Are anarchists playing with semantics by saying we're anti-state?

I could be wrong but anarchists do not want a monopoly on organised violence, anarchists will oragnise violence to the extent necessary to defend against the state's attempts to establish / re-establish a monopoly on violence.

I agree with what you say that setting up a monopoly on violence to defend the class interests of a few is part, maybe most of the definition of a state. Obviously violence to defend the masses, and from them, rather than in their name, is not the same thing. I think the danger is the leninist idea of siezing control of the state machinery in the name of the people to defend the revolution and very rapidly turning that force against proletarian enemies of the bureaucracy rather than enemies of the revolution.

Marx didn't write that much about the state, but he did write this on the Paris Commune, excuse the long quote:

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature – organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor – originates from the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old semi-feudal Europe against modern France.

[...]
The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman’s wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune.

Having once got rid of the standing army and the police – the physical force elements of the old government – the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the “parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.

The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it.

The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.

The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers.

In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents.

The unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was but a parasitic excresence.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Even though this is Marx, and not 'anarchists', you can clearly see non-semantic differences between the Commune and the state. Recallable delegates instead of representatives, militias and police under control of the commune and revocable at all times.

Now if you want to say 'aha! but the commune was a state!' then no-one can really stop you, but then you need find some other way to distinguish between representative democracy (or one party dictatorship) and federated direct democracy with recallable delegates.

A state is more than just violence – it also incorporates all of the lawmaking and law enforcing institutions in a territorial. More info in our introduction to the state: https://libcom.org/library/state-introduction

So to address your question, I think it's often best to look at historical examples. So in the Spanish anarchist revolution of 1936, there was a popular militia. Local areas were taken over by popular committees. Neither of these would fit any workable definition of a state. Even the popular militia, it was a body of organised violence, but it was not under the control of any small group – its officers were elected. And it didn't claim a monopoly of organised violence either.

To some extent there is a semantic issue, when it comes to the difference between anarchism and things like Trotskyism et cetera at a purely theoretical level. However when you look at concrete historical examples the differences become much clearer. Trotskyists for example may say they want to smash the state, like anarchists, however in practice they consistently use statist methods – supporting candidates for political parties, voting for political parties etc, participating in governments. And of course when they took power they not only took over the capitalist state in Russia, they strengthened many of its institutions, particularly the secret police.

Lucky Black Cat

But a revolutionary movement will be deciding that certain things are forbidden -- things like exploiting labor, for example -- and isn't that basically a law?

The point of a communist revolution is to make exploiting labour impossible, not to make it 'illegal'. i.e. to exploit labour, you need a class of proletarians who are only able access the means of life via commodities, and therefore must work for a wage.

If you look at what has happened in mass uprisings, you get mass looting of shops and warehouses as well as people taking them over to distribute things fairly (stuff like running food distribution and mass canteens collectively so that everyone can get fed). To the extent that this is successful and can be defended, then people won't be compelled to work for wages, because the means of life are provided.

Where a revolutionary movement will run into issues is against bosses/the state trying to lock everyone out of essential infrastructure (factories, docks, farms, electricity grid/wind farms etc.), but not really 'giving people money to work' as such.

If people are still having to work for money, then there might be some kind of uprising, but you're not in a position to prohibit working for money because it's still a necessity for people. An example would be miners strikes where the miners stayed out, but their families kept working in other industries to keep some income coming in and strike funds were donated to by other proletarians who were also still at work.

To some extent it's tautological, but it's also a practical question of why people work for money - the condition of it is the commodity form and the inability to access food/shelter/heat etc. without purchasing those as commodities, not because it's legal or not.

Now the state and capital has obviously offered people loads of money/land in order to put down revolutions before, but again the form that takes is strikebreakers/street fascists/mercenaries like the Pinkertons or similar, not just someone going into work for a wage.

So by 1921, Kollontai was arguing that "not being able to prove you are working in a state-mandated industry", i.e. being a labour deserter was counter-revolutionary and should get you sent to forced labour camps:

Kollontai

it is time we were clear on the question of sexual relationships. It is time we approached this question in a spirit of ruthless and scientific criticism. I already said that the interdepartmental commission has accepted that professional prostitutes are to be treated in the same way as labour deserters It therefore follows that women who have a work- book but are practising prostitution as a secondary source of income cannot he prosecuted.

https://libcom.org/library/alexandra-kollontai-prostitutes-forced-labour-camps-1921

At this point we're not talking about a revolutionary situation enforcing laws, but a counter-revolution where wage labour is enforced on the proletariat by the state. By 1918 Lenin was sending telegrams around the country telling people to take harsh action on soldiers who didn't want to fight at the front (under the command of former Tsarist officers in many cases) too - similar to treatment of draft dodgers or mutineers by straightforwardly capitalist countries.

If you're talking about stuff like "don't drive drunk at 70 mph past a kids playground" then there is a whole literature of restorative/transformative justice (Haven't read it, but something like https://libcom.org/library/anarchist-theory-criminal-justice might be a place to start) and how that might be administered.

Even in society now, speeding usually results in a fine (a bit silly if there's no money), or getting your license removed, rather than imprisonment. I can completely see a post-revolutionary situation where there is a regional car pool, someone goes on a drunken speeding rampage, and then they get banned from using the car pool, but "can I use that car? No, you're banned" doesn't require a state.

There are also examples in places like Chicago of groups organising restorative justice for people that don't want to go to the police but are victims of crime, this obviously does not have a 'monopoly on violence' or anything, it's an alternative to it.

But I think it's more important to interrogate why these discussions happen. People usually play this semantic game, often involving the Engels "revolution is authoritarian" quote as a rhetorical trick to then justify bonapartism, various existing 'anti-imperialist' states and all kinds of other things that aren't workers/neighbourhood councils and a militia. On the other hand there'll be people who do thing that workers/neighbourhood councils and a militia are a 'state' but won't then use that to justify bonapartism.

i think if you can replace the word with your definition of it, in anything you write or say, then your definition is at least internally constant, if you cant do that they its probably being used to obscure or manipulate

Yes, indeed, it all depends on how you define "the State."

Some define it as any of social organisation, but anarchists argue that this is wrong as it confuses social organisations based on minority class rule with all forms of social organisation.

So if it is hierarchical and centralised, it is a state. This structure is needed to ensure minority rule -- so these are not "neutral" nor can they be used by the majority. As Russia showed, such a structure produces a new ruling class (the bureaucracy).

Also, some functions which the state monopolises will still be needed in a free society or during a revolution. So mutual defence -- as Kropotkin and others noted -- would be organised by the workers own groups, for example. This does not make it a State -- it is a social organisation aiming to defend itself against those seeking to reimpose their rule (a State) on a free people.

Lucky Black Cat

Where can I get some info on this? I haven't heard about this even though I've done quite a bit of reading on the Spanish revolution (though of course with everything there is out there, this amounts to less than one percent!) Though maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by this. I know that villages were collectivized and run via a mix of mass assemblies and committees of mandated recallable delegates. But I haven't heard of anything like this for urban areas. I know there were neighborhood committees that did defense and food distribution, but in terms of popular committees running an entire town or city district, I don't know anything about that.

The neighborhood comités de defensa performed other functions besides just food provisioning and defense, and it is not inaccurate to say that it was these committees that were in control of Barcelona immediately after the revolution of July 19. They really did run the city, and the CNT-FAI itself could only be said to control it through them (since the committees were mostly made up of CNT members, and were financed by the unions – this did not save them from having their power slowly taken away from them by the comités superiores, run by those factions of the CNT-FAI that prioritized the antifascist struggle over the revolution). Agustín Guillamón, who has written up what is probably the most detailed historiographic account of the topic, has referred to them as "the embryo[s] of the organs of working class power". He has also said that no organization "was able or wanted to" coordinate their work in a centralized manner, which ultimately prevented them from becoming the organ by which the revolutionary proletariat would exercise its power. This is essentially identical to the analysis of the POUMista Josep Rebull and even to that of Trotsky, who wrote in 1937: "How can they say that the [Spanish] workers didn’t build soviets? They built committees everywhere and these committees took over industry. It was only a question of unifying these committees, of developing them, and that would have been the Soviet of Barcelona." (Leon Trotsky – Collected Writings (1929–1940), Vol. 9, p. 472).

Some relevant quotes:

[url=http://libcom.org/library/part-2-2]Agustín Guillamón[/url]

The real power of decision and execution was in the streets, it was the power of the proletariat in arms, and it was exercised by the local committees, the defense committees and the workers control committees, spontaneously expropriating factories, workshops, buildings and land; organizing, arming and transporting to the front the groups of volunteer militiamen that had previously been recruited; burning churches or converting them into schools or warehouses; forming patrols to spread the social war; manning the barricades, which were now class frontiers, and which controlled all traffic and manifested the power of the committees; resuming production at the factories, without employers or managers, or converting them to military production; requisitioning cars and trucks, or food for the supply committee; taking bourgeoisie, fascists and priests “for a ride”; replacing the obsolete republican municipal governments, and imposing in each locality their absolute authority in all domains, paying no attention to any orders from the Generalitat, or the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias (CCMA).

[...]

In Barcelona, during the following week, while the CCMA was still only a provisional power, neighborhood committees, as the expression of the power acquired by the defense committees, coordinated their activities in an authentic urban federation that, in the streets and the factories, exercised all power, in every domain, in the absence of any effective exercise of power by the municipal governments, the national government, or the Generalitat.

[url=http://tinyurl.com/yau24rk6]Agustín Guillamón[/url]

The revolutionary committees performed, in every neighborhood or locality, especially in the nine weeks after July 19, the following functions:

1. They confiscated buildings for committee offices, storage of supplies, cultural centers and rationalist schools. They seized and administered hospitals and newspapers;
2. They conducted searches of private homes to requisition weapons, food, money and objects of value;
3. Inspection of suspicious buildings by armed squads, in order to arrest “cops”, snipers, priests, reactionaries and fifth columnists. (Recall that the mopping-up operations conducted against snipers lasted an entire week in the city of Barcelona);
4. They set up recruiting centers in every neighborhood for the Militias, which they armed, financed, supplied and paid (until mid-September) with their own means, and even after May 1937, each neighborhood maintained an intimate and continuous relation with its militiamen on the front, and welcomed them when they came home on leave;
5. They stored arms in the headquarters of the defense committee, which also played the role of a local store or warehouse, in which the provisions committee of the district was also housed, which supplied the neighborhood with food that was requisitioned in the rural areas by means of armed coercion, exchange, or purchase with vouchers;
6. Imposition and collection of the revolutionary tax in every neighborhood or locality.

The revolutionary committees performed an important and quite multifarious administrative role, which extended from the issuance of vouchers, food coupons, and travel passes, marriage ceremonies, supply and administration of hospitals, to the confiscation of food, furniture and buildings, financing rationalist schools and cultural centers managed by the Libertarian Youth, paying the militiamen or their families, etc.

[url=http://libcom.org/library/theses-spanish-civil-war-revolutionary-situation-created-july-19-1936-balance-agust%C3%ADn-gu]Agustín Guillamón[/url]

THERE WAS A VACUUM OF STATE POWER. Having lost its capacity for coercion, the republican state witnessed the emergence of autonomous regional powers, totally independent of the central government, which in turn (such as the government of the Generalitat in Catalonia) saw how its authority collapsed; and how the various revolutionary, local, sectoral, neighborhood, factory, defense, supply, trade union and party committees and popular and rearguard militias performed those functions that the government was incapable of exercising, because of the loss of its repressive apparatus and the general arming of the working class organizations. In many places, the revolutionary committees, which Munis theorized as government-committees, exercised all power on a local level, but there was no coordination or centralization of these local committees: there was A VACUUM OF CENTRAL OR STATE POWER.

Lucky Black Cat

Thank you, AnythingForProximity! That's a very helpful and thorough response to my question.

I'm alarmed by some of the things these committees did, though.

2. They conducted searches of private homes to requisition weapons, food, money and objects of value;

5. [...] food that was requisitioned in the rural areas by means of armed coercion, exchange, or purchase with vouchers;
6. Imposition and collection of the revolutionary tax in every neighborhood or locality.

Especially when there is extreme poverty, as there was in Spain at this time, there will be the need to expropriate the wealth of the rich in a revolutionary situation. I don't there is anything alarming about that

admin: off topic comments split here – https://libcom.org/forums/history/spanish-versus-russian-red-terror-30042018

Lucky Black Cat

My conclusion is that the concentration of power in the hands of a tiny minority is an essential feature of the state. Historically, this has always been a feature of every state that ever existed. So without this feature, it's not a state.

I have a different view; I don't think the "concentration of power in the hands of a tiny minority" is a defining feature, but rather is a feature that often suits the requirements and purpose of a state. You have to remember that the state is a social relation between human beings, that which reproduces the division of society into classes. Within the context of our society, class relations are essentially capitalist (obviously), and that means the state's "primary function" is to "protect and promote the economy and the making of profit" (the how and why of that is explained quite well in libcom.org's introduction).

You can have a state which invites as widely as possible participation of the population at large, as long as it is taken for granted the separate spheres of social life known as "politics" and "economics". You can have a popular movement organised "from below" to challenge and redefine "politics" as we know it, but conform to, defend, promote the values, the "economics" of capitalism. The participants of such movement, having abolished a more traditional state, will probably refuse to call their own mass organisation a state, but it would still be a de facto state if it meets the above criteria.

Oddly enough, there has been a growing presence on the internet of people who champion a kind of libertarian statism. They promote the ideas of Murray Bookchin's Communalism or Ocalan's democratic confederalism. But they do so by ignoring the difference between these ideologies and the anarchist critique of the state, and try to pass it off as acceptable in anarchist circles. By the way, both Bookchin and Ocalan did not even regard their pet ideologies as part of the anarchist tradition, but many of their followers are not even honest about that.

In the case of a popular revolution in which the distinction between "politics" and "economics" is actively dissolved, and wealth is shared and produced for need, not profit, or at least is re purposed in that direction, then it is not a state. And that was the case in the Spanish Revolution, as many would argue, with quite a lot of evidence.

Lucky Black Cat

Maybe my understanding of the state is still not quite right. If anyone else thinks so and would like to take a swim in the pool of my ignorance and piss some insight into it I’d be very grateful. The more the merrier!

Lol! Sorry, I’d love to help but I’m all dried up, don’t worry though LBC, Libcom has plenty of participants that have got the smarts, I’m sure a comrade with intellectual incontinance will soon appear and verily thou pool shall runneth over!

Lucky Black Cat

So, by that logic, wouldn't that mean that no matter how centralized power is, even if it's only in the hands of a small group of rulers, if they use this power to abolish capitalism and class society in general, then it's not a state?

Nope. Communism can only come about by a libertarian praxis. I think you need to avoid defining the state purely by its formal aspects, and that is the point of my post above. Likewise, I don't think 'libertarian' or 'anarchist' can be defined on purely formal terms as well. There seems to be a tendency in your posts to do that. That's something many people who identify as 'anarchist' nowadays tend to be guilty of, for whatever reasons.

Lucky Black Cat

I don't know what you mean by this.

I'm too lazy to go into detail on any topic right now. But I'll leave you with this brief essay by Joseph Kay that excellently deals with the topic. The distinction between 'economics' and 'politics' goes back to earliest debates and discussions in the First International. It's one rejected by the emerging anarchist movement for good reasons. Although, nowadays, it seems like that is starting to change.

Lucky Black Cat

Sad to say but in the Spanish revolution, although wealth was shared to some extent, it was not done to the extent that I think you mean to imply here. And for the most part, production was still done for profit. It's just that the profit was shared by each collective of workers. There were federations that were starting to counter this tendency, and replace competition for profit with mutual aid, but it was not widespread enough. It largely remained a market economy. Capitalist property relations were abolished, which means class was abolished, but many of the features of capitalism remained.

I think your downplaying it a bit here. I don't mean to say that was the case everywhere. Some regions did abolish money and carried out production for need, and I think that's definitely worth acknowledgement. Others did not. But my impression is that it can't be dismissed as a largely market economy though. Admittedly, I have never read a book on the accomplishments and failures of the Spanish revolution. Whatever I know of it comes from past discussion threads on this site. Perhaps someone else can step in and provide an overall characterization of the Spanish revolution.

Lucky Black Cat, I must say I don't quite understand the distinction being made by Agent here either…

But personally I agree with your latter statement about a defining feature being that a state is inherently a body controlled by the minority

Lucky Black Cat #27

Couple of points I think worth making.
‘Formal aspects’, to me means having a check list, a set of theoretical ‘red lines’ by which we can define with some certainty anyone or anything. Unfortunately life is a wee bit more complicated - the Victorians categorised species by the number of legs, wings, etc. The discovery of DNA has thrown that system out.

In some respects economics and politics have similar characteristics as you suggest, though generally I find it useful to think of politics as the means by which we can shape our economics. Doing so, politics transcends the arena of ‘production and distribution’ and enters into all aspects of our lives (becoming the dominant ideology).

I find it unimaginable that a society could function using direct democracy and also maintain market relations. If wealth is created through exchange, how could it be protected (kept private) without the apparatus of a state – banks, police, courts, laws, jails, etc.? For direct democracy to function it requires free communism.

Lucky Black Cat #31

I generally agree with your understanding of the state.

The problem with pinning labels on words is that most words take their meaning from the context in which they are used. All states evolve and no two states are identical. This thread has singled out some important elements of ‘the state’, however because the modern state is a centralised forum for the competing interests of the ruling class and no one is in complete control (witness Brexit in the UK) it is hard to say which elements can safely define all the world’s states.

Perhaps something I could add would be that no state exists if the dark arts described by Niccolo Machiavelli in ‘The Prince’ have become redundant. While capitalism is not capable of being meaningfully reformed, Machiavelli shows that the mechanics of running a state requires even well intentioned people to act despicably (witness Lenin, in the USSR). Machiavelli’s practical advice got him into hot water, as the powerful like to keep their dirty secrets. Though printed in 1532 it is still relevant today.

Hope this is useful.

I just visited libcom for the first time in many months, at least, and I ran across this interesting thread. Actually, I found the post which began the conversation to be the most interesting.

I'm not sure if anyone still cares about this conversation or if everyone has had enough. But in the short time I have to spare, I thought I'd share my thoughts, and share the source of that definition cited by Lucky Black Cat.…

(This turned into a longer post than expected. Hope you don't mind.)

Yes, Lucky Black Cat, you pointed out a significant problem. And, however one chooses to define the state, the successful-monopoly-on-legimate-use-of-violence definition *is* the lowest-common-denominator definition, and thus any entity which finds itself in that position is a state.

This definition, btw, comes from Max Weber, originally in ‘Politics as a Vocation,’ where he argues that the state is defined as a “human community that (successfully) claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence within a given territory.” (1919) He restates this, and provides a much more elaborate analysis of the state and other defining characteristics in his magisterial 2-volume set from the 1950s, Economy and Society.

The words "successfully" and "legitimate" are important, I think, as they seem to entail some form of hegemony in the typical Gramscian sense of the word. No revolution can succeed in toppling a state without first successfully earning the support of the majority of the population, or at least the majority of the concerned citizens (those who give a shit either way).

And like it or not, Lucky Black Cat's question also raises additional questions about the use of violent armed struggle (i.e., actions that could kill or maim the people identified as opponents and/or bystanders) by any social movement seeking revolutionary change (i.e., radical changes seeking to address the roots of problems), period.

Because if one is concerned about claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence *after* organizing so much popular support and applying so much pressure that the state topples, then why wouldn't one also ask questions about the validity of exercising violent power well before that point, well before the movement has earned widespread popular support, or the majority's support?

After all, the effective use of violence to topple a state requires great discipline, planning, strategizing, etc. — in short, it requires claiming a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within a territory (perhaps a smaller territory at first), and the willingness and ability to enforce that claim against representatives of the existing state, *and* against any other organizations or movements whose violence threatens your movement's strategy …or your movement's legitimacy.

If such an organized and disciplined form of violent armed struggle is off-putting, well, then, if one insists on violence, the only other alternative is a politics of expression exercised via largely-symbolic & random violence. Then violence simply becomes symbolic in its politics, and for the militants, it becomes an intoxicating, seemingly-empowering channel for expressing their rage and frustration (be it personal and/or political). Such violence doesn't claim monopoly or legitimacy. But when brought up to scale, it can certainly claim to terrorize.

And of course, we all know that the state uses symbolic violence to terrorize.

Personally, I don't see how an anti-state movement can use violence without replicating the state. Violence is at the very heart of the state.

I ran across a quote said to be from Albert Einstein today. I've not yet verified it, but it seems relevant regardless: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

PS: If one reads Machiavelli, perhaps the first historical materialist, then one should read his Discourse on Livy, and not just The Prince otherwise one may walk away with a serious misunderstanding of Machiavelli. Among other things, one shouldn't always apply a literal interpretation to all of Machiavelli's words in The Prince. For more information, see Erica Benner's work: she provides close readings and analyses of Machiavelli's texts in historical context. (I also recommend Machiavelli & Us featuring a couple texts by Althusser regarding Machiavelli, and more.)

"Monopoly on the legitimate use of violence" from what I know comes from Max Weber. Personally I think it's extremely vague and unhelpful. It doesn't tell us what "legitimate" means, it doesn't tell us who implores the violence for their own ends, and doesn't tell us who the violence is used against. The state is a concrete institution that can be defined in the fallowing way; a coercive, armed institution organized for imposing the rule of a small group of exploiters and rulers over the masses of people. The revolution Anarchists call for involves the mass of people using their collective force to overturn this institution and abolish all ruling classes and exploitation for good.