Pat Stack argues that "the idea that dominates anarchist thought" is "that the state is the main enemy, rather than identifying the state as one aspect of a class society that has to be destroyed." ["Anarchy in the UK?", Socialist Review, no. 246]] Paul Thomas states that "Anarchists insist that the basis source of social injustice is the state." [Karl Marx and the Anarchists, p. 2]
On the face of it, such assertions make little sense. After all, was not the first work by the first self-declared anarchist called What is Property? and contain the revolutionary maxim "property is theft"? Surely this fact alone would be enough to put to rest the notion that anarchists view the state as the main problem in the world? Obviously not. Flying in the face of this well known fact as well as anarchist theory, Marxists have constantly repeated the falsehood that anarchists consider the state as the main enemy. Indeed, Stack and Thomas are simply repeating an earlier assertion by Engels:
"Bakunin has a peculiar theory of his own, a medley of Proudhonism and communism. The chief point concerning the former is that he does not regard capital, i.e. the class antagonism between capitalists and wage workers which has arisen through social development, but the state as the main enemy to be abolished. . . . our view [is] that state power is nothing more than the organisation which the ruling classes — landowners and capitalists — have provided for themselves in order to protect their social privileges, Bakunin [on the other hand] maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only be the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of all means of production in the hands of a few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one . . . the abolition of capital is precisely the social revolution." [Marx, Engels and Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 71]
As will come as no surprise, Engels did not bother to indicate where he discovered Bakunin's ideas on these matters. Similarly, his followers raise this kind of assertion as a truism, apparently without the need for evidence to support the claim. This is hardly surprising as anarchists, including Bakunin, have expressed an idea distinctly at odds with Engels' claims, namely that the social revolution would be marked by the abolition of capitalism and the state at the same time. That this is the case can be seen from John Stuart Mill who, unlike Engels, saw that Bakunin's ideas meant "not only the annihilation of all government, but getting all property of all kinds out of the hands of the possessors to be used for the general benefit." ["Chapters on Socialism," Principles of Political Economy, p. 376] If the great liberal thinker could discern this aspect of anarchism, why not Engels? After all, this vision of a social revolution (i.e. one that combined political, social and economic goals) occurred continuously throughout Bakunin's writings when he was an anarchist. Indeed, to claim that he, or anarchists in general, just opposed the state suggests a total unfamiliarity with anarchist theory. For Bakunin, like all anarchists, the abolition of the state occurs at the same time as the abolition of capital. This joint abolition is precisely the social revolution.
In 1865, for example, we discover Bakunin arguing that anarchists "seek the destruction of all States" in his "Program of the Brotherhood." Yet he also argued that a member of this association "must be socialist" and see that "labour" was the "sole producer of social assets" and so "anyone enjoying these without working is an exploiter of another man's labour, a thief." They must also "understand that there is no liberty in the absence of equality" and so the "attainment of the widest liberty" is possible only "amid the most perfect (de jure and de facto) political, economic and social equality." The "sole and supreme objective" of the revolution "will be the effective political, economic and social emancipation of the people." This was because political liberty "is not feasible without political equality. And the latter is impossible without economic and social equality." This mean that the "land belongs to everyone. But usufruct of it will belong only to those who till it with their own hands." As regards industry, "through the unaided efforts and economic powers of the workers' associations, capital and the instruments of labour will pass into the possession of those who will apply them . . . through their own labours." He opposed sexism, for women are "equal in all political and social rights." Ultimately, "[n]o revolution could succeed . . . unless it was simultaneously a political and a social revolution. Any exclusively political revolution . . . will, insofar as it consequently does not have the immediate, effective, political and economic emancipation of the people as its primary objective, prove to be . . . illusory, phony . . . The revolution should not only be made for the people's sake: it should also be made by the people and can never succeed unless it implicates all of the rural as well as the urban masses" [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, pp. 134-41]
In 1868, Bakunin was arguing the same ideas. The "Association of the International Brethren seeks simultaneously universal, social, philosophical, economic and political revolution, so that the present order of things, rooted in property, exploitation, domination and the authority principle" will be destroyed. The "revolution as we understand it will . . . set about the . . . complete destruction of the State . . . The natural and necessary upshot of that destruction" will include the "[d]issolution of the army, magistracy, bureaucracy, police and clergy" and "[a]ll productive capital and instruments of labour . . . be[ing] confiscated for the benefit of toilers associations, which will have to put them to use in collective production" as well as the "[s]eizure of all Church and State properties." The "federated Alliance of all labour associations . . . will constitute the Commune." The people "must make the revolution everywhere, and . . . ultimate direction of it must at all times be vested in the people organised into a free federation of agricultural and industrial associations . . . organised from the bottom up." [Op. Cit., pp. 152-6]
As these the words of a person who considered the state as the "chief evil" or "that the state is the main enemy"? Of course not, rather Bakunin clearly identified the state as one aspect of a class society that has to be destroyed. As he put it, the "State, which has never had any task other than to regularise, sanction and . . . protect the rule of the privileged classes and exploitation of the people's labour for the rich, must be abolished. Consequently, this requires that society be organised from the bottom up through the free formation and free federation of worker associations, industrial, agricultural, scientific and artisan alike, . . . founded upon collective ownership of the land, capital, raw materials and the instruments of labour, which is to say, all large-scale property . . . leaving to private and hereditary possession only those items that are actually for personal use." [Op. Cit., p. 182]
In summary, rather than seeing the state as the main evil to be abolished, Bakunin always stressed that a revolution must be economic and political in nature, that it must ensure political, economic and social liberty and equality. As such, he argued for both the destruction of the state and the expropriation of capital (an act conducted, incidentally, by a federation of workers' associations or workers' councils). While the apparatus of the state was being destroyed ("Dissolution of the army, magistracy, bureaucracy, police and clergy"), capitalism was also being uprooted and destroyed ("All productive capital and instruments of labour . . . confiscated for the benefit of toilers associations"). To assert, as Engels did, that Bakunin ignored the necessity of abolishing capitalism and the other evils of the current system while focusing exclusively on the state, is simply distorting his ideas.
Kropotkin, unsurprisingly, argued along identical lines as Bakunin. He stressed that "the revolution will burn on until it has accomplished its mission: the abolition of property-owning and of the State." This revolution, he re-iterated, would be a "mass rising up against property and the State." Indeed, Kropotkin always stressed that "there is one point to which all socialists adhere: the expropriation of capital must result from the coming revolution." This mean that "the area of struggle against capital, and against the sustainer of capital — government" could be one in which "various groups can act in agreement" and so "any struggle that prepares for that expropriation should be sustained in unanimity by all the socialist groups, to whatever shading they belong." [Words of a Rebel, p. 75 and p. 204] Little wonder Kropotkin wrote his famous article "Expropriation" on this subject! As he put it:
"Expropriation — that is the guiding word of the coming revolution, without which it will fail in its historic mission: the complete expropriation of all those who have the means of exploiting human beings; the return to the community of the nation of everything that in the hands of anyone can be used to exploit others." [Op. Cit., pp. 207-8]
Strange words if Marxist assertions were true. As can be seen, Kropotkin is simply following Bakunin's ideas on the matter. He, like Bakunin, was well aware of the evils of capitalism and that the state protects these evils:
"When a workman sells his labour to an employer and knows perfectly well that some part of the value of his produce will be unjustly taken by the employer; when he sells it without even the slightest guarantee of being employed so much as six consecutive months, it is a sad mockery to call that a free contract. . . As long as three-quarters of humanity are compelled to enter into agreements of that description, force is of course necessary, both to enforce the supposed agreements and to maintain such a state of things. Force — and a great deal of force — is necessary to prevent the labourers from taking possession of what they consider unjustly appropriated by the few; and force is necessary to continually bring new 'uncivilised nations' under the same conditions." [Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, p. 69]
Little wonder he called anarchism "the no-government system of socialism." [Op. Cit., p. 46] For Kropotkin, the "State is there to protect exploitation, speculation and private property; it is itself the by-product of the rapine of the people. The proletariat must rely on his own hands; he can expect nothing of the State. It is nothing more than an organisation devised to hinder emancipation at all costs." [Words of a Rebel, p. 27] Rather than see the state as the main evil, he clearly saw it as the protector of capitalism — in other words, as one aspect of a class system which needed to be replaced by a better society.
Similarly with all other anarchists. Emma Goldman, for example, summarised for all anarchists when she argued that anarchism "stands for . . . the liberation of the human body from the domination of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government." [Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 62] Errico Malatesta in the "Anarchist Programme" he drafted listed "Abolition of private property" before "Abolition of government" and argued that "the present state of society" was one in "which some have inherited the land and all social wealth, while the mass of the people, disinherited in all respects, is exploited and oppressed by a small possessing class." It ends by arguing that anarchism wants "the complete destruction of the domination and exploitation of man by man" and for "expropriation of landowners and capitalists for the benefit of all; and the abolition of government." [Life and Ideas, p. 184, p. 183, p. 197 and p. 198] Nearly three decades previously, we find Malatesta arguing the same idea. As he put it in 1891, anarchists "struggle for anarchy, and for socialism, because we believe that anarchy and socialism must be realised immediately, that is to say that in the revolutionary act we must drive government away, abolish property . . . human progress is measured by the extent government power and private property are reduced." [Anarchy, pp. 53-4] He stressed that, for "all anarchists," it was definitely a case that the "abolition of political power is not possible without the simultaneous destruction of economic privilege." [Life and Ideas, p. 158]
As Brian Morris correctly summarises:
"Another criticism of anarchism is that it has a narrow view of politics: that it sees the state as the fount of all evil, ignoring other aspects of social and economic life. This is a misrepresentation of anarchism. It partly derives from the way anarchism has been defined, and partly because Marxist historians have tried to exclude anarchism from the broader socialist movement. But when one examines the writings of classical anarchists. . . as well as the character of anarchist movements. . . it is clearly evident that it has never had this limited vision. It has always challenged all forms of authority and exploitation, and has been equally critical of capitalism and religion as it has been of the state." ["Anthropology and Anarchism," Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no. 45, p, p. 40]
All in all, Marxist claims that anarchists view the state as the "chief evil" or see the destruction of the state as the "main idea" of anarchism are simply talking nonsense. In fact, rather than anarchists having a narrow view of social liberation, it is, in fact, Marxists who do so. By concentrating almost exclusively on the (economic) class source of exploitation, they blind themselves to other forms of exploitation and domination that can exist independently of economic class relationships. This can be seen from the amazing difficulty that many of them got themselves into when trying to analyse the Stalinist regime in Russia. Anarchists are well aware that the state is just one aspect of the current class system. We just recognise that all the evils of that system must be destroyed at the same time to ensure a social revolution rather than just a change in who the boss is.