The problem of violence
The question of violence is linked to the question of transition – how gradual is
the movement towards a stateless society to be? Can a dramatic transformation of
society take place bit by bit?
Godwin believed that it would take considerable time before society became
sufficiently enlightened to adopt anarchist institutions, and Marshall has suggested
that different types of anarchist organisation could be taken to secure progression
towards the anarchist goal. Thus Proudhon’s mutualism (involving the regulation
of different private producers) could give way to Bakunin’s collectivism (where
people are rewarded according to their work), which in turn might yield to the
more egalitarian idea of Kropotkin’s communism where each is rewarded according
to their need (Hoffman, 1995: 124).
It is true that many anarchists have seen that violence involves an intolerable
conflict between ends and means. The Russian anarchist and novelist, Leo Tolstoy
(1828–1910), rejected all forms of violence, whether revolutionary or statist: is there
any difference, he asked between killing a revolutionary and killing a policeman?
‘The difference is between cat-shit and dog-shit... I don’t like the smell of either’
(cited in Marshall, 1993: 377). Gandhi, influenced by Tolstoy, also espoused a
militant pacifism. Carter argues that there are elements within anarchism that are
peculiarly receptive to violence. The belief that many anarchists held: that a
golden age might be realised through one apocalyptic outburst, an all-embracing
revolution, can only encourage what Bakunin called the ‘poetry of destruction’
(Carter, 1978: 337).
Part of this ‘utopianism’ is the shunning of political organisation in its conven-
tional form, for it might be argued – as we saw with the anarchists in Spain – that
it is worse to cast a ballot than fire a bullet. If constitutional procedures are identified
with ‘statist’ liberalism, then the alternative may have to be despotism and violence.
It is revealing that Robert Michels turned from anarchism to authoritarianism,
arguing that because the German Social Democratic Party was too hierarchical, all
organisation is oligarchical in character. One sympathetic commentator has argued
ruefully that ‘a streak of pathological violence’ runs through anarchism (Hoffman,
1995: 126). We see how after the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871, many
anarchists resorted to a ‘propaganda by deed’ – dramatic action designed to shake
the masses out of their passivity – and these propagandist deeds often degenerated
into acts of terror. The agonised slogan of radical black youth in the South African
townships in the 1980s – ‘liberation before education’ – echoes comments by Italian
followers of Garibaldi and Proudhon in the 1870s. A belief that everything is right
which is not ‘legal’ can easily lead to violence even if it is justified as a way of
avenging wrongs against the people, inspiring fear in the enemy and highlighting
the evil practices of the state (Miller, 1974: 98–9).
Marshall quotes a passage from the CNT constitution printed on the membership
card which states that ‘the adversary does not discuss: he acts’ (1993: 457), and
even Kropotkin, whose personal life is often described in saint-like terms, displays
what Marshall calls ‘an uncomfortable mixture of quietism and aggressive elements’.
Indeed, at one point in his life, Kropotkin supports the arguments of the anarcho-248 Part 2 Classical ideologies