Marxism and Anarchism: Ideological Comparison and Revolutionary Methods

Marxism

Critique of Capitalism

• The core of the operation lies in the proletarian *surplus value* (plusvalía). This surplus value is the source of capitalist profits.
• Capitalists limit associationism and prevent improvements in working conditions.

Historical Materialism and Class Struggle

• The engine of history is the "struggle of classes" between oppressor and oppressed.
• History is a sequence of "modes of production," characterized by production relations between the owners of the means of production and those who only possess their labor.
• The transition from one system to another occurs when class contradictions destroy a mode of production and replace it with a new one.

The Communist Future

• When the proletariat acquires class consciousness, organized in political parties and labor unions, they will carry out the revolution and conquer political and economic power.

Anarchism

Anarchism does not present the same comprehensive ideological coherence as Marxism. The term means "without authority" (an-archos). Despite the diversity of anarchist projects, there are a number of common ideas:

Core Principles

• Critique of capitalism and private property.
• Defense of collective ownership of the means of production.
• Social organization is based on free contact between community members that form a joint association.
• The voluntary union of different "communes" leads to a Federation that replaces the centralized state.

Rejection of the State and Political Action

• Advocates the destruction of the state, the army, the church, and private property.
• To eliminate the bourgeois state, anarchists oppose political participation in elections and parliaments.
• Political parties are substituted by independent trade unions.
• No party shall prepare the revolution; this will result from a spontaneous mobilization of the popular classes, using violence or direct action, not politics.
• The protagonists of the revolution will be all the oppressed members of society.

Key Differences

Marxism

• Workers create political parties, which will be led by intellectuals.
• Marxism believes in collective action as the revolutionary method.
• Advocates a strong state dominated by the proletariat (the Dictatorship of the Proletariat).
• Support is primarily found among industrial workers.

Anarchism

• Rejects the creation of political parties.
• Political action is replaced by trade unions that mobilize individual workers.
• Actions include individual acts, sometimes involving terrorism.
• Advocates the destruction of the state using violence or direct action.
• The new society will be organized from the bottom up through the creation of self-governing workers' communes.
• Support is primarily found among peasants and in less developed countries (e.g., Spain, Portugal).