No, far from it. While it is impossible to quote everything a person or an ideology says, it is possible to summarise those aspects of a theory which influenced the way it developed in practice. As such, any account is "selective" in some sense, the question is whether this results in a critiqued rooted in the ideology and its practice or whether it presents a picture at odds with both. As Maurice Brinton puts it in the introduction to his classic account of workers' control in the Russian Revolution:
"Other charges will also be made. The quotations from Lenin and Trotsky will not be denied but it will be stated that they are 'selective' and that 'other things, too' were said. Again, we plead guilty. But we would stress that there are hagiographers enough in the trade whose 'objectivity' . . . is but a cloak for sophisticated apologetics . . . It therefore seems more relevant to quote those statements of the Bolsheviks leaders of 1917 which helped determine Russia's evolution [towards Stalinism] rather those other statements which, like the May Day speeches of Labour leaders, were for ever to remain of rhetoric." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xv]
Hence the need to discuss all aspects of Marxism rather than take what its adherents like to claim for it as granted. In this, we agree with Marx himself who argued that we cannot judge people by what they say about themselves but rather what they do. Unfortunately while many self-proclaimed Marxists (like Trotsky) may quote these comments, fewer apply them to their own ideology or actions (again, like Trotsky).
This can be seen from the almost ritualistic way many Marxists response to anarchist (or other) criticisms of their ideas. When they complain that anarchists "selectively" quote from the leading proponents of Marxism, they are usually at pains to point people to some document which they have selected as being more "representative" of their tradition. Leninists usually point to Lenin's State and Revolution, for example, for a vision of what Lenin "really" wanted. To this anarchists reply by, as we discussed in section H.1.7 (Haven't you read Lenin's "State and Revolution"?), pointing out that much of that passes for 'Marxism' in State and Revolution is anarchist and, equally important, it was not applied in practice. This explains an apparent contradiction. Leninists point to the Russian Revolution as evidence for the democratic nature of their politics. Anarchists point to it as evidence of Leninism's authoritarian nature. Both can do this because there is a substantial difference between Bolshevism before it took power and afterwards. While the Leninists ask you to judge them by their manifesto, anarchists say judge them by their record!
Simply put, Marxists quote selectively from their own tradition, ignoring those aspects of it which would be unappealing to potential recruits. While the leaders may know their tradition has skeletons in its closet, they try their best to ensure no one else gets to know. Which, of course, explains their hostility to anarchists doing so! That there is a deep divide between aspects of Marxist rhetoric and its practice and that even its rhetoric is not consistent we will now prove. By so doing, we can show that anarchists do not, in fact, quote Marxist's "selectively."
As an example, we can point to the leading Bolshevik Grigorii Zinoviev. In 1920, as head of the Communist International he wrote a letter to the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary labour union, which stated that the "Russian Soviet Republic. . . is the most highly centralised government that exists. It is also the most democratic government in history. For all the organs of government are in constant touch with the working masses, and constantly sensitive to their will." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 2, p. 928] The same year, he explained in a Communist journal that "soviet rule in Russia could not have been maintained for three years — not even three weeks — without the iron dictatorship of the Communist Party. Any class conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the working class can by achieved only by the dictatorship of its vanguard, i.e., by the Communist Party . . . All questions . . ., on which the fate of the proletarian revolution depends absolutely, are decided . . . in the framework of the party organisations." [quoted by Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, pp. 239-40] It seems redundant to note that the second quote is the accurate one, the one which matches the reality of Bolshevik Russia. Therefore it is hardly "selective" to quote the latter and not the former, rather it expresses what was actually happening.
This duality and the divergence between practice and rhetoric comes to the fore when Trotskyists discuss Stalinism and try to counter pose the Leninist tradition to it. For example, we find the British SWP's Chris Harman arguing that the "whole experience of the workers' movement internationally teaches that only by regular elections, combined with the right of recall by shop-floor meetings can rank-and-file delegates be made really responsible to those who elect them." [Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe, pp. 238-9] Significantly, Harman does not mention that both Lenin and Trotsky rejected this experience (see section H.3.8 for a full discussion on how Leninism argues for state power explicitly to eliminate such control from below). How can Trotsky's comment that the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party is . . . an objective necessity" be reconciled with it? And what of the claim that the "revolutionary party (vanguard) which renounces its own dictatorship surrenders the masses to the counter-revolution"? [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4] Or his similar argument sixteen years earlier that the Party was "entitled to assert its dictatorship even if that dictatorship clashed with the passing moods of the workers' democracy"? [quoted by Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 78]
The ironies do not stop there, of course. Harman correctly notes that under Stalinism, the "bureaucracy is characterised, like the private capitalist class in the West, by its control over the means of production." [Op. Cit., p. 147] However, he fails to note that it was Lenin, in early 1918, who had raised and then implemented such "control" in the form of "one-man management." As he put it: "Obedience, and unquestioning obedience at that, during work to the one-man decisions of Soviet directors, of the dictators elected or appointed by Soviet institutions, vested with dictatorial powers." [Six Theses on the Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government, p. 44] To fail to note this link between Lenin and the Stalinist bureaucracy on this issue is quoting "selectively."
The contradictions pile up. He argues that "people who seriously believe that workers at the height of revolution need a police guard to stop them handing their factories over to capitalists certainly have no real faith in the possibilities of a socialist future." [Op. Cit., p. 144] Yet this does not stop him praising the regime of Lenin and Trotsky and contrasting it with Stalinism, in spite of the fact that this was precisely what the Bolsheviks did from 1918 onwards! Indeed this tyrannical practice played a role in provoking the strikes in Petrograd which preceded the Kronstadt revolt in 1921, when "the workers wanted the special squads of armed Bolsheviks, who carried out a purely police function, withdrawn from the factories." Paul Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, p. 42] It seems equally strange that Harman denounces the Stalinist suppression of the Hungarian revolution for workers' democracy and socialism while he defends the Bolshevik suppression of the Kronstadt revolt for the same goals (and as we discuss in the appendix "What was the Kronstadt Rebellion?", the rationales both regimes used to justify their actions were akin).
Similarly, when Harman argues that if by "political party" it is "meant a party of the usual sort, in which a few leaders give orders and the masses merely obey . . . then certainly such organisations added nothing to the Hungarian revolution." However, as we discuss in section H.5, such a party was precisely what Leninism argued for and applied in practice. Simply put, the Bolsheviks were never a party "that stood for the councils taking power." [Op. Cit., p. 186 and p. 187] As Lenin repeatedly stressed, its aim was for the Bolshevik party to take power through the councils (see section H.3.11).
This confusion between what was promised and what was done is a common feature of Leninism. Felix Morrow, for example, wrote what is usually considered the definitive Trotskyist work on the Spanish Revolution (in spite of it being, as we discuss in the appendix "Marxists and Spanish Anarchism," deeply flawed). In that work he states that the "essential points of a revolutionary program [are] all power to the working class, and democratic organs of the workers, peasants and combatants, as the expression of the workers' power." [Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, p. 133] How this can be reconciled with Trotsky's comment, written in the same year, that "a revolutionary party, even after seizing power . . . is still by no means the sovereign ruler of society."? Or the opinion that it was "only thanks to the party dictatorship [that] were the Soviets able to lift themselves out of the mud of reformism and attain the state form of the proletariat"? [Stalinism and Bolshevism] Or Lenin's opinion that "an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship" and that it "can be exercised only by a vanguard"? [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21] How can the working class "have all power" if power is held by a vanguard party? Particularly when this party has power specifically to enable it "overcom[e] the vacillation of the masses themselves." [Trotsky, The Moralists and Sycophants, p. 59]
Given all this, who is quoting who "selectively"? The Marxists who ignore what the Bolsheviks did when in power and repeatedly point to Lenin's State and Revolution or the anarchists who link what they did with what they said outside of that holy text? Considering this absolutely contradictory inheritance, anarchists feel entitled to ask the question "Will the real Leninist please stand up?" What is it to be, popular democracy or party rule? If we look at Bolshevik practice, the answer is the latter. As we discuss in section H.3.8, the likes of Lenin and Trotsky concur, incorporating the necessity of party power into their ideology as a lesson of the revolution. As such, anarchists do not feel they are quoting Leninism "selectively" when they argue that it is based on party power, not working class self-management. That Leninists often publicly deny this aspect of their own ideology or, at best, try to rationalise and justify it, suggests that when push comes to shove (as it does in every revolution) they will make the same decisions and act in the same way!
In addition there is the question of what could be called the "social context." Marxists often accuse anarchists of failing to place the quotations and actions of, say, the Bolsheviks into the circumstances which generated them. By this they mean that Bolshevik authoritarianism can be explained purely in terms of the massive problems facing them (i.e. the rigours of the Civil War, the economic collapse and chaos in Russia and so on). As we discuss this question in the appendix on "What caused the degeneration of the Russian Revolution?", we will simply summarise the anarchist reply by noting that this argument has three major problems with it. Firstly, there is the problem that Bolshevik authoritarianism started before the start of the Civil War (as we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?") and, moreover, continued after its ends. As such, the Civil War cannot be blamed. The second problem is simply that Lenin continually stressed that civil war and economic chaos was inevitable during a revolution. If Leninist politics cannot handle the inevitable then they are to be avoided. Equally, if Leninists blame what they should know is inevitable for the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution it would suggest their understanding of what revolution entails is deeply flawed. The last problem is simply that the Bolsheviks did not care. As Samuel Farber notes, "there is no evidence indicating that Lenin or any of the mainstream Bolshevik leaders lamented the loss of workers' control or of democracy in the soviets, or at least referred to these losses as a retreat, as Lenin declared with the replacement of War Communism by NEP in 1921." [Before Stalinism, p. 44] Hence the continuation (indeed, intensification) of Bolshevik authoritarianism after their victory in the civil war. Given this, it is significant that many of the quotes from Trotsky given above date from the late 1930s. To argue, therefore, that "social context" explains the politics and actions of the Bolsheviks seems incredulous.
Lastly, it seems ironic that Marxists accuse anarchists of quoting "selectively." After all, as proven in section H.2, this is exactly what Marxists do to anarchism! Indeed, anarchists often make good propaganda out of such activity by showing how selective their accounts are and how at odds they are with want anarchism actually stands for and what anarchists actually do (see the appendix of our FAQ on "Anarchism and Marxism").
In summary, rather than quote "selectively" from the works and practice of Marxism, anarchists summarise those tendencies of both which, we argue, contribute to its continual failure in practice as a revolutionary theory. Moreover, Marxists themselves are equally as "selective" as anarchists in this respect. Firstly, as regards anarchist theory and practice and, secondly, as regards their own.