Review of the book The Idea

The Idea: its main themes
Nick Heath The Idea: Anarchist Communism, Past, Present and Future
“We have just been told of two different Anarchisms, of which the one, we are assured, is none at all. I know but one; that is Communistic Anarchism, which has grown among workingmen into a party, and which alone is known in ‘larger circles,’ as we say. It is as old, yes, older than the present century: Babeuf already preached it. Whether a few middle-class liberals have invented a new Anarchism is entirely immaterial to me, and does not interest me any more than any other workingman. As regards Proudhon, to whom comrade Auban again and again refers, he has long ago been disposed of and forgotten even in France, and his place has everywhere been taken by the revolutionary, Communistic Anarchism of the real proletariat.” Otto Trupp in The Anarchists, John Henry Mackay. (Quoted by Heath)

Nick Heath’s large book on anarchist communism is the first such comprehensive work on the subject. Anarchist communism often hides in the shadows in the general works on anarchism available, only clearly emerging when the ideas of Kropotkin, Reclus and Malatesta are discussed. This book seeks to rectify all of that.
Its main sections deal with
1. The antiauthoritarian wing of the First international.
2. The development of the specific idea of anarchist communism.
3. The troubled relationship of anarchist communism with anarchosyndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism.
4. Platformist anarchist-communism.
5. The post-war platformist movement.
6. Relationship and interaction with council communism.
7. An anarchist communism for the present and future.

Heath’s first main thesis is that the revolutionary core of anarchism has been obscured by what are essentially bourgeois histories which pursue an eclectic approach which encompass many ideas, philosophers and movements. The worst of these are the works by Peter Marshall, James Joll, Roderick Kedward and George Woodcock. So therefore we have worthless speculations on various philosophers outside of the historic anarchist movement. The worst instances of this are in Marshall’s book, which includes the likes of Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand and Margaret Thatcher! This is ‘an idealist fashion of thinking more preoccupied with the ‘eternal struggle of humanity for liberty’ than the concrete struggle of the exploited and the social conditions which have permitted the emergence of an antiauthoritarian point of view in the proletariat’. Heath quotes Woodcock when the latter actually admits that “anarchism as a developed, articulate, and clearly identifiable trend appears only in the modern era of conscious social and political revolutions.”
Heath’s second main theme is a refutation of the assertion that anarchist communism is a poor relation to the mass movements launched by anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary syndicalism-see for example Alain Pengam, Anarchist-Communism where anarchist-communism is referred to as a “poor and despised relation”. Brian Morris in his Anthropology, Ecology, and Anarchism: A Reader, replies that this is misleading and asserts that anarchist communism is the main current within anarchism. Pengam further states that the accommodation of anarchist communism to syndicalism, made it a “simple variant of anarcho-syndicalism”, that it failed to discover the causes of the counter-revolution initiated by the Bolsheviks, and that it died as a credible current with the aftermaths of the Mexican and Russian Revolutions and that it was absorbed or replaced by anarchosyndicalism.
In an exhaustive number of chapters on different anarchist movements in many countries, Heath convincingly reveals that this is not the case, and that anarchist communism had a preponderant hold within those movements, as in France, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia, Latin America, China and Japan; and that indeed it is the dominant current within anarchism.
His chapters on anarcho-syndicalism and its relation to anarchist communism reveal an intimate connection between the two, an intimate connection that was often fraught and problematic. He reveals that Fernand Pelloutier, far from being the founder of French CGT syndicalism, was actually preoccupied with creating Bourses de Travail, which he saw as embryos of the Communes as advocated by the theorists of anarchist communism.
Heath’s third theme is related to the first, in affirming that the ideas of anarchism, communism and anarchist communism emerged with the development of the working class. He spends some time on movements that developed embryonic ideas on anarchism and communism which emerged with the English and French Revolutions (1640 and 1789), the Diggers and the Enragés. For him, these were bourgeois revolutions where the capitalist class and its supporters overthrew the last foundations of feudalism. In this process, there was a certain amount of room for radical ideas to emerge among the masses, among artisans and the rural and urban poor. However, Heath does not idealise these movements, especially with the Enragés, who he feels have been the subject of a ‘considerable anarchist mythology’ originating in late 19th century attempts to establish an anarchist lineage back to the French Revolution.
Heath spends some time on examining the concepts of both ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ and shows that they had their origins in the most radical fringes of the 1789 revolutionaries and that communism as both an idea and movement emerged in working class districts of Paris in the 1830s. He goes on to describe the different strands within this movement, and the emergence of the Communist League which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were to join. He regards the latter’s role in this movement as in part destructive. He is not afraid to criticise them and indeed other important figures within this communist movement, like Wilhelm Weitling and Etienne Cabet. In this process he places importance on the ideas of Joseph Déjacque as a pioneer of anarchist communism, seeing him as ‘ one of the grandparents of anarchist communism,’ and that ‘his project of collective class emancipation was linked to complete liberty for the individual, thus being one of the first to redefine communism in opposition to the authoritarian concepts of Cabet et al.
However, the real emergence of anarchism as a movement came with the growth of the working class and the establishment of its first international organisation, the International Workers Association, often called the First International. Heath is careful to show that in fact the ideas of revolutionary anarchism did not originate with the Russian Mikhail Bakunin, but emerged among French workers who were breaking with the non-revolutionary and pro-market ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Workers like Bastelica, Varlin, Malon, and Richard. As Heath comments: ‘ it was the encounter of Bakunin with this new wave of young militants that was to bring about a major evolution of anti-authoritarian socialist ideas.’
Thus, Heath shows throughout the book that workers themselves developed advanced ideas, as in 1830, as in the First International, and that thinkers like Bakunin and Kropotkin were not originators of these ideas. The latter’s function was to clearly define and amplify these ideas.
Heath shows the events within the First International, the break with Marx and his followers about how the that organisation should function, further defined these radical ideas and led to the emergence of anarchist communism, which became the predominant current within the anarchist movement, gradually replacing the anarchist collectivism of Bakunin.
Heath’s final important theme is the struggle for specific organisation of anarchist revolutionaries. He affirms that Bakunin was a partisan of a specific organisation of revolutionaries operating within a broader workers movement. He goes on to describe the turn away from such concepts towards loose networks of affinity groups as a reaction to the manoeuvrings of Marx and his followers, that ended up leading to a marginalisation of the anarchist movement. He shows that Kropotkin later revised these ideas of loose organisation, of which he had been a notable supporter, in favour of more effective organisation.
He demonstrates that in various countries, some anarchist militants were moving towards the construction of specific anarchist communist organisations but that it was the Russian Revolution of 1917 that really changed all of this. The anarchist movement was outmanouevred by the Bolsheviks and subsequently dismembered and crushed by them. Seeking to learn from this situation, a group of Ukrainian and Russian anarchists attempted to learn from these defeats. They advocated the need for a specific anarchist communist organisation, based on federal organisation and theoretical and tactical unity. This was in a document entitled the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists. Henceforth, supporters of these ideas were often known as Platformists.
Heath shows that there was considerable opposition to Platformist ideas, though also that it was taken up in various countries to a greater extent than previously acknowledged. He shows the continuing struggle throughout the international anarchist movement for effective organisation, in opposition to individualist disorganisers and anarchist communists like Galleani and his supporters who clung to the idea of loose networks of affinity groups. He shows that objection to specific organisation was often allied with a rejection of the class struggle basis and origins of the anarchist movement, with an embracing of vague humanist ideas, and that the struggle of partisans of specific anarchist communist organisation versus these objectors profoundly marked the movement and continues to do so to this day.
Finally, Heath confirms the continuing relevance of anarchist communism as the only anarchist current that specifically argues for the end of the market economy and of exchange value. As he says, ‘The history of anarchist communism has been full of many defeats, of scissions and failures. Yet it has perennially renewed itself, attempting to learn from the mistakes of the past. The self-isolation of the 1880s, the failures of he movement during the Russian Revolution,…these and other mistakes have to be rectified if anarchist communism is once more to reveal itself as an inspirer and galvaniser of social struggle’.