Marx and his followers have been the most influential of all socialists. For much of the twentieth century, in fact, roughly one-third of the world’s population lived in countries governed by regimes that claimed to be Marxist. But Marx and the Marxists have by no means been the only founts of socialist or communist theory and practice. As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, there have been, and continue to be, many non-Marxian voices in the socialist chorus. Indeed, there are so many varieties of non-Marxian socialism that we can scarcely list them, much less describe them in any detail. Nevertheless, we can conclude our history of socialism with brief discussions of several of the more important and influential varieties of non-Marxist socialism.
Anarcho-Communism
Marx’s main rivals within the ranks of the European socialist movement were the anar-chists.44We have already seen, in Chapter 1, that anarchists agree only on one key point:
that the state is an evil coercive institution that ought to be abolished and replaced by a system of noncoercive voluntary cooperation. But there the agreement ends. Some anarchists are radical individualists, others are communalists. Some advocate the vio-lent overthrow of the state, others are pacifists who advocate a more peaceful path to a cooperative society. With the exception of the libertarian or individualist anarchists discussed in Chapter 3, however, all have played a part in the socialist tradition.
One of the earliest attempts to articulate and defend anarchism was William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Godwin, an Englishman, maintained that the state was by its very nature oppressive, and likely to become more so unless somehow stopped. One way to do this, he thought, was by making communities small enough to be governed directly by their members so as not to need the coercive control of the state. So far as property ownership was concerned, however, Godwin was not a consistent communist.45 In this respect he differs from many later anarchists who held that the state is necessary as long as property is pri-vately owned. For these socialist anarchists, or anarcho-communists, the abolition of the state and the abolition of private property are two sides of the same coin.
In contrast to the popular image of the bomb-throwing anarchist, many anar-cho-communists have also made a strong moral case for pacifism and nonviolence.
One of these, the Russian Count Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)—author of War and Peace and other great novels—held fast to the principle that violence in any form is always wrong. A devout Christian, Tolstoy believed that this principle applies to the violence that the state does or is prepared to do to its own citizens. Why else, he asks, does it maintain a system of police, courts, tax collectors, and prisons? Why else does it employ an executioner? Without these means, whereby one human being does violence to another, the state would not exist. The state is, by its very nature, a violent institution. Violence being categorically wrong, the only moral thing to do
is to get rid of the state, replacing it with a system of voluntary cooperation in which every person assists others and is in turn assisted by them.
How can such a society be brought into being? Peacefully, Tolstoy believed. The transition to anarchy can and should be accomplished by the power of persuasion—by persuading the rich to part with their wealth (as Tolstoy had with his) and by persuad-ing everyone to withdraw support from the state and its institutions. But on this point there has been considerable disagreement among anarchists. Some, such as Tolstoy’s countrymen Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) and Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), have held that violent means may be required to eliminate the main source of violence, the state. For Bakunin, destruction can even be creative, as it is when people rise up to destroy the state—the master that enslaves them—and liberate themselves.46
It is easy to see why Marx regarded the anarchists with contempt, and why they viewed him with such suspicion. Marx, as we saw in Chapter 5, believed that the
Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
T. Kajiwara/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-48793]
transition from capitalism to communism required that the victorious revolutionar-ies seize state power in order to prevent the defeated bourgeoisie from mounting a counterrevolution. When it was no longer needed, Marx predicted, this transitional state, or “dictatorship of the proletariat,” would finally “wither away.” This pre-diction was regarded with particular scorn by Bakunin, a Russian nobleman turned radical anarchist. A huge heavily bearded bear of a man with a booming voice and an acid-tipped pen, Bakunin turned both against Marx. In Statism and Anarchy (1874) Bakunin mounted a prophetic and withering criticism of Marx’s claim that the state would, or could, spontaneously self-destruct. The state, said Bakunin, is not like that; its natural tendency is not to disappear but to acquire more and more power, to grow ever more oppressive and violent, and to subject its citizens to increasingly stringent scrutiny and control. This is as true of a so-called “workers’ state” as of the state controlled by the bourgeoisie. In fact, Bakunin added, the workers’ state is likely to be even more oppressive, for it—unlike the bourgeois state—has no militant and organized working class to oppose it and to check its growth.47
A rather different defense of anarchism was advanced by Kropotkin, particularly in Mutual Aid (1902). Because he was a Russian prince who had renounced his title in order to express a sense of solidarity with the common people, the Russian police kept a close watch on Kropotkin. In 1874 he was arrested for illegal political activi-ties and sent to Siberia. After serving two years of his sentence, he made a daring escape and, like many political refugees, made his way to England—and an exile that was to last forty-two years. Much influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin and other prominent nineteenth-century scientists, Kropotkin accepted the view that all species evolve according to inexorable laws of development. He took this to mean that the human species is steadily evolving and that society will eventually become more peaceful and cooperative. By means of concerted political action, he thought, these processes of change can be speeded up and the state abolished and replaced by a noncoercive anarchist society. Indeed, he argued that the political lesson of Dar-win’s theory—contrary to the Social Darwinists’ emphasis on competition between individuals—is that survival is likely to be the reward of those who learn to engage in “mutual aid” and cooperate for the common good.48 When in 1917, after long years in exile, Kropotkin finally returned to Russia, he was pleased to see the Tsar’s and the nobility’s demise, but deeply disappointed by their Bolshevik replacements.
Another Russian-born anarcho-communist, Emma Goldman (1869–1940), came to prominence in the United States, where she became known as “Red Emma.”
Like the other anarcho-communists, Goldman thought of anarchism as “the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive”—phantoms such as God, the state, and property. Anarchism, she declared, “really stands for the libera-tion of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberalibera-tion of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraints of government.”49 To these concerns she added the feminist theme of liberation of women from the exploitation of men. Just as capitalism oppresses working men (and women), she argued, so marriage oppresses women. Capitalism, Goldman declared,
robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in igno-rance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man’s self-respect.
The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent.
It incapacitates her for life’s struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.50
As an advocate of “free love,” Goldman also championed the cause of birth control—
and, as a result, served a prison term. In 1919 the U.S. government deported her to her native Russia, where she became an outspoken critic of the new Bolshevik regime.