ANARCHIST COMMUNISTS: A QUESTION OF CLASS
5.1.
Organization
Let us move on to those Anarchists who, at least in word, remain true to the struggle for the emancipation of the exploited. The first big distinction is between those who do not believe it is necessary for there to be organization of the class struggle and those like the Anarchist Communists who believe that it is indispensable. There are, in fact, spontaneist fringes in the Anarchist movement who do not believe that any form of planning is required, given that an anarchist society will inevitably come into existence as a necessary result of the evolution of human society. Giovanni Bovio, a Socialist parliamentarian and freemason with strong anarchist leanings, once said: "Thought is anarchist and history is marching towards anarchy", echoing that faith in the inevitability of the development of history towards anarchy. This optimism originates in the vision of the anarchist Prince Pëtr Kropotkin, the founder of Anarcho-Communism, on the basis of his own scientific knowledge. Kropotkin was a geographer of some standing, bettered only in professionalism among Anarchists by Elisée Reclus. On the basis of his own scientific knowledge and the study of social insect communities and, wholly imbued with positivism and the consequent sure belief that science could solve every problem, Kropotkin came to the idea that libertarian communism was a necessary and inevitable result for the organization of the collective life of humanity.
Thus, Anarchism was no longer the goal of the conscious efforts on the part of men and women to organize themselves for their collective happiness, but only the final and teleologically predetermined stage in historical development (as we shall see, somewhat like the dialectic materialism of Stalinist orthodoxy which stemmed from the same positivist vein). The result of all this, and his followers acted accordingly, was that all forms of organization are not only unnecessary (given that the course of events cannot be seriously influenced) but actually dangerous, as they represent an obstruction for the free flow of the process' spontaneity and impede the appearance of the final stage in the development of humanity.
On the other hand, Anarchist Communists (and others, besides) believe that the various stages of history are not written in stone and that the collective intervention of humans can influence events. This influence may be minor at first, but with the passage of time it can be directed at ever-greater goals. And collective means organized. As a result of their deterministic vision, Anarcho-Communists place no importance in the class struggle. Furthermore, they consider even the existence of classes to be an unproven fact, if not some Marxist invention. It is the man or woman, as a single individual, who must tend towards becoming a member of the anarchist society. For Anarchist Communists, society is dramatically divided into classes (something which the recent wave of rampant liberalism has made abundantly clear by widening the gaps between the haves and the have-nots, between rich countries and poor - in other words, between the exploiters and the exploited), and only the emancipation of the weakest by means of a resolute class war will lead to a society of free equals, the product of a conscious programmed project which can fulfil the proletariat's aspirations. The class struggle exists and it is the only hope to obtain a more just society. But if it is to be successful, it must be organized.