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Title: Marxism and Anarchism Author: FdCA Date: 1991 Language: en Topics: Marxism, authoritarian socialism, critique, anarcho-communism, italy Source: http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/organization/sdf-past/marxism_and_anarchism.htm Notes: First published by the FdCA in “Quaderni per la lotta di classe”, n°3, CP, Lucca 1991
As of the 7^(th) Congress of the FdCA of 1^(st) October 2006, this
document ceases to be part of the FdCA’s Basic Strategy.
The Bolshevik model for the construction of communism already showed
signs of crisis with Lenin’s introduction of the NEP. This was no
sudden, unexpected crisis. It had been presaged by certain political and
governmental choices in the wake of October 1917, in particular:
supported the revolutionary transformation of the country. The
consequence of this act was the suppression of the institutional
environment which hosted the dialectic and debate between the various
political forces representing the various groups and classes that were
allied in the revolutionary process. This “simplification” of the
political scene was achieved thanks to military strength and well before
the structural conditions of the presence of such forces were removed;
anti-institutional forces and therefore of the “social movements” of
which the Anarchists had always been one of the components (the
Makhnovshchina, Kronshtadt), movements that were capable of creating
social models and alternative, revolutionary practices;
which were capable of coming up with projects and programmes in
competition with and further left than the Bolsheviks’ conduct of the
revolution — the various revolutionary political groups that operated at
the time in Russia (Social Revolutionaries, Anarchists, etc.);
Communist Party (Bolshevik), the final act that sealed the definitive
affirmation of the party centre led by Lenin and the creation of an
autocratic management of the revolutionary process;
Factory Committees, organs which were capable of directly exercising
workers’ control of the productive process, achieved by transferring
power to the Soviets, knowing well that the electoral system and the
structure of the Soviets gave the party a greater possibility of taking
them over.
These choices, which were the result of the Leninist concept of the role
of the party during the revolutionary phase, had the (well-known) effect
of reducing mass, popular participation in the revolutionary process and
made it necessary for management of the economy and production to be
aimed at developing accumulation and the management of production by
small owners and by a class of bureaucrats who were comparable in every
way with those who manage the means of production under a capitalist
system.
The transfer of property of the means of production from capitalist
groups to the “socialist” State did not result in an automatic
overturning of relations between capital and labour. On the contrary,
labour remained totally subordinate to the new State institution into
which the ownership of the means of production was concentrated after
its expropriation from the capitalists. The “socialist state” rapidly
became the legal form through which economic development was achieved.
The accumulation of profit became the task of the State, which used its
capital according to the economic directives of the Communist Party. In
the late 1920s in Soviet Russia and in most Communist parties, there was
an increasing conviction that the concentration of ownership of the
means of production in the State, together with the responsibility for
planning it, would considerably reduce the “anarchy of production” which
afflicted the Western capitalist regimes, thereby avoiding the
short-term risk of economic crises. Instead, in Soviet Russia, typically
capitalist production relationships were slowly returning, even though
the ownership of the means of production was controlled by the State.
The reasoning behind this choice can be seen in the mechanistic
application of the principle according to which once the ownership of
the means of production changes, then there is a consequent change in
the social structure. Add to this the fact that State and party were
considered equivalent and that the party was considered to be equivalent
with the proletariat, and you have shown the communist nature of the
society: the proletariat is politically represented by the party and the
party controls the State. Hence, it follows that the society in which
this is the situation and in which the State is the “owner” of the means
of production is therefore a communist society. The clumsy reasoning is
obvious, yet Trotsky (who developed it) was never able to go beyond this
apparent syllogism and continued to sustain up to the end that the
Russian State was indeed a proletarian one, albeit bureaucratically
degenerated. As early as 1924, the classes that held control of
agricultural production attempted to regain the power which was de facto
theirs, if only because they materially possessed the means of
production.
In this context, the successful emergence of Stalin’s line was the
response that the party bureaucracy and what was left of the
revolutionary forces to the attempt from within the party (but with
solid structural bases in the productive and social fabric of the
country) to lay the groundwork to restore, also on an institutional
level, the representative power of the classes which had the possession
and management of the means of production, with “economic democracy”.
With the defeat of Bukharin’s line, the solutions proposed by Stalin met
with unexpected support from the international economic community and
from the crisis that was at the time afflicting the mechanisms of
accumulation throughout the capitalist world (the 1929 crisis).
On an economic level, Stalinism was an original and adequate response to
the problem of the moment. Economic planning, ruthless use of military
control over the workforce, the shifting of revolutionary enthusiasm
onto the processes of accumulation (the work ethic, the Stakanov
syndrome, and so on), a daring foreign policy for the import of civil
and military technology, all this made it possible to build the basic
structures of the country’s heavy industry, the infrastructure, and
allowed Russia to move on from a phase of structural economic
underdevelopment. But the corollary of this policy was the
transformation of the party bureaucracy into a class.
The war, with the rapid acceleration of the productive processes that it
brought, the promotion once more of consensus from and the participation
of the masses (stimulated through the tactical and strategic conduct of
the conflict to the extent of encouraging national reconciliation) gave
Stalinist policies an enormous boost. They also ensured that the
profound contradictions within the model of development and in the
economic and political choices that were made would not be able to
nourish the political opposition which was deprived of a mass base,
because of the war.
But the war (thanks to the acquisition of other territories and peoples
by the Union) did accentuate one very serious problem that the Bolshevik
power inherited from Czarist times: nationalities.
Stalin deluded himself into thinking that he could wipe out the basis of
this problem with forced migrations and the deportation of entire
populations, and tried to effect a “re-mixing” nationalities by
destroying territorial homogeneity, seeking to uproot the centuries-long
traditions and habits of various populations. This was supposed to have
brought about a sort of equalization which would, by alternatively
supporting the various ethnic groups, enable power to be exercised by
the central government. The system would make everyone feel so
“insecure” as to encourage cohesion and unity in the country over
separatism and nationalisms, despite the existence of these sentiments.
It was there not a new policy, but an indication of the continuity of
the old Czarist regime which conceded the right of settlement to various
ethnic groups during the frequent migrations in order to contain demands
for autonomy by the various peoples who were subjects of the empire.
This vassalage established between the central power and new arrivals
was now carefully planned. This was the only difference with the past,
as the various communities throughout the country (both then and now) do
not communicate with each other, do not join together to become one.
Instead, they accentuate their attachment to their own languages,
religions, cultures and traditions. This lay at the root of the
separatist movements that are today causing difficulty within the USSR.
During the second world war, the various contenders tried to exploit the
presence of populations, distinct from each other and often in conflict,
all along the confines of Great Russia, from the Baltic to the Urals.
Backed by the Allies, Stalin once again opted for the destruction of
entire ethnic groups by means of forced emigrations, the dispersion of
populations in the immense territories of the east and even
extermination. The policy of ethnic mixing was not applied in the Baltic
republics as these were not acquired by the USSR until later. Having
acquired them, however, and this being immediately followed by a war
which decimated the local populations, it was possible to engage in a
“Russification” of the area by promoting emigration by Russians and
people from other republics. For this reason, the problem today of
respect for nationality in these countries is, at least in some ways,
different than in the rest of the USSR.
But the great failure of Stalinist policy (and one which actually caused
its downfall as a method, style and political theory of government) was
principally its inability to link the management of those European
countries where the Red Army had imposed socialism to the management of
the USSR in an organic way. The centralist, bureaucratic vision of the
role of the party, the subordination of the various national parties to
the hegemony of the Soviet communist party, destroyed the strength, the
credibility, the mass base of communist parties with a solid, vast
presence in the various countries. This led to the revolts of 1956, a
clear signal of dissatisfaction with the “Russian” management of the
revolutionary process, due to the bureaucratic nature of the forms of
government and the political, economic and social policies which
typified it. These insurrections were characterized by the marked
political hegemony of left communism, often of council communist
inspiration. This should also be seen in the workers’ revolts of
1968–70, part of the long wave of leftist revolts in 1956. They contain
the embryo of the rejection of the running of society along Marxist
communist lines. This rejection also on the part of wide sectors of the
workers and peasants arose from the failures and from the repression
which followed any uprising of a progressive, revolutionary nature. In
fact, popular revolts ended with increasingly more “right-wing”
solutions to the problems raised. The leading class of these states has
as its prime objective the preservation of the strategic balance and is
therefore willing to make alliances with whoever can guarantee it and is
ready to make concessions on a structural level. Here, more so than in
the USSR, there are therefore the structural conditions to choose the
path suggested long ago by Bukharin, with the result that, due to the
changes in the political and economic management of society, there is a
rebirth (even in the economic and productive structure of these
countries) of the domination by classes whose power is based on the
management of the means of production and on the
bureaucratically-exercised control of the processes of accumulation. In
this way, the structural and superstructural bases for the
re-introduction of private ownership of the means of production and the
market were recreated.
Today, in certain countries such as Hungary and Poland, this process is
more advanced and so we can see the introduction of reforms in structure
and institutions of political democracy of a Western type. In others,
like the German Democratic Republic, the call of national unity seems to
be forcing the pace of change. In Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria,
the political situation is moving according to the particular conditions
of each country. We will look at the characteristics and consequences of
all this further on. What we would like to point out here is that in the
USSR, the communist party is playing the most difficult card.
In fact, there is an attempt to constitute the control of power by the
single party (so-called communist) with the restoration, albeit gradual
and partial, of the market, introducing guarantees similar to those in
the liberal state. In other words, there is a search for an original way
to find a new (neo-communist) solution that quietly draws on the
experience accumulated by the social democratic parties and is gradually
introduced into their programmes, in the conviction that the Soviet
State can only benefit from a policy of debate/competition with other
States. Today, the USSR is a full member in its own right of the
international community and a wholly legitimate one. As a military
power, as a State that can offer an immense, receptive market attractive
above all to those European countries which are in a phase of strong,
steady productive growth, the USSR is looking for something in return on
the level of security and economic development, and seeks solidarity
from Western (above all, European) countries in order to contain the
separatist tendencies of its peoples, as only a central Russian power
can guarantee the conditions of stability which provide the market with
security and balance.
There is much to be said on the new phase of European and world history
that is opened up thanks to this choice. It is sufficient to think of
the “Balkanization” of the whole of Eastern Europe right up to the
borders of the Russian republic and of certain situations in Asia in
order to understand that we are embarking on a phase of great
instability. And we can be sure that in this situation the processes in
progress will not be without their difficulties or without consequences
for peace.
It is necessary to point out that at the end of this long road, there is
nothing communist left in the USSR and in Eastern Europe and that the
much-vaunted superiority (as a political theory) of Marxism over
Anarchism is now seen to be without any basis. We now see the
inconsistency of those who based this superiority on Marxism’s ability
to provide positive, concrete solutions to the “transitional phase”,
providing as an example the realization of socialism in Eastern Europe.
In the wake of what has happened, we can happily say that nothing is as
it was before, even though the problems of the exploitation of man by
man and the need to build a communist society remain, in fact the
urgently concern the whole world. The increasing gap between the north
and south of the world, between rich countries and poor, the ecological
and environmental emergency, the explosion of nationalism and religious
and ethnic conflict are all indication of a deep crisis which requires
the urgent adoption of global solutions. The Marxist hypothesis, which
is also undergoing an identity crisis in China and in other parts of the
world, no longer offers sure solutions.
We must re-launch the debate leaving behind us the ruins of a historic
defeat, strong in the knowledge that, although capital continues to grow
stronger, although exploitation is on the rise, although the refinement
of the techniques of domination is ever greater, at least a theory on
which we have been divided is now seen to be a failure, thus opening the
way to revolutionary unity, the unity that characterized the
International in its earliest days.
Today, finally, behind the walls of the Kremlin, the heirs of the London
Secretariat of the First International have taken their last breath.
Once again, the masses become the leading actor in the revolutionary
process. But in order that they can have the instruments for political
action, communist anarchism must get back to carrying out its political
action, anarchist communist organizations must make their contribution
by constantly updating their theory, by setting out a strategy which is
managed by international connections and brought into the workplace and
among the masses by means of a tactical articulation which allows for
the maximum participation and constant verification.
We invite those revolutionary comrades who have been or still are
members of Marxist organizations to debate with us and work with us,
starting with the work among the masses and with a first verification of
the results achieved.
Even at the time of the preparations for the revolutionary uprisings in
Russia, Anarchists had their own original proposals which at times held
sway within the revolutionary movement. The development in 1905 of the
soviets as a means for the self-management of the struggles, as organs
of revolutionary democracy in substitution of the institution and forms
of bourgeois democracy and the nobility, was the direct result of their
political theory. The soviet, in fact, gathers the active forces which
are really involved in the revolutionary project in progress and allows
for the participation of all, irrespective of their political beliefs,
their labour union or religion, on the basis of total equality. This
original instrument of proletarian democracy and mass participation does
not deny the role of parties and political organizations, but achieves
the political objective of mass participation by presenting itself as
the only real and functional (original) instrument of participation. The
full approval by the masses of the soviet as an instrument of political
participation in the revolutionary process is evidenced by the fact that
even the Bolsheviks were forced by the movement to adopt as their own
the slogan “All power to the Soviets!”. Even in the early phase of the
revolutionary process of 1917 (the insurrectional phase), Anarchism had
laid the groundwork for leaving bourgeois representative democracy
behind and had created the basic nucleus for building a new type of
system for participation, also on an institutional level, by finding a
positive solution to the problem of power and of the State in the phase
of transition to communism.
Anarchism not only supported but promoted the liquidation of the last
State structures and the bourgeois democracy (the revolutionary
vanguards that physically closed down the Duma were Anarchists and the
Bolsheviks ratified the operation). But it must not be forgotten that in
the soviets, not only the Bolsheviks and Anarchists were represented,
there were also the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries and, even
more important, those without party, proving the extent of the soviets’
comprehensive capacity for representation.
The liquidation of the left-wing and right-wing opposition by the
Bolsheviks, hegemonized by the Leninist area, went hand in hand with the
subjugation of the soviets and their total domination by the Bolsheviks.
The rise to power of the party and the emergence of the bureaucratic
class in the USSR necessarily meant denying the pluralist nature and the
enormous mass popular participation in the revolutionary process.
Instead, by affirming “All power to the soviets, not to the party”, as
the sailors of Kronshtadt did in 1921, it would have been possible to
preserve the genuinely communist and revolutionary nature of the class
struggle in the USSR.
Later events demonstrated that when there is no more dialectics with
forces outside the party and when the social opposition is required to
carry out its role exclusively within a single party, then popular mass
participation and the participation of revolutionaries disappear and
even the leftist forces within the party succumb. In fact, they gain
sustenance only from the revolutionary movement which, deprived of its
instruments (the soviets and the political debate between the various
forces), inevitably disappeared.
The events of the first four years of the Russian Revolution taught the
revolutionary movement that there is no communism without democracy and
that democracy is not expressed through the bourgeois forms of
parliamentarianism and the electoral delegate, but through the direct
participation of everyone in all the political decisions and all the
decisions of government. The main characteristic of such a system is not
the absence of the delegate (even the members of the soviets were
delegated and elected), but constant grassroots control of the delegates
by those who delegated them. Delegates must always be subject to their
mandate being recalled by those who delegated them.
The presence of the soviet with elected, recallable delegates was part
of the general strategy and political proposals for the management of
the transition to communism set out by the Anarchists with regard to the
running of the economy. Only a society based on soviets of producers (by
which it is intended the factory workers, peasants, intellectuals, etc.)
could permit a new form of management at a political and institutional
level of the economy by means of the self-management of production and
services. Rejecting the positivist cause and effect relationship between
structure and superstructure as expounded by the Leninists, the
Anarchists instead considered the two to interact with each other. It
follows that the element of political management (superstructural)
interacted with the structural element of the management of the economy.
In other words, one was a condition for the other, to the point that the
soviets and the self-management of the means of production and services
were two sides of the same problem: the communist management of society.
Anarchism
The victory of Stalinism in the USSR greatly affected Anarchism’s
theoretical and strategic development. The profound strategic
re-examination that involved Anarchist organizations throughout the
world resulted in:
present in Anarchism, matched by the Social Democratic deviation within
the Marxist movement. The individualists of various tendencies found
arguments to create and strengthen organizations which revolved around
certain publications which had been established in order to influence
public opinion. They abandoned communism and the Bakuninist tradition,
only to return to the liberal-inspired proto-anarchism of mainly
Anglo-Saxon origin. These elements took inspiration from a
re-examination of the neo-positivist ideas of Kropotkin and came up with
the messianic idea of the inevitability of Anarchism. As it was
impossible to achieve an Anarchist society then, they chose to introduce
it “religiously” into the private sphere of their daily lives, to serve
as an example. Thus, from being a political ideology, Anarchism became
first and foremost an existential choice and met with some success among
certain cultural and intellectual movements, fulfilling the messianic
need that is always present, above all in the social layers which are
removed from the productive process.
international Anarchism leading to an intensification of labour action
and to the creation of an anarchist-inspired syndicalist international
(the IWA).
Through these means, this area of Anarchism succeeded for a decade in
keeping the class struggle alive and in opposing the vast restructuring
of production which followed the First World War within the framework of
a new international division of labour. Crushed by the 1929 depression
and by the rise of Nazism, Fascism, Rooseveltism and Stalinism, they
survived within the workers’ organizational structures in the various
countries which kept the class struggle on a genuinely revolutionary
footing during the following decade and, in part, also during the Second
World War. The revolutionary component of Anarchism was also responsible
for the creation in certain areas such as Latin America and South-East
Asia of class-struggle unions and political organizations which paved
the way for future anti-imperialist struggles.
But there is no doubt that the most mature revolutionary experience was
Spain, thanks also to the particularly favourable conditions created by
Anarchism and by the Spanish proletariat over decades of struggle.
Reflecting on the failure of the Anarchist strategy in the USSR, but
also in Italy and Germany (where the workers’ councils in Bavaria and
the unrest in Berlin were to finish tragically), Spanish Anarchism
developed a more elaborate theory and strategy of Anarchist Communism.
The Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) adopted “organizational dualism”,
by which it left the task of coordinating and leading mass action to the
labour union, while it worked on the development of theory, strategy and
a programme. The two organizations were linked by a constant dialectic
rapport, carried out through continual verification
(theory-practice-theory) involving every militant who was at the same
time member of the political organization and of the mass organization.
In this way, the theorizations of the political organization were
presented to the mass organization, where they underwent a democratic
examination by all the members of the movement in struggle and came
back, confirmed, to the political organization, enriching not only its
political, strategic and programmatic work but also its theoretical
baggage. It was therefore a dynamic vision of the theory and the
revolutionary project and allowed the organization to struggle in order
to create the conditions for realizing communism by sparking off a
genuinely revolutionary, pluralist and libertarian process.
Despite the international coalition against it, as seen in the military
intervention of the Fascist regimes, despite the disturbing action by
the Stalinists which affected the revolutionary unity and despite the
guilty indifference and complicity of the bourgeois democracies, the
Spanish Revolution was an exemplary revolutionary experience by reason
of the many positive results it saw with respect to the economy, to mass
popular participation in production and distribution, to the creation of
structures for self-management, to the formation of new institutions of
producers and citizens which led to a different, more advanced concept
of the State, of rights, of social welfare, of cultural enrichment, the
quality of life, the rights of individuals and in particular of women,
freedom from religious enslavement, while at the same time achieving
full liberty of conscience. Simply put, the conditions were created to
enable an original and efficient model for the transition towards a
communist society.
In response to the Stalinist policy of planning and the militarization
of the workforce; in response to autarchy, the depression of wages and
consumption and the policy of re-armament sought by the Fascists and
which would inevitably have led to war; in response to a greater role
for the State in the economy and the draining of resources away from
wages, through a massive devaluation in order to re-launch consumption
(after an unequal and forced re-distribution of resources), as foreseen
by the New Deal and Keynesian policies; in response to all this,
Anarchism proposed and achieved in Spain (despite the civil war) an
economy with the people at the centre.
The most was made of the country’s resources by mobilizing the energies
of the people. By eliminating company profit, resources were directed
into the development of collectivisation. In agriculture, efforts were
concentrated on modernization while collectivisation allowed companies
to return to competitive and economically desirable dimensions.
Distortions in the system of distribution were eliminated, as were
parasitic profits, gains, benefits and ecclesiastic privileges. The
whole operation was so efficient that, despite the state of civil war,
the farms which had been collectivised ended the year in the black,
thereby ensuring employment, produce and food supplies. In the
industrial sector, and despite being penalized by the war effort, there
was investment and technological innovation, company accounts were in
the black and the restructuring of distribution through the elimination
of intermediaries had a positive effect on profits and consumption.
In services, despite the repeated damage caused by the war, there were
notable successes. Services were extended and made accessible via a
policy of lower tariffs leading to greater company profits and also
ensuring higher standards of services. There was also great development
in health and social services, thanks also to the availability of
resources such as those of parasitic elements like the Church, the
religious orders and the nobility.
The action of Anarchist Communists in Spain was proof of Anarchism’s
ability to achieve results. It therefore had to be eliminated. This was
the task which both the Fascists and the Stalinists set about with great
gusto, ably assisted by the democratic regimes.
If the Spanish Civil War seemed to have sounded the death knell for
Anarchist Communism, the Second World War appeared to bury it for good.
Revolution and Communism were not seen to arrive by means of the
struggles of the partisans (whose ranks thronged with Anarchists from
all countries) but at bayonet point, imposed by the Red Army. Instead,
the communist regimes set up in the areas under Soviet influence were in
reality degenerate forms of State Socialism which in many cases swamped
the positive experiences that the proletariat in some countries had
developed. Indeed, Stalinism was responsible for eliminating some of the
most able and autonomous leaders and militants, and was accomplice to
the wiping out of many class-struggle movements in areas which were
outside its direct control. The installation of socialism in many
European countries was therefore part of the expansion of Russian
imperialism which did not hesitate to make use of a policy of annexation
in the Baltic, Balkan and Asiatic areas. The “Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics” had inherited the imperialist policy of Catherine II and
Peter the Great to the cost of the peoples, the ethnic groups and the
nationalities of Europe and Asia.
The operation was carried out under the ideological cover of
internationalism whose true meaning was distorted into aiding and
guaranteeing the power of the Russian Bolshevik party over the
international Communist movement.
But Anarchism had warned of the dangers of pan-Russian ideology and
Russian imperialism, using the Slavic question as the level of debate,
and had come up with concrete proposals. Bakunin had studied the Slavic
question deeply and with a re-working of the concept of federalism, had
laid the basis for an original vision of the State tending towards its
progressive negation and eventual dissolution. The Anarchist proposal
could have actually been achieved through a radical change of ownership
of the means of production, which would have passed to direct management
by the producers (economic self-management) and through a new system of
political participation. The basic points of this new institutional
framework were:
those who delegated them;
levels of representation up to the point of structures meeting the needs
for the management of ethnic, linguistic and cultural matters;
the liberation of man from capitalist exploitation and need, and of
internationalism understood as the overcoming of the enmity between
nations fomented by capitalism. The federalist structure was in order to
avoid the ever-present possibility of the domination of one ethnic
group, people or nationality by another. This collective participation
in social life would be held together by political pluralism and
therefore the continuation of political and party associations and of
organizational pluralism in the field of labour, conditional on
acceptance of the institutional structure that society had given itself,
thanks to the revolutionary break with the domination of capital. In
this delicate phase, where society as a whole is moving towards
communism and towards the “new humanity”, the Anarchist Communist
organization would have the delicate task of guaranteeing the
development of the revolutionary process, safeguarding and strengthening
the institutions created by the proletarian revolution, keeping alive
the dialectic tension between the domination of capital (always lying in
wait to rise up once more) and the attempt by the workforce to build a
communist society. It was not (and Anarchist Communists were well aware
of the fact) a linear process or one without obstacles. But the proposed
strategy was the only one by which communism could have been achieved in
liberty, beginning by building an alternative to capitalism which would
not be reduced into the more of Stalinism or Social Democracy.
For several months now, the crisis in the USSR’s satellites in Europe
have been occupying all the papers, in a stream of anti-communist
propaganda of an intensity never before seen. What is taking place could
be used to discredit any type of communism and presents the long
sought-after opportunity to eliminate any opposition to capitalism.
However, not much is being said about those (and there have always been
those) who say that there has never been much communism about those
regimes that are now collapsing.
But beyond the repercussions of this propaganda (important as they are),
on an ideological level the crisis of these regimes introduces a
situation of instability into Europe which merits careful attention by
the very people, like us, who care about the class struggle and the
problems of peace.
In analysing the new situation, we Anarchist Communists can hold our
heads high, having unceasingly and from the very start criticized the
“real socialism” of those countries, starting with the Leninist solution
to the problem of the transition to socialism. Today, our criticism
finds its confirmation in history, criticism which was paid for with the
blood of so many Anarchist Communist comrades during the Russian
Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, in Bulgaria, Germany, Italy and every
country where Anarchists were active in the class struggle. But it is
poor consolation, as there can be no doubt that our struggle is all the
more difficult now thanks to the mud thrown at the idea of communism
itself, to the mistrust sown among the people, for the consciousness
which now pervades the masses who are driven to think of the “Communism”
that existed but is now defeated and the Anarchist Communism that we
promote as one and the same thing. It may require a generation before
what has happened can be objectively analysed, before the causes of what
has happened and the need to continue the struggle for communism can be
understood.
But the events of these past months also offer another important lesson:
nothing remains the same and things can change in a short space of time
if they are supported by a desire for structural change and if there is
mass support. It is during phases of crisis in accumulation that a
transformation of social and productive relationships can be sparked off
and today we are going through a particularly intense crisis. It is a
crisis which effects not only the Soviet empire, certainly a spectacular
crisis, but also an equally profound, though still partially obscured,
crisis of the American empire. A battle is in progress, with no holds
barred, where Japan and Western Europe are bent on conquering increasing
proportions of the market and the centre of gravity of the planet’s
history is revolving once more around Europe after many years.
In this situation it is the task of the most conscious elements (the
vanguard) to work towards developing the consciousness of increasing
sectors of the workers of their strategic objectives, by adapting their
political strategy according to the changing situation, by stimulating
an updating of their theory together with the evolution of the economic
structure and technological innovation which, above all in the field of
communications, has overturned the old rules. And one essential tool to
achieve this is analysis. The notes which follow are therefore aimed at
contributing to this.
At the end of the Second World War, the division of Europe into spheres
of influence satisfied the appetites of the warring powers while at the
same time putting an end to a situation of perennial instability in
Central Europe. Geographical isolation, linguistic differences even to
the point of the impossibility of communication, religious differences,
different traditions, elements which in other parts of the continent had
been the basis for the construction of national identities and the
definition of borders were absent in Central Europe on produced only
vague borders. Hence the indeterminate nature of frontiers which allowed
Hitler to dream of a Greater Germany and to find no shortage of allies
among the fragile monarchies and little tyrants who ruled in the
countries of the Balkans and along the Danube. Yalta replaced German
control with the hegemony of Russia, accepted by the Americans and
strongly desired by the British (and later by the French) as an
anti-German device. Borders became strong and well-defined, cemented by
the ideology of Stalinist Communism and supported in some cases by
popular enthusiasm. The reasons for this consensus, which was certainly
limited to some areas only but was nonetheless vast and deeply felt in
its earliest phase, are to be found in the existence in these countries
of strong, well-established left-wing parties and labour unions whose
upper echelons were used by Stalin during the years of the Cominform
dictatorship, at least as far as the Marxists were concerned (it is
significant to note the massacre of members and leaders of the Polish
communist party). Stalin had already seen to the elimination of the
leaders of the other political organizations as the Red Army advanced (a
clear example being the liquidation of the Bulgarian Anarchist Communist
movement, an event which has been ignored in every historical
reconstruction).
The history of the role of COMINFORM in Eastern Europe and the
persecution of leftist opposition in those countries needs to be
completely re-written if we are to understand the reasons for the early
popular support, which is only partly explainable by the anti-Nazi
struggle and liberation at the hands of the Red Army, or to understand
why this popular support gradually diminished, and not through an
entirely painless process at that.
We would do well to remind those who have forgotten about the
disturbances in Berlin in 1953 which were inspired by left communism,
the Hungarian and Polish revolutions in 1956 which, alongside the
minority pro-Western elements, were largely the result of the workers’
councils, and a similar movement in Poland against in 1970. These
experiences ended in bloody repression, a limit certainly not desired by
those who had promoted them. However, the ways in which the repression
was carried out provided greater space for right-wing forces, to the
point that there spread throughout the masses a mistrust in the notion
that there could be an evolution from Moscow’s brand of “communism”. The
so-called Communist governments were increasingly seen as occupation
regimes and existed under the shadow of their big brother, whenever they
did not turn into personal dictatorships, as in Romania. In fact, it was
this very character of regime that prevented the internal dialectics
necessary for any sort of change from within, resulting in the
stagnation of the party and its members. Where conditions did, instead,
permit it, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the rigidity of the system
built by Stalin imposed the armed repression of a vital communist party
which had mass support, resulting in the party’s credibility being
irreparably damaged. It wasn’t long before the leaderships of the
Eastern European countries (like that in the USSR, and in some cases
even more so) found themselves beset with difficulties relating to the
question of their succession, understandable given the extreme
difficulty in selecting new members of the leading class.
In 1978 a new element arrived onto the international scene which was
already feeling the strain of a profound phase of restructuring of the
productive relationships and of division of the markets on a worldwide
scale.
The election of a Polish pope suddenly shifted the balance of power.
This man, inspired by the same political vision as Gregory VII and
supported by Catholic finance through often murky dealings (an example
being the IOR-Calvi affair), has acted boldly on all fronts and his
policies aspire at a restoration of the temporal power of the Catholic
Church. He has thus supported the right-wing elements fighting against
the regime in his own country, not only in an attempt to change the
situation in Poland but also as a way of sparking off instability
throughout Central Europe. To do this, it was necessary to create a
system of alliances which could bring about war within the Russian
empire. And to do this, he has gradually transformed ecumenical dialogue
into a political alliance of an anti-Russian nature. And in order to
achieve this goal, he has even established an entente cordiale with
every other force on the sole condition that they be anti-communist (see
for example the exchange of messages with Khomeini, characterized by the
common struggle of Islam and Christianity against atheist Marxism).
While the Roman Catholics within Solidarity carried on the battle in
Poland and Lithuania, the Lutheran Church has taken on the task of being
a point of reference for the opposition in the German Democratic
Republic, Estonia and Latvia, and among that vast minority of Germans
spread throughout the plains of the Danube. The area of Eastern Europe
and the USSR has been subjected to a concentric attack.
Thus, when events came to a crisis in Poland, we witnessed the effects
of the so-called domino theory advanced by Kissinger in the Vietnam War,
whereby if one country falls, all the others in the area would
inevitably follow.
In any event, the situation on a structural level lent itself perfectly
to this operation. If one examines the data on the performance of the
economies in the countries in the area, the crisis in the planned
economy is perfectly evident, as is the growth in the cost of the
apparatus necessary to sustain consensus in ratio to the available
resources. There has been no change of a structural nature in the
countries of Eastern Europe, though it might be appropriate to deal
separately with the productive structure in the GDR and perhaps also in
Hungary. The failure of COMECON and the inability to achieve an
integration of the productive systems in the associated countries was
caused by the hegemony and greed of the USSR in assigning sectors of
development and of the division of labour, and by the very structure of
COMECON, which did not allow for the sort of effective economic and
monetary integration that would have ensured equal status with the USSR.
It was therefore inevitable that there would be recourse to foreign debt
and to each single country entering the international market. This
introduced into the area the dictatorship of the World Bank and was
responsible for the inflation which was necessary to pay off foreign
debt. This led to the structural causes of the frightening economic
crisis which has hit Eastern Europe. Back in 1980, the Soviet economy
had begun to react to the crisis through increased concentration,
creating a series of “groups” of businesses, effect oligopolies which,
by reason of their size and their structural characteristics, had an
interest in changing the economic system and in the introduction of the
market.
However, the objective causes to which we have referred are not
sufficient to explain the speed of the changes, whose reasons should
also be sought in the strategic project that lies behind the policies of
Gorbachev and the political class to which he belongs, made up of the
new managers, the most important directors of the State oligopolies,
many of whom come from the ranks of the army. This class is supported by
a middle class made up of intellectuals, highly professionalized workers
and technicians with a high level of education.
At the time of his rise to power, Gorbachev inherited a situation which
had greatly deteriorated.
The morass of the Afghan war was devouring resources, accentuating the
reasons for the crisis in the republics along the border whose
populations are of Muslim religion and tradition. The winds of Islam,
fanned by Khomeini, have blown all the way into the Russia and have been
feeding the expectations of ethnic groups undergoing demographic growth
and who are eager to have a greater say within the country or at any
event to gain autonomy from the ruling classes, made up for the most
part of European Russians. This has given rise to the rebirth of
centuries-old ethnic rivalries such as the clash between the Georgians
and Armenians, each with their own strong traditions and a deep national
consciousness.
This situation can be contrasted (though the demands are similar) with
the desire for autonomy felt in the Baltic area which has seen notable
economic development. In fact, many of the oligopolies we spoke about
are based in this area, and the computerization of the productive system
here is also notable. This has facilitated communications (think, for
example, of the members of the National Fronts who communicate by means
of the computers in the companies where they work!), an exchange which
has enabled the rigid incommunicability imposed under the planned
system, to be overcome and which gives hope to the possibility that
these republics, once they become even partially autonomous from Moscow,
can join the Scandinavian area of production where they would
undoubtedly be able to integrate. National, ethnic, linguistic,
historical and religious reasons have seen to the rest.
This instability extended to the Slavic area, with similar problems
arising in republics which are part of the USSR and are important both
strategically and economically, such as Ukraine, to whom the reborn
autonomy of Eastern European states is undeniably attractive. The
borders between the states in these regions have always been uncertain.
Pan-German claims over the Danube area and the Baltic have caused in the
past and still continue to cause worry, as have Polish claims on
Lithuania and Ukraine, Hungarian claims on Transylvania and Romania’s
interest in Moldavia. Equally intense are the various claims and
counterclaims in other parts of the region, not least in Yugoslavia,
which is in danger of falling apart.
There is, in effect, a real risk that the demands of neighbouring
countries are tending towards the restoration of the borders preceding
World War II, thereby introducing in the region an instability which
would have negative implications throughout the continent to the point
that it could once again be the cause of armed conflict (not forgetting
that unrest in this area sparked off two world wars!).
Awareness of the crisis affecting it in the Soviet Union today is of a
clarity rarely seen among the leadership in Moscow. And they are equally
aware of the crisis hitting the United States. Hence the successful
policy of disarmament and disengagement which has brought about a
definite shift in the role of these global superpowers. There are thus
certain areas which are not covered, in which there is a great risk of
instability with the possibility that other powers will move in. Both
the USSR and the USA are worried about the growing economic power of
Japan and Europe. It is commonly felt that 1992 will see the start in
Europe of a solid process of integration that the USA has always (but
vainly) tried to obstruct through the policies of the United Kingdom,
which has paid for this attempt with an irreversible de facto
integration of the EEC and a reduction of its role as a military and
economic power.
For the USSR, the choice has been whether to take an antagonistic
position towards the countries of the European Community or to build a
partnership with them on the basis of common interests. It is well known
that the USSR needs the technological innovation that Europe can easily
provide. And it can offer unlimited raw materials, an enormous potential
market and a qualified workforce which can quickly adapt to the new
technology. In fact, the USSR has the highest number of engineers,
mathematicians and scientists of any country in the world. Some sort of
union is therefore possible, provided any potential causes of conflict
are eliminated and the political unity of the European agglomeration is
weakened, leaving a more markedly economic union.
To do this, Gorbachev, having noted the crisis affecting the countries
of Eastern Europe, is trying to face the problem with the cooperation of
these countries, if only because to do otherwise would mean losing them
altogether. The fall of the East German regime was therefore welcomed
and if they want to talk about German reunification then so be it — that
way West Germany will be less concerned with the political integration
of the EEC as it will be focusing on reunification. Apart from ensuring
the unity of the German people, reunification has the added bonus of
creating an internal market of 80 million consumers and bringing
together the productive capacity of the world’s fourth and tenth biggest
economies. Once an injection of West German capital has bailed out and
re-launched the economy of the other Germany, who knows what will happen
to the German populations lying outside the borders of the two states?
And what interest will Germany still have in European political unity?
Here then are the first positive reactions. Poland is continuing with
its attempts to re-introduce the market while still swearing loyalty to
the Warsaw Pact. Neither will it be long before Czechoslovakia does
likewise, unwilling as it is to repeat the experience of the Sudeten
Germans. Hungary is more liberal, but even here there are German
sections of the population and a Greater Germany would hamper
collaboration with the Austrian area and the Danube, which Hungary views
as vital (see for example the recent political and commercial agreement
between Hungary, Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia). Then there are the
Baltic republics who will have to keep in mind the loving attention they
were lavished with by Germany during the twenty years which preceded the
Second World War.
So, is it not better to stimulate change in Bulgaria before it occurs
spontaneously? Or promote change in Romania by forcing the international
Masonic clique to abandon Ceaucescu, who is no longer even useful to the
West as an opponent of Soviet policy within the communist countries? And
it is better for this change to occur before an opposition class can be
formed there and before this opposition produces the political class
that will decide the changes, as has happened in Poland and
Czechoslovakia.
If this is Gorbachev’s general policy (and it is), then it matters
little if such-and-such a leader of the old regime was a thief (are our
own Christian Democrat or Socialist rulers any less so?) or if they had
collections of pornographic films or splendid villas. It matters little
if General So-and-So is or was friendly with the Russians, or if some
party official or factory manger studied in Moscow in such-and-such a
period. It would be like saying that anyone who studied at Oxbridge or
Ivy League colleges is part of a political plot among Western countries,
given that anyone in Eastern Europe who wanted access to the very
highest levels of education inevitably went to Moscow. Our attention
needs to be focused on the general political project.
The USSR is today offering the countries of the EEC the internal Soviet
market — 250 million potential consumers to which we can add the 100
million in Eastern Europe. But for investments and the markets to be
secure, the Central European area requires political stability which can
only be guaranteed by the re-confirmation of the USSR’s hegemony. The
first significant evidence of the validity of this statement is the
request by the West that the USSR intervene in Romania and the role that
the USSR has played there in enabling the fall of Ceaucescu and set
about the work of restructuring to bring it back into a politically
homogenous area. The USSR thus achieves the first result of seeing its
role in Eastern Europe recognized by its long-time rivals and, more
importantly, it gains the chance to provide structural support in the
future of its dominant role in the area.
But in order for the restructuring which has begun to have a real chance
of success, it is necessary to correlate the economies of the USSR and
the Eastern European countries to the Western economy and to do this,
Gorbachev will be forced to put an end to the anomaly that is (what
remains of) post-revolutionary Russia. Thus, he has definitively
liquidated the Leninist “third way” and Russia is returning to the
Social Democratic family from which, if the truth be told, it had never
really strayed to far.
While in politics there is a return to parliamentarianism and the rule
of law, the huge oligopolies which developed under the GOSPLAN are
importing not only technology but also systems for company and labour
organization so that they can make Soviet production costs competitive
on the market. Significant accords in this respect have been made
(including some during Gorbachev’s visit to Italy) and concern all
sectors, from heavy industry to infrastructure. Alongside these groups
which represent both the present and the future of the USSR’s economy,
there are attempts to stimulate private initiative in order to develop
the service sector, to use technological research on the market through
the of goods for large-scale consumption. This dual path is being
reproduced in agriculture too, where alongside investment in huge areas
also in collaboration with certain multinationals of the sector (see,
for example, the agreement with FerruziMontedison), the resurgence of
medium-sized farms and the creation of cooperatives are also being
encouraged.
This choice undoubtedly represents a victory for the capitalist mode of
production and marks a return to the form of labour organization and the
values that the proletariat of the world have always fought. So, apart
from the great disappointment felt by those who had thought of the USSR
as the home of real socialism, there is now also an objective
strengthening of the control of multinationals on a global scale.
It is necessary, however, to examine carefully the possible scenarios
that could arise on an international level as a result of this
situation.
It seems clear that the main beneficiaries of this policy will be the
EEC countries. In particular, the Federal Republic of Germany is
destined to see an increase in its GDP by 1995, reaching the levels of
France and the UK. The greater part of its investment will no doubt be
directed at the GDR’s infrastructure and productive apparatus, in an
effort to strengthen economic ties between the two countries and create
a de facto reunification. Western countries in general will be focused
on the Eastern bloc’s debt repayments in order to create trustworthy
consumers. In the Pacific area and on the world’s chess board, the clash
between the USA and Japan is destined to become worse and there ban be
no doubt but that poor countries will fall further into debt and will
also see less investment from OECD countries whose attention will be
focused on introducing capital into Central Europe.
The labour movement and the workers of Western Europe may be able to
create struggles aimed at bettering their living and working conditions
in view of the probable growth in the economy, but at al strategic
level, their action will naturally be affected by the mistrust sown by
the failure of Leninism. And by no means can it be discounted that
international capitalism will not take advantage even more so than
before to strangle any form of organized opposition. Even the Social
Democratic parties will be forced into policies which are more
compatible with the system.
While it is certainly important for class-struggle militants to
understand what is happening, it is even more important to devise a
strategy for what Anarchist Communists can do. The analysis we make and
the discussion of this analysis with other militants on the left helps
us to clarify things further, to get rid of the Bolshevik myth and any
Leninist residuals. We need to lay the basis for a wide-ranging
theoretical debate in order to establish an organizational project that
has as its basis a common analysis of the situation of those many
comrades who up to now have been under the influence of the Leninist
myth.
We need to continue to carry out our work within the mass organizations
and among the workers in our workplaces. We must make efforts to give
our action a strategic dimension and range, elaborating concrete,
alternative political lines to demonstrate the continuing validity and
feasibility of our political alternative.
We need to develop our theoretical analysis, updating our elaborations
above all in relation to the management of the future society and the
“transitional phase”, and organization of the economy and production.
One thing we have learnt from history is that there is no possibility of
change if we do not provide solutions to people’s needs. History teaches
us, in fact, that it is when the crisis is at its worst and the solution
to the problems is uncertain, that the reaction is able to insert itself
and impose itself.
We need to support our comrades in Eastern Europe so that they can
re-build the historical memory which has been wiped out after years of
falsification and re-writing of history on the part of the Leninist
counter-revolution. On our part, we must intensify our work within the
class struggle and make efforts to give our action of opposition to
capitalism and the multinationals a strategic basis so that we can
assist the struggles of our comrades in the East and in the West,
linking them to the struggles of those in the third world and elsewhere
— anywhere where people fight for a society that is free from the
exploitation of man by other men.