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Title: Anarchist Communist Author: Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici Date: 2003 Language: en Topics: class, Especifismo, Italy, anarcho-communism, Organizational Dualism, Libertarian Marxism, marxism, dialectics Source: http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/organization/theory/acqoc/index.htm & http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/press/pamphlets/CA_CLASS_en.pdf
The Federation of Anarchist Communists (FdCA) was founded in 1985 on the
principle of the theoretical and strategic unity of its members, a
principle which it still holds to and will continue to do so. This
principle means that the FdCA is based on its positions which are shared
by the entire federated membership.
These positions are set out in a number of original Theoretical
Documents which represent the unity of the Federation and its policies.
They also represent the unity of its militants, federated into a single
political organization and individually and collectively responsible for
the political life and the political decisions of the FdCA.
Our Theoretical Documents are divided into Theory, Basic Strategy,
Political Strategy and General Tactics.
The documents which go to make up our Theory represent the unique,
united and characteristic identity of the Federation. They set out the
Federation’s revolutionary role and its political function as historical
memory and active minority, a role which has been indicated by the
experience of the revolutionary proletariat throughout the history of
the class struggle.
Our Theory currently consists of two documents: “Teoria dei Comunisti
Anarchici” and “Comunisti Anarchici: Una questione di classe.” This
booklet is a translation of the latter of these documents which was
first published in 2003.
Basic Strategy consists of those documents which set out the long-term
strategic role of our class enemies the role of the mass organization
and the political organization and the tasks of these organizations
during the transition to communism. Political Strategy consists of
documents which set out in the short term the social, political and
economic context of the class struggle and the strategic role of the
mass organizations and the political organization, while our General
Tactics are concerned with the immediate role of these organizations
within the current context of the class struggle.
This system of Theoretical Documents was conceived so that the FdCA
would always be in a position to understand the nature of its role and
its actions and so that it can engage in a continuing process of
strategic reflection and analysis, learning always from the class
struggle, promoting internal debate and thereby avoiding ideological
rigidity.
On our website at www.fdca.it you can find most of our Theoretical
Documents in Italian and several documents of Basic Strategy and General
Tactics also available in English.
Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
International Relations Office
June 2005
Anarchist Communism is not the pure fruit of some intellectual
adventure. It is not the result, happy as it may be, of certain
individuals who, sheltered from history, have meditated on humanity’s
destiny. It is not the (generous) answer of a few utopians to the ills
of contemporary society and to its patent injustices. It is not the
search for an ideal of perfection which can satisfy the need for harmony
of minds requiring abstract ponderings. Anarchist Communism was born
both from and within the struggles of the proletariat and has therefore
little to do with the innate aspirations of man towards less iniquitous
forms of social organization. Hence, we will not be searching for its
roots in the philosophical systems of more or less ancient times (even
though they may have provided food for thought, as is also the case with
certain other forms of political thought born around the same time, such
as Marxism or liberal ideology). We will concentrate only on the
stratification of ideas laid down in one component of the workers’ and
proletarian movement beginning with the First International (1864) and
continuing until today.
All this, however, does not mean that there have never been individuals
whose reflections have made a fundamental contribution to the
development of the ideological corpus which bears the name of Anarchist
Communism and we will be dedicating brief sections to them, with three
premises. The first is that none of them was simply a thinker who
observed the evolution of events in the class struggle from without or
who held a directing role, giving him the sole task of furnishing
policies and analyses. All were politically active full-time in the
daily goings-on of the movement and for this reason their contribution
is often fragmentary, consisting of one-off articles or pamphlets
hurriedly written in the heat of the moment, with the train of thought
in progress and often not brought to a conclusion. Their thinking,
therefore, although it may not always be systematically presented in
broad works resulting from years of planning, is nonetheless coherent in
its own way, with a thread which needs to be established with patience
and care, though this is often the cause of the diverse interpretations
which can be made.
The second premise is that those who we remember here are not the only
thinkers which Anarchist Communism can boast. Others have contributed
greatly to the development of our ideas and analyses. We simply wish to
underline the fact that these three names each represented a significant
turning point in the evolution of Anarchist Communist theory.
Finally, the third premise is that we ask the reader not to be shocked
by the absence from this brief collection of certain classic names which
appear in every history of anarchism (William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, PĂ«tr Alekseievich Kropotkin, etc.) or comrades who have been
so valuable to the Anarchist Communist movement in particular (Émile
Pouget, Errico Malatesta, Nestor Ivanovich Makhno, etc.). The former are
not included as they represent trains of thought which are often distant
from Anarchist Communism. The latter are omitted because, although their
system of thought may have been rigorous, they did not represent
milestones to the extent that we wish to emphasise here. We will leave
to another moment a systematic study of the evolution of Anarchist
Communist theory, one where every influence can be examined and
evaluated more fully.
In the history of anarchist ideas, Mikhail AleksandroviÄŤ Bakunin
(1814–1876) represents a fundamental stage and is without doubt the
basis for every form of class-struggle anarchism. His adventure-filled
life, together with a distinct lack of any systematic approach, means
that what was said above regarding the necessity for tiresome
reconstruction of trains of thought is completely true where he is
concerned, coherent and organic though his thought may be. Clues spread
here and there throughout pamphlets, articles, letters, notes and so on
are normally what constitute his analysis of the moment and are
therefore destined to be used for the most disparate purposes, given the
fact that they have never been arranged into one collection which could
serve to clarify them one and for all. Even so, careful reading of his
work should not lead to excessive misunderstandings (unless that is what
one wants). As we have said, though, that job will be for another time.
Here, what we are trying to do is simply trace the basic elements of his
thoughts as part of the process of the development of Anarchist
Communist theory.
His work, in fact, already included some of the distinctive elements of
this theory, such as what the new society should be like, the role of
the vanguard, organizational dualism and the need for a revolutionary
strategy which grows from consciousness of the economic and class
relations of the current situation at any time. Each of these topics
will be dealt with later. At this point, we are simply emphasising
Bakunin’s contribution to their definition.
It is thanks to him that Anarchism was able to move on from the
proto-Anarchist wastelands of Godwin and Proudhon, free itself from the
myth of the individual and his freedom guaranteed by possession, and
become genuinely collectivist and, later still, communist. The future
society which he imagined was federalist, based on the free union of
local communes and productive communes and which was anti-hierarchical
but which was no longer (as under Proudhon) centred on the nucleus of
the artisan family, proud of its skills and the owners of the necessary
means of production. Instead, these means were to become considered to
be under collective management through the workings of producers’ and
consumers’ associations.
The role of the vanguard in the revolutionary process was a constant
source of worry for Bakunin. “If the popular risings in Lyons,
Marseilles and other cities in France were failures, it is because of a
lack of organization [...].” For him, the organization must be composed
of individuals who were conscious of their aims, who were in agreement
and who were therefore much more united. His taste for conspiracy, which
was part of his impulsively romantic nature, combined with the need for
clandestinity (something which was clearly essential given the times in
which he lived) led him towards an almost too rigid conception of
organization, one which was unacceptable not only to most Anarchists,
but even to the most hard-bitten Marxists one could hope to meet. If any
convincing is needed, just read a few pages of the pamphlet “To the
Officers of the Russian Army.” But even though these extreme positions
(conceived as they were under the influence of Sergei Gennadievich
Nechaev) may seem almost folkloristic, the fact remains that Bakunin did
conceive of the organization of conscious class-struggle militants
(Anarchist Communists) as a structure which took its decisions in a
democratic way but which was disciplined, where the roles that each
played corresponded to the assumption of responsibilities without which
the group could not function or be effective. All this was possible
without getting lost in sophistry over the need for every individual to
have freedom of action, something which has gravely retarded the
development of the Anarchist movement. There were two good reasons for
all this. The first is that membership of the organization is voluntary,
which in itself requires clarity regarding the rules which the
organization uses in order to develop its revolutionary action and, of
course, acceptance of these rules. The second reason is that the
political organization is not, for Bakunin at least, the forerunner of
the future society which must instead permeate through the lives of the
masses, and cannot therefore mirror it in any way, but must simply
respond to its tasks in the most efficient way possibly.
Which leads us to the third basic characteristic of Bakuninist thought —
the strict separation between the political organization and that of the
proletariat. The former, conscious of its aims, organized and
disciplined, is at the heart of the revolution, directing its evolution,
promoting and supporting it. The latter, gathering all the exploited
masses to it, is the one which actually makes the revolution and builds
the society of free equals by following an arduous path through the
inevitable initial chaos. In making this distinction, there is no hint
of leaderist Blanquism (or, as we would call it today, Leninism), as the
organization of the revolutionary vanguard has no role to play unless it
is within the larger workers’ organization. It does not take their place
when decisions are to be made, it simply limits itself to trying to
guide, to steer the masses along their revolutionary path.
In order to do this, the political structure of the revolutionary
vanguard must not only enunciate principles, as sterile as they are
correct. It must set forth concrete proposals relevant to the time and
place where it acts. This means analysing the historical context
wherever it operates as Bakunin himself did admirably when he analysed
the situation in Italy and suggested what he thought would be useful in
his letter to the Italian internationalists addressed to Celso Ceretti.
All this without underestimating some aspects which, although they may
seem peripheral, are in fact fundamental if the organization is to be
properly effective, such as financing and making available resources
which will allow it to exist.
These four principles, proposed clearly for the first time by Bakunin,
will always be part of the evolution of Anarchist Communist theory and
represent its permanent framework.
Luigi Fabbri (1877–1935) had a much less adventurous life than Bakunin,
but spent his militant life in both the specific Anarchist movement and
in the organizations of the workers’ movement. His name, even among
Anarchist old-timers, is often shadowed by that of his contemporary,
Errico Malatesta.
However, without wishing to take away from the importance the latter
played as the spark — theoretical, too — of the movement (think, for
example, of the clarity with which he approached the debate on the role
of the unions with Pierre Monatte at the 1907 Amsterdam Congress),
Fabbri’s position was more coherent, not as heavily veined with generic
and tendentially inter-class humanism, and more thorough with regard to
the role of the political organization. Fabbri can be said to have
brought those ideas which Bakunin had elaborated during his work in the
First International to their logical conclusion, providing Anarchist
Communist theory with a complete and self-consistent, almost definitive
framework.
The role of the mass organization (or labour union) was always clearly
defined for Fabbri as the sole, irreplaceable agent of revolution, but
it is also necessarily the only possible place where the proletariat can
spend its revolutionary apprenticeship. For this reason it cannot
distance itself too much from the levels of consciousness expressed by
the real masses, or it risks turning into the virtual image which the
vanguard makes of the revolutionary movement, in other words the fruit
of a desire and not of the reality of class war.
“Those among the workers who have determined convictions [...] within
the class organizations must realize that there are those in there with
them who do not share their ideas and that therefore, out of respect for
the opinions and freedoms of others, they are obliged to maintain the
pact for which the organizations were created, working around common
goals without wanting to lead them towards special goals (even
apparently good ones) which do not correspond to the desires of others.”
From this the workers’ organization is doomed to split (for example the
split that led to the creation of the Unione Sindacale Italiana, even if
this was the work of the “reformists’ evil plans”). Side by side with
the mass organization, he foresaw the presence of a cohesive, structured
political organization and, in fact, after World War I was one of the
promoters of the Unione dei Comunisti Anarchici d’Italia (UCAd’I — Union
of Anarchist Communists of Italy), before Malatesta’s drive for
unanimity led to the formation of the Unione Anarchici Italiani (UAI —
Union of Italian Anarchists).
In 1926, when the international Anarchist movement was jolted by the
organizational proposals which had been set forth by a group of Russian
refugees in Paris (Makhno, Ida Mett, Piotr Arshinov, etc.), the
“Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists — Project,”
and many prestigious militants cried scandal because of what they
considered to be its overly leaderist tones, Fabbri took a most
responsible position and recognized that it placed “in the arena of
discussion a number of problems regarding the Anarchist movement, the
place of Anarchists in the revolution, the organization of Anarchism in
the struggles, and so on, which need to be solved if Anarchist doctrine
is to continue to respond to the growing needs of the struggle and of
social life in the present-day world.���
Lastly, we should remember that it was his lucid analyses which allowed
him to be the first to clearly foresee developments in the Russian
Revolution (which had just taken place) and the counter-revolutionary
nature of the coming Fascist regime.
Camillo Berneri (1897–1937) is representative of the latest generation
of the theoreticians of militant Anarchism, anarchism at the height of
its development. The losses incurred from the Spanish War through the
loss of a good many active members of the movement, from the Fascist
regimes through the dispersion of a century of accumulated experience
and from World War II through the emergence of the bipolar world order
and the disappearance of every alternative to Capitalism except
Stalinist Communism, have had the effect of not allowing a new Anarchist
Communist theory to develop. Few original thinkers have emerged (perhaps
the only ones were Daniel Guérin and Murray Bookchin, though the latter
starts from positions which have nothing to do with class-struggle
Anarchism). The re-elaboration of theory suffered an enormously grave
interruption, to the point where even the memory of basic points of that
theory which is Anarchist and Communist at the same time was lost and
required a long and laborious recovery. The ability to analyse the
present situation, too, came to a long halt and only recently have we
found Noam Chomsky to be an extremely lucid representative, the likes of
which had not been seen for over half a century. It has only been for
about the last thirty years that the real lineaments of the various
products of the Anarchist movement and its role as an integral part of
the proletariat, an idea of class struggle and not just the product of
the vague utopian wanderings of a few philosophers lost in their
sophistry, has emerged from the mists of disinformation which had
shrouded its distinguishing features, disfiguring it.
In his thinking, Berneri demonstrated intolerance for dogmas at an early
stage, above all where they came from a collection of assertions which
were superficially accepted and were not sufficiently examined for their
truth. His was, then, a strongly innovative contribution which was not
tied to any preconceived systems which would anyway end up creating
barriers for the development of the idea. Unfortunately, his premature
death in revolutionary Barcelona at the hands of hired Stalinist thugs
put an end to his theoretical development (and, as we have seen, to that
of the entire movement). It is therefore easier to understand the
potential in his original elaborations (original, though within the
definition of class-struggle Anarchism) than to point to a complete
corpus of doctrine. The most interesting elements are to be found in his
analysis of post-revolutionary society, of its possible methods, of the
contradictions which it will encounter and resolve. Berneri’s
theoretical exploration heralded positive developments which were
necessary even at the time in which he lived in order to clear the mists
which had already enveloped the presumed orthodoxy of the day, whose
sterile ideas were useless for day-to-day action.
Lastly, he was also the bearer of what could be called possibilism, or a
willingness to confront and to consider the conquests of the day,
something which distinguishes him from that mass of automatons, his
contemporaries (still appreciated today by their many imitators). This
even taking into account the total intransigence of his basic principles
which frequently led him into conflict with the Stalinists to such
extent that they felt forced to eliminate him physically — any adversary
who interfered in their matters was dangerous for them.
As we have done with the Anarchist Communist thinkers, so will we do
with the history of the class-struggle Anarchist movement. We will limit
ourselves simply to summarizations of some important events, above all
in relation to their relevance for the development of our theoretical
guidelines. For the founders of the theory we have just indicated a few
representatives without denying the importance of other contributions,
consistent as they may be. We have only dealt with those that seemed to
us to be the most relevant to the development of a theory which became
more and more self-consistent, and have left it to other specific works
to engage in a methodical treatment of the theoretical systems of the
individuals examined and also those others who, over the space of a
century and a half, have contributed, often in an extremely important
way.
History, too, is replete with significant episodes which absolutely must
not be forgotten. Even the few events which we will take into
consideration deserve much better, much deeper treatment. What we intend
to do here is only to highlight the most significant stages of the
historical evolution.
But first, a premise: all the historically relevant events in the
Anarchist movement in general are the fruit of its class component and
not of those who presume to distribute certificates of orthodoxy and
hand out excommunications to anyone who does not remain within the
boundaries of supposedly sacred principles (which, as we have seen, do
not even have a historical basis in the birth of Anarchism). From the
often decisive presence in key moments of the struggle by the exploited
for their emancipation to the creation of their instruments of
resistance, from the struggle for freedom from various oppressors to the
most advanced experiments in the building of a society which is not
based on the exploitation of one man by another, Anarchist Communists
have left traces of their presence and their activity while others
thrashed out the purity of their ideas and their rigorous adherence to
what they considered to be unalterable precepts, thereby saving their
souls without providing any real contribution to the emancipation of the
proletariat.
From a different point of view, it was exactly this constant presence in
the struggles of the exploited which gave rise to the collection of
experiences, later reflection on these experiences and on their concrete
results, and consequently the origin of the theory itself, making
Anarchist Communists the acting vanguard and historical memory of the
proletariat.
At the time when the Parisian proletariat gave birth to the Commune,
there was no political organization which had elaborated a plan of
action. It was the difficult situation of the period following the war
with Prussia, the existing social conditions which contrasted with the
hope aroused by the birth of the First International, and the tradition
of vanguard that the French workers’ movement had enjoyed for decades
which created the mix that sparked the first authentically self-managed
proletarian experiment on a vast scale.
When Adolphe Thiers moved all the structures of the French State to
Paris from Versailles, a vacuum was created which the Commune filled,
without almost any plan. Even the Blanquists, the strongest and least
heterogeneous group within the Commune, did not have clear ideas on what
to do, apart from creating the most centralized revolutionary government
possible. They had no social plan. The others (Jacobins, Proudhonians,
Internationalists, etc.) were few and divided amongst themselves and
were swamped by the elected representatives of the people who had no
political direction. The Jacobins had their heads in the past and had
nothing to say about the future. The Proudhonians were practically
inexistent, as their traditional representatives were against the
Commune. The Internationalists were split between a few Marxists, some
Syndicalists and a section of militants or Anarchists (Louise Michel,
Louis-Jean Pindy) or people very close to Bakuninist ideas (Eugène
Varlin), but none of these had a stable relationship with libertarian
organizations. Bakunin’s comrades in France had mostly departed
following the ruinous failure of an attempted Commune in Lyons the
previous year.
This was how the Paris Commune proceeded for a few months before being
drowned in blood (there may have been 30,000 dead and 45,000 taken
prisoner). It took no precise direction and did not therefore foreshadow
any complete social model. The surprising thing, and its greatest legacy
to the workers’ movement, is that despite the quarrels inside the
Commune, the dangers from outside, the state of war in which it found
itself operating and despite the lack of a politically mature element,
the daily life of the Commune was organized, services worked well or
badly as may be, production continued. Even a fairly respectable
military defence organization was set up.
This period is not only essential in order to understand the development
of the international workers’ movement and the emblematic role that the
Commune of 1871 has always played in it, but it is fundamental in the
development of Anarchist Communist theory. Karl Marx was, to say the
least, surprised by the events in Paris and was rapidly forced to revise
some of his conceptions of the workers’ state, which he did by
publishing “The Civil War in France.” For Bakunin, everything that
happened was natural and formed part of his theory — even, to a certain
extent, the errors of the Commune and its defeat. It was not, in fact,
surprising that the proletariat was able to organize itself
spontaneously and efficiently. Speaking with the benefit of hindsight
(in the light of experiences of later revolutions), neither was it
surprising that the path of post-revolutionary society followed the
correct way towards ever more self-managing structures, searching for
federative alliances with similar groups. This is the natural way of
things whenever the revolution is not led astray by perverting theories.
In fact, the absence of already-existing organizations with a definite
programme serves to prove this elementary fact, in the case of the
Commune.
On the other hand, it was the very absence of a conscious vanguard
(which, according to Anarchist Communist theory, must orient the
revolution, not direct it, and must protect it from deviations, not
impose its own beliefs) which constituted the weakness of the Commune
and stopped it from acting resolutely thereby isolating it from the rest
of France. By then, France was resigned to defeat and was firmly under
the control of reaction. Revolution either expands and contaminates or
it perishes!
The revolution in Ukraine has remained an unknown episode to this day
thanks to the thick veil of disinformation which Soviet propaganda
draped over it and thanks also to the complicity of official Western
historiography. The real facts of the matter have so far escaped serious
historical analysis. The vastness of the event (around two million
people were involved) and its duration (its fortunes waxed and waned
over a period of about four years) make it, however, a key episode in
the history of Anarchist Communism. Any reflection on its development
and final results can only provide an enormous font of practical and
theoretical stimuli for Anarchist Communist theory. The reader is, as
usual, advised to study the texts specifically regarding this event in
order to find detailed accounts of the events and information on how
they fitted into the immense and complicated panorama of the 1917
Russian Revolution. We will limit ourselves here to reflecting on its
theoretical influences.
The first point of reflection is in fact its size and duration. What
happened was not due solely to the “immense libertarian soul” of the
Ukrainian people, for their atavistic intolerance of any sort of
dominator (something already noted by Bakunin), or for their peasant
traditions and their strong ties to the earth, the font of all life. All
this obviously had an influence but they are conditions which have
historically existed in other times and places without producing the
same results. Instead, there was a detonator, a catalyst of confused
aspirations, something which channelled the people’s unheeded needs.
That something was an organization of comrades who had already been
militants for a long time, who were well versed in the practice of
struggle and in theory and who had a firm point of reference in the
personality of Nestor Ivanovich Makhno (1888–1934).
The Makhnovist experience provides us with two distinctive points for
consideration. The first is the particular role which the revolutionary
vanguard played. Secondly, there are the ideas that resulted from
contemplation of its defeat.
We have said that Anarchist Communism does not see the role of the
vanguard in the revolutionary process as one of direction or management,
but as one of orienting the process from within, guarding against any
deviations it might fall victim to either through any lack of clarity on
the part of the masses involved or, and above all, those caused by
erroneous recipes introduced from without which might poison the whole
process. In the case of the Ukrainian revolution, the Anarchist
Communist vanguard placed great emphasis on this second aspect, even to
the point of taking on that most thankless of tasks of all time — the
creation of an army of defence. This choice, which was nonetheless
unavoidable, was responsible for the more expert comrades (such as
Makhno) being seen more as an ideal point of reference rather than as a
real part of the social evolution which was taking place. On the one
hand, this confirmed that idea that the spontaneous development of the
masses, not deviated by ideologies which propose models claiming to be
solutions to every problem and for this reason referring to themselves
as scientific, naturally tends towards collectivism and self-management.
On the other hand, however, it is exactly by acting as a physical
barrier to any external influences that the idea takes root that the
enemies of the revolution are to be found on the outside, both
counter-revolutionaries and those who set themselves up as the
proletariat’s only revolutionary party, giving in this case a visible,
palpable form to the role of safeguarding the integrity of the
revolutionary process which was played by the Anarchist Communist
vanguard.
Unfortunately, the external difficulties (civil war — the main theatre
of which was in Ukraine itself, the sacrifice of the region by the
Bolshevik government as part of the peace of Brest-Litovsk and the
consequent arrival of German troops, the hostility of the Bolsheviks
towards an experiment which challenged their theories on the workers’
state and the guiding party) placed the possibility of revolution in
doubt along with any territorial or chronological continuity and
threatened the chances of success. The treaties between the Makhnovist
army and Lev Davidovich Trotsky’s Red Army, which were made in order to
defeat the various White generals who threatened the area (Anton
Ivanovich Denikin, PĂ«tr Nikolaevich Vrangel, etc.), were not an act of
faith in the central government of Moscow but were rather an attempt to
confront one enemy at a time, starting with the most threatening and
imminent. The confrontation with the Bolsheviks was put off until later
as they were further away, they had not yet established themselves
socially, there were difficult contradictions with the peasant masses
all over Russia, they had internal divisions in the party and a section
of their militant base (the sailors and factory workers) were
potentially closer to anarchist positions. On the other hand, Lenin had
managed to carry through the October Revolution with more-than-dubious
means: the slogan “All power to the soviets!,” which had upset the
Bolsheviks’ own ideas in April 1917, came from the Anarcho-Syndicalists
and was responsible for a large section of the workers’ movement
deciding to lend their support to the party. This was, however, a very
damaging conflict for the movement, and reflection on the reasons for
defeat was the subject of careful reconsideration which later led the
Paris-based Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad to propose the
“Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists — Project,”
which we have already mentioned.
The analysis was simple and profound. The Bolsheviks had won because
they had a compact organization which had a sense of direction and
branched into every area which the revolution had reached. The
Anarchists were divided into little groups which were often in
disagreement with each other and did not have a common plan. They could
not possibly have the same political weight. The Makhnovshchina remained
isolated (as happened during the Paris Commune) and Lenin’s party had no
difficulty in methodically tightening the noose around their necks. The
question of Anarchist Communist organization had by now become
unavoidable.
The Spanish Revolution was hurried on by the announcement of General
Francisco Franco, forcing the workers’ organizations (and in particular
the CNT) to accelerate their programmes. But despite this, the Anarchist
Communists (CNT-FAI) were not caught unawares. A few months previously
during its congress in Zaragoza, the CNT had approved a programme for
Libertarian Communism, which set out the path towards the achievement of
a society of free equals. So, in those areas where its influence on the
proletariat was greatest, they immediately began a series of
collectivizations of land, industry and services which produced a rough
sketch of a self-managed society with some noticeable results. It should
be noted that the CNT was strongest in those areas, such as Catalonia,
where economic development was most advanced, a fact which provides a
strong argument against the fantastic theory of Marxists (which,
besides, has no basis in theoretical analysis or historical research)
that states that Anarchism can only establish itself in places which
remain in a primitive state of development (peasants and small
producers) and which would be eclipsed by progress.
By reason of its size and duration, the Spanish experience is comparable
to that of Ukraine, but enjoyed without doubt much greater chronological
and geographic continuity. So much so that today it represents the most
valuable example of the realization of Anarchist Communism. This is not
surprising in the light of what has been said above about the existence
in the ranks of militants of a precise and detailed project and in the
light of the long revolutionary preparation which the Spanish
proletariat had accumulated at the time and, lastly, in light of the
fact that the CNT represented not only the most radical, conscious wing
of the proletariat, but was also the one which was best rooted among the
masses.
So why the defeat? Let us leave aside for now any judgement on the entry
into government by the better-known Anarchist militants, first in
Catalonia, then in the central government. It may have been an error,
but it certainly did not have a determining influence on events. First
of all, because when these choices were made, the fate of the Republic
was already on the cards and, secondly, though they may not have been
able to guarantee success for the revolution, threatened by a section of
the republican coalition itself (notably the Stalinists, who were at the
time guarantors of the interests of the Spanish bourgeoisie and the
Soviet state), they certainly did not in any way damage the social
experiments under way, above all in Catalonia.
Without doubt the choice of the enemy to strike early played a
considerable role, so much so that Zaragoza (where Anarchist Communists
had their most consistent presence) was lost straight away. Divisions
within the republican ranks also played their part, in particular the
clever, but perverting, way in which the Partido Comunista Español was
able to impose its “two halves” policy (first, victory in the civil war
and only then the social revolution) even using force, turning its arms
on the peasants’ collectivity instead of on the external enemy.
All this cannot, however, explain completely what happened. The
Anarchist Communists were prepared for events. They had a precise,
detailed programme. They enjoyed wide influence among the proletariat.
They had excellent, able militants. Even though they committed errors or
seemed uncertain at times, this did not suffice to damage their initial
advantage or the outcome of the revolution. Once again it was the factor
of isolation (on an international scale this time) which was
fundamental. The democracies around Spain, whether out of fear of the
rising Nazi and Fascist aggression (which, it was hoped, could be
placated through a policy of appeasement — for example Neville
Chamberlain in 1938 in Britain) or out of fear of a possible spread of
revolutionary conquests to their countries (for example in Léon Blum’s
France), limited themselves to verbal support and left the field open
for military intervention in support of the Francoist rebels on the part
of Italy and Germany. The USSR could not stand by and watch the birth of
a new revolutionary pole for the international proletariat to gather
round and was already on the way to making a treaty with the Nazis (the
Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty), which was signed at the same time as the
fall of Madrid. Hence its formal support, without substance. Like many
others, Anarchist Communists hurried to lend assistance to the Republic
by joining the international brigades, but their help was in terms of
manpower. They were unable to share their experiences, something which
could have allowed the Spanish to use this experience to further their
own struggle, mainly as a result once again of a lack of a general
organization which alone could have protected the social revolution from
choking to death.
It should also be added that the experience of the international
brigades, with the armed clashes between the Anarchist Communists and
Stalinists within the Republican forces, led to distorted conclusions in
the libertarian movement. As a result, many militants, and with them the
young people who were later attracted to Anarchism, developed a
ferocious opposition (not backed up by careful analysis) to the
communism which had been achieved in the Soviet Union and, as an
extension of this, to Communism in the widest sense. Thus began a long
slide which led to some preferring, of all things, Liberal Democracy and
often deep-rooted, violent anti-Communism.
Throughout its history, there has been a fringe within the Anarchist
movement which, as a result of a philosophical defence of the individual
(seen as some self-sufficient monad), has resulted in a completely
reactionary contempt of the masses. But a very large majority of the
Anarchist movement (almost the entire movement) has always been a part
of “the left” and has defended the weakest, the exploited, fighting
doggedly for their liberation.
Some Anarchists, while declaring themselves to be part of the left and
believing that their theory can liberate the whole of humanity (both
servants and masters), have come to believe that good ideas live by
themselves — all it needs is for them to be understood. So, their main
task has ended up as pure, idealistic propaganda and a consequent
refusal of class struggle.
They have, on the one hand, refused organization on the basis that it is
an essentially authoritarian principle and, on the other hand driven by
a blind hatred (and not by a precise analysis) of Marxism, they believe
that society divided into classes is not a reality but some
philosophical invention of Trier’s. The result of all this is inaction
and sterility.
Among the class-struggle currents of the Anarchist movement there are
three which use the term communist in their theoretical definitions
(Libertarian Communism, Anarcho-Communism and Anarchist Communism)
whereas others make reference to syndicalism (Revolutionary Syndicalism,
various forms of Anarcho-Syndicalism). We will deal with these
distinctions later on.
It should be noted at this stage that the term Communism refers openly
to the acceptance of class principles which distinguish all
revolutionary leftists, irrespective of their school of thought.
In fact it was Anarchists who first adopted the term on a wide scale.
Its early adoption represented early maturity on the part of the
Anarchist movement, which passed from the Collectivist phase to which
Bakunin was still linked (”from each according to their ability, to each
in relation to their work”), to the truly egalitarian phase (”from each
according to their ability, to each according to their needs”).
Until such times as Anarchists adopted the communist adjective, around
the end of the 19^(th) century, it had been relegated to certain
unimportant utopian sects such as the Icarians who were influenced by
Étienne Cabet.
Initially, it was the Marxists who had assumed the name. Marx and Engels
chose it, in fact, for their small group of German immigrants in
Britain, the Communist League, and used it in their 1848 work, the
“Communist Manifesto.” Successively, however, they fell back on the term
Social Democracy in all countries, partly as a result of their alliance
with the Lassallians which led to the birth of the German Social
Democratic Party, and partly because the Communist programme was judged
to be too advanced for political movements which still had to act within
bourgeois societies which had not yet developed fully. Orthodox Marxism,
in fact, believed that before there could be a social revolution, the
bourgeoisie had to develop all its progressive potential and the
proletariat had to cooperate in this, because only when this task of the
proprietary classes had been exhausted and when bourgeois society had
turned on itself, could the contradictions within it explode, giving
rise to the new era of proletarian domination.
It was only after the Russian Revolution of October 1917 that Marxist
parties all over the world returned to the use of the adjective
communist. By that stage, though, Anarchist Communists had already been
using the term for around half a century as a synonym of class-struggle
Anarchism.
Any activity which is designed to transform the existing situation and
change the structure of society cannot but come from an analysis of the
situation it finds itself in. The absence of such an analysis inevitably
leads to an inability to understand and establish what objectives to aim
for in order to obtain the desired transformation, what the social
structure’s weak points are, what its contradictions are. It is
impossible, in other words, to prepare a revolutionary project (which in
order to be just that, apart from being clear in its aims, must
inevitably mark out a direction which can guide its action).
The absence of a project conceals to a greater or lesser extent the
conviction (at times implicit and not understood) that the
contradictions in the present social structure can contain within them
the inevitable end of the capitalist system. In other words, a
mechanical, spontaneist conception which for that very reason believes
in the self-destruction of the system, which involuntarily activates,
but above all without the possibility of dispensation, its own process
of extinction (for example by allowing the proletariat’s rage to grow,
organize and explode). The long, messianic and useless wait for the
cathartic moment of revolution which has been with us for well over a
century now, has definitively proved this approach. If only the
Luxemburgists knew!
What we need to do, then, is begin this analysis, but first of all we
must define a methodology which we can use to interpret the situation.
In defining a method of analysis, the first thing to be said is that it
does not, and must not, have any pretence of being absolutely objective.
Methods designed for different aims are inevitably different. One thing,
however, is important: the method, which we will analyse and define,
without doubt provides the only key to reading both the past and the
present. In other words, it is the only one which can make sense of the
varied panorama of scattered facts which present themselves. On the
other hand, this does not mean that we will abandon it if certain facts
cannot be explained by it; first of all, because there is as yet no
other method which is as successful as far as the interpretation of
history is concerned; secondly, because history is not a linear process
without contradictory aspects, which can therefore require a
comprehensive outline in which every aspect can be contained (our method
takes account of and has as its proposition, this contradictory fact,
and seeks only to re-construct the lines which undergo historical
development); lastly, because historical materialism, the method we are
talking about, is simply too appropriate for our ends and it has
provided too many positive results in the history of the proletariat.
Its most precise definition is provided by Marx and Engels:
“The first historical action is therefore the creation of the means to
satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself, and this is
precisely a historical action, a fundamental condition of any history,
which still today, as millennia ago, must be accomplished every day and
every hour simply to keep man alive [...]. In every conception of
history therefore, the first point is that this fundamental fact be
observed in all its facets and that its place be recognized.”
Historical materialism is therefore a methodology for the analysis of
historical facts which can establish the primary cause for these in the
evolution of the productive structure of society, in the development of
relationships and forces of production; every event that history
presents us with is therefore not the result of ideas and the clash
between different conceptions of life, but the result of the economic
interests at stake — direct and indirect manifestations of the
relationships which establish themselves with human society in the
production of those goods which are necessary for the satisfaction of
our historically and socially determined material needs. History is not
the history of ideas. Ideas are backdrops created by real movements that
can themselves, however, influence the movements. History is the history
of the antagonisms created by the production relationships. It is the
history of the struggle between the classes.
The “class-struggle left,” “class-struggle unions” or “class interests”
are common expressions in political phrasebooks. But what are classes
for Anarchist Communists, or indeed for the entire radical left, Marxist
and otherwise? They are the social groups that can be identified on the
basis of their position in the cycle of production and the distribution
of goods. For Marxists (for a majority of them, at least), the
definition is quite rigid. There are basically two classes. First, those
who control the means of production (capital, structures, production
machinery, etc.) and who, on the basis of this ownership, obtain a
privileged share of the goods which are produced without themselves
working on the transformation of raw materials into finished goods. Then
there are those (the proletariat) who own only their ability to work
(their labour force) which they sell to the former group (the bosses) in
exchange for a wage which allows them and their families to survive and
reproduce (the very word “proletariat” comes from the Latin prōlēs,
meaning “offspring”). Others, such as the middle class are destined to
disappear into the proletariat, while the poor who are unable even to
make their way into the labour markets survive as an underclass (the
“lumpenproletariat”) and do not merit a class identity, serving only to
keep wage levels down thanks to competition with the employed, something
which serves the interests of the bosses alone.
For Anarchist Communists from Bakunin onwards, the position requires
further explanation. The position within the productive cycle does
identify fundamental opposing interests — on the one hand the
proletariat which produces goods for consumption through its labour and
which loses the benefit of this as a result of the ownership system of
capitalist society and, on the other hand, the bosses who take the
profit thanks to their ownership of the means of production. But around
this irreparable contradiction are a series of secondary actors who are
no less important. There are the peasants, who possess their own means
of production but who are robbed of the greater part of the wealth they
produce by the mechanism of distribution which they do not control. Then
there are the middle classes whose function is essential to capitalist
reproduction and who are repaid with ephemeral, derisory privileges and
who are consequently often confused as to where their real interests
lie. Finally there are the unemployed, whose desperate thirst for a wage
puts them in fictional competition with their natural allies.
It is important, therefore, to establish the basic dichotomy and build a
strategy which can bring together the interests (which are only separate
in appearance) of all those who to a greater or lesser extent are
exploited by the present social system based on capitalist private
property. This basic dichotomy cannot be denied or avoided. For this
reason, there is no place from a class-struggle point of view for all
those groups (even though they may be tactically useful in the building
of revolutionary confrontation) which bring together people on the basis
of subjective perceptions or of different interests to those involved in
the production cycle, such as consumers, the poor, the inhabitants of a
neighbourhood, students, etc.
As we have said, the materialist conception of history implies the
conception that society is divided into classes and that the interests
of these classes are fatally opposed and irreconcilable. This too is an
idea which is shared by the whole class-struggle left and is not an
invention of Marxism (as certain non-class struggle Anarchists think).
It is a reality known even before the theoretical works of Marx and
Engels, though this pair did provide a coherent, convincing description
of it. As in the case of historical materialism, though, also in this
case the paths of Marxism (or better still, the different varieties of
Marxism) and Anarchist Communism quickly diverged on three fundamental
points: the causes of the class struggle, the development of the class
struggle, and the relationship between the condition of the proletariat
class and the consciousness that it develops of this condition.
For Anarchist Communism, the class struggle is developed within the full
flowering of capitalist society primarily as a result of the material
conditions that the proletariat has to live in. But as these conditions
are not new, nor are they as bad as in past days, other joint causes are
needed: a fundamental role is surely played by the fact that the
capitalist organization of labour concentrates large masses of workers
into the same physical space, both for production and in daily life,
easing the way for political aggregations. Our agreement with the
Marxists is thus far complete. Marxists, however, tend to overvalue this
important aspect, to the point of considering it the only possible
aspect and consider it completely as an internal movement of the
productive forces, who in their development create the conditions for
the birth of workers’ antagonism and therefore threaten from within, for
that same reason, the very life of capitalist class society. They
therefore limit the class struggle to the version of factory struggles,
particularly in industry, which best represents the advanced stage of
technical and productive development. Anarchist Communists, on the other
hand, though recognizing the decisive importance of the two factors
mentioned before, believe that others have their role to play: the
growth in education (not so much regarding schooling, but in the
circulation of ideas), which is dragged along by labour once liberated
from feudalism; an idea of social justice which emerges from the mists
of impatience which have always been produced in every society which is
marked by deep inequality; finally, utopia — the embodiment of a less
unfair world. The Marxists would say these are superstructural factors
(or idealistic, or worse still, petit-bourgeois), but nonetheless of
great importance and, most importantly, they do not relegate the class
struggle to that between workers and individual bosses, but include the
whole struggle between the exploited and their exploiters, embracing
also the demands of the peasants.
This is the source of the second point of dissent. For Marxists,
wherever capitalism develops is where the moment of Communist revolution
draws near, whereas the old-fashioned production methods (crafts,
peasant agriculture, etc.) are inexorably eliminated, thereby
facilitating progress. However, revolutions have always occurred in
places where capitalism was not yet fully developed and while the new
working class (still in a minority) may have provided grist for the
political vanguard’s mill, nothing could have happened without the
involvement of the endless masses of peasants.
The third point of divergence is the bitterest: the relationship between
the condition of the class and the consciousness of its real interests,
as interests opposed to those of the proprietary class. Once again for
Marxists this is a problem which does not exist. Either because, for
some of them, the two (class and class consciousness) are destined to
merge, deterministically and spontaneously, coinciding, driven by the
evolution of productive forces, overlapped by the development of the
economic structure. For others, since it is not necessary for the entire
proletarian mass (nor even the worker minority within it) to be class
conscious, it is sufficient that there be a compact vanguard nucleus, in
other words the party. In its Leninist version, the party is actually
outside the workers’ movement, as the workers are incapable of raising
themselves to the revolutionary doctrine as they are weighed down by
their own inevitable economism, that is to say their immediate, daily
needs which are different to and irreconcilable with their historical
needs — something they are incapable of understanding. For Anarchist
Communists, on the other hand, the relationship between the class and
its consciousness can be affected by the more advanced, politicized
elements who act within the proletariat (being a part of it) in order to
stimulate consciousness of its historical interests through the
day-to-day struggles which seek to provide answers to the needs of the
immediate present. This is because the greater the unity and
consciousness in the proletariat, the better the chances of a revolution
being able to assume an Anarchist Communist character quickly, enabling
the class to build the new society without delegating the task to
anyone.
“We do not, after all, differ with the Anarchists on the question of the
abolition of the state as the aim.” These words were written by Vladimir
Il’ich Ulyanov, Lenin, in September-October 1917 and the date is no
accident. This is to show that as far as the type of society which it is
intended to realize, there is no apparent contradiction between the
various currents of the revolutionary left. Following a long phase of
uncertainty during the mid-19^(th) century between Socialism (”to each
according to their merits”) and Collectivism (”to each according to
their labour”), Communism (”from each according to their abilities, to
each according to their needs”) became the common arena for all those
class elements which have developed throughout the history of the
workers’ movement. There also exists a common view of the communist
society which would develop (without, however, going into excessively
detailed plans, given the acceptance of the fact of the enormous
self-organizational abilities of the masses once they are free of the
bourgeois yoke!): a federative basis, with freely-accepted rules for
social life being developed from below — in other words the model
sketched out by the Paris Commune. There can be no communism (equality)
without liberty (self-determination); there can be no liberty without
communism.
Though there may be agreement between all the various revolutionary
currents which have appeared in the workers’ movement over the years on
the social framework which will be realized with communism (we could
just as easily say “with anarchism,” since no-one denies that it is
impossible to separate economic equality from the liberty of the
individual), opinions do diverge, and noticeably so, on two fundamental
issues: what sort of action is required now, in the bourgeois State, and
the timescale and methods of the passage from the initial revolutionary
phase to the construction stage of the society that we all aspire to.
Let us not be fooled by the heading. It has already been explained that
Anarchist Communists were born from and have always remained within the
struggles of the exploited and have therefore constantly been a part of
the class-struggle left. However, in everyday language the expression
“left” has come to include only the Marxist element, be they
Revisionists, Third-Internationalists, heretics or the so-called “New
Left,” with the Anarchists being pushed aside. We therefore use the term
as it is currently used, for reasons of simplicity, but this in no way
implies any distancing of ourselves from strictly class-struggle
positions.
In reviewing the common points between the various theories which
populate the struggles for the emancipation of the proletariat, we have
already noted in what way they differ with regard to the various
interpretations and how their implications are not accepted unanimously.
They are, however, less important than those differences indicated at
the end of the last section and concern two fundamental and truly
divisive issues: the development of the proletarian movement and the
building of the post-revolutionary society.
The deterministic view of history (more evident in his followers, but
nonetheless present in Marx) can also influence the various ways of
conceiving the means to develop the proletariat’s radical nature within
the present capitalist society, the instruments required to strengthen
the proletariat’s opposition to exploitation and the level of struggle
which the proletariat itself is capable of developing. In the words of
Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto: “the proletariat will
use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the
bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of
the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class.” This
brief passage contains in a nutshell the whole history of the evolution
of Marxism from its origins as a tiny sect of German emigrants in Great
Britain to the dominant party of the proletariat throughout the 20^(th)
century. It is also, according to Anarchists, the cause of the miserable
collapse of real socialism. The above extract was also to become (and
not by chance) one of Lenin’s favourites, one upon which he would build
his theory of the revolutionary party. Let us look at this in detail.
The first element to consider is the question of “political supremacy.”
The conquest of this supremacy has logical and practical consequences
which Anarchist Communists have always rejected (as also have, if the
truth be told, certain Marxist currents like the Luxemburgists,
Bordighists, Council Communists, etc.). The need to conquer political
power, in fact, implies political representation, a party which works
within the institutions. Anarchist Communists do not reject the party as
organization (obviously as long as it meets certain criteria, something
we will return to later). We reject it inasmuch as it represents the
exploited masses, and even more so where this occurs within the
political arena. If the masses are to bring about their own
emancipation, then only they can represent themselves. For Marxists,
however, the political vanguard plays an entirely different role (this,
too, we will return to later), but above all it must devote itself to
entering the apparatus of the bourgeois State, taking over its
mechanisms, developing its own strength, electorally speaking, and so
on. The process was once known in Italy as “becoming State.” The
revolutionary current of Marxism was to reject this strategy which
underwent a tragic development and met an even more tragic end in the
Second International (1881–1914), but nevertheless the same path would
be followed again and again, as for example with the parties of the
Third International (1921–1989).
In effect, the compromise with the bourgeois State and the re-absorption
by the State of Marxism’s operations (to the extent of it totally
capitulating) has been a constant factor in the history of Marxism. When
the German Social Democratic Party was founded in Gotha in 1875, Marx
sharply criticized the programme of the new political grouping, as the
fusion between his followers and those of Ferdinand Lasalle had, in his
opinion, watered down his theories. The party continued on its path
despite this excommunication. However, though trusting in the support of
Engels (who would himself disown it after the turning point of the 1891
Congress in Erfurt) and its own ideas, developed for the most part by
Karl Kautsky, it would form the basic political line of the Second
International. The door was open, and the first to rush through was
Eduard Bernstein, who started to deny the need for revolutionary
struggle (a denial implicit in the phrase “wrest by degree” in the
passage by Marx and Engels quoted at the start of this section). He was
followed by Alexandre Millerand in France, who left the party in order
to enter a bourgeois Government as minister. Finally, there came the
whole German Social Democratic movement, which in 1914 (earlier
indicated erroneously but intentionally, as the date of the end of the
Second International) voted for the war credits which allowed Germany to
launch World War I.
Lenin grafted a Blanquist element onto the Marxist tree, giving it once
again an aggressively revolutionary character. However, though this
would work in the power-grabbing phase of November 1917, it would
nonetheless later allow the re-emergence of the tendency to compromise
with the bourgeois State, a factor which has been shared by every
Communist party in the world right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Anarchist Communists, instead, are not interested in the bourgeois State
apparatus, except to analyze it in order to reveal its true method of
functioning. We therefore believe that it is not useful to work within
this apparatus, either as an organization or as proletariat. Nothing is
to be gained by it except more chains.
Anarchist Communists believe that the revolution must be a social
revolution, that it must overturn the property relationships of
bourgeois society. Responsibility for the abolition of private property
and its replacement with collective ownership must be fully taken on by
the proletariat, which must itself begin to manage production,
distribution and services. Communist society can only be self-managing
and federative or, as is often said, decision-making power must be
exercised from below. With this in mind, the day-to-day struggles which
we are involved in within the present capitalist society serve a variety
of purposes. First of all, they help build the proletariat’s fighting
power, its mass organization whose forms presage the future instruments
of management. Secondly, even the conquest of “crumbs, which though tiny
are always good to eat, (...) will increase the workers’ well-being and
therefore improve conditions, even intellectual conditions” (Fabbri).
Lastly, anything that the struggle snatches from the bosses, which
limits their freedom to do as they would wish, is a conquest which must
be won and defended. In this sense, Anarchists are “reformers” (to use
Malatesta’s word) but not reformists, as they do not believe that a free
and equal society can be built little by little, step by step. What can
be built by degrees and will help the chances of a successful
revolutionary rupture, is the will to fight and the class consciousness
of the exploited. Anarchism is “gradualist” (another of Malatesta’s
expressions) in other words, not because it envisages a gradual passage
from Capitalism to Communism, but inasmuch as it believes in the gradual
construction of revolutionary proletarian organization which is
conscious of the fact that the satisfaction of its historical needs
rests entirely and solely in the hands of the proletariat itself.
In all of the above there is no room for political struggle, for taking
control of the State apparatus with the aim of using it as a vehicle for
social change, for two good reasons. The first is that the State is a
superstructure of bourgeois society and, as such, is unsuitable for a
communist transformation (if anything, its survival reproduces bourgeois
society, as we will see further on). Secondly, the political road
envisages delegation, without any possibility of control, to the (often
self-proclaimed) vanguard which then loses itself in the meanderings and
traps of the capitalist social apparatus and deprives the proletariat of
its role as protagonist of its own emancipation, which rightly belongs
to it. It could also be added that the political struggle diverts the
hopes of emancipation towards inappropriate paths, deceiving the masses
into imagining that emancipation can be brought about by the
powers-that-be rather than won through social struggle.
This point sharply divides Anarchist Communist theory from Marxist
theory (in almost all its forms). Marx and Engels’ political revolution,
and before them that of the Jacobins, Gracchus Babeuf and Louis-Auguste
Blanqui, envisages a political struggle, the consequences of which we
have seen in all the political revolutions which have taken place to
date, where the dominant class has simply reappeared. Social revolution,
the only revolution which can truly emancipate the exploited, requires
social struggle.
As we have said, the need for political struggle, with all its
complexities, its strategic subtleties and its dark side, leads to the
creation of a political party, or vanguard, which detaches itself from
the masses in order to protect the masses’ interests, the only possible
relationship being that of delegate. The party, guardian of orthodoxy
and the only strategy for the salvation of the exploited, is the course
of the correct line to follow and becomes separate from the class it
seeks to represent. In fact, in its Leninist variety it must be formed
by elements which do not come from the proletariat. This is because the
workers (not to mention the peasants), being squeezed under the weight
of their daily needs (economicism), are incapable of understanding the
difference between their immediate needs and their historical needs, the
satisfaction of which will lead to their emancipation.
For Anarchist Communists, the party (a word which Malatesta himself
used), or the political organization of the Anarchist Communists, plays
a role only within the proletarian movement. In other words, from within
the daily struggles, it seeks to develop the class consciousness within
the proletariat, to promote (as part of the proletariat’s clash with the
bourgeoisie) a revolutionary strategy which can allow consciousness of
the historical needs to develop among the exploited, starting with their
daily needs. In this case, the party does not make the revolution for
the proletariat, it does not direct it in the proletariat’s interest, it
does not govern it for the good of the proletariat. It simply exists
within the process of growth and emancipation of the proletariat,
seeking to convince the rest of the proletariat that the ideas it
promotes are a suitable way of reaching the goal. In order to do this,
the party must develop analyses, proposals, reflections and must
function as an enzyme for revolutionary development, as the historical
memory of past victories and defeats and the fulcrum for a critical and
useful re-examination of these.
Let us return to the extract from Marx and Engels which we quoted at the
start of Chapter 4.1. Marx and Engels speak of concentrating all the
means of production in the hands of the State. As we have already seen,
that “by degree” was the justification used by German Social Democrats
for the conquest of political power and the gradual transformation of
capitalist society into a communist one (this is utopia, at least in its
commonly-used sense of the unreachable goal, something which history has
more than amply demonstrated). But what happens once the State has been
taken over, on the crest of a revolutionary wave, no longer on the
forced march through the institutions which eventually peters out to the
point of exhausting the innovative energies of the self-proclaimed
vanguard? What happens once the party of professional militants has for
the moment achieved power without ever having come to any political
compromises with the ruling class? Can the recipe still work? Even in
this case, the history of all the revolutions of the 20^(th) century and
of their collapse leaves no room for doubt — the revolution is not
betrayed (as claimed by Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a.k.a. Trotsky). It
regularly fails to reach its intended goals and throws up another class
society based on exploitation. But why?
Marx and Engels’ phrase ends with a qualification of the State as “the
proletariat organized as the ruling class.” Here is the root of the
causes of the failed revolutions which have been run by Marxists and it
is on this point that Anarchist criticism has concentrated, beginning
with Bakunin. He had foreseen these failures well before they ever
happened. The question we should ask ourselves is a simple one: does the
proletariat need the State to organize itself as the dominant class? The
answer of Anarchist Communists is: no, for some very basic reasons.
In 1868, when the Bakuninist International Alliance of Socialist
Democracy applied to join the International Workingmen’s Association
(IWMA), Marx, apart from asking that it join as a local section and not
as a structured international, requested a change in its statute: with
heavy irony he pointed out that the phrase “equalization of the classes”
was ambiguous and that it would have to be corrected to read “abolition
of the classes.” Bakunin agreed that the phrase was improper and agreed
with the proposed change which better explained the goal of the
revolution. But the error committed by Marx and Engels in 1848 was much
greater and would be the cause of many negative consequences among his
followers and on the revolutionary processes that they would be involved
in.
What, in fact, can be meant by the proletariat constituting itself “as
the dominant class”? First of all, if the proletariat has taken power,
then the revolution or the change of hands with the bourgeoisie will
already have taken place and as the aim of the revolution is, according
to everyone, the abolition of classes (something which Marx himself
reminded Bakunin of in 1868), the struggle of the proletariat becomes
its own dissolution as a class together with all other classes, the
bourgeoisie heading the list. In second place, class distinction is not
a matter of ethics, somatics or ethnicity, but is based on the different
positions which the individual members of a society have with regard to
property relationships. At the moment in which individual property is
abolished, to be substituted by the collective ownership of production,
distribution and consumption, there is an effective end to all
class-based social organization. The image is, therefore, of a real
non-sense: is it possible that myriads of Marxist commentators have not
realized it? Of course they have! But as it was convenient for
controlling the process of revolution for their own ends, it was
accepted without too much argument and justified by what seemed to be
two strong points: the temporary survival of the enemies of the
revolution and the need to begin the construction of communist society,
something which no-one imagines can be done in a day.
One fact which history has always amply demonstrated with the utmost
clarity is that the society born from the revolutionary process will
initially find itself clashing with those who up to then had enjoyed
privileges and who will find no shortage of help from their counterparts
in other countries as yet unaffected by such radical events. It is often
the case that revolutions collapse for the very reason of outside
interference. It will therefore be necessary for a while, often quite a
long time, to defend the gains which the initial impetus brings.
For Marxists, this need is met by the State and by a disciplined army,
run along lines developed throughout the long history of warfare.
Despite all the pre-revolutionary chatter about the people’s army, about
the democratization of the armed forces, the election by the troops of
their officers whose appointment can be revoked at any time, wherever
bourgeois parties or Marx’s followers have taken power, armies have
always formed again under the same conditions as before with the higher
ranks coming from the military academies, with their rigid hierarchies,
with the usual discipline imposed from the top down, with the same
professional nature resisting popular input. It should be remembered
that when the sailors in Kronštadt, the crème de la crème of
revolutionary combatants in 1917, rebelled against the heavy discipline
which it was sought to impose on them, the Bolshevik powers attacked
them with the cadets, student officers from the military academy who
were certainly no part of the proletariat. It can be added, too, that
this was an entirely internal party matter seeing as how the Anarchists
organized inside the fortress were a small minority.
Anarchist Communists, on the other hand, hold that the need to defend
the gains of the revolution must be met in another way. The fighting
forces must apply principles which go against the old hierarchical
methods. Anyone who accepts the responsibility of command must enjoy the
respect and trust of those who will carry out the commands at the risk
of their lives. In other words, the appointment of commanders must be by
election and must be revocable and only major decisions should be
discussed and agreed upon by all. Moreover, the war should be carried
out as a partisan war, with small, mobile units which are hard to
localize and which enjoy the support of the local population. And these
are not wild fantasies. We have seen how Makhno organized his
revolutionary army in this way and was able to defeat Wrangel and
Denikin, whose armies were financed by the Western capitalist powers and
against whom even Trotsky’s famed Red Army was forced to retreat. The
very conception of war and how it should be waged was at the heart of
the clash between the Marxist Communists and the Anarchist Communists in
Spain in 1936–39: centralized command and discipline on the one hand (no
matter that this weakened the strength of the international brigades
which had come from all over the world to help the revolution), while on
the other hand, participation and support from the local population (who
were persuaded by the obvious advantages that a successful social
revolution would bring them), a system which was able (in the symbolic
figure of Buenaventura Durruti) even to withstand the strength of the
Francoist troops at the gates of Madrid, to the point that the
Generalissimo was forced to put off taking control of the capital until
the end of the war.
The dispute is not only technical or tactical but goes much deeper, as
it not only allows the old stalwarts of bourgeois command to recycle
themselves as “experts” in the new social order, but also because behind
these ideas (originally Lenin’s) there lies the old statist mode of
thinking — the same which led the Bolshevik leadership (though, it must
be said, with the objections of Trotsky and Aleksandra Mikhailovna
Kollontai) to sign the unilateral peace with the dying Germanic empire
(at Brest-Litovsk in 1918). The declared reasons were the weakness and
demoralization of the Russian troops with respect to the mighty German
army, rendering any headway on the front improbable. In effect, this
move did allow some respite for Germany (albeit short-lived), which was
at that stage near capitulating. Ukraine was ceded (and had to liberate
itself from the occupying forces and the nationalist bourgeoisie) and
the Spartacist revolutionary vanguard of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht was abandoned to its own fate — the firing squad.
As far as the Anarchists were concerned (not to mention Trotsky and
Kollontai), the war could and should have continued in the form of
popular guerrilla warfare, something which would also have permitted the
extension of the revolution westwards.
Opinion is totally divided, too, on the organization of production. As
we saw in the quotation from Marx and Engels, Marxists believe that
economic power must be concentrated in the hands of the proletarian
State. This is not only because, in their way of thinking, the State is
the proletariat (or, the only general organization capable of discerning
the collective good) but also because the decentralization of the system
of production impedes that harmony of intent which alone can encourage
growth in the volume of goods and allow supply to meet demand. This is
how the Factory Committees in Soviet Russia were stripped of all power
(1918), even though they had been the backbone of the expropriations of
the capitalists and had guaranteed production in the first few turbulent
months. In fact, only a third of their members were permitted to
continue being elected from below, while the other two thirds were
nominated from above. Power passed to the Central Soviet and the
“All-Russian Soviet of Workers’ Control,” as the workers had (because of
direct management) begun to “act as if they owned the factories” (Anna
Mikhailovna Pankratova) -something which was an obstacle to the
collective good. It is almost like listening to the tirades of a feudal
lord in ancient China against the “egoism” of the peasants.
If the Petrograd workers who were the recognized vanguard of the
Bolshevik revolution had become short-sighted due to small-scale
possession and the greed dictated by their own interests, then what hope
was there for solidarity from the peasant masses who had always been
linked to the land and to the ownership of what their labour was able to
wring from the earth?
This is where the Russian Revolution embarked on the slippery slope of
the war economy, with raids on the countryside and forced
collectivizations, with government functionaries deciding what was to be
produced, five-year plans and decisions entrusted to economic experts
(who were, naturally, recycled from the old social order). Former owners
were even appointed as directors of the factories!
For Anarchist Communists, the disastrous effects of this policy which
history has laid plain for all to see were clearly foreseeable. We will
soon come back to the effects which all this produced (and which could
not have failed to produce) with regard to the reconstruction of a
system of exploitation of the working classes. Above all, the masses’
sense of detachment as a result of the above policies needs to be
emphasized. The management from below of the production process is seen
as being inevitably incoherent, chaotic and inefficient. The workers
cannot organize themselves, and therefore someone must do it — in their
interests (interests which this someone is evidently in a better
position to understand). All this when history has furnished splendid
examples of the ability of workers to manage themselves and of the
natural solidarity between the exploited classes (witness Spain and also
Ukraine, where a trainload of grain confiscated from the
counter-revolutionary Whites was sent to Petrograd which was known to be
starving). Not to mention the fact that, in the aftermath of the Paris
Commune in 1871, even Marx had admitted the proletariat’s ability to
build its own social organization!
The first disastrous effect is the proletariat’s distancing itself from
the revolution, when it does not provide them with convincing answers.
It happened in Russia from the start with the peasants, who were
constantly preyed upon and failed to be convinced that they should
co-operate with the city workers, and it happened later with the workers
themselves who more often than not saw the same bourgeois elements they
had expropriated returning to power. It happened in Spain in 1936, when
the Marxists refused to link the masses to the civil war by starting the
social revolution, and in fact impeded collectivization through force in
order not to frighten off that section of the bourgeoisie that was in
favour of the Republic: the two-stage policy (victory in the civil war
first, revolution later) was responsible for the previously
un-politicized masses not understanding the point of the struggle
against Francoism, thus de-vitalizing the strength of opposition to the
rampant obscurantism.
If what is outlined above are the purposes for which Marxists claim that
the State apparatus should survive after the revolution (defence of the
gains obtained against external enemies and the organization of
production and distribution), it immediately follows that these tasks
are limited in time. Anarchist Communists, as we have said, do not share
this way of resolving the two problems and have put forward concrete
counter-proposals. There remains, however, the contradiction noted early
on by Bakunin: “in this way, therefore, in order to liberate the popular
masses, it is necessary to begin by enslaving them.” The fact remains
that the State, also for Marxists, should have a limited lifespan and
extinguish itself once its duties have been carried out. The history of
victorious revolutions of the 20^(th) Century have made perfectly clear
how rapidly the State stands aside to make way for that self-managing
society that everyone says they want!
One look at events, in fact, is enough to do justice to the Marxian
theory of the extinction of the State. In the USSR, the State became an
omnivorous monster which devoured all personal freedom. Its exponential
growth knew no bounds — the effect it had even within the private lives
of individuals expanded beyond all measure. And when the moment came
when its enormity led to a resounding implosion (1989–1992), it spat
from within it an army of hungry locusts (the new bourgeoisie, mafia
organizations, corrupt officials, unscrupulous nouveaux riches, etc.)
that had lain hidden within it over the decades.
It was easy to foresee what regularly took place everywhere those
theories which rely on taking possession of the State as a method of
defending and organizing the revolution were put into practice. It was,
in fact, foreseen by Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, Fabbri and many
other libertarian thinkers. Invented by the bourgeoisie during its rise
to power in the course of the 18^(th) and 19^(th) centuries as a weapon
to protect the domination of its class, the apparatus of state is suited
to this very task and nothing else. It is for this most simple of
reasons that this superstructure, should it survive when the underlying
structure for the organization of production is eliminated, tends to
reproduce the exploitation it was based on. The old class domination
which was destroyed is then reproduced in a modified form and
regenerates a new exploiter class. Right up to his death, Trotsky
laboured under the false illusion that the USSR was a “degenerated
workers’ state” — in other words, given that as the basis of ownership
within society had changed (from bourgeois individual property to
collective property under the control of the State), the revolution was
irreversible, as Trotsky, good Marxist that he was, could never believe
that an organizational superstructure could modify the structure of the
production relationships. Instead, a new class (in the real sense) gave
rise to a form of privileged appropriation of goods and so a new form of
exploitation came into being wherever Marxist parties came into power
and took control of the State apparatus. It is for this reason that the
State never withered away having exhausted its usefulness as Marxism
predicted it would, but instead the worst predictions about
“barrack-house communism” (Bakunin) advanced by Anarchist Communists
were to come true.
But where does this new class come from? Who is it composed of? How
exactly does it appropriate and exploit? The answer is easy. It was
equally easy one and a half centuries ago. When the Marxists began to
talk about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (exercised through the
State), in order to respond to the two previously-seen needs of the
immediate post-revolutionary period, the device was immediately
criticized and it was clear from the start that it would become a
dictatorship over the proletariat. Bakunin was already saying: “any
difference between revolutionary dictatorship and statist centralization
is only apparent. The two are substantially nothing but the same form of
government by a minority over the majority in the name of the supposed
stupidity of the latter and the supposed intelligence of the former.”
The minority which would exercise this power (and which did, in fact,
exercise it in democratic centralist regimes) was inevitably of
bourgeois origin, since it was mostly the bourgeoisie who had the time
and means to acquire a sufficient cultural level which would allow them
to dominate the workers’ parties, those parties which were supposed to
represent the interests of the proletariat in the parliamentary circuses
or in the abstruse doctrinaire dialectics of clandestine circles. In
fact, as far as Lenin was concerned, it was for this very reason of
being outside the class which guaranteed their revolutionary
steadfastness, given that they were unconcerned with the needs of the
moment, those needs which afflict the proletarian masses who, weighed
down by poverty, would be more inclined to come to a compromise. This is
how a group of bourgeois intellectuals, who were struggling to find a
place which could satisfy their ambitions within the capitalist social
order, began to impose themselves on the proletariat’s struggles from
the mid-1800s. As their way of conceiving the future society allowed
them to conquer a certain prestige which they would otherwise be unable
to enjoy, they borrowed from similar theories of others who had already
been in the vanguard of the bourgeois revolutions of the previous
century (Jacobins, Blanquists, etc.), with the same love for political
struggle, for the winning of Statist power, for the use of the State in
order to establish a vicious post-revolutionary dictatorship which they
claimed would defeat the enemies of the revolution but which instead
served only to keep them in power permanently.
Within the societies created by the revolutions managed by the Marxist
parties, a new dominant class immediately formed which was made up of
revolutionary intellectuals who had previously constituted the party (or
better still, its group of leaders) and of the contributions by
intellectuals, technicians and experts who had been active within the
old order and who learnt to stay afloat thanks to the need the former
had for them and their expertise. This new class was given the name
“bureaucracy.” Trotsky never recognized it as the dominant class,
preferring to think of it as a rampant excrescence which, though sucking
the life from the revolution, never changed its basic nature. In
reality, the completely centralized control over distribution allowed
the bureaucrats to acquire a privileged share of goods in accordance
with their (at times inexistent and often harmful) role in the
productive process. This, under the guise of the socialization of all
the means of production, constituted a real form of exploitation and
reproduced class society. When this society collapsed, the most dynamic
members of the privileged classes rapidly converted to the new role of
bourgeoisie to all effects.
Certain heretical Trotskyists (such as Bruno Rizzi) understood their
master’s mistakes and modified the theory by introducing a new class,
the “techno-bureaucracy,” which was designed to take account of the
situation in Soviet Russia, but which contained two limitations. The new
class had a double face, as it was positioned between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat and shared aspects of both. In second place, the
nature of the new class was seen as the most advanced and appropriate
for the running of planned economies which were at that time gaining
popularity even within capitalist societies. Forty years later, these
aspects fascinated anti-organizationalist and non-class struggle
anarchists in Italy. They saw undeniable advantages in it, from their
point of view, and they made it the basis of a new theory made up of
classes which rise and fall where the techno-bureaucracy plays a primary
role against a proletariat which has most to fear from the arrogant new
enemy and against the declining bourgeoisie which is to all extents
innocuous. It was their hope that all this would smash the rigid
class-struggle dualism which was considered Marxist and water down the
class struggle, shifting attention onto the cultural front. This also
had the effect of marking out the USSR as the real enemy and reducing
the importance of the capitalist enemy in Western countries, considered
by this stage a system in decline and rapidly moving towards the eastern
European system. The fall of the Soviet empire, the end of planned
economies, the re-emergence of the power of money and of the controllers
of international finance, the spread of Western (in particular US)
imperialism, the re-appearance of an aggressive bourgeoisie in
capitalist countries, the increasing intensification of the traditional
class war — all these have put paid to these so-called new theories
which heralded a new age of messianic Anarchism.
Throughout its evolution, anarchism has taken on many forms, an enormous
quantity of different roles. Anarchist Communism is clearly distinct
from these various incarnations, and this chapter will set out its
distinguishing features and point out the differences from the other
schools of thought. Of these, we will not be considering two — the
Educationalists and the pure Individualists, as neither can be
considered revolutionary currents.
The former, as Malatesta noted, hold that education can suffice to
change man’s nature, even before changing the material conditions of
existence. Obviously, by arguing against this, we are not saying that
the educational problem is not essential; we simply believe that a good
programme of education is not enough to arrive at communism, simply by
dint of the fact that everyone becomes convinced that it is the only
rational system of social organization.
The evolution of Individualism merits brief treatment as it is most
instructive. Its prime theoretician, Johann Kaspar Schmidt (better known
as Max Stirner), was a mild-mannered teacher in a secondary school for
girls and his explosiveness existed only in the radicalness of his
writings. He was harshly criticized by Marx and Engels in the Saint Max
chapter of their book “The German Ideology,” together with the rest of
the Hegelian left. The basic idea, later developed philosophically by
Friedrich Nietzsche and which became the standard of Individualist
Anarchists, was that the measure of freedom was equal to the amount of
the individual’s independence, which showed a total lack of regard for
the fact that Man is a social animal. All Man’s achievements (including
those which made it possible for abstract thought, and therefore
Stirner’s fantasies, to develop) were obtained only thanks to human
society. They are the fruit of billions upon billions of anonymous
contributions to the creation of the well-being and evolution of the
species. Humankind today lives in such a thick web of relations between
all its past and present members, that the total freedom of one isolated
being as a single individual is a philosophical category which is
totally removed from reality. Starting with this improbable supposition,
the individualists began to cut themselves off from all social groupings
and to despise the masses (whom they thought slavishly obeyed power) and
ended up considering Anarchism as a fight against authority and the
State and not as a struggle for a egalitarian society. Social equality
disappeared from their theories in favour of a furious search for the
liberty of the individual which often broke out into a struggle of each
against the other, something which had previously been theorized by that
founder of Social Liberalism, Thomas Hobbes, and is so dear to the
aggressive capitalists of the period in which we now live. It is not by
chance that theoreticians of extreme liberalism and competition as the
only font of social progress, such as the early 20^(th) century
Austrians Friedrich August von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, are
classified as Anarchists. Neither is it by chance that in the United
States there has developed a current of so-called Anarcho-Capitalists
(Friedmann) whose only enemy is State centralization which is perhaps
guilty in their eyes of limiting the possibilities for enterprise by the
most unscrupulous individuals (thereby damaging the vast majority of
their equals), who see the solution to every social problem in
entrusting to the private sector (lured by profit) every economic
initiative, every form of collective service, every aspect of human
existence. Individualists, or rather a majority of them, end up fighting
not against the exploitation by one over another, but against any
obstacle placed in the path of this exploitation. Others, albeit few,
have remained actively militant among the proletariat and despite their
lack of structure have contributed and continue to contribute much.
Let us move on to those Anarchists who, at least in word, remain true to
the struggle for the emancipation of the exploited. The first big
distinction is between those who do not believe it is necessary for
there to be organization of the class struggle and those like the
Anarchist Communists who believe that it is indispensable. There are, in
fact, spontaneist fringes in the Anarchist movement who do not believe
that any form of planning is required, given that an anarchist society
will inevitably come into existence as a necessary result of the
evolution of human society. Giovanni Bovio, a Socialist parliamentarian
and freemason with strong anarchist leanings, once said: “Thought is
anarchist and history is marching towards anarchy,” echoing that faith
in the inevitability of the development of history towards anarchy. This
optimism originates in the vision of the anarchist Prince PĂ«tr
Kropotkin, the founder of Anarcho-Communism, on the basis of his own
scientific knowledge. Kropotkin was a geographer of some standing,
bettered only in professionalism among Anarchists by Elisée Reclus. On
the basis of his own scientific knowledge and the study of social insect
communities and, wholly imbued with positivism and the consequent sure
belief that science could solve every problem, Kropotkin came to the
idea that libertarian communism was a necessary and inevitable result
for the organization of the collective life of humanity.
Thus, Anarchism was no longer the goal of the conscious efforts on the
part of men and women to organize themselves for their collective
happiness, but only the final and teleologically predetermined stage in
historical development (as we shall see, somewhat like the dialectic
materialism of Stalinist orthodoxy which stemmed from the same
positivist vein). The result of all this, and his followers acted
accordingly, was that all forms of organization are not only unnecessary
(given that the course of events cannot be seriously influenced) but
actually dangerous, as they represent an obstruction for the free flow
of the process’ spontaneity and impede the appearance of the final stage
in the development of humanity.
On the other hand, Anarchist Communists (and others, besides) believe
that the various stages of history are not written in stone and that the
collective intervention of humans can influence events. This influence
may be minor at first, but with the passage of time it can be directed
at ever-greater goals. And collective means organized. As a result of
their deterministic vision, Anarcho-Communists place no importance in
the class struggle. Furthermore, they consider even the existence of
classes to be an unproven fact, if not some Marxist invention. It is the
man or woman, as a single individual, who must tend towards becoming a
member of the anarchist society. For Anarchist Communists, society is
dramatically divided into classes (something which the recent wave of
rampant liberalism has made abundantly clear by widening the gaps
between the haves and the have-nots, between rich countries and poor —
in other words, between the exploiters and the exploited), and only the
emancipation of the weakest by means of a resolute class war will lead
to a society of free equals, the product of a conscious programmed
project which can fulfil the proletariat’s aspirations. The class
struggle exists and it is the only hope to obtain a more just society.
But if it is to be successful, it must be organized.
The feature which best distinguishes Anarchist Communists from all other
schools of thought within Anarchism is what we call “organizational
dualism.” This means that apart from the general organization of the
entire proletariat (as outlined in Chapter 1.2, dedicated to Fabbri),
there is also the political organization of Anarchist Communists, or, to
use the usual terms adopted in the movement’s debates, beside the Mass
Organization there must also be the Specific Organization. As already
indicated, the other trends in Anarchism reject either or both of these.
It is clear that Individualists recognize no role for the movement of
the exploited who are seen as a humble flock of individuals unworthy of
any personal realization as they have no ambitions. But the
Individualists lie completely outside class-struggle Anarchism. The
Kropotkinist Anarcho-Communists (not for nothing known as
anti-organizationalists) believe that any work among the masses apart
from pure and simple propaganda of the “right” ideas, is useless. This
is the origin of their lack of interest in the daily struggles of the
working class which are seen as pointless and counterproductive.
Pointless in that every gain made under the present social system is
held to be short-lived and counterproductive as the syndicalist approach
only encourages the habit of gradual conquests with a consequent loss of
sight of the revolutionary goal. We have already seen how Bakunin threw
himself into the struggle which began with the First International and
how both Fabbri and Malatesta considered that any gains towards the
well-being of the masses in the present were nothing to be looked down
on. Anarchist Communists believe that it is essential to be involved on
a day-to-day basis in the workers’ organizations (to which, as workers,
we belong). We believe that the existence of these organizations is
necessary as a barrier to the powerful whims of the exploiter class. For
Anarcho-Communists, instead, their abandoning of all attention to the
proletariat’s immediate demands results in the specific organization
being relegated to a role of propaganda of the ideal, the recruiting of
new members, in other words something like the function of a religious
sect.
Basing themselves on similar premises to those of the Kropotkinists,
Insurrectionalist Anarchists also deny the value of work within the
labour movement. After all, Kropotkin was present at the International
Congress in London in 1881 which approved the strategy of propaganda by
the deed. Disappointed by the late arrival of the revolution, unable to
enjoy a useful relationship with the masses thanks to the spread of
special anti-anarchist legislation all over Europe, the anarchists chose
to act according to their times in order to extricate themselves from
the corner they found themselves in. The hope was that the spread of
violent acts directed at the pompous bourgeoisie of the period would
provide an example which would rapidly be imitated thereby transforming
the insurrectionary spark into an immense revolutionary blaze. This was
the period of the bloody acts of the likes of François-Claudius
Köhingstein (better known as Ravachol), Bonnot, Émile Henry and many
others. France, in fact, though at the centre of the insurrectionalist
wave was also the place where class-struggle Anarchist militants (Émile
Pouget, Fernand Pelloutier, Pierre Monatte, and others) found a way out
through the formation of the “Bourses du Travail” and the syndicates and
thereby brought Anarchism back to its natural element, the proletariat,
which led to a new and profound method of struggle and organization.
Despite this, there are still today those who as a result of a childish
theoretical simplification, hold that gains made by the unions are
ephemeral and who continue to preach the idea of propaganda by the deed.
They are mistaken twice over. Firstly, when they think that syllogisms
can cancel history — in other words they believe, with purely abstract
reasoning, that as long as capitalism exists there can be no improvement
in the living conditions of the masses even where there have been labour
struggles. Secondly, they are under the illusion that some external
example can be more attractive and convincing than long, tiring
educational activity within the day-to-day struggles.
Then there are those Anarchists who deny the need for a Specific
Organization. Anarcho-Syndicalists of various types and Revolutionary
Syndicalists lay their trust in the spontaneous evolution of the
proletarian masses and that accordingly if the labour unions are left
alone, sooner or later they will arrive at the decisive clash with the
boss class. Malatesta already opposed this idea, held by Monatte, in
1907 at the International Congress of Amsterdam. He clarified how the
proletariat’s associations for resistance would inevitably slide into
reformism, thus blurring sight of the goals. This was the economicism
which Lenin pointed out, though he wanted to fight it by instilling
class consciousness into the masses from without, but which Anarchist
Communists fight by acting as a critical conscience from within. The
historically proven decline of all unions which were born revolutionary
(starting with Monatte’s own CGT), has led some Anarcho-Syndicalists to
seek the answer not in political organization, but in the creation of
unions which are based on a pre-determined revolutionary idea. In other
words, to create unions which are exclusively composed of conscious,
revolutionary elements. The result is a strange mix of mass organization
and political organization which is basically an organization of
anarchists who set themselves up to do union work. In this way the
obstacle has not been removed, but avoided, as the link which connects
the masses to the revolutionary strategy is missing, unless of course it
happens to be the resurrection of the idea of an external example which
contaminates the masses by some process of osmosis.
For Anarchist Communists these theoretical problems are resolved with
organizational dualism, assigning precise tasks and separate functions
to the two organizations.
organization
For Anarchist Communists, the mass Organization (labour union) does not
need to mimic their particular expectations of combativeness or
opposition to capital to the point that if the union were not to meet
their standards, they would not participate in the unions’ struggles.
They do not expect the union to be born revolutionary nor to continually
carry on a fierce level of combat against the bosses. Unions are born
out of a need for the proletariat to defend itself. They aim to wring as
much as possible out of the bosses in order to win greater wealth for
the exploited classes they represent. They try to satisfy the needs of
the workers who are being continually squeezed by their adversary, the
bosses. As long as the union exists, it will produce within it a
managing class which more often than not acts in its own interests
rather than in the interests of those it claims to represent. This is
all an inevitable, naturally-occurring state of affairs and something
which has yet to be avoided throughout the course of history.
From the capitalists’ point of view, the unions’ economic fight is not
only an attempt to demand improvements in the (always unequal) division
of the goods provided by the system of production, it is a permanent
need to re-organize according to the fluctuations in the workers’
demands. The unions therefore, linked with the phases of the class war,
genetically take on the double role of answering the proletariat’s
interests and being one of the sources of the development of capitalism.
And that is without taking into consideration the bad faith of its
managing class who view their role as answering their own needs for a
better life, or worse still as a trampoline for their careers in the
bourgeois State’s administrative ranks.
One fundamental requisite for an egalitarian revolution is that it be
the work of those who wish to find within the new society the benefits
of the happy life they are denied under the present social system. “The
emancipation of the workers will be at the hands of the workers
themselves” is not simply a slogan for Anarchist Communists, as it is
for Marxists — it is a profound conviction. It is the proletariat,
acting on its own initiative, which will liberate not only itself but
all others too, heralding the end of class society. It follows therefore
that the most united and conscious proletariat possible should face the
bosses in the final clash if it is to avoid falling prey to an
intellectual class which might “offer” to manage society on its behalf
and supposedly for its benefit. But if it is to avoid every form of
substitution, be it imposed or produced in all apparent naturalness, and
if it is to prevent the handing over of power in any way which might end
up being permanent and damaging to the final goal of establishing a free
and equal society, the proletariat itself must be able to take on
immediately the management of the various phases of the revolution and
the subsequent reconstruction. This is why workers’ unity is
indispensable. And it can only be reached through collective struggle
and not through the marvellous example of exemplary struggles which the
masses should watch, admire and imitate. The nub of the problem is the
link between the economic condition of the class and consciousness of
the historical ends which the class must necessarily pursue for its own
emancipation. Or, in other words, how does the link between class and
class consciousness come about?
We have already seen how the Leninists consider class consciousness to
be external to the proletariat and must be brought to the proletariat,
even through authoritarian means. In direct opposition to this,
Revolutionary Syndicalists hold that class consciousness is born
spontaneously and gradually among the masses, the more they engage in
the clash with capitalism. This is a vision which is clearly descended
from economic determinism and the inevitable explosion of the internal
contradictions in the capitalist system, while the Leninist vision is a
product of bourgeois Jacobinism. Marxism has not remained immune from
either. For many Anarchists who side with the struggle of the exploited,
there is no automatic link between the class and class consciousness,
while there is also a rejection of the Leninist methods. As we have
already seen, Anarcho-Syndicalists (though admittedly not all of them)
avoid the problem rather than face it, with their theory of example
designed to infect the proletariat, who otherwise tend to bow down to
the reformists. Their vision is for well-organized revolutionary unions
to engage in radical, victorious struggles which serve as a magnet for
the great mass of the exploited. Therefore, they hold that the union
organization should, from day one, take an ideal form — even if this
damages class unity. Theoretically, class consciousness comes before the
condition of the class and the union becomes a carbon copy of the
political organization.
Anarchist Communists consider this to be wrong (indeed Fabbri drew
attention to this). Though we are fully aware that there will always be
differing levels of consciousness among the workers and are convinced of
the fact that unity does not mean homogeneity, we believe that the class
comes before the consciousness, that unity comes before radicalness and
that therefore the relationship between the class and class
consciousness needs to be resolved in another way.
If the running of the phase of revolutionary struggle and the society
which follows must be firmly in the hands of the workers, as we have
said already, then class unity is a necessary prerequisite as is the
proletariat’s consciousness of its historic needs, which are much
greater than its immediate economic needs. How to grasp the horns of
this dilemma is something which has been hotly debated for a long time
and various solutions have been proposed, as we have seen. For
class-struggle Anarchists, the solution has been clear since the days of
Bakunin and requires two things: direct action and political
organization.
The practice of direct action, in other words the first-hand running of
the struggles, is a training ground for the acquisition of consciousness
by the proletariat, which independently evaluates its victories and the
methods adopted to win them on the one hand, and on the other, the
bitterness of the conflict and the strength of the opponents. The
progression from self-management of the day-to-day struggles to
self-management of the revolutionary conflict is thereby more natural,
without doubt. We must, however, be careful not to confuse direct action
with just any action carried out by those concerned. Direct action is
not just a group of people (however big or small, well-organized or
conscious) self-managing their own struggles. This is something that
every political grouping does in the course of its activities, but it
does not add even one ounce of consciousness to the masses. Direct
action can only be carried out by economically or territorially (and not
politically) homogeneous groups in order to achieve even a modest
objective, because it is only in this way that individuals with varying
degrees of social consciousness can engage with each other against an
external obstacle. They thereby acquire an awareness both of the
momentary limitation of that struggle’s aims, together with the skills
(including technical skills, too) which will be needed to widen the
scope of objectives they can aim for and ensure the long-lasting nature
of their gains.
And it is precisely within the process of direct action that the
irreplaceable role of the “party” (to use Malatesta’s expression) of
Anarchist Communists can be seen. Pushing forward the terms of the
clash; enabling others to become conscious of how fruitful the gains
made in economic struggle can be and how quickly and easily what has
been won can be taken back by the enemy; placing the immediate aim
within an ever-greater context of aspirations. These are the specific
tasks of Anarchist Communist militants in the class struggle. In other
words, the conscious members of the mass organization must work towards
spreading the practice of direct action and use the struggles of today
to enable a consciousness of the objectives of tomorrow to develop.
Anarchist Communist militants find strength for their activities in the
co-ordination of their efforts which takes place through their work in
their political organizations. The political organization is therefore
the much sought-after link between the class and class consciousness.
Its activities as a part of general class organization are the enzyme
which sparks off fermentation of the economic condition of the class in
the full awareness of the proletariat’s historical ends. But in order
for that to happen there must be workers’ unity, independent of their
level of class consciousness and direct action. The mass organization,
therefore, does not subject prospective members to entrance exams but
simply groups together all the exploited unconditionally, in the way
envisaged by Bakunin’s project for the International Working Men’s
Association. The conflict with capital and the constant actions of the
political organization (in Bakunin’s plan, the Alliance for Socialist
Democracy) within it, will ensure the struggles will gradually become
more radical until such times as the decisive clash arrives.
The goal of the Anarchist Communist political organization is thus to
remain a part of the class struggle in order to radicalize it and
promote consciousness of its final objectives. The organization cannot
limit itself to making propaganda (abstract propaganda, out of sight of
the proletariat) but must descend to the level of consciousness
expressed by the proletariat in any given moment and constantly seek to
raise it. To do this it must produce analyses, strategies and credible
proposals. Its members must gain the trust of the workers and
distinguish themselves by the clarity of their ideas and their ability
to promote convincing struggles which should, if conditions so permit,
be victorious. However, they must not become a new leader class,
separate from their comrades in struggle, but simply a point of
reference which can point the way at any time and not lose their sense
of direction during the ups and downs.
As it is obvious that not all proletarians will have reached the same
level of consciousness when the revolution breaks out (what is required
is unity, not an identical state of consciousness), it follows that
“leading groups” will naturally evolve, if the reader will forgive the
expression. But this does not mean that a Leninist-style dictatorship
necessarily follows, if three fundamental points are adhered to. First
of all if the gap between the “vanguard” (Bakunin’s “active minority”)
and the masses, in terms of consciousness, is not too great. In this way
it will be possible to maintain the maximum level of grassroots control
over the former’s actions by the great mass of the proletariat.
Obviously, what is referred to here is the level of consciousness
regarding ideas for struggle and not strategic awareness that members of
the specific organization need to possess. Secondly, the “vanguard”
needs to remain physically alongside its comrades in the struggle. It
must not expect or demand a directing role for itself even if this were
to be justifiable by the need to guarantee a successful outcome of the
revolution. Finally, all power will have to be invested in the
workplaces and in the proletariat’s associations and, from there,
proceed upwards from below, without ever being delegated to higher
organs, allowing them carte blanche, not even with the excuse of greater
scientific or technical competence. The organization of Anarchist
Communists will have to be vigilant in order to ensure that none of
these three potential deviations occurs.
Having lived in a period when the bourgeois State ferociously fulfilled
its role of protecting the interests of the ruling class, Anarchists
have developed a deep and justified hatred for this institution.
Furthermore, their direst predictions regarding the oppressive nature of
the State as an institution were borne out by the revolutions controlled
by Marxists and in particular by the history of the Soviet Union. The
point that Anarchist Communists challenge other Anarchist tendencies on
is not the need to abolish the State right from the first moment of the
revolution, but the fact that the great majority of Anarchists from
other tendencies have acquired such an aversion to the State that they
become blind to other facts.
Many Anarchists have developed a strange inversion of priorities. The
State, which is a tool of the bourgeoisie that the bourgeoisie uses in
order to exploit and appropriate the lion’s share of available wealth,
has become the prime enemy, even greater than the bourgeoisie which uses
that tool. But partly as a result of the effects of the proletariat’s
struggle, the State has taken on other roles apart from that of
policeman and these roles, known by the general term “welfare state,”
have some very complex facets. On the one hand they have allowed the
bosses to offload onto taxpayers (and thus mostly the workers
themselves) part of the costs deriving from the greater security and
well-being of those less well-off; a burden created through pressure
from the workers has been offloaded onto the collectivity, which
otherwise would form part of the cost of labour. On the other hand,
though, these functions have enabled a minimum redistribution of wealth
in favour of the workers; as the result of decades of struggles they
have allowed the conflict to be regulated for the protection of the
weakest, they have produced social institutions, such as education,
healthcare and social insurance, with a high element of solidarity.
It is not a surprise, therefore, if capitalism (which has now reached
another phase of its historical development, where fierce international
competition demands that costs be slashed) tends towards reducing social
provisions (which are partly financed by business) and to reduce the
tasks of the State to that of being an armed guardian of Capital’s
interests. And it is the inverted point of view of many Anarchists which
prevents them from analyzing the phenomenon, from seeing that our
principal enemy is the same as ever, and from realizing that what the
“light State” would like to get rid of is the very thing that the
proletariat have an interest in maintaining. The reduction in the
State’s functions involves a lowering of the fiscal burden on the rich
but not on the poor, the maintenance of the State’s role as policeman
and the destruction of all social insurance, guarantees and protection.
The dropping of areas such as the above by the State and their
replacement by equivalents on the market (and therefore their
transformation into a source of profit) involves an increase in cost for
services which workers will only rarely be able to afford, and will
result in a noticeable reduction in their living standards. By not
defending these tasks of the State, we also risk losing sight of another
important aspect: the role of collectivity. Anarchist Communist society
will not be able to do without a system of “taxation,” in the sense that
a part of the wealth will be set aside in order to sustain those who
cannot contribute to the production which is essential for their needs —
children, the old, the ill, etc. State management of areas such as
education, healthcare and social insurance is much closer to the
collective management of these services in a future society than would
be the case under private management, subject to the laws of profit. The
transport workers in revolutionary Spain in 1936, who were organized in
a union, lost little time in organizing the service. Would the same
happen today with the same rapidity and naturalness in the case of the
workers on the privatized railways in Britain? Consider also the case of
pensions, where under the current system there is an automatic link (and
corresponding sense of solidarity) between workers of different
generations.
Anarchist Communists therefore believe that the struggle against the
survival of the State at the time of the revolution does not preclude
recognition of the various functions of today’s bourgeois State: those
that serve to guarantee the continuing class domination (which, not
surprisingly, capitalists seek to preserve and strengthen) and those
born from compromises in the clash between the classes and which provide
a modicum of well-being for the oppressed classes (again, not
surprisingly, the very functions which capitalists seek to eliminate
today). If the bourgeoisie is seeking to reform the State, it is doing
so out of its own interests, interests which do not coincide with those
of the workers.
It is commonly said within the Anarchist movement that there is a close
link between the means of the struggle and its ends. If by this is meant
that certain methods must be excluded because they are inappropriate for
the ends, then we have no objection. We have already seen, for example,
that any suggestion of using the State in the march towards communism is
out of the question, if we are to promote its extinction. There are
means which are theoretically and practically incompatible with the ends
of the struggle.
This does not automatically signify that there is a strict relationship
between the means and the ends, something which many Anarchists claim,
particularly the pacifist elements and the anti-organizationalists, with
some grotesque consequences. To make an example, if this were indeed the
case, Anarchists would have to behave in the here and now by acting out
the rules of solidarity and social living that they are trying to create
for the future society. This would mean living in some sort of
collective such as a commune, but would have two unfortunate
consequences — one practical and one theoretical. On a practical level,
communes have always failed miserably (for example the famous
19^(th)-century Cecilia commune in Brazil), as the members carry with
them certain weaknesses and defects, inherited from the present
bourgeois social organization where they were born, grew up and
schooled, which have a negative effect on the life of the community and
eventually ruin it. Neither can the commune remain isolated from the
rest of the world: it is often therefore contaminated by its
relationships (often of a commercial nature) with surrounding societies.
Thus it follows that communist society must cover a vast area and
increasingly include the rest of humanity and that a period of
transition would be required in order to eliminate individuals from
those vices which are part and parcel of their character. The
theoretical consequence is that the new society would be born out of the
example offered by small groups, like small spots of communism which
spread throughout the social fabric, thus kissing goodbye to the
revolution and welcoming a vision of the future make-up of society which
can be realized by degrees in a new form of reformism.
We would have to be non-violent because (according to the axiom of ends
and means) a society of peace and solidarity could not come from a
violent act such as a revolution. Anarchist Communists do not love
violence, but we know that the bosses will not voluntarily give up their
privileges as a result of simply reasoning with them that communism is
the most rational social structure possible.
It follows that, for Anarchist Communists, the means must not contradict
the pre-established ends, but once the obviously incompatible means have
been discarded there remain a wide range of methods of struggle which
should be considered only on the basis of their effectiveness. Above
all, we believe that certain means, far from advancing the struggle
towards its goal, serve to distance it and make it impractical. This is
the case with criticism of the political organization and its internal
structure by some confusionists of anarchism, who see the internal
discipline of militants with regard to the decisions taken collectively
as a violation of the individual’s freedom and in effect a negation of
anarchist ends. This belief impedes any serious work within the masses
and therefore delays the social revolution.
If the political organization of Anarchist Communists is not to limit
itself to simple propaganda of sacred principles, its work in the
struggles of the exploited must be incisive, effective and recognizable.
For this reason the political and strategic line which the organization
follows must be seen outside the organization as being united, capable
of representing a solid reference point for the proletariat in its
process of acquiring consciousness. The functional principle which
allows this is known as “collective responsibility” and was outlined by
the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad in France (Delo Truda), in the
“Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists — Project.”
The definition of this function sparked off a great scandal within the
Anarchist movement, to the extent that the word “Platformist” is still
used as an insult against Anarchist Communists. However, it is based on
a misunderstanding which we will now seek to clear up.
The confusionists of Anarchism mistakenly identified the collective
responsibility of the Anarchist Communist political organization with
the democratic centralism of Leninism. But it is a facetious comparison.
In democratic centralism, a group of leaders take decisions which the
members are then obliged to apply. As membership of the party is
voluntary, at least in those places where it is not in power, this is
perfectly legitimate as those who agree to join the organization agree
with its way of functioning. All this, however, has absolutely nothing
to do with collective responsibility, which instead provides for the
maximum democracy in decision-making (at the Congress, where each member
counts as much as any other). But once decisions have been accepted by
the majority, the entire organization is bound by them. The minority can
always decide not to apply the decision, but they cannot block the work
of the organization or damage the external image of the organization by
working against the decision. At the following Congress it will be able
to make its case once more and try to convince a majority of members,
either should the previous line have clearly failed or else through
greater success in setting out their case.
The Anarchist Communist organization has four basic principles on which
it bases its work: theoretical unity, strategic unity, tactical
homogeneity and collective responsibility. Theoretical unity means that
all members must share the general principles which inspire the
organization — in other words, the principles outlined in this work. If
this were not the case they would be working for different causes and
should therefore belong to different organizations. Strategic unity
means that all members must share the common path which the organization
establishes to the social revolution — in other words, those guidelines
which all agree on regarding the organization’s actions from now until
(it is hoped) a not-too-distant future. Without a common strategy, the
actions of members or groups of members would follow different paths and
the organization per se would be unable to play any meaningful role in
the struggles of the masses. Tactical homogeneity means that the daily,
local activities of the various members and groups must tend to agree
with the general strategic line, though there can be some
diversification according to the varying local situations. If the
tactics of the various components of the organization did not run along
similar lines, the organization’s actions would be confused and
incoherent.
The Anarchist movement has known two types of organization:
organizations of synthesis and organizations of tendency. Synthesist
organizations accept members who declare themselves to be Anarchists,
without any further specification. It is possible, therefore, for
members to be Educationalists, Communists, Syndicalists,
Insurrectionalists and even Individualists. The range is not always
quite so wide and the level of theoretical unity required can vary from
one organization to another. For example, in 1965 the class-struggle
wing of the Federazione Anarchica Italiana succeeded in having
Malatesta’s 1920 programme adopted by the organization, thereby
provoking a split with the anti-organizationalist and individualist
elements. Whatever the level of theoretical unity may be (and it is
never complete), the absence of any strategic unity means that any
decisions taken need be observed only by those who agree with them,
leaving the others to do as they please. This means that the decisions
are of little value, that Congresses can make no effective resolutions,
that internal debate is unproductive (as everyone maintains their own
positions) and that the organization goes through the motions of its
internal rites without presenting a common face outside the
organization. The absence of any formal structure not only does not
guarantee greater internal democracy but can permit the creation of
informal groups of hidden leaders. These groups come together on the
basis of affinity, they can co-opt new adherents and they can generate
an uncontrolled and uncontrollable leadership, hard to identify but
nonetheless effective.
Organizations of tendency gather their members on the basis of a shared
theory (there are also organizations of anti-organizationalists!). This
was the case in 1919 with Fabbri’s Unione Comunista Anarchica d’Italia
(Anarchist Communist Union of Italy) before Malatesta, with his
Programme, transformed it into the synthesist Unione Anarchica Italiana
(Italian Anarchist Union) out of a desire for unanimity and maybe in the
hope of dragging towards class-struggle positions those who did not want
to know anything about the class struggle. Obviously, Anarchist
Communists organizations are organizations of tendency. The strong
tendency towards homogeneity which is accepted by members when they join
places a great limit on the apparently coercive nature of the principle
of collective responsibility. Indeed, when a known member of any party
takes a certain position, it inevitably reflects (even if they do not
intend it to) on their organization in the eyes of the public. For this
reason it can be even more dangerous for members to speak “different
tongues,” just because they do not wish to accept a single method of
communication, than it is when the communicative vocabulary to be
adopted is previously agreed on.
The basic element which distinguishes Anarchist Communists from all
other Anarchist currents may be organizational dualism, but what marks
them out in particular from the rest of the Anarchist movement (even
with regard to the Libertarian Communists — see Appendix 2) is the
existence of a programme. This is the collection of the short-term and
mid-term objectives which the political organization establishes for
itself. It is approved by Congress and reviewed at each successive
Congress. What has been achieved and what has not been achieved is
studied and explained. Objectives can be considered no longer important
and can be removed, and in general the strategy is adapted to the times.
The programme as such is a set of strategic and tactical elements which
guides the political organization’s actions in the mid-term. The fusion
of strategic elements and tactical elements enables the programme to
change with the changing economic and social situation. The function
which the Anarchist Communist political organization assigns the various
parts of the programme are one of its characteristics, seeing that
objectives which may be purely tactical for some may be strategic for
others, and vice versa. For this very reason the programme is a platform
for collaboration with other political organizations, where each one
retains the right to establish strategically common objectives which are
then pursued in collaboration with other organizations.
The existence of a programme (often called a minimum programme) may
initially seem to be an unimportant detail. On the contrary, its
consequences are of the utmost importance, as its existence provokes a
certain mentality and disposition for political work. This is something
which characterizes to a great extent the Anarchist Communist political
organization and determines some very important aspects.
These traits are all contained in the short definition of programme
which we have just given. They do, however, merit a little detailed
examination. As we have said, the programme is the workplan which the
political organization provides for itself at every Congress, and is
therefore valid for several years. As it contains tactical and strategic
elements, it needs to place the organization’s political action within a
dimension which is adequate in order to progress towards the ends. In
order to do this, the programme (which is established in a particular
historical context) must set out the correct steps for the times
concerned. It therefore requires knowledge of the current situation and
this implies that accurate political and economic analysis of the
current phase be made beforehand.
For decades, Anarchists had abandoned the field of economic analysis,
judging it to be unnecessary to know the class enemy’s strategy in order
to spread Anarchist ideas. The result is action without time or place, a
vision of the world in which everything is grey and where the cutting
edge of militants has become progressively blunter and the survivors sit
around nostalgically agreeing that they are right.
The rediscovery of Anarchist Communism sparked off a rediscovery of the
joys of study, knowledge and analysis. In consequence, certain dogmas
previously considered untouchable were put to the test, something
Berneri had already done. Above all, it made it possible once more for
there to be dialogue with those common women and men who slave away to
earn a few crumbs of wealth without having to wait for a messianic
salvation in some distant future. In other words, Anarchism came back to
live in the open, among the masses and within the labour struggles.
As we have seen, a sect-like spirit dominated the Anarchist movement in
Italy after World War II. This derived from the opinion that only the
realization of a free and egalitarian society after the social
revolution could improve the condition of a humanity which was bowed by
exploitation: any other progress, any other conquest, any improvement
was considered impossible under the current capitalist system or even as
a trap to ensnare the masses and stop them reaching their final goal.
Any compromise with the needs for today was seen as giving in and would
result in putting off further the glorious future which was the sole
objective worth fighting for.
The re-discovery of Anarchist Communism once again brought to the fore
the gradualism which Malatesta spoke of and the programme is a visible
manifestation of this. Intermediate objectives are not reformist sops
which are designed to build the future society piecemeal (something
which Anarchist Communists would never dream of). They are merely vital
responses to the daily needs of the exploited which, far from dulling
their ambitions for a just, egalitarian society, give them a taste for
struggle and for conquest. The more they eat, the hungrier they get.
Anyone who has to resolve the immediate problem of their primary needs
will only with difficulty be able to conceive a long struggle for their
historical needs and only with enormous difficulty will be able to
acquire the necessary consciousness to transform themselves into the
agents of their own emancipation.
Ultimately, if we do not propose solutions to the problems of the day,
it will be practically impossible to provide credible proposals for the
realization of a paradise which is lost in the mists of a distant
future. The struggle to satisfy the immediate needs, to snatch even a
minimum of wealth from our class adversary, to limit his unbounded power
and total control over the workforce, was called “revolutionary
gymnastics” by Malatesta and Fabbri. For this reason, their Anarchism,
like ours, was not reformist but reforming, because it kept its eye
firmly fixed on the revolutionary objective, without nonetheless
renouncing the gains made in the here and now. Obviously these gains are
fleeting and the to’s and fro’s of the class struggle can all too easily
render them useless (something we have in fact been witnessing in recent
decades), but they need to be obtained nevertheless, for two reasons.
Firstly, the acquired consciousness that they are not permanent will
sooner or later make it clear to the proletariat that only the final
victory can guarantee peace and well-being for ever and for everyone.
Secondly, a look back at the last two hundred years of history will make
it quite clear that generally there has been some real progress in the
living standards of workers in those countries where there has been an
active labour movement.
We have spoken about the sect-like spirit which dominated the Italian
Anarchist movement for decades. It really could not have been otherwise.
As the only possible objective to aim for is the social revolution
(about which Anarchists have their own very precise ideas), then no
alliance with other revolutionary forces is possible, in fact it could
even represent a betrayal of the ideal. But Anarchist Communists have
their programme with its partial and immediate goals, and as far as this
is concerned it is possible to find companions, in other words to form
alliances in order to obtain success for that particular piece of the
programme. Thanks to the programme, this possibility is an important
element in the history of the Anarchist movement which, thanks also to
the influence of Malatesta in 1921, proposed an alliance with other
leftists (known as the Fronte Unico Rivoluzionario, or Revolutionary
Single Front) to respond to the growing Fascist reaction.
Anarchist Communists are so sure of their historical ends, of their
strategy for obtaining them and of the steps they must take today, that
they do not fear any impure contact contaminating them. On the contrary,
they believe that they can contaminate others. In particular, they feel
that they can spread their ideas and proposals among the great mass of
the proletariat which is still fooled by the promise that the system is
reformable or by the hope that an authoritative, illuminated leader will
guide them towards a society without classes.
Historical materialism is the heritage of the whole proletariat since
its inception as a class conscious of the exploitation to which it is
subjected, though it must be recognized that Marx was the most accurate
promoter and organizer of historical materialism. Marx was influenced by
Proudhon, who was the first to note the economic contradictions within
society; however, (according to Marx) Proudhon imagined that these
contradictions could be resolved through the use of a science which only
partially took account of the real situation of productive relationships
without taking account of autonomy which is essential in real
materialism.
Unfortunately, the main theoreticians of orthodox Marxism, from the time
of the Second and Third Internationals up to the present day, have
always substituted historical materialism with the dialectic materialism
that was set out by Friedrich Engels in his works “Anti-Dühring” and
“The Dialectics of Nature.” Dialectic materialism turns Hegelian
dialectics on its head, placing it with its feet on the ground: while
Hegel concentrated on the evolution of the idea, dialectic materialism
instead considers the evolution of matter. Matter evolves by means of
its own immutable (a-historical) laws; in society and in the economy
this can be seen in the continual dialectics between the development of
the productive forces and the production relationships. The latter
initially adapt themselves to the level of development of the productive
forces, but at a certain point they become an obstacle for the
productive forces, to the point that they become a rigid casing which
must eventually be broken.
Thus, dialectic materialism is no longer a method for discovering the
real situation, but becomes an interpretation of the reality; not only
does it imagine that it provides a general vision of human history, it
also predicts with certainty the final crisis of capitalism and the
inevitable advent of communism.
But communism is then no longer a way to change the production
relationships once the proletariat, as a class, has re-appropriated the
product of its labour; communism is instead reduced to being only one
way to manage the productive forces in a particular advanced stage of
evolution. In this way man loses his function as the one responsible for
transforming the situation and becomes only the product of extraneous
forces and immutable laws which lie out of his control.
Therefore, Englesian and Leninist Marxism theorize a metaphysical and
idealistic materialism of a sort that anarchism has always rejected. It
must be said again that dialectic materialism is not a method for
discovering the real situation but an interpretation of the historical
process and a precise vision of the facts which entails pre-determining
the future as the inevitable development of past and present events.
Anarchism (apart from Kropotkinist positions) has always rejected this
conception of history which is the child of positivism and this idea of
man as a product of superior laws; for Anarchism, history is the product
of extremely complex and variable factors and man is one of these
factors at play.
Dialectic materialism is also the child of the great development in the
natural sciences of the mid-19^(th) century, to the point that it
believes it can transfer the methods of natural science to social
science. Thus, the birth of scientific socialism, which studies the laws
of the evolution of history as if they were objective, like the physical
laws of nature. This need to transform social processes into objective
laws has consequences on economic theory. In “Capital,” in fact, Marx
enunciates an economic theory that reduces class struggle to a sort of
corrective factor; in the interpretation of history, the class struggle
is a part of the dynamic processes of matter, but matter has abstract
and immutable laws. As man can only know nature in an approximate way
because it is outside and independent of him, he consequently cannot
intervene in its development, either alone or collectively; man is
therefore only a pure product of nature. This rigidly deterministic
model (reductionism) of the 19^(th) century disappeared from the natural
sciences during the course of the 20^(th) century, but it has remained
within Marxism! In the second half of the 20^(th) century we even saw
the end of that mechanic model that was the predictability of movement
which came into existence with Galileo and Newton, as we now know that
the tiniest uncertainty in the starting conditions makes the trajectory
unpredictable, even by a very few particles!
Dialectic materialism therefore induces a scheme of interpretation of
history based on successive stages (revolutions), as one can read in the
“History of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of the USSR” in the edition
authorized by the Party’s Central Committee.
It seems incredible that for so long “scientific socialism” was content
with such a simplistic and unreliable vision of history. And yet, until
not much more than ten years ago, historical materialism, deterministic
materialism and dialectic materialism were still being mixed up and
still are by most Marxist and other analysts. For Anarchist Communists
it is therefore doubly important that we distinguish between them. It is
important so that we can re-discover the method of analysis that has
guided the principal and best steps of the anarchist movement since the
time of Bakunin. Secondly, it is important so that we can once again
place the maximum importance on the class nature of our struggle which
has so often been forgotten as a result of doctrinaire beliefs that
reduce man to being a puppet, incapable of acting and building a society
for the benefit of man.
In fact, within the Anarchist movement, the terror of these
pre-conceived analyses of Marxism has led to a point-blank refusal of
it, even with regard to the parts of it that inspired the birth of the
workers’ movement and on which even the militants of the First
International were agreed. But that is not all. It also led to certain
principles being rejected by some, merely because Marxism talked about
them, thereby forgetting that they were also basic principles of
Anarchism. They had existed even before Marx formulated them and by
abandoning them, the spirit that had inspired the movement since its
beginnings was lost.
Any activity designed to transform the present society with the aim of
organizing social life so that everyone, as individuals and as a
collective, can live free from need presupposes that there is a method
of analysis of the current situation.
For us, that method is historical materialism.
Historical materialism as a way to analyse historical facts, according
to Marx, Engels and also Bakunin, is the common heritage of the
exploited all over the world. Chapter 3.1 contained an effective
summary, made on the basis of experience gained by the exploited in
their struggles mainly since the Industrial Revolution. It is from that
period that the proletariat as a class was created thanks to formation
of large urban concentrations, the expulsion of poor peasants from the
countryside and the destruction of crafts due to the changing production
processes. However, it is on the analysis of the classes that we find
among the exploited the first division between the two principal
tendencies: the Anarchist tendency and the Marxist tendency.
The former took account of the continual change in social relationships
and realized that the mass of the urban proletariat and the poor
peasants (expropriated by the development of capitalism) would be
willing to effect a radical and egalitarian transformation of society in
order to find an answer to their material needs.
The latter saw the proletariat in the factories as the sole enemy of
Capital and the development of productive forces as a progressive
proletarization of the exploited; it followed that once Capital were to
reach its maximum stage of development there would be a corresponding
stage of development of the proletariat.
This profound antagonistic contradiction would necessarily resolve
itself in the revolution, a moment of synthesis of the process of
historical development.
Finally, we must consider the problem of the relationship between
structure and superstructure as it divides the Marxist interpretation of
the situation from the historical materialist interpretation of
Anarchist Communists. Marx only vaguely defines this relationship,
prompting a wide range of interpretations from his followers, who for
the most part consider that the relationship is one of absolute
dependence of superstructure on structure.
The most obvious consequence of such a differentiation can be seen in
the conception of the State.
The State is considered by Marxists as a superstructure generated by the
structure of the capitalist economic system. As such the State must be
conquered and transformed, placing it at the service of the working
class as a tool for the construction of Socialism. This State,
controlled by the party, must be used against any attempted resurgence
of the bourgeoisie and to create the conditions necessary for the
successful development of Socialism and then Communism. As the State
gradually transforms its economic structure, the conditions will be
created for its disappearance. It is this conception of the historical
process that gives rise to the Marxist separation of economic struggle
and political struggle.
Anarchist Communists reject the clear separation between structure and
superstructure and consider the State as a superstructure in continual
transformation due to the evolving nature of capitalism itself. We also
consider the superstructure as a producer itself of relevant effects on
the structure. It follows that we believe that the use of the State is
incompatible with the end of destroying it. As firm supporters of
historical materialism, we believe that the way Marxism overcomes the
means-ends contradiction is merely a dialectic trick. Throughout our
history, Anarchist Communists have held that the instrument of the
transition to Socialism is the very act of revolution, the people in
arms and the widespread practice of self-organization.
For Anarchist Communists, this means that there is no separation between
economic struggle and political struggle and that we should constantly
strive to unite the two and thus recompose the contradiction on the
terrain of the defence of the material and historic needs of the
exploited.
The relationship between the masses and their most conscious elements
(the vanguard) is one of the fundamental problems regarding the
formulation of a revolutionary strategy. The absence of a solution to
this problem, or incorrect solutions to it, lie behind every historical
failure of each revolutionary project or else are the basis of the
failures in those countries where revolutions enjoyed some initial
success. No school of Marxism has yet clarified that relationship in its
essence, while on the part of Anarchists, the rejection a priori of the
concept of a vanguard (a word which evokes an unwarranted idea of
authority) has long impeded any detailed explanation. The only clear
thinking on the matter remains, even after over a century, Bakunin.
A correct theory on historically and socially determined material needs
shows us that the satisfaction of them is in contradiction with the
capitalist system and that therefore seeking their satisfaction is the
basis for the definition of a revolutionary strategy and the
organization of the proletariat in the workplace (the mass
organization). The capitalist system has perfected a series of
instruments with which it can recover what it loses to workers’ demands,
so it is perfectly utopistic to claim that the material needs and their
satisfaction can automatically provoke the end of capitalism, ruined by
its internal contradictions. The struggle for material needs must also
be the seed for class consciousness and the basis on which a detailed
strategy for attacking the capitalist system can be grounded. It must
also be a revolutionary strategy, which can be a point of reference for
the political growth of the proletariat in the struggle and ensure an
increase in those struggles as part of a strategic process which will
direct them towards the goal of the revolution. An organization is
therefore required for the development of strategy and this organization
(the specific organization) of revolutionary proletarians must be based
on a common theory. This is organizational dualism.
By mass organization we mean the organization which the masses build for
the defence of their interests. We can better explain by trying to
define the mass organization par excellence: the labour union. It is
formed in the workplace due to the precise material needs of the working
masses who make up its membership and who control it directly. Its
distinguishing features are:
political ideas of its members, is not to unite people who are already
members of this party or that, but to unite all workers who share the
interests to be defended;
struggles and agreement on demands, as a constant practice, in other
words within the labour union which guarantees control by the workers.
The labour union, as a mass organization, is therefore a tool in the
hands of the working classes for the improvement of their economic
conditions and for their emancipation, through anti-capitalist struggle.
In all this, it must be remembered that the emancipation of the workers
is the fruit of constant struggle and not so much of propaganda or
ideological convictions. It must also be remembered that direct action,
an essential practice in the struggle for our needs, is a guarantee that
the union does not become the plaything of this or that party, and that
decision-making never becomes independent of the assembly of workers.
From this it derives that:
“the workers’ organization must have a final goal and an immediate goal.
The final goal must be the expropriation of capital by the associated
workers, in other words restitution to the producers, and for them to
their associations, of all that the labour of the working classes has
produced, of everything that would have no value without the labour of
the workers. The immediate goal is to develop increasingly the spirit of
solidarity between the oppressed and resistance against the oppressors,
to keep the proletariat in practice with the continual gymnastics of
workers’ struggle in all its various forms, to conquer from capitalism
today all that it is possible to grab in terms of well-being and
freedom, however little it may be.” (Fabbri)
The specific organization, instead, is made up of the members of the
mass organization who share the same theory, the same strategy and
similar ideas on tactics. The task of this organization is, on the one
hand, to be the depository for the class memory and, on the other hand,
to elaborate a common strategy which can ensure the linking of all the
struggles by the class and which can stimulate and guide. Having said
this, we can easily establish the errors which led both to the Leninist
conception of the party (a political organization which lies above the
masses) and to the idea that the specific organization is merely a
connector between the various struggles and is without a strategy or a
revolutionary plan of its own. In the former case, the party-guide is
formed of elements which are not necessarily part of the mass
organization and so are external to it. It establishes a political line
which is then transmitted to the organizations, like a drive belt. In
the second case, it is the fear of a degeneration into authoritarianism
which causes the essential role of elaborating a revolutionary strategy
to be lost from sight. The specific organization’s members must bring
this strategy with them into the heart of the organizations of the
working class if the specific organization’s actions are to be
effective.
The need for the existence of the specific organization, its tasks and
its roles, has already been clearly set out by Bakunin:
“[...] to organize the masses, to firmly establish the beneficial action
of the International Workingmen’s’ Association on them, is would be
sufficient for even one out of every ten workers in the same occupation
to be a member of the appropriate section. This is clear. In moments of
great economic crisis, when the instinct of the masses, inflamed to
boiling point, opens up to every joyful inspiration, when these hordes
of men, enslaved, bowed, crushed but never broken, finally revolt
against their yoke, but feel disoriented and impotent as they are
completely disorganized, ten or twenty or thirty men in close agreement
and well connected to each other, who know where they are going and what
they want, will easily be able to bring along one, two or three hundred
or more. We saw it recently during the Paris Commune. The real
organization which had only begun during the siege was not enough to
create a formidable capacity for resistance.”
Furthermore,
“[...] one could object that this manner of organizing the influence of
the International over the popular masses seems to wish to establish on
the ruins of the old authorities and existing governments a new system
of authority and a new government. But this would be a grave error. The
government of the international, if indeed there is a government, or
rather its organized action on the masses, will always be different from
every government and from the action of every State because of this
essential property. It is nothing more than the organization of action
(not official and non invested with any authority or any political
force, but absolutely natural) of a more or less numerous group of
individuals guided by the same principle and working towards the same
goal, first on the action of the masses and only later, through the more
or less modified opinion by the international’s propaganda, on their
wishes and on their actions.”
Here then are the characteristics of the specific organization:
not external to it means that members of the specific organization must
be class-struggle militants.
stimulates their political growth, their desire for self-management and
self-organization, leading to a revolutionary project.
which it brings its strategy.
members of the mass organization, as members of the mass organization
they bring to it their points of view in order that the action of the
masses can be strategically coordinated, with the aim of reaching the
revolutionary objective in the most efficient way possible.
What relationship should develop between the specific organization and
the mass organization, between the vanguard and the mass, between the
anarchist party and the labour union? It is not sufficient to impose the
formula of the dialectic relationship, since that could serve to hide a
division between the economic and the political, between class
consciousness and the class. Let us straight away state that as the
members of the specific organization are at the same time members of the
mass organization, non-separation is guaranteed. It cannot be imagined
in Second-Internationalist terms because it is obvious that the economic
struggle is also political, something that strikes at the heart of
capitalist exploitation, and its conquests need to be defended by
including them as part of a strategy for action (which is not
necessarily the strategy of the specific organization, but is more
likely to be so the more the level of class consciousness has grown in
the masses and the better and more expert is the work of the members of
the specific organization within the mass organization). It is also a
guarantee that conquest of the State is not proposed as a way to spark
off the transition to socialism, thereby privileging political and party
struggle over economic demands. The mass organization therefore loses
its function as a drive belt of the specific organization and instead
becomes the site of debate on the strategy defined by the specific
organization against the strategies proposed by other parties, but above
all confronting that strategy with the demands of action, the level of
growth of the masses and of their real needs.
The role of the specific organization is not recognized in any official
way within the mass organization. It is not, and must not be, a
recognized, institutionalized leadership which, as such, could impose
solutions and pretend (in the manner of the Leninists) to represent the
real interests of the proletariat. It is only a point of debate and
elaboration of politically homogeneous comrades who prepare and finalize
their work and their proposals on the basis of their analysis and their
ideology, without expecting it to be accepted on the basis of
delegation, but only by virtue of it being freely accepted through
debate within the mass organization. Any acceptance of Anarchist
Communist ideas is only further proof of their correctness. Any refusal
to accept them indicates an error of analysis on the part of the
Anarchist Communists and requires them to revise the strategy or the
tactic.
One last point remains to be clarified. The mass organization is not
built by the specific organization in its likeness, a toy for it to
influence or a place reserved for revolutionary proletarians. In other
words, it is not the revolutionary mass organization. Such an
organization would be a half-way house between party and mass. Firstly,
it would only represent a closing in on itself by the specific
organization, which would thus be idealistic, waiting for the
proletariat to accept its ideology simply because it is the best and the
most revolutionary — a form of politically impotent doctrinaire
simplisticism. Secondly, it would be a talking-shop for the vanguard,
reducing and sterilizing its internal debate and hiding within it a
vision of the masses needing to be civilized, masses who are incapable
of revolutionary action, a pure and simple army to be manoeuvred by the
winner of the dialectic clash between the politicized elements. Debate
must take place on the widest possible level, not at the highest
possible level; only at this level can there be proper evaluation of the
lines adopted by the various specific organizations.
The experience of Spain also left its mark on the Italian Anarchist
movement even with the strict limits on its activity imposed as a result
of Fascist repression.
The heritage of the short-lived but fruitful Unione Comunista Anarchica
Italiana (later known as the Unione Anarchica Italiana) was embraced in
1943 by groups which came together as the Federazione Comunista
Anarchica Italiana (Italian Anarchist Communist Federation).
Together with this historic part of the Italian Anarchist movement which
benefited from the various experiences of Italian Anarchist Communists,
in the period following World War II there were also two other
tendencies (although all would later merge to form an organization of
synthesis, the Federazione Anarchica Italiana):
Libertarian Communist Federation), whose members were Anarchist
Communists but included also a sizeable fringe of more generally
libertarian elements who had moved closer to the Anarchist movement
thanks to the Resistance, making the FCLAI an organization which was not
homogeneously Anarchist Communist in its strategy and theory;
such as Cesare Zaccaria and others, which was to end up disorienting a
great many Anarchist Communist militants with their positions, resulting
in a predominantly nihilistic form of politics. From the Carrara
Congress on, they were to take over the leading positions in the
organization and ended up totally destroying any class positions within
the movement, with some comrades even being driven towards the reformist
parties.
This defeat which the Anarchist Communist movement suffered during the
post-war period and whose effects continued right up to the early
Seventies, was responded to by a sector of militants who in their youth
had been involved in the Resistance, who believed in the watchwords
launched after the war. After analysing the causes of the nihilist
positions which had come to the fore, they came to understand that apart
from the link with the class on the basis of defence of the material and
historical needs of the class, the movement had failed to reconstruct
those theoretical principles and a tradition of elaboration which could
bind the movement to Anarchist tradition (from the First International
through Anarcho-Syndicalism to the struggle during the Spanish
Revolution).
The experience of the Gruppi Anarchici di Azione Proletaria (Proletarian
Action Anarchist Groups -GAAP) was very important for the Anarchist and
proletarian movement and produced theoretical and other material which
was worthy of attention. On an international level, the GAAP linked up
with the Organisation Pensée et Bataille (OPB) which was developing
along similar lines in France. The two organizations also founded a
short-lived Libertarian Communist International.
The fundamental error of these comrades was that they did not understand
the need for ideological, methodological and practical links with the
historical heritage of Anarchist Communism. Believing themselves to be
something new, something different, was responsible for their failure to
accept the benefits of a history rich in experience and analysis, which
could have ensured a link with the masses as an essential historical
component of the workers’ and peasants’ movements. By allowing others a
monopoly of and domination over this area and by allowing the
revisionists of Anarchism free rein, they committed their greatest
historical and political mistake. The progressive loss of political
identity was simply a direct consequence of this choice. Their eventual
enfeeblement as revolutionary militants was a consequence of having lost
sight of every link with Anarchism and with the Anarchist Communist
heritage of culture and struggle. Inevitably, their progressive
isolation produced sterility within the organization which, surrounded
on either side by revisionist Anarchism and an equally revisionist
Marxism, produced that Libertarian Communism (a synthesis of Anarchism
and Marxism) that we know today.
The reply of the GAAP to this situation in 1956 was to join together
with other Marxist groups to form Azione Comunista (Communist Action), a
political area that was to survive as the only leftist faction of the
Partito Comunista Italiana (Italian Communist Party — PCI) until 1961
when the first Marxist-Leninist groups appeared in Italy. From that year
on, the extra-parliamentary area left of the PCI became stronger and
stronger. A group of intellectuals and syndicalists founded a new
journal, Quaderni Rossi. Under the firm leadership of Raniero Panieri,
it would re-discover the experiences of class spontaneity. The Partito
Socialista di UnitĂ Proletaria (Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity),
born from a left-wing split in the Partito Socialista Italiana (Italian
Socialist Party), occupied itself mainly with collecting and guiding
this experience, giving certain intellectuals and syndicalists the
opportunity to publish Classe Operaia (1964–66). This marks a period of
unity between some Marxists who by now were aware of the shortcomings of
traditional Marxism in dealing with the problems posed by the class
struggle and comrades who had previously been part of the Syndicalist or
Anarchist Communist movement.
In 1968, the events of May in France began to produce their effects in
Italy, which until then had had a separate development. The political
actors mentioned above began to make their mark as basically they were
the only ones in any way ready for the clash. In Pisa, Potere Operaio
was born and, following a split within its ranks, Potere Operaio, Lotta
Continua and the Centro Carlo Marx. In these organizations (except for
the Centro Carlo Marx which merged with the PCI in 1975 becoming its far
right wing), there was a most deleterious mixture of Leninism and
spontaneism.
The crisis in these organizations and in others which had formed to the
left of the PCI together with the inability of the Anarchist movement in
general to rediscover its genuine origins in Anarchist Communism with
regard to theory and political practice, gave rise to a mass of
political activists who understood the spontaneous behaviour of the
masses to be the key to revolution. The new “autonomous” movement
attracted ex-members of the old Potere Operaio, refugees from a number
of neo-Leninist political organizations and a good number of Anarchist
groups (the Kronstadt Group from Naples, the FCL in Rome, etc.) who had
attempted to re-discover Anarchist Communism by examining the ideas of
the Organization Platform but who quickly abandoned (like the GAAP) the
terrain of Anarchism and ended up becoming part of the hybrid world of
Libertarian Communism.
At this stage, the term “Libertarian Communism” was no longer synonymous
with “Anarchist Communism” (as it had been until the 1940s) and had
taken on a new meaning. By now it indicated a theory in which analysis
of the role of the specific organization, the mass organization and the
relationship between the two, no longer coincided with Anarchist
Communist theory and practice. Elements of Marxist analysis were
introduced, such as the inevitability of the fall of capitalism once it
reached its highest stage of development, the automatic nature of the
struggles with regard to the economic phase, and a view of the current
crisis as being Capital’s final crisis.
Having said all that, it is clear that we need to avoid the mistakes
which have been made up to now. Leaving aside how the various
organizations are named, we need to examine their content continuously.
We need to maintain our links with the heritage of Anarchist Communist
analysis. Together, we must define the various stages in the
organizational process which can allow Anarchist Communists to ensure
that every territorial group can make an impact on the struggles by
means of a strategy which is firmly based on a common theory.
Chapter 1
Press, New York/London, 1970
Chapter 1.1
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Lehning, Jonathan Cape, London, 1973
1975
Chapter 2
1953–1960
Chapter 2.1
Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune of 1871, New
Park Publications, London, 1976
Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1941
Chapter 2.2
London, 1987
Detroit/Chicago, 1974
Hudson, London, 1973
révolution de 1917 (Essais et documents), Les Editions de Paris, 2000
Vseobshchego Soyuza Anarkhistov — proekt, Paris, 1926. Published in
English translation by Workers Solidarity Movement, Dublin 1989 under
the title “The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists”
Chapter 2.3
Hastings, 2001
Madrid, 1988
Barcelona, 1977
Chapter 3.1
Frederick Engels, Lawrence & Wishart Ltd, London, 1975
Philosophy of Misery, Arno Press, New York, 1972
Moscow, 1938
Chapter 3.3
Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961
Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961
Chapter 4.1
Selected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975
Julian, oder Capital und Arbeit, R.Schlingmann, Berlin, 1864
Chapter 4.2
Galilée, Paris, 1977
Chapter 4.4
Is It Going, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1973
Chapter 4.4.1
1971
Cambridge, 1983
Chapter 4.4.2
Chapter 4.4.3
Chapter 4.4.4
Revolution, Verlag für Sozial-Revolutionäre Schriften, Berlin, (n.d.)
Chapter 4.4.5.
Various, Un’analisi nuova per la strategia di sempre, L’antistato,
Cesena, 1973.
Various, I nuovi padroni, Antistato, Milan, 1978
Guido Montana, La rivoluzione egualitaria post-industriale, Silva, Rome,
1971
Chapter 5
October 1922. Now in Errico Malatesta, Scritti scelti, SamonĂ e Savelli,
Rome, 1970, pp.173–177.
Chapter 5.1
movements, Meridian Books, Cleveland and New-York, 1962
Chapter 5.2
Congresso Internazionale anarchico di Amsterdam (1907), CP, Florence,
1978
Chapter 5.2.1.
l’organizzazione di massa, CP, Florence, 1984
Chapter 5.2.2.
anarchici, Quaderni di Alternativa Libertaria, fuori programma
Chapter 5.3
to be in, Studies for a Libertarian Alternative
Chapter 5.4
Chapter 5.5
Books, Johannesburg
Chapter 5.6
Comunisti Anarchici — Atti del V° Congresso della Federazione dei
Comunisti Anarchici, CP, Florence 1998.
Chapter 5.6.1
Marco Paganini, Giovanni Cimbale, Ai compagni su: capitalismo
ristrutturazione e lotta di classe, CP, Florence, 1975
Globalizzazione, Quaderni di Alternativa Libertaria, n.13.
Chapter 5.6.2
sindacalismo, in Ricerche Storiche, a.XIII, n°1, January-April 1943,
ESI, pp.151–204
Chapter 5.6.3
for a Libertarian Alternative