Machnos hemstad faller?

 

Nestor Machnos gamla hemstad Huljajpole (den nuvarande svenska stavningen) har stormats av ryska styrkor och kanske även av nordkoreaner (sic). Är dessa alltså aktiva vid fronten i Ukraina? Från TH:s blogg.  

Nu faller Machnos gamla hemstad Huljajpole

Gyllene Flottan möter Surrealistgruppen

Fan, kamrater, vi kommer försent till vallokalen,
måste ju rösta på Biden!

Blev ganska road när jag såg denna (alltså artikeln jag länkar till i slutet av detta inlägg). Hade jag varit kommunist hade jag garanterat uppfattat detta som ännu ett bevis på att anarkisterna är västimperialismens nyttiga idioter. Nu har de visst grundat en folkfront med Zelenskyj, Biden och Azov-bataljonen. Det verkar handla om inhemska anarkister i Ukraina. För några år sedan stred amerikanska Antifas med "SDF" (det stalinoida PKK) i norra Syrien, som ju fick flygunderstöd av Donald Trump. Sedan var det folkfront med Biden på hemmaplan i form av våldsam svans till BLM. 

Det finns många liknande exempel från anarkismens historia. Hübinette nämner Korea och klagar på att deras anarkister betraktas som nationalister, men enligt den bok jag läst i ämnet (som också rekommenderas av Hübinette själv) stod de koreanska anarkisterna i den kinesiska diasporan närmare KMT och vänster-KMT än KKP. Sedan har vi ju Krapotkins stöd till Tsar-Ryssland under första världskriget, Petritjenkos samarbete med Kozlovskij och "Finska Röda Korset" (dvs vitgardister) på Kronstadt, Cipriano Meras agerande under Madrids belägring av Franco, Bakunins möte med Kron-Kalle, och så vidare, och så vidare i all jävla oändlighet, är jag den ende som inser att "den frihetliga socialismen" är rena bluffen, åtminstone om man tror att den står "till vänster" om kommunismen och representerar ett obesudlat "revolutionärt alternativ". I själva verket är anarkisterna bara allmänvänsterns skrikigare svans. De har ibland hamnat *till höger* om vänsterns huvudfåra.

Det finns förresten anarkos på andra sidan också, vem minns inte hur SAC sket ner sig när deras samarbetspartners i Ryssland, KAC eller KAS, stödde Rutskoj och Chasbulatov mot Jeltsin? 

Makhno har förresten också blivit kraftigt romantiserad av anarkisterna. Han och hans medarbetare var riktiga anarkister, men bondearmén han ledde var det knappast. Jag tror att Makhno de facto fungerade som ett slags hetman eller ataman "ute på fältet". 

Till slut en lite nördig varning. Som synes på Hübinettes blogg så ska den anarko-syndikalistiska flaggan vara diagonalt delad. Eller vad man nu säger. En röd-svart flagga som är horisontellt delad symboliserar nämligen extremhögern i Ukraina! 

Varför strider anarkistiska förband mot ryssarna i Ukraina?

Living Anarchism

I remember the Anarchist Workers Group. In fact, when I visited London years ago, I *almost* attended one of their meetings (don´t remember the name of the borough). 

Be that as it may, I read a few issues of "Socialism From Below", the somewhat peculiar magazine of the AWG. I recently found all back issues (only four were ever published, circa 1989-91) on a website humorously called "Splits and Fusions". It made me realize things I had not seen before. The AWG was curious in that it more closely resembled a Trotskyist group (but with anarchoid rhetoric) rather than a anarchist ditto. Indeed, other anarchists loved to hate it. I wondered why the AWG didn´t simply join the SWP. However, it turns out that there was *another* Trotskyist (or Trotskyist-derived) organization the AWG resembled much more closely. Yes, it was the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Digression: the British RCP is a different group than the American RCP (which is Maoist or Maoist-derived). 

In fact, the similarities between the AWG and the RCP are so striking, that the former almost comes across as a front operation for the latter! Since several members of the AWG subsequently did join the RCP, I frankly wonder whether some kind of entryism might have been involved? There are certainly hidden codes: several articles in "Socialism From Below" have titles including the words "The Next Step", and an ad for a summer school includes the word "Confrontation". Now, the RCP´s weekly paper was called "The Next Step", and their theoretical journal..."Confrontation". 

More to the point, the political positions of the AWG have a strong family likeness to those of the RCP. The Labour Party is a bourgeois imperialist party and must be completely opposed. While this is also an anarchist position, remember that the AWG sounded Trotskyist-inspired. The RCP was perhaps the only British Trotskyist group which opposed voting for Labour even as a tactic. The correct line towards the IRA in Northern Ireland is a form of military but not political support, and national self-determination is for "the Irish people as a whole", code for a united (Green) Ireland. The established campaigns demanding "troops out" are useless, and should be countered with a more militant anti-imperialist campaign. This is at least similar to the RCP´s positions. Countering homophobia, the Embryo Bill and AIDS hysteria is important. The bourgeois state should *not* ban racist and fascist marches, since this would strengthen the state, ultimately endangering the left. Again, very similar to RCP.  

AWG began as a split from the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement (DAM). The AWG rejected the DAM´s dual unionism in favor of a rank-and-file opposition within the existing unions. And then, maybe they really didn´t. The rank-and-file committees called for by the AWG are really "politicized" fronts for the AWG itself. The committees should cut across union divisions, and perhaps even the divide between workers and the unemployed, suggesting that they aren´t rank-and-file union caucuses of the typical kind. Their program should not be confined to union issues alone. At one point, the AWG strongly implies that their projected rank-and-file movement might agitate for the AWG´s line on Northern Ireland.

The RCP had exactly the same approach to union organizing. My take is that the RCP and AWG positions is *really* just another form of dual unionism, a kind of "moderate" version of the Third Period, essentially trying to create a dual union within the union! 

The main difference between the AWG and the Revolutionary Communist Party is that the latter group was really "right as to content", despite its ra-ra-revolutionary rhetoric, something the subjectively more leftist AWG doesn´t seem to have understood. Thus, the refusal to let the bourgeois state arbitrate between fascists and anti-fascists was really a libertarian position, while the attacks on the AIDS panic was probably a libertine promotion of "alternative lifestyle choices". The AWG does criticize the RCP´s bizarre pessimism at one point, however.

As already mentioned, the Anarchist Workers Group often took positions usually associated with Leninism and Trotskyism (while nominally sharing much of the anarchist criticism of the same). They are in effect calling for a democratic centralist organization with strong executive committees, but also with faction and tendency rights. The AWG even calls this "a cadre organization"! Such an organization is necessary, not simply for purely technical reasons (swift decisions must be taken when the class struggle moves forward), but for the more fundamental reason that the working class left to itself will never spontaneously develop revolutionary consciousness. Moreover, the working class is split, one layer being a more privileged labor aristocracy. To "politicize" the struggle ("the battle of ideas"), the revolutionary minority must organize itself on a professional basis. This all sounds like an RCP-ish take on Lenin´s "What is to be done". 

The AWG, however, preferred to reference the so-called Platform, a controversial document adopted in 1926 by Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov and Ida Mett, three Russian anarchist exiles in France. Since the Platform calls for the formation of a politically homogenous anarchist organization with a strong leadership, it was roundly condemned by most anarchists as "Leninist". From time to time, some anarchists rediscover the Platform, but the AWG seems to have been the only Platformist group that actually became a kind of crypto-Leninists. Or perhaps crypto-Füredi-ites...

That concludes my admittedly somewhat esoteric reflections. 

A tedious conversation

This is a relatively uninteresting pamphlet, also available on the web. The publisher is a small "Trotskyist" group, the International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT). The pamphlet is really a sequel to a somewhat better publication, titled "Platformism and Bolshevism".

Platformists are anarchists, but call for a more centralized organization with a united leadership. More traditional anarchists have therefore accused the platformists of being too soft on Leninist methods. Ironically, the original platformist current was founded by Nestor Makhno, whose armed peasant detachments found themselves in conflict with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War! The main platformist groups today are the Irish Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) and the American NEFAC (or Common Struggle).

The IBT's polemic against the platformists is written from a Leninist-Trotskyist perspective, and little needs to be said about it here, except that "Conversations with an Anarchist" is less interesting than the main pamphlet. But then, I already said that, didn't I?

Personally, I'm pretty sceptical to both the IBT and the NEFAC. I mean, come on, one of the groups is headed by Bill Logan, and the other by Wayne Price?! Feels like choosing between the SLANZ and the RSL (who became "libertarian socialists" only after having purged every dissident on the block). No thank you.

Indispensable source material

Freedom Press is an anarchist publisher in Britain who once again publishes this English translation of Peter Arshinov's near-epic "History of the Makhnovist Movement 1918-1921". The Makhnovists were a peasant insurgent movement in the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. They were named after their leader, Nestor Makhno. The Makhnovists are often described as "anarchists" and play a prominent role in the political mythology of many anarchist groups. The leadership (including Arshinov and Makhno himself) was anarchist, but the movement as a whole was a populist peasant insurgency. Interestingly, the Makhnovists never collaborated with the White Guards. Indeed, they occasionally joined forces with the Bolsheviks against the Whites. However, Makhno's movement was never under actual Bolshevik control, and as Soviet Russia was sliding towards one-party rule, a showdown between Makhno and the Red Army became inevitable. By 1921, the movement had been defeated, and both Makhno and Arshinov fled to France. Their subsequent fates are somewhat curious. In France, Arshinov and Makhno published an anarchist platform which was too centralist and "Bolshevik" for the taste of the regular anarchists. They were roundly condemned as heretics. Even later, Arshinov became a Communist and returned to Russia! As a final ironic twist, Stalin had him shot during the Great Purges, accusing Arshinov of wanting to restore anarchism... Makhno, meanwhile, remained an anarchist and died in France in relative obscurity.

Although very partisan, Arshinov's book on the Makhnovists is nevertheless an indispensable source for students of the Russian Civil War and Ukrainian history. It tells the entire story of the Makhnovist movement from 1918 to 1921, and includes various documents issued by it. Despite its partisan character, the book does contain some revealing material. For instance, it's obvious that the movement wasn't particularly "anarchist" or "libertarian". It was essentially an army, commanded by Makhno and a closely knit group of collaborators. Makhno was called Batko ("little father" - actually a deferential term given to leadership figures) and the official name of the movement was Revolutionary Insurgent Army of the Ukraine (Makhnovist), which suggests a personality cult of some sort.

Nor is this surprising. Peasant movements are often welded together by military strongmen of this kind. It's probably inevitable: the peasantry is decentralized, and the only way to unite it might be through strong leadership figures to whom the peasants feel an almost individual loyalty and deference. Other examples probably include Zapata, Pancho Villa, Sandino, Farabundo Marti and even Mao Zedong. Interestingly, all of these had some kind of "anarchist" ideology (except Mao). We can also see this phenomenon historically. What about Thomas Münzer or Engelbrekt, for instance?

Nor were the Makhnovists particularly "democratic". At one congress of the Insurgent Army, Makhno quite simply shot and killed his opponent Grigoriev in front of the entire meeting, where upon Grigoriev's men supposedly hailed Makhno and decided to follow him instead! I have little doubt that Grigoriev was a bandit and anti-Semitic pogromist, but this episode does show that Makhno wasn't your average liberal democrat. The book also shows that Makhno had a very ambivalent attitude to other left-wing movements. When his army captured the town of Ekaterinoslav, they did proclaim freedom of speech and organization, while simultaneously warning the political parties not to "impose any political authority on the working masses". In other words, to stay clear of the Makhnovists, who had the real political authority.

Personally, I find these non-anarchist traits entertaining, since they belie Makhno's position in anarchist mythology. Indeed, it may have been Arshinov's and Makhno's experience in the Ukraine that led them to later propose a more centralist, disciplined form of anarchism.

Another account of the Makhnovist movement can be found in Voline's "The Unknown Revolution", a mammoth work also published by Freedom Press. Voline also belonged to the Makhnovist movement, but couldn't accept the later platform of Arshinov and Makhno.

Recommended.

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.

The last stand of Nestor Makhno

"Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists" (often known simply as the Platform) is a controversial document published in 1926 by the anarchist group Dielo Trouda. The Platform was signed by three well known anarchist militants: Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov and Ida Mett. Two other signatories, Valevsky and Linsky, are relatively unknown. The text itself was probably written by Arshinov.

During the Russian Civil War, Makhno had led a substantial armed movement in the Ukraine, the Revolutionary Insurgent Army, which actually referred to itself as "Makhnovist". While Makhno and his close collaborator Arshinov called themselves anarchists, the movement itself was a populist peasant insurrection. It came into conflict with both the Germans, the White Guards, the Ukrainian nationalists and (finally) the Bolsheviks. The Makhnovists did enter a number of temporary alliances with the Bolsheviks, but Lenin and Trotsky could hardly tolerate an independent movement, let alone one based on the peasantry. In 1921, after the Bolsheviks had turned on them, the Makhnovists were defeated. Somehow, both Makhno and Arshinov managed to escape to France, where they were later joined by Ida Mett, another anarchist who had left the Soviet Union. (She is the author of a well-known pamphlet on the Kronstadt rebellion.)

When the Platform was published in 1926, it immediately became the centre of heated controversy. Indeed, most leading anarchists condemned it, including Voline (who had also worked with Makhno in the Ukraine). Reading the Platform, it's not difficult to see why.

The Platform condemns individual anarchism, and explicitly defines anarchism as a movement for class struggle of the workers and the peasants. It calls for a united, disciplined and ideologically homogenous General Union of Anarchists led by an Executive Committee. In effect, the Platform calls for an anarchist version of the Bolshevik Party! True, it doesn't say so explicitly, but although the expressions differ, the "Union" is really a party with a Central Committee and some kind of democratic centralism. It also calls for the creation of a centralized revolutionary army. It's difficult to take its call for "the abolition of the state from day one" seriously. It's also hard to see how the national networks of workers' and peasants' cooperatives the Platform talks about could be set up without some kind of central power.

The anarchists who attacked the Platform did have a point. This was indeed a Bolshevized version of anarchism. It might seem ironic that those who proposed it, Arshinov and Makhno, had been forced out of Russia by the Bolsheviks. Why would they want to copy their methods? But perhaps it's not so strange after all. The Makhnovist movement plays an important role in anarchist political mythology, but how "anarchist" was the movement really? As already mentioned, the top leadership was anarchist, but the movement itself was essentially a peasant army, led by a central command with Makhno acting as a kind of charismatic leadership figure. In essence, the movement wasn't particularly "democratic". Makhno at one point shot and killed an opponent at a Makhnovist congress (admittedly, the opponent was the notorious warlord Grigoriev). When the Makhnovists captured the town of Ekaterinoslav, they gave the other political groups a stern warning not to interfere with the authority of "the working masses" (read: the Makhnovists). Of course, by defending private or co-operative property in land, the Makhnovists nevertheless gave the peasants more rights than the Bolsheviks, which explains their strong support in parts of the Ukraine. Still, Makhno was obviously not an anarchist in the mushy, anti-authoritarian, hippie sense of that word. This could explain his call for an organization of disciplined, collective action during his exile in France.

The subsequent fate of Arshinov is somewhat strange. He broke with anarchism and returned to the Soviet Union, apparently embracing the Communist message. As a final twist, Arshinov was executed during the Great Purges, accused of wanting to restore anarchism! Makhno, meanwhile, remained an anarchist and died in France in 1934. I suppose the Platform was his last stand.

As for the Platform itself, it has never been widely accepted by the anarchist movement, although a few "Platformist" groups have been formed in various nations.