Revisiting Anarchist Critiques of Marxism

9/15/22, 12:22 AM Revisiting anarchist critiques of Marxism | Cairn International Edition
Revisiting anarchist critiques of Marxism

Jean-Christophe Angaut
In
Actuel Marx
Volume 54, Issue 2, 2013, pages 173 to 183
Translated from the French by Cadenza Academic Translations
Full-text
T o ask questions about the contemporary relevance of anarchist critiques of

Marxism [1] is perhaps principally to ask ourselves what use we can make of them in
such an era as our own. It will not have escaped anyone’s attention that we are
1
living in the twenty-first century. What Eric Hobsbawm called the “short twentieth
century,” [2] which began with the First World War and ended with the collapse of the so-
called Soviet empire in around 1990, is closely related to the adventures and??”above
all??”the misadventures of Marxism, since this period corresponds exactly to the life
span of the first political regime to have explicitly proclaimed its allegiance to Marx.
Marxism’s economic, social, and political analysis, as well as the type of emancipation it
promoted, emerged from this period??”rightly or wrongly??”severely discredited. As a
result, to ask ourselves about the current state of anarchist critiques of Marxism is also
to ask ourselves whether or not these critiques run the risk of sharing Marxism’s fate.
The promotion of Marxism during the twentieth century, at the level of official and state
doctrine, ultimately led to a double defeat for it. Transformed into a state and party
doctrine, which led to a profound alteration of its contents and its emancipatory aims,
it shared the fate of the states and political movements with which it had been
associated. For anarchists, who were the first to fight Marxism, this evolution could be
likened to a bitter victory.
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The forgetting of Marxism and critiques of it in

contemporary forms of anarchism
Without much exaggeration, the reaction of many libertarian militants and thinkers 2
(and dissident Marxists) to the events that marked the collapse of the regimes in
Eastern Europe at the end of the twentieth century can be presented as follows. The end
of supposedly real socialism signified the end of an unfortunate interlude for some; an
era during which the emancipatory project led since the mid-nineteenth century by the
labor movement had been falsified and identified exclusively not merely with Marxism
but a highly specific version of it that acted on behalf of a few states and the oligarchies
that dominated them. In other words, was it not the case that the end of the so-called
Soviet Union (which had taken its name from the very organizational form on whose
ruins it had erected itself [3]) offered the chance to reopen all those possibilities that the
Russian Revolution and its disastrous results had brutally closed? In particular, did it
not present the opportunity to bring out from under the leaden weight of history the
emancipatory potential of the libertarian movement, which had distinguished itself
through its opposition to both the capitalist order and authoritarian socialism?
Truly??”if I may be humored??”were we not back to where we were in 1914?
This perception was, of course, somewhat naive and unreasonably optimistic. It 3

disregarded the fact that the defeat of Marxism had been preceded by that of
movements which, although they had (perhaps) not lost their souls, had to admit to
playing a part in their own collapses (we might recall, for example, the defeat of Spanish
anarchism in 1937). It also underestimated the fact that the discredit heaped on
Marxism had more broadly fallen on all revolutionary projects, all prospects of radical
questioning of the prevailing economic, social, and political order, based on the famous
adage that “we can see where this leads.” The vision of history of the twentieth century
as an unfortunate interlude in which the revolutionary movement took a wrong turn
and found itself at an impasse from which it was finally able to emerge from??”to a
degree through retracing its steps??”must nevertheless be mentioned. This is because it
contributes to understanding the contemporary resurgence of different forms of
anarchism, which had already been seen when the events of 1968 had shaken orthodox
forms of Marxism (that is, those that asserted their orthodoxy) and the organizations
that had claimed to adhere to them. This resurgence has been observed in social
struggles, whether in the form of the bypassing of union bodies during official conflicts
(the practice of coordinating and collectivizing conflicts), or self-organization and
direct-action practices; for example in conflicts involving workers in precarious forms
of employment (and more broadly in what at the end of the 1990s were called the
“without struggles,” namely struggles by those without working papers,
accommodation, or work). In both these cases, a new way of addressing the question of
self-emancipation, which had been asked since the beginnings of the labor movement,
had been found. It can be observed in the antiglobalization movement of the twenty-
first century, both through forms of struggle claiming to have a horizontal form of
organization and through the promotion of nonstatist alternatives to global
capitalism. [4] It has also manifested itself in France in radical forms of protest such as
those that characterized movements like the one against the First Employment
Contract in 2006. Finally, it has inevitably had the effect of awakening a certain amount
of interest from the academic world in the anarchist movement and its history, theory,
and relevance. [5]
In this case, observers of the anarchist movement, who are also sometimes (but not 4
always) participants in it, have attempted to describe in various ways what they
consider to be some of its new features. It has thus been possible to speak of extramural
anarchism, [6] in particular with reference to a practical form anarchism that exists
outside of organizations and sometimes does not recognize itself as such. The choice
has also been made to describe new forms taken by the movement as neoanarchism, [7] a
term that describes a form of anarchism that is not in strict continuity with historical
anarchism and breaks with some of its assumptions, such as that of social revolution.
Finally, a postanarchism [8] has appeared, a strictly academic current based on the
theory that historical anarchism shares with modernity a number of assumptions that
must be broken away from. What is called into question in these contemporary
reconfigurations is the possibility of there being a continuous history of anarchism as
both a political (or antipolitical) theory and as a set of antiauthoritarian practices, since
practical anarchism seems to disregard history, while postanarchism seems painfully
cut off from any militant practice.
Within the various contemporary forms of anarchism (including those inherited from 5
historical anarchism, namely organized, federative, or anarchosyndicalist forms), there
is a tendency to treat Marxism as a “dead dog,” to use a turn of phrase that Marx himself
had used to describe the attitude towards Hegel held by some writers of his time. [9]
Treating Marxism as a dead dog is much worse than making the most devastating
critique of it; it means considering Marxism as being no longer even worth critiquing or
reading, let alone worth searching within for anything that increases our power to act.
It is to see Marx as a “waste of time” that for this reason we should “turn away from” (to
use turns of phrase that the young Engels employed about the elderly Schelling [10]).
In response to this tendency of contemporary forms of anarchism, it seems important 6

to note that anarchism loses something in reserving this treatment for Marx, not only
because it is likely to still be able to find weapons of resistance to domination that are
not all old blunderbusses in the Marxist arsenal, but also because anarchist critique of
Marx and Marxism can still bring something to contemporary anarchism, whether in
the fight against the resurgence of authoritarian forms of Marxism, using weapons
forged through this critique against other elements of domination, or questioning
certain assumptions that underlie some forms of anarchist activism.
By revisiting the broad outlines of the history of relations between Marxism and 7
anarchism, it is possible to demonstrate two things: firstly, that although the attitude of
rejection of Marx in most contemporary anarchists is not always reasonable, it
nevertheless has its historical reasons; and secondly, that in opposition to the mutual
ignorance in which Marxism and anarchism have largely remained, there have been
theoretical and practical attempts to consider both an anarchist appropriation of Marx
and a Marxist appropriation of anarchism.
Anarchism as anti-Marxism
If we are first of all to seek the historical reasons why anarchism and Marxism have 8
largely remained in a state of mutual ignorance, as well the reasons for the reciprocal
misconceptions that most militants and theorists of these two currents display
nowadays, we will need to make a return to origins. [11] Anarchism was originally a form
of anti-Marxism. Historically anarchism as a movement dates its birth [12] to the split in
the International Workingmen’s Association (which is usually referred to as the First
International) that was the outcome of what is known as the conflict between Marx and
Bakunin??”although this conflict embodied a deeper conflict within the emerging labor
movement around the issue of politics and organization, with Bakunin having only
made critiques that had been developed collectively. [13]
The reason for this conflict as it appears through Bakunin’s texts that critiqued Marx [14] 9
was in fact as follows: Bakunin, who only knew Marx the person (for whom he cared
little) and the Communist Manifesto, attributed to Marx the intention of making the
International a kind of grouping of political parties that would participate in election
campaigns and through doing so aim to gain power in nations where there was a
representative system, implying a fairly clear road map for the proletarians of the
different countries: attain a representative system and universal suffrage, organize into
a party, and win elections. [15] This was how he interpreted the policy of the German
socialists and the idea, expressed in the Manifesto, that the working class must gain
control of the state apparatus to make it work in its own favor and to do away with class
antagonisms through the extinction of the bourgeoisie as a class, before finally
disappearing. For the purpose of the state was nothing more than the perpetuation of
class domination, thus a classless society (which in this instance would mean one that
was not governed by the division between owners of the means of production and those
who only owned their own labor) would be a society without a state.
Challenging Marx’s political thesis would lead Bakunin to challenge a philosophy of 10

history, with the former turning on the latter and history being guided by the necessary
development of the capitalist mode of production. The ever-stronger concentration of
capital and resulting intensification of class struggle which makes it both easier and
more necessary to reverse the domination of the bourgeoisie. In opposition to what he
saw as an endorsement of historical necessity, Bakunin proposed the idea that, even
though the conditions of production and reproduction of human life may be crucial in
the development of humanity, certain secondary factors??”such as the state??”may
acquire greater importance. This is what underpins, philosophically, the famous
proposal to abolish inheritance advocated by Bakunin at the Basel Congress of the IWA
in 1869, which was opposed by Marx and his friends. Although this right may only be the
legal reflection of an economic fact, it was nevertheless of decisive importance in
maintaining it.
Bakunin’s critique to the Marxian conception of history was therefore twofold. On the 11
one hand, this conception excessively undermined the role of the political factor in the
march of history. On the other hand, Marx was sanctifying the march of history. For
Bakunin, that there were centralizing tendencies in history did not mean at all that
these tendencies were objectively revolutionary. Just because the genesis of the
capitalist mode of production, and the state centralization that accompanies it, are
strong historical tendencies, this does not mean that they should be endorsed, and even
though they may be inevitable, it would be right to rebel against them if they represent
further subjugation of human beings. [16] In this spirit, the act of resisting the
establishment of a factory, or resisting the introduction of machines in the production
process, can be interpreted as a form of reaction from those involved in an endangered
mode of production. However, if we break with Marxism’s heavy historical teleology,
they can also be interpreted as a defense of freedom against a new and terrible form of
oppression (and as a successful defense of the interests of workers in the sector
concerned). There is nothing surprising that it was libertarian [17] writers who
rehabilitated the Luddite movement, whose members the Marxist historiography
considered retrograde because of their objections to technical progress, the
implementation of large industrial operations, and in fine the possibility of the mass
organization of the working class.
Regarding the status of politics, Bakunin considered that the seizure of state power by a 12
revolutionary organization inspired by the program that was (presumably) Marx’s
would lead to the emergence of a new class that would administer the capital that had
been prized from the hands of the bourgeoisie and would in turn oppress both the
working class and the peasantry. [18] This is often what is known as “prescient
analysis” [19]??”a problematic formulation??”on Bakunin’s part regarding the unavoidable
degeneration of the workers’ state. In opposition to the political position he attributed
to Marx, Bakunin put forward the idea that the International was not a group of parties
that had the goal of taking power through the ballot box, but a body for systematizing
and practically asserting the objective??”economic??”solidarity that joined the working-
class world together. Within this organization, Bakunin went on to explain, it would be
natural and necessary that different political options were expressed, whether they were
those of Marx, those of Blanqui’s friends (which involved a coup carried out by a small
minority of determined men), or those of what he called the anarchic party (widespread
insurrection to destroy the state immediately, that is to say, not instantly, but without
mediation), but none of the three should ever become the official policy position of the
organization, lest it degenerate into an embryonic form of the state. [20]
Here we see a critique regarding separation from politics and an ideal of politics being 13
resorbed in the economic policy that would be taken up, developed, and turned into
action by revolutionary syndicalism at the end of the century and the beginning of the
next. Consequently, Bakunin also opposed any form of centralization within the
International. Attributing to Marx the project of setting up the general council of the
organization as a kind of central executive, he advocated the free federation of sections
of the organization and the reduction of its central body to a mere office for statistics
and correspondence. It was on this point (and not based on an anarchist program) that
most sections of the International opposed the general council and left the organization
after Bakunin’s expulsion at the Hague Congress of 1872. [21]
The contemporary relevance of a critique
To summarize, the political conflict that historically gave rise to anarchism bequeathed 14
to it a threefold critique, the current relevance of which needs to be explored. Firstly,
there was a critique of politics, which was understood as an activity carried out by
specialists and whose aim was the conquest of power through elections, against which
an alternative was proposed that was antipolitical (and not apolitical, as Marx and his
friends tended to argue), that is to say, an activity related to the state which
simultaneously sought its destruction. [22] Secondly, there was a critique of
organizations as a possible new source of oppression, centralization, and bureaucracy;
this critique spread immediately through revolutionary syndicalism and was popular
among the first authors to highlight the confiscation of democracy by political
parties. [23] Finally, there was a critique of the philosophy of history insofar as history is
denied any telos to orientate it, a critique that permits an understanding of why
anarchism historically has not only survived its defeats, but turned them into legends:
the Commune, Makhno, libertarian Spain, and so forth. These critiques were merely
begun by Bakunin. With regard to organizations, his position was more complex than
what he said about the International, as he was also highly enthusiastic about secret
societies, which he endowed with endless regulations that were a long way off being a
blueprint for a society free from all forms of domination. [24] As for the philosophy of
history, Bakunin adhered, for the most part, to the materialist conception of history as
it is put forward in the Manifesto. He simply rejected the crudeness of the mechanism,
without rejecting a certain degree of teleology. With regard to politics, the conflict
between Marx and Bakunin gave rise to a curious chiasmus, wherein the author who
was supposed to play down the role of political factors in history stood accused of
turning the seizure of state power into the main objective, and wherein the author who
emphasized the role of political and legal factors in the development of the capitalist
mode of production (for example through inheritance) turned his back on any separate
or specific political activities.
To these three critiques we must add a fourth, which was mostly reserved for Bakunin 15
because of his interest in countries that were not industrially developed. As with a
section of Marxism after him, Bakunin identified within Marxism a portrayal of the
working class as essentially revolutionary, which led to a dismissal of elements of the
population such as the Lumpenproletariat, smallholding peasantry, or the déclassé youth
as potential counterrevolutionaries. In attempting to consider the conditions for
revolution in countries where industry and the working class were still in their infancy
(Russia, but also Italy), Bakunin did not follow the path of saying that these countries
first needed to develop a disciplined working class through industry before they could
contemplate a social revolution. Instead, he emphasized the role of the peasant
masses [25] and young people, [26] and even what Marx decried as the Lumpenproletariat. [27]
More recently, in Pierre Bourdieu we find a convergent analysis of the revolutionary
potential that is contained within the existence of “proletaroid intellectuals” who have
failed to find their place in a particular field and for whom “everything. .. inclines them
to put their capacities for explanation and systematization at the service of popular
indignation and revolt.” [28]
These criticisms are also interesting because they resonate with other decenterings that 16
have characterized the modern era, especially when it has come to revisiting the
problem of the state. There is a relationship between the critiques of Marxism that have
historically been formulated by anarchists and those that have been presented by
authors as diverse as Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, particularly during their
teaching at the Collège de France, where they had to deal the issue of state. [29] We might
also indicate extensions of the anarchist critique of some aspects of the Marxist
philosophy of history into the work of libertarian anthropologists Pierre Clastres [30] and
David Graeber. [31]
Of course, we must provide a number of nuances within this presentation of anarchist 17

critiques of Marx. Firstly, the position attributed by Bakunin and his friends to Marx
was highly simplistic, and often seemed to apply to Lassalle’s thought and anticipate the
Marxism of the Second International. In terms of political matters, Marx’s position was
likely more complex; it involved taking into account country-specific developments,
advocating in some cases the organization of the working class into a party that would
take power peacefully, while not excluding the occurrence of revolutions in others.
Above all, Marx fluctuated, especially during the Paris Commune, on the question of the
seizure of state power by the proletariat. While continuing to follow the efforts of the
German Socialists to unite into a single party, Marx praised the Parisian proletarians
who understood that the working class should not just take the powers of the state as
they exist to make them work to their advantage, but must immediately destroy them, a
correction to the formula contained in the Manifesto. With regard to organization, Marx
was absolutely not contemptuous of forms of organization based on economic
solidarity; he even believed they foreshadowed the classless society and were a place
where proletarians could experience self-government. [32] Finally, although it is difficult
not to see a kind of historical teleology in his formulation of great historical tendencies,
or something akin to laws of history (typically in the penultimate chapter of book 1 of
Capital about the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation), it was often a different
story when it came to his analysis of specific historical circumstances. These nuances
are both important and insignificant. They are insignificant in that they were often
erased by the dominant versions of Marxism; they are important in that it has been
precisely on these nuances that certain authors and activists have relied to propose
rapprochement between Marxism and anarchism.
It should be noted that even though the reciprocal hostility between Marx’s and 18
Bakunin’s supporters was fed by mutually held misconceptions, this did not extend to
ignorance??”quite the opposite. Bakunin believed, for example, that it would be possible
to validate the critique of political economy contained in Capital as a true scientific
critique (he had already begun to translate the work into Russian). It is also worth
noting that the first great popularizer of this work was a friend of Bakunin, namely
Carlo Cafiero, an Italian activist whose compendium of Capital attracted the praise of
Marx and Engels. [33] Thereafter, anarchists were able to appropriate the Marxian
critique of political economy, just as they appropriated other useful scientific
knowledge for propaganda and their struggle. [34] Of course, this implies considering it
to be possible to separate the wheat of Marx’s political economy from the chaff of his
politics and philosophy of history, something which is not evident.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the instances of rapprochement that have been 19

attempted over the course of history between Marxism and anarchism. Maximilien
Rubel, Marx’s French editor at the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, did not hesitate to see in
Marx a “theorist of anarchism,” particularly through the emphasis he placed on Marx’s
writings in response to the Paris Commune. [35] For his part, Daniel Guérin, a writer and
libertarian Communist militant, repeatedly called for an anarchist appropriation of
[36]
Marxism.  It must be emphasized that such cases were isolated, and certain Marxist
authors who reached conclusions that were similar to anarchist Communism have
always refused to recognize it. [37] Finally, of key significance are the situationists who,
in 1960, made original propositions for going beyond what they saw as the respective
sectarianisms of Marxism and anarchism. [38]
At bottom, the theoretical debate caused by the conflict between anarchism and 20
Marxism has left the movements that fight against domination with a problematic
project: self-emancipation. For this reason, it is important to appreciate that the
relevance of anarchist critiques of Marxism goes beyond the immediate context in
which these critiques were articulated. Whether one is identifying the revolutionary
subject, understanding the conditions under which a society freed from the state is
possible, or protecting against reproductions of domination using the means of
emancipation that organizations are supposed to provide, the problems identified by
these critiques are still ours.
Notes
[1] A first version of this text was presented at the “Actualité de Marx” colloquium held in
Lyon on March 8, 2013. I thank the students who organized this day for their
invitation and for listening.
[2] Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century (London: Michael
Joseph, 1994).
[3] This critique was made very early on by some of the last representatives of “classical”
anarchism, especially in 1921 by Rudolf Rocker in Les Soviets trahis par les bolcheviks
(Paris: Spartacus, 1998).
[4] It is in particular this development that is demonstrated in Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive!
Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (London: Pluto Press, 2008).
[5] We find illustrations of this in particular in the Anglophone journal Anarchist Studies
and in the book that I edited with Daniel Colson and Mimmo Pucciarelli, Philosophie de
l’anarchie (Lyon: ACL, 2012).
[6] See Uri Gordon’s clarification of this in Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive! Les politiques
antiautoritaires de la pratique à la théorie, trans. Vivien Garcia (Lyon: ACL, 2012), 30–33.
The phrase is inspired by Tomas Ibanez Anarchisme, néo-anarchisme et post-anarchisme,
Nada, 2014: (“anarchisme extra-muros”.
[7] This designation was proposed by Tomás Ibañez. See in particular by this author
“L’Anarchisme est un type d’être constitutivement changeant. Arguments pour un
néo-anarchisme,” in Angaut, Colson, and Pucciarelli, Philosophie de l’anarchie, 357–372.
[8] The main representative of this not particularly militant current is Saul Newman; see
his From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (Lanham:
Lexington Books, 2001). For a discussion and critique of postanarchist theories, see
Vivien Garcia, L’Anarchisme aujourd’hui (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007).
[9] Karl Marx, Afterword to the second German edition of Capital,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm. In this text, Marx takes
this phrase from the preface of Hegel’s Encyclopedia; Hegel was referring to how,
according to Lessing, Spinoza was treated during his time.
[10] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Schelling,

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/anti-schelling/ch05.htm
[11] This return to the origins obviously does not exclude mention of the subsequent
history, which contributed to the original dispute crystallizing into two camps: the
crushing of the Kronstadt uprising in 1921 and more broadly the growing repression
of anarchists in Russia after 1918; the Red Army’s use of Makhno’s anarchist uprising
in Ukraine to defeat the White armies before turning against him; and the liquidation
of the Spanish revolution (and many revolutionaries) by Stalin in 1936 and 1937, to
mention only the most famous events.
[12] Especially if one considers birth dates to the antiauthoritarian International that met
for the first time in Saint-Imier in September 1872.
[13] On this point see Mathieu Léonard, L’Émancipation des travailleurs. Une histoire de la
Première Internationale (Paris: La Fabrique, 2011).
[14] These texts are collected principally in volume 3 of Mikhail Bakunin, Œuvres complètes
de Bakounine (Paris: Champ Libre, 1974–1982)
[15] See for example the manuscript of March 1872, “L’Allemagne et le communisme
d’État,” in which Bakunin attacks “the party of social democracy, founded in Germany
by the disciples of Marx, Lassalle first, then Liebknecht and co., the party that
recommends that workers in Germany seek their emancipation by transforming the
current state into a popular one” (Bakunin, Œuvres complètes, 3:113). [Translator’s note:
Quotation back-translated from the English-language version of this article.]
[16] In the same text, Bakunin writes: “Materialists and determinists like Mr. Marx
himself, we also recognize the fatal linkage between economic and political
developments in history. .. but we do not we bow before them indifferently, and above
all we refrain from praising and admiring them when, by their nature, they reveal
themselves to be in flagrant opposition to the supreme goal of history and to the
fundamentally human ideal that is found in more or less evident manifestations in the
instincts, popular aspirations, and religious symbols of all ages.” (Bakunin, Œuvres
complètes, 3:195–196). [Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from the French-
language version of this article.]
[17] See especially Julius Van Daal, La Colère de Ludd: la lutte des classes en Angleterre à l’aube de
la révolution industrielle, (Paris: L’Insomniaque, 2012).
[18] This prediction is developed in particular in Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) (originally published in 1873).
[19] See, for example Noam Chomsky, “Union soviétique et socialisme,” in De l’espoir en
l’avenir. Propos sur l’anarchisme et le socialisme, (Marseille: Agone, 2001), 83.
[20] See especially the first pages of Écrit contre Marx, dated to the end of the year 1872, in
Bakunin, Œuvres complètes, 3:171–187.
[21] However, it was the Jurane James Guillaume and not Bakunin who imposed the
minimalist tactic that ultimately led to the isolation of the Marxists and Blanquists
over the question of the autonomy of sections within the organization. See on this
point the introduction by Arthur Lehning of volume 3 of Bakunin, Œuvres complètes.
[22] This antipoliticism was common to Bakunin and Proudhon, who wrote in his Carnets
in 1852: “I am in politics in order to kill and do away with it.” (Quoted in Philippe
Chanial, “Justice et contrat dans la république des associations de Proudhon,” Corpus
no. 47 (2004): 113.) [Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from the French-
language version of this article.]
[23] Moisei Ostrogorski, La Démocratie et les partis politiques (1902–1912) (Paris: Fayard, 1993);
Robert Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens (Leipzig: Klinkhardt, 1911).
[24] Bakunin, Principes et organisation de la société internationale révolutionnaire, Strasbourg,

Le Chat Ivre, 2013 includes the most important of the secret-society regulations
written by the Russian revolutionary.
[25] This is particularly the case at the end of Statism and Anarchy, his last major text. See
Bakunin, Œuvres complètes, 4:346.
[26] With regard to Italy, Bakunin stressed in particular the revolutionary role that could
be played by the “great mass of people born into the bourgeoisie, but who on the one
hand disdain serving the state, and not having found a place or in industry or in
commerce, are completely displaced and disoriented.” (Bakunin, Œuvres complètes,
1:82). [Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from the French-language version
of this article.] For Russia, see the text Quelques paroles à mes jeunes frères en Russie
(September 1869) and his praise of the “déclassé and educated youth” in Socialisme
libertaire (Paris: Denoël, 1973), 205. [Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from
the French-language version of this article.]
[27] See, in the letter to Nechayev of June 2, 1870, the encouragement to connect with the
“world of vagrants, thieves and robbers” (Bakunin, Œuvres complètes, 5:234).
[Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from the French-language version of
this article.]
[28] Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ littéraire,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 89
(September 1991): 32 (written in 1982). It therefore seems difficult to maintain, as
Daniel Bensaïd does, that this figure is identical to that of the organic intellectual and
“constitutes a kind of resentful lumpenintelligentsia” that stands in opposition to the
“authentic intellectual” and that Bourdieu “rejects with horror” (Daniel Bensaïd,
“Pierre Bourdieu, l’intellectuel et le politique,” Contretemps no. 4 (May 2002): 165).
[29] Michel Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 2004); Pierre

Bourdieu, Sur l’État (1989–1992) (Paris: Seuil, 2012).
[30] Pierre Clastres, La Société contre l’État (Paris: Minuit, 1972).
[31] David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm

Press, 2004).
[32] In his letter of October 10, 1868, to J. B. Schweitzer, Marx explains that “centralist
organisation. .. contradicts the nature of the trades unions;” it “would not be desirable,
least of all in Germany. Here, where the worker is regulated bureaucratically from
childhood onwards, where he believes in authority, in those set over him, the main
thing is to teach him to walk by himself.” (Marx to Schweitzer, October 10, 1868,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_10_13.htm.)
[33] Carlo Cafiero, Abrégé du Capital de Karl Marx (Marseille: Le Chien rouge, 2013)
(originally published in 1878).
[34] It was in this spirit that a motion recommending that militants “give great weight to
the study of technical and chemical sciences, as a means defense and attack” was
passed at the International Anarchist Congress of London that created the Anarchist
International (July 1881). [Translator’s note: Quotation back-translated from the
French-language version of this article.]
[35] Maximilien Rubel, “Marx, théoricien de l’anarchisme,” in Marx, critique du marxisme

(Paris: Payot, 1974).
[36] Daniel Guérin, “Anarchisme et marxisme,” in L’Anarchisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1981),

and Guérin, Pour un marxisme libertaire (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1969).
[37] This is the case of Anton Pannekoek whose great work, Workers’ Councils, only
mentions anarchism as an insult to the workers who engage in wildcat strikes (see
Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1947/workers-councils.htm).
[38] See Jean-Christophe Angaut, “Beyond Black and Red: The Situationists and the Legacy
of the Workers’ Movement,” in Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red, ed. Alex
Pritchard et al. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 232–250.
Abstract
EnglishThere is a tendency evident in the various strands of contemporary anarchism

to ignore both Marx, Marxism and the history of Marxism, and the critiques formulated
by the anarchist tradition. Against this tendency, the aim of the present article is to
emphasize both the contemporary relevance of these critiques and the contribution of
Marxism to a radical critique of all forms of domination. It therefore recalls the role
played by the critique of Marxism in the elaboration of the anarchist movement,
whether for the philosophy of history, the status of the political, the role of organization,
or the postulate that the revolutionary subject is to be exclusively identified with the
proletariat. While some of the critiques are aimed more at the Second International
than at Marx himself, they do however retain their relevance in our present situation.
They are, furthermore, here coupled with the attempt to go beyond the exclusive
partiality of these two traditions, the Marxist and the anarchist. The question of self-
emancipation thus finally emerges as the most important and problematic heritage of
the conflict between Marxism and anarchism.
Outline
The forgetting of Marxism and critiques of it in contemporary forms of anarchism
Anarchism as anti-Marxism
The contemporary relevance of a critique
Author
Jean-Christophe Angaut
Jean-Christophe Angaut is maître de conférences in philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure

de Lyon. A specialist in German philosophy (especially the young Hegelians), in socialist,
anarchist, and Communist theory, and in critiques of trade-union and political
organizations, his notable publications include Bakounine jeune hégélien. La philosophie et son
dehors (Lyon ENS Éditions, 2007), La liberté des peuples. Bakounine et les révolutions de 1848 (ACL,
2009), and the coedited work Philosophie de l’anarchie (with Daniel Colson et Mimmo
Pucciarelli, ACL, 2012). He recently contributed to the republishing of Confession de Bakounine
(Le Passager Clandestin, 2013), and is currently preparing a new translation of Robert
Michels’s Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens.
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9/15/22, 12:22 AM Revisiting anarchist critiques of Marxism | Cairn International Edition

T o ask questions about the contemporary relevance of anarchist critiques of

The forgetting of Marxism and critiques of it in

This perception was, of course, somewhat naive and unreasonably optimistic. It 3

In response to this tendency of contemporary forms of anarchism, it seems important 6

Challenging Marx’s political thesis would lead Bakunin to challenge a philosophy of 10

The contemporary relevance of a critique

Of course, we must provide a number of nuances within this presentation of anarchist 17

Finally, it is worth mentioning the instances of rapprochement that have been 19

[9] Karl Marx, Afterword to the second German edition of Capital,

[10] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Schelling,

[24] Bakunin, Principes et organisation de la société internationale révolutionnaire, Strasbourg,

[29] Michel Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique (Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 2004); Pierre

[30] Pierre Clastres, La Société contre l’État (Paris: Minuit, 1972).

[31] David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm

[35] Maximilien Rubel, “Marx, théoricien de l’anarchisme,” in Marx, critique du marxisme

[36] Daniel Guérin, “Anarchisme et marxisme,” in L’Anarchisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1981),

EnglishThere is a tendency evident in the various strands of contemporary anarchism

The contemporary relevance of a critique

Jean-Christophe Angaut is maître de conférences in philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure

Uploaded on Cairn-int.info on 05/03/2015

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