Everything is possible: The Strange Journey of Georges Valois

"From Fascism to Libertarian Communism: Georges Valois against the Third Republic" by Allen Douglas is a book about Georges Valois (1878-1945), a French political activist with a very colorful career. Valois started out as an anarchist, turned to monarchism and fascism, only to rejoin the far left later in life. Indeed, he is one of the few people I'm familiar with who evolved from right-wing to left-wing activism at a fairly advanced age. Valois died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.

As a young man, Valois saw himself as an anarchist rebel, but was soon drawn to the more constructive side of anarchist ideology in the form of Kropotkin and anarcho-syndicalism. His first political mentor was Ferdinand Pelloutier, his second (more ominously) was Georges Sorel. When breaking with leftist syndicalism, Valois would join the monarchist and proto-fascist Action francaise headed by Charles Maurras. He also became a Catholic. Sorel, too, expressed some sympathy for Maurras. During the 1920's, Valois founded an explicitly fascist party, La Faisceau, which seems to have clashed with the Action francaise even more often than it fought leftist. I mean that quite literally: both Valois and Maurras had access to impatient young men functioning as stormtroopers... 

During the 1930's, Valois went back to a form of revolutionary syndicalism and libertarian communism, while maintaining an ecumenic outreach to all leftist currents except the most reformist ones. He also left the Church and seems to have become an atheist. 

Douglas is clearly fascinated by Valois, but can't really explain his peculiar political gyrations. Perhaps no explanation is readily available. He describes Valois as a "utopian", constantly working on blueprints for a future society. Did he think too much? Like many other utopians, Valois had a tendency to "take an idea and run with it", in his case currency reform. He was something of a "money freak", obsessed with the gold standard, although I have to admit that I often don't understand what on earth the man was talking about! And while Douglas paints Valois as a fairly conservative family man, he did have a mercurial streak in his personality. Why would a young anarchist travel to Russia and work as a tutor in an aristocratic family? Why did he abdicate leadership responsibility in order to work at a plantation in Reunion, or in order to walk on foot from Paris to Lourdes as a Catholic pilgrimage? His whole approach to politics and coalition building was unpredictable and eclectic. He was also a litigious person, but so where his opponents. Perhaps this is typically French? 

Interestingly, Valois was for the creation of Red-Brown blocs as a right-wing activist. As a leftist, by contrast, he warned against all forms of collaboration with fascism, and perceptively realized that some reformist "neosocialists" (such as Henri de Man) could end up becoming fascists - which they indeed did. Valois thus wasn't a "Red-Brown leftist". He really did change almost his entire worldview when returning to the left. As a monarchist reactionary, he had opposed the French revolution, while extolling the virtues of hierarchy, war and tradition. And yes, he was anti-Semitic. His philosophy had been a pessimistic one. Humans are by nature lazy, and all progress is therefore the result of stern leadership (including the whip) over the mediocre masses. As a leftist, by contrast, Valois was optimistic, dreaming of progress and a coming space age. He opposed war, militarism and hierarchy in favor of a society based on mutual aid. 

Yet, there was *some* kind of continuity even in the mind of this strange Frenchman! One was the fixation with monetary reform. After abandoning the pro-gold "deflationist" position when he turned left, he actually went back to a gold bug position while still a leftist. Another constant was an orientation to winning the working class, something Valois never seem to have accomplished in any of his political incarnations. Still another common theme is the idea that the state shouldn't direct the economy. During his right-wing period, he certainly saw the state as necessary, but economic life should be in the hands of "corporations" (in the corporativist sense). As a libertarian communist, he would rather dispense with the state altogether in favor of syndicates (labor unions), cooperatives, etc. By contrast, state planning was "plutocratic" and opened the door to fascism (and Stalinism). It's also interesting to note that Valois used biological metaphors both during his far right and far left phases. As a leftist, he argued that the human body functions "democratically" due to energetic factors. 

Final point about my copy of this book. It's apparently a print on demand edition, and it seems the printer made a weird mistake. Under the same cover, there are two books, the other one being "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy" by none other than Nikola Tesla! I'm sure Georges Valois would have approved of the sentiment... 

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!

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.

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?

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.