Marxism and Anarchism are Incompatible
Haz Al-Din
Abstract
This essay argues that the divide between Marxism and anarchism is rooted not primarily in competing political strategies, but in fundamentally incompatible philosophical conceptions of social reality. It contends that anarchism, despite its revolutionary aspirations, remains grounded in the same individualist metaphysics that underlies liberalism by treating the empirical individual as the primary unit of analysis and the state as a derivative construct. Against this, the essay develops a Marxist account of objective social relations, maintaining that material relations of production precede and constitute both individual subjectivity and political institutions. Drawing upon Marx’s critique of Feuerbach, Hegelian dialectics, and later engagements with Lenin, Lacan, and modern political philosophy, it argues that the state is not an arbitrary instrument of domination but the political expression of historically constituted social relations. The essay further contrasts the Marxist conception of the proletariat as the concrete historical realization of humanity with the anarchist elevation of negation and anti-institutionalism, concluding that Marxism offers a dialectical science of the social whole fundamentally irreconcilable with the metaphysical premises of anarchism.
Keywords
Marxism, Anarchism, Historical Materialism, Social Relations, Dialectics
