" ... Where the Marxian tradition has no stability, as in Italy, the
socialist party refused to admit that the State was an exclusively
capitalist organism and that it was necessary to challenge its action.
And with this pro-State attitude of the socialist party all its ideas
have unconsciously changed. The principles of State enterprise (order,
discipline, hierarchy, subordination, maximum productivity, etc.) are
the same as those of private enterprise. Wherever the socialist party
openly takes its stand on the side of the State--contrary even to its
intentions--it acquires an entirely capitalist viewpoint. Its
embarrassed attitude in regard to the insubordination of the workers in
private manufacture becomes each day more evident, and, if it were not
afraid of losing its electoral support, it would oppose still more the
spirit of revolt among the workers. It is thus that the socialist
party--the conservative party of the future transformed State--is
becoming the conservative party of the present social organization. But
even where, as in Germany, the Marxian tradition still assumes the form
of a creed to all outward appearance, the party is very far from keeping
within the limits of pure Marxian theory. Its anti-State attitude is not
one of inclination. It is imposed by the State itself, ... the
adversary, through its military and feudal vanity, of every concession
to working-class democracy."[19]
All this sounds most familiar, and I cannot resist quoting here our old
friend Bakounin in order to show how much this criticism resembles that
of the anarchists. If we turn to "Statism and Anarchy" we find that
Bakounin concluded this work with the following words: "Upon the
Pangermanic banner" (_i. e._, also upon the banner of German social
democracy, and, consequently, upon the socialist banner of the whole
civilized world) "is inscribed: The conservation and strengthening of
the State at all costs; on the socialist-revolutionary banner" (read
Bakouninist banner) "is inscribed in characters of blood, in letters of
fire: the abolition of all States, the destruction of bourgeois
civilization; free organization from the bottom to the top, by the help
of free associations; the organization of the working populace (_sic!_)
freed from all the trammels, the organization of the whole of
emancipated humanity, the creation of a new human world."[AC] Thus
frantically Bakounin exposed the antagonism between his philosophy and
that of the Marxists. It would seem, therefore, that if Labriola knew
his Marx, he would hardly undertake at this late date to save socialism
from a tendency that Marx himself gave it. The State, it appears, is the
same bugaboo to the syndicalists that it is to the anarchists. It is
almost something personal, a kind of monster that, in all ages and
times, must be oppressive. It cannot evolve or change its being. It
cannot serve the working class as it has previously served feudalism, or
as it now serves capitalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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