---
authors:
- V. I. Lenin
isoListDate: 2022-09-03
isoSourceDate: '1901'
language: en
original: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/dec/31.htm
read_time_minutes: 2
summary: <strong>1.</strong> Anarchism, in the course of the 35 to 40 years (Bakunin
  and the <em>International</em>, 1866-) of its existence (and with Stirner included,
  in the course of many more years) has produced nothing but general platitudes against
  <em>exploitation</em>. These…
title: Theses on Anarchism
---
**1\.**
Anarchism, in the course of the 35 to 40 years (Bakunin and the *International*, 1866-) of its existence (and with Stirner included, in the course of many more years) has produced nothing but general platitudes against *exploitation*.
These phrases have been current for more than 2,000 years.
What is missing is
α) an understanding of the *causes* of exploitation;
β) an understanding of the *development* of society, which leads to socialism;
γ) an understanding of the *class struggle* as the creative force for the realisation of socialism.

**2\.**
An understanding of the *causes* of exploitation.
*Private* property as the basis of *commodity* economy.
Social property in the means of production.
In anarchism--nil.
Anarchism is bourgeois *individualism* in reverse.
Individualism is the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook.
Defence of petty property and *petty economy* on the land.
*Keine Majorität*.
{No majority (i.e., the anarchists' non-acceptance of the submission by the minority to the majority).--*Ed*.--*Lenin*}
Negation of the unifying and organising power of the authority.

**3\.**
Failure to understand the development of society--the role of large-scale production--the development of capitalism into socialism.
Anarchism is a product of *despair*.
The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond, and not of the proletarian.

**4\.**
Failure to understand the *class* struggle of the proletariat.
Absurd negation of politics in bourgeois society.
Failure to understand the role of the organisation and the education of the workers.
Panaceas consisting of one-sided, disconnected means.

**5\.**
What has anarchism, at one time dominant in the Romance countries, contributed in recent European history?
No doctrine, revolutionary teaching, or theory.
Fragmentation of the working-class movement.
Complete fiasco in the experiments of the revolutionary movement (Proudhonism, 1871; Bakuninism, 1873).
Subordination of the working class to *bourgeois* politics in the guise of negation of politics.