Ge fan i våra statyer, era jäääävlar

Varför vill den vakna mobben riva Karl XII:s staty i Kungsan i Stockholmish? Förstår ingenting. Karl XII var en queer envåldshärskare som attackerade Ryssland i allians med muslimer, han hyllades av ateisten Voltaire, och han lät "tattare" invandra till Sverige. Låter som en ledande medlem av Demokratiska Partiet i USA, med andra ord. Så vad är problemet, som sagt var? Hade Karl XII levt idag hade han garanterat försökt avsätta Donald Trump! 

På Djurgården finns det förresten en staty av en annan svedish kingen, Karl XV. Även den är FREDAD eftersom Karl XV vid ett tillfälle träffade Bakunin, den store anarkistiske revolutionären... Om ni ifrågasätter något jag säger möts vi i gryningen utanför Café 44 och kämpar man mot man (eller queer mot queer), välj vapen, molotov eller slangbella!

The Lenin of syndicalism

Anarchist good guy?

This is one of the most obscure products I´ve reviewed. Unless you are Swedish and very interested in the history of anarcho-syndicalism, chances are you never heard of “Förhållandet mellan syndikalism och anarkism”, with the long subtitle, or perhaps front cover slogan, “Syndikalismens förhållande till anarkismen är ett annat än de olika anarkistiska attitydernas förhållande till syndikalismen!”. First published in 1963, my copy is dated 1981.

The author, Rudolf Holmö (alias Rudolv Holmö or Rudolv Holme) had been a high-ranking syndicalist and member of the Swedish syndicalist dual union SAC during the 1910´s and 1920´s. It´s not clear to me when he left the SAC the first time, but his resurfacing during the 1950´s is said to have been a reentry into the organization. He was expelled from the SAC by its Stockholm branch (Stockholms LS) in 1953 together with some close associates. At the time, SAC had changed most of its traditional revolutionary politics in favor of a kind of Cold War liberalism, or rather ditto libertarian socialism, inspired to take this step by Helmut Rüdiger, a German exile living in Sweden. The twin disasters of Stalinist Communism and Nazism had made the SAC give up its revolutionary goals and methods, instead calling for peaceful change and decentralization through co-operative movements and businesses. Internationally, the SAC supported the West in its Cold War against the Soviets, even going so far as to support South Korea and the United States during the Korean War! Thus, Rüdiger could be seen as the libertarian socialist equivalent of Max Shachtman.

Holmö opposed Rüdiger “from the left”, calling for a return to more traditional syndicalist positions (or maybe not – see further below). His group, Syndikalisternas Förbund (the League of Syndicalists) published the magazine Våra Idéer (Our Ideas). The Rüdigerites were not amused, and unceremoniously expelled Holmö and the other S-F leaders from the SAC. However, it seems the expulsions were declared null and void by Stockholms LS in 1981 (Holmö was already dead by this point) and the S-F certainly existed within the SAC during the 1980´s. Ironically, the more leftist elements within the SAC were *not* attracted to S-F´s often curious positions and rabid polemical style, instead preferring classical anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism. Holmö´s version of syndicalism was more similar to that of the French CGT (pre-World War I), and it could be argued that he adapted himself to both Social Democracy and Communism. Above all, his version of revolutionary syndicalism was specifically anti-anarchist, and he was sometimes dubbed “the syndicalist Lenin” for this fact. The Rüdiger faction had accused him of being in cahoots with the Social Democrats, and it´s certainly interesting to note that Holmö had a prominent position in the ABF during his absence from the SAC, the ABF being a Social Democratic-dominated educational association.

“Förhållandet mellan syndikalism och anarkism” is a curious pamphlet in many ways. Logically, Holmö should attack Rüdiger for being a bourgeois liberal and Cold Warrior. He *does* imply at several points that Rüdiger must be a CIA agent, and he certainly regards him as “liberal”, this being a serious reproach in Holmö´s more classically socialist worldview. However, most of the time, Holmö accuses Rüdiger and his co-thinkers of being *anarchists*, seeing this as the main problem. To Holmö, all anarchist currents save one are inevitably hostile to the interests of the labor movement and therefore also the interests of syndicalism. The sole exception are the anarcho-communists around Peter Kropotkin, who in Holmö´s opinion always supported the revolutionary “syndicates” in an admirable fashion. All other anarchist currents are either confused (such as those upholding Bakunin) or outright reactionaries, such as those harking back to Proudhon. Holmö has a special animus against Errico Malatesta, whose “free communism” he associates with complete decentralization, societal decay and general mayhem, in plain English anarchy! Malatesta´s self-proclaimed disciple Max Nettlau is another object of venom for Holmö, and so are Rudolf Rocker and Augustin Souchy in their respective post-World War II incarnations. Rüdiger was apparently associated with all these people. In some curious way, then, Holmö connects anarchism, anarchy (in the negative sense), liberalism and – surprise – the CIA.

Holmö´s alternative turns out to be a centralized form of labor organization, complete socialization of the economy (albeit under “the self-management principle”) and a strictly uniform society (he is very adamant on this point), rather than the utopian “free communism” of Malatesta, Nettlau and other Agency assets. Holmö believes that syndicalism must be strictly neutral towards all partisan parliamentary politics, and also towards religion, since the only function of a syndicalist labor union is to promote the socialization of production. Like the French CGT, Holmö never really explains how this can work in practice – the CGT, of course, was *not* neutral towards the socialist political parties but *opposed* them, the militant minority de facto acting as a quasi-political party itself (albeit an extra-parliamentary one). Holmö also explicitly states that the goal of syndicalism isn´t to abolish the state. Indeed, the state *can´t* be abolished, since all societies need a centralized organ of some kind to function properly. I get the impression that Holmö is trying to anachronistically resuscitate the “pure” syndicalism of the CGT in 1950´s Sweden, where the political lineups were very different. 

As already indicated, the Holmö group failed to attract much support or interest during the 1980´s, when they had been allowed to work freely inside the SAC. The old guard of Rüdiger must have vomited at every mention of these people, while the new style 70´s radicals considered a “syndicalist” group sounding like a blend of pseudo-Communism and pseudo-Social Democracy very, very strange. And then there was that angry polemical style – the syndicalists I knew (including the ones who were on the anarcho-syndicalist side of things) were sick and tired of the ra-ra-revolutionary sloganeering and dogmatism of the Leninist groups and didn´t react very well to the S-F version either!

Finally, I noticed something very strange about the publication history of Holmö´s pamphlet. At one occasion, it was reprinted by the Anarchist Federation in Stockholm! I´m not sure if this was some kind of bizarre trolling, or if these particular anarchists were of the nice anarcho-communist Kropotkinesque version. Also, my copy of the pamphlet, while published by the S-F, is actually printed by Stockholms LS…

What on earth for?!

Next posting: more S-F high strangeness. Stay tuned, comrades!

Sold down the river

A review of "King Oscar Sardines"

Here he is, His Royal Majesty the union king of Sweden and Norway, Oscar II. According to legend, he shook the hand of Bakunin when he was still a prince. Yes, *that* Bakunin. As king, he preferred more lady-like company, attending a conference organized by Katherine Tingley's organization, the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. He was a very cultured man. A painter, I believe. An idealist philosopher. A highly accomplished dancer. A ridiculous conservative anachronism who opposed liberal democracy and the labour movement. And yes, his name and portrait is used to sell sardines.

Anarchism for teenagers

At least in Sweden, Daniel Guérin's book "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" is *the* book everyone interested in anarchism reads. I know from personal experience than all teenagers who consider themselves anarchists read it, or at least used to read it when I was in high school. I also read it and found it interesting and well-written. I think it was the first political book I ever read!

Guérin was a French left-wing intellectual, and wrote several books that are relatively well-known in leftist circles, including "Fascism and Big Business" and "Negroes on the march". He belonged to the PSOP, a rather small socialist party in France, roughly similar to the Spanish POUM and the British ILP. Later, he became an anarchist of the "platformist" current, which emphasizes class struggle rather than alternative lifestyles, and calls for a centralized revolutionary organization, something many other anarchists consider anathema. (The founders of platformism were Peter Arshinov, Nestor Makhno and Ida Mett. See my review of Arshinov's book on the Makhnovists for a background.)

"Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" was first published in 1965. However, the anarchist political myths are still the same, and the book can therefore still be read by students of intellectual history (or budding anarchists, perhaps). Guérin describes the main anarchist thinkers of the 19th century: Proudhon, Bakunin, Stirner and Krapotkin. He attempts a kind of synthesis of their rather disparate ideas. Other anarchists mentioned include Malatesta and the perhaps lesser known Diego Abad de Santillan. The section on the history of anarchism concentrates on those anarchists that were active in the labour movement and called for class struggle, rather than on hippies, religious communes or terrorists. All the usual anarchist stories are included: the French CGT, the Spanish CNT and the Spanish revolution, Makhno, Kronstadt... There is also a chapter criticizing "workers self-management" in Algeria and Yugoslavia. Today, this part of the book looks curious, but back in 1965, many left-wingers probably saw these nations as some kind of libertarian alternatives to Soviet Communism. In Sweden, the more moderate wing of anarcho-syndicalism was certainly positive towards Tito's Yugoslavia.

While Guérin isn't entirely uncritical of the anarchist tradition, "Anarchism" is nevertheless a work of propaganda, and should be read with that in mind. I find it interesting for the reason I mentioned earlier: many people got their first positive exposure to anarchism from this book.

PS. Perhaps I must point out, that I'm not an anarchist...

Anarchist panorama

Paul Avrich was a historian broadly sympathetic to anarchism. His most well known book is "Kronstadt 1921", a study of the famous anti-Bolshevik uprising at the Kronstadt naval base outside Petrograd.

"Anarchist Portraits" is another book by Avrich. It contains sketches of various famous anarchists, and a few less famous ones. The reader shouldn't expect full biographies.

One chapter deals with Bakunin's visit to the United States, where he managed to meet a number of radical Republican politicians, including the governor of Massachusetts. Another chapter tells the sorry tale of Nechaev and Bakunin's tangled relation with this sociopathic adventurer. There are also chapters on Benjamin Tucker, Kropotkin, Sacco and Vanzetti, Nestor Makhno and Volin. Lesser known characters covered include Paul Brosse and J.W. Fleming.

The most intriguing chapter is the shortest. It turns out that Anatoli Zhelezniakov, the sailor who dispersed the Russian Constituent Assembly in 1918 with the famous words "the guard is tired", was an anarchist! It also turns out that Zhelezniakov had friends in high places. After fighting on the Bolshevik side in the Civil War, he had a fall out with Trotsky and was outlawed, but nevertheless managed to visit Moscow illegally and complain in person to Yakov Sverdlov, a high-ranking Bolshevik official! He even managed to leave Moscow unmolested. Somewhat later, Trotsky pardoned Zhelezniakov and made him commander of an armed trained expedition against the White Guards. When Zhelezniakov was killed in combat, the Bolsheviks gave him a sumptuous burial and virtually claimed him as one of their own. In reality, the tempestuous sailor never joined the Bolshevik Party. (They were stuck with Stalin, I suppose.)

"Anarchist Portraits" may be somewhat confusing to people entirely new to the subject, but to those who already now a thing or two about anarchism, it does fill in some blanks. Recommended.

Bad Bakunin

"Bakunin on anarchism" is an anthology, edited by Sam Dolgoff. Unfortunately, few of the texts included are unabridged. Most have beeen cut and pasted by Dolgoff, often on very flimsy grounds. Why did he excise points I, H9, N6 and XC from Bakunin's program "Revolutionary Catechism"? Why not publish all of it? "The National Catechism" is published almost in full, but a few sentences have been dropped. Most other texts are abridged as well, and the editor never explains why.

It's unfortunate that this seems to be the only extensive Bakunin anthology available in English. I'm not interested in Sam Dolgoff's version of Bakunin. Is he hiding something? I'm old enough to make my own decisions, thank you. I want to know the real thing!

Somebody should publish an unabriged edition...

A weak response to primitivism

Brian Oliver Sheppard's book "Anarchim vs. primitivism" is an attack on anarcho-primitivism or neo-primitivism, written from an anarcho-syndicalist perspective. The primitivists are a current within the anarchist milieu which argues that abolishing the state and capitalism isn't enough. They also want to abolish most or all technology, and move society back to a pre-industrial stage. The most extreme primitivist, John Zerzan, wants to go all the way back to the Palaeolithic and perhaps the Neanderthals. More moderate primitivists are apparently ready to settle for a libertarian version of the Iron Age or the Middle Ages.

The more "main line" anarchists write blistering attacks on primitivism with a regularity I find perplexing. Murray Bookchin did it all the time, Chaz Bufe did it too, and now comes Sheppard. One wonders why? The only possible reason is that primitivists and regular anarchists (including anarcho-syndicalists) belong to the same social milieu. This is richly ironic, since the anarcho-syndicalists in particular claim to be oriented to the labour unions and the working class. If so, why bother attacking people like John Zerzan, who most workers or left-wing activists have never even heard of? I've heard of anarcho-primitivism, but that's only because I've read Bufe decades ago!

[SOME GENERAL PROBLEMS WITH THE PAMPHLET]

Personally, I'm neither a classical anarchist nor a primitivist. I suppose most anarchists would consider me an unregenerate statist. (They are right!) Still, I must say that Sheppard's criticism of primitivism is rather weak. While Proudhon, Bakunin and Krapotkin weren't primitivists, their emphasis on decentralization, the peasantry, artisans and local mutual aid does reflect a very early version of industrialism, rather than the full blown version reflected by Marxism and certain forms of syndicalism. Thus, the anarcho-primitivists aren't completely out on a limb when attempting to fuse classical anarchism with eco-radicalism. Sheppard further attacks Dave Foreman and Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber), but they aren't anarcho-primitivists. Both are more "right wing", especially Kaczynski. Foreman, despite his action antics, might not even be particularly radical.

The author's main argument against primitivism is that affluent, modern Westerners don't want to give up their technology. Well, obviously not, but so what? The real question isn't what anybody "wants", but what is actually needed to solve the ecological crisis. Another main argument is that primitivism, if implemented, would lead to the death of billions. While this is certainly true, once again, it misses the point. The real question is whether or not overpopulation is a problem. The author tries to have it both ways, sometimes arguing that it isn't, sometimes proposing various ways to fight overpopulation, for instance by getting rid of natalist religion, giving people access to free contraceptives, etc. Sheppard also loves poiting out that the primitivists don't live as they learn. Thus, Zerzan watches TV, Fifth Estate use computers and Green Anarchist use the web. But the personal hypocrisy or contradictions of the primitivists don't necessarily invalidate their critique of modern civilization. I don't eat organic carrots, nor do I drink rain water, but what does that say about the reality of climate change or the need for organic agriculture? Not much, either way. I eat a lot of candy, too, which would make any moralistic preaching on diabetes from my part somewhat comic, but that doesn't mean diabetes isn't a threat, especially if you do eat a lot of candy...

Sheppard's arguments against the primitivists are based on a kind of middle-class populist "common sense", but these kinds of arguments can be used against anarcho-syndicalism, as well!

[PRIMITIVE PEOPLES]

Sheppard's attacks on the cultures of primitive peoples aren't convincing either. He confuses the Palaeolithic and Neolithic with pre-industrial but hierarchic societies in the Americas at the time of the conquista, even mentioning the Aztecs and the Incas. In passing, he shows his true colours (?) on the woman question: "Iroquois women, for example, made most of the important decisions in their society. (A matriarchal society, it is important to remember, is still of course a hierarchical society.)" Now, we can't have that, can we? For all we know, most or many Palaeolithic and Neolithic cultures were indeed egalitarian and peaceful. Since they were stateless cultures, it's strange that an anarchist like Sheppard rejects them out of hand. (As an unregenerate statist, I'm equally fascinated by the egalitarian, peaceful high culture of the Indus Valley, and the presumably peaceful but hierarchic high cultures of Norte Chico and Minoan Crete.)

[THE ABOLITION OF WORK]

At one point, Sheppard makes fun of the anarcho-primitivist notion that "work" can be abolished in a non-technological society: "As they'd look in disdain over their shoulders at the `workerist' anarchist civilization they have left, they could delight in pursuing the very hard work of foraging and constructing shelter for themselves, deluding themselves that that is not itself work - albeit a hard sort of work not aided by the machinery that anarchists back in the hi-tech society have expropriated from capitalist rule. In the end, the primitivist will be working much harder than his `workerist' cousin, no matter how hard he may try to convince himself that he has liberated himself from toil." While it's certainly true that anarcho-primitivism has a utopian-hippie flavour, much research suggests that Palaeolithic peoples really didn't work very hard. As for hard-working, agricultural tribal peoples, many of them want to keep their traditional lifestyles rather than be swallowed by New Delhi suburban sprawl. Does Sheppard believe this to be an inherently irrational position? Besides, his own viewpoint could also be criticized for being utopian - is it realistic to believe that nobody would work hard in a super-technological society? Is complete automation and robotization really feasible?

[IS TECHNOLOGY NEUTRAL?]

Further, Sheppard believes that modern technology is neutral, and therefore can simply be taken over by the anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and hence be "self-managed" on that basis. This is naïve, certainly for an anarchist! I can understand Marxists who argue like this, since Communist regimes, of course, don't self-manage anything, but run the entire economy from a tightly knit centre. But how can modern technology be "self-managed"? That's not prima facie clear, and even Sheppard believes that some technology is inherently dangerous, such as nuclear power plants. But surely the problem goes deeper than this: a hoe can be dangerous, too, but a nuclear power plant is impossible without an entire centralized structure around it, including a state to make sure nobody sabotages it, not to mention the control necessary to ensure safe storage of the radioactive waste, to stop theft of plutonium, etc. The nuclear power industry *cannot be* self-managed, and most states probably couldn't control it sufficiently either (it's difficult to imagine Jeffersonian America or CNT-run Aragon with nuclear power).

[THE STATE AND ALL THAT]

As you may have gathered by now, I don't think we can get rid of the state, unless civilization collapses entirely, at which point the question will become redundant (and so will Sheppard's criticism of primitivism). It's difficult to envisage an ordered transition from one system to another without some kind of state power, not to mention the need for defence, diplomacy, international trade, etc. In his most lucid moments, even Bakunin seemed to have understood that one cannot abolish the state immediately, and it's interesting to note that he expressed support for the Union during the American Civil War, while criticizing the North for being too centralized. But both the Union and the individual Northern states were...well, states. (Proudhon, by contrast, supported the Confederacy, but that, too, was a state power!)

It's not very likely that Nestor Makhno could have abolished the state had he somehow taken power in the Ukraine. Rather, the Ukraine would have become a new state, perhaps a more radical version of Stamboliski's Bulgaria. The CNT-FAI didn't even try in Spain. After all, they joined the popular front! Had CNT somehow managed to take sole power, Spain would either have become something akin to Sandinista Nicaragua or Tito's Yugoslavia, depending on how the CNT would have treated the other political currents after an anarchist take-over. Occasionally, even Sheppard hints at some higher authority at work in his supposedly self-managed society: "But an anarchist society worthy of the name would not allow those holding religious beliefs to impose them upon others, nor would religious beliefs be allowed to influence decisions of production and distribution." Who's to stop that, I wonder? (And what would happen to the Amish?)

[A STRANGE IDIOSYNCRASY]

Final point. What on earth does Brian Sheppard have against permaculture? :-D

[SUMMARY]

In sum, I can't say that "Anarchism vs. primitivism" have managed to conclusively refute primitivism. The future may not be primitive, but then, anarcho-syndicalism has also seen its better days, hasn't it?

The contradictions of anarchism...and Marxism

"Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism" is an anthology published in the Soviet Union by the foreign language publishing house Progress. This edition is from 1974. I have the 1989 edition, in which Bukharin has been rehabilitated in the footnotes. (Books published by Progress are notorious for their footnotes, in which the momentarily correct line of the Soviet regime is laid down.) Apparently, there is also a much later non-Soviet edition of this work, but I haven't seen it.

The anthology contains texts by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and V. I. Lenin attacking anarchism. Marx and Engels criticize really existing anarchists, including Proudhon and Bakunin. Lenin mostly criticizes perceived anarchists, often within his own party. Thus, the book contains several texts written against the Workers' Opposition, a dissident Bolshevik faction, rather than anarchists sensu stricto.

The texts by Marx and Engels are the most interesting ones. "The Bakuninists at Work" is perhaps the most interesting item in the entire book, dealing with the republican uprising in Spain in 1873. Engels points out that the anarchists (which were relatively influential in Spain at the time) joined several revolutionary governments, despite their much-vaunted opposition to all state power. In effect, the anarchists formed a coalition with a group of "bourgeois" republicans, known as the Intransigents! Marx and Engels also squeeze as much as possible out of Bakunin's secret alliance and his collaboration with the cultic sociopath Nechaev. They point out the obvious contradictions between Bakunin's "anarchism", the covert elitism of the Alliance, and the super-authoritarian and frankly bizarre antics of Nechaev. Other texts deal with the question of authority, the abolition of the state, and the ideas of the Proudhonists. (It should be noted, however, that the more militant wing of anarchism has very little to do with Proudhon, harking back rather to Bakunin.)

Of course, it's easy to point out various glaring inconsistencies in the ideas and actions of Mikhail Bakunin and his secret anarchist Alliance. Still, there are obvious contradictions in the Marxist position, as well. On the one hand, Marx and Engels extol the Paris Commune and claim that the state will wither away under communism. On the other hand, they praise authority and centralization, pointing out (correctly) that modern heavy industry is impossible without a central authority. Presumably, this means that even classless, stateless communism will be centralized. Of course, there are no known examples of societies combining the radically democratic features of the Commune with a centralized planned economy.

It's also amusing to read Marx' and Engels' attack, in the article "The Alliance and the IWMA", on Nechaev's vision of a future society. Nechaev was both centralist, collectivist and super-authoritarian. After describing his ideas in some detail, Marx and Engels ironically exclaim: "What a beautiful model of barrack-room communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, our committee, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme director. This is indeed the purest anti-authoritarianism". One wonders what Marx and Engels would have said about Stalin's Russia or Mao's China?

A problem with all anthologies of this kind, is that they contain very little context. People who know nothing about the conflicts between Marxism and anarchism will probably be bewildered by this book. The footnotes aren't always very helpful either. However, this collection might helpful to more advanced students of the subject.

Catechism of a sociopath

The less said about Sergei Nechayev's bizarre tract "Catechism of the Revolutionist", the better.

Nechayev was a 19th century Russian "revolutionary" who briefly collaborated with the more well-known Mikhail Bakunin, the de facto founder of modern anarchism. Bakunin's alliance with Nechayev destroyed the former's reputation, and is still the main argument used against him by critics of anarchism. "Catechism of the Revolutionist" was written by Nechayev, but Bakunin apparently approved of it at the time. (An earlier document, written by Bakunin himself, is sometimes also referred to as "Revolutionary catechism", but that text is less controversial.)

The text speaks for itself. Nechayev was obviously a quite literal sociopath, and his catechism isn't really a manual for creating a serious revolutionary organization. Rather, we are talking about a murderous cult. The "revolutionary" hates and wants to destroy society, but nevertheless lives right inside it, which would take quite a lot of dissimulation. In other words, only a psychopath could get away with it. The "revolutionary" should turn other people into his virtual slaves, by getting hold of their dark secrets and threaten to reveal them to the world at large, unless they support the revolution. Women in particular should be manipulated, in order to get influence over their husbands or lovers. Competing revolutionaries should be forced to incriminate themselves by being duped into making fiery revolutionary speeches, which would lead to their arrest and elimination. In other words, Nechayev wanted to act as a provocateur.

Enemies of the "revolution" should be killed without mercy. The mind of the manipulative sociopath shines through most obviously in the following lines: "Hard towards himself, he must be hard towards others. All the tender and effeminate emotions of kinship, friendship, love, gratitude and even honour must be stifled in him by a cold and single-minded passion for the revolutionary cause. ... The nature of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, any sentimentality, rapture or enthusiasm. ... The revolutionary passion, which in him becomes a habitual state of mind, must at every moment be combined with cold calculation".

I took a little souvenir, a pretty head!

These were not the sensationalist scribblings of a frivolous youth. Nechayev and his secret organization actually acted precisely as laid out in the "Catechism". They incriminated other radicals, extorted them for money, etc. In Russia, Nechayev murdered a defector from his group, a student with the improbable name Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov. Finally, Bakunin broke with his younger ally, who eventually died in Russian imprisonment, but only after having manipulated the prison guards! (Paul Avrich's book "Anarchist Portraits" tells the full story.)

It's pretty obvious that Nechayev, under different circumstances, might have become a particularly vile serial killer, or (more likely) the leader of some cult in the American West. His "Catechism" is essentially fascist, but nevertheless has some comic relief in the last section, where the "revolutionaries" are said to be fighting for the liberation of the people: "Therefore our society does not intend to impose on the people any organization from above". No? Marx and Engels, when exposing the anarchists during the factional struggles in the First International, quoted a document apparently written by Nechayev's group in which the future society looks suspiciously similar to a Spartan military barrack.

However, it's unlikely that people such as Sergei Nechayev can ever take power. Hitler and Stalin had other qualities apart from being cold-blooded and vile. People like Nechayev can act only as lone wolf assassins or agent provocateurs, and their self-destructiveness will eventually bring about their downfall. (Small wonder they often commit suicide, witness Jim Jones and perhaps David Koresh.)

The main problem, of course, is that they tend to take dozens of others with them into the eternal darkness.

A Marxist critique of Sendero Luminoso

"Peru's Shining Path: Evolution of a Stalinist Sect" by Martin Koppel is a pamphlet published by the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP). I have a previous edition, entitled "Peru's Shining Path: Anatomy of a Reactionary Sect". It's not clear in what way the two editions differ. The early edition calls Sendero "reactionary" and "radically reactionary" in the contents section and the back matter, while the later edition calls it "Stalinist" and "petty-bourgeois". However, the articles in both editions seem to be the same.

Shining Path, Sendero Luminoso or the "Communist Party of Peru" was a notorious Maoist guerrilla group, waging a brutal war against several Peruvian governments and the Peruvian army. Their leader, Abimael Guzman a.k.a. Chairman Gonzalo, was captured in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment. The SWP opposed both the Peruvian government and the Maoist guerrillas. In this pamphlet, Martin Koppel explains way.

He points out that Sendero's war was to a large extent directed against working people. The Senderistas were assassinating labour union leaders, killing members of competing left-wing groups, threatening and attacking workers who didn't participate in the "armed strikes" called by the guerrilla, etc. Sometimes, they blew up plants owned by foreign-born employers, leaving the workers to fend for themselves. More bizarrely, Sendero Luminoso also bombed the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies, in the name of fighting "revisionism". (Guzman didn't consider these nations to be truly Communist or revolutionary.)

However, Koppel admits that Sendero did have a certain amount of popular support among the most downtrodden and least organized layers of the Peruvian population, including peasants in the poorest districts, and slum dwellers in Lima. The "law and order" imposed by the guerrillas in remote regions of Peru sometimes appealed to the local population, since the guerrillas executed thieves, wife beaters and drug users. The Maoists also defended coca growers against both the government and drug traffickers. Presumably, drug traffickers want coca growers to sell the coca as cheaply as possible. Sendero made it possible for these peasants to get higher prices for their produce!

In the end, however, Koppel draws the conclusion that Marxists cannot support the Senderistas. While calling them Stalinists, he somehow believes that they are even worse than "regular" Stalinists, who at least created "deformed workers' state" in Yugoslavia, China and Vietnam. Koppel believes that these states in some distorted fashion nevertheless represented a gain for workers and peasants. The Senderistas, by contrast, are more similar to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who massacred a million people while reducing a large part of the population to virtual slavery. Thus, Pol Pot's Cambodia didn't embody even "deformed" gains for the working classes. If Sendero would take power in Peru, the result would be a reign of sheer terror more akin to that of Pol Pot than the situation in Vietnam or even Mao's China.

Koppel compares Sendero Luminoso to Mikhail Bakunin and the Bakuninist networks exposed by Marx and Engels in the First International. The comparison is apt, at least if Koppel refers to Bakunin's worst period, when he was under the spell of the cultic sociopath Sergey Nechayev. For some reason, however, Koppel never calls the Senderistas "fascist", reserving that term for movements financed by big business to smash the labour movement on its behalf. This definition, surely, is too narrow - why can't a fascist movement decide to rule in its own name? Why cannot Nechayev or Pol Pot be called "fascist"?

Once again, this review is based on the 1993 edition. There may be some subtle differences with the 1994 edition, depicted on this product page.

Of course, Koppel's own alternative to Sendero Luminoso's cultic reign of terror is Fidel Castro's Cuba, and the pamphlet promotes several works by Che Guevara. If forced to choose between Castro and Gonzalo, I'd take my chances with Fidel anytime. Still, the failure of Cuba as a model for economic growth (or the "workers' democracy" craved by the author), shows that the SWP really has no workable alternative model to offer Peru.

But that's another show.

For those who want to read a Marxist criticism of the ostensibly Marxist Shining Path in Peru, Koppel's small work might be of some interest.

The fraud of Bakunin

I always suspected that there was something "fishy" about that apostle of freedom and libertarian socialism, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. Arthur P. Mendel's psychobiography "Michael Bakunin: Roots of Apocalypse" confirmed my suspicions. In fact, it was worse than I imagined!

Bakunin is mostly remembered for his prophetic denunciations of state socialism, made during his conflicts with Karl Marx in the First International. These still play an important part in anarchist mythology (alongside Kronstadt, Makhno and the CNT). However, it's long been known to more dispassionate observers, that Bakunin was - to put it mildly - extremely contradictory. While preaching decentralization, free federation and the immediate abolition of all state power, Bakunin organized secret revolutionary organizations which were super-authoritarian. His real program was for a minority dictatorship over the dumb masses, an "invisible dictatorship" as he once called it. Unknown to most anarchists, Marx actually repaid Bakunin by denouncing *him* as authoritarian!

Mendel's biography shows that there was a basic continuity in Bakunin's political thought, from his pre-anarchist days to his later phase as an explicit anarchist and socialist. One idea that never really left his mind was pan-Slavism. Although Bakunin's pan-Slavism was anti-Czarist (at least more or less), it was nevertheless strongly nationalist and racist. He envisaged a Slavic-Latin alliance against Germany, and often accused Marx of being a Prussian nationalist. Nor was Bakunin's secret appetite for centralized, revolutionary dictatorship anything new or anomalous. It had been his view of post-revolutionary society already before he became an anarchist, and never really left him, despite the libertarian public face. Ironically, Bakunin's political strategy was to the "right" of Marx, rather than to his "left", as would be expected of an anarchist. While Marx supported labour unions and independent labour parties, Bakunin's strategy was to capture and exploit "bourgeois" organizations: the Pan-Slavic Congress in Prague, Polish nationalists, the League of Peace and Freedom, the movement around Mazzini, French and Spanish republicans, the Freemasons... During a visit to Sweden, Bakunin was allowed to meet the king's brother, or the king himself according to some sources (Karl XV). A dangerous revolutionary meeting a Swedish monarch?!

More disturbingly, Bakunin was fiercely anti-Semitic. He never tired of pointing out that many leading German Marxists, including Marx himself, were actually Jewish. Bakunin's anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the usual ones: the Jews are a race of usurers and merchants, their religion and their god are cruel, they control most of the German press from the left to the right, and once state socialism is introduced the Rotschilds will take over the state bank. These are almost word for word the same stereotypes later used by Nazis to deadly effect. I haven't come across this information before. It might explain why a small group of neo-Nazis, known as "national anarchists", are interested in the ideas of Bakunin. On a more bizarre note, Bakunin connected his vicious anti-Semitism with anti-German nationalism, believing himself to fight a German-Jewish alliance! Even Bakunin's attack on Czarism was essentially nationalist, since he claimed that the Czars were "Germans", representing "the state of Peter the Great".

Mendel also points out that Bakunin lapsed from his revolutionary convictions during his imprisonment in Russia and the exile in Siberia. He began extolling the virtues of a relative, General Muraviev, who was the Czarist governor of East Siberia. However, even here there is continuity. Bakunin somehow expected Muraviev to carry out a revolution from above, to be a "red general", and (of course) to establish an iron dictatorship over the stupid masses, who were ungrateful to Muraviev's modernization of the Russian Far East. Bakunin actually sent a letter to Alexander Herzen, defending Mouraviev from the criticism of other Russian exiles. When Bakunin became a revolutionary again, he still expressed a certain hope that Czar Alexander II would somehow come to his senses, convene a national assembly and lead the pan-Slavist revolution!

Some anarchist.

The above facts do make Mendel's biography interesting. However, there are also some problems with it. The book is above all a psyschobiography, with the author using Freudian or perhaps neo-Freudian categories to explain Bakunin's somewhat idiosyncratic behaviour. Thus, there's a lot of talk about "pre-Oedipal narcissim", "Oedipal failure", "projection", speculations about how Bakunin's sexual impotence might have influenced his politics, etc. There is even an extensive appendix titled "Oedipus and Narcissus". While Bakunin's complex character does invite psychologizing, surely the man was above all a product of the Russian 19th century radical milieu? To some extent, Bakuninism was also a product of the immaturity of the labour movement in some of the Latin countries.

The Freudian approach makes Mendel skip certain episodes in Bakunin's life, such as the details concerning his dramatic escape from Siberia and subsequent journey through the United States. Instead, the author emphasizes Bakunin's infatuation with Schelling and Fichte as a teenager. (I was more infatuated with Bakunin himself as a teenager!) Strangely, the book says relatively little about the Nechaev episode - only half a chapter. Perhaps Mendel somehow assumes that his readers are already familiar with this dark episode, and that it really doesn't need further elaboration. He has a point there, but in a psychobiography Bakunin's almost homosexual infatuation with the young savage Nechaev sounds like "smoking gun evidence" for the prosecutor!

I'm not sure how to rate "Roots of Apocalypse". It contains really damning information about Mikhail Bakunin, but also contain lots and lots of Freudian mumbo-jumbo. In fact, I almost threw the book away the first time I attempted to read it. (I got it for ten bucks.) Finally, I decided on the OK rating. At the very least, the book proves that Bakunin was a complete fraud. But, seriously, is anyone surprised?

I AM the Anti-Christ, I AM an anarchist

Originally posted at another site to troll the anarchists - everything I say is true, btw. Come at me, Antifa, tweet at me! 

Mikhail Bakunin attempted to create a super-authoritarian organization with the cultic sociopath Nechayev. Their vision of the future sounded like a cross between ancient Sparta and modern North Korea. Meanwhile, Proudhon was busy supporting the Confederacy during the U.S. Civil War.

In 1933, the CNT boycotted the Spanish general elections, thereby securing the election of an authoritarian right-wing government.

In 1939, the CNT supported General Miaja's coup against Negrin, who wanted to continue resistance against Franco. Miaja wanted to surrender to the fascists. The CNT's Cipriano Mera fought and defeated republican troops who still opposed Franco.

During the 1990's, the Class War Federation started supporting paedophilia. Previously, they had opposed a general strike against Thatcher and called Mandela's imprisonment "no big deal".

Oh, I forgot...in 1975, we got the Sex Pistols!!!

If you find all this to your liking (not to mention Kropotkin's support for World War I), by all means, go ahead and join the punks who riot, occupy Wall Street and listen to really bad music. In short, be an anarchist. This is the product for you, partner!

If not...well, how about reading a good book about what actually happened in 1936-39, or what Bakunin was *really* up to?

No? "That is not my kind of anarchism". No, of course not. I mean, Bakunin would never have listened to the Sex Pistols...

HA HA HA HA.