Anarchism and Socialism

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Anarchism and Socialism, by George Plechanoff, Translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling
Transcriber's Note:







In reprinting Anarchism and Socialism , by George Plechanoff, we realize that there is not the same need for assailing and exposing anarchism at present as there has been at different times in the past. Yet the book is valuable, not merely because of its historic interest but also to workers coming into contact with the revolutionary movement for the first time. The general conception of anarchism that a beginner often gets is that it is something extremely advanced. It is often expressed somewhat as follows: After capitalism comes socialism and then comes anarchism. Plechanoff very ably explodes such notions.
Within the pages of this work the author shows not only the reactionary character of anarchism, but he exposes its class bias and its empty philosophic idealism and utopian program. He shows anarchism to be just the opposite of scientific socialism or communism. It aims at a society dominated by individualism, which is simply a capitalist ideal. Such ideals as liberty, equality, fraternity, first sprang from the ranks of the petty property owners of early capitalism, as Plechanoff shows. He also points out that while Proudhon is usually credited with being the father of anarchism that actually Max Stirner comes closer to being its father. Stirner's League of Egoists, he says, is only the utopia of a petty bourgeois in revolt. In this sense one may say he has spoken the last word of bourgeois individualism.
Bakounine and Kropotkine, the famous Russian anarchists, are exposed as confused idealists, who have not aided but rather hindered the development of the working-class movement. Lenin speaks highly of the book in this relation, but takes Plechanoff severely to task for his failure properly to set forth the Marxian concepts of the State, and for his total evasion of the form the State must take during the time it is in the hands of the workers. When writing on the Vulgarisation of Marx by the Opportunists, in his State and Revolution , Lenin said: