Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions
As global capitalism,
with neoliberalism being a necessary accompaniment, has covered now the entire
globe, it is extremely useful to revisit some of the great radical traditions
of the 19th and 20th centuries -- namely, anarchism and communism. What do they
stand for? What are their main differences? Did Soviet Communism represent an
authentic form of socialism or was it a "reformed workers' state" --
or, even worse, a tyrannical form of state capitalism? In this exclusive
interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky shares his views on anarchism, communism,
and revolutions in hopes that the new generation of radical activists does not
ignore history and continue to grapple with questions about strategies for
social change.
C.J. Polychroniou:
Noam, from the late 19th century to the mid or even late 20th century,
anarchism and communism represented live and vital movements throughout the
Western world, but also in Latin America and certain parts of Asia and Africa.
However, the political and ideological landscape seems to have shifted
radically by the early to late 1980s to the point that, while resistance to
capitalism remains ever present, it is largely localized and devoid of a vision
about strategies for the founding of a new socioeconomic order. Why did
anarchism and communism flourish at the time they did, and what are the key
factors for their transformation from major ideologies to marginalized belief
systems?
Noam Chomsky: If we look more closely, I think we find
that there are live and vital movements of radical democracy, often with
elements of anarchist and communist ideas and participation, during periods of
upheaval and turbulence, when -- to paraphrase Gramsci -- the old is tottering
and the new is unborn but is offering tantalizing prospects. Thus, in late 19th
century America, when industrial capitalism was driving independent farmers and
artisans to become an industrial proletariat, evoking plenty of bitter resistance,
a powerful and militant labor movement arose dedicated to the principle that
"those who work in the mills should own them" alongside a mass
radical farmers movement that sought to free farmers from the clutches of banks
and merchants. The dramatic era of decolonization also gave rise to radical
movements of many kinds, and there are many other cases, including the 1960s.
The neoliberal period since the '80s has been one of regression and
marginalization for much of the world's population, but [Karl] Marx's old moleis never far from the surface and appears in
unexpected places. The spread of worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives in
the US, while not literally anarchist or communist, carries seeds of
far-reaching radical transformation, and it is not alone.
Anarchism and
communism share close affinities, but have also been mortal enemies since the
time of Marx and [Russian anarchist Mikhail] Bakunin. Are their differences
purely strategic about the transition from capitalism to socialism or do they
also reflect different perspectives about human nature and economic and social
relations?
My feeling is that the
picture is more nuanced. Thus left anti-Bolshevik Marxism often was quite close
to anarcho-syndicalism.
Prominent left Marxists, like Karl Korsch, were quite sympathetic to the
Spanish anarchist revolution. Daniel Guerin's book Anarchism verges on left
Marxism. During his left period in mid-1917, Lenin's writings, notably State
and Revolution, had a kind of anarchist tinge. There surely were conflicts over
tactics and much more fundamental matters. Engels's critique
of anarchism is a famous illustration. Marx had very little to say
about post-capitalist society, but the basic thrust of his thinking about
long-term goals seems quite compatible with major strains of anarchist thinking
and practice.
Certain anarchist
traditions, influenced by Bakunin, advocate violence as a means of bringing
about social change while others, influenced by [Russian anarchist Peter]
Kropotkin, seem to regard violence not only politically ineffective in securing
a just social order but morally indefensible. The communist tradition has also
been divided over the use of violence even in situations where the conditions
seem to have been ripe for revolutions. Can social revolutions take place
without violence?
I don't see how there
can be a general answer. Struggles to overcome class power and privilege are
sure to be resisted, sometimes by force. Perhaps a point will come where
violence in defense against forceful efforts to maintain power is warranted.
Surely it is a last resort.
In your writings,
you have maintained the view that the Soviet Union was never a socialist state.
Do you accept the view that it was a "deformed workers state" or do
you believe that it was a form of state capitalism?
The terms of political
discourse are not models of precision. By the time the Soviets and factory
councils were eliminated -- quite early on -- there was hardly a trace of a
"workers state." [Factory councils were forms of political and
economic organization in which the place of work is controlled collectively by
the workers.] The system had wage labor and other features of capitalism, so I
suppose one could call it a kind of tyrannical state capitalism in some
respects.
In certain
communist circles, a distinction has been drawn between Leninism and Stalinism,
while the more orthodox communists have argued that the Soviet Union begun a
gradual abandonment of socialism with the rise of Nikita Khrushchev to power.
Can you comment on these two points of contention, with special emphasis in the
alleged differences between Leninism and Stalinism?
I would place the
abandonment of socialism much earlier, under Lenin and Trotsky, at least if
socialism is understood to mean at a minimum control by working people over
production. The seeds of Stalinism were present in the early Bolshevik years,
partly attributable to the exigencies of the civil war and foreign invasion,
partly to Leninist ideology. Under Stalin it became a monstrosity.
Faced with the
challenges and threats (both internal and external) that it did face following
the takeover of power, did the Bolsheviks have any other option than
centralizing power, creating an army, and defending the October Revolution by
any means necessary?
It is more
appropriate, I think, to ask whether the Bolsheviks had any other option for
defending their power. By adopting the means they chose, they destroyed the
achievements of the popular revolution. Were there alternatives? I think
so, but the question takes us into difficult and contested territory. It's
possible, for example, that instead of ignoring Marx's ideas in his later years
about the revolutionary potential of the Russian peasantry, they might have
pursued them and offered support for peasant organizing and activism instead of
marginalizing it (or worse). And they could have energized rather than
undermined the Soviets and factory councils. But all that raises many
questions, both of fact and of speculation about possibilities -- for example,
about creating a disciplined and effective Red Army, choice of guerrilla vs
conventional military tactics, political vs military warfare, and much else.
Would you accept
the view that the labor concentration camps and the other horrible crimes that
took place under Stalin's reign are unlikely to have taken place if either
Lenin or Trotsky were in power instead?
I strongly doubt that
Lenin or Trotsky would have carried out crimes anything like these.
And how do you see
the Maoist revolution? Was China at any point a socialist state?
The "Maoist
revolution" was a complex affair. There was a strong popular element in
early Chinese Marxism, discussed in illuminating work by Maurice Meisner.
William Hinton's remarkable study Fanshen captures vividly a moment of profound
revolutionary change, not just in social practices, but in the mentality and
consciousness of the peasants, with party cadres often submitting to popular
control, according to his account. Later the totalitarian system was
responsible for horrendous crimes, notably the "Great Leap Forward"
with its huge death toll, in the tens of millions. Despite these crimes, as
economists Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze demonstrate, from independence until
1979, when the Deng reforms began, Chinese programs of rural health and
development saved the lives of 100 million people in comparison to India in the
same years. What any of this has to do with socialism depends on how one
interprets that battered term.
Cuba under Castro?
In assessing
developments in Cuba since it achieved independence under Castro in January
1959, one cannot overlook the fact that from almost the first moment Cuba was
subjected to vicious attack by the global superpower. By late 1959, planes
based in Florida were bombing Cuba. By March, a secret decision was made to
overthrow the government. The incoming Kennedy administration carried out the
Bay of Pigs invasion. Its failure led to near hysteria in Washington, and
Kennedy launched a war to bring "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba,
in the words of his close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his
semi-official biography of Robert Kennedy, who was placed in charge of the
operation as his highest priority. It was no small affair, and was one of the
factors that led to the missile crisis, which Schlesinger rightly described as
the most dangerous moment in history. After the crisis, the terrorist war
resumed. Meanwhile, a crushing embargo was imposed, which took a huge toll on
Cuba. It continues to this day, opposed by virtually the entire world.
When Russian aid
ended, Clinton made the embargo harsher, and a few years later, [the]
Helms-Burton [Act] made it harsher still. The effects have of course been very
severe. They are reviewed in a comprehensive study by Salim Lamrani.
Particularly onerous has been the impact on the health system, deprived of
essential medical supplies. Despite the attack, Cuba has developed a remarkable
health system, and has an unmatched record of medical internationalism -- as
well as playing a crucial role in the liberation of Black Africa and ending the
apartheid regime [in South Africa]. There have also been severe human rights
violations, though nothing like what has been standard in the US-dominated
countries of the region or the US-backed national security states of South
America. And, of course, the worst human rights violations in Cuba in recent
years have been in Guantanamo, which the US took from Cuba at gunpoint in the
early 20th century and refuses to return. Overall, a mixed story, and not easy
to evaluate given the complex circumstances.
Overall, do you
regard the collapse of so-called "actually existing socialism" a
positive outcome, and, if so, why? In what ways has this development been
beneficial to the socialist vision?
When the Soviet Union
collapsed I wrote an article describing the events as a small victory for socialism,
not only because of the fall of one of the most anti-socialist states in the
world, where working people had fewer rights than in the West, but also because
it freed the term "socialism" from the burden of being associated in
the propaganda systems of East and West with Soviet tyranny -- for the East, in
order to benefit from the aura of authentic socialism, for the West, in order
to demonize the concept.
My argument on what
came to be known as "actually existing socialism" has been that the
Soviet State attempted since its origins to harness the energies of its own
population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took
advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize state power.
Since its origins,
socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the
Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "This goal is not reached
and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting
itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers
themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the
producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have
regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter
opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the "revolutionary
intellectuals" guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western
managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element
of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the
property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people
who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a
fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.
The Leninist intelligentsia
had a different agenda. They fit Marx's description of the
"conspirators" who "pre-empt the developing revolutionary
process" and distort it to their ends of domination. "Hence their
deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of the workers about
their class interests," which include[d] the overthrow of the Red
Bureaucracy of which Bakunin warned, and the creation of mechanisms of
democratic control over production and social life. For the Leninist, the
masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist will struggle to
achieve a social order in which discipline "will become superfluous"
as the freely associated producers "work for their own accord"
(Marx). Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to
democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms
of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life -- an
unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to
new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in
traditional practice and consciousness.
The Leninist
antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the
very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as
instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich
potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted
themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments,
establishing the rule of the [Communist] Party, in practice its Central
Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years
earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as
the anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses, but even the Party
must be subject to "vigilant control from above," so Trotsky held as
he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to state priest. Before
seizing state power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of
people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their
true commitments were quite different. This was evident before and became
crystal clear as they assumed state power in October 1917.
A historian
sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr, writes that "the spontaneous
inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in
the management of the factories was inevitably encouraged by a revolution which
led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged
to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own
advantage" (my emphasis). For the workers, as one anarchist delegate said,
"The Factory committees were cells of the future… They, not the state,
should now administer."
But the state priests
knew better, and moved at once to destroy the factory committees and to reduce
the Soviets to organs of their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a
"Draft Decree on Workers' Control" that delegates elected to exercise
such control were to be "answerable to the state for the maintenance of
the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property." As
the year ended, Lenin noted that "we passed from workers' control to the
creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," which was to
"replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control"
(Carr). "The very idea of socialism is embodied in the concept of workers'
control," one Menshevik trade unionist lamented. The Bolshevik leadership
expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.
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