ANARCHISM

Marx is the pre-eminent communist thinker. There are many forms of non-Marxist communism. The most influential of these is anarchism, or anarcho-communism. It advocates not only communal ownership of property but also the abolition of the state. The important anarcho-communists were William Godwin in England, Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin in Russia (though both became exiles), and Emma Goldman in the United States.

They argued that the state and private property are interdependent institutions. The state exists to protect private property, and the owners of private property protect the state. If property is to be owned communally and distributed equally, thestate must be smashed once and for all. In Statism and Anarchy, BakuninattackedMarx’s viewthat thetransitionalstate—thedictatorship of theproletariat— would simply wither away after preventing a bourgeois counterrevolution. He argued that no state has ever withered away, and no state ever will. On the other hand, the very nature of the state is to extend its control over its subjects, limiting and finally eliminating whatever liberty they once had over their lives. Marx’s interim state would in fact be a dictatorship “over” the proletariat. Thus, in this regard, Bakunin proved more prescient than Marx.