A key idea in most forms of Marxism is that the evolution of capitalism itself will create the preconditions for socialism. This is because capitalism tends to result in big business and, correspondingly, increased numbers of workers subject to the "socialised" production process within the workplace. The conflict between the socialised means of production and their private ownership is at the heart of the Marxist case for socialism. Engels writes:

"Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufacturies, their transformation into actual socialised means of production and socialised producers. But the socialised producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before . . . the owner of the instruments of labour . . . appropriated to himself . . . exclusively the product of the labour of others. Thus, the product now produced socially were not appropriated by those who actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. . . . The mode of production is subjected to this [individual or private] form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

"This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today." [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 704]

It is the economic crises of capitalism which show this contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation the best. Indeed, the "fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises." The pressures of socialised production results in capitalists merging their properties "in a particular branch of industry in a particular country" into "a trust, a union for the purpose of regulating production." In this way, "the production of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society." This "transformation" can take the form of "joint-stock companies and trusts, or into state ownership." Even state ownership does not change the "capitalist relation" although this does have "concealed within it" the "technical conditions that form the elements of that solution." This "shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into state property." [Op. Cit., p. 709, p. 710, p. 711, p. 712 and p. 713]

Thus the centralisation and concentration of production into bigger and bigger units, into big business, is seen as the evidence of the need for socialism. It provides the objective grounding for socialism, and, in fact, this analysis is what makes Marxism "scientific socialism." This process explains how human society develops through time:

"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. . . At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces come in conflict with the existing relations of production or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed." [Marx, Op. Cit., pp. 4-5]

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that socialism will come about due to tendencies inherent within the development of capitalism. The "socialisation" of labour implied by collective labour within a firm grows steadily as capitalist companies grow larger and larger. The objective need for socialism is therefore created and so, for most Marxists, "big is beautiful." Indeed, some Leninists have invented terminology to describe these aspects of the "invading socialistic society" associated with the rise of big business. They contrast the "law of planning" associated with the conscious planning of economic activity on a wider and wider scale by large companies to the "law of value" which operates in the market. In other words, that the increased size of capital means that more and more of the economy is subject to the despotism of the owners and managers of capital and so the "anarchy" of the market is slowly replaced with the conscious planning of resources. Marxists sometimes call this the "objective socialisation of labour" (to use Mandel's term).

Therefore, there is a tendency for Marxists to see the increased size and power of big business as providing objective evidence for socialism, which will bring these socialistic tendencies within capitalism to full light and full development. Needless to say, most will argue that socialism, while developing planning fully, will replace the autocratic and hierarchical planning of big business with democratic, society-wide planning.

This position, for anarchists, has certain problems associated with it. One key drawback, as we discuss in the next section, is it focuses attention away from the internal organisation within the workplace and industry onto ownership and links between economic units. It ends up confusing capitalism with the market relations between firms rather than identifying it with its essence, the labour market and the wage slavery this generates. This meant that many Marxists considered that the basis of a socialist economy was guaranteed once property was nationalised. The anarchist critique that this simply replaced a multitude of bosses with one, the state, was (and is) ignored.

The other key problem is that such a perspective tends to dismiss as irrelevant the way production is managed. Rather than seeing socialism as being dependent on workers' management of production, this position ends up seeing socialism as being dependent on organisational links between workplaces, as exemplified by big business under capitalism. Thus the "relations of production" which matter are not those associated with wage labour but rather those associated with the market. This can be seen from the famous comment in The Manifesto of the Communist Party. The bourgeoisie, it argues "cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society." [Marx-Engels Reader, p. 476] But the one relation of production it cannot revolutionise is the one generated by the wage labour at the heart of capitalism, the hierarchical relations at the point of production. As such, it is clear that by "relations of production" Marx and Engels meant something else than wage slavery, the internal organisation of what they term "socialised production."

Capitalism is, in general, as dynamic as Marx and Engels stressed. It transforms the means of production, the structure of industry and the links between workplaces constantly. Yet it only modifies the form of the organisation of labour, not its content. No matter how it transforms machinery and the internal structure of companies, the workers are still wage slaves. At best, it simply transforms much of the hierarchy which governs the workforce into hired managers. This does not transform the fundamental social relationship of capitalism, however. Thus the "relations of production" which prefigure socialism is, precisely, those associated with the "socialisation of the labour process" which occurs within capitalism and are no way antagonistic to it.

This is confirmed when Marx, in his polemic against Proudhon, argues that social relations "are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist." [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 166] On the face of it, this had better not be true. After all, the aim of socialism is to expropriate the property of the industrial capitalist. If the social relationships are dependent on the productive forces then, clearly, socialism is impossible as it will have to be based, initially, on the legacy of capitalism. Fortunately, the way a workplace is managed is not predetermined by the technological base of society. As is obvious, a steam-mill can be operated by a co-operative, so making the industrial capitalist redundant. The claim that a given technological-level implies a specific social structure is, therefore, wrong. However, it does suggest that our comments that, for Marx and Engels, the new "social relationships" which develop under capitalism which imply socialism are relations between workplaces, not those between individuals and classes are correct. The implications of this position because clear during the Russian revolution.

Later Marxists built upon this "scientific" groundwork. Lenin, for example, argued that "the difference between a socialist revolution and a bourgeois revolution is that in the latter case there are ready made forms of capitalist relationships; Soviet power [in Russia] does not inherit such ready made relationships, if we leave out of account the most developed forms of capitalism, which, strictly speaking, extended to a small top layer of industry and hardly touched agriculture." [Collected Works, vol. 27, p. 90] Thus, for Lenin, "socialist" relationships are generated within big business, relationships "socialism" would "inherit" and universalise. As such, his comments fit in with the analysis of Marx and Engels we have presented above. However, his comments also reveal that Lenin had no idea that socialism meant the transformation of the relations of production, i.e. workers managing their own activity. This, undoubtedly, explains the systematic undermining of the factory committee movement by the Bolsheviks in favour of state control we discuss in section 10 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?".

The idea that socialism involved simply taking over the state and nationalising the "objectively socialised" means of production can be seen in both mainstream social-democracy and its Leninist child. Hilferding, for example, wrote Finance Capital which argued that capitalism was evolving into a highly centralised economy, run by big banks and big firms. All what was required to turn this into socialism would be its nationalisation:

"Once finance capital has brought the most important branches of production under its control, it is enough for society, through its conscious executive organ — the state conquered by the working class — to seize finance capital in order to gain immediate control of these branches of production. . . taking possession of six large Berlin banks would . . . greatly facilitate the initial phases of socialist policy during the transition period, when capitalist accounting might still prove useful." [pp. 367-8]

Lenin basically disagreed with this only in-so-far as the party of the proletariat would take power via revolution rather than by election ("the state conquered by the working class" equals the election of a socialist party). Lenin took it for granted that the difference between Marxists and anarchists is that "the former stand for centralised, large-scale communist production, while the latter stand for disconnected small production." The obvious implication of this is that anarchist views "express, not the future of bourgeois society, which is striving with irresistible force towards the socialisation of labour, but the present and even the past of that society, the domination of blind chance over the scattered and isolated small producer." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 261 and p. 205]

As we discuss in more detail in we discuss the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?"., Lenin applied this perspective during the Russian Revolution. For example, he argued in 1917 that his immediate aim was for a "state capitalist" economy, this being a necessary stage to socialism. As he put it, "socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly . . . socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly." [Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 211]

The Bolshevik road to "socialism" ran through the terrain of state capitalism and, in fact, simply built upon its institutionalised means of allocating recourses and structuring industry. As Lenin put it, "the modern state possesses an apparatus which has extremely close connections with the banks and syndicates, an apparatus which performs an enormous amount of accounting and registration work . . . This apparatus must not, and should not, be smashed. It must be wrestled from the control of the capitalists," it "must be subordinated to the proletarian Soviets" and "it must be expanded, made more comprehensive, and nation-wide." This meant that the Bolsheviks would "not invent the organisational form of work, but take it ready-made from capitalism" and "borrow the best models furnished by the advanced countries." [Op. Cit., p. 365 and p. 369]

The institutional framework of capitalism would be utilised as the principal (almost exclusive) instruments of "socialist" transformation. "Without big banks Socialism would be impossible," argued Lenin, as they "are the 'state apparatus' which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big . . . will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. This will be country-wide book-keeping, country-wide accounting of the production and distribution of goods." While this is "not fully a state apparatus under capitalism," it "will be so with us, under socialism." For Lenin, building socialism was easy. This "nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus" would be created "at one stroke, by a single decree." [Op. Cit., p. 365]

Once in power, the Bolsheviks implemented this vision of socialism being built upon the institutions created by monopoly capitalism. Moreover, Lenin quickly started to advocate and implement the most sophisticated capitalist methods of organising labour, including "one-man management" of production, piece-rates and Taylorism ("scientific management"). This was not done accidentally or because no alternative existed (as we discuss in we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?".). As Gustav Landuer commented, when mainstream Marxists "call the capitalist factory system a social production . . . we know the real implications of their socialist forms of labour." [For Socialism, p. 70] As can be seen, this glorification of large-scale, state-capitalist structures can be traced back to Marx and Engels, while Lenin's support for capitalist production techniques can be explained by mainstream Marxism's lack of focus on the social relationships at the point of production.

For anarchists, the idea that socialism can be built on the framework provided to us by capitalism is simply ridiculous. Capitalism has developed industry and technology to further the ends of those with power, namely capitalists and managers. Why should they use that power to develop technology and industrial structures which leads to workers' self-management and power rather than technologies and structures which enhance their own position vis-à-vis their workers and society as a whole? As such, technological and industrial development is not "neutral" or just the "application of science." They are shaped by class struggle and class interest and cannot be used for different ends. Simply put, socialism will need to develop new forms of economic organisation based on socialist principles. As such, the concept that monopoly capitalism paves the way for socialist society is rooted in the false assumption that the forms of social organisation accompanying capital concentration are identical with the socialisation of production, that the structures associated with collective labour under capitalism are the same as those required under socialism is achieve genuine socialisation. This false assumption, as can be seen, goes back to Engels and was shared by both Social-Democracy and Leninism despite their other differences.

While anarchists are inspired by a vision of a non-capitalist, decentralised, diverse society based on appropriate technology and appropriate scale, mainstream Marxism is not. Rather, it sees the problem with capitalism is that its institutions are not centralised and big enough. As Alexander Berkman correctly argues:

"The role of industrial decentralisation in the revolution is unfortunately too little appreciated. . . Most people are still in the thraldom of the Marxian dogma that centralisation is 'more efficient and economical.' They close their eyes to the fact that the alleged 'economy' is achieved at the cost of the workers' limb and life, that the 'efficiency' degrades him to a mere industrial cog, deadens his soul, kills his body. Furthermore, in a system of centralisation the administration of industry becomes constantly merged in fewer hands, producing a powerful bureaucracy of industrial overlords. It would indeed be the sheerest irony if the revolution were to aim at such a result. It would mean the creation of a new master class." [The ABC of Anarchism, pp. 80-1]

That mainstream Marxism is soaked in capitalist ideology can be seen from Lenin's comments that when "the separate establishments are amalgamated into a single syndicate, this economy [of production] can attain tremendous proportions, as economic science teaches us." [Op. Cit., p. 200] Yes, capitalist economic science, based on capitalist definitions of efficiency and economy and on capitalist criteria! That Bolshevism bases itself on centralised, large scale industry because it is more "efficient" and "economic" suggests nothing less than that its "socialism" will be based on the same priorities of capitalism. This can be seen from Lenin's idea that Russia had to learn from the advanced capitalist countries, that there was only one way to develop production and that was by adopting capitalist methods of "rationalisation" and management. In the words of Luigi Fabbri:

"Marxist communists, especially Russian ones, are beguiled by the distant mirage of big industry in the West or America and mistake for a system of production what is only a typically capitalist means of speculation, a means of exercising oppression all the more securely; and they do not appreciate that that sort of centralisation, far from fulfilling the real needs of production, is, on the contrary, precisely what restricts it, obstructs it and applies a brake to it in the interests of capital.

"Whenever [they] talk about 'necessity of production' they make no distinction between those necessities upon which hinge the procurement of a greater quantity and higher quality of products — this being all that matters from the social and communist point of view — and the necessities inherent in the bourgeois regime, the capitalists' necessity to make more profit even should it mean producing less to do so. If capitalism tends to centralise its operations, it does so not for the sake of production, but only for the sake of making and accumulating more money." ["Anarchy and 'Scientific' Communism", in The Poverty of Statism, pp. 13-49, Albert Meltzer (ed.), pp. 21-22]

Efficiency, in other words, does not exist independently of a given society or economy. What is considered "efficient" under capitalism may be the worse form of inefficiency in a free society. The idea that socialism may have different priorities, need different methods of organising production, have different visions of how an economy was structured than capitalism, is absent in mainstream Marxism. Lenin thought that the institutions of bourgeois economic power, industrial structure and capitalist technology and techniques could be "captured" and used for other ends. Ultimately, though, capitalist means and organisations can only generate capitalist ends. It is significant that the "one-man management," piece-work, Taylorism, etc. advocated and implemented under Lenin are usually listed by his followers as evils of Stalinism and as proof of its anti-socialist nature.

Equally, it can be argued that part of the reason why large capitalist firms can "plan" production on a large scale is because they reduce the decision making criteria to a few variables, the most significant being profit and loss. That such simplification of input data may result in decisions which harm people and the environment goes without a saying. "The lack of context and particularity," James C. Scott correctly notes, "is not an oversight; it is the necessary first premise of any large-scale planning exercise. To the degree that the subjects can be treated as standardised units, the power of resolution in the planning exercise is enhanced. Questions posed within these strict confines can have definitive, quantitative answers. The same logic applies to the transformation of the natural world. Questions about the volume of commercial wood or the yield of wheat in bushels permit more precise calculations than questions about, say, the quality of the soil, the versatility and taste of the grain, or the well-being of the community. The discipline of economics achieves its formidable resolving power by transforming what might otherwise be considered qualitative matters into quantitative issues with a single metric and, as it were, a bottom line: profit or loss." [Seeing like a State, p. 346] Whether a socialist society could factor in all the important inputs which capitalism ignores within an even more centralised planning structure is an important question. This does not mean that anarchists argue for "small-scale" production as many Marxists, like Lenin, assert (as we prove in section I.3.8, anarchists have always argued for appropriate levels of production and scale). It is simply to raise the possibility of what works under capitalism make be undesirable from a perspective which values people and planet instead of power and profit.

As should be obvious, anarchism is based on critical evaluation of technology and industrial structure, rejecting the whole capitalist notion of "progress" which has always been part of justifying the inhumanities of the status quo. Just because something is rewarded by capitalism it does not mean that it makes sense from a human or ecological perspective. This informs our vision of a free society and the current struggle. We have long argued that that capitalist methods cannot be used for socialist ends. In our battle to democratise and socialise the workplace, in our awareness of the importance of collective initiatives by the direct producers in transforming their work situation, we show that factories are not merely sites of production, but also of reproduction — the reproduction of a certain structure of social relations based on the division between those who give orders and those who take them, between those who direct and those who execute.

It goes without saying that anarchists recognise that a social revolution will have to start with the industry and technology which is left to it by capitalism and that this will have to be expropriated by the working class (this expropriation will, of course, involve transforming it and, in all likelihood, rejecting of numerous technologies, techniques and practices considered as "efficient" under capitalism). This is not the issue. The issue is who expropriates it and what happens to it next. For anarchists, the means of life are expropriated directly by society, for most Marxists they are expropriated by the state. For anarchists, such expropriation is based workers' self-management and so the fundamental capitalist "relation of production" (wage labour) is abolished. For most Marxists, state ownership of production is considered sufficient to ensure the end of capitalism (with, if we are lucky, some form of "workers' control" over those state officials who do management production — see section H.3.14).

In contrast to the mainstream Marxist vision of socialism being based around the institutions inherited from capitalism, anarchists have raised the idea that the "free commune" would be the "medium in which the ideas of modern Socialism may come to realisation." These "communes would federate" into wider groupings. Labour unions (or other working class organs created in the class struggle such as factory committees) were "not only an instrument for the improvement of the conditions of labour, but also of becoming an organisation which might . . . take into its hands the management of production." Large labour associations would "come into existence for the inter-communal service[s]." Such communes and workers' organisations as the basis of "Socialist forms of life could find a much easier realisation" than the "seizure of all industrial property by the State, and the State organisation of agriculture and industry." Thus railway network "could be much better handled by a Federated Union of railway employees, than by a State organisation." Combined with co-operation "both for production and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture," workers' self-management of production would create "samples of the bricks" of the future society ("even samples of some of its rooms"). [Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, pp. 21-23]

This means that anarchists also root our arguments for socialism in a scientific analysis of tendencies within capitalism. However, in opposition to the analysis of mainstream Marxism which focuses on the objective tendencies within capitalist development, anarchists emphasis the oppositional nature of socialism to capitalism. Both the "law of value" and the "law of planning" are tendencies within capitalism, that is aspects of capitalism. Anarchists encourage class struggle, the direct conflict of working class people against the workings of all capitalism's "laws". This struggle produces mutual aid and the awareness that we can care best for our own welfare if we unite with others — what we can loosely term the "law of co-operation". This law, in contrast to the Marxian "law of planning" is based on working class subjectively and develops within society only in opposition to capitalism. As such, it provides the necessary understanding of where socialism will come from, from below, in the spontaneous self-activity of the oppressed fighting for their freedom.

This means that the basic structures of socialism will be the organs created by working class people in their struggles against exploitation and oppress (see sections H.1.4 and I.2.3 for more details). Gustav Landauer's basic insight is correct (if his means were not totally so) when he wrote that "Socialism will not grow out of capitalism but away from it" [Op. Cit., p. 140] In other words, tendencies opposed to capitalism rather than ones which are part and parcel of it.

Anarchism's recognition of the importance of these tendencies towards mutual aid within capitalism is a key to understanding what anarchists do in the here and now, as will be discussed in section J. In addition, it also laid the foundation of understanding the nature of an anarchist society and what creates the framework of such a society in the here and now. Anarchists do not abstractly place a better society (anarchy) against the current, oppressive one. Instead, we analysis what tendencies exist within current society and encourage those which empower and liberate people. Based on these tendencies, anarchists propose a society which develops them to their logical conclusion. Therefore an anarchist society is created not through the developments within capitalism, but in social activity against it. Section I indicates what such a society would be like and where its framework comes from.