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Title: Trotz Allendem Author: John Olday Date: April 10, 1976 Language: en Topics: Germany, armed struggle, insurrectionary anarchy, guerrilla war, urban guerilla Source: https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/john-olday-trotz-allendem Notes: Trotz Allendem (“In Spite of All” Title of 1848 poem by Hervregh). John Olday was an Anglo-German revolutionary anarchist a veteran of the 1918 sailor-worker insurrection in Hamburg, 1919 Spartacus revolt, 1921 & ’23 uprisings and worker councils. Expelled from Communist Youth for ‘anarchist-guerrillism’ he joined Anarcho-Spartacists. Anti-Nazi resistence escaped Gestapo; jailed by British for revolutionary anti-militarism in WWII. He edited “Mit-Teilung”, a revolutionary broadsheet, and was a member of the General Defense Committee (IWW). John Olday is noted as a revolutionary cartoonist., esp. The March to Death (Freedom Press,1943). Workers News Service (Toronto) 1976. This edition published by Kaleidoscope.
The new generation booed Stalinist Bolshevism off the stage while
enthusiastically cheering Maoism as the new star of genuine communism.
Yet how critical was the inquiring mind of our contemporary
Castro-Guevara-and Mao Tse-tung enthusiast?
We do not object if Marxist-Leninists loot anarchist ideological values
and incorporate them into their programs, although we would expect at
least honest acknowledgement of their source. If Marxists would actually
carry out anarchist methods, much the better. What we object to is the
opportunistic pretension, the abuse of the libertarian character and the
twisting of it into Blanquism.
May we quote at random early anarchist statement that have been made use
of in various non-anarchist guerrilla programs.
“The insurgent anarchist is aware that violence stands in contradiction
to the ideal. He accepts violence as necessary and as the only way left
to bring to an end the endless violence exercised on the part of
reactionary regimes.”
“To approve of unlimited violence is absolutely condemnable. The use of
violence can only draw its excuse and justification from the argument of
the self-evident necessity for self-preservation. The moral
responsibility rests with the ruthless oppressors. The counter-violence
of the guerrillas is based on the ethical goal, as perceived in vision
of a free society. The aim determines the guerrilla’s conduct of his
warfare and regulates the grade and nature of the violence he uses.”
“Guerrilla units are not formations of an army. Small groups are kept
fragmentary. There is no rigidly fixed organisation Action leaders have
no official status. There is no centralised authority.”
“The guerrilla movement is, in relation to its aims, conduct and
formation, anarchist. The groups are autonomous units. They may not even
keep in mutual contact.”
“All actions are planned collectively and carried out in mutual
agreement, whereby initiative is given free hand, to suit any situation
occurring at the moment.”
“The basic antimilitarist character results in a consequent opposition
to all socialists’ and communists’ attempts to exploit the guerrilla
movement for the construction of a Red Army fundament.”
“The ideology of the guerrilla movement accepts no discipline dictated
from above and refuses to fight for any revolutionary government or in
support of a nationalist liberation because nationalist independence
movements harbour the germ of fascism.”
Parties come and go, just as nations in the course of history grow to a
point of climax and then decline. Since freedom is the basic universal
inclination, the guerrilla fighter, although engaged in local combat, is
aware of the international implication. With the universal purpose in
mind, he will reject coordination with people who hold views
elementarily foreign to the libertarian outlook and instead seek
congenial international support, thus warding off the danger of
infiltration and subsequent internal disintegration. As long as the
guerrilla cherishes his undiluted conception, nothing can go wrong. New
fighters will replace those who perish and the everlasting renewed
struggle will finally cause the collapse of establishments blocking the
road to freedom.
When the English and German labour movements fell under the spell of
Marxist reformism, the Bakuninist section of the 1^(st) International
was viciously attacked for their firm advocacy of armed struggle in
answer to repression. The Jura anarchists were the first to publish a
comprehensive booklet detailing what measures could be employed to
defeat any major military operation of a regime attempting to forcibly
frustrate a General Strike.
The definition of a General Strike was unmistakably formulated: total
participation of all industrial sections of the entire nation. In the
case of any trade union branch, under domination of reformist leaders,
acting against the workers, the rank-and-file should dispose of the
latter and confiscate their strike funds, to be put at the disposal of
the General Strike committees. In conformity with the standing anarchist
anti-militarist tradition, especially in the Latin countries,
sympathetic workers in uniform should intensify their agitation for
fraternization, convert their cells into soldier’s councils, confiscate
regimental funds, arrest officers and distribute arms to the people.
All this was nothing extraordinarily new. But there followed a list of
suggestions on practical and simple acts of sabotage, which could be
carried out by anyone, man or woman or youth, and if practiced
massively, would effectively hamper the mobility of any police or army
force and, in combination with guerrilla attacks, achieve the standstill
of the military offensive.
As a matter of fact, there isn’t a single direction in our contemporary
Maoist, Guevarist and Castroite guerrilla manuals, that was not first
formulated in the anarchist pamphlet of the last century on General
Strike and sabotage.
We do not claim that the anarchists were the sole authors of a summerial
collection of guerrilla tactics. Long before the runaway gladiator
Spartacus employed similar methods. They had been used by rebels all
over the Globe. But the Jura anarchists may be credited with having
first adjusted the ancient guerrilla strategies to the new situation of
industrialised civilisation and not merely bringing them up to date, but
supplementing them with a new factor, namely the recruitment of everyone
into the struggle against the common enemy. By showing ordinary people
what they, on their own part, could do and the enormous effect their
simple sabotage actions could have on a supposedly superior and
overwhelmingly powerful enemy, the anarchists — at the very least — did
their share to fight the defeatism promoted by the Socialdemocrats. It
was not the fault of the anarchists that there was no immediate general
response and that it took an undue time for their ideas to sink in,
after long incubation (and that, under the impact of two world wars, it
reappeared in an immature Marxist distortion). Yet where the Bakuninist
and Jura formulations were followed, without reform or equivocation (as
in isolated instances in Spain and the Makhnovist Ukraine), the results
were explosive and constituted some of the only real attempts at social
revolution. And exactly where the formulations were tampered wit, lay
the root cause of disaster and crushing defeat.
The deadly danger of German fascism under Hitler was entirely
underestimated in Germany and abroad. Most people were convinced that
they would have a chance to bargain. Capitalist, middle class,
aristocrat and worker alike, were led by false hope of security. By the
time they realized that they were cornered, they had no other
alternative but to submit or perish, for it was then too late.
How did this come about? — The vitality of the workers had been drained
by endless and frustrated legal industrial struggles. They had been
discouraged by defeat after defeat. It had been hammered into them that
any attempt of armed resistance would be suicidal; that they were no
longer a match for the enormously rearmed counterrevolutionary forces.
There were still a few anarchists who, throughout the years of postwar
and inflation, fiercely exposed the insane policy of the Socialdemocrats
and Communists, and although aware of the approaching victory of the
national revolution, had at least tried to stem the pessimism of the
dispirited workers and to rekindle revolutionary courage, but their call
remained a cry in the wilderness. It was all very well to say, ‘inaction
is the road to revolutionary impotence’. But the workers had learned by
bitter experience that direct action carried out by a minority of
militants and meeting with no massive favourable response, was a waste
of revolutionary energy. What good would it do to continually point out
that the workers are only then powerless when they surrender without a
fight...? The workers had fought and they had been crushed.
How did this come about? — Was it because the majority of organised
workers still kept allegiance to a corrupt Socialdemocratic party?
Because the workers’ councils had been usurped by politicians? Because
the revolutionary syndicalists failed to attract a mass following?
Because the counterrevolutionists had a superior military force? Because
the Communist Party had, by their irresponsible va-banque policy
disqualified themselves as competent leaders of the revolutionary
proletariat and only deepened the general confusion? Or because the
anarchists had shown no gift for organising and had attempted to surpass
Prussian or Bolshevik methods? No.
In 1918/19 revolutionary units, voluntarily formed at the spur of the
moment by deserter soldiers, sailors and workers (and those officers who
fraternized with the rebels and were elected council members), were only
tolerated by Liebknecht end Luxemburg if they placed themselves under
the direction of one of the left-Socialist groups controlled by either
of them. A “Red Army” as visualized by Liebknecht and Luxemburg would be
under their General Staff direction — and would follow the Trotskyist
pattern: a rebel army usurped by the Party, purged of the original
soldier councils and placed under the command of Bolshevist commissars.
A major cause of the 1919 defeat lay in this attempt to direct from
isolated Berlin the sailor-soldier-worker councils in Wilhelmshaven,
Kiel and Hamburg.
Where the German anarchists of that period (the Anarcho-Spartacists as
opposed to the Communist Party Spartacists) also misfired in their
consistent insistence on armed struggle, was their absence of deductive
logic, which would have enabled them to draw from the actual events a
correct conclusion and postulate it: viz, that armed insurrection was
bound to failure, not so much on account of the often quoted reasons,
but simply because the insurgent minority let themselves be misled, to
adjust their actions to the strategical rules of formal military
science. For that is precisely what happened in Germany in the years of
l918/19, 1921 and 1923.
The German anarchists had neglected the study of the early anarchist
movement and consequently failed to reaffirm guerrilla tradition as the
still most potent alternative to any military and police power of any
regime, no matter how modern its scientific and technological progress.
By means of party discipline the authoritarian Marxists manage to keep
opposition factions in line. Using, at leisure, the pretension of
democracy, bourgeois and revolutionary armies have to impose authority
of leaders onto the rank and file. In strict contrast to parties and
reformist trade unions, the anarchist guerillas proclaim as their
greatest asset the autonomy of the small unit. Holding on to this
libertarian principle, they established a record that cannot be
disputed. They have established the evidence that convincingly
contradicts the stereotype accusations of all those who contend that
anarchists are inefficient, that their concept of “no leaders — no
centralization”, etc. gets one nowhere. If that were really so, why
should so many Marxists have bothered to adopt anarchist guerrilla
tactics, why should the general staffs of every country in wartime make
use of resistance forces patterned after guerrilla methods, and why
should governments everywhere employ their generals in working out
special civil war contingency plans and specific anti-guerilla strategy?
In the late ‘60s there were in Bolivia 22 leftist organisations
belonging to the University Confederation of Bolivia. The members were
sons of wealthy, respectable businessmen, civil servants and officers of
the army. The Army had, after long effort, managed to kill Che Guevara.
The students intended to rekindle the fire of revolution fading as a
result of the death of Che. They were going to create a new guerrilla
army. The poor peasants, discouraged by Che’s demise, would take new
heart and join the student guerrillas. This “New Teponte Guerrilla Army”
consisted of 75 youngsters. They had not realized how drastically the
rural guerrilla potential had been reduced. The U.S.A. counterrevolution
had been systematically at work. Military centres had been established,
where officers and instructors had been training men in counterguerrilla
tactics. International military experts were convinced, that in view of
the jungle warfare training and modern weaponry of the various South
American police forces and armies, no other Castro would have a chance.
Since Bolivia was especially vulnerable, the U.S.A. supplied everything
needed for modern civil war and established on Bolivian soil, vast
training camps with U.S. advisors.
During 1967 Guevara had seldom encountered more than 30–40 soldiers of
the Government at any one time, but now the scene had changed. The Army
encircled the new student guerrillas with a ring of 2,000 men in
Redponte district. Strong units of “Rangers”, experienced in jungle
tactics, were operating in the bush in a cat-and-mouse game directed by
helicopters. At the very onset guerrilla scouts had been ambushed and
eight of them killed. The guerrillas never saw any of their enemies.
The student guerrillas were badly armed. They had insufficient
provisions. They had no guerrilla experience. They had not acquired the
fitness needed. They could not get the support of the peasants who were
too scared to help with food. They were exposed to sniping sharpshooters
who always remained hidden. The guerrillas made endless marches but
never encountered the enemy. In a state of complete exhaustion they were
killed off one by one. Paz Zamora, a radical Christian guerrilla whose
diary on the events has been preserved, collapsed and died, starved to
death.
Great idealism and courage. But complete ignorance as to the condition
and plans of the enemy. Unaware of the actual frame of mind of the
people. Blinded by a legend built around their hero Guevara. Ignoring
the most important teachings of seasoned guerrillas. Misled by their
fixations.
To a certain extent romantic inclinations have also penetrated the
anarchist movement. Tending towards insurgent views, intoxicated by the
enthusiasm for the brave guerrillas, obsessed with the self-importance
of the immature, many would not waste time on the study of military
science, technology and guerrilla counter-techniques. Their
antimilitarism led them to a generalization, which made them throw out
the baby with the bath water.
The unhappy ending of Guevara, Zamora and so many others taught them
nothing. It is all very well for the immature and facile to reject the
study of the past — lock, stock and barrel — just because the version
taught in school and university was a pack of lies. But for the sincere
inquisitor there is no insurmountable barrier to the truth.
Let us look at post-WWII West Germany. The Adenauer republic had
developed into a Wohlstands-Staat (wealth state) thanks to American
investments. The workers were less than ever inclined to adopt
revolutionary policy; they became, so to speak, prospective “partners”
of the “new order” and were striving to gain a greater share in the
dividends of the profit-system. The first radicalisation occurred around
demonstrations against American intervention in Vietnam, but this was
almost solely confined to middle class students and was dominated by
various leftist groups. Anarchists were included, but they were
hopelessly outnumbered by Maoists, who by their display of aggressive
spirit and deliberate provocation against the police, hoped to impress
the progressive liberals and militant workers. The workers refused to be
drawn in. They realized that for many of the students the revolt had the
nature of enjoyable student pranks. They were bourgeois kids playing at
wild rebels with intent of shocking their teachers and society’s
philistines. There was, in the beginning, little risk in provoking the
police, who were under orders to abstain from aggression for the sake of
democratic appearance. Police were permitted to use arms only when
actually attacked. Encouraged by this police handicap certain
fighting-mad demonstrators gave vent to their frustrations in a wild
manner, which upped the ante and resulted in a change of police orders.
In the course of events a student was killed and many wounded... Up to
then, the various splinter groups taking part in the turbulent
demonstrations, were each after their own agitational gains sake. But as
the clashes with police newly equipped with modern antiriot gear
resulted in defeats for the students, they lost the support of the many
hangers-on who had enjoyed the kicks; likewise, liberal
fellow-travellers were scared off. Now the militant groups began to
attract society’s rejects, the so-called lumpenproletariat and dropouts.
Thus history repeated itself. Once more, as in the case of Roehm’s S.A.,
the confused, the uncritical, the romantic and adventurous, and the
downright psychopaths were absorbed. For apart from these doubtful
sympathizers, the most extreme militants of German SDS, who became known
as the Baader-Meinhof group (or more properly, the Red Army Fraction),
stood isolated.
Rehashing old revolutionary catch-phrases picked-up in yesterday’s
left-wing literature, they manipulated rhetorically with dialectical
jugglery as arrogant and demagogic as Lenin, Luxemburg, Mussolini,
Hitler and Goebbels. The Socialdemocrats and parliamentary system,
sponsored as they were by the imperialist Western powers, became prime
targets. Stalin’s Bolshevism got its share of bitter attacks. But Maoism
was presented as a return to true Communism. Yet the militant section of
the workers distrusted this new “polit” generation and stubbornly
watched with a critical eye the further development of this small
minority within the universities, who now pushed themselves into the
limelight claiming revolutionary leadership.
The students had misjudged the real situation. They took the Vietnam
protest marches for a sign of an acute revolutionary mood. They next
projected their own fury against the police onto the people and —
wishfully — hoped that the sudden ruthless operations of the police
would infuriate the majority of citizens and workers and stimulate them
to join the student revolt. It did not.
To encourage the masses to fall in with them, the Baader-Meinhof people
started their violent direct actions. The results are well known.
We have repeatedly criticized the revised urban guerrilla programs of
the Marxists, including the RAF (Baader-Meinhof) version — especially
the absurdity of the latter in calling themselves a fraction of a
nonexistent Red Army. It brings to mind the historical Hauptmann von
Koepernick incident (a simple cobbler masqueraded as a major and staged
a military inspection). Their naivete is schoolkid like, if not
schizophrenic. The stubborn block-headedness of their self-deception
indicates a traumatic deathwish fixation, which attracts the equally
neurotic. Ironically enough, the pretentious manner in which they
lecture the workers does not strike them as identical to the sort of
university lecturers they originally fiercely objected to in their
antiauthoritarian student days.
Equally objectionable are dramatic adoption of names such as “People’s
Courts” or “Revolutionary Tribunals”. It is tragic enough if a comrade,
who by his collaboration with the police has caused arrest or
destruction of other comrades and is likely to go on doing so, must be
destroyed, without the executioners then playing at pseudo-military
martial law. Anyone who has had to take part in a drama of charging a
former fellow activist and then pronouncing and executing a verdict of
guilty after a full confession of the accused will hope to be spared
that experience for ever more.
We have criticized the RAF for its unbelievable disregard for the
simplest security precautions and their recruitment of doubtful members.
We have been outspoken but not one-sided. For we have also attacked
anarchists who changed their position on armed struggle as soon as they
saw the first red light. While the latter anxiously created alibis for
themselves by adjusting their policy to exclusively legal tasks and
withdrew their support for political prisoners in fear of being branded
as supporters of “criminal” organizations, we on the other hand have
insisted on upholding our right to express our opinions on the
justification of armed resistance in defiance of all new laws reducing
civil liberties.
We are all for intense industrial struggle and community activities. But
we would also like to hear the voices of those who are not renouncing
armed struggle. Must it be “all quiet on the anarchist guerilla front”?
We are tired and sick of having the label “dangerous” stuck on anyone
who dares to bell the devil’s tail. History will record that in the 1976
period of excessive repression, only the voice of the RAF, and their
anarchist ally 2^(nd) of June Group, was raised, and that alone is going
to do the anarchist image in the future a great service. It will be said
that the solidarity for political prisoners slipped out of the hands of
explicitly anarchist groups and only RAF defenders stuck out their necks
against the absolutely corrupted law. It will be said that
purist-anarchist aid sank to the level of bourgeois charity.
We are dead-set against the Marxist-Leninist theories of the RAF and
will go on opposing them as strongly as possible. We will unceasingly
expose the fallacies of their guerrilla methods. But we will not deny
them common solidarity when they fall beneath the merciless blows of a
demented State machine. And to their fallacious theories of liberation,
we will vigorously counterpose the anarchist guerrilla method.
The early Germans were regarded as outstanding warriors. There is a
certain affinity between their tradition and that of the libertarian
guerrillas. The tribe would chose a combat leader out of their midst, in
accordance to his previously displayed qualities. The entire tribe,
including the women and children, participated in battle. A leader who
did not come up to expectations, could be replaced at any time.
Even more remarkable were the “Wild Scythen”, sometimes called Saken.
Their fighting collective was also formed and controlled from below.
They were horsemen and came from the steppes of the Don, the Volga, the
Caucassus, and the Kaspi Lake district. They were nomads and shared
everything in common. They first became known when mighty Assyria was
attacked by the armies of the Herden. The Scythen defeated them, then
conquered the rich cities of the Phoenicians, penetrating deep into
Philister country, burning and sacking the temples of the Mother-Goddess
Mylitta. Jehuda and Egypt were threatened and managed to stave off
invasion only by buying their friendship with enormously costly
presents. Gifts and Icot were equally divided. Most of the Scythen
returned home, but many settled down in the country they had conquered
despite its more sophisticated civilization. Yet their customs and ideas
of free men soon infected others bound to irksome conventions and the
reestablished authorities began to regard them as corrupters of morals
and disturbers of the peace. Especially in the slave armies, where they
were known as ringleaders of insubordination and revolts. Their spirit
gradually spread to the Germans and Goths and later inspired Hunnes and
Vandals. The revolts of the conquered Jews against the Romans show
traces of Scythian influence, later to be found in the runaway Gladiator
fraternities banded together with the Thracian Spartacus. The world
conquest of the Romans does not exclusively belong to the credit of the
Legions. Without the massive backup of the subordinated slave army, the
Legion itself would have been less powerful. They were however superior
to the armies of other nations on account of their strategically new
battle formations, transport facilities, and endurance capacity of the
highly trained Legion.
Historians of the old school made much fuss over the military genius of
the Roman generals. Much praise was given to the amazing discipline of
the Legion, which was attributed to the pride and spirit of the
legionnaire. Yet even in the legion were still rudimentary elements of
the ‘control from below’. For it was the Legion who by vote or
spontaneous actions, made or unmade the Caesars. The difference between
the barbaric tribes of the Germans, Scythen, etc., was that the latter
did not entrust total authority to their chosen leaders and entitled
them no special privileges. Hardly ever did the schoolbook historians
elaborate on the historical fact that the very best Roman generals
suffered defeat through the hands of runaway gladiators and slaves, so
long as the latter stuck by their guerrilla tactics and fraternal
solidarity.
If the fraternal identity became upset by ambitious individuals or
cliques, then the elementary resource of strength would drain away and
disaster would follow. Spartacus was not defeated by the Roman generals,
but by the slave army’s own shortsightedness in allowing their original
small group to be swamped by less streamlined runaway slaves, by rival
conflicts with affiliated groups, by letting themselves be influenced
through Roman renegades to adopt warfare techniques of the Legion.
After their defeat thousands of captured Spartacists were nailed to
crosses erected along the highroads leading to Rome. These triumph signs
of the masters were meant to act as deterrents. Yet the meaning the
Romans intended for the cross was turned into its opposite by the
people’s suffering under the Roman heel. It became a symbol of
resistance — long before the Christians appeared and took the cross of
crucifixion as their sacred talisman. And this incorporated even earlier
currents of resistance, going back to the days of King Solomon whose
sponsoring of Phoenician culture and the introduction of their gods into
the Temple in Jerusalem enraged the Jehovah priest-caste and caused them
to recruit nationalist activists to fight the Corybante priests of the
Kybele and those Jewish rulers favouring foreign gods. 900 years before
Christ the Middle East experienced every possible form of power struggle
with which we are today acquainted: secret societies, conspiracies,
organised riots, violent disruptions of religious gatherings, the use of
explosives and assassination. When the Jews were exiled to Babylon, they
managed to gain favour with the mighty and amass fortunes, which forced
their return. The defeat of the Maccabees by Rome did not stop
resistance, for they organized among exiled Jews and in the slave
communities.
The first German guerrillas we know of were the 9^(th) century runaway
serfs, monastery novices and scholars fallen from official grace, who
began to band together in the manner of their forefathers, the
Nethersaxons, who had been butchered wholesale by the Christian invaders
of Charlemagne. The runaways were joined by the pariah-class knackers,
the outcast story tellers and mountebank ballad singers, the women
fortune-tellers and healers, as well as criminal fugitives. They took
refuge in thewoods and mountains. Here they established free
communities. They were supported by the nearby peasantry. They waylaid
and robbed the caravans of the rich merchants and took hostages for
ransom, they ambushed unpopular knights, relieving them of life and
arms. Their stories were passed on orally. We know that those who acted
in mutual agreement and common sharing lasted longest. Their incentive
rested on a natural law: the more ruthless the enforced servitude, the
more radical the resistance. The level of oppression determined the
measure of resistance.
The serf of the medieval age was less cared for than a head of cattle.
He had no rights whatsoever, could be sold or beaten to death. If he ran
away, he became “vogelfrei” (free as a bird). Anyone could kill him on
sight. Anyone who sheltered or fed him became an outcast in turn. He was
therefore dependent on the solidarity of other outcasts. We have no
authentic statistics as to their numbers, but can only draw conclusions
from fragmentary church files referring to their crimes and punishments,
if caught, and the punishments were always exceedingly cruel. They were
labeled as devil’s spawn, cut-throats, merciless incendiaries, cruel
bandits capable of every imaginable atrocity.
The barbaric justice of the rulers — hanging, beheading, quartering,
burning to death — did not break the spirit of resistance, nor reduce
the sympathy of the common people; on the contrary, it stiffened the
bitter popular resentment, it lingered on underground as a latent
smouldering until it flared up in the great German Peasant Revolution.
This ought to be a lesson to contemporary rulers, who believe their
sophisticated justice can postpone the approaching general reckoning.
Nothing the medieval rulers did could stamp out completely the menace
threatening their establishment. The more hysterical the denunciations
from the church pulpits, the greater the admiration of the people for
the rebels. The harder the punishment, the deeper the sympathy. The
agitators, in word and song, or whispered message, could not be silenced
by chasing them from the village green, by pillorying them, throwing
them into dungeons, beating them to a pulp or tearing their tongues out.
It is to their credit that a wave of dance mania and a blasphemy craze
swept the country, inflicting the first cracks in the foundation of
ecclesiastical power. We now know that the inquisition and burning of
witches — apart from robbing the rich of their wealth — was an attempt
by the church to arrest a sexual revolution and to destroy the last
rudiments of pagan ideology, which had survived evergreen among the
people, despite the centuries of Christianity. Behind the secret
adoration for the “wise women” stood an anonymous and silent women’s
liberation impulse, in stubborn passive resistance to the malegod
tyranny of Jehovaism.
The past is more relevant to the present and more significant to the
outcome of the future than our student comrades, in their contempt for
the study of history, seem to think.
The Hansa, for example, was in a position of unchallenged worldwide
power. The new merchant class was contesting the power of the Church and
kings, and their influence reached from the far corners of Russia, over
Finland and Scandinavian to England and from there down to Sicily. But
then their power was suddenly and dangerously challenged by pirates, by
declasse seafarers. So long as these pirates — who resembled very much
the land guerrillas — stuck to their hit-and-run tactics, they were
extremely difficult to apprehend and the damage they inflicted upon the
mighty Hansa federation of the major German ports made the rising
merchant class tremble. Disaster overtook the pirates when they no
longer kept to their small, fast craft, but began to employ the large
vessels of the Hansa which they had captured, and began collecting a
fleet with which they hoped to enter into formal naval competition.
The strategical advantage of the small craft had always been appreciated
by the Asian and Mediterranean pirates since the beginning of seafaring
conquest and freebooting. Similar to land guerrilla warfare, where the
small unit had the advantage over huge, cumbersome armies, the pirate
too could outmaneuver oversized merchantmen or heavily armed war
vessels. The spontaneity of action favoured the small craft, in addition
to the daredevil spirit of the lawless pirate band, especially when
facing crews or soldiers who were likely pressganged and ill-treated and
could often be induced to fraternize with the pirates instead of
fighting them.
Some famous oriental pirates were courted by potentates who engaged them
in waging naval battle against rival powers. Here too, if the pirates
made the mistake of abandoning their tradition and accepted the
leader-authority of a pirate chief newly elevated to admiral status in
the formal fleet, abandoning their old autonomy of action, things always
went wrong in the final chapters.
The peasants of the Great Peasant Revolution were in the beginning armed
primarily with flails, scythes and pitchforks. They set fire to castles
and monasteries and by the sheer force of their rebellious enthusiasm
beat off the mercenary troops sent by the feudalists to crush them.
There followed then fraternization with the Landsknechts, many of whom
were of peasant stock. Their officers, from the lower nobility, were
immensely attracted by the reckless spirit of the rebel camps, the bawdy
songs and folkdances not tolerated by the church authorities elsewhere,
the anticlerical sentiments expressed, and, holding grudges of their own
against the higher aristocracy, many joined in the peasant revolution.
What happened then was identical to what occurred in the Spartacus slave
rising. The peasants were led to give up the spontanaeist
‘undisciplined’actions and trust the military leadership of their noble
friends. They were drawn into power politics, conflicting aspirations;
they were sold-out by Martin Luther, and then, confused and demoralised,
the peasants were finally crushed.
So far every social revolution has gotten tangled in the clash of rival
factions and has been led astray. At the root cause of each failure we
find some “friend of the people”. Look today at Germany, where the
prototype of the intellectual, the Socialdemocratic Helmut Schmidt, is
far more dangerous than his forerunner Noske “the bloodhound”.
The bourgeois revolution, in its last phase, is the revolution of the
intellectuals. To this strata of society belong the propagators of the
managerial revolution, the elite of science and technology. Which
includes the great: Marx, Lenin, Mao, and the small: Dutschke,
Cohn-Bendit, Baader and Meinhof. All of them are personified ‘intellect
contra instinct’. Their character is marked by elitest conceit, this
heritage of feudalism. They stand on an imaginary height — vying with
the Zarathustrian superman of Friedrich Nietzsche — from where they
lecture the ignorant. Through their fine addresses to the workers breaks
the lightening of concealed contempt — no better epitomized than by the
disgust Leon Trotsky felt for the masses. They are the well-trained
pupils of the father of State philosophy, Plato.
The anarchist becomes activated by the rebellious impulse of the people.
Not vice versa. There is presently far too much Marxist-style lecturing
among anarchists. At the gut-level, the people don’t have to be taught
anything, they know. As much as the anarchist and as little. So too the
petit bourgeois knows. The rulers know. Action speaks more than words.
The anarchist does not want to mould and direct. He gets down into the
anonymous will of the people under the impact of a crisis which has set
them in motion. In this situation all the repressed emotions explode,,
instinct presents the bill and this instinct is the fruit of all past
frustrations. It has its own reasoning power and the irrefutable right
of a natural law.
The common sense of the people has always bordered on anarchist
sentiments. When told they may not take the law into their own hands,
their emotional response to this reveals their latent distrust and
hatred of “The Law”. There is law, but no justice. This feeling of the
underprivileged is even shared by the petit bourgeois. When forced to
seek the aid of a lawyer he goes not because of a belief in justice, but
because he hopes the lawyer can outwit the law. He remains unaware of
the fact that in the depths of his heart, he really desires the
destruction of the law. Admitting that utility-democracy has its
drawbacks, he argues that so does every other system. He cannot know
that Anarchism offers an alternative, for history records no anarchist
organisation or community yet providing an example of its workability.
And why?
Because these few full-blown attempts — the Makhnovist Ukraine, the
Korean communes in Manchuria, the anarcho-syndicalist collectivizations
in Spain — were beset by compromise, betrayed by the Bolsheviks, crushed
by the Reaction, and buried beneath a torrent of historical
falsification.
What exactly is the root of the tremendous power of the State? Military
manpower? Superior weaponry?
The knight in early medieval time was superior to the mass of serfs
because he was in possession of a sword and a battle horse, both costly
and out of reach of the dispossessed. This weaponry gave him superiority
and authority of command. Besides, he was commissioned by the grace of
Almighty god. Yet his powers rested in neither, but rather in the fact
that the serfs believed uncritically in his superiority. What gave them
into his hands was their ignorance and fear, deriving from religious
superstition and myth. And today? The progressive generation has not
discarded God, but merely replaced him with another. Modern man believes
in the absolute superiority of the scientist and technician, the high
priests of a new religion.
One look at history will show that the more elaborate the weapons
development, the more handicapped was the aristocratic overlord. His
movements, conditioned by the heaviness of his ever-increasing armour,
restricted mobility. He developed a technique suitable only for a
specialized aristocratic sport. But on the battlefield, standing out
among the multitude on foot, he became a target, not only for knightly
combat, but also for the less well-equipped underlings, conscripted
serfs or hired peasants, who could bring him down easily, by cutting
with a scythe the sinews of his overburdened battle horse.
During clashes in 1920’s Germany between demonstrators and police on
horseback, pepper bags were thrown at the horses’ eyes and acid sprayed
on their underbelly and private parts, causing havoc to the police.
There never has been any weapon that could not be rendered useless by
simple means of sabotage. All that was needed was the knowhow. There has
not been one new strategy, not one technological improvement, not one
advantage of mechanization, that could not be overcome by a
countermeasure. One needn’t have dynamite to put a computer out of
action. Every government knows this from their own sabotage and
guerrilla operations in times of war. Which is why they secretly quake
with fear.
Any action that helps to break the spell of fear among the people, which
the powerful assiduously cultivate, is half the battle won. Any
historical research destroying the legends nurtured by the ruling
overlords past and present is the antidote needed to render their
poisonous lies ineffective. For instance, is it true that the brave
loyal Prussian Army defeated the 1848/49 insurgents in Hessen? Did
Generalfieldmarshall Hindenburg crush the German Spartacists in 1918/19
because he was a military genius and had the greater arms potential?
True to the facts is that the people of Hessen, badly armed and
inexperienced in warfare, defeated twice the overwhelming forces of the
German princes. Truth is that Hindenburg was not the mastermind behind
the Tannenberg victory over the Russians and that he could not prevent
the Red sailors from taking over the fleet in Kiel and Wilhemshaven, nor
halt them from capturing Brunswick, Hamburg, Bremen, the Industrial Ruhr
towns and the capital Berlin.
No, again, and again, the counterrevolution triumphed only by employing
every means of deceit, treason, and atrocities to confuse and demoralize
the insurgents, infiltrating their ranks with agent provocateurs,
bribing and blackmailing, employing traitors and assassins. And in every
case, they crowned their terrorism with a merciless revenge in the
aftermath.
Then they would hammer it in: “Resisting the mighty is futile”. Then one
witness the frightened would-be revolutionaries parroting: “Anyone still
preaching armed struggle is irresponsible.” Thus the legend of superior
power and the impossibility of overthrowing it by armed action was once
more established.
Granted, a gun is a stronger weapon than a bare fist. Granted the
Spanish workers lost against the mechanized intervention of Hitler and
he, in turn, lost out against the enormous output of the U.S. war
industry. But equally true is that a man without a gun has many times
beaten his armed aggressor and that savages, armed with bow and arrow,
were not everytime defeated by invaders equipped with gun and cannon.
What we are saying is that the unarmed man is not necessarily without a
chance. During the Spanish civil war the people amazed the onlooking
world when they managed to produce, against all the odds, guns, armoured
cars and planes. In fact, the most fruitful war industries were those
operated by the anarcho-syndicalist worker collectives.
It is our argument that the Spanish people would have stood up better if
they had not allowed themselves to be bewitched by the strategy of
fascist mechanization which they faced, but instead adopted general
guerrilla warfare as was actually advocated by some Spanish anarchists
at that time. The same view was expressed by anarchists in Britain
during World War II in the face of Hitler’s threat of invasion. We still
maintain the validity of this our conviction.
Anyone who advocated insurgent action in this general prewar period was
looked upon as a Fifth Columnist. The British Communists, of course,
practised flea-jumping acrobatics: “Up the war” one day, “down the war”
the next, “up the war” again on the third. In contrast, anarchists and
Trotskyists upheld and propagated revolutionary principles. Since they
were regarded by the British government as a minority with no base in
the working class, they were considered harmless and the State afforded
them the leniency to carry on, thus bolstering the regime’s claim of
democracy. But when the militant dockers, miners and railway workers
launched a continuous series of wildcat strikes, the alarmed authorities
blamed the Trotskyists and clamped down on them. But the strikes
increased and in addition, mutinies occurred in many theatres of war and
when Scotland Yard and the Whitehall security discovered in the
possession of members of the forces subversive anarchist material, it
was the turn of the anarchists to be rounded up.
Be it remembered, however, that what the anarchists advocated in their
leaflets and illegal “Soldier’s Letter” was not defeatism or surrender
or even pacifism. But rather soldier councils and a people’s resistance
to Fascism.
Our principled rejection of militarism ought not to lead us into
inattention to military science, nor should we overlook the fact that
the warrior instinct is still very much alive in every human being and
conclusively contradicts pacifist ideals. In fact, this natural
aggressive inclination finds confirmation in the preaching of love, for
it reveals the preacher’s own fear of the harmful consequences that
might occur should he ever let himself become overwhelmed by his basic
aggressive impulses.
A mother, generally regarded as the incarnation of love and harmony,
will turn into a raving beast in defence of her child.
“Armed resistance is suicidal.” That, comrades, was the preaching of the
Church. “Do not resist the authorities.” “Give the Emperor what is the
Emperor’s”. That is the teaching of the bourgeoisie. It became the
gospel too of the Socialdemocrats and German Communists. To maintain
their seats in the Government, arse to arse, with the liberals, smirked
at by the conservatives, they helped to reintroduce the notorious
oppression methods Hitler built upon. They did this while draping
themselves in the Black, Red and Gold colours.
The liberterian legacy-fetishists who now suddenly denounce armed
struggle turn into satellites of the Socialdemocrats and reveal
themselves as mere red-tinted bourgeoisie. They can hardly be called
renegades, as they were never revolutionaries. They deceive themselves
if they believe the counterrevolution will spare them, just as did the
Socialdemocrats, Trade unionists and Communists, who all thought the
Nazis would compromise with them. The genuine revolutionist may, in
times of repression and the people passive, go underground, but never
will he give up his determination to fight. If he did he would lose his
self-respect.
“Rather dead than a slave!” That was the slogan of the Nethersaxons,
when they had the choice to renounce their beliefs or be killed. This
proud spirit did not vanish when they were killed, it inspired permanent
resistance in the following generations and gradually undermined the
power of the church.
A chain of abortive insurrections does not prove the impregnable power
of the oppressor. It is always the last battle that is decisive and that
battle has not yet come. It won’t commence, so long as the oppressor
manages to convince the oppressed that it is wiser for them to submit
without a fight. Reward for such submission is the gracious liberty to
administer mosquito stings to the gigantically swollen and thick-skinned
power-monster, which do not harm, but rather helps to give the
impression of tolerance.
“Pay your taxes, that I may grow more powerful; produce arms, with which
I can crush the rebels; build prison fortresses where I can break the
backbone of the upright; — then you may even express complaints, within
the framework of the permissible, of course. I will listen to them, and
shelve them, at my pleasure. The age of barricades is over, once and for
all. We remove them with remote-controlled bulldozers. We clean the
streets of demonstrators with water cannons. Our policemen wear
bulletproof uniforms. Their machine-pistols shoot a hundred times more
bullets a second than yours. Fraternizations? Insurrections? Only if we
sponsor them, for purposes of our own. We — the CIA; the DDP; the NSC
and CIP; the KGB and SSD. Remember the Junta coups in Greece; the
killing of Che Guevara; the ousting of Allende; the Spinola role in
Portugal, etc. etc.”
Alright, Gentlemen: That is one side of your medallion. What about the
reverse? At the back of your powerboasts, we detect your cold sweat,
caused by the nonstop growth of social-revolutionary trends in every
part of the globe. The possibility that your repressive methods will
result in the very thing you wish to prevent — the sparking of a
universal armed insurrection — that is what is driving you insane.
What is the concrete situation for anarchists today?
In Germany, neither the Baader-Meinhof group, nor the 2^(nd) of June
branch, succeeded in gaining mass support. Historians keep saying that
the time of anarchist mass following belongs to the past.
Anarcho-syndicalism was crushed by the wave of Fascism in the 20’s and
30’s and now exhibits only isolated resurgence in Spain.
Anarchocommunism and worker councilism suffered a similar demise at the
hands of both Reaction and Bolshevism, and its present-day revivals are
likewise isolated and often liquidated. (vz. Hungary 1956, Portugal
1975). The once worldwide I.W.W. organisation also declined after long
persecution and has not picked up to any appreciable degree. Communism
is conquering the field. Fascism is gaining strength. If both are
bourgeois aftermaths, anarchists will have to reconsider their stand
regarding the Marxist transition theory.
If declared anarchists, affected by the scare of antiterrorist
legislation, openly withdraw from the armed struggle position,
proclaiming it to be essential to confine themselves exclusively to
industrial struggle, the young insurgent anarchists, forced into
isolation, will have to make up their minds once and for all whether it
remains viable to recruit just anyone — and rake again the same mistakes
of their predecessors — or to take new tack. The historical role of
isolated anarchists has always been to function like yeast. That is no
mean role. If anarchist and Marxist comrades cannot see it, the heads of
government surely do. If the brisk agitators of the Left ascribe the
lack of mass support to the anarchists’ inability to organise, the
security forces of the State know better and are accordingly worried.
They remember well that there were in the Kaiser’s Reich of 1914 only a
mere handful of anarchists and anarcho-communists but that in 1916 —
overnight — workers’ councils appeared in every industrial section of
Germany and initiated a tidal wave of anti-war demonstrations and
massive strikes.
The 1968 vintage of German students in their antiauthoritarian fury were
obsessed with purging the past and discarding old values. Yet at the
same time they were eagerly looting, like rag and bone pickers, both
anarchist and pseudo-anarchist historical baggage. That period of
fermentation is now over. Elitism has lost its fascination. The pendulum
oscillation towards extreme intellectualism has reversed towards common
sense, matured in everyday’s grim reality. New groupings are occurring
which have taken stock of the recent past. They seem sincere in their
endeavor to assimilate the thesis and antithesis of authoritarianism
contra libertarianism, that were causing eternal frictions. The near
future will show if they will succeed in finding a workable synthesis.
The miscarriage of armed actions through methods in flagrant contrast to
libertarian concepts have been earnestly analysed. Justification of
armed struggle has not been disproved. Repressive methods characterise
the extent of insecurity felt by the regime. The sword of justice cuts
two ways. The deterrent effect paralyses the weak, but it also deepens
the scorn felt by the just. The more brutal the regime, the more that
brutality will mobilise and activate resistance. The much-vaunted theory
that rebellion erupts not in time of extreme misery and repression, but
rather in a period of liberalisation and rising expectation, snugly
ignores the seething hatred and underground stirrings that will break
forth from even the smallest crack — only in hindsight to be considered
a liberal concession.
No ever so crushing defeat of rebellion is absolutely final. The
backbone of the revolution cannot be broken, simply because the law of
nature is unalterable: pressure produces counterpressure. Although the
urge for freedom may seem to be dulled, it nevertheless remains embodied
as a dormant but permanent risk factor. Since restriction of freedom
constitutes a permanent condition of any regime, we may well look upon
it as the Achille’s heel of all establishments, the vulnerability
inducing persistent and aggressive opposition. Every regime justifies
its existence by the claim of creating peace and order, essential for
general welfare. Yet, since no regime grants unlimited freedom and
cannot establish universal contentment, it is, paradoxically the author
of chronic unrest.
Strengthening of armed forces and the use of governmental terrorism
provides the evidence for the potential power of the revolution. This
armoured plating actually constitutes the fissure in the seemingly
unconquerable superpower; it is here that the revolutionary agitation
persistently drives a wedge. And even were revolutionists to fail to do
so, the acid of the people’s resentment would eat its way through,
gradually but surely.
The armed actions of rebels — the skillful and abortive ones alike — are
the distant lightening of a tempest growing. The harsh punishments meted
out by the regime to reveal its panic, leading it to ever increased
violations of ethical pretensions. With each new abuse of power the
regime reduces its moral prestige. In contrast, the courageous rebels,
the political prisoners enduring vicious captivity, increase respect and
admiration for themselves as well as the willingness to aid them, even
though it involves the danger of being dragged into court and charged
with “support of a criminal organisation”. For every rebel jailed,
tortured and killed, ten new sympathizers can be mobilised.
While the counterrevolutionary power of computerised security forces and
armies is ballooning monstrously, guerilla tactics are still the most
potential and dangerous counter-factor. The best armed Goliath can still
be put out of action by a stone slung by a small David. The mighty
elephant fears most of all a tiny rodent.
The insurgent anarchist knows, in the present situation, the one most
important thing: to remain alert, to keep a sharp eye on the enemy, to
discover the most vulnerable points in the dragon’s skin. And to avoid
the mistakes made by rebels in the past. Those who, in times of acute
repression, weather through the tough schooling, will gain thereby
sufficient insight of human nature to judge precisely who will prove a
trustworthy comradein- arms when it comes to popular revolt. In the
final battle, aimed at the overthrow of the regime, every uncompromising
fighter is a natural ally, no matter if he came originally from working
class or bourgeois environment. By the act of his complete
identification with the uncompromising antiauthoritarian revolutionists
joining in the fight of the people for freedom, he dissolves his
previous class bondage and becomes an instrument of a classless
community.
John Olday
10 April 1976