According to many Marxists anarchists either reject the idea of defending a revolution or think that it is not necessary.
The Trotskyists of Workers' Power present a typical Marxist account of what they consider as anarchist ideas on this subject:
"the anarchist conclusion is not to build any sort of state in the first place — not even a democratic workers' state. But how could we stop the capitalists trying to get their property back, something they will definitely try and do?
"Should the people organise to stop the capitalists raising private armies and resisting the will of the majority? If the answer is yes, then that organisation - whatever you prefer to call it — is a state: an apparatus designed to enable one class to rule over another.
"The anarchists are rejecting something which is necessary if we are to beat the capitalists and have a chance of developing a classless society." ["What's wrong with anarchism?", World Revolution: PragueS26 2000, pp. 12-13, p. 13]
It would be simple to quote Malatesta on this issue and leave it at that. As he argued in 1891, some people "seem almost to believe that after having brought down government and private property we would allow both to be quietly built up again, because of respect for the freedom of those who might feel the need to be rulers and property owners. A truly curious way of interpreting our ideas." [Anarchy, p. 41] Pretty much common sense, so you would think! Sadly, this appears to not be the case. As Malatesta pointed out 30 years latter, the followers of Bolshevism "are incapable of conceiving freedom and of respecting for all human beings the dignity they expect, or should expect, from others. If one speaks of freedom they immediately accuse one of wanting to respect, or at least tolerate, the freedom to oppress and exploit one's fellow beings." [Life and Ideas, p. 145] As such, we have to explain anarchist ideas on the defence of a revolution and why this necessity need not imply a state and, if it does, then it signifies the end of the revolution.
The argument by Workers' Power is very common with the Leninist left and contains numerous fallacies and so we shall base our discussion on it. This discussion, of necessity, implies three issues. Firstly, we have to show that anarchists have always seen the necessity of defending a revolution. This shows that the anarchist opposition to the "democratic workers' state" (or "dictatorship of the proletariat") has nothing to do with beating the ruling class and stopping them regaining their positions of power. Secondly, we have to discuss the anarchist and Marxist definitions of what constitutes a "state" and show what they have in common and how they differ. Thirdly, we must summarise why anarchists oppose the idea of a "workers' state" in order for the real reasons why anarchists oppose it to be understood. Each issue will be discussed in turn.
For revolutionary anarchists, it is a truism that a revolution will need to defend itself against counter-revolutionary threats. Bakunin, for example, while strenuously objecting to the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (see section H.1.1 for details) also thought a revolution would need to defend itself. In his words:
"Immediately after established governments have been overthrown, communes will have to reorganise themselves along revolutionary lines . . . In order to defend the revolution, their volunteers will at the same time form a communal militia. But no commune can defend itself in isolation. So it will be necessary to radiate revolution outward, to raise all of its neighbouring communes in revolt . . . and to federate with them for common defence." [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 142]
And:
"the Alliance of all labour associations . . . will constitute the Commune . . . there will be a standing federation of the barricades and a Revolutionary Communal Council . . . [made up of] delegates . . . invested with binding mandates and accountable and revocable at all times . . . all provinces, communes and associations . . . [will] delegate deputies to an agreed place of assembly (all . . . invested with binding mandated and accountable and subject to recall), in order to found the federation of insurgent associations, communes and provinces . . . and to organise a revolutionary force with the capacity of defeating the reaction . . . it is through the very act of extrapolation and organisation of the Revolution with an eye to the mutual defences of insurgent areas that the universality of the Revolution . . . will emerge triumphant." [Op. Cit., vol. 1, pp. 155-6]
Malatesta agreed, arguing for the "creation of voluntary militia, without powers to interfere as militia in the life of the community, but only to deal with any armed attacks by the forces of reaction to re-establish themselves, or to resist outside intervention." The workers must "take possession of the factories" and "federate amongst themselves" and only "the people in arms, in possession of the land, the factories and all the natural wealth" could defend a revolution [Life and Ideas, p. 166, p. 165 and p. 170] Alexander Berkman concurred: "The armed workers and peasants are the only effective defence of the revolution. By means of their unions and syndicates they must always be on guard against counter-revolutionary attack." [ABC of Anarchism, p. 82] Emma Goldman clearly and unambiguously stated that she had "always insisted that an armed attack on the Revolution must be met with armed force" and that "an armed counter-revolutionary and fascist attack can be met in no way except by an armed defence." [Vision on Fire, p. 222 and p. 217]
Clearly, anarchism has always recognised the necessity of defending a revolution and proposed ideas to ensure it (ideas applied with great success by, for example, the Makhnovists in the Ukrainian Revolution and the C.N.T militias during the Spanish). As such, any assertion that anarchism rejects the necessity of defending a revolution are simply false.
Which, of course, brings us to the second assertion, namely that any attempt to defend a revolution means that a state has been created (regardless of what it may be called). For anarchists, such an argument simply shows that Marxists do not really understand what a state is. While the Trotskyist definition of a "state" is "an apparatus designed to enable one class to rule another," the anarchist definition is somewhat different. Anarchists, of course, do not deny that the modern state is (to use Malatesta's excellent expression) "the bourgeoisie's servant and gendarme." [Anarchy, p. 20] Every state that has ever existed has defended the power of a minority class and, unsurprisingly, has developed certain features to facilitate this. The key one is centralisation of power. This ensures that the working people are excluded from the decision making process and power remains a tool of the ruling class. As such, the centralisation of power (while it may take many forms) is the key means by which a class system is maintained and, therefore, a key aspect of a state. As Kropotkin put, the "state idea . . . includes the existence of a power situated above society . . . a territorial concentration as well as the concentration of many functions of the life of societies in the hands of a few." [Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, p. 213] This was the case with representative democracy:
"To attack the central power, to strip it of its prerogatives, to decentralise, to dissolve authority, would have been to abandon to the people the control of its affairs, to run the risk of a truly popular revolution. That is why the bourgeoisie sought to reinforce the central government even more. . ." [Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 143]
This meant that the "representative system was organised by the bourgeoisie to ensure their domination, and it will disappear with them. For the new economic phase that is about to begin we must seek a new form of political organisation, based on a principle quite different from that of representation. The logic of events imposes it." [Op. Cit., p. 125] So while we agree with Marxists that the main function of the state is to defend class society, we also stress the structure of the state has evolved to execute that role. In the words of Rudolf Rocker:
"[S]ocial institutions . . . do not arise arbitrarily, but are called into being by special needs to serve definite purposes . . . The newly arisen possessing classes had need of a political instrument of power to maintain their economic and social privileges over the masses of their own people . . . Thus arose the appropriate social conditions for the evolution of the modern state, as the organ of political power of privileged castes and classes for the forcible subjugation and oppression of the non-possessing classes . . . Its external forms have altered in the course of its historical development, but its functions have always been the same . . . And just as the functions of the bodily organs of . . . animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass-exploitation and social privileges, and creator of privileged classes." [Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 20]
As such, a new form of society, one based on the participation of all in the affairs of society (and a classless society can be nothing else) means the end of the state. This is because it has been designed to exclude the participation a classless society needs in order to exist. In anarchist eyes, it is an abuse of the language to call the self-managed organisations by which the former working class manage (and defend) a free society a state. If it was simply a question of consolidating a revolution and its self-defence then there would be no argument:
"But perhaps the truth is simply this: . . . [some] take the expression 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labour, and trying to build a society and organise a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers.
"Thus constructed, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everyone, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.
"But the real supporters of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one' party's leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and above all its armed forces, which are at present [1919] also deployed in the defence of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictator's will upon the workers, to apply a break on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses." [Malatesta, No Gods, No Masters, vol. 2, pp. 38-9]
The question is, therefore, one of who "seizes power" — will it be the mass of the population or will it be a party claiming to represent the mass of the population. The difference is vital and it confuses the issue to use the same word "state" to describe two such fundamentally different structures as a "bottom-up" self-managed communal federation and a "top-down" hierarchical centralised organisation (such as has been every state that has existed). This explains why anarchists reject the idea of a "democratic workers' state" as the means by which a revolution defends itself. Rather than signify working class power or management of society, it signifies the opposite — the seizure of power of a minority (in this case, the leaders of the vanguard party).
Anarchists argue that the state is designed to exclude the mass of the population from the decision making process. This, ironically for Trotskyism, was one of the reasons why leading Bolsheviks (including Lenin and Trotsky) argued for a workers state. The centralisation of power implied by the state was essential so that the vanguard party could ignore the "the will of the majority." This particular perspective was clearly a lesson they learned from their experiences during the Russian Revolution.
As noted in section H.1.2, Lenin was arguing in 1920 that "the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised through an organisation embracing the whole of the class, because in all capitalist countries (and not only over here, in one of the most backward) the proletariat is still so divided, so degraded, and so corrupted in parts . . . that an organisation taking in the whole proletariat cannot directly exercise proletarian dictatorship. It can be exercised only by a vanguard . . . Such is the basic mechanism of the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the essentials of transitions from capitalism to communism . . . for the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be exercised by a mass proletarian organisation." [Collected Works, vol. 32, p. 21]
This argument, as can be seen, was considered of general validity and, moreover, was merely stating mainstream Bolshevik ideology. It was repeated in March 1923 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party in a statement issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. This statement summarised the lessons gained from the Russian revolution. It stated that "the party of the Bolsheviks proved able to stand out fearlessly against the vacillations within its own class, vacillations which, with the slightest weakness in the vanguard, could turn into an unprecedented defeat for the proletariat." Vacillations, of course, are expressed by workers' democracy. Little wonder the statement rejects it: "The dictatorship of the working class finds its expression in the dictatorship of the party." ["To the Workers of the USSR" in G. Zinoviev, History of the Bolshevik Party, p. 213, p. 214] It should be noted that this Central Committee included Trotsky who, in the same year, was stating that "[i]f there is one question which basically not only does not require revision but does not so much as admit the thought of revision, it is the question of the dictatorship of the Party." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 158]
Needless to say, Workers' Power (like most Trotskyists) blame the degeneration of the Russian revolution on the Civil War and its isolation. However, as these statements make clear, the creation of a party dictatorship was not seen in these terms. Rather, it was considered a necessity to suppress democracy and replace it by party rule. Indeed, as noted in section H.1.2, Trotsky was still arguing in 1937 for the "objective necessity" for the "dictatorship of a party" due to the "heterogeneity" of the working class. [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4] Moreover, as we discuss in detail in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolshevik undermining of working class autonomy and democracy started well before the outbreak of civil war, thus confirming anarchist theory. These conclusions of leading Leninists simply justified the actions undertaken by the Bolsheviks from the start.
This is why anarchists reject the idea of a "democratic workers' state." Simply put, as far as it is a state, it cannot be democratic and in as far as it is democratic, it cannot be a state. The Leninist idea of a "workers' state" means, in fact, the seizure of power by the party. This, we must stress, naturally follows from the idea of the state. It is designed for minority rule and excludes, by its very nature, mass participation. As can be seen, this aspect of the state is one which the leading lights of Bolshevik agreed with. Little wonder, then, that in practice the Bolshevik regime suppressed of any form of democracy which hindered the power of the party (see the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"). Maurice Brinton sums up the issue well when he argued that "'workers' power' cannot be identified or equated with the power of the Party — as it repeatedly was by the Bolsheviks . . . What 'taking power' really implies is that the vast majority of the working class at last realises its ability to manage both production and society — and organises to this end." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xiv]
In summary, therefore, anarchists reject the idea that the defence of a revolution can be conducted by a state. As Bakunin once put it, there is the "Republic-State" and there is "the system of the Republic-Commune, the Republic-Federation, i.e. the system of Anarchism. This is the politics of the Social Revolution, which aims at the abolition of the State and establishment of the economic, entirely free organisation of the people — organisation from bottom to top by means of federation." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 314] Indeed, creating a new state will simply destroy the most important gain of any revolution — working class autonomy — and its replacement by another form of minority rule (by the party). Anarchists have always argued that the defence of a revolution must not be confused with the state and so argue for the abolition of the state and the defence of a revolution (also see section H.1.3 for more discussion). Only when working class people actually run themselves society will a revolution be successful. For anarchists, this means that "effective emancipation can be achieved only by the direct, widespread, and independent action . . . of the workers themselves, grouped . . . in their own class organisations . . . on the basis of concrete action and self-government, helped but not governed, by revolutionaries working in the very midst of, and not above the mass and the professional, technical, defence and other branches." [Voline, The Unknown Revolution, p. 197] This means that anarchists argue that the capitalist state cannot be transformed or adjusted, but has to be smashed by a social revolution and replaced with organisations and structures created by working class people during their own struggles (see section H.1.4 for details).
For a further discussion of anarchist ideas on defending a revolution, please consult sections I.5.14 and J.7.6.