Anarchism and Socialism

“Anarchism and Socialism” is a brief outline of Lenin’s criticism of anarchism. It was written at the end of 1901; it contains Lenin’s concentrated reflections on the attitude towards anarchism. It was published in the 7th issue of Proletarskaya Revolutsia in 1936. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 5 of the second edition of Complete Works of Lenin.

In the 1860s, Bakunin combined the anarchism of Proudhon with the communist idea of collective ownership and put together an anarchism program that had a serious impact on the communist movement. At the turn of the 19th century and the 20th century, the anarchist theorist Kropotkin introduced anarchism to Russia. In the next half-century, anarchism was suppressed because the importance of the state became clear. But in Russia, with the development of capitalism and the bankruptcy of small producers, anarchism still found a basis. In the process of criticizing Narodnik thought, Lenin found the internal relationship between anarchism and Russian Narodnism. Anarchism maintained the small private ownership and the small peasant economy, denied that the minority is subordinate to the majority and political power has a unified and organizational power, rejected the political power by claiming that it has an unjust and unreasonable basis, and even opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat. These ideas were also accepted by the Narodniks and had a great disorganizing effect on the proletarian revolution. Therefore, Lenin criticized anarchism. “Anarchism and Socialism” was Lenin’s outline, it contained five theses.

In the first thesis, Lenin pointed out the defects and main claims of anarchism. Anarchism offers nothing but empty talk against exploitation. The reasons are as follows: First, anarchism does not understand the root causes of exploitation; second, do not understand that development of society, which leads to socialism; third, do not understand that class struggle is the creative force to realize socialism. Anarchism essentially represents the interests and aspirations of small producers. It does not welcome the establishment of capitalism, let alone understand that socialism will definitely replace capitalism as an inevitable trend of historical development. They do not see the important role of proletarian class struggle in the realization of socialism. Anarchists stand on the position of small producers, deny the capitalist system and bourgeois politics. They believe that plotted assassination and terrorist activities as an effective means to resist the whole autocratic system, even as the only means that the oppressed can use to fight against state violence.

In the second thesis, Lenin positively stated that private ownership is the basis of the commodity economy and that Marxism advocates the public ownership of means of production. He pointed out that anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse, and individualism is the basis of the whole world outlook of anarchism. Anarchism maintains the small private ownership and the small peasant economy on the land in this respect they share many ideas with Narodniks. Anarchism’s denial of the unified and organized force of political power is central to anarchist thought and precisely one of its destructive aspects.

In the third thesis, Lenin pointed out that anarchism did not understand that the fundamental driving force for social development was socialized mass production, and the progress of productive forces would certainly push the development of capitalism to socialism.

In the fourth thesis, Lenin pointed out that anarchism did not understand the class struggle of the proletariat. The class struggle of the proletariat is to defeat the bourgeoisie, eliminate the private ownership, realize the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally realize communism, not to oppose the bourgeoisie in order to preserve the interests of small producers.

In the last thesis, Lenin pointed out that anarchism has a very bad influence on theory and practice. First of all, anarchism does not provide any doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory, so it has no theoretical foundation. Secondly, it divides the workers’ movement and causes the working class to be disturbed in the process of fulfilling its historical mission. In the practice of the revolutionary movement, the anarchism of Proudhonism in 1871 and the anarchism of Bakunin in 1873 were doomed to complete failure. Finally, Lenin pointed out that the essence of anarchism is the subordination of the working class to bourgeois politics in the guise of negation of politics. Lenin thought that anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian.

Lenin pointed out the class basis, position, social harm, and theoretical essence of the anarchist petty bourgeoisie in “Anarchism and Socialism”. Lenin’s criticism of Narodnism and anarchism in this period laid the ideological foundation for the establishment of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. On November 24, 1905, Lenin wrote another article entitled “Socialism and Anarchism”, which was a parallel to this outline. In that article, Lenin spoke highly of the decision of the workers’ representative of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies to reject the anarchist demand for their representation in this committee, which thoroughly demarcated the line between socialism and anarchism.