in response to my recent post on Anarchism over marxism, tom u, a local comrade, directed me to hal draper's criticisms of anarchism. i couldn't find the 'critiques of other socialisms' piece that tom was referring to, but looked at his 'the two souls of socialism' with horror. in the section entitled 'the myth of anarchist libertarianism', draper simply drags up lots of personal issues he has with proudhon (which, to be fair, paint him as a thoroughly nasty piece of work) but barely comments on his political philosophy. as we are anarchists, not proudhonists, these personal failings are irrelevant. for a more insightful look into proudhon's work, check out gambone's 'proudhon and anarchism', whose opening paragraph contains the line

Marx did a hatchet job on Proudhon and Marxists such as Hal Draper took quotes out of context or dug up embarrassing statements that made Proudhon look authoritarian or proto-fascist. There are also anarchists who claim he is "inconsistent" or "not quiet an anarchist"

however

When I finally read his works, far from appearing "inconsistent" or "not quite an anarchist", the "Sage of Besancon" had created a practical and anti-utopian anarchism - An anarchism based upon a potential within actually existing society and not a doctrine or ideology to be imposed from outside.

i'm certainly not convinced that comments about proudhon's personal life make for a compelling critique of anarchist theory.

next up for the 'razor sharp' criticism is bakunin. draper writes:

The story is similar with the second "Father of Anarchism," Bakunin, whose schemes for dictatorship and suppression of democratic control are better known than Proudhon's.

so much so, in fact, that draper doesn't feel the need to actually document any of them. seeing as most of these assertions seem to have been made up by marx who had a personal dislike of the man, it's hard to see that this has any credibility at all. the behind-the-scenes string pulling an wrangling marx employed to expel both bakunin and his social democratic alliance from the first international, surely illustrate who the anti-democratic party was in that dispute. the allegations come from a wilful misinterpretation of bakunin's term 'invisible dictatorship'. whilst this has clearly been taken out of context by many marxists, once again it should be stressed that we do not follow the writings of bakunin, or have him as our political idol. as bakunin himself wrote in a letter:

These [revolutionary] groups would not seek anything for themselves, neither privilege nor honour nor power. . . [but] would be in a position to direct popular movements . . . [via] the collective dictatorship of a secret organisation. . . The dictatorship. . . does not reward any of the members. . . or the groups themselves. . . with any. . . official power. It does not threaten the freedom of the people, because, lacking any official character, it does not take the place of State control over the people, and because its whole aim. . . consists of the fullest realisation of the liberty of the people.

for an anarchist interpretation of bakunin's invisible dictatorship see this piece.

finally draper comes up with something resembling a thesis:-

Anarchism is not concerned with the creation of democratic control from below, but only with the destruction of "authority" over the individual, including the authority of the most extremely democratic regulation of society that it is possible to imagine...
Anarchism is on principle fiercely anti-democratic, since an ideally democratic authority is still authority. But since, rejecting democracy, it has no other way of resolving the inevitable disagreements and differences among the inhabitants of Theleme, its unlimited freedom for each uncontrolled individual is indistinguishable from unlimited despotism by such an individual, both in theory and practice.

The great problem of our age is the achievement of democratic control from below over the vast powers of modern social authority. Anarchism, which is freest of all with verbiage about something-from-below, rejects this goal. It is the other side of the coin of bureaucratic despotism, with all its values turned inside-out, not the cure or the alternative.

but surely democratic voting can result in terrible mistakes, and those opposed to its intended consequences have a duty to act and prevent those consequences? if a referendum were to be held in the uk right now on whether asylum laws should be tightened, undoubtedly the majority of people would vote for that measure, in spite of its repressive consequences. anarchists would reject the legitimacy of that vote, and act in order to prevent its implementation. what about wildcat strikes? they're the decision of a minority to resist their oppression, and surely not 'undemocratic'.

the anarchism website has some rebuttals to draper, that question his proposed alternatives to anarchism:-

Draper argues for "democratic control from below" instead of anarchism. Of course, anarchists like Bakunin had argued for elected, mandated and recallable delegates long before the Paris Commune but let us forget that little fact. So what does Draper's scheme actually involve. Marxism, as Lenin made clear, does not aim for direct working class power, but power to the party, which we have to obey (or else!). As Trotsky put it, "a revolution is 'made' directly by a minority. The success of a revolution is possible, however, only where this minority finds more or less support, or at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority." So Draper's "democratic control from below" simply results in power being centralised into fewer and fewer hands. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" becomes, in fact, the "dictatorship over the proletariat" by the party.

my own view is that the empowerment of individuals is the only effective brake on the development of authoritarian hierarchical structures. this is not anti-democratic, and indeed many anarchists of today call for the achievement of true democracy. david graeber claims that

[Anarchism] is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy.

direct democracy is what we seek, and hal draper aint got a clue.