism . It considers the possibility of revolution to be strictly determined by the world-historical trends of capitalist development. This leads to the conclusion that if the productive forces have not reached a certain level, communism is literally impossible, which can result in passivity while waiting for ideal "material conditions . " Thus, it creates an opportunity to accelerate revolutionary changes.
Another problem is that, historically, council communists (specifically the International Communist Group, ICG) proposed a distribution scheme based on accounting for working time . While in the 1930s council communists rejected "planning in kind " for fear of a "dictatorship of the statistical office over the producers , " today technological developments (such as the internet and real-time data processing) allow for direct coordination without the need for such accounting detours or a central bureaucracy. Therefore, this scheme is historically obsolete . Nevertheless, this is also a lively debate within council communists, who acknowledge this conceptual error.
A similar issue arises when reading some council economic writings from the 1920s and 1930s. During those years, they argued against direct planning because they believed it would inevitably lead to a dictatorship by a specialized stratum of statisticians or a "central planning office . " Lacking confidence in the councils' technical capacity to coordinate without intermediaries, their economic model was caught between the market and bureaucratic control.
When council communists (such as Helmut Wagner) criticize the anarchist "evasion " of political power, they are actually revealing their own analytical weaknesses. Wagner and other council communist critics often confuse an " apolitical " (evasive or passive) attitude with an " anti-political " one (destructive of bourgeois political institutions). By insisting so relentlessly and intransigently on the label of dictatorship of the proletariat , they create an ideological barrier with other revolutionary sectors (such as libertarian communists or anarcho-communists) who, in practice, advocate precisely the same thing: that workers' councils should destroy and absorb all power.
Despite being considered the "conscience of Marxism , " their theoretical position has historically relegated them to being a " voice in the wilderness . " By rejecting both social democratic reformism and Leninist authoritarianism and mass syndicalism, their proposal often lacked a real mass base (with the exception of a few months between 1919 and 1920 in Germany) , appearing as a doctrine too advanced for its time.
In summary, the weakness of council communism lies in an overly strict theoreticism that can ignore the creative capacity of the revolutionary subject (which they despise as "voluntarism") and in the defense of economic methods that the very development of capitalism has left behind.
To this we will add one final criticism, which is the misinterpretation of other revolutionary traditions, such as anarchism. The error of left-wing communists is to treat anarchism as an incoherent or childish ideology, without recognizing that it has its own organizational methodologies ( organizational dualism and anarcho-syndicalism) that seek the same end without the authoritarian dangers that ultimately destroyed the soviets in Russia. Nor have they taken into account the theoretical and tactical output of anarchism, and when they have, it has been to point out conceptual errors and caricature anarchism, falling into dogmatism.
In this sense, from my point of view, what is lacking is a channel for healthy and constructive dialogue between revolutionary traditions, where they can learn from one another. Disrespect and arrogance are often poor vehicles for understanding one's own points of view, when in reality there is much to contribute.
Miguel G. Gomez, @BlackSpartak
Literature
Friends of Durruti. Manifestos and leaflets from May 1937 ( Workers!, The People's Friend ).
Balius, Jaime. Towards a new revolution (January 1938), included in Guillamón's anthology.
Berneri, Camillo. Between the revolution and the trinxeres . Editions May 37 / Col·lectiu Negres Tempestes, 2009.
Collapse and Diversion: Council Communism and Anarchist Communism . Translated by Amapola Fuentes (originally published in International Socialist Review ).
Correa, Felipe. Black Band: Rediscussing or Anarchism . Curitiba: Editora Prismas, 2015.
Corrêa, Felipe. Towards a strong people. Anarchism, organization and popular power . Barcelona: Editorial Descontrol, 2020.
Ten, Xavier. The political thought of Salvador Seguí . Barcelona: Virus Editorial, 2016.
Fabbri, Luigi. Libertarian Communism or State Capitalism . Barcelona: Edita Copia i Difon, 2014.
Gómez, Miguel G. The CNT and the New Economy. From business collectivism to the planning of the confederal economy (1936-1939) . Madrid: Anselmo Lorenzo Foundation, 2024.
Dielo Truda Group. Organizational platform for a General Union of Anarchists (1926) . Barcelona: Aldarull Edicions, 2010.
Guillamón, Agustín. The Revolution of the Committees. Hunger and violence in revolutionary Barcelona. From July to December 1936. Barcelona: Aldarull Edicions, 2012.
Guillamón, Agustín. The Friends of Durruti. History and anthology of texts . Barcelona: Aldarull/Descontrol, 2013 (2nd corrected edition for Alejandría Proletaria, 2018).
Lorenzo, César M. The Spanish Anarchists and Power (1868-1969) . Paris: Ruedo Ibérico. (Digital edition distributed by Solidaridad Obrera).
Most, Johann. "The Science of Revolutionary Warfare," mentioned in discussions about power.
Trejo, Rubén. Magonism: Utopia and Revolution, 1910-1913 . Barcelona: Aldarull Edicions, 2010.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/06/17/divergencias-y-similitudes-entre-el-comunismo-de-consejos-y-el-comunismo-libertario/
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