LAW MORALS

Law Morals

Law Morals

Since the Nineteenth century Marxism and anarchism have confronted each other as the two dominant strains of revolutionary thought. Some Marxists claim that in fact Marxism is not a statist or vanguardist ideology. Like all Marxists they also generally dismiss anarchism as utopian, marginal and non-scientific. The aim of this article is to show that Marx and Engels were deeply ambiguous on the nature of the state and the party, and that the criticisms by anarchists of them were and remain valid.Far from being utopian anarchism has the same materialist origins as Marxism and, far from being marginal, has had a huge influence among workers since the nineteenth century. As Daniel Guerin put it:

"Anarchism and Marxism at the start , drank at the same proletarian spring" (2)

Since then many anarchists have, unfortunately, tended to demonise Marx. The genius of Marx and Engels was in the way they were able to combine the materialism of Hegel [sic] with various economic theories to come up with a critique of capitalism. By Marx's own admission Capital his major economic work is a synthesis of ideas from right-wing economists like Adam Smith to socialists like the Irishman William Thompson. One of Marx's main contributions was to popularise the labour theory of value (though he was not the first to come up with this idea). Put crudely this is the idea that all material goods or commodities have another value besides their actual usefulness (or use-value). This value is determined by the amount of labour required to produce them. The capitalist does not pay this full value in wages (which only provide enough to feed and maintain the worker) the rest is held back as surplus value or profit.(3)

Thus workers have a real material interest in overthrowing capitalism. As well as this Marx pointed to capitalism's tendency to bring workers together in large workplaces where they can struggle together. This creates the social basis for labour organisation and the realisation of collective class interests. Before Marx socialists were aware that workers were exploited but they had no explanation of the economic basis of this exploitation. The mechanics of capitalism were not understood.

Bakunin and his followers fully accepted this and other ideas in Marx's critique of capitalism. In fact Bakunin began the translation of Capital into Russian and the Italian anarchist Carlo Cafiero published a summary of the same work in Italian.

With regards to materialism Bakunin begins his seminal work God and State (4) by clearly taking sides. He asks:

Who are right, The idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists are right

What are the divisions between anarchists and Marxists? You don't need a degree in political science to figure out the major one:

Marx and Engels saw the State as being a product of class struggle. It was the executive committee of the ruling class. It was an instrument by which one class rules ...