As discussed in the last section, Lenin claimed that workers can only reach a "trade union consciousness" by their own efforts. Anarchists argued that such an assertion is empirically false. The history of the labour movement is maarked by revolts and struggles which went far further than just seeking reforms and revolutionary theories derived from such experiences.

As such, the category of the "economic struggle" corresponds to no known social reality. Every "economic" struggle is "political" in some sense and those involved can, and do, learn political lessons from them. As Kropotkin noted in the 1880s, there "is almost no serious strike which occurs together wwith the appearance of troops, the exchange of blows and some acts of revolt. Here they fight with the troops; there they march on the factories . . . Thanks to government intervention the rebel against the factory becomes the rebel against the State." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, p. 256] If history shows anything, it shows that workers are more than capable of going beyond "trade union consciousness." The Paris Commune, the 1848 revolts and, ironically enough, the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions show that the masses are capable of revolutionary struggles in which the self-proclaimed "vanguard" of socialists spend most of their time trying to catch up with them!

These last two examples, the Russian Revolutions, also help to discredit Lenin's argument that the workers cannot develop socialist consciousness alone due to the power of bourgeois ideology. This, according to Lenin, required the bourgeois intelligentsia to import "socialist" ideology from outside the movement. Lenin's argument is flawed. Simply put, if the working class is subjected to bourgeois influences, then so are the "professional" revolutionaries within the party. Indeed, the strength of such influences on the "professionals" of revolution must be higher as they are not part of proletarian life. After all, if social being determines consciousness than if a revolutionary is no longer part of the working class, then they no longer are rooted in the social conditions which generate socialist theory and action. Rootless and no longer connected with collective labour and working class life, the "professional" revolutionary is more likely to be influenced by the social milieu he or she now is part of (i.e. a bourgeois, or at best petit-bourgeois, environment). This may explain the terrible performance of such "vanguards" in revolutionary situations (see section H.5.8).

This tendency for the "professional" revolutionary and intellectuals to be subject to the bourgeois influences which Lenin subscribes solely to the working class can continually be seen from the history of the Bolshevik party. For example, as Trotsky himself notes:

"It should not be forgotten that the political machine of the Bolshevik Party was predominantly made up of the intelligentsia, which was petty bourgeois in its origin and conditions of life and Marxist in its ideas and in its relations with the proletariat. Workers who turned professional revolutionists joined this set with great eagerness and lost their identity in it. The peculiar social structure of the Party machine and its authority over the proletariat (neither of which is accidental but dictated by strict historical necessity) were more than once the cause of the Party's vacillation and finally became the source of its degeneration . . . In most cases they lacked independent daily contact with the labouring masses as well as a comprehensive understanding of the historical process. They thus left themselves exposed to the influence of alien classes." [Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 297-8]

He pointed to the example of the First World War, when, "even the Bolshevik party did not at once find its way in the labyrinth of war. As a general rule, the confusion was most pervasive and lasted longest amongst the Party's higher-ups, who came in direct contact with bourgeois public opinion." Thus the professional revolutionaries "were largely affected by compromisist tendencies, which emanated from bourgeois circles, while the rank and file Bolshevik workingmen displayed far greater stability resisting the patriotic hysteria that had swept the country." [Op. Cit., p. 248 and p. 298] It should be noted that he is repeating earlier comments from his History of the Russian Revolution when he argued that the "immense intellectual backsliding of the upper stratum of the Bolsheviks during the war" was caused by "isolation from the masses and isolation from those abroad — that is primarily from Lenin." [vol. 3, p. 134] As we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", even Trotsky had to admit that during 1917 the working class was far more revolutionary than the party and the party more revolutionary than the "party machine" of "professional revolutionaries."

Ironically enough, Lenin himself recognised this aspect of the intellectuals after he had praised their role in bringing "revolutionary" consciousness to the working class in his 1904 work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. He argued that it was now the "presence of large numbers of radical intellectuals in the ranks . . . [which] has made . . . the existence of opportunism, produced by their mentality, inevitable." [contained in Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 25] According to Lenin's new philosophy, the working class simply needs to have been through the "schooling of the factory" in order to give the intelligentsia lessons in political discipline, the very same intelligentsia which up until then had played the leading role in the Party and had given political consciousness to the working class. In his words:

"The factory, which seems only a bogey to some, represents that highest form of capitalist co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to organise . . . And it is precisely Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism, that has taught . . . unstable intellectuals to distinguish between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline based on collective work . . ). The discipline and organisation which come so hard to the bourgeois intellectual are especially easily acquired by the proletariat just because of this factory 'schooling.'" [Op. Cit., p. 24]

Lenin's analogy is, of course, flawed. The factory is a "means of exploitation" because its "means of organisation" is top-down and hierarchical. The "collective work" which the workers are subjected to is organised by the boss and the "discipline" is that of the barracks, not that of free individuals. In fact, the "schooling" for revolutionaries is not the factory, but the class struggle. As such, healthy and positive discipline is generated by the struggle against the way the workplace is organised under capitalism. Factory discipline, in other words, is completely different from the discipline required for social struggle or revolution. Thus the workers become revolutionary in so far as they reject the hierarchical discipline of the workplace and develop the self-discipline required to fight that discipline.

A key task of anarchism is encourage working class revolt against this type of discipline, particularly in the capitalist workplace. The "discipline" Lenin praises simply replaces human thought and association with the following of orders and hierarchy. Thus anarchism aims to undermine capitalist (imposed and brutalising) discipline in favour of solidarity, the "discipline" of free association and agreement based on the community of struggle and the political consciousness and revolutionary enthusiasm that struggle creates. To the factory discipline Lenin argues for, anarchists argue for the discipline produced in workplace struggles and conflicts against that hierarchical discipline. Thus, for anarchists, the model of the factory can never be the model for a revolutionary organisation any more than Lenin's vision of society as "one big workplace" could be our vision of socialism (see section H.3.1). Ultimately, the factory exists to reproduce hierarchical social relationships and class society just as much as it exists to produce goods.

It should be noted that Lenin's argument does not contradict his earlier arguments. The proletarian and intellectual have complementary jobs in the party. The proletariat is to give lessons in political discipline to the intellectuals as they have been through the process of factory (i.e. hierarchical) discipline. The role of the intellectuals as providers of "political consciousness" is the same and so they give political lessons to the workers.

Moreover, his vision of the vanguard party is basically the same as in What is to Be Done?. This can be seen from his comments that his opponent (the leading Menshevik Martov) "wants to lump together organised and unorganised elements in the Party, those who submit to direction and those who do not, the advanced and the incorrigibly backward." He stressed that the "division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him [the intellectual] a tragicomical outcry against people being transformed into 'wheels and cogs'" [Op. Cit., p. 21 and p. 24] Thus there is the same division of labour as in the capitalist factory, with the boss ("the centre") having the power to direct the workers (who "submit to direction"). Thus we have a "revolutionary" party organised in a capitalist manner, with the same "division of labour" between order givers and order takers.