"An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself, it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.

Does this mean that after the fall of the old society there will be a new class domination culminating in a new political power? No.

The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders.

The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)

The proletariat must therefore overthrow the political power where it is already in the hands of the bourgeoisie. It must itself become a power, in the first place a revolutionary power.

Marx, Moralizing Criticism and Critical Morality (1847)

"It [that "the proletariat be the dominant class"] means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened."

"It ["The proletariat established as the dominant class"] means that the proletariat, instead of struggling sectionally against the economically privileged class, has attained a sufficient strength and organization to employ general means of coercion in this struggle. It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as class. With its complete victory its own rule thus also ends, as its class character has disappeared."

"...as the proletariat still acts, during the period of struggle for the overthrow of the old society, on the basis of that old society, and hence also still moves within political forms which more or less belong to it, it has not yet, during this period of struggle, attained its final constitution, and employs means for its liberation which after this liberation fall aside. Mr Bakunin concludes from this that it is better to do nothing at all... just wait for the day of general liquidation -- the last judgement."

Marx, Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy 1873
(Bracketed sections refer to Bakunin’s words, in quotation marks)

1.

In Marxist understanding, historical materialism does not recognize the existence of eternal and absolute categories to define social reality; rather, it considers all categories that define society as representations of the content of the social relations existing at each moment and place. That is, for Marxism, all categories defining reality are historical and relative, subject to historical development and belonging to a specific social form.

For this reason, Marxism does not consider the State as an immutable category, nor does it attribute to it a metaphysical principle that would be identical in any moment or historical situation. The existence of a category like the State is not grounded, as anarchists claim, in a power "above society." This power appears as such, but in reality, it is entirely determined by and dependent on the existing society. However, since the existing society is a class society, the State only represents, in its configuration and ordinary activity, the class interests of the bourgeoisie. The formal separation between the political State and civil society, for example, is characteristic of bourgeois society and did not exist in feudal society, where the economically dominant class was directly the politically dominant class. It is from this separation between State and civil society that the strong appearance in the capitalist system arises, suggesting that the State is a power situated above society.

Moreover, the configuration of the State depends on the nature of the interests of the dominant class. The interests of a minority class or group can only be organized in an authoritarian manner to impose them on the majority. If this minority is, more precisely, an exploitative class (even if it does not exercise power directly but through a system of delegation), its organization will not only have to be authoritarian but also a true dictatorship, even if it is a covert dictatorship.

Anarchism considers the State as an essentially immutable category, even absolute and eternal, so it is incapable of conceiving a State other than the existing one. The most consistent anarchism in practice will recognize that the proletarian revolution can only triumph through violence against the bourgeoisie to carry out the expropriation of the means of production and defend the communist-libertarian organization of society. But this organization of violence, and consequently of proletarian power, is in reality a State, but a "proletarian" State, whose organization will respond to principles opposed to those of the bourgeois State and class-based States in general. Since the State has its material foundation in the exploitation and oppression of one class over another, as this disappears, the organization of political power loses its statist character: the suppression of wage labor implies, on the one hand, the suppression of the active foundation of the State, the hierarchical relation and unilateral authority over the working population (a relation that globally expresses the domination of capital over labor), and on the other, the suppression of its material support, constituted by the various specialized bodies that make up the state structure (bureaucracy, army, police) and monopolize the political activity of society as a whole.

This would be the consistent application of historical materialism to the question.

But the proletarian revolution will not be a matter of a single day. It will be a prolonged process of successive struggles, both to destroy the domination of capital and to build a new society on communist foundations. Private property will not disappear instantly. All petty-bourgeois elements, for example, cannot be instantly transformed. The political power of the proletariat will have to impose a transitional legal state to defend the communist economy against forms of regression to capitalism, to prevent petty bourgeois from exploiting wage labor, and to ensure that workers’ collectives still under the control of individual capitalists cannot be freely exploited. All these complexities require the organization of the proletariat as the dominant class. The process of abolishing classes requires a transitional historical period, the shorter the faster the economic progress of communism—which includes, as a decisive productive force, the proletariat’s own capacity to carry it out and defend it.

The "State of the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat" will not, in the end, be a State in the current sense, but an anti-State, like matter is to anti-matter. Its statist form only exists as long as the proletariat confronts the bourgeoisie, as long as the latter exists.1 This State will be the defensive mechanism of a new form of political power, the trigger of an anti-authoritarian and emancipatory social regime, not because of official declarations, but because of its social practice, as it will not be the organization of a minority against the majority, but the organization of the majority against the minority; it is the proletariat associated as a political force against capital. This found its historical realization in the system of workers’ councils, structured from the base of factories and unitarily encompassing all tasks of social reorganization. It is an organization of political power that no longer relies permanently on the oppression of one class over another, but whose objective is to abolish classes—specifically, by destroying the current dominant class as a class—so that proletarian political power dispenses with the permanent instruments of that oppression: the standing army, the police, the bureaucracy, and its hierarchy (bureaucratic centralism). In their place, what is needed are transitional instruments, which must fulfill the same function of domination as long as the persistent features of capitalist society make it imperative. This transitional character will derive from the fact that, materially, these are no longer special means of oppression, but a state organism constituted by the armed people and characterized by the suppression of permanent bureaucracy through elective positions and rotating participation in tasks, as well as by a centralization of decision-making based on self-organization from below.

With the abolition of classes, in developed communism, the need for any armed force, even the armed people, will finally be eliminated. The need for any bureaucracy will also be eliminated, replaced by universally developed individuals. The same will happen with limited centralism based on self-organization from below, as any limitation on self-organized life will no longer be necessary, and everything can be decided or determined from below (for which there are already ample technical means today, and they will multiply in the future). This is what will truly signify the disappearance of any remnant of the State.

At that point, the political character of the power structure, whose separation from civil society and the proletarian masses had already been abolished, will increasingly lose meaning, as the norms of coexistence and decision-making will progressively lose any character or need for coercion to ensure compliance, and the equal free development of individuals in community will make legislative activity itself increasingly superfluous. Then democracy will disappear, and we will enter what will properly be anarchy.

Certainly, from a practical standpoint, we can dispense with calling the organization of the proletariat as revolutionary political power a "State," avoid emphasizing the statist character of this power, as it is not practically essential for the proletariat to create and develop its own revolutionary power organs. This is even imperative in conditions where speaking of a "proletarian State" tends to be confused with the character of the existing State. Moreover, Marx, aware that the emancipation of the proletariat is not only antagonistic to the existence of private property but also to the existence of the State, never adopted the well-known term "workers’ State" (see his Conspectus on Bakunin’s "Statism and Anarchy"2 ) except rarely and with a polemical sense (in the same sense of contrasting the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie), as he never lost sight of this contradiction: the proletariat can assume political power in society, but no State, as such, can be "workers’" or "proletarian," since no statist element forms a positive part of the proletariat’s emancipation3 —in any case, its persistence indicates that the proletariat’s emancipation is in a limited stage.

The class antagonism that pits the proletariat against bourgeois society is a radical and universal antagonism, an antagonism with private property, the State, and all forms of alienated human activity: "The proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State."

The communist revolution, by abolishing the division of labor, finally eliminates political institutions. (Marx/Engels, The German Ideology, 1847).

In other words, as Anton Pannekoek said long ago: "The struggle of the proletariat is not simply a struggle against the bourgeoisie for state power as an objective, but a struggle against state power. The problem of the social revolution can be summarized by saying that it is about making the power of the proletariat grow to such an extent that it surpasses the power of the State. And the content of this revolution is the destruction and liquidation of the instruments of state power using the instruments of proletarian power." (Mass Action and Revolution, 1912).

These words of Pannekoek must also be interpreted in the sense that the proletariat’s struggle is a struggle against state power because its very existence constitutes a limit to the free development of social life. Moreover, it is a power whose primary objective is to eliminate the conditions of existence of any state power, including itself as such. Its inessentiality as a State is expressed, concretely and practically, in the fact that its definition at a "popular" level as a State is already unnecessary, even counterproductive, and the essence of its practical definition in the revolutionary program can be fully explained without reference to the concept of State or the adjective statist.

It is very important to keep in mind that from the conditions of existence of the proletariat in bourgeois society emerges the alienated tendency to conceive the State according to the prism of the existing State, and consequently, excessive insistence on the concept of State to refer to the proletariat’s State risks fostering, as in the past, statism and authoritarian culture, as happened with Bolshevism. But this does not mean that we can abandon the category of State when theoretically addressing the questions of revolutionary transformation. In fact, as we have just outlined, its use is even decisive for clarifying the different political phases of the development of the proletarian revolution and its material content: 1) organization of the proletariat as a political force for the destruction of the bourgeoisie as a class (proletarian State, no longer organically separated from the mass of civil society by special bodies and authoritarian regulations); 2) suppression of the statist features of the workers’ council system, abolishing all separation between political power and apolitical society—which still exists as an expression of conflicts within society linked to the struggle for the existence of individuals and groups—between the political individual and the social individual (realization of integral autonomy); 3) complete extinction of the political character of organized social power, which becomes a mere administration of things, while all social inequality between individuals disappears and democracy itself is surpassed (anarchism).

Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.

Marx/Engels, The German Ideology, 1847.

To live on other people's labour will become a thing of the past. There will be no longer any government or state power, distinct from society itself! Agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production, will gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan. Such is the humanitarian goal to which the great economic movement of the 19th century is tending.

Marx, The Nationalization of Land, 1872.

2.

With this exposition, which refocuses the question of the State outside the authoritarian Leninist discourse, and which fundamentally does no more than reiterate the original Marxist theory and its unity with the later contributions of Council Communism, we can appreciate how mistaken are the perspectives that seek a "synthesis" between Marxism and anarchism, or even see Marx as a "theorist of anarchism" (Maximilien Rubel). But we can also see how superficial is the attempt to reinterpret the entire problem from the concept of "community" (gemeinwesen), as some radical groups propose.

To begin, a consideration of the sources of Council Communism.

Council Communism has two important precursor sources, though they do not strictly form part of its theoretical body. On one hand, Dutch Council Communism began to take shape, breaking away from the social-democratic tradition, in the left wing of the Dutch Social Democratic Workers’ Party, with Herman Gorter and Anton Pannekoek. This party had as its direct antecedent the Social Democratic Union formed by Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who held anti-parliamentary, anti-militarist, and revolutionary syndicalist positions, and progressively evolved toward anarchism. The Social Democratic Union had opposed the expulsion of anarchists from the First International, and eventually split, forming the new party, closer to the German social-democratic model. But, as Paul Mattick attests, the radical ideas of the old party continued to influence the new one and Dutch socialism in general, particularly Gorter and Pannekoek.

On the other hand, German Council Communism has a crucial antecedent in Spartakism and Rosa Luxemburg. Deeply marked by the experience of spontaneous proletarian struggles during the 1905 Russian Revolution, which she witnessed firsthand, her work clearly reflects the strong presence of the concept of spontaneity, but also of direct action, and other insights, such as those on mass strikes and the proletariat’s self-organizing capacity, which show a confluence with anarchism. Later, the most advanced current of German Council Communism, led by Otto Rühle and the AAUD-E, would also have a strong anarchist influence, with which the councilist movement in general had contact during the German Revolution of 1918-1923, given that members of the FAUD (Free Workers’ Union of Germany) participated in the Workers’ Unions4 , knowing that the anarchist union precursor to the FAUD had significant influence in pre-war labor struggles.

However, all these anarchist influences from their origins, and the later convergences with typically anarchist postulates, such as Pannekoek’s insistence on workers’ self-management, etc., did not constitute any "synthesis" between Marxism and anarchism as attempted by Daniel Guerin or those who call themselves—in this sense—"libertarian Marxists." First, it must be recognized that the aforementioned ideas (spontaneity, direct action, revolutionary strike, self-management, etc.) were historically developed with greater clarity by anarchism, and in Marxist theory, they are found only in an embryonic state, with partial developments or more or less isolated mentions. However, it must be borne in mind that original Marxism developed concepts that refer to all these realities in another way. Only by proscribing Marxism as a theory of "authoritarian socialism," or by completely ignoring Marx’s work, can one lose sight of this and think that anarchist ideas about organization, spontaneity, direct action, etc., are the most advanced.

In reality, all the influences we might call anarchist were integrated into councilist Marxism from a theoretical perspective and a unique experience. Concepts may have an essential meaning inherent to them, but the way their practical manifestation and interrelations are understood depends entirely on the overall view one has of the class struggle, the development of the proletarian movement, and the proletarian revolution. Hence, we speak of a confluence and not a synthesis or an "appropriation" of anarchist ideas (as if revolutionary anarchist ideas were not an expression of the real movement of the proletariat, but the private property of anarchist theorists, and their dissemination were something more than catalyzing the rational understanding already implicit in the proletariat’s general experience). Whether these ideas reached Council Communism through discussion with anarchist revolutionaries, through knowledge of anarchist works, or through completely autonomous and direct comprehension of the proletariat’s class struggle experience in these aspects, matters little.

Confluence means, specifically, that the ideas shared with anarchism are inscribed within a distinct worldview and are also integrated as developments of Marxist concepts. Thus, the concepts of spontaneity and direct action are assumed as aspects or developments of the proletariat’s self-activity. The conceptions about the creative aspect of spontaneity are situated within the field of dialectical unity between subject and object, between self-transformation and transformation, between proletarian consciousness and the experience of class struggle.

The importance of adapting organizational forms to the revolutionary aim was developed in Council Communism with much greater depth and scope than anarchism had done, adopting a historical-materialist perspective and method of analysis and relying on the living experience of the German Revolution (1918-23) and the two Russian Revolutions. In this way, it continues the Marxist line of insisting on the "self-governance" of the proletariat (Marx, The Civil War in France), but not by emphasizing the formal, technical aspect of "self-management" and direct democracy, but by directly connecting with the category of "selbständig" (which can be translated as "autonomous" or "independent," but literally means "its permanence lies in itself") used in the Communist Manifesto to define the proletariat’s movement and implicitly opposed to "verselbständig" (the "becoming independent" or "autonomization" of the products of labor with respect to the worker, a category widely used in The German Ideology, 1846).5

On the other hand, we are today used to seeing the division between Marxism and anarchism as a division between two closed doctrines, when in reality, such closure or internal systematization never existed. In anarchism, these traits are evident, as it is more a doctrine than a set of tendencies that converge only on certain essential ideas—and not always proletarian anarchism, precisely. In Marxism, these traits are less evident, but their concealment is due to the enormous distortion Marxist theory suffered during the 20th century at the hands of social democracy and Bolshevism. The only internal systematization Marxism possesses is a set of methodological principles, with the rest subject to the historical development of conditions and class struggle, and to the development of historical knowledge in general. The Marxist current of thought did not have an ideological character in its origins. And it was precisely because of this that it was quickly contaminated by social-democratic ideas, which accentuated precisely the formally "authoritarian" and statist traits that would give rise to Leninism. These erroneous traits, however, can be attributed to the political practice of Marx and Engels or other reasons, but they are neither essential nor significant in Marxist theory itself regarding the State, class struggle, and proletarian revolution.

On the other hand, it is evident that proletarian anarchism assimilated elements of Marxist theory, such as the importance of class struggle, economic theory, the theory of alienation, etc., and this does not make it less anarchist or less "authentic."

In short, what becomes clear when we look at things without prejudice is that there is a tendency toward confluence on both sides, without this negating the historically proven theoretical superiority of Marxism, nor the decisive anarchist emphasis on the unity between principles, means, and ends. The theoretical inferiority of anarchism—which is not a judgment on the depth of its revolutionary conceptions, but on its intellectual integrity—was verified in its inability to conceive the overcoming of the old workers’ movement and explain its own betrayals and failures, let alone put them into practice.

3.

Marx was not a theorist of anarchism, but he recognized that anarchy was the objective of the proletariat’s revolutionary movement. In fact, he rejected including the concept of anarchy in his thought to define the "realm of freedom," and he almost always uses it in a pejorative sense—corresponding to the dynamics of individuals in bourgeois society. Instead, Marx developed the concept of Gemeinwesen, community, whose French synonym is commune.

The first clear development of the concept of human community, in opposition to the State as a "political community," is found in an 1844 article, in which Marx also declares that "the existence of the State and the existence of slavery are inseparable," in opposition to those who seek to resolve class contradictions by simply modifying the form of the State.

For Marx, moreover, State and civil society, political State and apolitical society, are the two aspects of the same whole (see Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843). The abolition of the State implies the abolition of civil society. This process of abolition—the communist revolution—is based on the realization of the "community of revolutionary proletarians" (The German Ideology) and its extension on a social scale, creating a true human community in which the free development of each is the condition for the collective free development, and in which human essence finds, in collective identity and the communal organization of productive forces, its expression and realization.

On the other hand, for Marx, the question of authority was always secondary, because in the Marxist understanding of the State, the authoritarian form that capitalist production and its corresponding State take is an expression of their class character, while the proletariat, as it develops as a conscious revolutionary class, tends by its own social essence and through association to develop a true human community among itself.

"But the community from which the workers is isolated is a community of quite different reality and scope than the political community. The community from which his own labor separates him is life itself, physical and spiritual life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, human nature. Human nature is the true community of men. Just as the disasterous isolation from this nature is disproportionately more far-reaching, unbearable, terrible and contradictory than the isolation from the political community, so too the transcending of this isolation and even a partial reaction, a rebellion against it, is so much greater, just as the man is greater than the citizen and human life than political life. Hence, however limited an industrial revolt may be, it contains within itself a universal soul: and however universal a political revolt may be, its colossal form conceals a narrow split."

"But whether the idea of a social revolution with a political soul is paraphrase or nonsense there is no doubt about the rationality of a political revolution with a social soul. All revolution – the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order – is a political act. But without revolution, socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organizing functions begin and its goal, its soul emerges, socialism throws its political mask aside."

Marx, Critical Notes on the Article: "The King of Prussia and Social Reform" by a Prussian, 1844

In this way, the question of authority is subject to this process of human self-liberation and to the existing conditions of class struggle and, ultimately, to the development of democracy permitted by existing technical conditions (the level of productive forces, which is the condition for increasing the time devoted to political formation and participation, as well as determining the organizational and material means available for its realization). For this reason, conceptions about the "authoritarian" or non-authoritarian character of organization have never had a clear definition or theoretical relevance in Marxism, as it was trusted that, by ensuring true internal democracy in the proletarian movement, the proletariat itself, driven to historical action by necessity and to class consciousness by all resistances, obstacles, and adversaries, would adapt the organization’s characteristics to its needs.

Evidently, Marx and Engels underestimated the problem of organization, but no less so the anarchists, who thought they could create anarchist unions and parties (anti-political parties, of course) by virtue of and with the guarantee of the "purity" of anarchist doctrine and the firmness of their anti-authoritarian aspirations. But, as in all questions, both positions proved insufficient in the course of the real historical movement. The clarification of these problems was only possible by deeply applying historical materialism to the questions of organizational forms and functioning, although, in reality, and in the face of the isolation of revolutionary groups, the workers’ movement itself took its first steps toward resolving them, generally adopting the assembly-based conception of organization for its united struggle. This latter point verifies the relevance of many anarchist ideas but also certifies their insufficiency to overcome bureaucratic and reformist tendencies.

However, there is a widespread misunderstanding about the concept of "anarchy" in Bakunin, which affects not only the Marxist tradition but also the anarchist one. Ahead of his time, Bakunin found in the self-activity of the working masses during revolutionary processes the manifestation, "without government," of the destructive and creative potencies hidden within class society. It was not until the third quarter of the 20th century that a series of scientific studies provided a scientific basis for this Bakuninian intuition: chaos theory.

This theory explains that transitions between one order and another occur through chaotic processes that destroy the previous order to create a new one in a self-organizing manner; disorder would be, rather, the natural decomposition of the old order that, at a certain point, triggers a "phase transition," a qualitative leap in which the chaotic process of self-reorganization spontaneously sets in motion. This chaos theory applies to all material processes, from those occurring in inorganic matter to those in thought. Of course, this understanding of the anarcho-creative character of material processes has nothing to do with an absolute negation of centralization and authority, but rather means that every structure must, in reality, be a product of the self-activity of all the forces that compose it (or else, it will be an external power contrary to development). For this reason, looking deeper, it is incorrect to see in the concept of anarchy an absolute negation of political power: rather, what happens is that the conscious development of communist anarchy in social life, of the permanent revolutionary process of the masses, will grow until it reabsorbs all political power into the self-activity of individuals, thereby destroying it as such.

4.

Another problematic issue between Marxism and anarchism is that of parliamentarism and political parties.

As long as the oppressed class – in our case, therefore, the proletariat – is not yet ripe for its self-liberation, so long will it, in its majority, recognize the existing order of society as the only possible one and remain politically the tall of the capitalist class, its extreme left wing. But in the measure in which it matures towards its self-emancipation, in the same measure it constitutes itself as its own party and votes for its own representatives, not those of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is thus the gauge of the maturity of the working class.

Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, 1884.

First, the question of political parties as framed by anarchist anti-politicism is a false issue, as anarchist "specific organizations" are nothing more than parties, albeit with peculiar organization, programs, and ideas. Their aim is to propagate anarchist ideas and win the proletariat to those ideas, which means that, in reality, they act as an organization seeking to gain power in the mass movement, not in an "authoritarian" way, but through a less direct, apparently "non-authoritarian" hegemony. However, in reality, and as seen in the case of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, they do aspire to a de facto authority, even if not formally "authoritarian," and act as just another political party among existing parties.

That anarchist parties are abstentionist and anti-parliamentary is not essential to not defining them as political parties. Every "party"—as an organization fighting for the hegemony of certain ideas or programs—is necessarily political, even if its politics promote abstentionism or even total apoliticism.

For original Marxism, parliamentary participation was never essential, nor was it seen as the solution to the working class’s problems. It was linked to the ascending phase of capitalism, when the struggle for reforms had a positive basis. This does not negate that there were inconsistencies in the understanding of parliamentarism or syndicalism, which could only be resolved when conditions were ripe for it. The same can be said regarding the tactic of revolutionaries’ participation in reformist, parliamentary organizations.

On the other hand, it is important to see, as the German council communists did, that parliamentarism is not only participation in the bourgeois parliament but the form that political relations take in general under capitalism. Thus, syndicalism is also seen as a form of parliamentarism. That "revolutionary" unions, as anarchists claim, are not delegationist, etc., does not prevent this from being their nature: they are structures for mediating between capital and labor, oriented toward negotiation, which represent—in themselves, as organizational forms—the proletariat as part of bourgeois society, as a mass of private individuals and a commodified labor force. From these characteristics necessarily emanates, no matter how attenuated it may initially seem, parliamentarism in the economic sphere, and it also tends to become the paradigm of the practice of workers’ organization, as this is built to fight for improvements and not to make a revolution. Of course, there is the possibility that a radical or revolutionary union, formed in a context of rising class struggle, evolves toward a higher form of organization. But this is very difficult, as all historical experiences to date confirm, since the organizational form of unions and political parties naturally tends to generate a bureaucracy and adhere to capitalism, whose logic they represent despite all the ideological superstructures that cover them and the will of their members.

On the other hand, anarchist anti-parliamentarism has a sectarian character, as it does not consider parliamentary participation a tactical issue but a matter of principle. This latter point is directly related to the understanding that parliamentarism is contrary to the development of proletarian autonomy, that parliamentarians’ actions substitute for the development of the masses’ direct political action. But anarchist reasoning is idealist. It does not situate itself in the concrete conditions in which the real class struggle develops, but understands revolutionary struggle as an unconditional duty of the working class, thus tending to prioritize the "idea" as the source of the impulse for action over the material development of class antagonism, which has its own course determined by that of the capitalist mode of production. Unlike anarchism, Council Communism understood that parliamentarism is antagonistic to the development of the proletariat as a revolutionary class, but also that, under certain conditions, it was inevitable for the proletarian movement: when capitalism was ascending, and the bulk of the class tended to surrender to reformist practice—and the illusions associated with it. In those conditions, an open break with parliamentarism was not possible.

Anti-parliamentarism is, therefore, a principle for revolutionary Marxism as we council communists understand it, but not in a sectarian and idealist sense, which would exclude any participation or relation with parliamentary organizations, that is: all kinds of union or party organizations. It could be said, of course, that anarchist parties are anti-parliamentary. But, in reality, what happens is that they seek to represent the proletariat from outside—and supposedly against—the institutions of the bourgeois State. To the extent that they do not truly dedicate their efforts to contributing to the autonomous development of class consciousness (focusing on the problems of the real class struggle), but to party ideological propaganda, focusing on spreading anarchist "ideas," all they do is perpetuate their own starting point: remaining ideologically elevated above the ignorant masses. If they manage to win the movement to their positions, it will be by acting as a separate representation, which in reality represents their own viewpoints. Only when representation is the product of the real movement itself and, in this way, both act as such—the representation as a product and the movement as active will—in organic unity with each other (and with the representation, then, being truly subordinate, not in declarations of intent, but in practical reality), can we say that such representation, even if it has a delegative form, is a genuine expression of the real class movement.

It goes without saying that, since a party, even an anarchist one, cannot represent the class as an autonomous class, anarchists cannot truly act as a revolutionary vanguard either, but, like those who hold openly authoritarian and substitutionist views, they end up fulfilling the role of a parasitic excrescence, stifling the true spontaneous movement under the pretext of the—supposed—need for it to be politically led and intellectually educated by the "vanguard."

For us, the vanguard is not the one that leads the movement, but the most advanced part of the movement itself. It fulfills a leading and educational function only as an organic, indissoluble part of that movement, and as its expression. The communist vanguard is not simply a "revolutionary minority," but the sector of the class that has risen to an understanding of the historical aims and how to advance toward their fulfillment in current conditions. Its interaction with the rest of the proletariat occurs on equal terms, despite organizing separately to concentrate its energies and efforts to carry out these tasks, and despite having to maintain a certain organizational separation and independence to avoid being nullified by the tendencies toward integration into capitalism that always exist, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the conditions, within the bulk of the class and its majority organizations in non-revolutionary conditions.

In short, anti-parliamentarism is a principle for us, but we do not understand "principles" in an absolute and immediatist way. One of Marxism’s maxims is: firmness in principles and flexibility in forms. Principles are, however, essentially practical: being anti-parliamentary means refusing to participate in bourgeois parliaments, whether the State’s parliament or the parliaments formed by negotiation between union and employer representatives. The same applies to cultural aspects. What revolutionaries must always defend is direct action, the development of the class’s collective self-activity. But this does not mean that anti-parliamentarism excludes relations with non-revolutionary organizations.

In current conditions, parliamentarism is a completely obsolete institution. However, unlike Lenin’s reasoning, for us, there is no practical difference between the historical decadence of an institution and its decadence for the masses. The consciousness of the masses progresses through errors, being forced to renounce its own illusions, but the real class movement is sunk by these errors and can only assimilate and overcome them during a process of recomposition, which the bourgeoisie exploits to recover its lost positions. Therefore, Lenin’s reasoning, which was a critique of revolutionary communists, meant, in the revolutionary context of the 1920s, and especially for the German Revolution still in progress, an openly counter-revolutionary position. But this position is also counter-revolutionary in general, as it seeks to instill revolutionary consciousness from a party that has become a parliamentary party (even if it is supposedly a "revolutionary parliamentarism"), instill it in a passive mass movement, subservient to that party, and achieve this through the party-movement relationship itself. In practice, Leninist policy means that party intellectuals indoctrinate expectant masses, submissive in parliamentary illusions, when they deem it the right moment to declare the revolutionary struggle open. This is why, wherever "revolutionary parliamentarism" was applied, it ended up being a falsification of Marxism and a counter-revolution, a "revolutionary parliamentary cretinism," decisively contributing to liquidating, isolating, or letting die authentic revolutionary efforts.

For Council Communism, there is no difference between the historical decadence of an institution and its decadence "for the masses," between the objective process and the subjective process. There is a dialectical unity between consciousness and social being, between the objective decline of capitalism and the development of the revolutionary movement. This means that there is a becoming, which takes place through contradictory processes, necessarily involving a succession of defeats and the consequent strengthening of capitalism. The deeper the historical decadence, the more immediate the need for revolution becomes for the life and struggle of the proletariat as a whole, the more the consciousness and practice of the proletariat tend to assume, first unconsciously or semi-consciously, then consciously, this decadence as the determining starting point of their real struggle, beginning by understanding that they face a regime in which there is no future for them but growing poverty. Council Communist groups stimulate the class’s understanding of this reality, the deepening of struggle experiences, the elevation of immediate consciousness to a rational and universal consciousness, which understands the conditions of class struggle as a totality and how to confront them in favor of proletarian self-emancipation.

Moving to another point, it is worth mentioning that there were minority groups prior to the council communist tendency that, from their own experience of state parliamentarism, evolved toward a revolutionary critique of parliamentarism. One such case is the British revolutionary socialist current led by William Morris, who can be considered the first British Marxist and yet maintained a principled anti-parliamentary position in the last two decades of the 19th century (with affinities with anarchism, but also with Council Communism!). This case is interesting, as it is not a conventional evolution—more prevalent—toward adopting typical anarchist positions in the face of growing parliamentary opportunism, but rather Morris developed a conception of the revolutionary movement’s development based on the spread of socialist consciousness on a mass scale, such that he was able to grasp—despite this somewhat educationalist tendency—the pernicious effects that parliamentarism has on the development of revolutionary consciousness among the proletariat. He even points out a fundamental issue that others overlook: that parliamentarism prevents the working class from understanding that the State is the organ of the capitalist class’s political domination, allowing it to present itself as a power above classes.

"The Policy of Abstention then is founded on this view: that the interests of the two classes, the workers and the capitalists, are irreconcilable, and as long as the capitalists exist as a class, they have the monopoly of the means of production, have all the power of ordered and legal society."

"...in order to drive this fact home, it is necessary to keep the two camps of labour and monopoly as distinct as possible."

"And now mark that this movement, this force for the revolution that we all call for can only be fully evolved from this conscious opposition of the two powers, monopolist authority and free labour: everything that tends to mask that opposition, to confuse it, weakens the popular force, and gives a new lease of life to the reaction, which can indeed create nothing, can only hang on a while by favour of such drags on such weaknesses of the popular force. If our own people are forming part of parliament, the instruments of the enemy, they are helping to make the very laws we will not obey. Where is the enemy then? What are we to do to attack him? The enemy is a principle, you say: true, but the principle must be embodied; and how can it be better embodied than in that assembly delegated by the owners of monopoly to defend monopoly at all points? to smooth away the difficulties of the monopolists even at the expense of apparent sacrifice of their interests `to the amelioration of the lot of the working classes'? to profess friendship with the so-called moderates (as if there could be any moderation in dealing with a monopoly, anything but for or against)? in short to detach a portion of the people from the people's side, to have it in their midst helpless, dazed, wearied with ceaseless compromise, or certain defeat, and yet to put it before the world as the advanced guard of the revolutionary party, the representative of all that is active or practical of the popular party?

This is the advantage not speculative but certain which sending Socialist members to Parliament would hand over to the reactionists: let us try rather, I say once more, to sustain a great body of workers outside Parliament, call it the labour parliament if you will, and when that is done be sure that its decrees will be obeyed and not those of the Westminster Committee."

"... The scheme of parliament would be found in practice to stand in the way of the formation of that widespread organization with its singleness of aim and directness of action which it seems to me is what we want: that the effort towards success in parliament will swallow up all other effort, that such success in short will come to be looked upon as the end. However, you may say that this mistake can be guarded against and avoided; I am far from sure that it can be, but let that pass: the organization I am thinking of would have a serious point of difference from any that could be formed as a part of a parliamentary plan of action: its aim would be to act directly, whatever was done in it would be done by the people themselves; there would consequently be no possibility of compromise, of the association becoming anything else than it was intended to be; nothing could take its place: before all its members would be put but one alternative to complete success, complete failure, namely. Can as much be said for any plan involving the representatives of the people forming a part of a body whose purpose is the continuous enslavement of the people?"

"It is above all things necessary that the working-classes should feel their present position, that they understand that they are in an inferior position not accidentally but as a necessary consequence of the position of the classes that live by monopoly. When they have learnt this lesson they will learn with it the necessity for a change in the basis of society: they are strong enough if they combine duly to bring that change about; but their due combination depends on their knowing that from the present rules of society they will get nothing but concessions intended to perpetuate their present slavery: they must know they are invited to vote and take some part in government in order that they may help their rulers to find out what must be conceded, and what may be refused to the workers; and to give an appearance of freedom of action to them."

William Morris, The Policy of Abstention, 1887.

Groups like William Morris’s can, therefore, be considered precursors of revolutionary anti-parliamentarism. However, historical experience showed that splits or temporary separations from social democracy were incorrect in the circumstances of the last quarter of the 19th century, when capitalism was still ascending. Social-democratic parties continued to grow, and with them reformist tendencies, while separated revolutionary groups became increasingly isolated. Only from the First World War onward can we speak of a mass revolutionary tendency, fueled by the capitalist crisis—which showed the first signs of decadence, pushing humanity toward a global catastrophe—and the consequences of the war itself. It was then that, from within and in rupture with social-democratic parties and unions, understanding that capitalism’s decadence had begun, significant revolutionary currents formed in Holland, Germany, England, etc.

But, on the other hand, revolutionary groups that integrated into social democracy only managed to maintain partial integrity and influence, in continuous decline, such that later separation was an enormously difficult process. Moreover, the confusion created between Marxism and social democracy made it possible for the name of Marx, communism, and the practical meaning of Marx’s work to be practically monopolized for an entire century, first by gradualist social democracy and then by "revolutionary social democracy," Bolshevism (and, to some extent, Spartakism in Germany, whose remnants merged with Bolshevism).

The result of the inconsistencies of parliamentary tactics was, therefore, a century of distortions in which, in exchange for preserving and publishing all of Marx and Engels’s works, a brutal distortion of revolutionary ideas was carried out, burying their true content and labeling as leftists those Marxists who dared to protest against the "orthodoxy" of Marxist-Leninism. And let alone the anarchists, whose ideas were anathematized and proscribed in the name of the Holy Trinity of Marx-Lenin-Stalin, creating a rigid separation between Marxism and anarchism that had never existed.

Evidently, it is difficult to formulate a balance on the issue of parliamentarism. Many questions would need to be considered. But one thing is clear: excessive emphasis on revolutionary principles can lead to sectarianism and isolation, separating us from the real movement, but excessive emphasis on approaching non-revolutionary organizations and their practices can produce enormous deviations and distortions in the revolutionary current, not only preventing it from fulfilling its role but also hindering the path for those who come after. It is clear that these errors had to be committed in the past to learn, to clarify the thought of the revolutionary current, but it must always be borne in mind that the best lesson from the past is the one that serves to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

5.

To conclude these points, it must be said that the distortion of Marxist thought would never have had the historical transcendence it did if this thought did not contain, in itself, an essentially total theory, encompassing all aspects of the proletariat’s struggle. This explains its great scope, both as an instrument for the development of proletarian consciousness in its early stages and, once distorted and falsified, as an instrument for domination over the global proletariat by Stalinism and, to a lesser extent, by the "liberal" wing of Bolshevism, Trotskyism. On the other hand, Marxist thought was only recoverable from all Leninist distortions due to its great depth and the preservation of many unpublished works that later proved key for reinterpretation.

This explains the apparent hegemony of "Marxism" in certain fractions of the workers’ movement for decades, which, in terms of content, was nothing more than a falsification, more or less severe. It also explains why revolutionary anarchism, or the heterodox contributions of other socialist currents, were forgotten or reduced to small groups, as was Council Communism from the 1930s, and were only recovered much later—but not even fully today.

Even so, Council Communism had the advantage of already possessing a total theory—an updated Marxism—and a universal experience—that of the Russian and especially the German revolutions—for the proletariat’s struggle in the conditions of capitalism’s decadence—conditions that, while they seemed not to exist during the intense economic growth phase of the mid-20th century, ended up asserting their reality and expressing themselves in the international rise of class struggle from the late 1960s to the late 1970s.

Council Communism also had the advantage that Marx’s work, which is its own foundation, was still there, constituting an invaluable intellectual substrate accessible to revolutionary militancy, despite the piles and piles of garbage with which the Leninists, especially the Stalinists, covered it. Thus, even dead, Marx was able to triumph intellectually over decades of social-democratic and Leninist counter-revolution, whose greatest thinkers were incapable of replacing their supposed master beyond the political plane.

History thus shows, by itself, what the starting point of the future revolutionary movement must be. Likewise, it shows what supports will allow us to deepen and critically update original Marxist thought along with all the contributions of previous council communists.

One thing is clear to us: from a positive perspective, communism is the movement that builds the true human community, whose internal condition is the progress of anarchy, which is the regime or state in which relations of full equality, freedom, and fraternity among human beings are realized. Anarchy can only exist in the proletarian movement within capitalism in a limited form, and, on the other hand, anarchy only has meaning and real foundation as an expression of the universal and autonomous development of individuals, not based on the association of bourgeois individuals as such (even if, by their social condition, they are proletarians). Only by building a new proletarian movement, founded on revolutionary principles, concretized in new forms of organization and struggle that are consistently revolutionary, and thus in the development of the proletariat as a whole as a revolutionary subject, can the idea of anarchy truly come to life.

The spiritual force of the proletariat has as its condition of development free association and free development, and in this sense, its growth lies in the true progress of human freedom, through the deepest democracy, toward anarchy. On the other hand, the material force of the proletariat must necessarily express itself in political form and acquire a statist character, and its realization requires political domination. The community of revolutionary proletarians, in which alienated social relations are abolished in favor of the total development of individuals, constitutes the dialectical unity of both poles, internal proletarian anarchy and external domination over the bourgeoisie, in a continuous development that will culminate in the classless, stateless society.

• 1Certainly, the "statist principle" must persist as long as the material conditions that enable the formation of the bourgeoisie and divide society into a mass of individuals forced to struggle, each for their own survival, still exist. These are conditions such as economic underdevelopment, the accumulation of small proprietors, organized pro-capitalist political forces, etc. But, in reality, this statist principle is nothing other than political power as such. Political power, as something separate from the will of particular individuals, only came into existence during the historical transition between primitive classless society and class society, when social differences tended to sharpen. Only when this political power assumes an organizational form independent of society, with a special repressive force and a bureaucracy, can we speak of a State properly speaking.

  When that special repressive force and bureaucracy begin to disappear, being replaced by militias and accountable representatives subordinated to the base, the political structure ceases to be independent of the will of the majority of individuals. This is the first phase of the historical extinction of the State. Then, once the capital relation is definitively abolished on a general scale, the need for militias and proletarian struggle organizations would cease to exist, and the limits that the struggle against counter-revolution still imposed on the development of mass direct democracy would disappear. This would be the second phase of the State’s extinction.

  Therefore, we consider it erroneous to say that the State persists once the capitalist class has disappeared, dissociating the formation of proletarian power organs from the free and equal association of producers as the basis of communist society. This theory served, in Leninist regimes, to justify the persistence and even strengthening of the new State, turned into a general capitalist. Instead, from the abolition of the capitalist relation, we speak simply of political power, because speaking of a State means speaking of the oppression of one class over another.

  As the Manifesto states:

  "When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to... sweep away by force the old conditions of production, then it will... have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

  In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

• 2"If Mr Bakunin only knew something about the position of a manager in a workers' cooperative factory, all his dreams of domination would go to the devil. He should have asked himself what form the administrative function can take on the basis of this workers' state, if he wants to call it that."
• 3In the same sense, Engels says: since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.” (F. Engels, Letter to Auguste Bebel, London, 1875.)
• 4The wildcat strikes that in 1919 broke the social peace of German trade unions, organized by factory delegations, led to the consolidation of "workplace organizations" as a new form of proletarian organization opposed to syndicalism and oriented toward the formation of new workers’ councils through revolutionary class struggle (the first German councils, formed in the revolutionary upsurge of 1918, were usurped by social democracy and integrated into the capitalist State). The Workers’ Unions grouped the various workplace organizations, constituting in turn a General Workers’ Union of a national character (the AAUD) and in confluence with the Communist Workers’ Party (KAPD).
• 5"All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air." Likewise, the Manifesto contains the opposition between the "self-permanence" of the proletarian movement and the "self-permanence," the absolutized independence of capital resulting from the relation of alienated labor: "In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."