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 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.

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.